Pupil Equity Funding for Dundee Schools

The Scottish government has announced details of how much money each school in Scotland will receive to close the attainment gap in 2017-18.

It was Scottish Labour which first put closing the attainment gap with extra funding onto the agenda in the Scottish Parliament – but we would have paid for it by asking the richest 1 per cent to pay a little more with a 50p top rate of tax. Instead, the SNP is taking it by perversely cutting the pre-existing schools budget.

The SNP sums simply don’t add up on schools funding. Ministers cannot cut the gap between the richest and the rest while they slash £327 million from Council budgets across Scotland.

Head teachers will see this new funding alongside shrinking budgets, so it’s simply SNP spin after £1.4 billion of cuts since 2011.

Labour has a better plan to close the attainment gap – our MSPs will table amendments to the Scottish budget to use the new powers of the Scottish Parliament to stop these cuts and invest in education instead.

Allocation of Pupil Equity Funds for Dundee Schools 2017-18

Primary Schools

Ancrum Road Primary School £116,400

Ardler Primary School £79,200

Ballumbie Primary School £193,200

Barnhill Primary School £31,200

Blackness Primary School £57,600

Camperdown Primary School £147,600

Claypotts Castle Primary School £200,400

Clepington Primary School £165,600

Craigiebarns Primary School £76,800

Craigowl Primary School £159,600

Dens Road Primary School £130,800

Downfield Primary School £150,000

Eastern Primary School £60,000

Fintry Primary School £152,400

Forthill Primary School £44,400

Glebelands Primary School £82,800

Gowriehill Primary School £49,200

Hillside Primary School £76,800

Longhaugh Primary £154,800

Mill Of Mains Primary School £81,600

Our Lady's RC Primary School £54,000

Rosebank Primary School £57,600

Rowantree Primary School £205,200

Sidlaw View Primary School £120,000

St Andrew's RC Primary School £108,000

St Clement's RC Primary School £88,800

St Fergus' R C Primary School £57,600

St Joseph's RC Primary School £60,000

St Luke's and St Matthew's RC Primary School £135,600

St Mary's RC Primary School £118,800

St Ninian's RC Primary School £62,400

St Peter and Paul RC School Primary £142,800

St Pius' RC Primary School £102,000

St Vincent's RC Primary School £126,000

Victoria Park Primary School £76,800

Secondary Schools

Baldragon Academy £122,400

Braeview Academy £117,600

Craigie High School £126,000

Grove Academy £70,800

Harris Academy £182,400

Morgan Academy £182,400

St John's RC High School £175,200

St Paul’s RC Academy £201,600

Commenting on Additional Attainment Challenge Funding for Dundee Schools

Earlier this week, I welcomed the news that Dundee Schools will share an additional £5m of government funding for financial Year 2017/18 to help to close the attainment gap. I am advised that every one of our schools will gain some of the funding which will be shared out according to to the number of pupils in each school entitled to free schools meals. This was originally a Scottish Labour proposal in early 2015 which has since gained all party support. But the original proposal was for additional funding rather than funding to partly compensate for cuts to main stream budgets for our schools.

There are however a number of details yet to be announced which I think Head Teachers, Parent Council members and members of the Children and Families' Service Committee will want to know.

For example how long is the funding likely to last? Will the money be distributed direct to schools or via the Council? How will the spending be monitored and will the schools or the Council be held responsible for this investment? What can our Directorate and Children and Families' Service Committee members do to support our schools?

Notifying head teachers with only a matter of weeks before the spending can commence is potentially a recipe for rushed planning and delayed spending. We saw the latter in the City with the delayed appointments to new posts created by the first tranche of Attainment Challenge projects. Although the Council received approval for its scheme in late August 2015 some staff were still to be appointed in April 2016.

Finally, the Convener of the Children and Families' Service Committee should also clarify the scale of the Council cuts to the mainstream schools budget for 2017/18. If I were a Head Teacher, before I celebrated the additional funding coming from one hand, I should want to also know what funding my school might be losing from the other.

Commenting on Weapons Confiscated from Pupils in Dundee Primary and Secondary Schools 2011-16

The five year figures from Dundee City Council, of school pupils having an offensive weapon in School show a worrying increase in these incidents from none recorded in school year 2011-12. Additionally, Police Scotland have revealed that between 2013 and 2015, there were 11 incidents recorded across nine high schools in the city where Police had been been informed of a dangerous weapon at school.

