Our education system is in the midst of an academic, pastoral and behavioural crisis. Andy Maciver argues that if the new Qualifications Scotland body does not understand this, it may do more harm than good.

“What reforms are you proposing? Give me an idea” came the question from Colin Mackay on STV’s Scotland Tonight on Monday, directed at Qualifications Scotland, the new agency set up to return Scotland to the global education elite.

“We have already removed the external exam from Practical Cakecraft” came the answer.

For those industrial leaders who have been warning us that Scottish school-leavers are needing, in effect, remedial training compared to young adults from other countries, it is difficult to imagine that this is the sort of transformation they have in mind.

I was sitting listening to the interview on Monday night, before offering analysis as part of the show’s Monday Night Panel. I simply rolled my eyes, but in reality we are well past the point where an eye-roll is enough. We talk at length in this country about the problems in the NHS, about sluggish economic growth, about the existential problems faced by universities and colleges. All are important, but none are as worthy of action as the collapse of Scotland’s schooling.

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For those who are hoping that the replacement of the Scottish Qualifications Authority with Qualifications Scotland will be more meaningful than the replacement of the Judean People’s Front with the People’s Front of Judea, the early signs are poor. Filter through the relentless pepperings of the words “stakeholder” and “learners” (schoolchildren in real life) and it is rather difficult to see what they accept is actually going wrong.

But........

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