School chiefs have faced a grilling over whether children are being left behind because of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of cuts to primary education in Dundee.
Labour leader Kevin Keenan demanded answers from education director Michael Wood after it emerged that spending on primary school children has declined by £353 per pupil a figure that could equate to a £200,000-plus drop in some schools.
The issue emerged during a discussion of the largely positive annual review of education in the city.
Mr Keenan said: “Spending is down by over £350 per child and in early years it is down even more.
“We all agree that intervention at an early age is clearly the best (way to improve educational outcomes) but that is the area that has suffered the biggest cash drop we see here.”
Mr Wood said the “catch-all” figure should not be taken at face value.
He said: “This is a catch-all figure divided between the entire school age populations.
“It does not go into detail. For instance, the primary school age population has gone up by 900, which makes a big difference as well.”
The declining spending figures proved the only issue of contention in the report, with members agreeing that education in the city was “miles better but there are miles to go”.
Labour member and education spokesman Laurie Bidwell said: “There is a lot of positive developments in this annual review.
“In particular, pupils and their teachers and other staff working in a supportive role are to be praised for an improving set of SQA examination results.
“Bearing in mind that there were new National 4 and National 5 examinations to teach towards during the last school year for S4 pupils and work still to do to develop a more interdisciplinary broad general education in S1-S3, and given that this coincided with lower resource levels, this is an achievement worth recording.”
SNP education convener Stewart Hunter agreed.
He said: “There is improvement and that improvement is clear to see but that does not mean that there is not more that can be done.”