Meeting of the Parliament 27 January 2016
For some reason, the Scottish National Party still wants us to judge it on its record, so let us do that. After nine years of nationalist decline, the cabinet secretary’s coat ought to be on a shoogly peg. Does she or anybody in the SNP think that it is acceptable that young people from wealthier families are twice as likely to go to university, seven times more likely to get three As at higher level and 12 times more likely to become a medical student? Do the cabinet secretary and the SNP really take comfort from an OECD report that notes the poor literacy of primary and secondary students and the
“declining relative and absolute achievement levels in mathematics”?
Should the SNP really take comfort from the fact that the report says that we might have a good system if it was strengthened with a stronger role for local authorities—so that the Scottish Government had less control—and more money for councils? How can the SNP pretend that things are wonderful when we see the narrowing of the curriculum, the decline in modern languages study and the lowest teacher numbers for 10 years?
In the face of such a mess, what do the cabinet secretary and the SNP do? They reprofile £500 million from council budgets while their back benchers, many of whom are ex-councillors, say nothing. SNP councillors mutter but comply if they control the council and, if they do not control it, they blame the council rather than the Scottish Government. Cabinet secretary, in case you do not know this, education is a huge proportion of council spending. In some cases, it is more than 40 per cent. You cannot make such extensive cuts without harming education.