Union chief slams £290,000 school cuts

AROUND 100 lessons currently taught in Borders secondary schools each week will be lost because Scottish Borders Council is cutting teaching posts, writes Andrew Keddie.

That is the claim of Douglas Angus, local association secretary of the EIS, who this week delivered a stinging rebuke of the council.
Mr Angus was reacting angrily to Thursday's decision to reduce staffing budgets at the nine senior schools by 2 per cent.
"Borders schools are currently delivering an excellent service with many teachers going the extra mile – in classes, after school or in sports – to make sure our pupils get the best we can offer," said Mr Angus, head of Modern Languages at Kelso High.
EIS boss Douglas Angus says pupils will suffer the pain of teaching cuts
"We want to keep this up and go further, but it seems this is not an aspiration of our council. We are told we will have to make 'painful decisions'. Unfortunately, it is Borders pupils who will ultimately feel the pain."
In agreeing to cut the secondaries' devolved school management budgets by £290,000, councillors have ignored the pleas and warnings of the nine rectors, who claim the loss of 11 full-time posts will hit subject choice and lead to larger class sizes.
Mr Angus hailed the proud record of the schools, noting that this year's national SQA award for academic excellence went to a student from Galashiels Academy, while the Candidate of the Year award for Scotland was lifted by a pupil from Earlston High.
"In terms of SQA results, the Borders ranks fourth of the 32 Scottish local authorities, beaten only by those in the leafy suburbs. We have a proud record of academic success. In Kelso, 50 per cent of pupils will have gone to university by the time they are 21 and candidates from most our schools are off to Oxbridge on a regular basis."
Mr Angus said the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) was putting in extra money to increase teachers, reduce class sizes and allow teachers time to gather and evaluate their work, while planning for progress.
"The SEED aim is to increase the number of teachers to 1,320 in all our schools by 2007, but what is the response of our council? It is to take 10 posts from our secondaries and not give any additional staffing to meet targets agreed in 2001 to make sure teachers have the time to spend five hours a week working collectively to improve their schools.
"The funding will not be in our schools to implement this agreement . . . and the result is a shortfall of an average two teachers per school. If we add this to 2 per cent cut agreed last week, it makes the shortfall three teachers per school. That is 100 lessons a week that will not be taught."
Mr Angus went on: "Make no mistake, these are not efficiency savings, but cuts. If we remove the flexibility to allow for absence or for mee tings to improve the service, schools will function less well and, at times, pupils will have to be sent home or sent to the hall to be supervised by managers.
"The results will be less time to manage and improve our schools, less choice in third year as classes are cut, larger classes in S1-2, and the loss of many S5-6 Higher and Advance Higher classes which will be deemed too small to be viable.
"This will demoralise teachers and cause dissatisfaction among pupils and parents. All have the feeling they have been let down by our councillors."
The criticism will come as no surprise to education director Glenn Rodger who said recently: "I hope all rectors and teachers respect that education has to take its share of the savings the council is being forced to consider. We are facing significant challenges and there are no easy options."