ER Magazine // BUDGET


page 15


Secondary Schools Savings


S1 and S2 English and Maths Class Sizes: £765,000 The council has maintained a reduced class size of an average of 20 pupils in both English and Maths S1 and S2 classes, against a national maximum class size of 33 pupils. This proposal will bring East Renfrewshire Council in line with many other Scottish councils and will increase class size to 30. We are confident that attainment will not be affected by this proposal and will continue to focus on improving the quality of our teaching and learning experiences to maximise pupil attainment and not class size.


Management and Pupil Support Structures: £412,000 This proposal will redesign how management responsibilities, duties associated with pupil support and monitoring attendance are absorbed by teaching and support staff across our secondary schools. This will reduce the number of teachers, attendance officers and social justice managers who have these specific responsibilities as part of their role. Whilst this is a significant change, we believe that there is some scope to manage this redesign without a negative impact on how we operate our schools and continue to support both pupils and teachers. We would distribute our remaining promoted staff and additional teaching time allocated for pupil support fairly across our secondary schools based on pupil numbers and need.


Campus Police Officers: £160,000 This proposal will remove all five campus cops currently deployed by Police Scotland. We believe that this service has played an important role in prevention and early intervention in a number of our schools and intend to work with Police Scotland to maintain this service, even at a reduced level, through their funding.


School Librarian Service: £131,000 By identifying options to introduce self-service or to involve our senior year pupils on a voluntary basis in supporting the running of their school’s library, we believe we are able to reduce the full time dedicated librarian resource within each of our secondary schools and replace this with a part-time resource, without reducing the level of service .


School Based Behaviour Support Assistants: £94,000 All of our secondary schools have access to support assistants that help with the management of behaviour and we believe that this support is best utilised when targeted to need. This is further supported across our school communities through the development of inclusion policies and by promoting positive behaviour in school as a matter of course. Our proposal would deliver a needs- based approach, where we will allocate support when and where it is genuinely required enabling us to reduce the number of behaviour support assistants by 20%. We do not believe that this will have an adverse affect on those pupils requiring support, or on the wider school community.


Youth Counselling: £105,000 We currently commission a third sector organisation to provide youth counselling in our secondary schools. Over the next year we will work with schools, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services within the CHCP and others, to develop a more integrated and sustainable alternative. We will not make this saving until 2016/17 to ensure we have the right service in place for our young people.


All Schools Savings


Devolved School Budgets: £375,000 This saving will be delivered by reducing some budgets devolved to schools and pre-five establishments to, for example, support the renewal of furniture and fittings and funds to support school activities. It amounts to approximately a reduction in budget equivalent to £20 per young person.


Instrumental Music Charges: £123,000 The Instrumental Music Service is not related to curricular music which all pupils receive, but is for additional specific tuition that some pupils undertake. It is a popular service across East Renfrewshire that provides tuition at a considerably lower rate than private music lessons. We are proposing to increase the price of instrumental music tuition from £200 to £300, through an increase of 25% in year 1 and a further 20% in year 2 . Current concession arrangements in place for pupils will not change: there will be no charge to pupils and families currently in receipt of free school meals or those studying towards SQA exams, and the discount arrangements for siblings will continue to be applied.


Curriculum and Support for Quality in Education Budgets: £276,000 This saving will be delivered by reducing some budgets devolved to schools and pre-five establishments to support their improvement plans including curriculum development, learning and assessment. Given now the full implementation of Curriculum for Excellence and the introduction of new qualifications, it is considered possible to take this saving.


Sports, Arts and Library Services Savings


Local Sports Club Subsidies: £8,000 The council currently provides a contribution to a few local sports clubs. We are proposing to remove funding from Whitecraigs Rugby Club (£5,000) and Giffnock North Athletics Club (£3,000). This will not be phased out until 2017/2018 to provide each club with the maximum time to find a way to replace this contribution. The council will provide the clubs with assistance to help them access new funding streams available through Sports Scotland and other funders. Our £15,000 contribution to a Head Swimming Coach post for REN 96 will be maintained.


Library Service: £325,000 This proposal relates to a review and redesign of our library service to be implemented from 2016/17. We plan to continue to operate 4 main library centres in Barrhead, Clarkston, Giffnock and Newton Mearns, and identify a new way to deliver the service in smaller centres such as Busby, Eaglesham, Neilston, Thornliebank, Netherlee and Uplawmoor. This may involve co-locating libraries with other local facilities, identifying local commercial opportunities or community management opportunities. This will require extensive community consultation and we will seek to develop a number of options if required, tailored for each community and developed in partnership with local people. This may include the introduction of self-service, working with community volunteers to operate a library service, or changes to opening hours and management arrangements. To deliver this saving we will significantly change how library services are provided in some areas across East Renfrewshire. We believe we can deliver a library service that is tailored to each local community based on customer use and local need, and can maintain the service in all current locales.


Establishment of a Culture and Leisure Charitable Trust: £400,000 There are a number of examples where council services can be delivered by another party resulting in improved service at a reduced cost. We have identified that we can continue to have our culture and leisure services provided to local people whilst making a considerable saving, which would not involve cuts to services and jobs. Our proposals would see our sports and leisure


facilities, plus their staff, transfer to a Charitable Trust by summer 2015. Included in the proposal are sports centres, libraries (excluding school librarians), community halls and Eastwood Park Theatre. Sports and Arts development and the Active Schools service would also move to the new trust. The move would enable savings of around £400,000 to be made through rate and VAT exemptions and there would be no impact on the services delivered to local people. The council would keep control of all its properties meaning the trust would not be able to close a facility without the support of the council. We have learned from the success of other cultural and leisure trusts in Scotland and we believe we can deliver a model that will improve the service to local people. Access to new funding, previously unavailable to a council, will now be accessible to our services under Trust status. Our alternative would be for the council to continue to run the service and identify £400,000 of savings from elsewhere in the services. Should the transfer to Trust go ahead, it will be up to the Trust itself to deliver the savings we have presented e.g. Library Service, or identify other ways to deliver the savings level required. In addition to the £400,000 savings to be gained


from Trust status, our cultural and leisure services have been undergoing a redesign process to identify efficiencies and improve services. This redesign will continue regardless of a transfer to a Trust. This will involve changes to staffing arrangements such as non contractual overtime, the streamlining of support services and reduced management costs, combined with self-financing models for the Arts service and increases to fees and charges.


Sports Pitch Lets: £72,500 Our excellent sports pitches continue to be very popular with clubs and football leagues. In order to maintain high standards we are proposing to increase the cost of lets by 10% per annum from 2015 to 2018.


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