Parents urge law change to prevent shortening of school day
PARENTS have called for a change in the law to prevent councils cutting the school week.
The call came after local authorities suggested shortening the time pupils spend in class as part of wider budget cuts.
The primary school week currently amounts to 25 hours during term time, but this is not backed up by legislation and some councils have considered reducing it to 22.5 hours a week.
Iain Ellis, chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, warned the move would damage education and should be outlawed.
He said: “Local authorities are making decisions on school budgets and all of them will be looking at ways to reduce costs, including cutting the school week, but this can only have a detrimental impact on learning.
“It could also lead to a further reliance on homework, which is dependent on parents’ involvement and sadly, not every child has this support.”
Mr Ellis said changing the start and finish times of the school day was also problematic for working parents.
He added: “Finding and paying for additional childcare is not easy and has a bigger impact on families who are already the most disadvantaged.
“Our view is that the Scottish Government should legislate to protect the amount of teaching time that children receive every week.”
A number of councils including West Dunbartonshire, Fife and Highland have all looked at a reduction before rejecting the idea, but it is still on the table in Falkirk.
The controversial proposals have also been given reluctant backing from headteachers with a survey of Scottish primary heads finding 60 per cent thought it was an acceptable way to save money to protect other areas of education.
Greg Dempster, general secretary of the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland, said the disappointing proposal would not normally find favour, but the reality of cuts facing councils had to be realised.
TO Alison Rowat’s question “is being a a regular, everyday sort of person enough to endear a Tory leader to Scots voters?” there can only be one answer: No (“Not-so-nasty Davidson has a political mountain to climb”, The Herald, February 20).
Personally, I like Ruth Davidson, just as I liked Annabel Goldie before her. I have relatives who vote Tory and I like them too. But I wouldn’t vote for them. And while Ms Davidson no doubt thinks she has to do something to improve on her party’s position in Scotland (one MP at Westminster, 15 MSPs at Holyrood) her party political broadcast flagged up what is an important issue as we go into the General Election campaign. Should party political broadcasts be used by political parties as a means to inform the public of the policies they have on offer, or is it acceptable to use their few allotted minutes to try to hoodwink the voters with cosy little domestic scenes similar to what we were treated to by the Tories the other night, which were designed to snuff out memories of what was a horrendous period in recent Scottish political history?
Naturally, one does not blame young Ms Davidson for the Thatcher years. She has no memory of them, but that is the point. Ms Davidson did not live through the Thatcher years and if she thinks the inappropriate lowering of a flag is “a steaming pile of nonsense”’ that is nothing compared to what Mrs Thatcher did to Scotland, poll tax et al. And no matter how Ms Davidson may try to promote herself as a good sort, and even distance herself from her bosses in London with the odd roguish statement about flags, there is no getting away from the fact that Ruth Davidson in Holyrood still believes that power over Scotland should remain in Tory hands at Westminster, and even with Mrs Thatcher out of the equation, the Tories at their political heart are still a nasty lot. Ruth Marr, 99 Grampian Road, Stirling. ALEX Gallagher (Letters, February 19) calls for Scots to vote Labour to get rid of the Tories. He has obviously not been listening to what has been going on.
London Labour is promising to carry on the same failed austerity programmes that the Tories introduced; the policies where people’s income is squeezed so badly that income tax receipts to the treasury are falling and the National Debt continues to rise.
It is clear that for government revenues to exceed outgoings we need people earning decent wages and paying tax on them. There is no point in screwing those at the bottom for every last penny, relying on zero hours contracts and minimum wage earners and letting the rich and the big corporations evade their due. This is what the Tories are doing and it’s what Labour was also doing before they were thrown out. Because of continuing austerity we are now coming to the stage where there is genuine fear of deflation, where wages and prices fall to the detriment of every business in the land.
The SNP has put forward a sensible set of measures to help the poor and get people working, earning and spending again. A proposal that harks back to after the Great Depression when the Americans introduced the “New Deal” by raising government spending to get things moving. This was followed by the longest period of sustained growth and prosperity that we remember.
The SNP has made it clear that they will never support the Tories in government but might work with Labour if it can get enough seats in England and Wales to make up the numbers. Provided Labour does not collapse in the rest of the UK there is better hope for a rainbow coalition with the SNP, the Welsh Nationalists and the Greens keeping Labour on a more sensible route than it now offers. DS Blackwood, 1 Douglas Drive East, Helensburgh.