Schools face £40m cuts as city battles funding shortfall

Published on Tuesday 29 September 2009 10:22

SCHOOLS in the Capital may have to cut staff and delay plans to reduce class sizes in order to save more than £40 million.

The city's education leader Marilyne MacLaren has warned she has been told to prepare for the dramatic funding cuts, as the council battles to plug a 90 million funding shortfall.

She described the financial plight of the local authority as "horrendous".

The level of the expected cuts – five per cent of the children and families department's funding of 14 million a year for the next three years – has raised fears of a hard impact in city classrooms.

City leaders say it is too early to say exactly where the axe will fall within the department which runs social services as well as schools.

But parents and opposition politicians have raised fears that it could mean staff cuts, a depleted choice of subjects and larger class sizes than would otherwise be the case.

Councillor MacLaren said her priority would be to protect "core services". Other council departments are also understood to have been warned to look for similar levels of savings.

Last year, there was an outcry when schools were faced with two per cent cuts to their individual budgets – a total of 3.7 million – although they were eventually avoided by central savings including 2.1m saved by closing three primary schools.

If the five per cent cuts were passed to schools this year, it would mean every secondary having to save around 250,000 and primaries 50,000.

Cllr MacLaren told parents during public meetings last week that closing four schools – Burdiehouse, Drumbrae, Fort and Royston – could help to protect school budgets.

"It's not going to be easy to take five per cent off all schools in our city," she told a meeting at Fort Primary. "Last year when we closed three schools, it enabled us not to take two per cent off all school budgets."

Today, Cllr MacLaren added: "We are being told by the director of finance that the savings are in the order of five per cent.

"But whether it's five per cent across the board in all the departments or whether we can vary it a bit, I don't know.

"I'm going to try harder to protect core services, including schools, but to do that I have to release money either from other services or by other ways such as closing these four schools."

Gavin Corbett, chairman of the parent council at Craiglockhart Primary school, said he was "dismayed" by the news.

He said: "Parents fought tooth and nail against 2 per cent cuts last year so it is fair to expect there will be an even bigger outcry this time.

"Parents will wonder why we are being told that we need to close schools – three last year and four proposed this year – in order to protect budgets, when budget cuts happen all the same."

Ricky Henderson, Labour's Edinburgh education spokesman, said there was a "real concern" that finding savings of 14 million could lead to staff cuts.

He said: "If pressure is put on budgets, it puts pressure on staffing and they can't deliver on things like reducing class sizes."