Ruth Davidson:
NICOLA Sturgeon said she wanted to be judged on her record on education. She has been. And she has failed. While others were calling for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to reveal the way it would grant awards this year, her Government sat on its hands and let it operate in secret. Fail.
When calls came for equality impact assessments to make sure that no group would be disadvantaged, her Government turned a deaf ear. Fail.
When proposals were made that the SQA revert to schools and teachers for evidence when estimates came in that raised eyebrows, rather than running the results through a blunt algorithm, her Government waved such concerns away. Fail.
When the extent of the downgrades became apparent – more than 124,000 marks lowered, with 45,000 going from a pass to a fail – the First Minister defended the process, saying it was ‘not credible’ to do otherwise. Fail.
When it emerged that the most disadvantaged pupils were more than twice as likely to have their grades lowered than wealthier students, her Education Secretary, John Swinney, denied the evidence. Fail.
When Ms Sturgeon was asked to make a choice – to defend the system or defend Scotland’s school pupils – she chose the system. Fail.
None of this was inevitable. The broken dreams, the shattered confidence, the life plans thrown out of the window – all could have been avoided if Ministers had gripped this instead of signing off on a system of ‘moderation’ which decided that a pupil’s individual merit was less important than a school’s historic results.
Not only unfair, but baking in the shackles of the very inequalities that a good education should unlock. It turns out that in SNP Scotland, there is nothing a bright child in a tough school could do to succeed this year.
As someone who attended Buckhaven High School, a great school in so many ways but in a deprived area of Fife and languishing near the bottom of the league tables, there is no way that, if I had studied for my Highers this year instead of in the 1990s, I would have been awarded the grades to study English literature at Edinburgh University.
I suspect that if a young Nicola Sturgeon had been in fifth year at Greenwood Academy in Dreghorn, Ayrshire, today instead of in the 1980s, there is no way she would have qualified to study law at Glasgow University.
THE First Minister had the sheer brass neck to stand at her podium and say she ‘very possibly’ might have joined Friday’s protests – outside the SQA headquarters in Dalkeith, Midlothian, and in Glasgow’s George Square – if her younger self had been as utterly shafted as a quarter of all Scotland’s pupils have just found themselves to be.
But here’s the thing. People join protests and go on marches because they feel they don’t have any way to effect change yet they want to register their dissent to those who do. Well, guess what, First Minister, that’s you.
Hiding behind an appeals process – while refusing to countenance the backstop of allowing those who wish to sit exams in the autumn to do so, as other parts of the UK are permitting – is not effecting change.
Telling kids they shouldn’t worry what grades they have because this might change on appeal is cowardly, and of little use if there is no trust, or no explanation about how the appeal process will be carried out, or to what time frame. But there are some issues upon which I agree with the First Minister. Twenty years ago, after another, lesser, exam fiasco, Ms Sturgeon railed: ‘It is the ultimate responsibility of the Education Minister to ensure smooth running of the exam process. Despite several warnings in the last few months that all was not well with the processing of this year’s results, [he] has failed to take the appropriate action to avoid this disaster. He must now carry the can’.
She added that the Minister ‘should be out of office’.
The First Minister is now in a position to put such protestations into action. Will she? Of course not. Yet another fail.