Dundee’s head teachers would receive a near £1 million cash boost for their schools under Labour’s education plans, Kezia Dugdale has pledged.
Earlier this month, The Courier revealed children from St Paul’s RC Academy were grouped in a gym and shown a DVD rather than taught in classrooms because of a lack of staff.
Dundee West candidate Jenny Marra recently claimed every school in the city is suffering from a severe shortage of teachers but Michael Wood, the city council’s director of education, is confident there will be a full compliment in place by August.
Speaking to The Courier as she travelled to campaign in the city, Ms Dugdale, who was educated at Harris Academy and is the daughter of two teachers, said: “For many kids from poor backgrounds, school is an escape.
“It is also full of potential, a possibility to break through the pre-determined destiny many children in Dundee and elsewhere in Scotland face.
“But you have to have equal access to a great education and the minute that a teacher is off sick and in some cases you can’t find supply teachers because there is no budget for that, the DVD gets put on and the kids are left to get on with it then the kids lose that sense of hope.
“That’s when you start to think maybe nobody cares, nobody wants to give you different choices or options. So we have to invest in education and the Labour Party is the only one of the three main parties which has promised to increase education spending in real terms so we have the resources to close that gap.”
Labour has pledged to increase the basic rate of tax by 1p and the top rate from 45p to 50p in an effort to “stop the cuts” currently coming from the UK and Scottish Governments.
Questions have been asked about whether or not promising to increase education funding in real terms means anything to voters, particularly if there is no specific plan for a new school or tangible teacher number in local communities.
Ms Dugdale said: “In Edinburgh Eastern, where I live, £880,000 would go to head teachers and nobody can say that is not a serious amount of cash which would make a real difference to lives of some really vulnerable kids.
“I’ve no doubt that Jenny Marra will have been making the same case in Dundee West, where it is an even greater sum of money going to schools as a consequence of the proposals that we’re making.”
Polls suggest Labour could be overtaken by the Conservatives, which has also fuelled speculation about Ms Dugdale’s future as leader.
She admits the surveys have been “challenging” but points out they have been that way for a long time and argues that “despite having 150 policies in the last election, people didn’t know what the Labour Party was for” but there is now “a real sense of what we’re about”.
“That challenge, that difference that we’ve got to make over the next six days and arguably the next few months and years, is how to turn that support for our values, our principles and our policies into votes,” she adds.