The email was received by schools across the country, including West Dunbartonshire but the Council refuse to tell council taxpayers what the impact was here.
Stop Press: On Thursday, we learned from The Bell, an independent news platform for Glasgow similar to The Dumbarton Democrat, that, following on from Monday’s chaos, where 148 out of 192 schools in Glasgow were contacted with a hoax bomb threat, we’ve been told that West Dunbartonshire schools have received another threat. In an email that went out to parents, the Chief Education Officer, Gillian Hamilton, stated that “malicious email communications” had been received but that there was “no credible threat”. The email is being treated as another hoax. All of the council’s schools will remain open. Maybe it’s just as well for West Dunbartonshire Council that this was a hoax. Had it been real and children were killed or injured in such an attack, then the Council’s so-called communications department would have been asked to give evidence at an inquiry as to why they did not use every means at their disposal to warn the public that this was about to happen. The Dumbarton Democrat readership is nearly 20,000, but the Council, in its wisdom, chooses not to communicate with us because we asked for the sound to be turned up at one of their meetings. How petty, juvenile, unreasonable, and anti-democratic is this? Just look at our report of the COVID-19 Inquiry, which says that bureaucratic bumbledom was partly to blame for the deaths of patients in care homes. It’s time the Communications Department and the elected members who are supposed to control it grew up. Just do your job. Bill Heaney, editor
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Attendance at schools across the country has dropped following bomb threats – despite Police Scotland confirming they were a hoax.
Parents have posted online that their children were still too worried to return to to the classroom and several councils have confirmed that absence rates were much higher than usual on Tuesday.
Glasgow City Council said that some of their schools had 50% fewer pupils than normal, but West Dunbartonshire Council, which spends around £500,000 a year on communications, refuse to tell the local electorate what the impact of the bomb hoax was here..
Councillor James Dalgleish, convener of education, children and families at Edinburgh City Council urged parents to “speak to their children and calm their fears”.
He said: “I want to stress that we have worked with police as well as following our own safety policies and we established there was no risk to pupils.”
“If you have any concerns about attending, please speak to your child’s school. School staff will also be checking in with pupils to make sure they are safe and supported,” he said.
Meanwhile, Midlothian council said it had a 21.5% absence rate compared with 6.9% across primary and secondary schools on the same day last year.
Hundreds of people contacted police after schools across Scotland received the emails on Monday.
The warnings were quickly identified as hoaxes, and learning was unaffected in schools where pupils had returned from the October break, while other schools were still on holiday.
Similar hoax emails warning of an “explosive device” were also sent to about 300 schools in Northern Ireland.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “These messages have been assessed and are being treated as a hoax, with nothing to suggest any threat to the public.”
They added that officers and staff from Police Scotland’s Cyber and Fraud Unit were “working closely with partners” and were continuing to carry out “extensive inquiries to establish the source”.
On Thursday, we learned from The Bell, a news platform similar to The Dumbarton Democrat, that, following on from Monday’s chaos, where 148 out of 192 schools in Glasgow were contacted with a hoax bomb threat, we’ve been told that West Dunbartonshire schools have received another threat. In an email that went out to parents, the Chief Education Officer, Gillian Hamilton, stated that “malicious email communications” had been received but that there was “no credible threat”. The email is being treated as another hoax. All of the council’s schools will remain open.