Damning verdict

The recent Audit Scotland report on education was damning enough. Limited improvement in some areas was acknowledged but the verdict of the Auditor General was that Ms Sturgeon's ambition to close the attainment gap had ended in failure – it remains "wide".

Now Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh University, informs us that the position is even worse than reported. He states that figures obtained by the Times newspaper "show not only no progress between 2016 and 2019, but perhaps even a worsening of the situation". The complete picture is "masked by the standard reporting" which focuses only on pupils who have passed one or more Highers before leaving school. This method of reporting is described as "purposefully inadequate", which comes as no surprise given the SNP'S routine attempts to suppress information which is in the public interest.

The figures, described by professor Paterson as" fine grained ", reveal amongst other things that looking at the richest and poorest areas shows a gap greater than 20 per cent in attainment at A grade in Higher and greater than 25 per cent at A grade in National 5.

Education was Nicola Sturgeon's "priority" at the last election and we were asked to judge her on that. Quite evidently she has failed. Perhaps politicians should be judged like football managers. With results like these the punters would have been calling for Ms Sturgeon's head long before now.