Schools spending slashed as council tax goes up by 3%

Plan to save £37.5m puts education and leisure in the firing line

A RISE in council tax, cuts in education and leisure and services from grasscutting to the brightness of streetlights were voted through as part of Highland Council’s budget plan to save £37.5million.

The local authority faces a funding gap of £27.9m in 2019-20 and £32.4m over the following two years, while its reserves are at a historic low.

In a dossier that leaders described as “a budget for jobs”, there were no redundancies and an additional and recurring £1.5million fund for roads.

But council tax will rise by 3%, and education and leisure will be the hardest hit with £4.2million in cuts be- tween them. A former teacher claimed the council’s so-called “transformational changes” to save £2.8million in Additional Support Needs (ASN) was effectively removing all specialist staff and was the wrong area to target.

And one councillor admitted voting the cuts through was a “leap of faith” and called for the ASN axe to fall on management and bureaucracy costs rather than frontline staff. But the council’s new chief executive Donna Manson said: “The key to this is how we manage change. We’ve been meeting with head teachers since November and I’ve been inspired because they recognise that we’ve got an issue and we’ve not been getting the outcomes we need for our children.”

Highland Council’s administration got its budget of £37.5 million savings through yesterday – but there were concerns inside and outside the chamber over cuts to education.

The cash-strapped authority had to find ways to plug a funding gap of £27.9m next financial year and £32.4m over the following two years.

Finance chiefs managed to avoid redundancies, a £2.5m Change Fund will help deliver the savings, and investment of an additional and recurring £1.5m for roads maintenance was approved as a priority area.

But householders will be hit with a council tax rise of 3%.

A former teacher claimed the council’s so-called “transformational changes” to save £2.8m in Additional Support Needs (ASN) was effectively removing all specialist staff and was the wrong area to target.

Caithness councillor Nicola Sinclair said: “All education cuts require a leap of faith. We haven’t done a redesign process here, we are trusting in the administration and the new chief executive officer (Donna Manson).

“I completely agree we need to simplify, remove waste and overprovision, remove the paperwork burden and tiers of management, but not frontline ASN staff. “Parents want to keep ASNs and PSAs.” Separately, a former teacher contacted The Press and Journal with her concerns about the cuts.

She said: “This ‘restructuring’ is effectively removing all specialist staff and transferring all responsibility for special needs on to the already massively overstretched classroom teachers.

“They will have lots of extra paperwork and responsibility which they are not trained for and they will now have no support in their classes at all, except for children with the most severe needs.”

Lochaber councillor Denis Rixson, a former teacher, questioned statistics that showed Highland has nearly twice – and in some places, three times – the Scottish average of children with special needs.

But he earned a round of applause when he spoke of his concern for how teachers were coping.

“There are a worrying number of absences,” he said.

“Teachers are suffering from stress. “There has been an exponential growth in paperwork.

“I’d like our education service to look at every scrap of paperwork and if it’s not statutory, ban it, bin it or reduce it.”

The council’s chief executive, Donna Manson, said: “The key to this is how we manage change.

“There is still going to be considerable pupil support”

“We’ve been meeting with head teachers since November and I’ve been inspired because they recognise that we’ve got an issue and we’ve not been getting the outcomes we need for our children.”

Mrs Manson said the council’s new Change Fund would be used this year to support the changes.

“The head teachers have been saying they’d like to see a whole system approach to nurturing our schools. There is still going to be considerable pupil support resource when you compare it to other councils but we need to get underneath why we’ve got our children being labelled at 40% special needs.”

Council leader Margaret Davidson said: “This is a jobs budget, it’s about protecting the jobs that are the backbone of many rural Highland communities. If we don’t make these changes, where do we go, what do we cut? We’re at the wire.”