During the 2007 election, the SNP made cutting class sizes to a maximum of 18 in the first three years of primary school a flagship manifesto pledge.
New figures released this week show that just over 13 per cent of pupils in the first three years of primary school are in class sizes of 18 or below – a rise of less than one per cent on the previous year, whilst the average size of Primary One to Primary Three class is only down from 23.3 per cent last year to 23.2 per cent. At the current rate, it would take another 87 years to meet the target, overshooting the SNP deadline by a mere 85 years.
The SNP had banked on a fall in the number of pupils in public schools to help them deliver on their promise. However, whilst there was a 1.5 per cent drop in the numbers of pupils in our state schools in 2008, amounting to 681,573 pupils, the population is not falling as fast as expected, with a reduction of just 351 pupils in the first three years of secondary and an unexpected rise of nearly 2,000 pupils in Primary One.
The key issue however is not demographics, but is the SNP’s on-going failure to put their money where their mouth is.
The concordat with local authorities extorted the commitment to freeze council tax through an increase in flexibility over how they spend their budgets. What was not made clear at the time of the deal however, was that any new SNP spending commitments on schools, such as to fund a free school meals pilot, would have to be funded out of the existing budget devolved to local authorities. The pilot, which will provide free school meals to 163,000 children in Primary One to Three across Scotland from 2010 is expected to cost up to £50 million. The Scottish government is expecting local authorities to fund this out of their existing £34.9 billion funding allocation, despite the reality that no reference to this expectation was made at the time of the original agreement.
Last year, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland warned that it would cost £622m to cut class sizes to 18, given that an additional 2,173 teaching staff and an extra 900 classrooms would be required. This, coupled with the fact that half of teachers are due to retire within the next four years and that the statutory maximum class size in Scotland remains at 30, leaves local authorities with no means and no compulsion to implement the SNP commitment.
The breaking of manifesto commitments is nothing new for the SNP: a grant for first time buyers; writing off student debt; and most recently, the introduction of a Local Income Tax. Each of these have fallen by the wayside.
Interestingly though, the SNP publicly remains committed to meeting their class sizes commitment. What they are failing to do is invest public money or the clout of the government into actually delivering on it. After almost two years in power, the SNP appears to be the first government in history to refuse to take any form of responsibility for turning rhetoric into reality. They are the first government in history to actively refuse to govern.
Whilst debate continues to rage around increasing the powers of the Scottish parliament it’s time for the SNP to use the power, and responsibility, which they currently hold in their trust. The SNP remains, at heart, a single-issue party, but now we wait to see whether there’s a single one of their promises which they intend to keep.