Edinburgh teachers are calling for “more investment in education, not cuts” ahead of a meeting where plans to slash £8.2m funding for the city’s schools will go before councillors.
The cuts have been tabled by finance chiefs to help plug a £20m shortfall in the council’s budget, which legally needs to be balanced in advance of the beginning of the new financial year.
If approved it would scale-back additional funding given to schools since the pandemic for extra support teachers and staff. The proposal also includes shrinking the overall pot of cash available to head teachers for essentials like stationary, textbooks and IT equipment, known as Devolved School Management (DSM) spend.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a teacher working in an Edinburgh secondary school said they were left “demoralised but unsurprised” that more education funding was being targeted as part of cost-cutting measures.
“For the last 14 years there has been a kind of death by a thousand cuts,” they said. “This is just the latest – but it comes at a time when teachers have never been more exhausted; we’ve never been more stressed and over-worked.
“And it comes at a time when we’re faced with huge and growing problems related to a massive increase in pupils with additional support needs and a huge increase in ‘dysregulated’ behaviour.”
Teachers, as a result of being asked to do “more with less,” they said, were “suffering”.
They added: “When you do that to teachers that has an impact on their teaching performance. We need more investment in education – not cuts.”
Another teacher working in the capital, this one based in a primary school, said the £8.2m figure was “horrifically arbitrary”.
They said: “It’s deeply punitive to a part of the public sector that is absolutely working flat out on the bare minimum.
“What exactly do they expect us to go without?”
They told the LDRS the impact they feared the most was having fewer “adults in the room”.
They explained: “The thought of having fewer support staff is terrifying.
“I only get support in my class for an afternoon in the day in a class that needs support all day long – I have multiple pupils who require additional support in the class and to have the threat of losing even that, I don’t know how I’m going to cope with a reduced amount of support.”
They added that a reduction in DSM funding would “bring us to our knees” as many teachers were already spending their own money on basic classroom supplies: “We’re already subsidising the council by buying our own resources when we’ve run out, whether it’s glue sticks or paper or pencils – really basic, basic resources,” they said.
“Where we are in Edinburgh just now I would say schools need an increase in funding – that’s what we need. We actually need an increase in the funding in the schools. Talking about reducing it is totally crazy.”
The council’s education committee will discuss the matter tomorrow (January 23) however a decision on whether the cut should go ahead, or be progressed in part, will not be taken until the final budget meeting next month.
An amendment being tabled by the authority’s Labour administration will call on finance officers to ‘identify funding to mitigate these cuts’ and reduce the proposed 1.2% cut to DSM.
Lib Dem and Conservative groups are proposing to consider the options in full at the budget setting process on February 22nd.
SNP councillors will move to reject the £8.2m cut in its entirety. The Greens, meanwhile, will urge all councillors to “seek to avoid the proposed savings” ahead of the budget. Their amendment includes ruling-out specific elements of the cut such as funding for climate and nature education and overall DSM allocations.
Council leader Cammy Day said: “Across the Council, we are being forced to look at service cuts, reductions and changing how we do business due to the erosion of our capital city by the SNP/Green-led Scottish Government.
“I am finding myself having to have difficult conversations with senior colleagues about cuts to our services, including Education, due to this severe lack of funding.
“Whilst Edinburgh remains the lowest funded authority in Scotland, I will continue to lobby the Scottish Government, through COSLA and directly with Government Ministers to secure the fair funding we deserve.
“I regret being in the position of having to consider scaling back our vital services but this has been imposed on Edinburgh by the SNP/Green-led Scottish Government who continue to undermine our capital city.”
SNP education spokesperson Cllr Simita Kumar said: “The SNP budget next month will reverse these education cuts and protect funding in the classroom. Instead of cutting funding for our kids’ education, we’re also looking at ways of prioritising resources within budgets to increase the amount going into the classroom.
We’re calling on the Labour, Tory and LibDem administration to match our commitments and give a cast-iron guarantee they won’t be balancing the books on the backs of our children’s futures.”
Cllr Kevin Lang, Lib Dem group leader, said: “It’s a sign of just how awful the SNP’s cuts to council funding are that officers have had to bring these proposals forward. Edinburgh is already one of the worst funded councils per head. However, the recent Scottish Government budget has made it even worse, creating another £20 million shortfall.
“SNP Ministers could resolve this issue today if they funded Edinburgh Council properly.”
Greens’ education spokesperson Cllr Steve Burgess said: “Greens are calling on the Education committee to reject these cuts to the education budget, and asking council officers to find other ways to balance the council budget next year.
“Proposed cuts to school budgets that result in the loss of teachers in secondary schools and teaching time in primary schools, and crucially the loss of the climate and nature Sustainability Champion from every school, are unacceptable to Green Councillors and should be unacceptable to all parties in Edinburgh.”
by Donald Turvill Local Democracy Reporter
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is a public service news agency. It is funded by the BBC, provided by the local news sector (in Edinburgh that is Reach plc (the publisher behind Edinburgh Live and The Daily Record) and used by many qualifying partners. Local Democracy Reporters cover news about top-tier local authorities and other public service organisations.
