ALMOST 200 teaching positions will be lost in Fife if controversial education proposals go through, a teachers’ union has warned.

The Fife branch of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) has said it is against the “daft” idea that a shorter school week would enhance children’s education, and is concerned about the additional pressure that teachers would be under after job losses.

Councillor Bryan Poole, Fife Council’s executive spokesperson for education, has previously insisted that no teacher would lose their job if the proposals went through, explaining that there would only be “natural wastage, where some leaving or retiring would not be replaced”.

However, David Farmer, publicity officer for Fife EIS, said that regardless of how the jobs were lost, the remaining teachers would find themselves under a lot of pressure.

“There is a whole culture about the use of the word ‘redundancy’,” he said. “As soon as you use that word there’s an impact on people that sits very, very negatively. It’s not surprising that councillors are saying they aren’t making anyone redundant but the posts are not going to be there any more, and there’s going to be increased pressure on the teachers still in the school to pick up the work of the posts that have been lost.

“For us, that’s still shedding posts and the loss, with the impact on teachers and the service delivery for children.” In a recent meeting, Fife EIS were told that around 140 primary school positions would be lost, as well as around 40 secondary school positions.

“Essentially those posts are going to disappear and they are not going to come back,” added Mr Farmer.

“They’ll be asking staff to do the same or better with less.” The biggest factor in job losses is set to come from the proposed changes to the school week, which seek to cut pupils’ teaching time to 22.5 hours a week, and Mr Farmer is sceptical that the cuts are for the good of the children.

“Our position is to campaign against changes to the school week,” he said. “We need to raise our concerns with the politicians and the public. They have been saying that these changes are there to enhance education but we think that’s daft, it doesn’t make sense.

“Our concern about the budget proposals really centre around two things. First, the proposed changes to the primary school day, which is where most of the job losses would come. This is because there are posts that are currently there to give primary teachers non-contact time. If this gets shifted to a Friday afternoon, then there won’t be a need to have those posts.

“The second thing is revising class sizes in secondary schools, particularly in English and Maths in S1 and S2. If the class sizes go back to 30 then that will be two posts per secondary school - one English and one Maths - that are going to disappear.

“That’s nearly 200 posts in total. We understand that the budget position is very difficult, but as a trade union we’ve got to be opposed to job losses.”