But still she backs Swinney

First Minister defends her deputy over grades fiasco

EMBATTLED Education Secretary John Swinney yesterday received a vote of confidence from Nicola Sturgeon despite overseeing ‘the greatest scandal in education in Scotland for decades’.

The First Minister defended her deputy as he prepares to face a vote of no confidence from fellow MSPs over his handling of the exams fiasco.

She also insisted she does not ‘attach any blame’ to the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and insisted it acted on what ministers asked it to do.

But opponents said people have no confidence in Mr Swinney following the shambles, which saw the results of more than 120,000 pupils downgraded because of the past performance of their school.

Labour formally called for a vote of no confidence to be scheduled for this week’s business at Holyrood and has secured the backing of the Tories.

The motion says that parliament has ‘no confidence’ in Mr Swinney ‘in light of his mismanagement of schools education and in particular of this year’s awarding of grades to Scotland’s school pupils and the unfairness of the system applied by the SQA’. Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: ‘John Swinney has presided over the greatest scandal in education in Scotland for decades and for five days refused to acknowledge any failure. This is unacceptable.

‘Scottish Labour has today formally submitted a motion of no confidence in John Swinney and is actively seeking the support of parliamentarians.

‘John Swinney has made it clear that he has no confidence in the teachers or pupils of Scotland. It is now Scottish Labour’s task to inform the Education Secretary that the people of Scotland have no confidence in him.’

The Liberal Democrats and Greens will decide their position after Mr Swinney’s statement to MSPs today when he will confirm the results of all pupils that were downgraded will revert to their teachers’ assessments without needing an appeal.

At her media briefing yesterday, Miss Sturgeon pledged she would address the approach to results ‘in a way which means young people get the grades they feel they have worked for and earned’.

She said: ‘We will not put the onus of that on young people. We are the ones – with the best of intentions and in a difficult situation where there was no clear right way and wrong way to do this – we accept we didn’t get this right and therefore the onus will

‘Greatest education scandal for decades’

be on Government to fix this, and we will set out the detail of exactly how that will happen tomorrow.’

Miss Sturgeon said she believes that when the Government makes a ‘mistake’ ministers must be ‘big enough to say that’.

Asked why she believes Mr Swinney is still the right man for the job, she said ‘I believe he is,’ adding: ‘There are different governments in different parts of the UK, all led behind different parties and actually they’ve all taken broadly the same decision.’

On the role of the SQA – which was responsible for the moderation system which was applied to results and was heavily criticised for failing to disclose its methodology prior to results being issued – Miss Sturgeon said: ‘I should say I don’t attach any blame to the SQA for this. This is ministers’ responsibility.’

Asked about what modelling had been done regarding the likely impact of the methodology, she said she ‘couldn’t have known in advance exactly what the results would show’.

She said that in recent days, she has become ‘more acutely aware’ of the impact on young people in deprived areas, in particular. ‘The conclusion they may be reaching right now is, no matter how hard they work in school, no matter how seriously they take education, the system is stacked against them and I’m not prepared to have that outcome,’ she said.

It was also confirmed that none of the pupils whose results were increased after the moderation process would have their grades

‘More lives than a cat’

reduced because of actions to resolve the crisis.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: ‘The Deputy First Minister cannot casually blame the pandemic for his failures.

‘For months he was warned repeatedly to turn back before it was too late. There was another way and he rejected it.’

Professor Lindsay Paterson, an expert in education policy at Edinburgh University, told BBC Radio Scotland there needs to be ‘a public inquiry’ into the decisions taken. Holyrood’s education committee would be the ‘best place’ for this in the autumn.

Nationalist MSP Alex Neil, a former health secretary in Miss Sturgeon’s Government, told BBC Good Morning Scotland: ‘Clearly there has to be a review as to why all of this happened, who was involved.’

Scottish Tory education spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘Mr Swinney has more lives than a cat. He’s survived this exams fiasco, the blended learning U-turn, years of falling PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] standards, Named Persons, subject choice limitations, the P1 testing debacle, dropping the Education Bill, widespread multi-level teaching, failing to reduce the attainment gap, and hundreds of teacher vacancies every single year.

‘Whether he lives to fail another day or not, we need an urgent parliamentary inquiry into how this mess was allowed to happen.’