The further cuts announced to teacher numbers will leave staff with no chance of meeting students’ needs, writes Jane Gow.

The debate about teacher numbers is dangerously ill-informed. Following the announcement this year that existing teacher numbers in Glasgow could no longer be afforded, one lamentable politician described current numbers as a ‘luxury’. For the avoidance of doubt, teacher numbers in all sectors of Glasgow’s education provision have already been eroded down to a skeleton service. 125 posts were cut this last session. A further 172 have been axed before the August start. By the end of the three-year budget cycle, Glasgow proposes to have lost 450 teachers. That is close to 10% from where we are now.

Teacher numbers are not a luxury. Their necessity is already being proven by the significant rise in behaviour incidents, the increasing numbers of our young people with assisted support needs, and the unsustainable workloads of the diminished number of staff who are holding the fort and firefighting as colleagues and resources disappear.

The fewer teachers and associate professionals there are in schools, the fewer ports of call our young people have. While teacher numbers are cut, other vital posts are in jeopardy. Developing the Young Workforce workers deliver the national youth employment strategy funded by Scottish Government, but there is no dedicated funding to guarantee these colleagues a secure position. Further, the proposal to cut MCR (‘Motivation, Commitment and Resilience’) Pathways co-ordinator posts from 1 to 0.5 FTE across the estate, with any additional provision required in schools being devolved to Head Teachers to budget for, raises the risk of inequitable distribution in a mentoring service that sets out to ‘address inequality in education outcomes’. In all, there will be reduced capacity for one to one and small group intervention and no meaningful time for teachers to support children during lessons as class sizes increase.

It has emerged that 45 of Glasgow’s primary schools will have only their Head Teacher working out of class when schools return in August. This means Deputy Head Teachers and Principal Teachers will be class-committed, effectively providing cover for the 136 class teacher posts which have been axed from this sector. The remits of these promoted teachers include supporting pupils, parents and class teachers so, in one fell swoop, this support will be lost to nearly one third of our primary schools. The implications of this reduction in service are wide ranging. Over the course of a school day, only one teacher will be available to respond to the needs of the school community. This is not only totally inadequate, but is a dangerous reduction in the capacity to react to everyday crises.

In response to the problem, probationer teachers have been invited to prop up core staffing. This plan directly contradicts the principles of the Teacher Induction Scheme which was conceived as a route to providing Scottish education with a well-trained and confident new teacher cohort each year. Teachers in training were originally supposed to be supernumerary to staffing levels to give them the advantages of wider-ranging experiences. They should expect to have a dedicated experienced teacher to mentor them, to have time and space to build and reflect on experience, and to be additional to staffing, without the professional responsibility required of core staff. They have not yet achieved professional standards and are not yet GTCS registered teachers. The plan to fill the budget gaps with untrained teachers is a mark of the local authority’s desperation.

In the secondary sector, the 36 posts cut represent more than one teacher lost per school. The unacceptable practice of multi-level SQA classes has been a long-standing issue in Glasgow, increasing year on year as teacher numbers have been eroded. The coming session’s loss will compound this and, in many subjects, lead to maximum senior school class sizes of 30 plus, providing three or more different levels of course teaching. A Higher course can have vastly different content to National 5 and 4 courses in the same subject, yet all three must be covered in one class over one short session to prepare students for final exams and assessments. Under this workload, staff will be incapable of supporting the needs of each student.

There is a real concern too that we are seeing a blurring of lines in teacher-pupil ratios at Additional Support Needs schools, where many young people are being placed in establishments neither built nor staffed for their needs. This is a direct result of schools being closed, ASN pupil numbers rising, and the concomitant reduction in teacher numbers that we have seen in recent years, despite a government manifesto pledge to introduce 3,500 more teachers into Scottish education. Glasgow did not receive its share because this promise failed to be realised. Now we are looking down the barrel of the unimaginable further loss of 450 teachers. Those who remain are clear that this will damage the city’s education provision and the life chances of our pupils for decades to come. Far from closing the poverty related attainment gap, these cuts will widen the gulf and, once again, our most vulnerable communities will suffer most.

Jane Gow is a retired teacher and secretary of EIS Glasgow Local Association.