Comparing pupils in 2009 and 2025 reveals how the SNP have ruined Scottish education – Cameron Wyllie

On Tuesday, the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results for 2025 were published, showing how our young people in Scotland are doing in vital skills – reading, maths and science – by comparison with, a, how they used to do and, b, other countries.

Now, there are lots of commentaries in almost every paper detailing the continuing demise of our school pupils’ performances in these key areas of the curriculum – a positive smorgasbord of school statistics. Neatly, however, it’s possible to express these results as expressions of time and these, perhaps, are the most disheartening of all.

READ MORE: PISA figures have a clear message for Scottish education: copy England – Professor Lindsay Paterson

Scotland far behind England

The Curriculum for Excellence was introduced in 2010, so the 2009 Pisa results provide a reliable comparison with the cohort of today’s young people, who are, on average: 14 months behind the 2009 cohort in science; eight months behind in reading; and 19 months behind in maths.

Just think. The average fourth-year pupil in Scotland in his or her study of maths is now more or less at the same point as someone a year-and-a-half younger in 2009.

But it gets worse when you get into international comparison, because of course the most obvious one is with England. You know, back when I started teaching, people used to relocate from England because the Scottish education system was so highly thought of.

READ MORE: It would take 20 years of radical change to improve Scottish schools, education expert says

Now, in the group of 40 countries measured, England is in the top ten for all three of reading, science and maths and Scotland is 11th, 16th and 21st respectively. These are facts which would have been totally unconscionable even 20 years ago.

Why is England doing so well? Well, I know that the Tories didn’t do much right in their last few periods of UK government, but they did education right. The policies pushed through by Michael Gove, then Education Secretary, and particularly by his clever, efficient and courageous schools minister, Nick Gibb, have changed the landscape of English education for the better.

So, every educational policy maker in Scotland should be reading Reforming Lessons, by said Nick Gibb and Robert Peal, which lucidly and modestly details the radical changes which have brought English schools, their teachers and students to this commendable level of success. But of course, they won’t. “Rocks will melt in the sun” before the Scottish educational monolith bends an ear to anything English.

READ MORE: SNP accused of being 'in denial' on Scotland's education record over PISA results

SNP’s fondness for artistic expression

Which brings me on to how the SNP government at Holyrood reacted to these embarrassing figures. Now, we do, of course, have a relatively new Education Secretary in the shape of Mairi McAllan, following a stream of SNP luminaries who held that post, including John Swinney and Jenny Gilruth.

Ms McAllan is suggested by some as the next First Minister. She said quite a lot about the Pisa results at Holyrood, and, extraordinarily, she seemed to be quite pleased by them, although she admitted that it would perhaps be useful if the maths results were better. Indeed she accepted, with some hesitation, that maths, reading and science were “very, very important”, but went on to say that Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence also looked at “artistic expression, problem solving [and] moral education”.

Good old CfE! It’s as if other countries don’t do this, while Scotland produces magnificent artists who are deeply moral and who can solve problems like lightning (providing of course such problems don’t involve being good at say, geometry or chemistry and don’t involve any complex language). These vague areas – so close to the heart of so many Scottish educationalists, and viewed with justified suspicion by so many of Scotland’s actual teachers – can’t of course, be measured.

Where is Ms McAllan’s evidence that Scottish young people are, as a result of their education, more moral than those in Ireland or South Korea? How fortunate that another of the SNP’s recent announcements is that they will provide minimum incomes for Scotland’s artists – presumably to cater for all the creative, but functionally illiterate, geniuses our education system produces. When will an SNP education spokesperson just admit that we need to change direction?

READ MORE: Readers' letters: Swinney should hang his head in shame over Pisa results

Hubris and blinkered thinking

I’m bracing myself for the usual response here – ‘ex-head is talking Scotland’s teachers down’ – but I don’t believe Scotland’s teachers think that. They are brave and hard-working professionals who, in their hearts, know they are fighting a losing battle to drive up standards in Scottish schools.

No wonder, as reported in the press recently, so many of them quit within five years of becoming teachers, or, in despair, go and work in other countries. I know that the Pisa results will be just another blow in their despondency and they are right to be angry.

Our young people are our future. If so many of them aren’t doing well in maths and English – skills that extend way beyond school subjects and which are necessary for virtually every career path – then of course we are going to fall behind economically.

Instead of shame and apology, we get yet more hubris and blinkered thinking from the SNP. But don’t worry – McAllan and her team of young advisers – no doubt deeply moral, artistically aware problem-solvers – will be standing by as another cohort of young Scots sinks in international league tables.

They are being betrayed. Heads should be rolling.

Cameron Wyllie is a retired headmaster. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and hosts the podcast, Two Heads are Better than One, with Rod Grant