Politicians showing their class

As most followers of Scottish Politics will be aware, we are potentially entering the third year of a concordat between the Government and COSLA that will ensure more funding for the councils if they freeze council tax for you and I, affectionately known as hard-working families and struggling pensioners. I'm not sure if any of the four descriptions apply to me personally but then the concordat was never really 'historic' so I won't dwell on the thorny subject of misplaced adjectives.

There has been a valid concern raised that the freeze should be lifted to ensure certain local services in certain parts of the country do not suffer unduly when local residents may be perfectly happy to pay a little more to ensure standards remain.

After all what are the chances Aberdeen City Council are facing the exact same financial constraints as West Dunbartonshire? As East Lothian? As the Borders?

So it's a fair suggestion. Let individual councils decide.

Then again, such an approach does perhaps overlook the original deal that saw Councils receive more money from the Government in order to compensate (or even pay for?) the Council Tax rises that would have been implemented had the concordat not been agreed.

Just because Council Tax has been frozen, that does not necessarily mean that local Councils do not have more money to work with. After all, Council Tax only makes up about 20% of your average council's total pot of money. Lifting the freeze would only ever be a small part of the solution to the overall problem.

And of course, there is the political dimension. The SNP Government delivering a Council Tax freeze for the majority of its time in power would be a massive coup, a chunk of gold for activists and candidates to take to the doorsteps. Almost as soon as the 'historic concordat' was announced it was generally accepted that Labour would have to bring it down if they had any chance of winning the next election.

Political posturing is couched within supposedly principled positions. Surprise, surprise.

After all, the same people who are pushing for local councils to have more power over the money they raise are also castigating the Government for their efforts on class sizes when it is councils who hold that particular power.

I may be in two minds about the merits of lifting the Council Tax freeze but I am bloody-mindedly sure that the SNP are on the right track with class sizes.

A judgment has been made (which has been largely backed by teachers and parents) that there are too many pupils in school classrooms, particularly in primary 1 to primary 3. Consequently, an effort has been made by Councils and the Government alike to reduce the number of children in classes across Scotland.

The drive may have run into some unexpected legal difficulty given that the only class size enshrined in law is the rather cramped 30 but this is being tackled head-on by the Education Secretary with a law change to ensure class sizes of 25 are backed by law.

And surely the easiest approach for the SNP (dare I say the populist approach) would be to just leave the rules open so that parents can cram their kids into their preferred school to the possible detriment of the entire class. That's not treading on anyone's toes after all? But no, the SNP have recognised that a new line in the sand needs to be drawn and, for now, that line is 25 per class.

Critics point out that the SNP promised class sizes of 18 and are seven shy of this. But it's one of those hollow criticisms where the same critics are neither stating that they personally would like to see class sizes of 30 or 25 or 18, just merely pointing out a numerical anomaly.

Is it enough to say 'you said you would do x, you haven't done x therefore you have failed' without debating the substantive issue of what size of class is actually best for young kids? Is that the type of debate we want to have?

I'm personally relaxed about the SNP's promise being downgraded to an aspiration and I think if I was a parent I would understand the predicament that the Government finds itself in, not to mention appreciate the solution that they are proposing. We're seeing schools close in every city across the country and we're seeing budgets cut across all departments. To go from class sizes of 30+ to 18 is certainly too big an ask now, let alone when the good times were rolling. 30 to 25? Sounds about right and we can build from there.

As a country, we're heading in the correct direction and surely that's at least satisfactory?

So to attack the Education Secretary when she's still reducing class sizes seems odd. This isn't a 'broken promise' like saying you'll have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and then not or saying you won't adjust the top rate of income tax and then punting it up to 50%. It's a sliding scale rather than a yes/no question.

And anyway, there are mixed signals in wishing to give more power to local councils to raise Council tax while ignoring the powers they possess on setting class sizes.

Opposition parties wish to give with one hand and berate with another. Politically, it is understandable but it still shouldn't be good enough.