After a drop in teacher numbers for two years running, the Scottish government has said it plans to ring-fence the £145.5 million given to councils annually for additional teachers and support staff.
However, in a briefing issued to MSPs ahead of tomorrow’s 2024-25 Budget debate in the Scottish Parliament, councils are arguing that they need more funding, “not more restrictions”.
They say if the £145.5 million is removed from the general revenue budget - and instead distributed via specific resource grants that have teacher number targets attached - other services that help children will pay the price, including social work services, early intervention services, cultural services, youth work and libraries.
‘Other services have taken the hit’
Local authorities’ body Cosla says that councils have “protected and invested in education as much as possible, while other services have taken the hit”.
However, Cosla - which points out that school rolls are falling and that Scotland’s pupil-teacher ratio is the lowest in the UK - says the situation is “increasingly untenable, and councillors must now consider education taking a proportion of this year’s cut”.
Cosla also says that ring-fencing the funding for teacher and support staff could increase the number of teachers on temporary contracts - and keeping teacher numbers “at an arbitrary level” could put the council tax freeze at risk in some authorities.
Some councils, it says, will “now need to raise revenue to pay for additional teachers”.
‘Iron law’ of budget confidence
The Cosla briefing states: “Graham Donaldson, former head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and author of [seminal 2011 report] Teaching Scotland’s Future noted ‘the more confident councils are in their budgets, the more permanent contracts there will be. That is an iron law’.
“Where councils have no guarantee that they will be funded in future years, there may be greater use of temporary contracts. It’s worth noting that the £145 million accounts for roughly 2,000 teaching posts that could be affected.”
The Scottish government has promised to increase teacher numbers by 3,500 by the end of the current parliament in 2026.
It has also committed to reducing teachers’ class contact time by 90 minutes per week, which will require teacher numbers to grow.
However, in both 2022 and 2023, teacher numbers fell, despite the government saying it had given councils £145.5 million to “maintain increased teacher numbers and support staff”.
In January, education secretary Jenny Gilruth said she was considering holding back some of that funding in the council areas where the fall in teachers had been steepest.
Teacher numbers disappointment
But last week - as revealed in Tes Scotland - Ms Gilruth wrote to councils saying that while she was “extremely disappointed” in the reduction in teachers last year, she would not be withholding funding.
She did not “wish to create a risk of services having to be withdrawn at short notice”.
Looking ahead to 2024-25, however, Ms Gilruth expected councils to protect teacher numbers.
She said additional funding for teacher numbers of £145.5 million would be distributed via “specific resource grants”, which would be “conditional on councils agreeing at the outset to maintain teacher numbers”.
The Cosla briefing says councils only found out about the government’s plans to ring-fence the £145.5 million in Ms Gilruth’s letter dated 12 February.
The briefing says: “This is not an acceptable way of working.”
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