Tories schooled

I see that Ruth Davidson and Liz Smith, the Tory education spokesperson, are calling for the scrapping of assessment of Primary One pupils.

This is very strange, as both of them called for such testing in May 2015, during a Holyrood debate, specifically mentioning primary one pupils and criticising the Scottish Government for not having a sufficiently rigorous assessment programme, unlike Denmark and Canada.

If I may also quote from the 2016 Conservative manifesto: “The Scottish Government should commit to reentering Scotland into all the main International comparison tests and design the new standardised tests at P1, P4 and p7.”

Now the Tories are calling for all the opposition parties to vote against what they, themselves, proposed only two years ago. Not because it is bad for the pupils (they obviously don’t think that), but only because they think they can possibly defeat the SNP.

Ruth Davidson and her party are displaying hypocrisy and political opportunism of the worst and most cynical kind.

JAMES DUNCAN Rattray Grove, Edinburgh