Harris Academy Visit

I was delighted to join council colleagues and others visiting the building site at Harris Academy on Friday.  It was really good to see progress being made.  I think that this will be a very interesting building once it is finished.

It was also good to see in Thursday's Evening Telegraph pictures of the new school.  I am pleased that the public of Dundee who, after all are paying for the new Harris Academy, have been given the opportunity to see pictures and videos of the work progressing that is only right. As one of the local councillors and a member of the project board responsible for overseeing the rebuilding of the school I enjoyed my site visit to the school on Friday.  You  can see the Evening Telegraph's picture's here.

I was a little disappointed earlier in the week when my colleague Kezia Dugdale MSP was refused a tour of the site, despite the fact that she is a former pupil of the school. The reason given was that local councillors should get to visit before others. I was pleased that opposition councillors were for once being given their place, unlike for example in the ways in which the V & A project has been handled. The argument about not allowing Kezia Dugdale to visit the Harris out of respect for the position of local councillors does seem to be rather at odds with allowing a newspaper access to film and photograph inside the new school before the local councillors were given the chance to visit.