Farquhar EE letter

Local paper communication

paul martin
1 min readJan 30, 2022

I enjoyed the education focus in Thursday’s Evening Express: Flashback school pictures, North East to receive less government Early Years education money, and (indirectly) Colin Farquhar on risks and creativity, a cinematic meets civic redevelopment view. His full page article started with an anecdote on school poetry, and concluded with a call for “Creativity, transformation and risk” which could have been a quote from the recommendation of the first report by the great and good of the Times Education Commission. Indeed, at first glance I thought the picture, at the heart of the article, was an artists impression of an atrium for a new City Academy.

And a “radical and thoughtful solution” occured to me why not place a school, to improve the moribund eastern district of Union Street. One option would be to relocate Harlaw Academy — aren’t there enough schools on the western approach roads into town; plus the current campus would fetch a good price. Alternatively a secondary faith school might be encouraged to set up for the growing religious population of Aberdeen. Such has been successful in other parts of the UK where large empty shops have been converted and lively teens have transformed run down areas.

A bold move might be vote winner in the upcoming local council elections. Which political party triumphed with “Education, education, education” ?

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