More Education Cuts in Dundee City Budget 2016-17 - My Contribution tot he Debate at the Budget Meeting

At the Budget Meeting on Thursday 25 February 2016, I made the following contribution to the debate about the SNP's budget proposals.

"Convener, with regard to Education your budget is full of short term cuts with long term damage to education in our city.

In June you are closing a well regarded and very well led high school in Menzieshill which parents and carers fought to retain. This will be happening at a time when the latest national population projections confirm a continuing and significant population growth in our city especially in the 0-15 age group.

In our primary Schools we continue to reduce capacity while there are proposals afoot to increase the nursery education and care entitlement. This would require considerable additional accommodation in our Primary and Nursery school buildings.

On Monday night I pointed out at the Education Committee that having 'Reserved Places' in four out of the soon to be eight secondary schools in the city is an indicator that our secondary schools are filling up and only Braeview, Craigie, St Paul's and Baldragon have some remaining capacity to cope with population growth in our city. 

Combined, Convener, with your fire sale of Council properties and sites, this means that not only will we have pressure on school places in the future but no Council owned  sites on which to build the new primary and secondary schools we will need.

In relation to the supply teacher budget, you have cuts back on this and gamble that there will be no no increase in demand such as a flu epidemic or an increase in staff on maternity and paternity leave that will increase demand for supply teachers in the next year. You are in my mind misleading people in Dundee when you claim this will make no difference. In the current year schools have been unable to spend this budget because of the lack of supply staff caused largely by the national shortage of teachers. If, as the Holyrood government tell us that they have at long last sorted out the lack of training places for teachers, we might have the potential supply teachers to employ next year but not the budget in our schools to pay for this. 

Short term cuts and long term damage Convener.

We can also see that the direction of travel will be to accommodate the rising number of pupils by allowing classes in our schools to get larger. Apparently you are happy for Dundee to be mid-table at everything  and not really ambitious to be outstanding. 

Convener, some of your colleagues have congratulated you on your creative approach to finding your budget cuts. But our constituents and our staff know that there are many dangers in your 'creative accounting'.

So Convener, I cannot support your budget today because you do not have the best interests of our city at heart. Your short term cuts will inflict long term damage to our children in our schools in the City. 

Not so much Getting it Right for Every Child, but Getting it Cheap for Every Child."

After the meeting I said:

It was very disappointing that the Finance Convener, Councillor Willie Sawers would not even allow a discussion of the Labour motion at the budget meeting. He just arbitrarily ruled it out of order, even though it had previously been agreed by the Council's Chief Legal Officer as a competent motion.. Councils must, by law, fix their budget for by mid March, so there was still time to put these savage budget cuts on hold and try, with a united political front, to negotiate a better deal for the city from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, John Swinney. I don't think any Councillor should dismiss an opportunity to try to negotiate a better deal for our city. 

Dundee deserves better

Call for Clarity About Which Secondary Schools in Dundee Will Have Larger English and Maths Classes in S1/S2

Last week, the SNP led Administration of the Council made a shock announcement about their cuts in staffing at our Schools. From August 2013 they have proposed to withdraw smaller classes in Maths and English in the first two years at five of the nine secondary schools in Dundee. These classes are currently capped at 20 and will, under these proposals, increase to a maximum of 33 pupils.

The Education Convener, Councillor Hunter justified this by saying that four secondary schools had less positive exam results and keeping the smaller classes for them would help improve their results. Presumably, by that line of reasoning, exam results in those schools where the smaller classes are being withdrawn will be undermined.

But so far the Education Convener has avoided spelling out which four secondary schools will retain their cash for these smaller Maths and English Classes in S1 and S2 and which will lose out. Parents and carers who have children moving from Primary to Secondary School this summer have a right and a need to know this now. They need to know because whether a secondary school will or will not have smaller classes in Maths and English is something that might sway their decision about which school to request for their child.

These parents and carers shouldn't be asked to wait for his announcement until after the Budget Meeting on Thursday 14 February, because they must finalise their parental choice for a secondary school by the Council's deadline. Placing requests must be submitted to the City Council by the first Monday in February which this year falls on Monday 4 February. 

