25 hours of teaching time to be guaranteed per week

Primary school pupils in Scotland will be guaranteed at least 25 hours of teaching time per week after the Scottish Government amended its latest education legislation.

Ministers have lodged an amendment to the current Education Bill which will see the requirement on councils changed from 190 days of school to a minimum of 950 hours teaching time every year.

The move comes after budgetary pressures forced many councils to consider shortening the school day alongside other cuts.

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The Scottish Government has already told councils to maintain teacher numbers in the face of the cuts.

Education secretary Angela Constance said: “Decisions on the amount of time with teachers, in class and at school should always be made based on the potential educational benefit for children, rather than on how much money can be saved.”

Scotland’s largest teaching union the EIS welcomed the move. General secretary Larry Flanagan said it was good news for pupils and parents. “The EIS has always been vehemently opposed to any attempts to reduce the length of the pupil week which would serve only to dilute the quality of education in Scotland's primary schools,” he said.

Councils umbrella body COSLA has warned the government local authorities face half a billion pounds of spending pressures in the next financial year.  It expressed anger at not being consulted before the amendment was lodged.

Cllr Stephanie Primrose, COSLA Education, Children and Young Person Spokesperson said she was "extremely disappointed" to have to react to an announcement after "zero consultation" with local government. 

"We hear about it only a matter of hours before amendments are submitted. This is either bad planning on their part, or a knee-jerk response to an issue that was far from the top of the pile a matter of weeks ago.

"On top of this, to assert that they need to do this because of the concerns of teachers and parents about the impact of budget cuts is poor indeed. Legislation should not be based on anecdote and hearsay but on hard evidence that there is a genuine problem that needs to be fixed.

"The Government have presented no such evidence, which we suspect is because they know it does not exist. The Scottish Government may try to dress this up as action on attainment but this is far from the truth. It’s political opportunism at the expense of local government, in full knowledge that there is not any evidence which links better education attainment to a 25 hour school week,” she said.

The amendment will be considered by the Education & Culture Committee next week.