Elected Member Briefing Note - RDM School

About this Briefing Note

Report by: John Beveridge, Strategic Lead - Property Services

Date: 29 January 2026

Subject: RDM School

Details

Purpose

This Briefing Note provides an update on the boiler issues affecting the Robert Douglas Memorial School.

Briefing Information

The boiler room at Robert Douglas Memorial School was flooded on Tuesday 27 January during the recent storm.

This resulted in the boilers being rendered inoperable and leaving the school without heating and hot water.

The decision was made to close the school on Wednesday morning following an assessment of the boilers and associated equipment.

Several options have been explored to restore the heating and hot water provision with most appropriate option to reduce the impact on service delivery being the installation of a temporary boiler unit.

The temporary boiler plant will be delivered on Monday,  2 February with works continuing to restore heating and hot water to the school from Wednesday, 4 February, if possible. 

Unfortunately, the school will remain closed to staff and pupils until this issue is resolved and further updates will be provided on progress early next week.

Education provision

Staff at RDM have been providing online learning for children while the school is closed.

Engagement has been approximately 35% across the school including nursery and ISP.  This has been demonstrated through returning tasks, asking teachers questions, or using the 'love heart' function.

Families have been provided with paper copies of tasks on request. The ISP has provided a range of sensory based and home craft experiences for the children and families have also accessed learning journals.  Teachers have been asked to ensure each day there is a literacy, numeracy and a health and wellbeing task and have used wider learning platforms such as Sumdog to continue continuity in their learning.

This has been made available to families using learning journals for most with learners in P6 and P7 also using Glow and Google Classroom.

Teachers are providing feedback to learners who have completed and returned tasks. Senior leaders are monitoring the communication function on learning journals and supporting families with accessing or engaging with the website.

A meeting took place on Thursday to make plans for next week.

The school is looking at sending P7 pupils to Perth Academy on Monday as two classrooms are available. Learners would use their bus passes and the service bus, accompanied by staff from RDM. This would replicate their enhanced transition practice. Parents would drop off and collect from RDM as normal.

Letham Nursery has offered approximately 35 places for early years children. The school will contact parents and ask them to indicate whether they would like to take children to Letham Nursery on Monday.

We are sourcing oil-filled radiators for the ISP so that children with significant and complex needs can return to school. These radiators will be tested on Friday, and a decision will be made depending on whether they are able to sufficiently heat these rooms safely. The headteacher and central officers are exploring a "Plan B" for priority families in case planned work takes longer than anticipated. The possibility of using other classroom provision within the estate is being explored.

Remote learning will continue to be provided for all other children. The senior leadership team will continue to carry out wellbeing checks with vulnerable families.

Officers and school staff will continue working together on Friday to ensure the preparation for repairs, delivery of learning and contingency planning for next week continues.