The Newly Created Lost Generation of Scots, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon demands that Scottish children get 50% face to face learning time in Schools, her empty words and rhetoric show how little she and the SNP leadership care about the life chances of working class children, 50% is not good enough, Sturgeon’s education intervention is part of the SNP’s carefully staged managed persona for her since the PR mileage of ‘Nicola saves Scotland from coronavirus’ is literally is dying a painful death

Dear All

Any country that wants to progress must invest in its most important and valuable resource, that resource is people. The way to invest in people is through education. Education is the route that helps to ensure that working class kids have options. In return for having an educated population, we as a society see benefits, such as tax returns, social cohesion, social mobility and the raising up of society as a whole. If a country doesn’t invest in education it is the worst political decision it can make in both the long term and the short term. The creation of an underclass is one of the most damaging things that a country can produce and then allow to fester. In the wake of coronavirus, we are now seeing how SNP mindset is working to push further back the life chances of the most vulnerable in society.

The greatest lie that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP ever played on the Scottish people is that they cared for Scotland’s people. Many young Scots who hoped to go to University are going to see their hopes for getting a place in a shrinking quota further diminished by not having the tools to get into higher education. If you didn’t know better you would think judging by the rhetoric that the SNP were a party in opposition instead of controlling the levers of power of the Scottish Government. An example of what I have written is Nicola Sturgeon is ‘warning’ councils she expects pupils to be taught at least half the time in a classroom when schools return in August.

Working class Scottish kids need to be in school 100% of the time, plus they also need access to private tutors, private tutors are still the preserve of the rich. As someone who uses the Glasgow libraries, I have seen private school kids getting further education from private tutors even before the coronavirus hit Scotland. Working class Scottish kids from the most disadvantaged backgrounds aren’t being given a level playing field.

And they never were!

The hypocrisy of Nicola Sturgeon saying she has “concerns” about anything less than 50 per cent face-to-face teaching time is a sick joke. Under the SNP, the downward trend for Scots kids continues. Whatever measures are put in place by councils will not be enough, and the idea that the Scottish Government wants class time “maximised” is meaningless. You see when it comes to learning, people learn at different speeds and a key element in learning which opens up the wonder of understanding a subject is the ability to analyse. The ability to analyse, to breakdown a subject is crucial, you might call it ‘getting a hook’ where suddenly everything basically lines up in your mind and with that bedrock, you can achieve comprehensive understanding.

What is proposed by the SNP as help isn’t really going to be effective unless they can bring back 100% teaching time. Ideas like teaching on a Saturday and working through the October holiday isn’t going to make up the additional 50% of teaching time lost. Years ago, I came up with an idea of Scotland having, ‘community colleges’, this idea wasn’t new but new for Scotland, the community colleges would be run out of schools. This idea was all about bring the Japanese method of ‘cramming colleges’ to address the fact that poor kids couldn’t afford private tutors. The Japanese see the value of education at a young age as the best platform to prepare their kids for higher education or the world of work. Such an idea never came to the UK because the politicians found no value in it because they send their kids to private schools.

John Swinney, the SNP Education Minister prior to coronavirus has done a bad job of protecting kids’ futures. Nothing he has done in my mind shows he has Scotland’s best interests at heart. He failed to overturn CfE, a botched project on learning, and like the rest of the SNP leadership, he is more keen on bring an lgbt agenda into schools so that very young kids learn about anal sex among other things. John Swinney is too all intensive purposes a front man for the lgbt community of the SNP, the ‘enlightened heterosexual’.

So, what is the intervention of Nicola Sturgeon about when education secretary John Swinney said it was “unlikely” schools would be back to normal by summer 2022? It is all about a PR stunt to give the impression to the public that ‘Nicola Cares’. This is the continuation of slick PR scheme that the Nationalists have run with since she took over the leadership from Alex Salmond. Sturgeon, an angry bitter poisonous wee woman was given ‘make over’, hair, clothes, shoes and media training in an attempt to appear likeable. But the reality is that Nicola Sturgeon isn’t likeable as a person, there is something deeply rotten in her soul which she struggles continually to stop bursting out.

One thing, I don’t buy into is when the Scottish Tories claimed Sturgeon was “desperate” to wrestle back control of the subject from Mr Swinney. The SNP operate under the ‘Cult of Personality’, where the leader has full control and Ministers are autonomous up until the leader makes a decision which must be carried out. What the Scottish Tories got right that that the SNP are sowing confusion. The confusion is part of an act or mini play in which the ending is already written before the first act, the leader Nicola Sturgeon steps in to provide almost fairytale wisdom. In this case, like Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon is out of depth regarding education, how it is taught and how the provision of how it is delivered.

Both Swinney and Sturgeon don’t have real teaching experience!

Sturgeon saying her Scottish Government would now scrutinise council school plans and ask them to “reconsider and revise” to me is a superficial understanding of the real deep seated and systemic problems. The SNP are a party which pretty much exclusive operate on short term strategy, in the 13 years of government, Scotland is not a better place for people who are working class. Sturgeon thinks that throwing money at a problem is the solution to everything, which the analysis of how it is spent, when it is spent, who is spending it, and what is the overall effect of the spending of cash.   

Sturgeon’s intervention now is a rebuke to councils who have angered parents by already announcing plans for pupils to return for one day a week or for a third of the week. Her stepping in is all about seizing an opportunity to garner votes ahead of the 2021 Holyrood election. Apparently ‘Nicola saves Scotland’ from coronavirus might not be panning out as she and the SNP hoped for, the care home deaths and the overall total of deaths in Scotland isn’t an endorsement of her leadership.

Last Friday, John Swinney said he would like to see the face-to-face teaching “being applied at as close to 50 per cent as it possibly can be”. In contrast SNP-led Edinburgh City Council told parents only 33% of a school’s roll would be in school at any one time, and schools would only open Monday to Thursday. To me, this looks like a staged event undersell and then in comes Sturgeon to raise expectations. What sells this nonsense is a timid and compliant press, so we have at her daily briefing, Sturgeon being asked if the one day in three was good enough and whether she would consider a Scotland-wide minimum for face-to-face teaching in schools. For many who follow football, they will be familiar with the ‘set piece’, and this little episode has all the hallmarks of a staged little drama.

Sturgeon said:

“I would say very clearly, No I don’t think that is good enough. I said very clearly in my opening remarks we have to start from a point of seeking to maximise, absolutely maximise, the amount of time children will spend in a school environment having face-to-face learning with their teachers. While we have necessary safety constraints in place, that will, for a period mean that is not 100% of time being spent in school. But one of the things we will be looking at as we scrutinise the plans is whether there should be a minimum that we seek to have. That’s work we will consider in the days ahead.”

So, a lot of jargon, meaningless jargon at that with no promises, so also not the use of words, “  we have to start from a point of seeking to maximise, absolutely maximise, the amount of time children will spend in a school environment having face-to-face learning with their teachers”.

This is hope with no substance, designed to get Sturgeon over a low bar hurdle, no real pressure from the press in her carefully staged managed interviews. Nicola Sturgeon added teachers, pupils and parents had to be confident that schools would be safe, and the Government would ask its education experts on lessons from other countries. This means she intends to copy others which is another hallmark of her SNP Government, and shows a lack of knowledge in depth or the ability to be creative.

She also said:

“I want to get as quickly as we can, and as quickly as is safe and feasible, back to a position where young people have normal schooling just as quickly as possible. We will do that in absolute good faith. The priority for all of us must be the highest quality education for our young people, and to do everything we may be required to do to ensure that any impact on children’s education does not adversely affect them in the longer term. I cannot stress enough how much that means to me personally and the Government.”

One thing if you observe the SNP in action is that they don’t operate in ‘good faith’. In her threat to compel councils to offer a minimum standard of face-to-face learning, the issue is time. Smaller classes will mean more classes, and more classes mean longer hours for teachers. Compelling councils who either don’t have the money or the staff doesn’t really solve the problem, because the problem is time.

The problem is Time!

Scottish Tory education secretary Jamie Greene said:

“We are now several months into this crisis and that’s more than enough time for the SNP to have come up with a nationwide plan to maximise in-class schooling. Instead, all we’re seeing is more confusion, mixed messaging, and a chronic lack of leadership. Parents and teachers won’t know who to listen to – the First Minister or the education secretary – as their stories are increasingly different. Councils are being left in the dark and left in the lurch. This was a desperate attempt by Nicola Sturgeon to wrestle back control of this issue from John Swinney, who she clearly thinks has made a mess of things in recent days. As a result of this shambolic incompetence, right across Scotland children will miss out on huge swathes of education, and parents will simply be unable to return to work under current SNP plans. This is much than attainment; this is going to hamper Scotland’s economic recovery in the short, medium and long-term.”

Finally, Scotland used to have one of the best educational systems in the world; those days truly are long gone and seem permanently to remain as part of a bygone era. The claims of Nicola Sturgeon standing up for Scottish kids regarding their education are nonsense, as fake as her claims about standing up for Scotland. Over 13 years, the SNP had an opportunity to fix the broken system of education but instead choose to put others above working class kids at every opportunity. Whether it is 33% or 50% of face to face teaching time in Scotland’s schools, it isn’t good enough. What is needed is a return to a minimum of 100%, then that is the start point for the debate on the educational inequality which exists and is never tackled. We are seeing another lost generation of working class kids who have no real future; this has been solely created by Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP cohorts.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University