Children should not be carrying weapons anywhere — let alone into schools. Even one occasion is too many as the the tragic death of the Aberdeen schoolboy Bailey Gwynne has demonstrated.

When the Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Death of Bailey Gwynne was issued in October last year, I wrote to Michael Wood, the Executive Director of Family and Children's Service,  asking when he would be coming forward with a report to Committee mapping out how best we should respond in Dundee to the recommendations in the Inquiry Report in order to try to prevent such a fatality in our schools.  He confirmed that the Directorate were in the process of considering the various recommendations in full discussion with headteachers.  He also committed to bring a report to committee.

I think parents and carers as well as City Councillors need to know more about how our schools are responding to the Independent Inquiry into the Death of Bailey Gwynne and the incidents behind these statistics about pupils, albeit a very small minority, who have been found taking potentially offensive weapons into our schools. We have all been kept waiting long enough for this report to appear. I am calling on the Executive Director and the Convener of the Children and Families' Service Committee to make sure this report appears before the end of this month.

Link to my earlier posting about the Independent Inquiry into the Death of Bailey Gwynne which was issued in October 2016

Commenting on Homework Policy for Dundee Primary Schools

The recent news that a Primary School in the Highlands has opted to stop setting homework is one which I think we should take notice of in our Primary Schools in Dundee. I am not suggesting that we abandon homework as a Council policy but that each of our schools review its value and place especially in the early primary years. 

Many parents and carers may be surpised to know that the research evidence that regular homework is effective and beneficial is at best mixed. If there are no clear benefits, then the potential damage it can do in adding to pressure on our young people already makes homework not worth doing at that point. Sometimes less is more. 

It is also argued that the role of ‘homework policing’ by parents creates tensions in the family. I can certainly remember 'issues' when having the responsibility to sign off the homework tasks when these had been completed.

"Whether you're pro- or anti-homework, keep in mind that research gives a big-picture idea of what works and what doesn't, and a capable teacher can make almost anything work. The question isn't about homework vs. no homework; instead, we should be asking ourselves, 'How can we transform homework so that it's engaging, relevant, and supports learning?' "

I am sure that many pupils, parents and carers would say 'yes' to that.

Commenting on Future Targeted Cash for Dundee Schools

 

Last week there were reports attributed to the Scottish Government that extra cash generated by an increase in the Council Tax for householders with properties in the top three council tax bands would be distributed directly to schools. This would be awarded per pupil of parents or carers on low incomes. This is my press response:

"I am cautious about giving this proposed extra cash for schools an unqualified welcome. Whoever made this announcement is getting ahead of themselves. Before any of this extra cash can be distributed to schools, it has to collected in the Council Tax for the next financial year beginning in April 2017. The details of the scheme are also very sketchy. For example, what is the per pupil premium amount? £300, £750? Over how many years might this extra cash be available for schools to spend? 

While extra cash from one Scottish Government hand is welcome, it may be more than wiped out by another reduction in the Council's block grant from another hand of the Scottish Government. This latter funding will not be revealed until December and might not be agreed in the Scottish Parliament until January 2017 and it is this cash that will continue to fund the greatest share of the expenditure in our schools. 

I think most parents and carers want reassurance from the SNP Administration of the Council that the overall cash for their children's education in our city schools will not be cut again in 2016-17."

International Literacy Day 2016

Today is the UNESCO designated International Literacy Day 2016.

In the graphic prepared by Education Scotland (see above), there is an admission that the UK has one of the lowest literacy rates in the developed world with one adult in six living with poor literacy. This statistic challenges us to think about what goes on in our schools and what we can offer adults that want to improve their literacy.

It is positive then, that as part of the Attainment Challenge programme of work in our primary schools, literacy has a very prominent place. This includes the citywide introduction of a common phonics based approach, Read Write Inc., to teaching reading. Initial observations about pupil progress have been promising.

Help for adults in Dundee wanting to improve their basic skills is available through Discover Learning 

Email discover.learning@dundeecity.gov.uk 

Tel 01382 666665

Find them on Facebook www.facebook.com/discoverlearningdundee

Website http://www.discoverlearning.org/literacies

Commenting on Lack of Spare Places in Dundee Primary Schools to Cope with A Rising Number of Children

The figures obtained from the City Council support the warnings I have issued in recent years. I have made it clear to the Council that it is continuing to reduce capacity in our primary schools through school mergers and school closures while the number of school pupils in Dundee is continuing to rise. This is a recipe for disappointment for parents and carers when they can't get their child a place in school. 

