Nicola Sturgeon has said her Government will intervene to stop councils balancing their books by slashing teacher numbers.
Her Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville will announce the plan within days after the Record revealed Glasgow Council is considering axing over 800 posts.
We revealed last week how officials in Glasgow were eyeing up £51m of education cuts to fill a £68m black hole.
One of the biggest savings, £18.5m, would come from reducing the numbers of teachers by closing schools early on Fridays, affecting 324 roles.
Another £22.5m could be found by revising staffing formulas for primary and secondary schools, cutting nearly 400 jobs.
However, the cuts plan came in spite of a Scottish Government pledge to recruit 3,500 teachers by 2026.
It is understood the Government is looking at various options, such as using legal powers and ring-fenced funding, to maintain teacher numbers.
The First Minister told MSPs: "The government will act to protect teacher numbers. This government has a commitment to increase teacher numbers and indeed councils are being given additional funding specifically to deliver that.
"It would not be acceptable to me or to the Scottish Government to see teacher numbers fall.
"I can confirm therefore that the government does intend to take steps to ensure that the funding we are providing to councils to maintain increased numbers of teachers actually delivers that outcome and the education secretary will set out more details to parliament in the coming days.”
Andrea Bradley, general secretary of the EIS teachers' trade union, said, “While this suggested intervention by the Scottish Government is welcome, it is the persistent under-funding and under-resourcing of Scottish education that has led to this situation in the first place.
"The Scottish Government needs to fund local authorities better, including a return to ring-fenced budgets for the delivery of education. Scotland’s young people deserve the best quality education, and that requires proper funding and investment in facilities, resources and in staff. Sufficient numbers of well qualified, properly paid teachers are absolutely essential to the delivery of quality education.”
Labour MSP Michael Marra said: “Teacher numbers are only under threat because the SNP have been raiding Council funding for years.
“They are asking schools to do the impossible and deliver the same standard of education with ever-dwindling resources.
“If this intervention isn’t backed up by proper funding for schools and local Councils then it is meaningless.”
Tory MSP Stephen Kerr said: “It’s unfair of Nicola Sturgeon to issue this diktat to councils without offering them the additional funding to make it deliverable.
“The reason local authorities are warning of potential cuts to teacher numbers is due to years of systemic and brutal underfunding by the SNP Government.
“Any cuts to teacher numbers must be avoided at all costs, but it’s the height of cynicism for Nicola Sturgeon to simply ring-fence another area of council spending, as that will just mean even more savage cuts to the remaining services local authorities have to provide."
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