Sara Craig, whose deaf three-year-old son attends Gateside School, said Renfrewshire Council had not consulted fully or adequately on its proposals to close Gateside, which currently caters for 17 children, of whom three are deaf. The school is also the base for a peripatetic service for deaf children which is to be amalgamated into other peripatetic services for children with special educational needs. It was originally intended to cater for 15 children with hearing impairments.
The protesting parents are being supported by the West of Scotland branch of the National Deaf Children's Society. The chair, Joe Owens, said, 'It's a centre of excellence for deaf children, and the council is going to close it and combine the children into an ordinary nursery.' The council has decided to transfer services for under-fives with hearing impairments from Gateside, a nursery school with its own headteacher, to neighbouring Glenfield Community Nursery, a council-run nursery, by August 2002. The other Gateside children will also transfer to Glenfield or to other local nursery provision. The headteacher's post will be made redundant, but three other specialist staff - a teacher of the deaf and two specially trained nursery nurses - will transfer to Glenfield.
Ms Craig said that the first Gateside parents knew of the plans was when they read about them in the local press in August, and parents who used the peripatetic service were not consulted. The council says that it consulted on the closure of the nursery school in accordance with statutory requirements and carried out an informal consultation on the changes to the peripatetic service.
Ms Craig added that the education department did not present parents with concrete details about the plans during the consultation period. 'We've been given assurances in the loosest terms that provision will be "adequate", "maintained" or even "better". Yet how this would be achieved remains obscure.' A council spokeswoman said Glenfield would be adapted to meet the needs of children with hearing impairments, including a sound-proofed play room, a therapy room and a parents' room.
Meanwhile, the Gateside building is to be adapted to cater for the children with severe and complex learning difficulties who are currently accommodated at nearby Moorcroft Children's Centre, premises that the council describes as old-fashioned and unsuitable.
Ms Craig said, 'Parents of all the children at Gateside feel desolate about the way in which the education department has gone about this. Personally we are new to parenting a deaf child - Angus was finally diagnosed just over a year ago. We were, and still are, so grateful for the wonderful gift Renfrewshire gave our son in Gateside school.
'Only through pressing the education authority to recognise current provision can we ensure that it is maintained or bettered in the future. For this reason the parents are legally challenging the council on the basis that they have failed to consult properly on the closure of a school.'
