WHEN the Scottish Government announced its Pupil Equity Fund (PEF), the aims were explicit: the money would help schools close the attainment gap and would support youngsters whose learning experience might suffer because of their families’ poverty.
Headteachers could be flexible in how they used the money but have to demonstrate that it aided children affected by poverty. Nowhere was it said that PEF money could be used to pay for janitorial services. Yet this is what Glasgow City Council, run by a minority SNP administration, has suggested.
The settlement of a dispute means that janitors’ term-time days now end at 4pm. The council recognises that this will cause headaches for primaries but says PEF monies can be used to pay for evening janitorial cover if the school happens to be hosting an event designed to close the attainment gap: a parent/child group, for example.
Local authorities must contend with ever-shrinking funds but Glasgow’s move undermines the edict that schools can decide for themselves how to use PEF funds. North Lanarkshire, earlier this year, sought to force heads to use £1 million to pay for existing classroom assistants. How does paying for evening janitorial cover help to close the attainment gap? The council should re-think its decision; or be made to, in a telephone call from John Swinney.
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 here