Petition follows plan for cut in number of headteachers

Scotland’s biggest teaching union has warned Argyll and Bute Council’s plans for a new role of ‘executive headteacher’ will reduce the number of heads from 84 to 14.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) union has now launched a petition against the proposals.

The EIS petition says the plan ‘seeks to establish school clusters’ overseen by the executive heads, ‘which would decrease the current number of headteachers from 84 to around 14’ and has led to ‘significant [EIS] member concern about how this will affect schools, teachers and pupils’.

The union said school leadership was critical and every school and its community should have a headteacher in post, adding: ‘Our starting point should always be to locate leadership as close as possible to practitioner practice.’

The petition states: ‘We believe these changes are simply a cost-cutting exercise that will not empower schools and support attainment but rather will damage educational delivery, quality and equity in Argyll and Bute.’

Another petition against the council’s changes has been started by Wise4All, an Argyll group set up to inform Argyll communities about the proposed changes.

‘In June this year the Education Change Programme was unveiled by Argyll and Bute Council,’ its website says. ‘It proposes far-reaching changes to our children’s education: individual head teachers would be replaced by one super-head, responsible for many schools. The quick action by parents in Dunoon and Cowal along with unprecedented correspondence to elected members raising concern secured a pause in the process to allow for necessary consultation of such a significant change.

‘A Dunoon cluster is proposed involving seven primary schools and one secondary with a total roll of 1,450 pupils; on Bute, two primaries plus Rothesay Joint Campus; in Kintyre, a combined roll of 885 in one secondary and six primaries.

‘These clusters would be ‘early adopters’ with further roll out across all Argyll and Bute schools. Plans for other areas are not available.

‘In the classroom teachers and support staff, ‘would become part of a cluster and not part of a school and could therefore be moved accordingly either on a temporary basis to provide cover or on a longer term basis’.’

It was also envisaged pupils could move between ‘cluster’ schools ‘to take advantage of the facilities best suited to particular areas of learning’.

The council said at the time that it had drawn up the plans ‘to discover if new and improved ways of working could be implemented’, taking account of the ‘significant geographic’ challenges the authority faces. Council papers said the model ‘could deliver potential savings’.

The papers added: ‘The challenge of filling teacher vacancies in many rural parts of the area is an ongoing issue.’

An Argyll and Bute Council spokesperson said: ‘No decisions have been made regarding the future of our education service. We are in the process of carrying out a thorough, open and accessible consultation, listening to all stakeholders, and the feedback from this will be reported to the Community Services Committee.

‘We want the best outcomes for our children and young people and they are at the heart of all our work. We would encourage everyone to get involved and give us their feedback through the consultation process.’

‘We believe these changes are simply a cost-cutting exercise that will not empower schools and support attainment.’