Scottish Borders Local Association

School cuts protest as changes are planned to education overhaul

Published Date: 20 November 2008

By Andrew Keddie

A FIERCE debate on the future of education in the region is expected today as protesters demand no further cuts in school budgets.

"No cuts means no cuts anywhere," is the uncompromising message from PACE (Parents Against Cuts in Education), a new action group which has gathered a petition with more ethan 2,000 supporting signatures.

The changes will now be determined on December 18 to give education officials time to amend proposals which have attracted "several hundred responses" from concerned teachers, parents and parent councils.

Placard-bearing campaigners will stage a demonstration outside the Newtown HQ of Scottish Borders Council before its 34 elected members meet this morning.

The petition will be handed to SBC convener Alasdair Hutton and Catriona Bhatia, executive member for education.

The gesture had been planned to coincide with a meeting, originally scheduled for today, on the Transforming Children's Services (TCS) review and its plans to cut the number of headships and principal teaching posts.

Councillor Bhatia has already warned that if considerable savings via the TCS programme are not achieved, it will impact on devolved school management (DSM) budgets which this year sustained a 2 per cent "efficiency saving", which initially ignited the protests.

The debate on TCS has now been deferred until December 18 to give education officials more time to evaluate a deluge of around 300 consultation responses, mostly from parents and teachers, although Mrs Bhatia insists implementation will take place in May next year, four weeks before the end of session when timetables for the following session are drawn up. But the postponement has neither dampened the ardour of PACE nor Councillor Sandy Aitchison (Borders Party) who has tabled a motion calling for implementation of TCS to be delayed until "the start of the academic year in September, 2009 at the earliest".

He will also demand the principal authors of the review – head of schools Brian Keenan and communications and policy manager Leona Bendall – be retained as employees until the new system is "in place and shown to be working effectively".

Mr Keenan and Mrs Bendall have already been offered lucrative severance packages and, it is understood, are due to leave the council early next year.

Rory Bannerman of PACE said he welcomed the TCS postponement if it gave councillors more time to think about the proposed changes.

"We felt, however, that with or without TCS, school budgets are under threat and, given the chaos and concern caused by this year's cuts, we feel councillors, who are preparing spending plans now for 2009/10, need to know exactly where we stand. We really do mean no cuts in any school budgets."

Mrs Bhatia said yesterday she would be delighted to accept the petition.

"In effecting change though TCS which will improve education and, at the same time, save on unnecessary bureaucracy, I want to preserve DSMs and I totally share the aims of PACE.

"Mr Aitchison's motion, which I will oppose, makes no sense. How can you introduce radical change at the beginning of a new session? He doesn't even know that session starts in August.

I could certainly not support rescinding the offers [to Mr Keenan and Mrs Bendall] when funding is extremely tight and we need to make savings in central management structures in order, again, to protect school budgets.

“He should also not try to pre-empt the process of evaluating the consultation responses which are being taken into account by our professional officers as they prepare recommendations for councillors on December 18.”

Mrs Bhatia declined to comment on possible changes to the original TCS recommendations which proposed cutting primary heads from 57 to 42 and reducing principal teacher posts by more than 100.

But TheSouthern understands the issue of shared headships will be revisited and more focus will be placed on saving money by cutting central management outwith schools. There will also be amendments to the way funds are allocated to schools in respect of pupils with additional needs.

Kay Miller, Borders secretary of the EIS teaching union, agreed that the start of a new session was not the time to implement major changes, but maintained her opposition to cuts in head-teacher numbers and said the timescale for implementation was still “ludicrously short”.

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