Highland Council drops unpopular plans to cut class time
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PLANS to cut class time are likely to be abandoned after Highland Council agreed not to cut teacher numbers in return for government cash.
Education chiefs were considering reducing the primary school day by half an hour, to 22.5 hours per week.
They were predicting it could save £3.2 million a year.
Subjects like physical education, art and music taught by visiting specialist teachers would have been dropped and children would have missed out on the equivalent of three terms of schooling over their time in primary school.
But yesterday, councillor Maxine Smith, the council’s budget leader, announced that the proposal would probably be scrapped.
The u-turn comes after the council made a deal with the Scottish Government to maintain its 2,300 teaching posts in return for a £450,000 grant.
Councillor Smith said: "It is likely that if we pursued the 22.5 hour week this would eat into the number of teachers we have, therefore I do not think we will be proceeding with it."
All 32 Scottish councils have agreed to maintain teacher numbers in 2015/16 in return for a share of a £10 million Scottish government grant.
A £41 million settlement was paid to councils last year. Those who refused to adhere to the teaching number commitment risked having some of that funding clawed back.
Cllr Smith, SNP member for Cromarty Firth, said it remained to be seen if the government would extend the grant to 2016/17.
She added: "If it says the grant will apply right across to 2016/17 then we would not be pursuing the 22.5 hour week."
Brian Cooper, a spokesman for EIS teaching union, said the government was taking a harder stance against councils to protect teaching jobs.
And he believes that stance is unlikely to change. He said: "The government has now taken a much firmer line with councils. There’s no financial savings to be made at local authority level by cutting back on teachers."
Bill Alexander, the council’s head of care and learning, said the extra money would help the local authority to maintain teacher numbers.
But he said it would not change the council’s plans to remove 20 teachers this year from schools that have an over-provision.
