The truth about our schools in West Dunbartonshire

By Mick Dolan

Joint Teachers’ Convenor for West Dunbartonshire

The Joint Local Association Secretary for the EIS in West Dunbartonshire’s  address to West Dunbartonshire Council when members and officers met on Wednesday to debate budget cuts to local services. 

We return here again for the annual debate on another series of cuts to our local services. A task that, we fully understand, none of us really wishes to be the case.

Our particular area of responsibility is Education but every cut which affects our community has either a direct or an indirect impact on our young people and their life chances.

In Education we have a hard working dedicated team; from support staff in schools in all capacities, classroom assistants, teachers, management teams in schools and the management team at the Authority.

There are fantastic things going on in our schools which enrich the lives of our young people.

Some go on to achieve at the highest level in the academic world, the world of business, the Arts and in sport.

But far too many of our poorest children from struggling families are being left behind by a system that has already been cut to the bone and beyond.

In a recent workforce survey of teachers in West Dunbartonshire, carried out jointly by Management and Unions, over 57% of teachers responded, that’s well over 500 teachers, a massive response.

Of those, 70% report working more than 5 hours per week unpaid beyond their contractual hours and 43% worked more than 8 hours unpaid overtime each week.

The system survives on the unpaid work of over 1000 teachers in West Dunbartonshire and it cannot suffer any more cuts.

Poverty and deprivation are crippling elements of our community and the impact is being felt widely throughout the Authority.

We have alarming increases in violence in our classrooms.

We have teachers being seriously assaulted, we have classes of children removed to corridors for their safety as disruptive pupils lose control.

We have a dramatic increase in mental health issues among children due to poverty and family crisis.

We have over 40% of our children with identified Additional Support Needs.

We have the lowest level of school attendance of all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland.

When we examine the outcomes for our poorest, most deprived 20% of pupils, only one of our secondary schools scrapes into the top 200 in the country and 2 of our schools don’t even make the top 300 and that’s out of 359 secondary schools in Scotland.

The poorest in our communities are in urgent need of more investment, more teachers, more resources more and richer life changing experiences; NOT CUTS!

Our secondary schools cannot lose Deputy head posts, posts that provide leadership, support for classroom teachers, links with parents and links with the wider support services in our community.

Our crucial Early Years Service supporting our youngest children and their families cannot suffer the loss of almost 1/3 of their teachers. A service which is reporting alarming levels of the impacts of deprivation; children who are non verbal, children with impaired language skills, children who are not toilet trained, young people who need to learn to socialise and cope in that environment.

We cannot lose teachers and support staff from our Collaborative Services which give wide ranging support throughout our schools to the most needy children. This includes the Interrupted Learning Service which provides education for those young people who have missed long periods out of school through, illness, mental health issues, family breakdown and bereavement.

We cannot lose those additional teachers in our schools who are there to reduce class sizes where Head Teachers identify groups with additional support needs well beyond that which can be managed. Support needs, that in the Special sector have class sizes as low as 6 but with the Inclusion Agenda we now can have the same level of need in classes of 33.

We are here to make our demands on behalf of our teachers, that we do not make the mistakes of the past, of cutting a service where the workforce is already at breaking point and is only surviving through their dedicated commitment beyond their contractual hours.

We are here to make our demands on behalf of our most deprived children and their families.

And we are here to make our demands on behalf of the wider school communities that the scourge of poverty does not continue to blight the life chances of so many of our young people in schools.

Caption to top of page picture: High achieving pupils, staff and eduction convener Councillor Clare Steel pictured in Dumbarton, but how does this picture issued by the council truly reflect the message about what is happening in our schools? Sadly, the achievers are the exception rather than the rule.