The SNP is a motor of educational decay, de-schooling Scots

“Let me be clear – I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people then what are you prepared to? It really matters.” 

Thus spake Nicola Queen of Scots, in a keynote address to education leaders in 2015, asking that her term in office as First Minister should be judged by her performance in delivering quality education to Scottish pupils. That was more than four years and two disastrous PISA education league table reports ago.

The spotlight has again been turned on Scotland’s relentlessly declining education system by The Times’ recent revelation that Scottish education secretary John Swinney (also deputy First Minister to Nicola Sturgeon) is set to miss his self-imposed targets to improve failing schools by a country mile. Swinney set a target of 68 per cent of primary school pupils in the most deprived schools achieving literacy by the end of this term, and 75 percent attaining numeracy. In fact, standards have remained almost unchanged since the targets were announced in the 2016-17 school year.

Why would anyone be surprised? Under the stewardship of the SNP Scottish education, once the admiration of the world, has slumped to derisory levels. The SNP has not the slightest notion of how to improve the situation, nor any serious interest in doing so – provided Scots are sufficiently literate to put a cross opposite Yes in a putative Indyref2, that will suffice.

The SNP administration seeks only to camouflage its failure. In 2017, for example, the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) revealed that only 49 per cent of S2 pupils performed well at writing, as compared with 64 per cent in 2012. Over the same period P7 pupils’ writing ability had declined from 72 per cent to 65 per cent. The previous year an SSLN report on numeracy had similarly recorded a decline in maths.

The SNP government promised to take prompt action in response to this embarrassing report and, in fact, it did so: it abolished the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy which had exposed this decline. Instead, the Scottish government announced: “New statistics on literacy and numeracy performance will be available annually from the teacher professional judgement data collection…”

Unfortunately for the Sturgeon administration, Scotland’s fast-track march towards illiteracy and innumeracy is still being recorded by the OECD’s PISA “league tables” of international educational performance. The latest results were published last month and they made horrific reading for any Scottish parent.

On the eve of the SNP coming to power the PISA report rated Scotland in 10^th place internationally for performance in science, with a mean score of 515 points; in the latest report Scotland has fallen to 23^rd place with a mean score of 490 in science. In mathematics the SNP inherited a country whose pupils were rated in 11^th place internationally with a mean score of 506; today Scotland comes 27^th with a mean score of 489. Both the science and maths scores are record lows.

The SNP has become a motor of illiteracy and innumeracy, de-schooling what was formerly the most universally educated country in the world. This disastrous decline is coinciding with the period in history when education and skills are most essential and decisive for life chances and prosperity both for individuals and entire nations.

The SNP would claim, however, that its reforms are creating a state-of-the-art educational model: under its plans, maths and all other subjects are to be taught from an “LGBT perspective” and guidelines due to come into force this year will instruct children as young as five to “decide” what “gender” they are. It remains to be seen what improvement these cutting-edge reforms will effect in Scotland’s performance in the next PISA report – unless, of course, the SNP decides to withdraw from that embarrassing forum of educational transparency in favour of a system whereby teachers assess their own pupils.

It is one of the wonders of the political world that the Scottish electorate has not yet turned on the party of institutionalized incompetence that is radically wrecking education, health and every other basic plank of society. Yet it is not a situation without precedent: Britain voted in three successive general elections for Tony Blair, a politician now so discredited that he could not visit even his former – now Tory-held – constituency without inviting a reception involving tar and feathers.

In cynical political terms it might be argued that the longer the SNP holds power and the more damage it does to Scotland’s social infrastructure the more extreme and irreversible will be its eventual rejection at the ballot box. But that is scant comfort for those Scots who are increasingly experiencing Third World public services, notably in education.

“I want to be judged on this.” You will be, Nicola, you will. The only question is how long it will take for a deceived public to recognize the outrageous imposture that has been practised upon it and remove from power those who, under the pretence of patriotism, have done enormous damage to the country they are unlikely ever to rule again once their abject failures have been exposed.