Nice work but must try harder

John Swinney did well to take on a radio phone-in but we also need him to tackle the growing teaching crisis

The tribal nature of Scottish politics does not serve us well when it comes to complex problems. Whether it’s hard questions on the future of the health service, local government funding or Scottish education, the audience too often divides along party lines.

Brickbats are thrown from all sides based largely on the colour of the speaker’s rosette.

We witnessed more evidence of this yesterday when Education Secretary John Swinney took to the radio to discuss education.

Firstly, it is worth saying that Mr Swinney was brave to spend an hour on the BBC Radio Scotland phone-in where he took questions from teachers, former teachers, parents and industry experts on all aspects of the classroom. There was no escaping some of the anger.

Mr Swinney insisted there was no “crisis in morale” among Scottish teachers as he faced a grilling over workloads and pay. This broad answer, of course, was the proverbial red rag to a bull. How dare a politician tell us what’s happening at the chalkface.

The truth is that education is in crisis. Scotland is not performing well by international comparisons. Scores for maths, reading and science all declined in the latest set of Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) figures. Slovenia is ahead of us in maths, Ireland in reading and Estonia in science.

Teacher recruitment and retention is more difficult that ever, workloads are increasing and much of this burden falls on Scotland’s cashstrapped local authorities.

It is simply no longer credible to describe Scotland’s education system as world leading.

But of course to simply label this all the fault of John Swinney or the SNP government is equally shortsighted. And where does it get us?

There is surely no more important issue that how we educate our children.

How we overcome structural issues, staff shortages and pay against the background of societal change and Brexit is not easy.

But it certainly won’t be solved with shouting across the Holyrood chamber.

After the last set of Pisa results Mr Swinney pledged an “unwavering focus on improvement”. We don’t expect him to have all the answers, but we do expect him to lead us out of this growing crisis.