Scotland’s shameful slide to the bottom of the class
POLITICS aside, the fact that Scotland has slipped in the international rankings for education (Mail) is a disaster. the SNP reaction, however, is telling. there’s a grudging hint from Education Secretary John Swinney that radical reform is needed — though he seems to have no clue as to what form that will take. He also hints that changes have already been made — a tacit acceptance that his predecessors got it wrong. And then there is the usual circling of the wagons by SNP supporters, some of whom think Wales — under labour — being worse off is something to be pleased about. our children must compete in a global market and the SNP running around covering its tracks is not going to help them.
MARIE LEWIS, Glasgow. WITH amazing understatement, John Swinney says the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report on slipping standards in Scottish schools is ‘uncomfortable reading’. It’s the result of the SNP getting too comfortable, with Fiona Hyslop doing little more than mind the shop at education before Mike Russell complacently declared the curriculum for Excellence world-class. the appointment of Angela constance as Education Secretary must go down as one of the most disastrous choices of nicola Sturgeon’s career. And now Mr Swinney is mumbling a few vague things about reform. this disaster may be beyond his ability to fix and it is Scottish schoolchildren who will suffer.
IRENE HUNTER, Dumfries. NICOLA Sturgeon said she ‘put her neck on the line’ over education but I bet — like the damsel in distress in the old silent movies — she will have made an escape by the time the steam engine arrives. there’s no more chance of her taking responsibility over slipping school standards than there is of Humza Yousaf admitting responsibility for train delays and traffic jams.
BILL STEVENSON, Aberdeen. In reading, Scottish children are now at 23rd in the PISA rankings, whereas in 2006 they were at 11th and, in 2000, sixth. this is lamentable for what used to be one of the best-educated populations in the world. It may be that it owes something to the confusion being sown in young pupils’ minds by the imposition of faux Scots in the curriculum. this invented ‘language’ owes more to Stanley Baxter’s hilarious Parliamo Glasgow than to any living tongue. children are set tasks requiring them to read, spell and write in this language at an age when their real need is to consolidate their learning in standard English. It is all, of course, intended to hammer home a spurious differentiation between Scotland and England that is part of the SNP’S strategy for winning Scots over to separation. According to Professor lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh university, the culprit for falling standards appears to be the muchvaunted curriculum for Excellence. In a damning interview, he referred to its ‘rather Mickey Mouse approach to crosscurricular themes and lots of other projects that are rather beside the point at that age’. JILL STEPHENSON, Edinburgh. INDEPENDENCE is the answer to all our problems, says the SNP. Yet we have had almost a decade of SNP autonomy over education and what have we got to show for it? If it ran the whole country, wouldn’t it be the same shambles we see in schools? JIM DICKSON, via email.