Tell us how our savings proposals impact you

Saving: £500,000 in total

All service contracts for children, young people and partnerships would be reviewed when they come up for renewal. Previously, £500k was removed from support services. Services such as contracted family learning, therapeutic services would be reduced further.

Data around school roll projections would be reviewed to assess whether there is potential for consolidating schools. Savings would also be dependent on whether Council approves carrying out a statutory consultation on identified schools and consideration of the outcome of the statutory consultation. Alongside the review of the learning estate, opportunities for shared/executive headships would also be considered.

Saving: £160,000 in total

School libraries would not have school librarians and the service would be delivered in a new way. This redesign will be taken forward in conjunction with the wider review by the Place Directorate.

Saving: £75,000 in total

CLLE has a statutory duty to provide youth work, adult learning and community development.

A total of £60,000 of savings would come from a recruitment freeze, which depending on grade, could equate to three to four posts not being filled and removed from the service.

CLLE would add £5,000 to our income target while the CLLE operational budget would be cut by £10,000.

Saving: £425,000 in total

The saving would come from reducing staff across various teams in the directorate. This will include the Education Quality Improvement Team, Educational Psychology Service and the Business Support Team. A percentage saving will be applied to each service area. Reducing the staff will require redundancies or restructuring the services as saving the money by not filling vacant posts would take some time.

Saving: £830,000 in total

Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) is allocated directly to schools as per grant conditions, totalling £2.4m in 2024/25. Prior to the introduction of PEF, the council provided schools with additional funding to reflect areas of high deprivation. This was not adjusted when PEF (funded in line with deprivation) was introduced. The proposal is to remove a proportion of this additional funding.

Saving: £300,000 in total

Scottish Government currently provides around £240,000 for free music tuition. The council supplements this with funding of around £540,000. The saving would come from reducing the council’s supplementary funding and cutting Full Time Equivalent posts.

Saving: £300,000 in 2025/26 and a total of £1,850,000 over four years

Primary school class hours would be reduced from 25 hours to 22.5 hours. This would also reduce the hours of other staff, for example learning assistants and office staff. In secondary schools, the proposal would be to reduce class periods by five minutes from 50-45 minutes, a cut of 10%.

The council would explore opportunities to share services across Children, Young People and Partnerships with neighbouring authorities. The potential savings cannot be quantified until resource is allocated to exploring which services provide the most potential in terms of financial benefit.

Saving: £500,000 for 2025/26 and £2,000,000 in total over four years

The budget reduction equates to reducing the number of learning assistants by 88 over four years. This would put significant pressure on teachers. The reduction does not include Saltersgate School.