Cuts to classroom assistant numbers criticised
CUTS to the number of classroom assistants and school support staff in Scotland will harm children’s education.
The stark warning came from trade union Unison which criticised the Scottish Government after a plan which would have prevented more than 190 post being lost in North Lanarkshire was vetoed.
The proposal from North Lanarkshire Council was to use money from the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) – set up to close poverty-related attainment gap – to save the jobs. Scottish ministers, however, ruled it out. Secondary schools in the local authority have now been left without assistants.
Budget cuts by local authorities over the past seven years have resulted in hundreds of jobs going. The Scottish Government’s own figures show that more than 600 support workers – which includes roles such as classroom assistants, clerical staff, nursery nurses, technicians and coaches – have been lost from primary schools since 2010. At the same time almost 800 have gone from secondary schools.
Johanna Baxter, Unison organiser in North Lanarkshire, said: “The Scottish Government cut North Lanarkshire Council’s budget by £27 million. So the council drew up proposals to use their Pupil Equity Fund money to invest in school support staff and their development through the creation of a new position of enhanced support assistant.
“These proposals had the support of all head teachers in the area and were fully compliant with the Scottish Government’s guidelines on disbursing Pupil Equity Fund.
“The Scottish Government responded by threatening to withhold the entire fund for North Lanarkshire Council. While North Lanarkshire Council tried to work with the Government to discuss some of the issues raised, and did so in good faith, it is the Scottish Government’s intransigence that has led to the situation we are now in where 193 classroom assistant posts in North Lanarkshire are being cut.”
She added: “It is a whole team who deliver education but across Scotland there are 6,700 more pupils since 2010, but 1,800 less support staff and 1,300 less teachers. Cuts in education staff put enormous stress on support staff and teachers who are trying to give all children the very best start in life. But this is enormously difficult when schools are short of staff but workloads continue to increase”
A spokesman for Scotland’s largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), echoed Baxter’s concerns. He said: “There have been significant reductions in a range of valuable support posts – including classroom assistants – in local authorities across Scotland due to austerity-related cuts.
“This has resulted in many highly-valued staff losing their jobs and has been damaging to support for education in schools across Scotland – with worrying consequences both for the learning environment of pupils and for the working environment and workload of Scotland’s teachers.”
Isabelle Boyd, assistant chief executive of North Lanarkshire Council, said: “All 120 primary schools in our area continue to have a classroom assistant. And all 198 people previously employed as classroom assistants are in the process of being offered alternative employment. The vast majority have opted for redeployment to earl- years posts, mostly within their existing school. The remainder are considering other vacant posts and some have expressed an interest in voluntary redundancy.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Pupil Equity Funding is to be spent at the discretion of headteachers, not the council. What’s more, North Lanarkshire proposals did not have the support of all headteachers in the area and were in clear breach of the guidance. PEF spending must be additional to existing provision and cannot be topsliced for other purposes. North Lanarkshire’s proposed approach did not deliver this simple requirement.”