NO official minute was taken of a meeting with lobbyists ahead of a £345,000 grant award for a private school spearheaded by a Government adviser, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Education Secretary John Swinney approved the funding for Newlands Junior College (NJC), set up by billionaire Jim McColl, after a meeting with the project’s backers.
It has also emerged that Swinney agreed to relax the conditions for the award after a request by McColl.
Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer said the development raised further concerns about whether or not records of Government business are being kept.
“Every time we think this government’s problems with transparency couldn’t get worse a new revelation manages to prove us wrong,” he said.
McColl is chief executive and chair of engineering giant Clyde Blowers Capital and also sits on the Government’s council of economic advisers.
In 2014, he and Clyde Blowers helped set up NJC, which offers vocational courses and advice to pupils in S3 and S4 who have become disengaged from mainstream education.
The college - registered as an independent school - received start-up funding from the Government and Glasgow City Council, as well as private sector contributions.
The cost per pupil stands at around £15,000 and McColl lobbied Swinney in 2016 about potentially funding a network of schools around the country.
As revealed by Sunday Herald, NJC received an extra £345,000 from the Government last year, but no public announcement was made.
New documents released under freedom of information show that the funding bid was made by NJC in March last year and the formal award was approved in June.
But in April of the same year, a meeting took place between Scottish Government officials and NJC representatives, and no minute was taken. Swinney was not in attendance.
In December, it emerged that one of the conditions of the grant - that the Government award would be matched to the penny by councils - would struggle to be met and NJC wanted to vary the conditions so that match funding included private sector contributors.
A Government email showed that changes were made. “As you will be aware, following a request from Jim McColl, we have made arrangements to vary the conditions relating to the Scottish Government grant to Newlands Junior College. I attach a new grant offer letter, which replaces the grant offer issued in June 2017," it said.
However, the trail of emails has fuelled concerns about important government business being discussed at meetings which go unminuted.
Previously published research has listed nearly 40 examples of Ministerial meetings being held without a minute explaining what was discussed.
These include meetings with petrochemicals giant Ineos, businessman Sir Angus Grossart, Scotrail, bus company Stagecoach and investor Angus Tulloch.
Greer said: “The pattern of these controversies, so often coming from John Swinney’s education department in particular, should disturb Nicola Sturgeon, given the SNP’s desire to be judged by their record on education. Chummy deals with billionaires is the last thing the public want to see the Scottish Government focusing on while teachers in our state schools are buckling under the pressure of a decade of budget cuts and staffing reductions.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government is fully committed to openness and transparency and ensuring appropriate records of government business are kept. As this information shows, the NJC grant application was carefully considered and appropriate due diligence carried out before and after the award of funding. Stringent conditions were applied to ensure value for the public purse, including a requirement for match-funding and independent research to assess the impact of this approach on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap – which is a top priority for the Scottish Government.”
A spokesperson for Clyde Blowers declined to comment. NJC did not respond to an email.
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