We need international education comparisons

MICHAEL Russell maintains that dropping the requirement on Scottish education to report facts and figures to international bodies who compare the performance of education systems across the world will both save the Scottish Government money and reduce bureaucracy for teachers.

He may be right in this claim but he is wrong to make these cuts.

For in abandoning Scotland's participation in Pirls (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) the education secretary is depriving the nation - from ministers through academics to teachers and parents - of a vital tool to measure ourselves against other countries.

Not only that but, conveniently for this government its successors, his move means that Scotland will not longer be part of studies which have shown that this country's once much-admired education system was falling behind that of other countries. In 2006 Pirls ranked Scotland as falling from 14th place in literacy and reading to 26th out of 40 countries.

Experts including Professor Eric Wilkinson of Glasgow University, have questioned the decision. He and others, are right to argue that we need tools like this to tell us where Scottish education is failing - and where it is succeeding. Mr Russell must think again.