Decisions around how we teach our children, and what we teach them, are really about the kind of people we want them to become and, ultimately, the type of country we want to live in. They concern big questions about the knowledge and experiences that we value as a society, where power is located, and how it can be challenged in pursuit of change.
Debates about structures and resources, meanwhile, are really about whether or not we are willing to prioritise our children’s needs.
Of course these issues are political. How could they not be?
But the extent to which education is made ‘party political’ is another matter entirely. It is also a particularly acute problem in Scotland.
We’ve seen plenty of cynical politicking over schools in recent years, and an increase over the past decade, including Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘judge me on my record’ schtick (which by the end of this parliament will have cost us around £2bn), Jack McConnell’s interjections during the Covid period, and pretty much all of Russel Findlay’s contributions since becoming Tory leader.
At The Herald, we’ve tried so far as possible to stay away from this. We don’t think education stories need a political shouting-match going on to make them interesting, which is why a lot of our education coverage doesn’t include comments from opposition politicians.
But it can be a difficult balancing act because, once again, education is political, and sometimes we do need, and want, to know what MSPs (or at least the PR team working with them) think about an idea, development or revelation.
Sadly, things are about to get even more difficult on that front. By the time you read this we will be a couple of weeks into the new school year, and a little bit closer to an event that will turn the party-politics dial up to eleven: the 2026 elections to the Scottish Parliament. Many of my colleagues – especially the politics correspondents and columnists – will be excited at the prospect, but as an education specialist I feel very differently about the prospect of endless heat amid an absence of light.
The positioning has already started. Scottish Government comments to the press, or statements provided on background, have increasingly tried to shift the focus for failures (including those from the SNP manifesto in 2021) onto councils, who were are told again and again are the ones actually responsible for delivering education. The implication is that other people are to blame for the SNP’s broken promises, a position that doesn’t bode well when the pressure really starts to ramp up in the months to come.
Meanwhile, opposition parties are trying to get additional (and largely irrelevant) ‘vote for us’ lines into the comments they issue in response to stories, and if you know what you’re looking for in their press releases you can probably figure out what aspects of the education portfolio are likely to be the focus of their campaigning in the run up to the election in May next year.
Throw in Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir pulling the spotlight back onto the SNP’s dreadful education record, the ongoing – and, for what it’s worth, international – issues with violence in classrooms, and the increasing viciousness of an anti-trans campaign now targeting schools, as well as the rise of the Reform Party, and there’s a real chance that the year ahead could be particularly unpleasant for those of us who are actually interested in improving Scotland’s education system.
But I don’t think it has to be that way.
What if, instead of soundbites, cherry-picked stats, and lowest common denominator cruelty, parties came into the 2026 election with genuine, ambitious, integrated proposals to reform early years provision, or teacher career structures, or the exam system?
What if they talked about the importance of rural schools and nurseries to the communities they serve, and suggested ways in which the Scottish Government can help to protect those links?
Perhaps someone might want to discuss the pros and cons of the trend towards enormous ‘superschools’, or consider whether our two-stage approach to schooling still offers the best experiences for young people.
Do we have enough data about literacy and numeracy levels?
Those are the sorts of questions I wanted to be asking when I joined The Herald, and in a school year with an election near the end they feel more important than ever.
