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To: Cllr Cammy Day - Leader of City of Edinburgh Council

Save Our Schools - Stop the £8.2 million cut to Edinburgh Schools

On 14th February 2024, we delivered this petition to Council Leader Cammy Day and convener of the Finance Committee, Mandy Watt. Over 3,500 of us have called on them to reverse savage school cuts that would massively impact the children of our city.

As a result of this campaign and your support of this petition, we have had assurances that alternatives have been found for this year in the latest budget proposals. This is a huge win for our campaign and Edinburgh schools! You can read more about our campaign was mentioned in the news here: https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/petition-scrap-edinburgh-school-cuts-28634643

We will continue to campaign and make sure that these cuts are permanently revoked to protect our schools in the long term. Be assured that we'll be lobbying throughout the coming months to ensure this happens.

Reverse the planned £8.2 million cut to Education which, if implemented, will be devastating for teaching, learning and wellbeing in our schools.

Why is this important?

Cutting £8.2m from schools will cause great harm to teaching, learning and wellbeing at a time when our teachers and support staff are, struggling to meet the needs of an ever growing number of pupils with Additional Support Needs, bearing the brunt on a daily basis of dysregulated pupil behaviour and suffering enormously from workload stress and low morale.
Pupils that have an ASN need more to be invested in education, not less. But the same is also true of other pupils in their classes whose learning is also affected because teachers are so over-stretched as they struggle to attend to those with the greatest needs.
Further cuts to Devolved School Management budgets will erode all kinds of provision. Some Head Teachers may be forced to cut numbers of Pupil Support Assistants, again affecting pupils who most need the support of these vital school workers. Others will cut per capita department budgets affecting which courses will be able to run or that basic essentials such as paper, pens, textbooks and vital resources will be increasingly unavailable. Schools cannot run on iPads alone. Already In some schools the amount of money available to spend per head is less than a pound a week and a great many teachers are buying pens, pencils and other resources for their pupils.
The cost of these cuts to Edinburgh schools will be devastating, leading to increased stress and a decline in morale and wellbeing of teachers, support staff and senior leaders. Schools are constantly asked to look at how to raise attainment, how is it possible to do more with less.

Edinburgh, UK

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Updates

2024-02-15 10:41:29 +0000

Petition is successful with 3,590 signatures

2024-01-24 14:22:26 +0000

1,000 signatures reached

2024-01-21 17:07:13 +0000

500 signatures reached

2024-01-19 14:44:48 +0000

100 signatures reached

2024-01-19 13:52:54 +0000

50 signatures reached

2024-01-19 13:35:16 +0000

25 signatures reached

2024-01-19 13:17:57 +0000

10 signatures reached