At a time when the Primary School rolls are rising with 300 additional pupils expected across the the city in August this year, Primary Schools will have to make nearly half a million pounds of further savings on staff.
In addition, robbing many Primary Schools of their Early Years Practitioner so that they can be redeployed in Nursery Schools to help provide the extra nursery hours is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
When I have visited Primary School recently Head Teachers have told me about the challenging agenda for change they are leading in their schools including the Curriculum for Excellence and the new Read Write Inc programme and initiatives for numeracy as well. Along side this they will now be also expected to reduce their school's energy consumption by 5% in 2014/15 and a further 5% in 2015/16. While reducing waste seems like an obvious target for savings, many schools lack adequate controls on site for the school's heating system. It's difficult to be held responsible for expenditure over which you have limited practical control. Presumably a school that doesn't achieve its projected energy savings will have to reduce expenditure elsewhere in order to pay for the gas and electricity.
Many of these short term cuts will inevitably inflict long term damage in our schools. Dundee deserves better!
