CONDITIONS in West Fife’s schools are going to get worse.

That’s the dire warning from a Fife teaching union in the wake of Fife Council putting forward education cuts of £3 million – through the redistribution of teaching staff to reduce current vacancies – in last Thursday’s budget.

Ahead of showdown talks between teachers and the council tomorrow (Friday), David Farmer, publicity officer for the Fife EIS branch, said the cuts had come out of the blue.

He said details of teachers could be redistributed were “sketchy” and warned: “I think the immediate consequences for schools where staff are being redistributed from is going to be bigger classes, bigger workloads, less time to spend with the kids and more stress.

"For the EIS, that’s the massive concern. Things in these schools are going to get worse.

“We do not see how this redistribution is going to address the staffing issue. 

“There was an argument put forward that kids would be seeing the same teacher but it will be bigger classes where the teacher gets more time to spend with them and, if that teacher is absent, what happens then?

“If they do decide to take a teacher out of a Dunfermline primary school and transfer them into a primary in Glenrothes or Kirkcaldy, what is clear is the staff who are still in that primary school are going to have to pick up their workload.”

And he continued: “There had been no consultation or anything from the service about the redistribution and the first we knew about it was when we received, like other trade unions, the budget proposals a week before the budget meeting.

“We then contacted the service and asked what did this mean and we received the same information as the councillors did which, I think you could best describe as sketchy.

“I went to the budget meeting and found some of the statements made by the councillors confusing because the idea that this is actually going to address a national problem is a smokescreen.

“The national problem is something the Scottish Government needs to address. To a certain extent, the Scottish Government has recognised there is a recruitment and staffing problem but trying to get more student teachers into college places takes a while to filter through into the actual system.” 

Council leader David Ross said they currently had between 100 and 120 teacher vacancies which they were unable to fill due to a nationwide shortage (see page 24).

“Around 2,500 children in Fife’s schools don’t have a permanent, regular class teacher,” he said.

“Classes are covered by supply teachers, heads and deputes or other class teachers. Some classes simply sit in the assembly hall.

“This is unacceptable. We want to reallocate those extra teachers put into schools to reduce class sizes to fill as many of these 100-plus vacancies as possible.

“Some class sizes will increase a little but as many as possible of those 2,500 children will at least have a permanent class teacher.”

Fife SNP spokesperson for Education and Early Years, Councillor Fay Sinclair, said: “We still have no idea how this will be implemented, which staff will be affected, or exactly how it will impact teachers or pupils across Fife.

"The administration needs to reconsider this disastrous decision as a matter of urgency.”