Class sizes may decide who runs schools

Published on Saturday 27 June 2009 19:44

THE leader of Scotland's biggest teaching union has suggested councils could be stripped of their powers to run schools over the failure to cut class sizes.

Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the Educational Institute for Scotland (EIS), has raised the prospect of schools being run nationally from central government so that manifesto pledges were properly enacted.

SNP ministers vowed at the last election to reduce class sizes in the first three years of primary school to 18. They and local authorities then signed an agreement to make progress on the plans.

But critics say that with ministers having handed councils unprecedented freedom over how to spend funds, the package has been left to wither on the vine.

In a highly unusual move, Smith has now decided to raise the stakes, questioning whether local authorities should be taken out of the equation altogether.

Smith has pointed to recent reforms in Northern Ireland, where a single body has taken over delivery of education for the entire Province.

He told Scotland on Sunday: "The question is whether education being part of the general local authority framework is beneficial or not. Could there be a more direct line of funding rather than it being mediated by local authorities?"

Research has shown that less than 70 per cent of the cash earmarked for education given to local authorities by the Scottish government has made its way to schools.

Smith's intervention comes amid growing doubts that the 18 class size pledge will ever be delivered. A paper presented to the councils last week, agreed by education secretary Fiona Hyslop, suggested that councils could go at their own pace, and leave some schools out of the plans if they wished.