The two nursery classes, at primary schools in Westruther and Fountainhall, were targeted as part of a series of proposed cuts drawn up by a council working group and presented at a full meeting of the council on 5 July. Both have ten places or fewer. Together with reductions in staff development, equipment and outdoor area budgets, this would cut 25,000 from the nursery education budget.
Other spending cuts set out in a package which aims to save the council Pounds 1.5m in 2001/2002 include reducing the childcare budget by 32,000, which will reduce the council's capacity to achieve its childcare strategy targets this year; cutting expenditure on repairs and maintenance by 150,000, and reducing the grants available to the poorest families for shoes and clothing by 60,000. The council has also applied to transfer Pounds 525,000 of Excellence Fund money to use for installing computers in schools. This will mean less cash for classroom assistants, early intervention and support for parents.
The council has already decided to cancel the annual clean-up of all schools over the summer holidays.
However, the nursery classes look set to retain their funding after all because of the support of the Scottish Liberal Democrats (SLD) on the council. The council issued a statement last week saying that Councillor Jim Nairn, the leader of the SLD, had held a long meeting with senior council officers from corporate services and the education department and as a result it was likely that they would agree to the proposals at a further council meeting on 1 August. An exception would be the cuts to the nursery budget for Westruther and Fountainhall.
The SLD, who run the council in alliance with independent councillors, voted against the budget cuts at the 5 July meeting. Mr Nairn said, 'We were in no way being obstructive when we voted against the adjustments going ahead at the meeting of 5 July but felt strongly that these proposals merited a thorough and considered approach. I can say that the SLDs now feel much more at ease with making a decision at the meeting on 1 August.' According to the TES Scotland, John Christie, the director of education, gave a report to the 5 July council meeting in which he said that a 'failure to establish proper accountabilities and control procedures and to follow through the implications of budget changes' had led to the overspend. Mr Christie's report said that market share for three-year-olds and, to a lesser extent, four-year-olds had been lost to the private and voluntary sectors. The council had lost income and had also over-estimated uptake of its own places, leading to a 389,000 shortfall in the nursery budget.
Scottish Borders was one of the last local authorities to enter into partnership with playgroups and private day nurseries to provide pre-school education for both three-and four-year-olds by making the nursery education grant available to subsidise places.
In autumn 1999, it made funding available for three-year-olds but not for four-year-olds, raising concerns among parents that they would lose funded places outside council provision when their children turned four and would be forced to move them.
Nevertheless, Scottish Borders has done better than many other councils at providing places for three-year-olds, with 85 per cent receiving pre-school education (see News in Brief).
