I attended the official opening of the new replacement Kingspark School on Friday 18 February.
Michael Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning unveiled the opening plaque. The real stars of the event were the children who performed in a concert for the assembled invited guests, parents and a majority of the pupils. The programme was introduced by Mrs Laura Smith, the Head Teacher. It included spirited performances by the Kingspark choir and instrumental groups. I particularly enjoyed their singing of Calendonia as well as their rendition of Mhairi's Wedding that accompanied children dancing on the stage.
The children's performances gave some indication to the remarkable capabilities and life skills that the school nurtures amongst pupils with a range of disabilities and learning difficulties. After the ceremony, guests were taken on a conducted tour of the school. The positivity of the school 's ethos permeated all that I observed.
I am proud to have been the Education Convener when the planning of this school was undertaken and sanctioned by the Council. This is another one of the legacy achievements of the then Labour led administration of the City Council that built six new Primary Schools and two new secondary schools under the auspices of its PPP building programme. Kingspark was in the next part of the Labour led council's ambitious capital plan which also included the replacement Whitfield Primary School and the two new twin campus primary schools in the Westend and Lochee/Charleston.
When delivering his speech, Mike Russell, suffered from political amnesia counting the new Kingspark School as though it was part of the SNP's school building programme. The school was in fact built with a mixture of local funding and prudential borrowing by the City Council.
So while celebrating another success of our Administration's legacy of new school building and school refurbishment in the city, it's difficult to identify the SNP school building legacy apart from Harris Academy whose construction is projected to begin in 2012/13. I hope for the sake of children being educated in unimproved schools that the SNP administration will indeed will indeed conjure up a school building programme, as they promised in May 2007, 'to match Labour's PPP programme brick for brick'.
