The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee will conclude its work this Parliament in March 2026 ahead of the next Scottish Parliament election. So the Committee has time to complete its work, it has agreed not to consider petitions submitted after 10 October.
The Committee will continue to meet but given the volume of petitions and agreed work programme it is unlikely that the Committee would be able to meaningfully progress work on petitions submitted after 10 October ahead of the election. Petitions lodged after this date will not fall when the Parliament is dissolved and will be for the successor committee to consider in the new session.
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Closed petition PE2103: Legislate to standardise the prescribed learning hours for Primary and Secondary schools in Scotland
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to standardise the prescribed learning hours for Primary and Secondary establishments across all local authorities in Scotland.
Background information
Falkirk Council are seeking to plug a £65m deficit in their accounts over the next 5 years. They have allocated a significant proportion of the required savings, £40m, to Children’s Services and are proposing to finish the school week at 12:30 on Fridays to achieve £5.751m of this. However, this requires a reduction of school hours from 25 to 22.5 hours per week for Primary children and from 26.6 to 24.75 hours per week for Secondary education. This is 10% less than every other Primary school in Scotland, putting the children of Falkirk at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers. Over the course of a child’s formal education in a Falkirk school they would receive 52 weeks less teacher contact time, more than an entire academic year, and yet will be expected to achieve the same standards of grades.
Alongside the hugely detrimental effect on our children’s education, working families will suffer as hours, and thus family income, will have to be cut to accommodate this change.
This petition was considered by the Scottish Parliament
3,046 signatures