ALL schools in the Borders were to be checked following the decision by Edinburgh City Council to close 17 Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schools on safety grounds.

A Scottish Borders Council spokesperson said: "At this time, there is no information which indicates there are any issues at the Borders’ three PPP schools."

And all of the region's schools, including the three secondaries built under a public private partnership (PPP) funding arrangement – Earlston, Duns and Eyemouth - have re-opened as scheduled today (Monday).

The council was responding to Edinburgh City Council's recent decusion to close 17 of its schools built by Miller Construction via a similarly-funded Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon then ordered all Scottish councils to carry out urgent safety checks on every school.

In a statement on Monday, SBC acknowledged it had received that request and said all schools in the region – 63 primaries and nine secondaries – had been inspected after the incident at Liberton High School in Edinburgh in March, 2014, when a 12-year-old pupil was killed after a gym changing room wall collapsed.

“Following these inspections, some minor remedial works were carried out at the region’s three PPP schools, but no significant issues were identified,” said the SBC statement.

“In addition, further inspections were carried out at the three PPP schools on January 29 this year following the damage to Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh caused by high winds.

“No areas of concerns at any of the sites were found during these inspections”.

In the wake of the incident at PFI-built Oxgangs, in which hundreds of bricks from an external wall were blown down, inspectors found problems with the way it had been erected in 2005 and uncovered similar faults at three other city schools.

On Friday, the Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP), the private consortium which includes Miller, conceded that “further serious defects” had been found at Oxgangs and another school, and both were “no longer safe to occupy”.

And the city council’s decision to close all 17 PFI schools, which had been due to resume last Monday, was taken after ESP confirmed: “It is impossible to confirm whether these defects may exist at other estate buildings.”

Monday’s statement from SBC said that, following that decision, the council “will engage with the Scottish Government and Edinburgh City Council to seek further information”.

It added: “We will work with our partner Scottish Borders Education Partnership [SBEP] to consider if further assessments are required. SBEP is committed to working in partnership with SBC to ensure the safety of the pupils and the safe operations of its buildings."

The statement notes that the closure of Howdenburn Primary in Jedburgh – also due to reopen today (Monday) – was “due to storm damage rather than any structural issues related to this case”. And it stresses that the three Borders' PPP schools, opened in 2009, were built by Graham Construction.

No schools in the Borders were built by Miller Construction.