Of course Councillor Hunter could have chosen to put this on the Agenda of the Education Committee called for Monday 28 January, but I notice that he has avoided doing this when I looked at the papers that have been issued. As Convener, he still has the opportunity to put this on as a late item and allow Senior Pupils, Parent Council Representatives and Teachers from our schools to have their say along with Councillors.

Like his predecessor, Councillor Fordyce, Councillor Hunter can try and hide the issues that are really important from the Education Committee but he must come clean and tell us where his axe is going to fall in Maths and English Classes. Parents and carers won't thank him from hiding this from them when they have to make their placing decisions over the next few days.

The nine Secondary Schools in Dundee are:

• Baldragon Academy
• Braeview Academy
• Craigie High School
• Grove Academy
• Harris Academy
• Menzieshill High School
• Morgan Academy
• St John's RC High School
• St Paul's RC Academy

Five and Ten Percent Savings Sought from Each Council Department Confirmed by Chief Executive

On Thursday evening I attended the quarterly meeting of the Local Community Planning Partnership (LCPP) for The Ferry. 

The Chief Executive of the Council, David Dorward, attended and gave an overview about Council's priorities and plans. He also emphasised the challenge of continuing to provide quality services whist also finding significant reductions in budgets. This was in the context of reductions in the grant from the Scottish Government and the Council Tax freeze amounting to a £18 million black hole. To meet this £18 million shortfall by the end of March 2015, he revealed that each council department had been asked to identify potential savings of 5% and 10%. 

I have calculated from figures provided in this year's budget that this would amount in Education to about £6.5 for a 5% saving and £13 million for a 10% saving. But the funding gap is really bigger in Education as SNP Councillors are committed to increasing nursery hours at an annual cost of £1.6  million. Potentially therefore savings in existing services in our schools will be cuts by up to £15 million spread over the next couple of years. 

This confirms the concerns that I have previously voiced about the impossible challenge of maintaining excellence in our schools while seeking even more significant cuts in budgets.

Broughty Pensioners Lose Out as Osborne Raids Their Tax Allowances

In the Chancellor of the Exchequer's third budget yesterday he raided the resources of pensioners, what some commentators have referred to as a 'granny grab'.
He announced an increase in personal tax allowances for those under 65 but failed to protect the existing age related extra tax allowances for pensioners. In subsequent examination of the detail in the budget volumes, it became clear that not only is he freezing these allowances for existing pensioners and gradually phasing them out but also removing them immediately for new pensioners born after 6 April 1948.

Details of the Tax Changes from HMRC website

So much for promising a significant increase in the future in the basic pension in 2015 and then taking it away by removing these age related tax allowances. Did he think that pensioners would not notice?

So while George Osborne and his coalition partners give with one hand they are taking away with the other. This will affect everyone over and approaching pension age in Broughty Ferry (and elsewhere). 

The government's own assessment of the impact of these changes is as follows:
"In 2013-14, 4.41 million people aged 65 and over will be worse off compared to 2012-13 when RPI indexation to the age-related allowances is taken into account." (Overview of Tax Legislation and Rates HM Treasury/HMRC page 46)

SNP Councillors vote down £379,000 for Dundee Schools they had cut by £4.1 M

At the Council's Budget meeting on Thursday 10 February, the SNP group of fourteen Councillors, with the support of the Lord Provost, voted down the Labour amendment. We proposed to use savings we had identified, to restore more than a third of a million pounds to the Education budget.

Our proposals would have have made this a better budget by ensuring that:

• no class lacks a supply teacher when a teacher is absent and when a school's budget for supply cover is exhausted;

• curriculum for excellence developments will not be held back by reductions in the school's classroom expenses budget and

• no pupil is denied access to an examination as a result of the cut in SQA examination fees for dual presentations because two examination certificates are better than the risk of none.

We believed that the best way to achieve our priorities was to pass these funds to the discretionary budgets of our head teachers so that they might have spent this on the most important priorities in their schools. In this way, teaching and learning in our schools would have been protected from the most damaging effects of the SNPs programmes of more than £4 million cuts.

Unfortunately, our school children and their schools will have to suffer because the SNP insisted on protecting the budget for two civic cars and not one as we proposed. They also voted to protect money for beer and sandwiches for hospitality. They also voted to retain an unallocated bus route development fund. Why we would want to invest more money from the council tax to boost the profits of the bus company in Dundee beats me. I think most council taxpayers in Dundee would think this would be throwing good money after bad given the recent botched reorganisation of bus routes in the city.

