IN civic Scotland, where the appearance of virtue is cherished above all else, radical solutions and rigorous enquiry have become orphans. The system and the need to preserve it at any cost is paramount. Just ensure that at regular intervals on the journey you stop to make the usual pledges: an end to poverty and health inequality and the reduction of the attainment gap.

The social gerrymandering of this year’s exam-marking by the Scottish Qualifications Authority penalised the nation’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Yet, it was as predictable as it was depressing. Ironically, in choosing to ‘moderate’ down the performance projections of working-class children it highlighted what happens when middle-class mediocrity is embedded in the system. There was no imagination here; no measure of intellectual rigour. The SQA stuck to a template designed to convey, as always, the fig-leaf of a modest reduction in the attainment gap. It was also a metaphor for the way Scotland is run.

Nicola Sturgeon and her Education Minister, John Swinney – brass necks reinforced to an industrial standard – seemed satisfied that the credibility and integrity of the ‘system’ had been maintained. God forbid that any child from Scotland’s edgier neighbourhoods might be given the benefit of the doubt and awarded a pass in line with their teacher’s honest assessment. Those examination league tables were all that mattered, those shallow and contaminated measures of a school’s real worth.

Each year, children from schools in deprived neighbourhoods enter Scotland’s examination postcode lottery three goals down. Few of them have parents who can afford extra tuition and many are dealing with the daily effects of multiple deprivation. Even when they do attain the minimum entrance qualifications for their desired colleges and universities their places remain in doubt. Few enjoy the family connections to secure a crucial placement in the oak-panelled professions. The option of taking a year out to feed goats in Kathmandu or flying to China to take pictures of Snow Leopards to show your interviewers you’re sound and well-rounded isn’t really an option when you live in Possilpark.

The effects of coronavirus have been disproportionately harsh in Scotland’s poorest communities. In Inverclyde, home to our most deprived neighbourhood, deaths from Covid-19 are three times higher than the average. Pupils from these areas have experienced disproportionately the emotional and psychological effects of sickness and death among family and friends. This year, of all years, they might have felt they were entitled to a break. Every other year the system of academic preferment is programmed to reward affluence and economic muscle. Perhaps this time they might be judged on a level playing-field, after all they’d been through. Dream on.

Certainly, the pass rates might have been unusually higher but this has been the most extraordinary of years. Future generations would have understood. This week our children discovered there is no mercy in the hallowed system.

Yet, all that was required was the capacity to think bigger and to imagine better; to be spontaneous and nimble. Instead, all these children got was a rule-book waved in their faces and a letter telling them the computer said no. It seems the Scottish Government are much more focused on plans to criminalise the lieges. But hey; the system has been preserved and there’s just enough movement in the numbers to earn a tick.

The Government has betrayed our most disadvantaged children when they needed their compassion. In two decades of unbroken left-wing, devolved administration in Scotland the same families, living in the same neighbourhoods are still experiencing the same wretched outcomes in their health and their chances of a better life. In England, the most right-wing government in modern political history saw this coming and made the necessary arrangements to preserve fairness. The Conservatives actually tweaked the system to favour children in need. Sweet Mother of God!

A normal political party would be held to account on these issues by its own dissenting voices and perhaps be threatened with eviction at a nearby election. The SNP, though, is not a normal party. While it bears the eternal flame of independence its supporters are cowed to silence lest they be accused of jeopardising the Holy War, the unforgiveable sin. Independence, for the SNP hierarchy, has become a safety harness rather than a cause.

In the two decades since devolution we have seen the rise of think-tanks and lobbying firms. These make a virtue of moderation and centrism and are cherished by the SNP because they instruct us all to sit up straight, behave ourselves and keep our mouths shut. All of them are inter-connected but not in a way that’s visible to the naked eye.

They harbour a few dozen of the elect who wield influence on policy and strategy. Together they form an intellectual and philosophical black hole where radical ideas disappear and die. In exchange for this they get invitations to sup at the Bute House Presidential Palace or get thrown a seat on a quango or a health board. Thus, the triumph of middle-class mediocrity is assured.

This week, an outfit called the Commission for School Reform stepped up to provide relief for the Scottish Government. Its chairman, Keir Bloomer, architect of Curriculum for (ahem) Excellence, said: “If anything, I think the overall set of results demonstrate that they [the SQA] have been slightly lenient.”

The Commission for School Reform is one of those prattling colloquies which occupies the same territory as think-tanks. They specialise in the ‘Nothing-to-see here’ candyfloss that you need to gain entry and win favour in this civic wasteland. If you want to see what complacency and self-congratulation looks like google Scottish think-tanks and prepared to be stupefied by one of their many, sleepy treatises.

Since the start of lockdown the Scottish Government and all the indolent quangos which feed from them have had a chance to prove their worth. All they had to do was find a solution to the exams dilemma that didn’t penalise children who were already marginalised by their precious system. They failed, as they’ve been failing these communities for a generation.

They’re simply not worthy of an independent Scotland where fertile imaginations and ingenuity will be required to make it work.

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