A Plumstead school has spent more than £100,000 paying a maths consultant married to the headteacher, while teaching assistant roles were slashed.

Conway Primary School in Gallosson Road paid a maths consultant, husband of the headteacher Yalini Carlsson-Ruben, £133,250 between May 22, 2012 and November 2015, a freedom of information request submitted by Greenwich Unison revealed.

John Carlsson-Overy is listed as the sole director of Digon Consultancy Ltd in Companies House records and the consultancy firm does not appear to have any other employees.

Mrs Carlsson-Ruben addressed the controversy in a letter to parents and carers in October last year.

She wrote: “As you will likely be aware, all schools are required to look carefully at their budgets and make significant savings.

“As a responsible school we have been planning for imminent government cuts and thinking strategically around finances and funding allocations now.

“This requires sometimes difficult decisions that might not be popular with everyone.”

She added that the use of the maths consultant was to “maintain high standards across the school”, saying “I have no doubt that this approach has been instrumental in helping us achieve above average standards in these subjects and that is something I am really proud of.”

Eight teaching assistants accepted voluntary redundancy leaving the school with one teaching assistant to every 45 pupils, according to Greenwich Unison.

The union, who represented the teaching assistants in the dispute, said the school’s impressive academic results were influenced by the number of learning support staff in the classroom.

Mrs Carsson-Ruben declared her personal interests to the governors and did not play a direct role in the decision making process.

A statement signed by both Mrs Carlsson-Ruben and Stephen Piper, the chairman of the board of governors, said: “We have a responsibility to ensure that the school continues to deliver an effective education for all our children.

“As part of their ongoing review of finances the governors have been considering the current staffing structure alongside our other spending including the use of consultancy support.

“This is to ensure we are able to balance the pupil needs against the available budget. The outcome of this review has been the decision to reluctantly make a number of our Learning Support Assistants and our School Councillor redundant.

“This has been a very difficult decision not least because the staff concerned are highly regarded members of the school community, who have played their part in the school’s success over recent years.

“The governors are very mindful that losing any staff is going to be challenging but this decision is grounded in clear educational outcomes.

“We have however put in place a plan that will minimise their loss especially for those children who have directly benefited from their support.

“The decision we have reached will ensure the school’s financial stability and will protect, as far as possible, our children’s interests.

“This will mean that we are able to ensure that Conway’s high standards are maintained and that our results continue to be above the national test figures.

The needs of all Conway’s children are of utmost importance to us and we continuously strive for the very best outcomes for them, our ratio of teaching staff to children has always been fundamental to high standards.

“The maximum ratio would be 1 adult to 30 children and within Key year groups a ratio of 1 adult to 10 children.

“Our results and continuing high standards have been recognised nationally by consecutive Ministers for Schools and in the recently published Parliamentary Review.

“Therefore we would like to reiterate this has been a very difficult, but unavoidable decision for us to make.

“The school, under the leadership of Mrs Carlsson-Ruban, remains strong and we have an outstanding group of staff who are committed to ensuring that all our children fulfil their undoubted potential.”

Are you a parent at the school? Let us know what you think by emailing jessica.clark@london.newsquest.co.uk.