Education and Children’s Services
This department is responsible for schools education and children’s social work. The department also has responsibility for supporting children who have additional support for learning needs and also those who have severe and complex needs who require residential care.
As noted above, the department is planned to take a reduced share of the money available over the next two years. There are two main factors behind this. First, over the last decade the education service has experienced rapid expenditure growth, which has now slowed. Other services are now the focus for growth. Second, in making these plans the education service sought more time to develop their response to the national requirement introduced from 2008/09 for 2% cash releasing efficiency savings. They were allowed to plan for less than 2% savings in 2008/09 as long as the required 6% was delivered over the three-year period. This results in lower expenditure growth in the second and third years of the budget.
The central financial issue for this service is how it achieves national targets for 2% efficiency savings. Although this requirement is made by national government of the Council as a whole, given that this service takes the largest share of the budget it is simply not possible for other services to absorb this services share of the required efficiency savings.
There are no easy ways to make these savings. It would be very difficult for the Council to significantly reduce the resources devoted to children’s social work. Much of the remainder of this budget is spent on employees or the secondary schools PPP (Public Private Partnership) contract payments and the cost of operating 36 primary schools across the county. To cope with the changed financial environment, this service will have to deal with the central question posed by the national efficiency agenda. What parts of current spending add most value for the people we serve and contribute most to the delivery of desired outcomes? The most important element of education spending is paying for well-equipped teachers in front of classes, but how much of current spending is that? How much is spent in and outwith schools on non-teaching support activities? How much do we need to spend on this second kind of activity to effectively support the first kind?
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At Elphinstone Primary school parents have been told that the level of required “efficiency savings” to meet the proposed budget cuts can only be made by cutting staff. Staff are the major cost in a school.
For Elphinstone this would mean losing the one part-time Additional Support Needs teacher (ie special needs) and the school’s one Classroom Assistant. One will be lost in 2009/10 and the other in 2010/11 budget year.
Parents at Elphinstone are very concerned about the negative effect this would have on the school, the staff, the pupils and the community.
Savings made in Education should stay in Education so that these excellent school staff are not lost and all their hard work with our kids lost too.
I echo Judith Dunn’s comments; at Athelstaneford we are as yet unclear about exactly where the ‘efficiency savings’ will be made. Most likely we too will lose vital staff.
The Parent Council cannot understand why East Lothian Council have chosen to re-distribute these ‘efficiency savings’ in other departments. We do not feel that the reasons presented in the budget consultation paper justify the decision.
With a rising school roll in East Lothian and supposed commitment in the Scottish Parliament to reduce class sizes in P1-3 cutting the education budget is a political contradiction and failure to uphold the parliamentary promise to protect ‘key services.’
We are very lucky to have high education standards in East Lothian, how is it possible for the professionals to continue to deliver and improve if East Lothian Council is determined to erode them?
East Lothian is the only local authority in Scotland which has a growing school roll! With a decreasing budget this can only result in staff cuts in primary schools and loss of subjects for high schools.
One suggestion for “efficiency savings” is your undefined “other”. It is mentioned that a large portion of this goes to community services, as far as I can see community services already has it’s own budget.
Children are the future of this country and as such should be invested in.
I also agree with Susan’s statement with respect to the contradiction made by the government. How can the school class sizes possibly be reduced when budget cuts are being made. Or was this all just to get votes?
“Efficiency savings” are surely a way of reorganising how a service is delivered, so that it is cheaper to do so, but most importantly without affecting the quality of the service being given.
Cutting front line staff, like Teachers and Classroom/Learning Assistants, is not an “efficiency saving” - it is a cut!
This years “efficiency savings” resulted in the Council announcing in May 2008 that the number of teachers were going to be cut by 11 across the County. Given that the “efficiency savings” for next year have to be even greater this years, does this mean we can look forward to teacher numbers being cut again, but possible by more,, along with the number of support staff, like Classroom/Learning Assistants?
As a teacher myself I fully recognise and acknowledge the concerns that Judith Dunn and Susan Begg raise. Clearly, if you are reducing the number of key workers that are employed to deliver a service this will have a detrimental effect.
I would have hoped that Cllr MacKenzie, Convenor for Education and a former teacher himself, would also have realised the implications of cutting the education budget before agreeing to it.
The whole concept of efficency savings is based on the assumption that within any system there are ineficent systems and that if you make this cut you will make your service more efficient. This may work in the private sector but all that happens in the Local Authority is that managers and politicians go for the cuts that will lose them least votes (if you are a politician) or are the easiest to implement (if you are a service manager). Making the cuts is not the hard part, living with the consequences is.
You can only make efficiency savings if you know what an efficient service would look like and so far I see no evidence that the council is giving me a clear sense of the details of the service outcomes it is prepared to commit to achieving. Without this how do you measure any sense of efficiency let alone decide wheather one cut will make your service more or less efficient than any other cut!!!
Any attempt to apply a % cut to a budget will inevitably lead to a cut in services to the most vulnerable children as they have least say.
In education Atainment is what is measured and what schools are judged by, so the resources that support attainment in mainstream will be what is sustained in the budget. This will be at the expense of those children who need other additional resources, whether to extend learning or support the inclusion agenda.
Whilst I applaud the idea of this consultation exercise, the prescriptive nature of the questions asked almost precludes any answer other than the ones the council have come up with. The bigger questions of the compliance with no increase in the community charge and the negative impact of this on services are not even discussed.
