Highland Council Keeps Duror Primary Open With Two Pupils

Highland Council decided on 27 March 2025 not to close Duror Primary School, which still had two pupils at the September 2025 census. Officers had already called the lochside school no longer viable. Duror and neighbouring Kentallen hold about 300 people above Loch Linnhe.

The keep-open vote was a bet on preschoolers, a marine learning hub, and a village that said it would empty without a school. The last published roll has not moved.

Councillors Overturned Their Own Closure Paper

On 26 February 2025 the education committee met to rubber-stamp a closure that officials had been building for a year. Chair Cllr John Finlayson moved the other way. He said new information about a possible rise in the roll, plus the playgroup and cluster nurture work he had seen in the building, made it possible to withdraw the original recommendation. The committee backed him unanimously.

The full council then decided not to proceed with this proposal on 27 March 2025. That ended a statutory process started on 21 February 2024, when the same committee had agreed to consult on shutting Duror and sending its catchment to Ballachulish Primary, later revised toward St Bride’s Primary.

THE PATH TO THE KEEP-OPEN VOTE

1. 21 February 2024: Education committee agrees a legal consultation on ending education at Duror Primary.
2. 4 March 2024: Formal consultation opens.
3. 16 April 2024: Public meeting held in the school; every recorded speaker opposes closure.
4. 3 May 2024: Consultation closes after 60 days.
5. 26 February 2025: Education committee unanimously recommends the school stay open.
6. 27 March 2025: Full council refuses to discontinue education at Duror.

Twenty of 22 written responses opposed closure, most from the wider community rather than from parents. Two supported it. Education Scotland inspectors who visited found that parents, staff and pupils all wanted the school kept. Finlayson put the reversal in writing the next day.

The Council’s proposal to close Duror Primary School was made on the basis that only two children currently attend the school. However, new information has been presented since the report was published about a potential future increase in the school roll and this has made it possible to withdraw the original recommendation to close.

Cllr John Finlayson, Education Committee chair, Highland Council statement, 27 February 2025

Two Pupils Against a Capacity of 25

Highland Council’s core facts sheet, dated 31 March 2026 and using the September 2025 census, still lists two pupils against a planning capacity of 25. Occupancy is 8%. Condition is C. Suitability is C.

The closure paper had already treated a roll of two as a barrier to group work and shared tasks. “The educational interests of the children are best served elsewhere,” it said. Session 2023-24 had four pupils; two were in P7 and left for high school, which is how the live roll became two, a P6 and a P4. Officers then projected that, even with three preschoolers whose parents wanted Duror, the roll would not rise above three before August 2028. The older of the two on the roll was scheduled to leave for high school in August 2026.

Across Highland that census counted 15,525 primary pupils in 163 schools. Duror’s two desks sat at the bottom of that list with Raasay’s three and the handful of island and west-coast schools still in single figures.

SOUTH LOCHABER PRIMARY ROLLS, SEPTEMBER 2025

St Bride’s, the nearest alternative named in the later closure paper, is a 14-mile round trip from Duror. Ballachulish, the original receiving school, is eight miles and about 14 minutes by road. Funded transport would have been provided either way. Children would have lost the walk and cycle along the Caledonia Way that the community council put at the centre of its objection.

Ballachulish, Glencoe and St Bride’s Take the Rest

Duror has not been a one-room island since January 2020, when it became an associated school with Ballachulish. The four buildings share a cluster. On the village site the school is described as an outdoor centre for the cluster group, sitting on Cuil Bay Road at the A828, with a wildlife bay at the end of the track and woodland behind the playground. It was built in 1877 and is the most southerly primary in Highland. As of the June 2026 village update, class teacher Holly Graves runs the room and Mary Evans is acting cluster head teacher.

Local members told the February 2025 committee what a week already looked like, because the closure paper had treated two pupils as socially stranded. They were not arguing the roll was fine. They were arguing the cluster had already done the job officers said a bigger school would do.

A WEEK IN THE FOUR-SCHOOL CLUSTER

• Stay and Play: A toddler group uses the building, and parents stay with the children.
• Nurture visits: Pupils from the other three schools come in for confidence-building sessions.
• Ski days: Duror children join Glencoe classmates on the hill.
• Shared PE: Assembly and PE happen at St Bride’s with a larger group.
• Art visitors: Outside tutors come into Duror rather than the two pupils travelling every time.

Malcolm McGregor, speaking for the pupils, said they “feel like Duror is a family rather than a school.” Sophie Hardy, a mother of two toddlers who had moved in, said the village “ticked all the boxes: it is remote but has the essentials within it, plus a great community feel.” Megan Dent, another local parent, called the school “vital to the future of our village” and said she hoped her son would attend. Local members also told the committee the school was the last remaining employer in the village.

What the Otter Club and SAMS Have Done

Cllr Sarah Fanet told colleagues the partnerships on the table would turn Duror into a “unique marine and coastal education learning hub.” That line did more political work than any new classroom. The building looks over a sea loch. The argument was that the loch should count as a lab.

