EXCLUSIVE
LABOUR councillors in Glasgow were last night on collision course with the Roman Catholic and Muslim communities over plans to end the single-sex status of Scotland's only local authority comprehensive school for girls.
Members of the Labour group executive on Glasgow City Council voted 9-3 in favour of issuing formal consultation documents aimed at creating three Roman Catholic co-educational secondary schools to serve the west and north-west of Glasgow - John Paul Academy, Notre Dame, and St Thomas Aquinas Secondary.
It is proposed that all three would be retained in their current buildings, with Notre Dame getting a #1.1m extension and becoming progressively co-educational, starting with first-year in August 1999.
Notre Dame was recently the subject of an informal consultation on removal of single-sex status, coupled with a move to North Kelvinside Academy. The move to change buildings has now been dropped but the issuing of consultation documents, if approved by the full Labour group, would indicate that the education department feels it has a strong case, however controversial it might be.
The proposal is part of an overall strategy for school rationalisation in the secondary sector, with the number of schools expected to be reduced from 38 to 29.
A minority on the Labour executive warned that making Notre Dame co-educational would lead inevitably to a demand for a separate Muslim school, given the significant numbers of Muslim girls on the Notre Dame roll - 200 out of 830.
Mr Peter Mullen, spokesman on education for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow, said: ''Speaking personally, it seems curious to me that when you look at educational achievement throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, there is a single strand, and that is that single-sex denominational schools seem to do extremely well in all the major cities - in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, anywhere you like.''
Glasgow's Labour leader, Councillor Frank McAveety, made no comment on the Notre Dame situation, preferring to await the result of the consultation process. However, he talked up the school rationalisation programme, describing it as ''the most ambitious, detailed, and courageous programme of education investment that Glasgow has ever seen'', involving public/private partnership.
A spokesman for the Muslim community said yesterday: ''If the status of Notre Dame was changed, then the problem for the Muslim community would be that they would then have to offset that by setting up a school for themselves, and the Muslim community may well ask for assistance in that.
''If they can't find premises privately, then they will seek opt-out options in areas where there are Muslim majority schools - primarily in the Pollokshields area.''
Already a trust set up by Muslim businessmen has bought the B-Listed annexe at Bellahouston Academy for #300,000. It hopes to create a private fee-paying school for girls.
Notre Dame is one of the few single-sex comprehensive schools in the UK. The former Strathclyde Regional Council took a decision to close the school in 1988 after a public consultation, but this proposal was rejected by the Scottish Office.
The main school building is owned by the council but the land on which the school stands is leased. The rent is #150 per year and the lease terminates in 2009.
Another building used by the school has a five-year lease which terminates in December this year and has an annual rent of #46,200. The education department proposes to purchase the land on which the main building is located, either through voluntary agreement or compulsory purchase order. The department has also established that Notre Dame requires a #1.1m extension so as to vacate a leased annexe building.
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