Bearing in mind that our Primary schools and Nursery schools will need extra places to cope with a doubling of nursery hours by 2020, the Council can't be complacent about this. New school buildings or conversions take a long time, 4-5 years, to put in place. 

When the next School Estate Review is published in the Autumn, we will be able to see whether Councillor Hunter is continuing to ignore warnings that he is gambling with the future of our school children by failing to change direction. I don't want Dundee to be known as Dundee City of Portable Classrooms.

Commenting on Attendance, Absence and Exclusion in Dundee Schools

The Report before the Children and Families' Service Committee on Monday 22 August 2016 about Attendance, Absence and Exclusion in our schools has some progress to report. I think it is important to recognise that the trends on attendance rates and exclusions are at last moving in a positive direction.  

There is however, clearly much to be done particularly in reducing the rate of exclusion of looked after children in our City.   In the latest figures, the exclusion rate for looked after children is 15% compared with non-looked after children at 2%. This cannot be right.  On Monday night therefore, I want to hear more about how we are going to narrow this gap.

One of the other issues which is not mentioned in the report is about lateness. Unfortunately persistent lateness is still an issue for a significant number of pupils in our primary and secondary schools. I know some of our schools have specific initiatives to try and break the cycle of starting school late and thereby disrupting learning several days in every week. In future, I think lateness should also be reported along with attendance, absence and exclusion.

Finally, I think parents and carers whose children attend regularly and punctually and are not excluded would like to know more about how our schools are providing constructive alternatives to exclusion within school in a way that does not disrupt the learning of the majority of pupils who want to learn.

John Swinney Announces Step Towards End of Council Responsibility for Schools

Earlier today the Cabinet Secretary for Education, John Swinney MSP launched the Scottish Government's new plan, Delivering Excellence and Equity in Scottish Education.

In his plan John Swinney takes a further step towards removing the role of local councils in our schools by announching a consultation in the early Autumn:

 "We will launch a Governance Review alongside the Programme for Government in September 2016. 

This review will examine the system changes required to deliver our commitments to empower schools, decentralise management and the support through the encouragement of school clusters and creation of new educational regions. 

The reforms are designed to ensure that parents, colleges, universities and local employers can better support efforts to raise attainment and ensure that young people progress intopositive destinations. Our clear objective is to devolve decision making and funding to schools and communities. This process will run in parallel with the review of the impactof the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006 by the National Parent Forum of Scotland."

Commenting on Continuing High Levels of Pupil Absence in Dundee Schools

Being at the bottom of a national league table for pupil absence is not where we want to be in our schools and our city. Days lost through absence from school are days lost from learning.

Of course it is important to recognise that average attendances mask the fact that a majority of our pupils have excellent attendance at school. On the other hand, a relatively small proportion of pupils may have a very poor record of attendance which depresses the average attendance in a specific school and across the city. However we interpret them however, there is a job to be done to raise the average citywide attendance.

When we look for solutions, I have misgivings about putting too much reliance on short term projects employing temporary staff. When their project is over, after two or three years, the initiatives they have begun may well be unsustainable by the remaining core staff in a school. 

The reduction in the number of Guidance staff in Secondary Schools and the number of Depute Head Teachers in our Primary Schools will not have helped our schools focus on tackling non attendance. These cuts have reduced the senior staff who would directly follow up these issues with pupils and their teachers as well as parents and carers.

Just now the Council is consulting on a plan to reduce by a third the number of places for pupils in our three small scale Education Centres which offer an alternative to secondary pupils who are disengaged from their secondary schools who often have multiple additional support for learning needs. Currently many of the pupils who transfer to one of these centres experience a dramatic improvement to their attendance and participation in learning. I am concerned that the vague alternative and much cheaper services the Council are discussing will make matters worse not better for these pupils and less effective in promoting their attendance and participation by these pupils.

If we are going to tackle a low average attendance in our schools, relative to other Councils in Scotland, I think we need to stick with what currently works and promote initiatives that have the backing of staff and parents and carers, rather than impose more short term initiatives from the centre.

Commenting on Increasing Class Sizes in Dundee Primary Schools

I know parents and carers in Dundee will be concerned by the news that class sizes in Dundee are continuing to increase and the number of teachers we employ has declined significantly. They know that the quality of the education their children receive depends on the expertise and number of teachers in local schools.

