It was meant to be the dullest of elections. We knew that by the end of it Theresa May would still be in No 10 Downing Street and Nicola Sturgeon would remain in Bute House. The two main issues of the campaign — Brexit and independence — were ones for which only a minority of Scots had voted.
It was hardly surprising then if we felt a bit Brenda from Bristol, the voter whose eye-rolling exasperation — “what, another one? I don’t believe it” — was the sound bite that kicked off the campaign.
The people with the most enthusiasm for the election were, surprisingly, those running the opposition parties, all of whom believed they stood to gain. For the SNP, it was a chance to reinforce their demand for a second independence referendum. For Labour, it was an opportunity to rid the party of its tenacious leader and return it to the control of the moderates and modernisers. For the Liberal Democrats there was the prospect of leveraging some support from their strong pro-remain stance. For Ukip, it was a chance to get back down the pub.
Throwing her reputation for worthy dullness and sensible caution to the wind, along with a 20-point lead in the polls, Theresa May has taken her party on a white-knuckle ride, which may yet end with her fatally damaged. The SNP’s focus on independence has failed to engage voters. Far from weakening his position, Jeremy Corbyn has consolidated his claim to the leadership of his party. The Lib Dems have failed to make any real headway and Ukip has imploded.
We have four days left to see how the campaign plays out but a topsy-turvy result where the expected winner turns out to be a loser and vice-versa is looking highly likely.
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The most distressing element has been the way the real issues — our children’s education and welfare, the health of our families and our friends, the happiness and comfort of our elderly relatives and neighbours, the prosperity of our country — when they have been aired at all, have been no more than formulaic brickbats in a political Punch and Judy show.
If you have friends or relatives facing major surgery or children stressing about exams or struggling to read well, it is difficult to listen to the point scoring of politicians without feeling anger. At a Times Plus readers’ event in Glasgow on the election last week, one lovely woman came up afterwards to tell me her grandchild was going into a class of 38. Just thinking about it caused her visible distress.
The Scottish National Party came to power a decade ago on the promise of reducing class sizes in early primary to 18 or less. Since then the proportion of children taught in classes of less than 18 is back at 2005 levels of 13%.
John Swinney acknowledged last week that his party had got it wrong on teacher training places. But if you make a key manifesto pledge, it should not be difficult to work out how many teachers you need for the population under the age of 12. We are a small country. It’s not difficult maths, unless you are one of the children leaving primary school effectively innumerate, as 20% of our children do.
We are all familiar with the Pisa statistics, which show that Scottish schoolchildren have dropped from 11th to 23rd place for reading, 11th to 24th place for maths and 10th to 19th place for science since 2006. Last week in a series of tweets, the SNP MSP John Mason suggested too much emphasis had been put on academic subjects in Scottish schools. What did it matter if a surgeon couldn’t spell? Lege atque lacrima [Read and weep].
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Sturgeon’s position on Scottish education has been consolidated into one of those generic school reports demoralised teachers cut and paste for hopeless pupils. Faint praise for some esoteric achievement — “Jamie is a great rainy day monitor and is an enthusiastic supporter of the junior school recycling initiative” — coupled with a weary acknowledgment of the growing hopelessness of the position. “However, his inability to grasp the basic principles of numeracy and literacy are causing some concern. Could try harder.”
We need to reframe the debate on education. Something needs to be done right now for the children who have experienced a decade of SNP education policy and who are about to leave school considerably less well educated than previous generations and less educated than compatriots in other countries with whom they will compete for jobs.
“It’s distressing real issues have been no more than formulaic brickbats in a political Punch and Judy show
It is of no comfort to these children and their parents to talk about improving attainment over the next five to 10 years. At the very least the education secretary should be implementing summer schools for pupils who are leaving primary school illiterate and innumerate. There should be extra tuition for children who are repeatedly failing to reach basic levels in maths and English at S2 and S3.
Teachers need time to recuperate and prepare for the next academic term but remunerate them properly and some would give up a week or two of holiday to help get children up to speed in core subjects.
There is an army of university students and postgraduates, currently working in bars and shops for minimum wages over the summer, who could be recruited to help teach pupils the basics. They could be augmented by some of the newly retired teachers. If the government can fund gimmicks such as baby boxes and state-sponsored guardians, it can find money to stop pupils slipping through the net.
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There are models for this. In East Renfrewshire, under the leadership of the former director of education, John Wilson, children who were unable to reach acceptable standards in literacy and numeracy were coached in summer schools . The upshot was that it became the local authority with the best exam results in the Scotland.
In the private sector, teachers organise clinics in maths, English and sciences. They make themselves available out of hours to their pupils on digital platforms.
Many of the Scottish universities offer summer schools for less advantaged pupils. Virtual schools, such as the Khan Academy, are helping students throughout the world to learn. Large Scottish companies would second staff for a week or two to help teach children if the result was better educated employees.
We need to take the education of our children into our own hands. Our leading educationalists have been increasingly vocal about school standards which are failing to keep up with other countries. They have been met with empty rhetoric in Holyrood.
There will be few winners in this election campaign but we need to make it clear to our political masters that we will no longer tolerate our children losing out.