The continuing SNP education banjax.

[WingnutSOS]

This makes me angry, and sad.

PISA results for 2025 show Scottish (and Welsh) pupils are more than a year behind their English peers for maths and science. Also behind on reading. (20 points is equivalent of a year of schooling).

The SNP should hang their heads in shame.

Scottish education used to be the gold standard across the world. Now thanks to the SNP, Scottish pupils are more than a year behind English pupils when it comes to maths and science, and well behind on reading.

The SNP likes to claim they are stronger for Scotland but this is the reality of 20 years of SNP rule.

A dumbed down race to the bottom - attainment gap closing, but not by elevating those at the bottom 😳

Curriculum for excellence my arse.

Leaving aside your statistical argument - which is wrong, since the whole point of sufficient sampling relative to cohort size is to account for variation - of course countries are measuring against other countries: that’s the whole point of the research.

Countries want and need to know how their education system’s performance compares to others’. Without that they can have no idea how their achievements and failures rank generally. No country can sensibly say “we may be getting worse compared to the rest of the world, but we’ve improved our own scores on last year - yippee!”

I have no doubt that if the Scottish or Welsh PISA results showed the countries doing better against others - especially against England - they’d be crowing about it and arguing that the PISA methodology is good and reliable.

Last night's Scotcast on this subject is worth a watch. They had John McGhee, head of education for Glasgow Council on, who spoke very well. Figures they have are showing almost 5% of children can't read by the time they get to secondary school. Seven years of education, and there is that proportion of children can't read three letter words. Putting politics aside, Scottish children are being failed.

@DenizenOfAisleOfShame I remember when the SNP crowed about GERS being some “gold standard” when oil prices were high and they were writing the infamous White Paper, then criticised the methodology once it became clear that ship had sailed. It’s apparently “flawed” now…..
8

It really is a tragedy 😢

But the real tragedy is that we have a government that fails to admit to its failings, and so they won’t be addressed. It’s appalling. Who votes for these utter morons?

I don't read those results as Scottish education getting worse, what it really shows is that Goves much hated reforms in England have improved educational outcomes. Wales, NI and the OECD average isn't significantly different to Scottish results.
I read an Economist article which said Finlands education system has negatively influenced education systems in Europe, it was a surprise first place in the first PISA tests, but has been dropping down the rankings since then.

Yeah, it’s not wrong.

As I say it’s not useless but as a means of comparison between 2 countries with different demographics it isn’t great.

No accounting for sociological aspects at all.

What ‘sociological’ aspects ought to have been considered that weren’t though? Both first and second generation immigrants are outperforming white Scots, and I thought Scotland was throwing vast amounts of benefits at poor kids to pull them out of (statistical) poverty and we were doing better than England. Are we saying throwing cash at people isn’t making kids lives better?

I disagreed with some of Gove's measures but I think he had some correct ideas : studying whole books, for one, rather than extracts.
The SNP's education system clearly isn't working and hopefully people will soon wake up to that.

Scotland’s reading score has fallen from 526 in 2000 to 493 in 2022 and 488 in 2025. Does that convince you that Scotlands education is getting worse? Every 20 points is thought to equate to a years learning. So that’s is dropping by about 2 years of reading level. We cannot keep ignoring the elephant in the room that things are getting much, much worse.

The Finland case is funny. They topped the rankings, everyone came to look to see what they were doing just as they rewrote the curriculum. The new curriculum was dire and has sent them falling down the rankings, taking those that thought the new curriculum was the source of their success with them.

This is accurate re: Finland.

I was part of the top of the world rankings cohort and the curriculum was very traditional and knowledge based. Lots of repetitive rope learning to get really solid foundations and pattern recognition.

The curriculum has since been changed to problem based, themes based, self directed nonsense. This new curriculum was introduced with real hubris, and marketed to other countries. No doubt it inspired the ridiculous CfE in Scotland. It failed Finnish children, and is failing those countries that followed the bandwagon.

@apples24 this makes sense. The SNP also lifted the baby box idea from Finland but as is so depressingly typical, failed to implement the compulsory antenatal engagement that went along with it in Finland. Cue zero improvement in infant mortality but a headline grabbing freebie bribe for votes…

The very last paragraph of the English PISA report admits:

“There was, however, evidence of potential bias arising from pupil-level characteristics, such as free school meal eligibility, EAL status, and SEN support eligibility.”

This accompanies the attached table with shows how the final sample differed from the original randomised sample, wrt those pupil-level characteristics. I think the differences are not insignificant, to be honest.

Also, I think this open letter from 12 years ago gives a new perspective on the whole subject.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-tests-damaging-education-academics

I believe in a knowledge centred curriculum myself, but I don’t think PISA should be the vehicle to drive us in that direction.

Having read a bit about it yesterday, I think the OECD-wide declines points more to the harmful effects of smartphones, and also to some extent AI. That’s one of the main lessons to be drawn imv - the Europe-wide collapse in reading.

And the lax sentencing of minors without the vast manpower to ensure the criminal doesn’t reoffend - therapy, education, community projects, work tutoring etc that goes on in Scandinavia. So many ‘progressive’ ideas failed due to being implemented in such a half-assed way.

"the Europe-wide collapse in reading" - this. It makes me so sad, I come from a very working class background, first in my wider family to go to university, run my own business, which has given me a life I would never have envisaged even as a teenager. My mum let me walk to the local library from an early age, and I was a voracious reader (still am), and I had some great teachers (looking back).

I also was disappointed in how much Mairi Mcallan talked round the subject yesterday, rather than admitting we need to do better by the current generation going through our schools.

I do agree with the point about AI and phone use - I’m sure the bad cognitive effects are only beginning to be seen and will be fought by big tech as hard as meta fought the US cases they just settled. I’d add that the obsession with monetising degrees (even in Scotland degrees are a big investment) means so few people are taking subjects that teach critical thinking, broader cultural appreciation.

it has bled backwards through education - fewer taking history, languages, music etc.

but then we’re also getting poor STEM passes
at Nat 5 as well…

@Tomorrowisanewday one of the saddest sites has been the demolishing of what was a fantastic library in my old hometown, after it was turned into (now defunct in favour of newly - badly -built) council offices. The library was downgraded into an empty shop.

I had the happiest of memories of weekly trips to the children’s section with my mum, later on during study leave spending days there with others preparing for our exams. Good times. 😭

@WingnutSOS One of the things I love most about the stories about Dolly Parton is that she gave so much money to provide children with books. Because her father couldnt read, and she knew how much more he would have achieved if he could. every child should have access to books!

This popped up on my X feed. Sorry I don't have a share token for the article but the comments are interesting. https://x.com/alexmassie/status/2097758423563825325?s=20

@Arran2024 I was just reading that too!

Only 40% pass maths? That's shocking.

As an aside, I tried nitter to read the comments and see they're having legal trouble from X.

If anybody ever needs a sharetoken for a Times article just give me a wave, Alex Massie article here
https://www.thetimes.com/article/e17a3386-d463-4338-be11-a01e49d79f7c?shareToken=a43208ae3382d5b8dca8fbd1b0479c98&ver=article

I wonder if Swinney has hosted a meeting with McAllan, Gilruth, Scottish education leaders et al since the PISA results came out.

If so, was there any reflection, a sense of shame, accountability, panic or guilt and a plan for the future?

How could the SNP govt and the Curriculum for Excellence fail Scottish children so badly?

I suspect any kind of meeting would be to figure out how to spin it, ignore it.

The reality is that none of these ministers care about Scottish children or educational standards.

Imagine having a job where you could be so staggeringly incompetent and feel no sense of responsibility or accountability.

This is so bad

And it’s depressing that none of the government nor the faithful care

Independence seems to be the only thing that matters to a large percentage of the voters.