Council ‘extremely confident’ mentoring scheme can be saved
GLASGOW City Council is “extremely confident” that the MCR Pathways mentoring programme can be saved, The Herald can reveal.
In February, we revealed that the “transformational” scheme was at risk due to budget cuts, with the council planning to withdraw funding for school-based co-ordinators who have been described as essential to the functioning of the programme.
Now, Glasgow’s City Treasurer, Councillor Ricky Bell, has stated that work on “alternative options” means that he believes that the service will be able to continue.
The latest development came after The Herald approached the council about an email exchange from February now released in an FOI request. The emails are dated two days before the Snp-green budget was passed, in which officials confirmed that the proposed savings from the MCR Pathways programme involved the loss of all staff and the “deletion” of the service.
Mr Bell, who had enquired about the impact of the cuts on the continuation of the programme, was advised that although questions had been asked about “whether the service reduction could be phased”, the total savings figures in the council budget “were in relation to the full deletion of all of the MCR coordinators.” Another email from the same chain had stated that “this saving would result in the programme being unable to continue.”
The Herald has been told that, in response to this information, the MCR saving was then combined with other budget proposals in order to allow councillors to look for other ways to find the necessary savings. This could be achieved by running the scheme with fewer staff, or by raising money elsewhere and using this to protect MCR Pathways, although additional resources are also being sought to address issues like a planned reduction in teacher numbers.
To date, no specific details on how this is to be achieved have been provided, and the assumed saving of £961,000 remains a part of the council’s
budget assumptions, meaning that if an alternative approach cannot be found, the mentoring programme will lose all of its staff and will be closed down.
However, Mr Bell has now confirmed his belief that the scheme will be saved and advised that a “new model” for the delivery of the programme will be published soon.
He told The Herald: “I am extremely confident we will find a solution to keep MCR mentoring in our schools.
“We had to take some very difficult decisions in unprecedented financial times to balance a three-year budget that plugs a £108 million gap.
“No one wanted to take them, and we knew that they would not be palatable.
“But the reality is, the work begins when the savings need to be implemented by officers.
“We knew that if we did nothing that taking out all the funding would result in the programme stopping.
“But we did do something – we included the savings within the income and revenue generation options so that we can squeeze savings from elsewhere or find additional revenue.
“I have asked officers to produce alternative options to let us continue to deliver the MCR mentoring programme as we are aware of the impact and value it has in complementing the work done by our schools, teachers, and staff.
“The new model will be published in the very near future.”
Iain Macritchie, founder of MCR Pathways, welcomed the council’s commitment to saving the scheme, saying: “It is fantastic to hear of the council’s commitment to MCR and to ending the uncertainty of the last three months. Despite more than three quarters of the MCR young people having an additional support need and 70% of them living in our most deprived communities, they thrive on MCR mentoring and its life-changing impact.
“Keeping all these relationships in place is not just transformational for education outcomes but has a dramatic effect on confidence and self-esteem to help empower the young people to realise their full potential.”
It is fantastic to hear of the council’s commitment to MCR