The SNP's record of running Education in Dundee is imposing one cut after another in the number of teachers in our schools. In the census in September 2010 there were 1511 teachers in post and in September 2015 this was down to 1409. This loss of over 100 posts represents the equivalent of more than two teachers in each of the primary and secondary school in the city. We can't go on like this cutting the schools' budget year after year and not expect that this will undermine the attainment and achievement of our children.

Strangely when the City Council was provided with the opportunity to bid for extra millions of pounds to help close the attainment gap in our city, they have apparently declined the opportunity to employ more teachers to reduce class sizes, especially in the early years.

For the second year running, the Education Convener, Councillor Stewart Hunter is presiding over the worst record in Scotland for the proportion of pupils who are taught in class sizes of 18 or fewer in P1-3 classes in our Primary Schools.

The plain fact is that the cash the city has received from Scottish Government has been reduced year after year and the Council Tax has been frozen. While George Osborne and the UK Government has imposed significant cuts in the value of their annual block grant to the Scottish Government, the SNP government in Holyrood must also accept responsibility for imposing cuts in our schools by avoiding using the powers they possessed to increase the rate of income tax and failing to bring in a new system of local government funding to replace the Council Tax.

Commenting on the Report on Staffing Levels in Dundee Schools - Education Committee Monday 26 October 2015

The report from the Director of Children and Families' Service paints a varied picture. It is positive that at a time of shortage of teachers across the country the Council has managed to compete more effectively for potential staff. It also positive that the 1412.5 teachers in post is more than the 1407 teachers counted in 2014. But the fact remains, this is still a significant drop from September 2013 when the Council had 1436 teachers in post.

The report is also selective about what it reveals. On class sizes it does not for example identify the number of classes currently being taught at maximum. In relation to ongoing shortages of supply teachers, neither does the report refer to how secondary schools are having to improvise supply cover nor how primary schools are covering the non contact time of primary teachers which they use towards preparation and marking.

At the meeting on Monday 26 October, we shall want reassurance that strategies are in place for Dundee to recruit the teachers it needs as competition for teachers sharpens between councils. Councils in the Highlands and Islands have recently had a summit with Angela Constance and have agreed to work together on recruitment and promoting alternative routes to teacher qualification. What are our plans for Dundee?

This performance is not what the SNP promised at the May 2011 elections to the Scottish Parliament. 

In their Teachers' Manifesto May 2011, they committed to:

'Bring stability to teacher numbers by ensuring councils stick to the agreed minimum number of posts.'

It is significant that here in Dundee, this is the first year since 2011 that a year by year reduction in teacher numbers has been halted. It will take more than one year to be convinced that our SNP led Council now really means business on maintaining teacher numbers in our schools.

Head Teacher Selection Short Leeting and Interviews

Earlier today (Wednesday 2 September 2015), I was involved in a selection panel short listing applicants for a Head Teacher post in the city.

As part of my role as Labour Education spokesperson, I am invited to selection panels along with the Education Convener or his nominee, the Director of Children and Families' Services, a peer Head Teacher and two members of the Parent Council of the school for which a head teacher is being selected. In addition to these six voting members, there are two advisers to the panel; one from HR and the Head of Secondary or Primary Education as appropriate.

I think it is an important responsibility being part of the process of selection of the learning leaders of our schools.

Commenting on Continuing Teacher Shortages in Dundee

According to the latest figures, Dundee Schools have begun the new school year with vacant teaching posts. While it is positive that, the figure is apparently less than this time last year, these shortages will undoubtedly put additional demands on our teachers as they provide cover. 

While the Director of Children and Families' Services and his staff should be congratulated for their efforts over the summer, it is clear that the supply of newly qualified teachers is currently insufficient to meet the demands in Dundee and throughout Scotland. 

The responsibility for this mess rests principally with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, in the Scottish Government, Angela Constance MSP. She will point to her recently increasing the intakes to teacher training courses, but she and her predecessors acted too slowly. As a result our teachers and pupils in our schools are paying the price.

Our pupils and teachers deserve better.

Commenting on Supply Teacher Shortages in Dundee

The reported shortage of supply teachers in Dundee is putting additional pressure on Headteachers and their staff in our schools to cover classes when colleagues are absent.

The current supply shortage is a result of a very unfortunate combination of factors which have served both to increase the demand for 'supply teachers' and at the same time restrict the supply.

Firstly that the age profile of teacher until recently was skewed towards those approaching retirement. Their replacement with recently qualified younger staff in a profession where women are more numerous has meant that there has been a concurrent increase in the number of staff on maternity leave in any given school year. This year I understand that there are more than 45 teachers in Dundee on maternity leave, all of whom need replacement.

