A MAJOR inquiry into council funding is to be launched by MSPs in an attempt to hold the education secretary to account for financial cuts to schools across Scotland.
The announcement comes days after Fiona Hyslop was pilloried for blaming councils, the recession and the political system for her party's failure to deliver on election pledges.
Members of the Scottish Parliament's education committee have grown
impatient with Ms Hyslop repeatedly blaming councils for the lack of progress on reducing class sizes, failure to maintain teacher numbers and soaring numbers of trained teachers unable to find jobs.
Before Christmas the committee will begin a "substantial" investigation to track how money from central government is spent by councils.
Senior education figures, including council chief executives, directors of education and social work and teachers' leaders, are expected to be brought before the committee for questioning.
A key issue will be the potential for setting up a body tasked with scrutinising how well funding is spent through the concordat arrangement.
Labour schools spokesman Ken Macintosh said: "We just want to find a way of following the money and hold the education secretary to account for the decisions she has made.
"We are going to work with local authorities to try and make the system more accountable, because at the moment she (Fiona Hyslop] can pretty well say it is not my doing – it is the councils."
Earlier this week Ms Hyslop was accused of dodging responsibility and Conservative leader Annabel Goldie demanded that Alex Salmond replace her.
Several of the government's election pledges have not been met, including increasing nursery entitlement to three and four-year-olds by 50 per cent and maintaining teacher numbers.
Conservative schools spokeswoman Liz Smith said: "We have found it very difficult to find out how the money is spent. If local government is getting taxpayers' money, what ways do we have of checking how that's spent? This is a wider issue – this concerns how Holyrood works and there are moves among other committees to look at this."
A spokesman for Scotland's biggest teaching union, the EIS, said:
"The concordat has allowed the Scottish Government and local authorities to blame each other for the non-delivery of key education promises."
John Stodter, general secretary of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, acknowledged problems with the current system and welcomed the inquiry.
He said: "We do lack reliable and robust benchmarking and comparative data on costs."
However, a spokesman for local authorities denied the removal of ring-fencing had affected scrutiny of council spending and defended their record on investment in schools.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said it had provided local authorities with increased funding of £35 billion for 2008-11 and said education spend by councils was expected to be 4.1 per cent higher for 2009-10 than the previous year.
Concordat could be historyTRACKING the money has wider implications than finding out why cash isn't reaching cash-strapped schools.
The results could redefine the funding of public services in Scotland. The current concordat system, described as "historic" by the Scottish Government, changed the way taxpayers' money is spent by councils.
The system freed them from the constraints of ring-fencing. In the deal, local authorities froze council tax in return for agreeing to work towards central government priorities such as reducing class sizes and maintaining teacher numbers.
However, that agreement has already been broken by several councils. However, no sanctions have been taken other than education secretary Fiona Hyslop registering disappointment.
Words will not be enough to bring councils into line but if robust action is taken the government fears it could end up with a Mexican stand-off with local authorities over the issue.
If the parliament's education committee has its way then a special scrutiny body could be set up to ensure funding allocated by government to councils for specific purpose goes where it is meant.
However, this will curtail the freedom of councils to dictate their own spending and therefore render the "historic concordat" history.
