BBC Scotland, still headlining and picturing the SNP Education Secretary to suggest it’s all about her actions and putting pupils’ education at risk, while ignoring the facts.
First:
Pupil to teacher ratios in maintained schools were lowest in Scotland (13.2) and similar in Northern Ireland (17.4), England (18.0) and Wales (18.4).1
That’s a huge percentage difference in 54 000 teachers, meaning several thousand more teachers per head of population in Scotland. It would take massive cuts, of the kind not in question, to change that significantly.
Second, Scotland’s local authorities are sitting on massive usable reserves, kept for just this kind of event, where the UK Government has suddenly slashed funding to the Scottish Government, with inevitable consequences for the local authorities:
£21.8 billion across 34 local authorities!
Is that reserve already under pressure?
Nope
£98 million surplus in 2022/2023 added to reserves!
Sources:
- https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-and-training-statistics-for-the-uk#:~:text=Pupil%20to%20teacher%20ratios%20in%20maintained%20schools%20were%20lowest%20in,decreasing%20further%20education%20student%20numbers.
- https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-local-government-finance-statistics-2022-23/
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Focussing on pupil/teacher ratios distorts this debate. Teachers are not the only people in schools who have a positive impact on children’s learning.
The Blair/Brown Governments made a substantial investment in education, particularly in early years and this included a significant number of ‘classroom assistants’ (I do not recall the current term for them). Classroom assistants were an essential part of ‘inclusion’ which was the right of every child could attend a mainstream school.
They had a significant effect on the attainment levels of children and the incoming Cameron/Clegg government immediately chopped funding of early years education – can’t have the hoi polloi doing too well!
And whenever funding in education is cut the teacher unions immediately demand a preservation of their numbers and that the cuts should fall on other staff, such as classroom assistants. Classroom assistants’ remuneration was around 1/3 of that for an unpromoted teacher.
Teacher unions were generally hostile to the deployment of classroom assistants and demanded that the funding be used for more teachers, who, of course, would not do the work that classroom assistants did. The teacher unions also supported teachers who did not want classroom assistants (or, indeed, children with additional needs) in their classrooms.
I think the attitude of the Scottish Government in this case, and in too many others, is controlling and dirigiste. Local government needs to have increased empowerment.
Alasdair Macdonald
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