“From the earliest years until adulthood,” insisted Nicola Sturgeon, in April 2016 and ten days out from the last Scottish Parliament election, “improving Scotland’s education system should be the number one priority of the next Scottish government.”
Actually, she has spent far more time banging on about independence and Brexit. A package of timid reforms for Scotland’s schools was abandoned when the main teachers’ union arched its back and hissed – and education remains the SNP administration’s number one embarrassment. As is highlighted today in the latest annual report of the Programme for International Student Assessment, set up by the OECD to measure the performance of some 600,000 15-year olds in some 200 countries worldwide.
