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THE massive problems facing the education system in Scotland were perfectly summed up yesterday.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie got it spot on when he said children failed by our schools don’t get a second chance.

The Record hasn’t got much time for his party, who were rightly hammered by voters two weeks ago, but on this Rennie is correct.

Every child, poorer or richer, no matter where in Scotland they live, must be able to get the very best chances at the start of their life.

Every child whose talents aren’t fully nurtured at school is a child failed, a child robbed of the basic human right to learn.

Rennie made his intervention in a Holyrood debate sparked by a series of worrying statistics about reading and numeracy levels among Scots children.

But it is important that we talk about education beyond tribal party politics.

Yes, these failures come on the watch of an SNP government in power since 2007.

Yes, the SNP have many questions to answer on education and other areas under their control.

But we need cross-party agreement that our children’s futures are just too important not to be national priority No1.

If you doubt the urgency of this, here’s just a sample from the depressing current report card.

Reading standards among eight and nine-year-olds in Scotland have fallen by five per cent since 2012.

The number of candidates passing exams fell by almost 102,000 in the last year.

Three-quarters of S2 pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds do not have adequate numeracy skills - in other words they’ve been failed so badly they can’t add up properly.

All this is happening while Scotland’s schools are able to invest just 70p a month per pupil on books, as the Record revealed earlier this year.

No one could possibly defend this situation – so it’s a step in the right direction to hear Education Secretary Angela Constance admit standards clearly need to improve.

It’s now up to her to roll up her sleeves and get on with it, supported and scrutinised along the way by the other political parties who must hold her to account at every opportunity.

This has to be a national mission. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.