SNP Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth has hit out at her colleagues in Glasgow City Council over plans to cut 450 teaching posts over the next three years.
Speaking at an event organised by the EIS on the fringe of the SNP conference, the minister said it was impossible to improve attainment, attendance and challenging behaviour with fewer teachers.
Members of the union in the city are set to vote on taking strike action over the decision. The ballot opens on Monday and runs until 1 October.
The SNP-run authority has already axed 172 of those teaching posts this year.
If teachers vote to walk out, the strike action could take place after schools return from the October holidays.
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Opening the session, Andrea Bradley, the General Secretary of the EIS, described the plan as a “suicide mission” in relation to tackling the attainment gap.
She said: “So it looks like Glasgow City Council has a plan, an intention to haemorrhage around 10% of its teacher workforce over the next three years if they're not stopped.
“And that obviously has implications for class sizes in the city, implications for ASN support.
“It has implications for pupil behaviour, of course it does, because if you've unmet additional needs, and if you don't have enough adults in the room to nurture young people, that will have implications for behaviour.
“You’ll see lots more challenging behaviour in the city with those cuts enacted, and critically, in a city like Glasgow, where poverty levels are such as they are, it will seriously hamper the city's ability to continue work to reduce the poverty related achievement and attainment gap.
“It seems like a suicide mission to me in relation to that particular aspect of our work as teachers and as an education system.
“And it's going to have an impact on teacher workload. It's going to have an impact on the workload of the teachers who are still in post, because the work that is not being done will have to be done by someone, and that is likely to fall on teachers who are already significantly overburdened as it is.
“So it seems that an absolute calamity. Very, very difficult to fathom why the city of Glasgow… Well, somewhat difficult to fathom why city of Glasgow council might have got themselves into that situation.”
Ms Gilruth said: “Glasgow. I'm watching very closely. So look, I'm not going to speak specifically about a local authority, but all I know is that the SNP is elected on a manifesto commitment to increase the number of teachers in our schools.”
She added: “But think about all the problems I'm faced with as education secretary. I can't improve attainment with fewer teachers in our school. I cannot improve attendance, respond to challenging behaviour, additional support needs.”
Ms Gilruth said teachers were “vital to all of that.”
“I am watching very closely,” she added.
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