In agreement with many of the other comments. I would like to add my own concerns.
every school council we have consulted with have indicated that efficiency savings will have to come through staff cuts. This is not an efficiency saving, it is a cut. We are paying with the education of our children for brash promises made by a political party seeking votes and now we have to pay. There are many other ways so called efficiency savings can be made within East Lothian Council that do not involve our childrens education. I suggest the council look at their admin, advertising and other inefficient services.
Our schools already run as efficiently as possible and many of the staff work above and beyond their job descriptions.
Scottish government promised no council tax rises but again omitted to inform the electrate they intended to claw back the money through budget cuts disguised as efficiency savings.
December 08 , You pay - Now Have Your Say !!!
January 09, You’ve had your say - Now You’ll Pay.
Not that I’m a cinic but……
If we don’t get organized the Council will just do as they have been told to do in the concordat they have agreed with the Scottish Government.
There is £8m being “redistributed” from education to other areas within the Council in the next 3 years. What are the benefits that we will all see at the same point that we see these educations cuts?
Come on Mr Currie. Speak up!
Some of you should think yourself lucky. Prestonpans Primary School “failed” it’s pupils in an inspection a couple of years ago. The Council felt that the way forward was to cut the number of teachers (resulting in an increase in class sizes). This has been so successful that it is going to cut the number of teachers again, but this time also cut the number of Classroom Assistants. HOW CAN OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES BE SO OUT OF TOUCH, OR SO INEPT? PLEASE EXPLAIN THESE DECISIONS THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN , MR MACKENZIE AND MR CURRIE, IN YOUR CAPACITY AS OUR REPRESENTATIVES.
The People of Prestonpans
The effects of the budget proposals for North Berwick High School have been highlighted to parents by the NBHS Parent Council.
It is clear that the threatened cuts will, if they go ahead, threaten the quality of all pupils education.
The “efficiency savings” that ELC propose are not detailed, just what have they got in mind? The Council and its elected members need to re-think. These cuts will be deeply unpopular.
When considering areas of planned expenditure which add value it is difficult to think of one which so obviously adds value more than Education nor one where the costs of neglect are so high.
During the current year Musselburgh Grammar School has seen more than £98,000 of ‘efficiency savings’ removed from its budget. In an effort to balance the books spending on routine maintenance and the replacement of faulty equipment has been suspended. It is difficult to see how that increases efficiency and unfortunately it has not been successful in balancing the books.
Now there is no further scope for reducing non-teaching spending. This funding has been described as the lubrication which keeps the processes of teaching and learning running smoothly: without it the machinery of the school will grind to a juddering halt. Already some teachers are providing teaching materials from their own pocket. When no further ‘savings’ can be made in non-staffing costs it is inevitable that future ‘savings’ can only be made by reducing staff numbers. At Musselburgh Grammar School this will impact on the range of choices available to pupils in S3 – S6 with the greatest impact at Higher and Advanced Higher level. It will also impact negatively on the ratio of staff to pupils and on staff and pupil morale.
Although the notion of more for less has an obvious appeal it is a strategy which is only ever possible in the short term and seldom has any beneficial effect on efficiency. It is the opinion of Musselburgh Grammar School Parent Council that there is never a good time to cut expenditure on education. But that at a time when the school roll is predicted to rise, and across the county is rising already, with attainment showing some improvement, but with no fall in class sizes, and with major changes to the curriculum being proposed, this is absolutely the wrong time to be making cuts in this department. It has been suggested by East Lothian Council that a disproportionate reduction in expenditure should be borne by Education because “over the last decade the education service has experienced rapid expenditure growth”. However much of that growth was specifically to target changes to teachers terms of employment under the McCrone agreement and the refurbishment of building stock under PPP arrangements both of which, it could be argued, were themselves overdue and the consequence of previous under-spend. We would urge our councillors to maintain the share of expenditure on education, at the very least, at the current level.
Stewart R Buchan, Chair MGSPC
Following from MGSPC the actual quote from the consultaion document is “over the last decade the education service has experienced rapid expenditure growth, which has now slowed”. The “growth in expenditure” in education has not just slowed, but it has went into reverse. Taking account of the salary increases that the teachers are going to receive next year (announced before the proposal document was published) and the salary increases that support staff will receive next year (announced after the proposals were published) education in “real terms” is going to be cut, rather than just experiencing a slow down of the growth. The budget for Children’s and Educations Services is going to grow by 1.27% next year, whilst the salaries of the teachers and support staff is going to increase by 2.5% (indeed the cost to the Local Authority will be closer to 3%, when you take account of employers National Insurance contributions and Employers Pension contributions).
Therefore there may well efficiency savings that can be made, but there will also have to be cuts made as well. This appears to be the complete opposite of what we were promised, in the manifesto of the current largest political group were elected into power in East Lothian. I continually am most confused as two senior Members of the Scottish Government (Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning and Adam Ingram, Minister for Children and Early Years: two people that you think were in the loop!) have made it clear that Local Authorities do have the resources in place not only to “maintain teacher numbers” but also not to “cut support staff” as this will not be viewed as an “efficiency saving”. However, East Lothian Council cut the number of teachers last year and are proposing to cut the number of support staff (and teachers) this coming year.
It is a no brainer Mr Berry and Mr MacKenzie - just deliver to the people of East Lothian what you promised before being elected into power and what your/our government in Holyrood is saying you can deliver.
Whether this means that the share of the budget spent on education is cut is not important- so long as the education service itself is not cut, rather than trying to claim that it is only experiencing a slow down in growth.