In yesterday's Evening Telegraph, it was reported that Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the Scottish Government was in Dundee. He took the opportunity to visit Kingspark School and comment on the funding of the refurbishment of Harris Academy.
Unfortunately, the Education Minister's comments about his government's part funding of the refurbishment of Harris Academy served to confirm that the start date may be further away than predicted.
I think many folk connected with Harris Academy will be concerned that Mike Russell not only confirmed that, seven and a half months after the announcement about Harris Academy, no overall budget for the project has yet been agreed. Furthermore, he also appeared to be introducing another reason why this project will be delivered late, when he said 'Exactly at what time the money will become available depends on the present financial circumstances, but I think you can take it that it’s going to happen.'
I am glad the Education Minister came to Dundee to admire the new Kingspark School; our school providing education for young people between five and 18, who have a wide range of additional support needs. I should like to make it clear that the new Kingspark Special School he viewed while in the city is not funded by the SNP government's programme of school building but was funded principally by prudential borrowing by the Council. Furthermore, the contract to build the school was brought forward by the previous Labour/Liberal Democrat administration in the city during the time I was Education Convener. In fact this plan to rebuild Kingspark first appeared on the Education Committee's agenda in June 2008 and two years later the school will be ready for occupation. I regret his government has insisted that the Harris Academy refurbishment will need to go through the, yet to be established, new Hub Co for its procurement. Our Chief Executive, David Dorward has confirmed in an recent email to me, 'I would envisage that for the Company to be in a legal status that it could procure construction contracts may be during mid to late 2012.'
I remain committed, with my Labour colleagues on the Council, to look at any reasonable way of speeding up the refurbishment of Harris Academy and await an approach from the Education Convener to engage in discussions that might ease the path of this project.