Headteacher's warning - 'City parents will demand some answers'

Concern about the impact of the city's cuts on our children's education has been growing for some time amongst teachers and parents.

Their main fear is that getting rid of senior teachers and administrators will leave those left behind with a flood of extra paper work and less professional support - just when they are wrestling with the complexities of the Curriculum for Excellence. The end result, they say, will inevitably be pupils suffering.

The latest attack on education cuts, which we report today, takes that concern to a whole new level.

The headteacher involved pulls no punches, warning the city's "most experienced and gifted teachers" face the axe, describing the savings as "very dubious" and branding the Lib Dem-SNP coalition at the city chambers "weak and rudderless".

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The News knows the headteacher who feels strongly enough to make these statements, and there is no doubt that they are held in the highest regard in education circles.

Sadly, they cannot speak out publicly, because the local authority insists on gagging its staff.

But these concerns deserve to be heard, and parents will rightly demand answers. No-one doubts that cuts are needed in the public sector, but the area which requires greatest care is the education of the young.

While teachers are therefore right to fight against any truly damaging cuts, they must also play their part in the general tightening of belts.

Last week, teaching unions instantly dismissed an interesting idea from the Centre for Scottish Public Policy that teachers give up a week's holiday, with the time being used for training which currently takes place on in-service days.

That smacked not of defending sound education but of pure self- interest. There are wider flaws in the McCrone deal struck with teachers and the profession needs to recognise that the time has come to renegotiate some of its over-generous clauses - as part of a bigger plan to improve, not diminish, our schools.

Food for thought

as every proud Scot knows, this country is responsible for more than its fair share of inventions.

Telephone, TV, raincoats, Tarmac roads . . . you name it, chances are a Scot invented it.

Today we reveal another Edinburgh pioneer has invented a label that tells you when a food jar was opened so you know when the contents were thrown out.

Well done to him for his ingenuity, but isn't this just a high-tech, low- effort alternative to a marker pen and a calendar?