WHATEVER one’s views of councillors, balancing the books of local authorities in these times of scarce resources isn’t easy. Most councillors, other than a few intent on party-based confrontation, make a fair fist of trying not to cut services with the income they have.
Midlothian Council might count among these. As with others, it has had to make cuts in the past but, this year, it rejected many suggestions of savings made by its own officials and went out of its way to safeguard libraries, school crossings and so forth. To balance the budget, it raised council tax by 3 per cent. It even reduced the number of floral displays and shrub beds to save £65,000.
All very laudable, perhaps even imaginative. However, one rather clever – perhaps even cunning – move has set alarm bells ringing. The council has transferred the cost of music tuition for exams from its central budget to its schools’ devolved budgets. As a result, sums of up to £38,000 will be lost to schools, leading to fears of a decline in the number of pupils sitting music exams.
This comes against a backdrop of wider concern about the future of music tuition. Earlier this year, the Educational Institute of Scotland warned of music tuition being “eroded to extinction”. It pointed out that, since 2007, the number of music instructors dropped from 1043 to 701.
It also expressed concern about increasing charges to parents for music tuition leading to a “who pays, plays” culture. Midlothian itself has at various times over the years introduced charges, halved them, dropped them, and reintroduced them, albeit with exemptions for those in receipt of free school meals or from families on benefits.
This latest move, however, threatens to set a precedent which, if adopted by other councils, could harm music tuition nationwide. Councillors have proven adept at the difficult task of balancing budgets but this tactic, we fear, is too clever by half.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here