The education secretary has held funds earmarked for teacher numbers because some councils are making cuts
The Scottish government has withheld £145.5m in funding to councils because of a row over teacher numbers.
It says the money has been earmarked to maintain teacher jobs, but local government body Cosla disagrees with the ringfencing.
Most Scottish councils are looking at education cuts – including proposals to reduce learning hours, school buses, and classroom assistants – but only some, including Glasgow, have reduced teacher numbers.
Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth told BBC Scotland that she has not allowed the funding to go to councils as a result. But councils say this has forced them to make deeper cuts to other education services.
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Cosla told the BBC that ringfencing spending on teachers was not the best way to protect pupil attainment and that the stalemate is making things worse.
In recent months, Ms Gilruth has warned councils that she would act if they cut teacher numbers.
Asked if she was calling councils’ bluff, Ms Gilruth told the BBC: “I have not allowed that funding to flow out the door.
“I know this is also a challenging time for local authorities, I recognise that.
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“But fundamentally, protecting teacher numbers is a really important choice I think politically to make, because it protects outcomes for our children and young people.”
Walking 50 minutes to school
One of the less high-profile cuts to school services has been to school buses.
In a bid to save £3.6m in August, North Lanarkshire changed the qualifying mileage limits for free school transport from one mile to two miles for primary school pupils, and two to three miles for secondary school pupils.
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The council says it is part of £62m in cuts it needs to make over the next three years. But in some cases families feel the walking routes are dangerous, off-putting, and could lead to more pupil absences.
Leah is 12 years old and lives in Stepps. Until this August, children from Stepps could get a free school bus to Chryston High School and the walking route was deemed unacceptable.
Leah is concerned about the traffic along her walking route home
However, North Lanarkshire Council has re-assessed the route and said it is acceptable.
Much of the 2.2-mile route is along a busy dual carriageway.
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“After a tiring day at school and then to be expected to walk around 50 minutes home, no matter the weather, with terrible traffic can be a problem to some children,” says Leah.
Leah’s mother Lorraine said the route is not safe and that the local bus timetable doesn’t work with school start times either.
“I think I would support some of the council’s argument that children get the exercise before the school day, as a healthy thing – absolutely,” she said.
Lorraine believes the route children are walking is not safe
“But we’re talking about a 50 minute walk for most children, and some will be more than that. So the distance is part of it, but it’s the safety.
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“In my opinion, it’s not a safe walking route – it’s certainly not a safe cycle route for children to maybe try and cut that time by taking a bike etc. It’s simply just not safe.”
Several councils, including Falkirk, are also looking at reducing the hours in the school week to save money.
Liane Tait has two children at primary school in Falkirk. She is concerned at the impact on children and parents.
“My children are both in primary school and the proposed cuts that they’re suggesting makes them lose two and a half hours of schooling per week for the rest of their primary school and secondary school education,” she said.
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“So my biggest fear is my children are going to be significantly disadvantaged to everyone else in Scotland. It just seems very inequitable and unfair that, due to financial decisions children’s education going to suffer.”
Liane Tait and her children Cal and Orla
However, Ms Gilruth warned that she “can and will act” to force councils to maintain classroom learning hours if they try to cut them.
Dr Sue Ellis, former professor of education at Strathclyde University, said councils are “stuck between a rock and a hard place” and that the lack of flexibility over teacher numbers from the Scottish government is not helping.
She said councils need to be given more control of their budgets because many of the less visible cuts currently happening will have the most negative impact on inequality and attainment.
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“All the cuts, whether to libraries and librarians, staff classroom assistants, additional support needs, home school links teachers, all of those will impact the most on the children who are the most disadvantaged anyway,” she said.
Decisions at ‘local level’
A Cosla Spokesperson said local government has consistently not supported the requirement to maintain teacher numbers set by the Scottish government and that councils were facing significant budget challenges.
They said: “Workforce decisions should be taken at a local level, dependent on local needs and circumstances.
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“Measuring teacher numbers does not tell us anything about outcomes for children and young people, which is where our attention should be focused.
“Ringfencing spending on teachers forces even deeper cuts on services, including those for children with additional support needs, social work support, early intervention services, cultural services, youth work, and libraries – all of which are vital to supporting children and young people, improving attainment, and closing the poverty-related attainment gap.”
North Lanarkshire Council said its home-to-school transport criteria had been brought in line with 27 of the 32 local authorities in Scotland.
A spokesperson said: “The latest walking route assessment takes account of the most up to date information relating to the locality and supersedes an historical assessment.”
