Swinney under fire as report absent

JOHN Swinney has been criticised after failing to secure an interim report on the state of Scottish education before the Holyrood election.

In April, the Education Secretary delayed the publication of a major independent study on the Curriculum for

Excellence system by the OECD because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Due to report in February 2021, it was put back to June, the month after the election at which Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to be judged by her education record.

After complaints of a political fix, Mr Swinney later said he would discuss the possibility of publishing an interim report before the election.

He told MSPS in September: “I will be happy to discuss that with it [the OECD].”

But in a Governmentinspired parliamentary question and answer about progress on the OECD report, Mr Swinney made no mention on an interim report, and said the findings would be in June.

Liberal Democrat MSP Beatrice Wishart criticised the absence of an interim report.

She said: “The First Minister said education was her top priority. The public deserves to hear expert opinions before the election on the state of Scottish education to inform the debate.

“Parents and students would be better served by an SNP government that owned up to its mistakes, rather than one keeps kicking the can down the road.”

Tory MSP Jamie Greene added: “The SNP are blatantly burying bad news until long after the election to avoid scrutiny of their disastrous handling of Scotland’s education system.

“We called for an interim report so we can start to get under the skin of what’s going wrong in our schools.

“John Swinney has lost the trust of many parents and with this delay he’s guaranteed that he’ll let down even more pupils.”