***(UK) Scottish Highland sees 40% of students with special needs; taxes going up

Feb 15, 2019, Aberdeen (Scotland) Press and Journal: Cash-strapped Highland council putting children’s education at risk with new budget saving tactics https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/1678318/cash-strapped-highland-council-putting-childrens-education-at-risk-with-new-budget-saving-tactics/ Highland Council’s administration yesterday got its budget of £37.5million savings through yesterday – but there were concerns inside and outside the chamber over cuts to education. The cash-strapped authority had to find ways to plug a funding gap of £27.9m next financial year and £32.4m over the following two years, with cash reserves at a historic low. … But householders will be hit with a council tax rise of 3%. A former teacher claimed the council’s so-called “transformational changes” to save £2.8million in Additional Support Needs (ASN) was effectively removing all specialist staff and was the wrong area to target…. The sharpest axe in the budget fell on education, with a £2.8m cut in the Additional Support Needs (ASN) funding. Caithness councillor Nicola Sinclair said: “All education cuts require a leap of faith. We haven’t done a redesign process here, we are trusting in the Administration and the new chief executive officer (Donna Manson). “I completely agree we need to simplify, remove waste and overprovision, remove the paperwork burden and tiers of management, but not frontline ASN staff. Parents want to keep ASNs and PSAs.” Separately, a former teacher contacted the Press & Journal with her concerns about the cuts. She said: “This ‘restructuring’ is effectively removing all specialist staff and transferring all responsibility for special needs on to the already massively overstretched classroom teachers. “They will have lots of extra paperwork and responsibility which they are not trained for and they will now have no support in their classes at all, except for children with the most severe needs. “Teachers cannot cope with this and I believe the whole system could crumble if these changes are implemented.” Lochaber councillor Denis Rixson, a former teacher, questioned statistics that showed Highland has nearly twice, and in some places, three times the Scottish average of children with special needs. But he earned a round of applause when he spoke of his concern for how teachers were coping…. “There will still going to be considerable pupil support resource when you compare it to other councils but we need to get underneath why we’ve got our children being labelled at 40% special needs.”…