Primary school class sizes and the art of the possible

Education Secretary, Michael Russell, has seen a very clever move under-interpreted – to say the least – by his political opponents.

He announced this week that the Scottish Government will make it a legal obligation upon local authorities that no P1 class may have a cohort bigger than 25 children.

And out came the autopilot bazookas.

There was firing on SNP failure to honour a manifesto pledge of a limit of 18 on all primary school class sizes. And the pin was taken out on grenades spitting lac of regard for classes above P1.

The reality check

The political – the fiscal – reality is that there is no money for the expansion of teacher numbers that the 2007 manifesto commitment would require in reducing all primary school class sizes to 18.

At the time of the General Election campaign of 2007, no one knew what the banks were already up in buccaneering and ill-judged risk taking – and no one foresaw what was to happen in the Autumn of 2008.

When the UK hit financial meltdown and an unimaginable debt burden with the failure of the banks and the ludicrous Blair/Brown  ‘regulation with a light touch’, all cards on every table had to be reshuffled.

Only philosophy has a chance of surviving unscathed the translation from manifesto commitment to implementation in the reality of context – and that is chance not guarantee.

Any government insisting on ploughing ahead with manifesto pledges in the face of the financial crisis this country will be dealing with for the foreseeable future wold be irresponsible beyond belief.

And this Government’s performance has been marked by relative responsibility.

Primary One and the art of the possible

The Education Minister was also faced with local authorities finding that the parental right to choose their childrens’ school has producing asymmetry in class sizes.

They had no means of controlling the numbers in popular schools and they had no budget to hire more teachers to deal with the resulting imbalance.

They asked for some legal protection to allow them to exercise some control.

The measure proposed

What Russell has done is actually very precisely targeted and very clever.

The legal limit of 25 on P1 class sizes is financially achievable – and, crucially, P1 is the entry class.

Children make friends and settle in. Few parents are willing to disrupt this security for young children. They would do so only in the case of having had no choice but to send their child to a seriously failing school – which is a problem beyond finance.

So, as a general rule, children starting in a particular primary school will finish that stage of their education there, unless their family move away from the area.

That means that, as a general rule, the upper limit of 25 legally applied to the entry level class will continue to be the case in successive stages.

So a single simple legal requirement focused on the entry class is a major address to a wider problem.

No, it’s not an upper limit of 18. But it is an upper limit that will broadly, in fact, apply throughout the schools and it is an achievable start in limiting class sizes. What did other administrations, like the Labour-LIbDem coalitions that had two terms to use, attempt?

There is a variations that might be made that would upset this scheme and it is within the responsibility of local authorities concerned. Legally, they would have the power to admit over 25 children to P1, provided that the children were taught in two groups, each under 25 in total.

They might be able to afford the teaching time to do this, but would be unlikely to be able to afford to repeat this teaching pattern all the way up the school – so uncontrolled larger class sizes could emerge were this to happen.

Given that the local authorities asked the Minister for legal protection in the matter of admissions and he has delivered that, he is entitled to expect each of them to behave responsibly in their application of the authority they are to be given.

Mr Russell has stressed: ‘I am absolutely committed to making sure an increasing number of pupils benefit from smaller class sizes’, saying that: ‘together with the local government body, COSLA ministers have shown that we can continue to drive down class sizes through the flexibility in our agreement to deliver 20% of Primary 1-3 pupils in class sizes of 18 or fewer”.

The Education Secretary’s measure is a triumph of common sense and real politique.

It ought not to be a matter for the tiresome and unintelligent party politicking we must expect from now until the 2010 Scottish Election is over – and which has recently seen such daft flourishes as opponents ‘condemning the Scottish Government’ for the A83 landslide.