A Scottish council has decided to scrap the traditional 10-minute registration period at the start of the school day, in a bid to save almost £500,000 as budget pressures mount.

The change has come into force in Falkirk this month, meaning that the school day is now be reduced in schools by 50 minutes per week, allowing it to cut the number of teachers it needs to deliver secondary education by an estimated 16.7 full-time members of staff.

Falkirk Council proposed the move as a relatively pain-free way of saving money - but teachers have warned that it would mean the loss of a crucial part of schools’ pastoral care.

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In a recent meeting, a teacher representative warned that the council’s education executive that removing registration would be “removing the first line of guidance”.

Fiona Craig said there would also be concerns about the impact on learning and teaching over the rest of the school day if pupil issues were not addressed during morning registration.

The council said at the meeting in January that school online service Seemis could take up the administrative burden vacated by registration classes, 

However, Billy Burke, the headteacher of Renfrew High in Renfrewshire and president of School Leaders Scotland, said that his own council had got rid of registration a number of years ago.

A key adult needs to have regular contact with pupils, said Burke, but he questioned if 10 minutes of registration, when the teacher could do little more than “lay eyes on people”, was valuable. However, rather than shaving 10 minutes off the school day in Renfrewshire, the time had been used to create “another period of learning”, he said.

The new issue of Tes Scotland, which is out tomorrow, looks in detail at the reduction of non-class time in Scottish schools, particularly lunchtime.

The piece shows that school lunch breaks can be as short as 30 minutes and as long as an hour and 10 minutes.

This has prompted concerns that pupils are being denied important opportunities for exercise, making friends and building social skills, as well as taking part in sport, music, debating and other clubs.