Under measures for next year's budget, Glasgow City Council is proposing to replace the city's nursery school teachers with nursery nurses, now called child development officers (News, 10 November 2005). It is believed that around 37 nursery school teachers could be affected.
A final decision is expected on 9 February when councillors meet to discuss the 2006/2007 budget.
A group of teachers and parents also delivered a petition against the plans to the council's offices on Saturday.
Scotland's largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), which led the rally, said the quality of nursery education would suffer because less qualified staff would replace qualified nursery teachers.
Aileen Scullion, a nursery school headteacher and Glasgow chairperson of the EIS, told the rally, 'Teachers and parents are well aware of the value of fully qualified teachers in the nursery service. The extra that they bring is well documented in all the research into early years education.
The recent evidence of HM Inspectors to the parliamentiary inquiry into nursery is further proof of that. Is it not a false economy to permanently cut a service which is vital to our children's welfare and has been a credit to the city for many years, to save 370,000?'
The EIS is also concerned that other local authorities in Scotland are considering plans to cut education budgets and staffing.
EIS president Jack Barnett said, 'The proposals being put forward to remove nursery teachers from nursery schools have absolutely nothing to do with educational principle and everything to do with cutting budgets. The message from EIS nationally, to Glasgow and any other council considering going down this path, is that EIS will not sit idly by.'
The number of nursery school teachers in schools varies across local authorities. Ms Scullion said that East Renfrewshire, for example, had two qualified nursery teachers and a head teacher in each nursery school.
A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council confirmed that the proposal would be discussed at a full council meeting on 9 February but stressed that a decision had not yet been made.
The council dismissed claims that education would suffer and said it would not cut educational provision. The spokesperson said that if the plan went ahead, 'some of the teachers in nursery schools would be transferred to primary schools as a way of reducing class sizes in Primary 1'.
The Scottish Executive has pledged to reduce class sizes to 25 in Primary 1 by 2007.