GORDON Brown has been accused of talking down and endangering Scotland's distinctive education system.
The former Prime Minister cited surveys of 14 to 17-year-olds as part of the What Scotland Thinks project which showed around half would prefer to be part of a UK system.
Asked in 2013 if exams and the curriculum should be the same for everyone in the UK 51 per cent agreed. This year 46 per cent agreed. On whether the Scottish Parliament should be able to decide these issues North of the Border, the figure went up from 47 to 52 per cent.
At an event in Edinburgh University's McEwan Hall in honour of historian Sir Tom Devine, Mr Brown said: "Scottish young people's support for the same educational curriculum and exams across the UK is stronger than any poll would report for any group of adults, showing that young people are not the newly enfranchised 'nationalist generation' of the independence movement's dreams but a newly enfranchised and also newly empowered 'networked generation' - happy to be seen as Scottish first but suspicious of being seen as exclusively Scottish."
The SNP's Kenneth Gibson called it another "own goal".
"In bizarrely arguing against having the Scottish education system, Gordon Brown makes the Yes case for us," he said. "If education was controlled by Westminster, not in the Scottish Parliament, Michael Gove would be deciding education policy for Scotland.
"I doubt if a single person in Scotland would want that, other than Gordon Brown."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article