PARENTS fighting to save their Catholic primary school from closure have appealed to the Church for help.
The move comes as West Dunbartonshire Council holds informal meetings with parents about the future of three primary schools.
Campaigners say officials told them St Martin’s Primary School in Renton could be merged with St Mary’s Primary in Alexandria as part of plans for a "regeneration" of the school estate.
Drew MacEoghainn, whose children attend St Martin’s, called for the Catholic Church to help safeguard the schools' future.
He said: "There’s a chance that because of the distance to St Mary’s a lot of the parents will send their kids to Renton Primary instead, which means that up to 30 pupils will be lost from Catholic education.
“If the Catholic Church in Scotland flex their muscles we will have St Martin’s for another 118 years. What we are fighting currently is the eradication of more than a century of Catholic education in our village.”
West Dunbartonshire Community Party councillor Jim Bollan said the council has not given any reason for the plans.
He said: "To lose St Martin’s would be a major blow for Renton and I think that, coupled with other closures such as the library, it will have an effect on what people think of living there."
A council spokeswoman said: “Informal meetings are being held this week with St Martin’s, St Mary’s and Renton primary school parent councils to provide advance notice of a proposal to consult with parents and carers on the regeneration of the Alexandria schools estate.
“It will be for the education committee to decide whether to take the consultation forward when it meets in March.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel