For all the SNP whingeing over the past 17 years about how poor, downtrodden Scotland is mistreated by Westminster, we are entitled to ask just how poor and downtrodden we would be without the additional £2357 spending per head which the UK Government has to cover.
With a deficit of £22.7 billion to cover the gap between public spending in Scotland and revenues raised here, we are also entitled to ask exactly what we get for this hugely generous settlement.
Even with higher income tax and other Scottish Government levies, higher child benefit payments, the baby box, free tuition fees and prescriptions would not be possible without this support.
Splashing cash is easy and the SNP has thrown so much money around it did not have, particularly on big public sector pay deals without productivity agreements, that the result is this week’s freeze on further public spending. Yet still Scottish Finance Secretary Shona Robison blames Westminster for the effect of decisions she and her colleagues have made.
The impact of unbudgeted giveaways and incompetent administration is all around us, from the crisis in the NHS, the desperate housing shortage, the crumbling roads and as children return to school this week, falling education standards.
The fact that thousands of school leavers received blank emails when they opened their exam result communications last week just symbolised the disarray in Scottish education, and the students are the victims. As much as the SNP likes to disguise the truth, the decline in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results going back over 20 years tells its own story.
The last report, released in December, showed the capabilities of 15-year-olds had fallen to their lowest ever level in maths and science and joint lowest for reading. And as the fall in this year’s higher pass rate as revealed, the local response from one Edinburgh SNP MSP, Gordon Macdonald, was to deflect, as if citing a few countries with poorer PISA scores than Scotland makes any difference.
This year’s school leavers have never known an education system which hasn’t been controlled by the SNP, yet like bad children’s party magicians, their politicians try to distract attention when the causes are plain to see; an epidemic of classroom violence, an exam body in meltdown, a measurable decline in basic capabilities and a curriculum which delivers anything but excellence.
Scotland is supposed to be an outward looking county, but under the SNP more children now take Higher PE than all languages combined, despite the invaluable skills learned by taking a second language. Why? Because PE is a soft option and almost impossible to fail. But still the overall Highers pass rate fell.
The SNP likes to talk about Scotland’s potential being held back by the United Kingdom, but the potential lies entirely with the workforce of the future, and all the evidence shows Scotland’s potential is being held back by the SNP’s inability to grasp the need for meaningful reform and instead replacing it with an addiction to statistical manipulation.
Having ended the ruinous relationship with the anti-growth Greens, the SNP has supposedly embraced the need for economic expansion to secure future prosperity, but that is entirely reliant on an education system which works. Closing the poverty-related attainment gap is pointless if it just means destroying the top.
