Alex Massie Alex Massie

The greatest scandal in Britain is the failure to give poor children a proper education.

Earlier this week, I was part of a panel on Newsnight Scotland discussing the latest – some would say, belated – efforts designed to improve Glasgow’s dismally underachieving state schools.

That they need improvement is beyond doubt. In Scotland’s largest city, only 7% of state-educated pupils leave school with five good Higher passes. In Scotland as a whole a mere 220 children from the poorest 20% of neighbourhoods achieved three As at Higher (the minimum grades required for admission to leading universities such as St Andrews). As I said on the programme, this should be considered a national scandal. More than that, a disgrace. (Like Fraser, I wish more people were angry about these things.)

To be fair, Glasgow City Council is trying. It may have taken 30 years of complacency, neglect and failure to persuade Councillors that something – anything! – had to be done. But there are small signs of progress. Stephen Curran, the Labour councillor in charge of the city’s education system, pointed out that more than 95% of recent leavers from Castlemilk High School left for a job, an apprenticeship or a place at college. This is progress even if, as he acknowledged, not all of it shows up on league tables measuring pure academic success. But it is a start.

Even so Gordon Brewer, Newsnight’s presenter, wanted to know why Glasgow wasn’t copying some of the efforts made to improve London’s schools. A reasonable question, even if their positions are not wholly comparable. But to say they are not wholly comparable is not to suggest there are no sensible comparisons that may be made.

I think the Adonis-Gove agenda in England does have many lessons for a Scottish educational establishment that, until recently, has been longer on self-satisfaction than educational achievement. Even so, it would be silly to suppose that the Adonis-Gove way is the only way.

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