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It’s rich for English Education minister Gillian Keegan to claim English schools are superior when English school buildings are literally crumbling. Her own department admitted that England had cherry-picked better performing schools with more affluent students to take part in the PISA exams, violating a rule that each participating nation should select pupils of average academic background.[1] England cheated, which won’t come as a surprise to most Scots.
Keegan fails to mention another little detail. Just 4.7% of English secondary schools took part in the PISA exams, whereas 32.8% of all Scottish did.[2] This should invalidate any attempts to make direct comparisons between the two nations, but we already know Keegan is about as sharp as a marble.
A 2-hour standardised test emphasising a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, fails to capture important educational objectives such as physical, moral, civic and artistic development and a capacity for critical thinking, noticeably lacking in the UK’s political leadership. Such a narrow test also fails to account for socio-economic inequality, which has grown under the Tories, and the impact this has on the education attainment of poorer students.
A better metric for judging a nation’s education system is the proportion of students going on to higher education. In 2021/22, more Scottish students were on Higher Education courses than in any year in the past decade, a 4% year-on-year increase.[3]
The real failure lies with the UK government. It has relentlessly slashed public spending not just on education but on healthcare. A nation’s primary resource is its people. Without a well-educated, healthy population, economic growth isn’t possible.
For Scottish children to realise their full human potential and contribute to a thriving nation, their parents and grandparents must leave this failing union.
Leah Gunn Barrett
[1] https://www.thenational.scot/news/23980483.tory-minister-failed-mention-england-cheated-pisa-tests/
[3] https://www.thenational.scot/news/23980483.tory-minister-failed-mention-england-cheated-pisa-tests/
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