Education ‘no longer free’ as parents buy basics

SCOTTISH education is no longer “free at the point of need” – with parents being forced to fork out for classroom essentials, MSPs have been told.

Schools are also poised to close and teachers will be axed as swingeing budget cuts are implemented over the next few years, Holyrood’s education committee heard yesterday.

It has prompted fresh calls for schools to be taken out of council control completely, with the prospect of a national education body or control being handed to grass-roots bodies.

A new report yesterday warned there are still significant gaps between those from deprived areas getting three As at Higher and their better-off counterparts.

A report from the Scottish Funding Council shows about one in seven Scots from more deprived areas are making it to university.

Schools are increasingly being forced to stage fundraisers for “essentials” such as pencils, paper and IT equipment, MSPs were told yesterday.

Eileen Prior, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said: “We’re supposed to have a system of education that is free at the point of delivery – we don’t.

“We have individual parents who are having to find money to pay for materials or trips or whatever for the young people.”

This can discourage some youngsters from poorer backgrounds choosing technical and practical subjects where they may have to fork out for additional materials, she added.

“We’ve been tracking this for a number of years and parent groups are rasing funds not for frills, not for ribbons or fancy things, but for fundamental resources,” she said.

“Parent groups are funding things which would previously have been included in the school budget – that is across the board.”

Iain Ellis, chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, said he was aware of two schools in West Dunbartonshire where parent groups are paying for basics such as pens and pencils.

“When children are starting to share books one to three it doesn’t work,” he said.

“Kids are going home with books taped together that kids from years gone by have scribbled wee notes on. There’s no money left.”

And as councils around the country face massive budget black holes in the years ahead, the impact on schools will bite hard.

Mr Ellis said: “The last three years there’s been cuts, but not a lot to education. The next three years there’s going to be serious cuts to education because other departments have been cut to the bone.

“The only way to make serious savings in education is through staffing and school closures, neither of which are acceptable to parents.”

He suggested far closer working in education and questioned the need for each council to have its own education department.

“I would suggest could we do away with 32 authorities,” he said. “Take it off their hands completely.”

It came as Tory leader Ruth Davidson said reform of the sector is “long overdue”, with the party publishing a new booklet looking at what changes could be made.

The Tories want Scotland to look at how education services operate in other parts of the world, such as New Zealand where schools have boards of trustees appointed by parents, or the United States’ charter schools approach in which states issue licences allowing organisations to operate a school.

Ms Davidson said: “While Scottish administrations since devolution have held the power to chart a bold new course for our nation’s schools, they have ducked this challenge.

“In place of long-overdue reform, they have too often retreated into a ‘Scottish exceptionalism’ which closes its eyes to the transformational change that has swept through the delivery of education across much of the world.”