Representatives from both the Musicians’ Union and the Educational Institute for Scotland were trying to catch the eye of councillors attending the Finance and Resources Committee this morning.
They had banners and leaflets to hand out to passers-by saying that ‘Every child deserves a teacher’ and ‘Save our Nursery Teachers’ in a fairly quiet gathering outside the City Chambers.
Caroline Sewell of The Musicians’ Union told us that with the proposed cuts to instrumental tuition set to take place over the next three years it will undoubtedly mean the introduction of charges. She said : “The Musicians’ Union are really concerned about the growing pattern and the decline in instrumental music services across our local authorities. It’s been taking place over a number of years now.”
We met representatives from @WeAreTheMU and @EISUnion Campaigning against proposed cuts to the education budget by @Edinburgh_CC Here’s what they had to say pic.twitter.com/1Cp0Ese24Y
— Edinburgh Reporter (@EdinReporter) February 14, 2020
Sineag Blane of the EIS told us that there are amazingly only 798 nursery teachers in the whole of Scotland. She said : “I’m the EIS organiser working on a project specifically for Early Years. And I’m here today because it’s really important that we retain our teachers in our nursery settings throughout Scotland. We’re in the situation now today where we have the lowest number of teachers in Scotland than we’ve ever had. And we’re down to 798 throughout the whole country at a time where we are having unprecedented expansion in early years, and the Scottish Government’s commitment to high quality education means that we should not be removing a whole level of our workforce.
Kate Johnston a retired nursery teacher told us : “We’re campaigning because Edinburgh city council has put in their budget that they want to take the nursery head teachers and the nursery teachers out of the classroom, and put them into the primary schools, and only have a few going around to support the education of our young children. Edinburgh has a proud history of nursery education, lasting more than 100 years and we really need our nursery teachers a nursery team consists of everybody and all their different skills, and if we take these teachers that we’re losing all their expertise.”
The Council will meet on 20 February to discuss plans for the revenue budget for the next three years. These reports were rubber stamped this morning at the Finance and Resources Committee and referred to the meeting of full council when the politics will begin.
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Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
