Murdo Fraser: When SNP Ministers are in denial about school standards, what hope do young people have?

Government by press release rather than policy is choking the life out of our education professionals

History, they say, is written by the winners. But that doesn’t stop losers from trying to re-write it.

A case in point is our Justice Secretary Angela Constance MSP, when asked to defend the SNP’s record on education. She appeared on BBC Question Time last month just after the PISA results had shown that standards in Scottish education have declined year-on-year under the SNP. Now standards in reading in Scotland are lower than in England, while standards in mathematics and science have also plunged.

When it was repeatedly pointed out to her that Scottish education used to be regarded as amongst the best in the world, in a remarkable volte-face from the Scottish exceptionalism she usually asserts, Ms. Constance repeatedly asked: ‘When? When? When?’

So the SNP seem now to be saying that a decline in Scottish educational standards should not concern us as our system has never been the best in the world – and for the benefit of Ms. Constance, and perhaps people educated since the SNP came to office, ‘volte-face’ is French for a complete change of position.

She claimed also that the ‘attainment gap’ has closed, but had no answer when it was put to her that if that was the case it was only because higher standards had been lowered rather than low standards raised. Constance did assert that results in Higher Maths, and I quote, ‘have actually went up.’ Clearly she has studied the Morecambe and Wise book of grammar with particular emphasis on the plays, ‘what Ernie wrote.’

But, in truth, this isn’t funny. Whatever side you are on with regards to Scotland’s constitutional future, Scotland’s education is our future. It is how we will compete as a nation internationally. Education is part of our identity, and those who claim to be the champions of our identity in the SNP government are eroding it by their failure to deliver for our schools, our teachers and our young people.

Our schools are understaffed and our teachers under-consulted. Government by press release rather than policy is choking the life out of our education professionals.

Where there should be – and used to be – a vision of Scottish education empowering every individual Scot to compete globally, now our First Minister is happy if he can assert that Scotland is better than Labour run Wales. No disrespect to our Welsh cousins, but the education I received at Inverness Royal Academy when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister had a bit more ambition.

If Scottish Government cabinet ministers have to ask ‘when’ was Scottish education amongst the best in the world, then we can only reply before they were in charge. Indeed when they came to power in 2007 standards in primaries 1 to 3 in Scottish schools were judged amongst the best in the world – building on a legacy of four centuries of achievement before then.

If they do not get the importance of education being paramount to Scotland’s culture let me offer them just this one snippet from history.. Sir Monty Finniston, the legendary Scottish industrialist who reorganised the British Steel Corporation, born in Govanhill in Glasgow from Russian Jewish parents, used to tell this story.

He was once asked how, having spent most of his business career in London, he had retained his distinctive Scottish accent. He said it was quite simple. When he moved there he rarely socialised because he spent most of his evenings at home studying for professional qualifications. And by the time he had passed them all he was so senior in London business circles he only spoke to fellow Scots. That is one way of answering the question, ‘When,’ that Ms. Constance asked.

The SNP claim their policy by press release will prepare Scots for careers when they may change profession more than ‘fourteen times’, according to Ms. Constance.

Then, with a future so uncertain, so unshaped, surely the best way to equip young Scots is with the fundamental foundations of a grasp of literacy and numeracy that will not change, and yet that is what they lack in the name of the SNP’s faux claim of modernity.

After seventeen years of boasting we can only conclude that the SNP care more about their election results than our young people’s exam results. When educational standards in Scotland are questioned SNP ministers hide behind claims that our teachers are being attacked. But the truth is that our educational standards are falling in part because this SNP administration ignore our teachers and educational professionals, and that is a more fundamental and damaging attack on them than any question from an opposition politician.

Education is about finding the truth – leading people to the light - and that is the last thing the SNP will do. Standards in Scottish schools are declining and have been for some time. Since the pandemic, more and more pupils are not turning up on a regular basis. More and more need support, yet less and less is given. Behaviour in the classroom is getting worse and worse.

Yet no debate about why this is happening is allowed. No strategy developed other than a PR one to get through the day – to allow minister to get through the moment.

Ms Constance says that those of us who recall when Scottish education was amongst the best as the world as looking at the past through ‘rose tinted glasses’.

She would be better looking at her own Government’s record and admitting they are plainly failing the pupils of Scotland, undermining not just a reputation we built as a nation over centuries but also our future as a nation.

In response to the PISA results, the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Jenny Gilruth asserted: “The proportion of primary pupils attaining the expected levels in both literacy and numeracy have increased.”

Perhaps it has, but if the level of literacy of our Education Secretaries doesn’t increase, the have-nots in education will continue to rise.