The Scottish Government has confirmed that negotiations over a £145.5m special fund to protect teacher numbers are ongoing but has said that it “does not have” details on the terms it proposed to councils.

Recent comments about the funding have presented a confusing picture, with government officials alternating between suggestions that the funding is being withheld and that the process is ongoing.

In early October, Cabinet Secretary for Education Jenny Gilruth publicly stated that she had “not allowed that funding to flow out the door.”

Then, a month later, in response to a story about declining job prospects for new teachers, a Scottish Government spokesperson told The Herald:

“[W]e are providing £145.5 million to local authorities to help protect teacher numbers.”

Is the funding not flowing out the door? Or is the government actively providing the funding to councils?

In a way, the answer is neither because the funding distribution depends on whether the Scottish Government and Cosla can agree on terms.

But something is missing: specifics about the proposal that local authorities and the government are struggling to agree on.

To find out more, The Herald submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking for “the full terms that the Scottish Government has proposed to COSLA,” including the initial proposal.

The Herald also requested:

  • The conditions councils are being asked to meet
  • Each council’s share of the funding
  • What happens to a council’s share if they fail to meet the conditions?
  • What happens to the £145.5m if Cosla and the Scottish Government cannot agree?

The government responded by saying that the information requested does not exist.

“While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested, as no agreement has yet been made on the terms of the allocation of the £145.5 million to maintain teacher numbers for this year.”

Read more 

The wording is important because the government was not justifying a decision to withhold information but saying that it does not have the requested information, citing a section of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act that it says is immune from a public interest challenge.

“This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.”

The response went on to say that “Local authorities (sic) allocation of the £145.5 million for thus (sic) year and the communication between the Scottish Government, Scottish Government ministers and COSLA regarding the terms of the initial proposal are attached at Annex A .”

Annex A consisted of a letter from Mrs Gilruth to Cosla representatives dated 12 Feb 2024, in which Mrs Gilruth referenced “previous correspondence that set out the conditions attached to the additional £145.5m funding that is allocated to local authorities in 2023-24.”

The “key measure,” she explained, is that councils maintain teacher numbers at 2022 census levels.

However, Annex A does not specify how much councils stand to gain or lose or what will happen to the funding without an agreement.

Further letters between Mrs Gilruth and Cosla are included which indicate ongoing talks. The final letter is dated 29 August 2024, in which Mrs Gilruth said:

“I am writing regarding the £145.5 million of funding for the protection of teacher numbers, and to reassure you that I will soon confirm the arrangements for the distribution and allocation of this funding.”

There has still been no agreement and no further details have been released. 

However, the terms of last year’s allocations were released in response to a previous FOI, and the few details available about the ongoing negotiations provide a suggestion of what is on offer.

First, Mrs Gilruth’s February letter states clearly that councils are being asked to maintain teacher numbers at the 2022 census levels. For some councils, however, teacher numbers have fallen since 2022. In practice, they are not being asked to “maintain” teacher numbers but to increase them.

According to a briefing Cosla submitted to MSPs, that is an ongoing challenge for several reasons: enrollment has fallen since 2022, councils have other areas of education where the funding could have an impact, and recent pay uplifts for teachers mean that the £145.5m would support almost 600 fewer teachers this year than it did in 2021.

Second, there may be a way to estimate what each council stands to receive.

Following reports that Glasgow City Council will reduce teacher numbers by 450 over the next three years, the city could lose a portion of its £16.5m share of the special funding.

Although that amount is the only council share discussed publicly, it is almost exactly what the council was allocated in 2023/2024 (£16.46m, according to documents released via a previous FOI).

Finally, the 2023/2024 conditions suggest that only a portion of the total funding (£45.5m) is subject to conditions being met.

Again, all of this is based on the funding terms and conditions for previous years. Communications from the Scottish Government, including the FOI responses, suggest that the terms for this year are being drafted in real-time through negotiations and that there was no starting proposal.

This is because the government's FOI response argued that it does not have information about the proposal, not that it is refusing to share it.

The question is more than semantics. It has significant implications for local authorities and, potentially, teacher numbers.

This is partly because councils have come to expect this money in their budgets.

Having received the funding since 2021, Cosla has said that each council’s share of the £145.5m is no longer “additional.” In a briefing to MSPs, Cosla argued that removing it functions essentially as a cut to existing funding when councils are already facing a collective £585m budget gap.  

In previous years, the government has provided a special £145.5m fund to councils ring-fenced for “protecting teacher numbers.” Although the government has not responded to questions about how exactly councils can spend that money, Mrs Gilruth has told Parliament that the government reserves the right to “recoup” funding from councils that don’t meet the specified conditions.

This backs up Cosla’s argument that the funding has become baked into council budgets and suggests that the funding is normally paid upfront to councils. If they are later found not to have met the conditions, then the government can take it back.

That has yet to happen, even though Mrs Gilruth explicitly acknowledged that some councils failed to live up to their side of the deal last year.

When asked to provide the terms in the original proposal sent to local authorities, the Scottish Government did not comment. Instead, it provided background information suggesting it could not comment on ongoing negotiations.