Scottish Education secretary must ‘repair rift with councils’

Education directors in Scotland have advised that the new education secretary John Swinney must rebuild the government’s broken relationship with councils, following budget cuts.

The news comes after Deputy first minister John Swinney was appointed as education secretary last week. Head teachers, education directors and academics have agreed that Swinney will help bring ‘gravitas’ to the role and help to keep education high on the political agenda.

The SNP manifesto, published last month, called into question the future role of councils in the delivery of education: it vowed to ‘extend to individual schools responsibilities that currently sit solely with local authorities’ and ‘allocate more resources directly to headteachers’.

John Stodter, general secretary of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, said: “The local authorities are the education authorities and the first step will be to make sure all the politicians are fully engaged with the idea of working together to get improvement."