Iain Gray is the Scottish Labour education spokesman

JOHN Swinney made a big speech on schools last week. The SNP Education Secretary said the “data” told him that “the status quo was not an option” and then expressed his disappointment that “there is a strong body of opinion that does not accept the need for change and what is perhaps most worrying is that body of opinion is from within Scottish education”. Most coverage described this as an attack on the “complacent educational establishment”.

In doing so, commentators fell into a double trap. To oppose Mr Swinney’s proposed changes to schools is not to oppose any change at all. The overwhelming response to his “governance review” is that they are the wrong changes.

Secondly, this analysis accepts that the status quo is something Mr Swinney has stumbled upon. In fact, the status quo in schools is the legacy of 10 years of SNP government.

The status quo is declining budgets, 4,000 fewer teachers, 1,000 fewer support staff, a teacher recruitment crisis and dysfunctional government bodies (Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority, or SQA). Yes, change is needed; just not Mr Swinney’s changes.

For example, the SNP plans to centralise the setting of school budgets and create unaccountable “regional boards” for a purpose it cannot explain, except to say it wants to “strengthen the middle”, whatever that means.

In Dunbar, in my constituency, the local primary has more than 1,000 pupils while, a few miles away, Stenton school has 19. The idea that a civil servant with a formula knows enough about such diverse schools and the communities they serve to get their budget right is laughable. That decision has to be taken locally. What is more, if a headteacher or parent council thinks the budget is wrong, they can argue their case locally and they do; good luck trying that with a faceless bureaucrat in the Scottish Government’s offices in Victoria Quay.

When Kezia Dugdale raised this at First Minister’s Questions, Nicola Sturgeon was outraged. After all, she is devolving £120 million of Pupil Equity funding direct to schools. This is true but the core budget for schools is more than £4billion. Only in the world of the SNP could centralising £4bn and devolving £120m be presented as “all power to the headteachers”.

This is not the only “through-the-looking-glass” aspect of the position into which Mr Swinney has manoeuvred himself. He described his governance review as “a vision of empowerment and devolution”. It is full of declarations about teachers and parents “knowing best”.

Mr Swinney’s problem is that the responses to his review from headteachers, teachers, parents and communities almost all reject his reforms and tell him that what is needed is more resource and reform of Education Scotland and the SQA. His speech was clear: he intends to ignore the responses. Schools will be empowered, against their better judgment if need be. He is telling headteachers, teachers and parents that they do not know best; he does.

We should not be surprised. When the Scottish Parliament’s education committee gathered evidence from hundreds of teachers that they had lost any faith in Education Scotland and the SQA, Mr Swinney rubbished the committee’s work as statistically invalid. Instead, he said, he would base his views on the teachers he spoke to when he visited schools.

Happily, this “balanced sample” seemed very happy with everything he is doing. It is presumably only “bad” teachers and parents who have responded to his governance review with malice aforethought and he intends to ignore them.

Mr Swinney loves to talk about how much he respects teachers, as well he might. They are the only thing keeping our schools going through the SNP’s 10 years of incompetence and budget cutting. If he won’t listen to them his respect is just empty talk.

The status quo for teachers in Scotland is 10 years of under-resourced curricular reform, lower salaries than colleagues in other countries, less preparation time and the largest classes anywhere in the developed world. Nothing Mr Swinney is proposing will change that status quo, fashioned by him over his eight years as Finance Secretary.

All of this was laid bare in a recent parliamentary debate during which Holyrood defeated the Government and passed a motion roundly condemning its handling of education. Last week’s speech tells us that Mr Swinney is not just ignoring parents and teachers but parliament too.

That will of Parliament, so sacred when it comes to an independence referendum, would seem of no import with regard to our children’s future.