Dr Anuschka Miller, head of communications at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, had already started treating Duror as a useful outpost. SAMS’s own outreach and STEM offering for schools is still centred on Argyll and Bute, with Lochaber as extra reach, and the charity is separately converting a building near Oban into an Ocean Learning Centre scheduled for 2028. Duror is not that project. It is spare rooms and a shore.

The school has space and facilities that can enable us to provide more educational opportunities in the area.

Dr Anuschka Miller, Head of Communications, Scottish Association for Marine Science

Marine and Coastal Conservation of Loch Linnhe, the local group known as MaCCOLL, was set up in 2024 as a community charity for Duror and Kentallen and was already planning the school as a partner when councillors voted. The International Otter Survival Fund, based on Skye, then ran classroom sessions for the four cluster schools. Its 2025 impact report says Duror now hosts a club under the Team Otter education programme for children, pulling pupils from Ballachulish, Glencoe and St Bride’s into the same building officers had wanted empty.

THE THREE PARTNERS NAMED IN THE KEEP-OPEN DEBATE

• SAMS, Oban: Research charity using Duror for STEM outreach, while building its own learner hub for 2028.
• MaCCOLL: Village marine group formed in 2024, with education written into its charity objects.
• IOSF, Skye: Otter charity that visited the cluster and left a Team Otter club in the Duror building.

That is a real change in how the rooms are used. It is not yet a change in how many children are on the register.

The Saving That Depends on Empty Posts

The closure paper was presented as saving more than £100,000 a year. Officers insisted the driver was education, not the budget. At the 16 April 2024 public meeting that split was challenged in the room, because a teacher on a permanent contract would be redeployed, not taken off the payroll.

THE TWO SUMS IN THE SAME ARGUMENT

• Council saving: More than £100,000 a year if the school closed, including posts the authority would no longer need to fill.
• Floor cost: A speaker put spending on the two children at a ballpark of £100,000, then said the cash actually freed after redeployment would be £10,000 to £15,000 for the building, heat and upkeep.
• Officer reply: Education officer Ian Jackson accepted staff would move, but said a teacher sent into a vacant class is one less recruit, so the post count still falls.

The keep-open vote still has to live with that per-child cost. Anyone who calls two desks a waste of money is describing the same spreadsheet the committee chose not to cash. Anyone who calls the saving fake is describing the redeployment rule the council itself quoted. Both can be true at once if the teacher is moved and the boiler keeps running.

The building is already C for condition and C for suitability. Keeping it open is also a decision to keep spending on a school the estate data has already marked as poor.

Three Preschoolers Were Asked to Carry the Roll

After the consultation closed, officers counted three preschool children in the catchment whose parents wanted Duror: one about 10 months, one aged two, one aged three. A separate family from the armed forces, away from the village but still holding a house, asked that any new catchment be St Bride’s rather than Ballachulish. Duror and Kentallen Community Council had put the preschool pool higher, at eight, in an April 2024 letter, and pointed to a new toddler group as the pipeline.

The local place plan records six new homes already built, four of them housing association. Second homes and short lets sit on the same streets, 23 of them in a stock of 199 occupied houses, which is why families say a school is one of the few things that still makes a permanent move make sense. Hardy put it as a loss “especially with all the preschool children in the area.” Council officers, used to Highland housing that does not automatically produce pupils, still wrote that the roll would not rise above three before August 2028.

The September 2025 census, six months after the keep-open vote, still showed two. The otter club is in the building. SAMS has a use for the rooms. The older child on that census was due at high school in August 2026, and the younger in August 2028. The bet is now whether those three preschoolers, and anyone who follows them, arrive in time to look like a school rather than a very well-connected hall.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Did Highland Council Make the Final Decision on Duror Primary School?

The full council decided on 27 March 2025 not to discontinue education at Duror. Scottish ministers then had an eight-week call-in window, with public representations due by midnight on 16 April 2025 and a ministerial deadline of 21 May 2025.

Which Secondary Schools Can Duror Pupils Attend?

Kinlochleven High School is the associated secondary. The village school page also lists Lochaber High School in Fort William, Oban High School, and Ardnamurchan High School in Strontian as choices open to families in Duror and Kentallen.

How Many Children Were at Duror Primary in Session 2023-24?

Four. Two were in P7 and left for high school at the end of that year, which is why the closure paper, the February 2025 committee, and the September 2025 census all dealt with a live roll of two, then in P6 and P4.

What Extra Legal Tests Apply Because Duror Is a Rural School?

Under the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010 the council had to give special regard to any viable alternative to closure, to the effect on community sustainability and community use of the building, and to new travel arrangements, including the environmental impact of extra pupil transport.

The Team Otter club still meets in a Victorian school that the education service had finished describing as unviable. The next census will show whether the preschoolers the committee chose to trust have taken those two desks and made them look like a beginning.