Teacher jobs are under threat because of the SNP’s slashing of council budgets, Kezia Dugdale has warned.
The Scottish Labour leader asked Nicola Sturgeon at the final First Minister’s Questions of the year how many of the estimated 15,000 local authority job losses from the budget will affect schools.
It emerged on Wednesday that councils will have £350 million wiped from their day-to-day budgets under John Swinney’s spending plans from April, with Dundee set to lose more than £11 million.
Ms Dugdale told Holyrood: “Our councils are essential to the education of our children yet John Swinney’s budget pulled the rug out from under them.
“The reality is that Nicola Sturgeon can’t guarantee the budget won’t result in job losses for our specialist teachers, for our classroom assistants, janitors and office staff.”
Ms Sturgeon would not be drawn on numbers but admitted councils’ revenue expenditure would be reduced by 2%.
She said it is a “challenging settlement” but that “doesn’t take account of the additional allocation” councils have received, including £250 million for merged health and social care services and a £33 million fund to boost educational attainment.
“We set out our priorities and these will be priorities that I will be proud to take to the Scottish people,” she added.
“If Kezia Dugdale wants to prioritise different things then she has an obligation to say exactly what those alternative priorities and, secondly, and perhaps more importantly, where the money for those other priorities would come from.”
Willie Rennie, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said councils’ biggest undertaking is education and they are being “hammered” by the Government in this budget.
“She (Ms Sturgeon) clings on to this attainment fund while she butchers the school budgets of councils”, he added.
Ruth Davidson, Scottish Conservatives leader, used FMQs to round on the SNP for what she called the lie that “only a Yes vote in the referendum can fully protect Scotland’s NHS”.
She said she was pleased the Scottish Government passed on an extra £440 million to hospitals handed to them through the block grant from Westminster.
She added: “But it completely contradicts the SNP’s central claims that the only way to protect the NHS is by leaving the UK.”
See further coverage in Friday’s Courier.