Margaret Doran, the former director of children and families for Glasgow City Council, was given a combined redundancy package of £278,000.

A local authority spokeswoman said Ms Doran was given a redundancy payment of £64,000, as well as £29,000 in lieu of notice and a lump sum of £185,000 from the pension fund.

Last night, teachers’ leaders attacked the “extravagant” nature of the pay-off at a time of increasing financial hardship.

A spokesman for the Glasgow branch of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the country’s largest teaching union, said: “In this time of financial constraint it is disappointing that these kind of sums can be spent in this way – it appears to be excessive.

“Teachers who are suffering budget cuts on a day-to-day basis will be outraged by the nature of this settlement.”

However, a spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council said: “It is standard practice to compensate people for redundancy and early retirement.”

The Herald understands Ms Doran, whose salary was £120,000, left the council after relationships with other senior council executives soured, partly as a result of a restructuring of departments at the end of last year.

Ms Doran was originally appointed in 2007 as executive director of a combined department of education and social work services with an £80m budget.

The council’s vision – which she helped to shape – was to transform the fortunes of children from some of the UK’s most deprived communities by bringing together the two services.

At the time, Steven Purcell, the council leader, said: “Bringing education and social work closer together will help us to tackle attainment in mainstream education and improve the outcomes for our most vulnerable children.”

However, in December, the council’s executive committee decided to break up the new department after concerns it was too large and unwieldy – leaving Ms Doran effectively in charge only of education, which already had its own director.

It is understood Ms Doran, who is married to Michael Connarty, Labour MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East, was concerned about the decision while, at the same time, others questioned whether her role was still a necessity.

James Dornan, leader of the SNP council group, said the pay-off was a legacy of poor political leadership of the council by the Scottish Labour Party.

“We warned the Labour Party from the very start that, although there was a need for close working, a department of this size was unworkable.

“It was part of the modernisation of departments under the leadership of Mr Purcell and it is one that has rebounded on them.”

Other reasons that have been cited for Ms Doran’s departure include her management style, which some have described as arrogant.

However, Ms Doran has always insisted the reason she left was the financial challenges facing the council which made the projects she was involved with harder to deliver.

In a letter to staff earlier this year, she said her decision had been taken “in the context of responses” to budget difficulties.