More budget cuts could make things worse for head teachers
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Head teachers say they spend most of their time acting as school caretakers, doing menial tasks like ordering light bulbs.
They say 80 per cent of their day is taken up with housekeeping tasks leaving hardly any time to manage pupil’s learning and teaching.
The admission comes at a time when 20 schools in Highland are running without head teachers because vacancies are becoming harder to fill.
And head teachers could be stretched even further if the council decides to merge and close more schools to meet a £20million budget gap.
An emergency budget is expected to be published by the Chancellor in a few month’s time and Scotland’s allocation could be cut forcing the council to make more extreme savings such as slicing time off the primary school day.
The council is currently undertaking a review of schools to see where savings could be found.
Head teachers are being brought around the table with councillors for brainstorming sessions.
Bill Alexander, director of care and learning director, said the events were "rushed through before the summer because we recognise things really have come to a crunch point".
"There are many head teachers that are routinely working 60 or 70 hours per week to keep the show on the road and still do not believe they are covering all the bases. This cannot be sustained," he said.
Highland councillor Fiona Robertson, who attended one of the workshops in Dingwall last week, said the head teachers at her table were "passionate and interesting but sadly quite weary".
"Their main point was that around about 20 per cent of their time was actually spent on teaching and learning and the other 80 per cent was spent doing other stuff like ordering light bulbs and getting supply staff in. It should be the other way around."
The problems were discussed by members of the education, children and adult services committee on Wednesday.
Addressing failures over recruitment, Bill Fernie, Independent councillor for Wick, said people relocating to the Highlands needed two jobs - one for the husband and one for the wife.
He said: "You’ve got the NHS in the far north struggling to recruit doctors and GPs. We should have some sort of joint working with them and other organisations."
Retired head teacher Graham MacKenzie, SNP councillor for Dingwall and Seaforth, said job ads showing the beauty of the Highlands would draw people in.
But he said hiring business managers for schools, as suggested by some head teachers, was a "non-starter".
"The business manager would come in at the cost of a depute head teacher in the school," he said.
"The day that a business manager can break up a fight in the playground, where he can talk to a disgruntled parent, or where he can take a class at the last minute when cover is required then I would be prepared to have a look at that - but not until then. The idea is a non-starter."
Maxine Smith, the council's new leader in waiting and SNP member for Cromarty Firth, questioned whether there was any way the council’s own in-house business support team could support head teachers.
She also suggested handing heads a free house for a temporary period as part of their contract.
