We’re sorry? Her tin ear is matched by her brass neck

THE First Minister may have developed a reputation for being a canny communicator, but her belated and forced apology for the SQA results fiasco demonstrated she is not immune to putting her foot in it.

For almost a week, she refused to accept that an injustice had been done to the poorest pupils in Scotland and that the professional judgment of teachers had been ignored.

As pupils took to the streets in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon was still defending the classist and damaging SQA methodology as the only way to maintain ‘integrity’ in the exam system.

If the First Minister thinks judging pupils based on the area they live in rather than their own merits is a valid way to maintain integrity then we clearly have a different understanding of the word.

The First Minister’s apology, after days of spin and deflection, demonstrated that her tin ear is accompanied by a brass neck. More than 40 per cent of pupils in Sturgeon’s own school were marked down; the figure was nearer half for John Swinney’s old school. Crisis, what crisis?

This SNP Government has long attempted to present a veneer of technocratic competence, but this latest fiasco was not only the result of incompetence but of ignorance as well.

For months my parliamentary colleagues and I have warned the government that their approach would lead to gross inequality in the results and we were ignored. This was not because the SNP thought we were wrong, rather it was because they refused to be seen to alter their positions based on concerns raised by the opposition.

Had Miss Sturgeon and Mr Swinney listened to what we had to say then the anxiety and stress felt by thousands of pupils need not have happened and the injured professional pride of hundreds of teachers need not have occurred.

The single most important thing now is that this scandal is set right and that the pupils and teachers of Scotland receive the justice deferred to them thus far by the obstinacy of the SNP Government.

This is a task of great importance and magnitude and it is vital to the life chances of thousands of young Scots that we get it right. Scottish Labour strongly believes that we must trust the professional judgment of our teachers and return all grades marked down to the original teacher assessment. We must trust those who know the children best: their teachers. The scale of this crisis demands that it is met with urgency and humility. So far John Swinney has exhibited neither of these qualities. Posted missing for days, Mr Swinney could not bring himself to admit that something had gone wrong until Sunday and the threat of a no confidence motion which I have tabled.

There’s now talk of ‘hearing the anger of pupils’ from Mr Swinney and apologies from Nicola Sturgeon for getting it wrong, when on Friday she called the results system ‘credible’. It was no more credible then than it is now, or in April when it was raised with them.

The scale of this scandal poses a recovery operation of a similar magnitude and the outrage of pupils, teachers and parents is justified. Neither they, nor I, have any confidence in John Swinney’s ability or willingness to meet this challenge and it is for this reason that Scottish Labour has tabled a motion of no confidence in John Swinney as Education Secretary.

JOHN Swinney has been at the top of the SNP for decades and has played a central role in the party’s 13-year reign. Throughout his career he has attempted to present himself as a trustworthy, safe pair of hands, with the air of a bank manager rather than a politician.

Unfortunately, the only bank manager that John Swinney has resembled during his spell as Education Secretary has been Captain Mainwaring. From his bullish opposition to teaching unions over pay to his refusal to accept Scotland’s decline in the PISA rankings, Mr Swinney has been a calamitous Education Secretary. This latest scandal is not his first disaster as Education Secretary, but it must be his last.

In one fell swoop last week the First Minister allowed the SQA and John Swinney to turn the attainment gap into an insurmountable chasm. Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney have overseen the transformation of our education system into a selfrepeating engine of inequality rather than the dynamo of social mobility it should be.