The SNP’s national education disgrace
IT is nothing short of a national disgrace that schools are failing thousands of pupils.
The SNP, which has had sole charge of education for almost a decade, should hang its head in shame.
This latest indictment of its stewardship of our schools is not some politically motivated attack. It comes from Scotland’s chief education inspector Bill Maxwell, based on checks at schools across the country.
The shambles cannot be blamed on what Labour did a decade ago; cannot be brushed off by witless finger-pointing at ‘Westmonster’ and the Tories.
The harsh reality is that a string of unimpressive Education Secretaries – including moonstruck Angela Constance and dogmatic Mike Russell – and the deeply flawed Curriculum for Excellence have combined to damage the life chances of Scottish pupils.
Today’s youngsters face a supercompetitive global jobs market and the Curriculum for Excellence is not giving them all the maximum chance to excel.
It is galling for parents who heard First Minister Nicola Sturgeon declare education was her priority. She said: ‘Let me be clear; I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people, then what are you prepared to? It really matters.’
Whither that fine pledge now? Literacy and numeracy skills are slipping, while many pupils are stranded in decaying buildings and over-sized classes.
Scotland, once a byword for educational excellence and the blueprint for other countries’ schooling, is sliding backwards in international education league tables.
Miss Sturgeon gave the game away with another quote: ‘The case for full selfgovernment ultimately transcends the issues of Brexit, of oil, of national wealth and balance sheets and of passing political fads and trends.’
How telling that MSPs will today finish a pointless debate on another independence referendum while Education Secretary John Swinney continues to preside over the decline of schooling.
If Miss Sturgeon was a proper First Minister for all of Scotland and not just the partisan head of the SNP, wouldn’t she have insisted on days-long debates on education and not constitutional waffle?