‘Education failure’ will be the Nationalist epitaph

Blaming Westminster and Tory austerity for their own failings is the SNP answer to criticism, says Brian Monteith

For all its blustering bravado about holding another independence referendum, it is the sheer scale of its own incompetence that is going to sink the SNP government – and its failure on education will matter the most.

The SNP once had a strategy of showing it was at least no worse than Labour and the Liberal Democrats at managing Scottish public services. Once the public could see that schools would still teach kids to read and count, even speak a second language; once people could be assured that there would be no NHS cuts that would diminish the service they had come to expect; and once everyone would be relaxed that the trains would run on time and roads would be, if not paved with gold, at least paved then the SNP could win a second term and get down to the business of delivering independence.

If the Scottish Executive, now rebranded the Scottish Government, could run competently the vast majority of those public services that touch Scots then they could have the confidence to take on the whole gamut not yet devolved of raising taxes, conducting foreign relations and having a credible defence.

The strategy undoubtedly worked. Having become the largest party at Holyrood by one seat, and then relied upon Annabel Goldie’s hitherto untouchable Tories to rule as a minority administration, the SNP went on to win a famous second term in 2011 that gave Alex Salmond the chutzpah to push on with a referendum that he nearly won.

Now, four years on from that disappointment, and the SNP government is still waving the flag for a further referendum but the strategy of demonstrating its competence is in tatters. Everybody can see it except the SNP government itself, which is either in complete and utter denial of its growing litany of failures – evidenced by a failure to show humility and the constant need to spin an alternative narrative – or ministers simply blame Westminster and Tory austerity which is not supported by the facts.

This past week we have seen education come back to the fore as possibly the greatest failure of SNP competence.

If there was one thing domestically that Scotland developed within the union it was a world-wide reputation for an enviably successful education system that equipped boys and girls of all classes with an ability to achieve their ambitions. That is not a claim that can be made now.

The decline in Scottish education did not happen overnight, but it has become more marked during the tenure of the three SNP administrations.

We have seen a steady decline in primary school literacy and numeracy, the introduction of a new curriculum that is more and more accepted within the teaching profession as in need of urgent reform, while Scotland’s position in various international rankings for maths, English and science has fallen from among the best to barely average and behind countries with much poorer resources.

Professor of Education Jim Scott has demonstrated the pass rate for the Higher exams is declining. Now pass rates will go up and down, but a decline of three years in a row is a trend, and one that cannot be ignored. While the teaching of Gaelic was given a generous pledge of further support from education secretary John Swinney, we can also see the uptake in foreign languages