College nursery closed

photographs Stuart Maxwell

Thistle Nursery at Glasgow’s College of Nautical Studies has finally closed. The last day children attended was Friday 23 July when all the stops were pulled out to make it a happy, memorable end of term fun day. But as one member of staff said: ‘This is a sad/happy day.’
The College which is one of three merging to form a new £300m New Glasgow College campus straddling the river, said the closure was due to ‘financial viability and long term future.’ There are no nursery facilities planned for the new super campus.
Former nursery school pupils, such as 13-year-old Linsey Vipond’, said with tear filled eyes: ‘I grew up here. It is really sad the Nursery is closing.’
Her mother, Greta worked full time and had both her children at Thistle Nursery. ‘The staff here are absolutely fabulous. I can’t believe the College would let go of a wonderful resource like this with such dedicated staff,’ she said.
Since last year when the closure was announced, the team of 23 staff has been reduced to 10 with each one of those left,

still looking for a job. The Nursery was able to care for 75 children full-time.
Don MacKeen, a parent and a lecturer at the Nautical College told the LOCAL NEWS; ‘Closing this nursery reduces prospects for students to go into further education. I can’t see the sense of it. If there were financial problems then it should have been sorted out a long time ago. Parents would have paid more if they’d been asked. But I think the truth is that the Nautical College was stripping down to bare essentials to prepare for the merger.’