RELIEVED islanders in the Small Isles are celebrating after being told their school ferry will run permanently, enabling their children to return home every weekend.
The news comes following an outcry when the weekly service was cut to a fortnightly one, even though it costs more to house the children in a hostel on alternate weekends.
Eigg, Muck and Rum are only an hour’s boat trip away from Mallaig where the high school is located, but despite years of protests, Highland Council only ran a school boat back to the islands every fortnight – meaning the children were forced to stay in a hostel every second weekend.
When the pandemic began, the council decided to send the pupils home every Friday and parents thought this would continue, especially as Mallaig headteacher Jeremy Newnham initially told them the weekly boat appeared to meet the needs of parents and students.
To their dismay, they were told last summer that the service was being cut back to fortnightly and that if they took the children out of school in order to catch the public ferry at the weekends, the absences would be marked as “unauthorised”, leaving them at risk of prosecution.
A Freedom of Information request from the islanders established the cost of a weekly ferry would amount to £4200 per month as opposed to £5336.92 per month to house them in the hostel for the two weekends they were being forced to stay there.
After the cut was reported by the Sunday National, the weekly service was reinstated, but Highland Council said the longer term frequency of the boat service was still under review.
The children wrote to Highland Council begging for a permanent service while parents asked Finance Secretary Kate Forbes and Islands minister Mairi Gougeon to intervene.
Now the islanders have learned the weekly service is to become permanent. The decision has been welcomed by the parents and pupils.
One pupil who has just finished her first year in the hostel said: “I am so happy that I get to come home every weekend. It is still hard but at least when I leave on a Sunday evening I know I’ll be home in five sleeps.”
