A dispute involving two former colleagues means that New Deal money to upgrade one Angus primary is being diverted to another. The problem at 40-pupil Glamis school turns on the refusal of the retired headteacher to vacate the schoolhouse which the council says is needed to allow for expansion.
“We’ve been five times in court about the attempt to evict me,” Ken Duncan, aged 70, says. He denies his stubbornness is blocking investment in the school where he became head in 1973. “If I thought it was I would have been offski. But this is one of the last auld dominie’s houses occupied by an auld dominie. ”
Brian Milne, education convener of the SNP-run council, who is threatening to divert the money to another of Angus’s priority projects, the replacement of four temporary classrooms at Hayshead primary in Arbroath, once taught in the same school but Mr Duncan is determined not to give way.
“I said to a journalist that I’d be here in the new year, but I didn’t say which year.”