EDUCATION Secretary John Swinney has been challenged by the leader of the Scottish teachers' union over claims that nearly 20 managers at Glasgow's biggest college are paid £100,000 a year.
Swinney came under fire over pay for the "top level management structure" of colleges during an SNP conference fringe meeting in Aberdeen hosted by the EIS teaching union.
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan made the claim during a head to head debate with Swinney on "standing up for Scottish education".
Flanagan told Swinney "there is a need to stay focussed on the day to day job of delivering high quality education in Scotland's schools colleges" despite the ongoing independence debate.
The union leader went onto tell Swinney that there was an "unfortunate trend around the narrative about the failure of Scottish education".
Flanagan said: "The idea that Scottish education is failing is nonsense. We totally reject the idea that that school standards are falling and that we are failing pupils."
Flanagan claimed a major problem was the growth of excessive pay packages for college management, while frontline funding for further education services and schools were starved of cash.
He singled out one college, where he said up to 19 senior managers were paid more than £100,000 each a year - a figure he claimed his union's further education section has established.
He said: "One of the challenges in FE is the lingering nature of the management structure.
"The further education lecturers association conference of the EIS said that 19 people (managers) in one college are earning over £100,000.
"We need lecturers in classrooms rather than this top heavy management structure."
When asked by the Sunday Herald during the meeting about which college he was talking about, Flanagan, who was a teacher in Glasgow, said: "It's a very big college and it's very close to where I'm from."
Speaking after the meeting, when asked, he confirmed it was Glasgow's "biggest" college - which is the City of Glasgow College.
Swinney, when asked about the £100,000 payments, during the fringe meeting, said institutions should seek not to have "excessive management costs".
He said: "I was widely criticised for reforming the further education secretary and I believe it's a necessity to tackle duplication and overlapping.
"During my time as finance secretary I constantly challenged the system to hold its costs down, to not have excessive management costs and I would apply these same points to the college sector."
Meanwhile, Flanagan warned Swinney that the Scottish Government risked making the teaching profession less attractive unless it increased pay levels.
Speaking during the meeting, said: "We believe we are way past the time for teachers to have a decent salary increase.
"Teaching is no longer seen as an attractive profession.
"We're absolutely not in a teacher crisis, but we have an early warning sign."
The Education Secretary, also speaking during the meeting, said: "We have a strongly performing education system in Scotland."
Stuart Thompson, Vice Principal Finance & HR, at the City of Glasgow College, said: “City of Glasgow College is the largest College in Scotland and has the highest rate of student success in Scotland for full times students. The College has 1,400 staff and 30,000 students and the College Board approve appropriate senior management pay.
“Unfortunately the EIS are currently frequently issuing incorrect information to create negative publicity.
“I can confirm that only the Principal and Depute Principal are paid a salary of more than £100,000.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel