Scottish Borders Local Association

Disappointment as education overhaul passes final hurdle

Published Date: 25 December 2008

By Andrew Keddie

A PACKAGE of radical educational reforms, which will save Scottish Borders Council £4million a year once fully implemented, was approved after a two-hour debate last week, writes Andrew Keddie.

All 133 recommendations contained in the wide-ranging Transforming Children’s Services (TCS) project will be introduced over an 18-month period from May next year.

The number of headteachers will be reduced to 42 to cover the region’s 65 primaries as a result of shared headships. The junior schools will also sustain a loss of more than 50 principal teaching posts.

There will also be a reduction in secondary promoted posts and deputes, but high school heads will be given flexibility, through their devolved school management (DSM) budgets, to decide their own management structures.

A fundamental innovation will be the integration of SBC’s social work and education services for the assessment of pupils with additional needs to ensure their needs, and those of their families, are properly met.

The package was not, however, without its opponents at Thursday’s full council meeting, but all amendments were emphatically defeated.

Councillor Nicholas Watson urged caution over the schooling of special needs children becoming the responsibility of social work.

“This gives very negative messages and is precisely the sort of discrimination we should strive to avoid,” said Mr Watson. “I agree with the parent who, during the TCS consultation, said: ‘This is not because of any real or imagined stigma ... it is simply because education as a mainstream service has been a hard-won right for many parents of children with disabilities and additional needs’.”

The entire additional needs transfer was also opposed by Hawick Independent councillor David Paterson.

And Mr Watson’s Borders Party colleague Councillor Sandy Aitchison questioned the combination of schools to be covered by shared heads.

“Shared headships should be implemented only if clear educational benefits would follow,” said Mr Aitchison. “It seems odd that SBC, which seems to have evaluation systems for everything else, have not worked out a proper system to help us judge whether or not a particular shared headship is a good idea. These are extremely important and sensitive judgements.”

But the ruling administration held firm in support of executive member for education Councillor Catriona Bhatia who won a round of applause from her allies for announcing, as predicted in TheSouthern last week, that DSMs would not sustain any cuts on current levels in the next financial year – but only if the TCS programme was adopted.

“During the consultation on the original TCS proposals, over 500 responses were received and considered and many have informed the review,” said Mrs Bhatia. “In any such engagement, complete consensus is not achievable but there are many changes which show we do listen and respond.

“The decisions we make today will shape the future of education in the Borders for a generation. The challenge of improving and enhancing what happens in our schools in a climate of reducing resources is a challenge, but one we must not shirk from.

“As with any change programme, there is anxiety generated ... but uncertainty is worse and we must now move forward and begin the implementation of these recommendations.

“We have come to a fork in the road, so let us take the road less travelled. That will make all the difference to our most important resource and responsibility: the children of the Borders.”

After the meeting, Kay Miller, Borders secretary of the main EIS teaching union, which is already pledged to ballot for industrial action if there are compulsory redundancies, told TheSouthern: “Our members will be disappointed very little has changed in the revised version of the TCS and that these radical changes to the management structure of our schools are going ahead, despite the serious concerns of teachers and parents.

“Our schools, head teachers, principal teachers, class teachers and pupils are about to reap the results of the short-sighted decisions of our councillors. One can’t help thinking this is a massive exercise in grandstanding, with some councillors believing their names will go down in the annals of local government history. There have already been suggestions other councils will follow the Borders lead.

“Meanwhile, those at the sharp end of the transformation, which is being introduced on a ludicrously short timescale, wait with trepidation for these decisions to bite.”

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