Education

Sadly education has been first in the firing line for cuts in the last 2 years in Renfrewshire. Over £10 million of savings have been demanded in the last 2 years, and over 100 Renfrewshire teachers ‘let go’, and no probationary teachers from last year secured a full-time permanent contract in Renfrewshire. South school has been closed and Moorpark targeted for closure. It is a stark turnaround from the 10 new schools built and 13 refurbished at the behest of the last labour administration in Renfrewshire. If you want to know what is going on in education in Renfrewshire, see the details in the documents below.

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School Transport Cuts

 

Since the announcement of planned removal of many secondary school buses last month, parents have been demonstrating across the county, walking routes to prove they are not safe for 11 year olds in winter. I have been urging councillors to agree to an emergency Council meeting to reconsider the decision. The saving to the Council from cutting the buses is £410,000. So a pay freeze or 5% cut for those at the top of the Council who were awarded 22% in the last 2 years could go some way to meet the cost of keeping the buses.

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Moorpark School Closure Proposal

 

Education officials have admitted to Wendy that the Council has agreed to the building of 2789 new homes in Renfrew – less than 500 of these new homes are yet occupied.  So with Renfrew planned to grow by almost a third why are we cutting the non denominational2010-02-05 (2) schools from 4 to 3?

Why will Councillors not ask for £10m for Renfrewshire schools – just 1.5% of £800m on offer from the Scottish Government to let Kirklandneuk be refurbished as planned and both St James and Moorpark, each have a new school on a new joint campus?________

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Teacher Numbers and Probationary Teachers

210 Teachers blackboardOver the last 2 years 210 teachers have been axed in Renfrewshire, a rate three times faster than that in Scotland as a whole and resulting in Renfrewshire now having the worst overall pupil teacher ratio in the whole of Scotland.  The fate of probationary teachers has been equally concerning. See below for some of the heart-rending stories of those who want to work in teaching but cannot find work.  Again in the last couple of years Renfrewshire has hired 160-170 probationers each year, more than double the number employed in past years – and yet only 4 were given a full-time permanent job at the end of session 2007/8.  And, as the schools returned in Aug 2009 after the holidays, not one probationer who had completed their year’s  probationery work with Renfrewshire in June received a full-time permanent post. This is a shocking waste of talent leaving new teachers by the phone day after day hoping for some supply work.

Take a moment to read about the newly qualified teacher, a single parent, who went back late in life to University and is now working for £5.25 as a care assistant or the other who is “flipping burgers” working part time for a fast food chain to pay the mortgage. It cost over £7.4 million to train these 320 teachers who had one year’s work for Renfrewshire and were then all let go or forced to do supply work.

If you are outraged at this waste of talent that could be helping our children please sign the petition going to council officials to try and prevent a repeat of these sorts of developments again in next year’s budget. I am raising the matter in Parliament to try and get a sensible, positive solution. For example employing these new, keen-as-mustard teachers on one-on-one literacy tuition. Over 100 could be employed if Renfrewshire Council simply collected all the unpaid council tax in Renfrewshire this year.

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