AT last week’s City Administration Committee at Glasgow City Council, we continued to see the real terms impact of the SNP-Greens Budget unravel.

We have already been told the shocking news of the axing of more than 160 teachers for next session, with hundreds more to come in the next couple of years and now we see direct cuts to services for the most disadvantaged of young people.

Schools across the city pride themselves in how they support the totality of their pupil cohort academically, socially, physically and emotionally.

Those of you who are many years away from your own schooldays would be incredibly surprised about the nature of education provision in 2024 and how broad the level of support given to all our pupils is.

MCR (Motivation, Commitment, Resilience) Pathways is a mentoring programme with a proven record in helping care-experienced young people who face real significant barriers to learning unlock their potential.

Every young person has enormous talent, however care-experienced pupils and other young people identified by their schools may be struggling to engage with their education. MCR Pathways aims to support many young people including young carers, asylum seekers or those who have suffered significant family bereavement or disruption at home.

Young people collaborating with an assigned mentor are helped to realise their skills and progress onto a positive destination with the intent to increase the number of them experiencing better education outcomes, career and job opportunities and overall life chances.

It does magnificent work and families throughout the city are grateful for its interventions but now it has become one of the victims of the cuts made in the SNP and Greens Budget.

That is ironic as these are parties who allegedly champion Scotland’s young people but are happy playing fast and loose with their futures.

However, it is more insidious than that. The deal agreed between SNP and Green councillors to fund only part of the cost of the MCR Pathways programme for next session means that schools wishing to maintain the programme will have to dip into their own finances to make up any funding gap.

So, while singing the praises of the scheme this desperate duo are more than happy to swing the axe in conducting the dirty work of their political masters in the SNP government at Holyrood.

Scottish schools have a designated fund, PEF (Pupil Equity Fund), designed to support the poorest of our pupils who may have significant challenges to learning, attendance or other additional support needs.

It was awarded to schools back when Nicola Sturgeon asked to be judged on her record in education alone and was given directly to schools where staff, pupils and parents could use their specific knowledge of need in their own establishments to spend it appropriately with headteachers being directly accountable to Government for the effective use of the fund and evidence of school improvement.

Now headteachers are to be put in an invidious position by the SNP/Green cuts to vital services such as MCR.

The consequence of not using school funding to fill the gap left by the cuts will mean ending or reducing the size of the scheme and thus affect many already challenged young people.

However, the same money cannot be spent twice and many other excellent services supporting disadvantaged pupils will have to be cut instead. We are told by the SNP that it is the choice of headteachers but what a choice.

Council leader Susan Aitken gleefully shut me down when I, quite bluntly, compared this sort of choice to one of a patient when asked which limb they would prefer removed. How low of this administration to make already overworked and stressed school leaders accountable for cuts forced upon them.

The cuts are bad enough but to switch the responsibility is a disgrace. Shame on Aitken and shame on her administration.