Scottish Labour warns over council cuts impact on education
Scottish Labour has highlighted new analysis on cuts to local council budgets, which the party says will hit local authorities' ability to tackle the educational attainment gap.
Council body Cosla has already claimed that the £10.3 billion allocated for councils in the Scottish Government's draft budget for next year leaves them facing a £350 million cut.
Analysis from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice) found that Glasgow City Council, Scotland's largest local authority, is facing a real-terms cut of £63.7 million, while North and South Lanarkshire, and Edinburgh each face cuts of more than £30 million.
The national education and lifelong learning budget has also been cut by 2.8%, or more than £83 million, according to Spice.
Labour's public services spokeswoman, Jackie Baillie, said: Councils are central to the education of our children. They build our schools and employ our teachers.
Nicola Sturgeon was challenged to guarantee that there would be no job losses in our schools following the SNP's budget, but she failed to do so. The reality is that the jobs of specialist teachers, janitors, office staff and others working in our schools are now at risk.''
Labour has pledged to introduce the Fair Start Fund, giving £1,000 directly to headteachers for every pupil from a deprived background.
The fund would be paid for by taxing those earning more than £150,000 a year, the party said.
Labour criticised the Scottish Government for failing to use new powers over the Scottish rate of income tax in next year's spending plans, but Finance Secretary John Swinney does not yet have control over both rates and bands.
Any increase in the income tax rate next year would have impacted on the country's lowest earners as well as those who are paid the most, Mr Swinney has argued.
Devolved powers over both rates and bands, allowing a tax increase for those at the top of the scale, will not come into effect until April 2017.