Created on: 20 Sep 2024
The EIS has written to the First Minister today, calling on the Scottish Government to intervene over planned local authority education cuts.
The letter to the First Minister, based around the current dispute over deep cuts to teaching posts in Glasgow, comes as news emerged that another local authority, Falkirk, is moving ahead with its own plans to cut the length of the learning week for pupils and to reduce its teacher numbers as a cost-cutting measure.
In the letter to the First Minister, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley says, “The (Glasgow) dispute has been lodged by the EIS in response to the implementation of a package of cuts to teacher numbers in the City, over a three-year period, that we believe will have a deeply deleterious effect on the educational experiences and outcomes of children and young people in the city, particularly those living in poverty and/or who have additional support needs.”
“Glasgow’s package of cuts - amounting to the loss of 450 teachers by 2027, with 172 already gone from the service from the start of this academic year - will also intensify the pressures that continue to bear down hard upon Glasgow’s teachers and headteachers, who are working in incredibly challenging circumstances in regards to workload, responding to rising incidence of violent and aggressive behaviours, and seeking to respond to the growing range and complexity of young people’s additional support needs, whilst continuing the critical endeavour to reduce the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap.”
Ms Bradley also warned that other councils may seek to copy Glasgow’s damaging cost cutting plans: “We can be sure that the remaining 31 local authorities are observing the Glasgow scenario with close interest.”
This certainly seems to be true in the case of Falkirk, where Councillors will soon discuss proposals to cut the length of the learning week for primary pupils by 10%, from 25 hours to 22.5 hours, and for secondary pupils by 7%, from 26.6 hours to 24.75 hours.
The Council estimates that this will carve out around £6.3M per year from the education budget, primarily through a reduction in teaching posts, with serious consequences for education in Falkirk. Falkirk has cut 78 teaching posts in recent years, with 91 more set to go in these plans.
Commenting, Ms Bradley said, “The plans to cut teacher numbers and the length of the learning week in Falkirk would be hugely damaging for young people and for teachers alike. Young people in Falkirk would be placed at a significant disadvantage, compared to their peers in schools in other areas of the country, with more than a year of schooling lost in total over the course of their school career. In a local authority area where levels of poverty and deprivation are high, and the poverty-related attainment gap remains a significant challenge, these cost-cutting measures would make the young people of Falkirk pay a heavy and painful price for political and budgetary decisions taken by successive Falkirk Council administrations that are not in the interests of providing young people quality education.”
Ms Bradley added, “It is not too late for Falkirk Council to stop these cuts. Councillors should reject these profoundly damaging proposals, and commit to ensuring the best possible educational experience for all young people across Falkirk by expanding, not cutting the size of the teacher workforce and protecting learning hours equitably to those provided by all other local authorities across Scotland.”