The launch of a “consultation exercise” by Falkirk council over its plans to reconfigure its school week – including a cut of up to 10% in the length of the pupil week – is causing considerable concern within the Falkirk community.

Many teachers in Falkirk are very concerned about the intent behind the proposed reconfiguration of the pupil week. They believe it is an underhand way of administering cuts to the quality of pupils’ education, but also cuts to teacher numbers, and neither of those things are acceptable to the EIS.

These cuts would place young people in Falkirk at a significant disadvantage to their peers in other parts of the country. The changes, if implemented, would lead to primary pupils in Falkirk receiving two-and-a-half fewer hours of education, each and every week, compared to pupils in other local authority areas. For secondary pupils, the cut would be around 2 hours per week.

This is not only inequitable and unfair, it is also wholly incompatible with the drive to tackle the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap, something which is supposed to be a priority for local authorities and the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government also made a manifesto promise to increase teacher numbers during this parliamentary term. For the past two years, teacher numbers have dropped, so there needs to be government intervention to prevent further cuts of the kind being proposed by Falkirk Council and any other local authority looking to wreak the same damage on young people’s education.