All but one of Scotland's councils have agreed to a Scottish Government deal not to cut teacher numbers in return for cash.
A total of 31 out of 32 local authorities have signed up to the funding deal, which meant councils will only receive their share of £51 million of government cash if they meet conditions on teacher numbers.
Talks are ongoing with one remaining local authority on the issue, Education Secretary Angela Constance said.
She added: "Talks with local authorities have been positive and productive and we are pleased that we are working together to provide the right number and highest quality of teachers in our schools."
But local government body Cosla said councils had been left with "Hobson's Choice" and the SNP administration had "bulldozed through their scheme".
Cosla president David O'Neill said: "With a gun to your head, it is difficult to make the decisions you might otherwise want to make. Councils once again were left in the invidious position of having to accept this deal or face the most unpalatable of punitive measures."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article