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Falkirk council has deferred its decision on reducing the hours in the school week until December. It says it faces a serious financial deficit.
Renault defends the decision by emphasizing that with continuous updates—what would typically be called facelifts—the Renault 5 can remain relevant for at least 10 to 15 years.
“We won’t keep the 5 exactly the same for seven years. But it’s an iconic product, so we don’t want to change the design. The structure will stay the same for a long time—perhaps 10, 12, or even 15 years—just like the Fiat 500. But you can change everything inside,” Renault CEO Luca de Meo told the publication.
The French automaker is already considering the first updates to the car, even before the first customers take the wheel. One such update includes adding shift paddles on the steering wheel.
However, unlike traditional cars with combustion engines, these paddles won’t be used to shift gears.
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Instead, Renault plans to allow drivers to control braking and energy regeneration through the steering wheel paddles.
Additionally, the car will feature a ‘one-pedal’ driving mode, where the car slows down enough on its own that drivers only need to keep their right foot on the accelerator.
Making Europe safe for democracy will take much more than just maintaining Nato country defence budgets at 2 per cent of GDP, according to the organisation’s outgoing secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg (“So far, we have called Putin’s bluff”, Lunch with FT, Life & Arts, October 5).
Probably. But wouldn’t it be possible to improve the organisation’s weapons, capabilities and troops if the national defence forces of each country were put under one command?
Maybe we could start with the Nordic countries. Why do they each have their national defence forces and not one common defence force? Are they afraid of a future conflict and possible war with each other?
Jan Erik Grindheim Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway; and Afflliate, Civita Think Tank (Oslo), Notodden, Norway
One person is dead and 12 others trapped hundreds of metres underground after an elevator failure at a former Colorado gold mine that is now a tourist attraction.
Another 11 people were rescued from the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine attraction in Cripple Creek, Colorado, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell told reporters.
Emergency responders were attempting to repair the elevator to bring back the 11 tourists and one tour guide who were trapped, he added.
A mechanical failure in the elevator occurred with one tour group below ground and another group aboard while it was about halfway down the mine shaft.
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This resulted in one fatality while four other people suffered minor injuries, Mikesell said without providing details of how the person died.
Responders had radio communication with the people trapped below, and they had water, blankets and chairs to keep them comfortable, Mikesell said.
Engineers from the state, mine safety experts and firefighters were on hand.
In the event the elevator cannot be safely repaired, firefighters were preparing for a rescue operation, but using the elevator would be much safer.
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“If we have to, we can bring people up on those ropes, but it also subjects those first responders now to the threat and endangerment of doing so,” Mikesell said.
A family business has been operating tours at the mine, which is about 180 km south of Denver, for 50 years.
The renters’ rights bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Commons this week, is set to be the biggest change to the private rented sector in England for over 30 years with proposed changes to ban Section 21 evictions, the introduction of open-ended tenancies and new requirements for property standards and rent increases (Report, September 12).
Propertymark is the UK’s leading membership body for property agents. While we want to see improved standards, the government must fully understand the impact these changes will have, with agents left wondering how this legislation will help meet the much-needed demand for homes for people to rent.
Our monthly Housing Insight Report shows on average eight registrations for each available property with fewer new properties coming on to the market. The bill in its current form is highly likely to exacerbate this situation with more landlords withdrawing homes from the private rented sector, frequently moving them to short-term lets.
Tax is reducing the investment appetite of new and existing landlords with higher rates of stamp duty on buy-to-let properties and the withdrawal of tax relief on mortgage interest costs. Ministers must recognise the financial implications of this bill and the impact it has on the supply of homes to rent.
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Through the renters’ rights bill, the UK government must commit to reviewing all costs and taxes impacting on private landlords to ensure landlords continue in the market and more landlords can meet the demand for homes to rent.
Additionally, with no security of a rental term for a landlord beyond the proposed two months’ notice period and no long-term guarantee of rent, we would expect to see a significant number of landlords attracted to higher rents in the short-term letting market, which also offers them the advantage of being unregulated.
With landlords exiting the private rented sector, the result would be a reduction in the rental stock available for long-term tenants and increased rents. To help mitigate this, the government must also enact the registration of short-term rental property requirements, as passed in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, alongside these reforms to level the playing field for landlords and the long-term rental market.
Timothy Douglas Head of Policy and Campaigns, Propertymark, Warwick, UK
All Creatures Great and Small viewers were left in tears as James Herriot made a heartbreaking admission to Helen Alderson after a devastating conversation
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