School Leaders' Scotland secretary says school budgets should be handed directly to headteachers

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Under the model schools would be required to spend a set amount of money on teachers set out in a proposed national minimum staffing formula, but would have flexibility over where the rest was spent.

Currently school budgets are controlled by councils with a staffing formula set at local authority level and passed on to schools with limited flexibility.

However, Mr Thewliss stressed there was no appetite amongst secondary headteachers to follow the free school or Academy model adopted in England where secondaries are entirely removed from council control and run by independent boards.

Instead, he wants to see councils continue to exert control over major educational funding projects such as new buildings and functions such as human resources and quality assurance of standards.

Mr Thewliss also said services for pupils with additional support needs such as educational psychology would continue to be run by councils.

The intervention comes amidst growing tension over the future role of councils in the running of Scottish schools.

Local authority leaders have warned that SNP proposals to give more funding directly to headteachers could damage the drive to improve attainment by restricting the use of the funding.

However, Scotland's Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said the plans, included in the party's election manifesto, would give "real power" to schools.

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Mr Thewliss said: "We need to invert the pyramid so instead of local authorities deciding how to divide a central pot of money amongst schools headteachers would have this funding and would decide on their own priorities based on the schools own particular needs in partnership with parents.

"That would set up a different relationship between councils and schools which would be more designed to allow the school to support the needs identified within the school pupil population.

"What happens at the moment is that the level of funding which schools get from the council is passed through a number of filters because councils organise children's services in different ways, but if you give schools responsibility for the deliver of education and the power to commission services from a local authority it would be more suited to local needs."

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union, gave a cautious welcome to the proposals, but called for close scrutiny of the impact.

He said: "The EIS is not opposed to greater budgets being devolved to school level as a means of enhancing resource budgets, empowering schools and effectively ring-fencing education spending.

"Clear guidelines would need to be in place around additional expenditure, however, to ensure equity and transparency and to address potential drawbacks such as economies of scale being lost, some schools not having the necessary structures in place to determine how funds should be spent and the threat of significant workload implications for already overworked headteachers.

"The EIS believes that it is important, therefore, that the role of local authorities as the employers should continue, ensuring a degree of consistency and equity of core provision around the deployment of teaching and support staff."

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Earlier this week David O’Neill, president of council umbrella body Cosla, said altering how schools were funded or run "could make things worse" by effectively ring-fencing money in the classroom that could go towards programmes in communities that help children.

The proposals were contained in the SNP manifesto which also included the setting up of education regions.