Teaching union the EIS has warned introducing faculties in Dundee schools will not not guarantee any improvement in attainment levels.
It follows the publication of a report due to go before councillors next week which revealed the percentage of third year high school pupils attaining the expected levels of reading, writing, listening and talking, numeracy and literacy fell across all five categories between 2016/17 and 2017/18.
Children and families services convener Stewart Hunter said the city council was determined to improve attainment and was introducing a number of new measures to raise standards, including changing the leadership structure in schools by introducing new faculties.
This will mean replacing principal teachers with faculty leaders responsible for a number of different subjects.
Dundee City Council is looking to save £2 million a year from the move, the plans for which were passed as part of the council’s budget earlier this year.
However, the Dundee branch of the EIS said if was unconvinced by the wisdom of the proposal.
Dundee EIS secretary David Baxter said: “Simply stating that moving to faculties will improve leadership and thus improve attainment does not make it true.
“The real question is, how will removing leadership of subject specialism improve attainment in that subject? How will excessive workload be minimised — especially if you are working in a subject specialism without a leader trained in your specialism?
“And most importantly, how much will it cost to implement?”
Mr Baxter also said the figures showing a decline in literacy and numeracy did not show teaching is getting worse in Dundee.
He said: “There is always a fundamental flaw when comparing year on year attainment, in that we are comparing different cohorts of students with each other.
“What this doesn’t show is the progress that a student cohort makes as its progresses through school, which would be a better indication of how the schools in Dundee are doing.”
He said schools were facing a number of challenges which were having an impact on teaching in Dundee.
Mr Baxter said the move to a 33 period week was increasing the number of lessons teacher were expected to deliver without a corresponding increase in preparation time.
And he said schools had struggled to recruit and retain teachers and supply teachers in subjects including English, science, technology and maths.
