Swinney’s P1 testing obsession adds up to disaster

Education Secretary John Swinney is determined to keep P1 assessments in Scottish schools. He’s even invited MSPs to see a mock demonstration today. But with the opposition rounding on the policy at Holyrood, Scottish Labour leader RICHARD LEONARD explains why he thinks it’s time to ditch the tests. THE parliamentary recess affords elected representatives a muchneeded period to reflect on what was another turbulent year in Scottish and British politics.

I spent the summer travelling round the country meeting with community groups, businesses and workers from the Western Isles to Clackmannanshire and to the Borders.

No matter what part of Scotland I was in, two things were at the forefront of people’s thoughts – the NHS and our children’s schools.

Sadly, it appears that SNP Education Secretary John Swinney did not use the summer recess to reflect on his tenure in charge of our schools.

Fresh from the embarrassing collapse of his Education Bill, Mr Swinney is now in a direct confrontation with both teachers and MSPs on standardised testing.

On Sunday, Mr Swinney issued a thinly veiled threat to ignore the will of the Scottish Parliament if democratically elected MSPs vote to suspend the standardised testing of Primary 1 pupils.

It is not within the gift of Nationalist ministers to erode the role of Scotland’s parliamentarians in our public life in a grotesque power grab that would make even the Tories blush.

If he was indeed to ignore Parliament’s settled will it would set a dangerous precedent, where SNP ministers can sit in St Andrew’s House issuing edicts to every school in the land with no democratic check on their power.

Teachers across the country are repeatedly telling Mr Swinney that these tests are unwanted. They are costing the taxpayer £4.6million, yet no one outside the SNP Government believe they have any educational value.

Now he has decided to get his civil servants to demonstrate the tests to MSPs in a bid to prove their worth. Granted, politicians do behave like children on occasion but they are not four and five-year-olds.

You cannot possibly replicate the tests and the impact upon the child with this mock demonstration for adults.

Tomorrow’s debate and vote gives Mr Swinney one last opportunity to take a step back and reflect.

I hope he does so before any more money is wasted and the morale of under-resourced teachers is eroded even further.