Secondly, there has been a rise in the number of rising five year old children in our city entering Primary School each year; about 300 extra children per year equating to 18 additional classes alll needing a teacher.

Thirdly, one of the SNP's most damaging cuts in education was to reduce the national rate of pay for short term supply teaching. This initially restricted the daily rate of pay for up to five days supply teaching to the lowest rung of the salary scale. For experienced supply teachers, this made short term supply work much less attractive so understandably some supply teachers withdrew from the supply list or became selective; avoiding taking short term supply work at the lower rate of pay.

This has put a strain on teachers and management teams in schools as they cover classes. When this repeatedly happens this takes them away from other roles and tasks that they would be otherwise undertaking. In secondary schools the internal 'please take' cover may be by a teacher who is not qualified in the subject taught. While this cover is satisfactory, if not ideal, for an occasional lesson, this it is not a satisfactory longer term solution for pupils in a class preparing for SQA examinations.

After several years of difficulties securing supply teachers throughout Scotland, the Scottish Government has finally agreed to establish a national task force to look into and come up with some solutions that increase the pool of supply teachers. The sooner this group report, the better.

In the meanwhile, we are exploiting the goodwill of our school teachers and understandably this is wearing thin. Parents I am sure will be anxious that the education of their child does not suffer as a result of these shortages.

Need for Additional Report Before Approving Nearly £0.5m on Nursery Places for Under 3s

Click on image to enlarge

On Monday night at the City Development Committee, on the basis of a flimsy report, Councillors are being asked to approve borrowing of £464,659.00 to pay for:

13-6033 – Various Primary SchoolsProvision for Under 3 year olds

The works comprise alteration works to provide provision for under 3 year olds at Ardler, Ballumbie, Dens Road, Longhaugh, Mill O’Mains, Park Place and St Ninians Primary Schools.

There are no background papers just the contract costs.

Significantly there is no mention of this project on the agenda of the Education Committee which meets before the City Development Committee on Monday night. Apparently it will be on the agenda of the next Education Committee in May. This will be locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

I appreciate that the pace of change is dictated by the Scottish Parliament's requirement that the Council make provision for 600 hours of nursery provision for 2 year old children where both parents are unemployed in August 2014. But this decision is being presented with inadequate information for Councillors to make up their minds and that can't be right. I have already been advised that the inclusion of Park Place Primary School in the list is wrong; it closed it as a Primary School in 2012. 

Here is my list of the things I think Councillors reasonably need to know now:

1. How many children are we planning to provide places for?
2. How robust are these numbers of 'qualifying' two year old children?
3. Why have the named schools been chosen for these developments?
4. Are there any other schools not needing major building alterations that will be involved in providing places for this additional group of younger children?
5. What is the basis for calculating that qualifying children will live closest to the schools that have been identified?
6. What pattern of nursery hours will be offered to help unemployed parents and carers back to work? What job can you do if your child's nursery place runs for just over three hours a day five days a week? Has any other configuration of hours been considered?
7. What steps are we taking to recruit additional Early Years Practitioners to provide the extra places?
8. Will there be time to do all the building work before mid August as well as obtain the Care Commission approvals?
9. What consultation has taken place with parents and carers?
10. Has an Equality Impact Assessment been completed?

It's still not too late to put his right and introduce a late item at the Education Committee on Monday night. I have written to the Education Convener and Director of Education to propose that.

Link to City Development Committee Agenda Monday 20 April 2014

Link to Education Committee Agenda Monday 20 April 2014

Health and Safety of Dundee School Buildings

On Tuesday 1st April, regrettably, a twelve year old pupil at Liberton High School in Edinburgh died from her injuries when a partition wall in the school's PE changing rooms collapsed.

I am pleased to learn that Dundee City Council has already instructed technical staff to inspect equivalent 'modesty walls ' in school changing rooms in our schools.

The last annual report to to the Education Committee on the school buildings in Dundee focused on sufficiency of school places and the overall condition of each school building. It reported a generally improving position as new schools were replacing old. But the tragic death of pupil Keane Wallis-Bennett in Edinburgh shows how we can't afford to be complacent.

I have written to the Convener and Director of Education requesting that the council do a wider health and safety double check of school buildings in Dundee especially in those education premises due for replacement.

It has been reported that the partition wall that collapsed at Liberton High School had been previously noticed and commented on by pupils.

