The most radical approach has been in Clackmannanshire where 10.2 full-time equivalent PE teachers were recruited to fill the full 1.5 hours’ reduction for all teachers in the authority’s 19 primaries.
If successful, the council will consider extending this to areas such as the expressive arts and health education in order to make room for the further hour’s reduction in contact time by 2006. .
The expressive arts are already being used as the vehicle of choice in primaries linked to Grangemouth High. Unusually, however, this has not just given teachers at Moray, Bowhouse and Beancross primaries time out of class but has released them from the planning and preparation that they would otherwise have to do.
“It has taken a good slice out of our workload,” Sheona Kay, a P1 teacher at Moray primary, said. But the workload in preparing for it was considerable, Sheena Wright, the headteacher, says. “Timetabling all this was a huge exercise,”
