But didnt the Governess complain that the alternative to increasing taxes was a 'massive cut in education spending'?  

Now, you are telling us that the reality was that we would simply have a smaller <u>increase</u>, if we didn't raise taxes.

Given the fewer numbers of students (see GRPress this week) and the utter inefficiency of our school systems (something like 53% of the money actually gets to the classrooms), I think we probably could be ok with a smaller INCREASE (increase is the new massive cut, apparently).