In addition, I have asked for reassurance that staff and pupil observations of health and safety hazards in our schools are properly reported, logged, inspected and acted on.
When the schools go back after the Spring holidays on Monday 14 April, parents and carers have a right to expect that their children will be returning to a school environment that is not hazardous nor potentially injurious.

Commenting on the Proposed Loss of Early Years Practitioners from 22 Primary Schools in Dundee

On Monday Councillors received a copy of a letter sent by the Early Years Practitioners who work in 22 of our Primary Schools in Dundee. They are very concerned that as a budget saving their jobs in Primary Schools will disappear from June this year. 

In the SNP's budget proposals their jobs they will be cut from the primary schools and they will transferred to work in the nurseries to support more nursery hours for 3-5 year olds. This seems like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I think the Early Years Practitioners are right to be concerned on our behalf about a significant reduction in front line staff who work directly with children in our Primary Schools. The Early Learning Practitioners, many of whom are educated to degree level, work with reading groups and support children who otherwise might fall behind with their learning. On my recent visits to Primary Schools, I have seen at first hand the positive contribution they make supporting the teacher and the learning in our primary classrooms. For example; taking P1 reading groups involved in the new Read Write Inc reading programme. Some of these posts were established under the Raising Early Attainment in Dundee as long ago as 1997.  

This proposed cut will make it much harder to believe that the Council is committed to its Fairness Agenda and getting it right for every child.

Unfortunately, the SNP administration have a poor record on Primary Education. In their recent council budgets year after year they have removed teachers and staff concerned with children's learning in our Primary Schools.

I hope the letter from the Early Years Practitioners prompts the SNP administration of the Council to think again and find a way to withdraw this damaging 'saving' from their budget proposals.

Pupil Absences in Dundee Schools - Education Committee Monday 27 January 2014

I placed Pupil Absences in Dundee Schools on the Agenda of the Education Committee held on Monday 27 January because I think the thousands of missed school days in Dundee matters. 

The statistics published by the Scottish Government in December indicated the extent of pupil absences in Dundee Schools. Their table of results indicated that Dundee was the bottom of the league table of 32 education authorities on these measures.

These statistics showed that in 2012/13 the percentage attendance in Scottish local authority schools ranged from the highest 95.5 per cent (East Renfrewshire) to the lowest 92.3 per cent (Dundee City). This means Dundee has the highest pupil absence rate in Scotland in the last complete school year. A 3.2 per cent difference may not seem much but translated into days missed over a year it stacks up. In fact it means that on average, every pupil in Dundee misses more than one week more than pupils in East Renfrewshire. No wonder the exam results are better in East Renfrewshire.

Looking more closely at the figures for Dundee, it means that on average each pupil in Dundee misses fifteen days or three weeks of schooling a year. This adds up to almost one year of schooling lost by every pupil during their 5-16 compulsory school years. Of course I know that averages like this mask wide variations between schools and pupils. Some pupils will have perfect attendance and so by implication some pupils must be absent for lengthy periods of time.

Any day of absence from school is a day of missed learning opportunities. If we want to increase the attainment of our pupils, we need to reduce the number of days at school that are lost through absence for reasons that are avoidable.

This was reinforced by the publication of OECD international research about truancy. This report said that higher truancy rates in schools throughout Britain are leaving pupils lagging behind their peers in top-performing nations across Europe and the Far East. More specifically the research showed that a fifth of pupils in UK secondary schools admitted to skipping a least a day of lessons over a two week period period to the survey.

Right now we need some detailed explanation of what is going wrong and why the absence rate has apparently been creeping up in Dundee but decreasing elsewhere. I think we need to hear from the Director of Education about a way forward. We need to hear more how our schools, working with pupils and parents and carers, are tackling this issue. It surely needs to be much more than the Education Convener’s advocacy of taking some secondary pupils on visits to meet offenders in prison.

Judging by the avoidance of detail about Absences, apart from ‘Exclusions’ in the annual Standards and Quality Report also on the Agenda last Monday, it looks as though, if I hadn’t raised this there would not have been an opportunity for the Education Committee to engage with this important issue.

At the end of this item the Education Committee approved my motion:
which:

• instructs the Education Director to include absence issues including but not exclusively exclusions in the annual standards and quality report to the Education Committee and 
• recommends that strategies for absence reduction are given higher emphasis in the process of Annual Reviews and Extended School Reviews.

Commenting on the SNP's Proposed Further Cuts in Dundee Primary Schools

Once again the SNP Administration have not spared our primary schools from their cuts announced late on Wednesday afternoon. 

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!