Schools ‘not good enough’, says Sturgeon, as she hints at reform

NICOLA Sturgeon is being urged to consider scrapping the SNP’s failing curriculum after she admitted school standards are ‘not good enough’.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) should be reviewed after a report revealed Scotland’s schools are lagging behind former Soviet bloc nations Estonia and Slovenia.

At First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood yesterday, the First Minister said she would not make excuses for the poor performance, which she admitted three times was ‘not good enough’.

She also revealed she will bring forward plans for ‘controversial’ school reforms which ‘will run into resistance’.

The SNP rejected calls to bring in external advisers to review the CfE, which has been heavily criticised by teachers.

Miss Davidson said the SNP’s flagship school reforms were ‘on probation’ after the results of the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). She said: ‘Nobody here can simply brush aside the fact that, since it [CfE] has come in, standards have fallen.

‘Our ongoing support for Curriculum for Excellence cannot be taken for granted.

‘The entire project should now be put on probation. I ask a simple question and I ask it in all sincerity: if standards are going down because of Curriculum for Excellence, why are we sticking by it?’

Miss Sturgeon insisted that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which produced the schools report, has given its backing to the principles behind CfE.

But she acknowledged that the performance of schools is not satisthat factory. She said: ‘I take responsibility, on behalf of the Scottish Government, for the performance of Scottish education.

‘If anyone thinks I will stand here and give excuses, they are wrong.

‘There is lots of other evidence on Scottish education that I could cite but I am not going to do that today because the results of the PISA survey published earlier this week show that we are not where I want us to be.

‘They are not good enough. I am determined that we take the action will lead to improvement. We will continue to focus on taking the action that needs to be taken.

‘We are serious about making those improvements and I hope the whole parliament will get behind us because some of what we are going to do over the next period will be controversial and some of it will run into resistance.

‘It will be interesting to see whether the opposition parties are behind us on these things or not.’

The PISA report, published this week, showed that Scotland’s scores were lower in reading, maths and science than in any previous PISA survey.

In 2000, when Scotland first took part in the OECD survey of 15-yearolds, performance in maths, reading and science were all above average.

In maths, only five countries had better scores than Scotland in 2000, and 21 countries had worse.

By 2015, 14 countries had better results, while the number with worse scores was down to ten.

The Scottish Conservatives want external experts to review the CfE.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie listed more than 20 countries ranking higher than Scotland, including Poland and South Korea.

He said: ‘After ten years of SNP rule we are not even as good as England any more.’

Miss Sturgeon replied that she was ‘not going to rise to the bait on the politics of this issue’.

‘Won’t give excuses’