So as the dust settles after our prolonged budget meeting, why does our SNP led Council prefer to retain the £379,000 savings we had identified and not shore up the Education budget they had raided? Why are beer and sandwiches and civic cars on the council tax more important than the Education of our children?

Dundee nursery, primary and secondary schools deserve better.

Broughty Library - Is Transfer of Management Legal and Wise?

As part of the SNP's budget cuts,the well used and much loved Broughty Ferry Library will be set to managed by an arms length body, a not for profit organisation, rather than directly by the Council. While this is claimed to save money, is it legal and is the proposed form of management the best option?

Our Broughty Ferry library was one of the incentives provided by the then City Council to entice the former Broughty Ferry Borough Council to throw in their lot with Dundee. The 1913 Act of Parliament that annexed Broughty Ferry to Dundee made it clear that Dundee Council would provide and maintain a library in Broughty Ferry within five years of the annexation. This was duly provided. I am querying now how how this commitment stands. Can the council claim that it meeting this historic obligation while passing it on to an arms length body not under the direct control of the council?

Whether or not it is legally feasible, and I am sure legal officers will report on this, I am not convinced that the proposed successor body is the best solution for our library in the Ferry. The SNP led council's solution is to pass our library on to a reconstituted and expanded Dundee Leisure Trust along with all the other libraries in Dundee and the museums. I think at the very least a separate trust should be considered for Museums and Libraries in the city.

Do swimming pools, gyms, libraries and museums hang together? I notice that leading private sector leisure companies, such as David Lloyd Leisure and Bannantine Leisure Clubs don't also run museums and libraries. Will the independent directors of the proposed company have broad enough interests to focus on libraries and community learning as well as aerobics, swimming and hockey?

I think Councillor Ken Guild, Leader of the Council, should think again about the wisdom of the changes to library management his administration is proposing for Broughty Ferry.

Link to story in The Dundee Courier

Education Cuts in Dundee Revealed

As I predicted, in the first SNP budget in Dundee, Education has not escaped unscathed from cuts. The headlines from the SNP's damaging cuts in Education in our city include:

• removal of 11 visiting specialist art, design and drama teachers supporting primary schools across the city;
• 6% reduction in the per pupil allocations for books and supplies for all nursery, primary and secondary schools - taking into account the rate of inflation for text books and consumables such as replacement toner cartridges for laser printers this is nearer a 10% cut in spending power or a reduction of about £5000 for each of the larger Secondary schools in the city;
• early retirement scheme for experienced teachers aged 58 or over to save £0.5m;
• end of funding for language assistants in secondary schools;
• reduction in IT staff tutors working with schools and teachers;
  
• removal of, or reduction in, funding to Fairer Scotland funded programmes that support pupils who are troubled or troublesome and
• most parents in the city will find that by some postcode lottery, there are no planned reduction in the P1-3 class sizes at their children's school. Only the thirteen smallest primary schools in the city have been selected for this programme. For example, Broughty Ferry's three primary schools will not experience any class size reductions this year. In fact, since Barnhill, Eastern and Forthill primary schools are operating at or near to capacity, they would each need additional classrooms built in order to retain their current volume of pupils and accommodate P1-3 pupils in classes of 18 or under. As no money is budgeted for building permanent or temporary classrooms in the Council's capital plans for Education 2009/2012, its difficult to see how any progress on class size reduction in any Broughty Ferry primary school might be achieved. Of course all primary schools in the city will miss the impact and artistic support from the mobile Art, Design and Drama teachers. This seems particularly perverse given the additional demands of the curriculum for excellence and the provision of drama rooms in each of the six new PPP primary schools.
  

The capital budget also shows that the major refurbishment of Harris Academy is unlikely to start on site until late in 2011 and will not be complete until the latter quarter of 2013 or the first quarter of 2014. This timescale is also dependent on the Grove Centenary wing office conversion getting planning permission. This would then facilitate Council staff currently accommodated in the Rockwell building being relocated to the old Grove Office Conversion. Once Rockwell is empty, it would in turn provide the accommodation for the decant of Harris Academy while their school refurbishment takes place."