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This week Fiona Hyslop announced 21 new or refurbished Primary Schools. That makes a grand total of 35 new schools or major refurbishments.
Now here's a strange thing: when challenged about the pledge to match the previous administrations school-building programme "brick-for-brick", Ms Hyslop was wont to claim that the SNP had "completed" 236 new major school projects....but 35 can never be made to equal 236, (and BTW, none of them will be completed by May 2011) so how to square the circle?
The answer is in the word "complete": there have indeed been 236 schools completed... every one of them started or commissioned before the SNP came to power.
How does Fiona Hyslop hope to get away with this deception? Answer... she' hasn't.. she's bin fun' oot.
Rhona Brankin asked a question in parliament on 4th November 2009:
"... whether it will list the 236 new or refurbished schools completed since April 2007 referred to in its news release of 8 October 2009, broken down, where applicable, by (a) procurement method, (b) date when the outline business case was approved and (c) date when construction commenced."
Answer....
"the first bricks at 157 of those schools were laid in May 2007 or earlier. The other 79 schools were commissioned by the previous Scottish Executive, and started after the election."
The answer is accompanied by a table of all the 236 schools, when they were commissioned and when construction started, and not one of them owes anything to the SNP...except SNP ministers have had no problem attending ceremonial openings of the schools, many of which were built by PPP and which were bitterly opposed by the same ministers when in opposition.
So there we have it... the SNP promise to build schools "brick-for-brick" has no chance of being met. And claims to have "completed" 236 schools is just that: a claim with no foundation in truth or in fact.
But they have no shame when taking the credit for schools commissioned and built by others.
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