Isle fights for school with no pupils

IT IS an empty school where the playground echoes not to the laughter of children but the cry of distant corncrakes. Islanders on Egilsay, in Orkney, are fighting to save their primary from closure, despite the fact that the only pupil prefers to undergo a daily sea crossing to a larger school.

Egilsay Primary School has been mothballed for the past five years and now faces the prospect of closure, which the Orkney community believe will put off new residents from setting up home on the island.

At the moment, the island's only primary school pupil, Jordan Basford, 11, makes the 20-minute ferry crossing to reach the primary on neighbouring Rousay, a journey that can lead to him being stranded by stormy weather.

"It can be very rough and very exciting," Jordan said yesterday. "If the weather gets worse during the day I can get stuck there. But I prefer to go to Rousay, because if I went to school in Egilsay I'd have no friends to play with."

At the moment, the island has a population of just 24. Orkney Islands Council is due to decide next week whether to start the formal process to close Egilsay primary permanently.

As residents prepare to oppose that move, Egilsay's newest resident, Amber Craigie, made her first journey home to the island, a week after she was born in hospital in Aberdeen.

Jordan was just five when he started travelling to Rousay on a part-time basis, and has been making the daily round-trip by ferry since he was six.

"It's all he's known, and he's been magnificent," his grandmother, Margaret Swindells, said. "But I'm not sure other children would necessarily cope so well – particularly from such a young age – and I would never recommend this course of action for other parents.

"There's been times when Jordan hasn't been able to get home for two or three days when the weather's been bad. The community in Rousay have been brilliant in looking after him. But you still worry about when you're going to see him again."

Although his family agree it is best for Jordan to be educated with other children, they and the rest of the community hope that the presence of a school on Egilsay will help attract families to the island. "While the school's mothballed it can still reopen," said islander Edwin Dick. "But once a school closes it never opens again – and that would be a catastrophe that would tear the heart out of our community."

Mr Dick, a member of the local community council, said it was fine for a child of 11 to go by ferry to school.

"But it's completely unacceptable for a five-year-old," he said. "What family would move here if that was the only option? It means that Egilsay, instead of being a vibrant community, will become an island where only old people live. The council says it wants to support small communities like ours. But that would destroy us."

If the closure goes ahead, the council is proposing that the school building could be handed over to the Egilsay Community Association for a peppercorn rent as a meeting place for the island.

Education director Leslie Manson said that, for communities with low pupil numbers, the educational and social needs of children were better met if they could travel to a larger school for lessons.

"If the school-age population on Egilsay were to increase, the council would reconsider arrangements, including whether to reopen the school," he said.