Swinney’s shambles

JOHN SWINNEY looks like a schoolboy next to a broken window with a football at his feet, denying the damage is anything to do with him.

His claim that the first the SNP knew of the disastrous slide in standards in Scottish schools – exposed in PISA global exam league tables – was in spring last year is risible.

The warning signs, the criticism, were all there long before. But in succession, the SNP’s education ministers – Fiona Hyslop, Mike Russell and Angela Constance – all turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to any suggestion of a problem.

Now Mr Swinney comes blinking into the light, feigning astonishment and trying to hint that sufficient action to address the shambles – particularly the flagship Curriculum for Excellence – has already been taken. It simply will not wash. This crisis – a disastrous slide in core reading, writing and mathematical standards that has left a generation of Scottish children trailing their peers across the globe – was a long time in the making.

The truly terrifying prospect for parents is that Mr Swinney is now more interested in a face-saving exercise than about undertaking the hard work of addressing the issues.

The SNP affects an air of competence. As John MacLeod argues forcefully elsewhere on this page, the reality is that, blinded by its independence monomania and unwilling to accept any criticism, the party presides over a series of crises it is unable to recognise let alone address.