Rose-coloured age

Murdo Fraser chastises Angela Constance for questioning the supposed golden age of Scottish Education (Perspective, 4 January). Like Ms Constance, I would also like to know the basis of this oftvoiced claim. Reading a book on the history of Scottish education over Christmas I could find no answer. Indeed, two researchers described the “lad o’ pairts” paradigm as “a national myth” and said most historians viewed it as “an individualist form of meritocracy rather than reflecting a classless society”.

Scottish educational attainment was actually falling behind other countries up till the 1980s. Standards were not necessarily dropping, rather it was a case of other countries catching up. In 1997 after 17 years of the Conservatives being in charge of Scottish education, levels had fallen still further in international comparison tables. Even England was now overtaking Scotland in English and mathematics. Does this sound vaguely familiar? Yet this was taking place ten years before the SNP came to power.

Moreover, comparing the results from today’s comprehensives with those from a prior selective system is by definition going to produce poorer results. My experience of the latter in the 1960s was of a system which was hopelessly biased towards maintaing the status of the school rather than helping less gifted pupils onto the ladder of further education. I myself was told to my face I was “not good enough” for university. Yet ten years later I had two diplomas and two degrees, including a Masters.

As for Scots being highly respected in London, that’s simply evidence of elitism rather than egalitarianism. To make your way in the world you had to go south if you were Scottish. The irony in my case was that I found myself being rejected for jobs in London because I was now “overqualified”.

Robert Menzies

Falkirk