How the SNP wrecked Scottish education

Spectator

18-06-2025

A small but not insignificant morsel of data on the state of education after 18 years of the SNP running Scotland. New figures show the gap between the poorest and wealthiest school leavers has widened to a five-year high. In the least deprived areas, just 3 per cent of school leavers fail to go to a 'positive destination', the Scottish Government's term for higher or further education, training, employment or voluntary work. Yet in the most deprived areas, areas like the former Lanarkshire industrial town from which I'm writing this, more than one in ten children leave school to what is euphemistically called 'other destinations', i.e. unemployment.
Scottish Labour's education spokeswoman Pam Duncan-Glancy accuses the SNP of 'leaving Scotland's most disadvantaged pupils behind'. It's hard to disagree. Education used to be all the rage at Holyrood, the subject of speeches and pledges and reports and, most of all, photo ops. In 2015, early in her first ministership, Nicola Sturgeon – remember her? – gave a grand speech declaring that her defining priority would be closing the attainment gap between poor children and those from affluent families. These days Sturgeon tours the country chatting literature with minor celebs and touting her own forthcoming memoirs, but her legacy remains.
And what a legacy it is. The attainment gap she undertook to close is widening. Children from the poorest parts of Scotland are 23 per cent less likely than those in the richest areas to leave school with at least one National 5, the Scottish equivalent of the GCSE. At Higher level (comparable to the A-Level), the gap is 38 per cent. Just 57 per cent leave school with a Higher and one in seven leave before even getting to that level. In reading, there is an 88-point performance gap between the richest and poorest children; in science, it's 92 points; in maths, 98.
While the most deprived children bear the brunt of the Scottish education slump, no one escapes unharmed. Data from Pisa, an international study of school performance, shows that, almost two decades after the SNP came to power at Holyrood, test scores in science have fallen by 32 points and in maths by 35 points. Reading is the soaraway success story, with a drop of a mere six points in test performance. Children in Scottish schools are behind their English counterparts in all three disciplines. Little wonder the Institute for Fiscal Studies says 'something, somewhere is going wrong in Scottish education'.
It's something, somewhere, all at once. Subject choice has narrowed under the SNP's Curriculum for Excellence. More than 40 per cent of pupils are persistently absent from Scottish high schools. A survey by teaching union NASUWT found 44 per cent of respondents north of the border suffered physical abuse or violence at the hands of their pupils last year. There were more than 40,000 violent incidents in local authority schools in 2024 and since the pandemic there has been a 76 per cent increase in offensive weapons in the classroom, with Police Scotland recording 194 cases in the past three years. Even in the most conducive education environment, learning can be very difficult for some pupils. In a culture of chaos, it can become impossible.
Back in 2015, when Nicola Sturgeon gave her landmark speech on closing the educational attainment gap, she said:
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.
It does matter, but did it ever really matter to Sturgeon? A decade on, the balance of the evidence confirms that outcomes in Scottish education declined on her watch and that children from the poorest families shouldered the worst of it. Schools have been struggling to recover ever since Sturgeon made haste for the exit and a media career. As she offers election night punditry, tours theatres and playhouses with her novelist pals, and chips in the odd book review, it is difficult to discern where or when she put her neck on the line. Perhaps its high brass content made things difficult.