EIS decries ‘folly’ of funding reforms for schools

The proposals by education secretary John Swinney risk shifting schools from local authority control and creating more bureaucracy for headteachers, said Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS).

Ministers intend to give an extra £100 million for headteachers to address specific problems such as lack of staffing. Schools would also be shifted into regional clusters in an effort to cut educational inequalities between richer and poorer areas.

However, Mr Flanagan said the plans were untimely and would lead to excessive centralisation.

“It would be an absolute folly to have any kind of structural re-organisation of Scottish education at a time of reduced resources because it would be distracting attention from teaching and learning,” he told a summit of council leaders, unions and teaching leaders in Edinburgh.