Teachers made redundant as council looks to cut costs
Richard Evans, local democracy reporter
Dozens of teachers have been made redundant as a cash-strapped council makes budget cuts.
Conwy Council has confirmed 51 members of staff have been lost – at a one-off cost of £883k.
Conwy Council cut school budgets by 5% earlier this year for the second year running. The council said the redundancies would save more than £2m annually.
The authority raised council tax by 9.67% for the current financial year and slashed other front-line service budgets by 10%.
Headteachers in Conwy then signed a letter condemning the cuts, and Conwy initially released figures on school redundancies earlier this month, confirming the cuts caused 34 school job losses.
Foundation schools
But those statistics didn’t include redundancies at foundation schools, which are also funded by the local authority but have more independence in their running.
Following a series of questions sent by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the council has now confirmed the full extent of the cuts.
A Conwy County Council spokeswoman said: “To set a balanced budget for 2024/25, 51 employees from 18 schools have been made redundant.
“Of these redundancies, 46 were voluntary redundancies and five were compulsory redundancies.
“Roles that have been made voluntarily redundant consisted of assistant headteacher, deputy headteacher, teacher, higher level teaching assistant, teaching assistant, administrative roles, and mid-day supervisors.
“Compulsory redundancies related to teacher, teaching assistant, and administrative roles.
“The total cost associated with the redundancies was £882,939 and consisted of severance payments to the individuals concerned and pension strain costs that the council is obligated to pay in relation to certain redundancies.
“These are one-off costs.
“Collectively, the redundancies have created an annual, recurring cost saving of £2,012,125 in the council’s budget.
“Due to the potential to identify individual employees from within the data, we will not be disclosing information in respect of individual schools.”
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Conwy Council is a joke. Complaining about no money whilst they spend millions on that glorified greenhouse in the picture whilst the Bodlondeb offices are still empty. Easy to be wasteful of other people’s money by the ‘oh look we like new stuff’ brigade.
The same clowns that also wasted £1 million pounds hiring a building they couldn’t even use.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51910200
Education in Conwy has become so difficult now. I can’t understand why the council hasn’t been put in some type of ‘special measures’, as the Authority has so little money for this crucial service. Children and young people must be given a good education. It is not possible to do this with a skeleton staff of teachers, many of whom are stressed and burnt out. I have seen several good teachers leaving as they have had enough of the system. I have also seen good, young trainee teachers who have had to leave the area as there are no available… Read more »