ONLY two Scottish councils have confirmed they will fund pupil visits to Auschwitz this year and none can promise to pay for the trips after the money runs out in 2009.
An investigation by The Scotsman has revealed that while English pupils will continue to benefit from a scheme to send two children from every secondary school in the UK to visit the site of the concentration camp in Poland, Scottish youngsters will
miss out.
Treasury funding originally made the trips possible in an attempt to ensure younger generations never allow the horrors of the past to be repeated.
But when the funding runs out next year, only the English education department has confirmed additional money. Most of Scotland's 32 local authorities have said it will be up to individual schools to decide whether to pay for the trips and headteachers have already warned squeezed budgets mean they cannot afford it.
The Scottish Government has said funding must come from within the concordat deal with councils. However, cash-strapped councils say they cannot afford the trips.
Teachers have already threatened to strike because of cuts to educational resources and headteachers say they need greater funding to introduce the new curriculum as their priority.
Glasgow City Council and Clackmannanshire Council were the only local authorities to confirm they had directly funded places on two planned trips organised later this month by the Holocaust Education Trust. Other authorities said payment would have to come out of a school's individual budget.
Labour MSP Ken McIntosh, who has campaigned in favour of the trips, described the move as hugely disappointing. He said: "The trips organised for November will likely be the last. The subsidy of £200 per person can make a huge difference between someone going or not going."
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "This government has provided record funding and freed up local authority budgets so that they have the freedom to consider the contribution that study opportunities such as visits to Auschwitz might contribute to meeting agreed national outcomes, and make them available to pupils."
The full article contains 351 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
