Labour successfully reintroduced corporal punishment at First Minister's Questions today.

Not the belt, cane or - my own alma mater's speciality - a lightning fast clip to the ear, but a knotted mass of education statistics which Kezia Dugdale hauled from her desk and used to flog poor Nicola Sturgeon half to death.

The Labour deputy's tactic was to wallop the FM with one toxic number per question, then skip on to the next without giving her time to recover.

It worked - and it clearly stung.

Ms Dugdale started by asking about the slow switch to new Higher exams despite gung-ho assurances from various SNP education ministers.

It wasn't a problem, insisted the FM, it was "flexibility". Surely Ms Dugdale welcomed that?

But Ms Dugdale was already on to the SNP's new charges for exam appeals, a cost borne from squeezed council or school budgets for state kids, but which the parents of the privately educated pay themselves, giving them endless chances to up their darlings' grades.

Funnily enough, appeals on behalf of Bash Street's finest were now down 75%, while those from Lord Snooty and his chums had gone up.

"Is this the fairer Scotland that the First Minister promised?" asked Ms Dugdale.

Hopelessly unprepared, the FM got flannelling.

"I am surprised that Kezia Dugdale does not want to focus on what I thought would be the real success story," she tried to no avail, before a random kick at Labour over tuition fees.

The mood of the SNP's backbenches said it all.

Normally honking like seals on nitrous oxide, they sat in silence with heads lowered, staring at their desks like a sullen detention class.

Tory Ruth Davidson then piled in to highlight the loss of 30,000 college places in science, technology, engineering and maths since 2007.

They had been "slashed by a third" under the SNP.

"Our young people need the skills to compete. Getting a decent job depends on it. Why is the government failing them?" she asked.

Ms Sturgeon's discomfort deepened.

Back against the wall, there was nothing left for it but a desperate lunge at consensus-building.

"I am happy to look in detail at the figures Ruth Davidson has quoted and to respond," she said.

Labour MSPs guffawed at the lameness of it all.

"Labour clearly finds the issue of education amusing," the FM snapped, grateful for a passing straw to grasp at, "I find it very serious."

Hunched SNP beckbenchers focused on their correspondence, doodles, Fruit Ninja, suicide notes, anything to blot out the embarrassment.

Their mood worsened with a series of questions about job losses, inaction on child exploitation, the oil crisis, and even more education cuts.

Eight years of events and dodgy decisions piled up round the heidie like unmarked homework.

The lowest point came when Tory Liz Smith and Labour's Dr Richard Simpson asked about a massive decline in mental health research under the SNP, a subject usually immune to political football.

"It is clear that Labour has not changed its spots that much," Ms Sturgeon barked back.

"It is still trying to make out that Scotland is too wee and too poor to do these things."

Labour groaned, the Nats studied their shoes.

It was a remark that lowered an occasional poor performance to a full-on F minus.