By Grant Smith, education reporter

A BOARDING school in Dundee for troubled children has closed with the loss of 30 jobs because it had too few pupils to pay its way.

Parkview School in Blackness Road was an independent institution that looked after boys aged 10-16 with emotional and behavioural problems on behalf of local authorities across Scotland.

The company which ran it has gone into administration.

All the remaining dozen or so pupils have been relocated and all the staff have lost their jobs.

One of the joint administrators appointed to Parkview School Ltd said that all that remained now was to realise whatever funds could be raised from the remaining assets and see if any payments could be made to creditors.

The number of creditors and how much they are owed was not clear yesterday.

The imposing Victorian building occupied by the school is not one of the assets as it was not owned by the company but leased from a landlord.

Parkview had been in trouble for a while—last year there was a nine-hour stand-off with police after a group of boys barricaded themselves in a room.

Several boys were arrested and the reporter to the children’s panel was informed.

Despite positive reports by the Care Commission, by June 2008 the school was admitting that its roll had halved to just 12 pupils and a restructuring of the business was needed, including a substantial number of job cuts.

This was mostly because of a lack of placements from local authorities, especially Aberdeen City Council, which had been its biggest customer and ran into severe financial problems.

Joint administrator Gordon MacLure said that when he and colleague Matthew Henderson were appointed there had only been 12 or 13 boys on the school roll.

The continuing lack of referrals from local authorities and difficulties in securing funding to pay for boys to stay at the school had resulted in the directors deciding to close as the business was no longer viable.

Mr MacLure said, “All of the boys have been relocated over the last couple of weeks and 30 staff have been made redundant.

“The school is no longer operating.”

Sending children to residential schools is expensive for councils due to the need for 24-hour care and enough staff to handle young people with behavioural problems.

Given the pressures on budgets, some local authorities are now reluctant to go down that road unless they have to and are seeking options that mean children are looked after and educated closer to home.

West End councillor Jim Barrie said, “It’s a shame because it provided a valuable service to the community for a lot of years.

“The grounds were always immaculately kept and it’s a beautiful building.”

He added, “It would be a shame to see it not being used, so hopefully something good will come of this.”