Impact of council cuts felt already

 

Impact of Council cuts felt immediately as Eden Court announce cancellation of SVQ qualification - National 5 Drama.


It is with great regret that Eden Court has to announce it is unable to run the SVQ National 5 Drama qualification in the next academic year. We are acutely aware of the impact this will have on prospective school students who will be choosing their subject options in the coming weeks but we must accept that we can no longer afford to subsidise the delivery of this qualification.

This follows the surprising decision by Highland Council on 25 February to cut Eden Court’s funding by £100,000 (17%) rather than the £59,000 (10%) that the Council had told us to plan for.

Around ten years ago we started to teach Higher Drama at Eden Court and quickly added Higher Dance and Intermediate 2 Drama (superseded by National 5 Drama) as they were available only in a very few Highland schools. The courses appear on option forms for pupils at many Highland schools. Over the years our pupils have done well with and achieved very impressive pass rates. This year SQA asked us to provide them with pieces of work from our Higher Dance students as examples of high standard work. Some of our former pupils have gone onto dance and acting careers and our CREATIVE Ambassador, and former Higher Drama pupil, Karen Gillan is known throughout the world as the star of Dr Who and Guardians of the Galaxy.

These courses they were originally fully funded by Highland Council. However, successive grant reductions and rising costs mean that in the current academic year delivering these qualifications will cost Eden Court £15,000 more than the funding Highland Council has provided. That gap is set to rise to £19,000 for the next academic year. It is therefore with great regret that we have made the decision to not deliver National 5 Drama this year and to restrict some of the travel subsidy available to Higher Drama and Higher Dance students in an attempt to deliver these courses for closer to the amount of funding that Highland Council is able to offer. This action will save us between £11,000 and £13,000.

We had to make this particular decision quickly as pupils are currently considering their options for next year. It is regrettable that stopping the National 5 course will impact on those students who have previously used it as a stepping stone to Higher. However, because it is possible to undertake the Higher directly and National 5 Drama is still taught in a small number of schools we judged it was more important to preserve the Higher provision as these exams are the gateway to further education and careers. However, although we can commit to delivering both Higher Dance and Drama in 2016/2017 we may have to consider if we can continue to deliver these subjects beyond that point.
 
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