Money targeted at pupils from deprived backgrounds should not be used to reinstate services or resources lost through budget cuts, Scotland’s education secretary has warned local authorities.
John Swinney said today that he had already intervened after one council, Dundee, cut swimming lessons for primary pupils but advised that schools could keep offering swimming if they used their allocation from the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF).
Labour MSP Johann Lamont, a former teacher, had asked Mr Swinney whether advice from a Dundee City Council spokesperson - that headteachers had been “given the opportunity to explore how swimming lessons can be delivered through the Pupil Equity Fund” - was acceptable.
Mr Swinney’s initial reply was a simple, “No.”
He was then asked by Ms Lamont if he would intervene or even remove funding allocated through PEF, which is designed to encourage headteachers to find innovative ways to drive up attainment locally.
Speaking at today’s meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, Mr Swinney said his officials had spoken to Dundee City Council.
He explained that, while he noted the council’s argument that it could not justify the two hours of school time that had to be blocked off for a 20-minute swimming lesson, it was “not acceptable” for a school to use PEF money “to provide a replacement for a service that was there before”.
Mr Swinney, who is also Scotland’s deputy first minister, added that PEF guidance “makes it quite clear that pupil equity funding must be used for additional purposes - not replacement”.
A Dundee City Council spokesman said it had: “never intended to use Pupil Equity Funding as a way of paying for school swimming lessons or to replace any core funded activity”.
He added: “We have not cut any budgets surrounding these lessons and are now looking at ways of providing a better form of swimming programme for primary pupils.
“A working group is now considering how to take this forward and a report will come back to council in due course.”
The Scottish government has a £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund which it is distributing over the course of the current Scottish Parliament, including £120 million of PEF money in 2017-18 divided among around 95 per cent of state schools.
The aim of PEF - similar to England’s Pupil Premium - is to encourage innovative projects to close the “attainment gap” between poor and affluent children.
Headteachers are supposed to decide how to spend their school’s allocation, although there was some confusion at today’s meeting in Parliament about where exactly accountability lay for these spending decisions.
In October 2017, Tes Scotland highlighted concerns that some schools were “shoring up” local budget cuts with their PEF allocation.
