Under the SNP it seems children in Scotland are no longer taught much but they surely still learn it is always best to own up to your mistakes.
This is an important life lesson – and one it seems the SNP itself is yet to learn.
Consider the nationalists’ response to the latest evidence of plummeting standards in our schools: “Scottish education maintains international standing.”
This is certainly an interpretation, and certainly not a valid one.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) figures are compiled every three years and are used to measure comparative educational standards.
‘Grim reading’
For those interested in the future of our country, they make grim reading.
By any reading, the PISA figures show long-term decline in Scotland’s performance in reading, maths, and science.
The fall in standards is so severe that, since 2006, it is the equivalent to a student missing 21 months of science lessons and more than 18 months of maths lessons.
Perhaps most embarrassingly for the SNP, although of little relevance to anyone else, is the fact that England performed comparatively well.
And yet, despite this national disgrace, there is seemingly no attempt from the SNP government to address it, or even to admit that they have actually made a mistake here.
Such a move would be straightforward – indeed, politically astute – for the new(ish) Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth who only need blame her predecessors for the figures and pledge to improve them.
But such accountability is anathema to nationalists and so instead Gilruth found herself defending the indefensible, risibly trying to blame the declines on the Covid-19 pandemic, apparently hoping no one would notice the slump long preceded March 2020.
‘Culture of spin and misdirection’
Not that Gilruth is in any way unique.
There has not been a pip or squeak out of the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who infamously claimed raising educational standards was the top priority of the SNP government.
Instead, Sturgeon has taken an area where Scotland could, quite genuinely, claim to be exceptional and turn it into mediocrity.
If anyone is hoping for a mea culpa from the former first minister, they too will be waiting rather a long time.
This is because the culture of spin, misdirection and a fundamental shirking of responsibility is now so ingrained in the SNP it is impossible to shift.
Any issue is always someone else’s fault, any scandal can be explained away.
No one – not a single SNP politician – is now seemingly willing to admit when they get something wrong.
In the early years, such a culture may have helped the SNP survive, but no longer.
It is this lack of accountability that leads to ministers like Michael Matheson being kept in post when they should quite evidently be sacked.
Far from closing down scandal, refusing to take responsibility allows the stench to linger and fester, causing far greater longer-term damage to the nationalist cause.
‘Inexcusable mistake’
Meanwhile, an inability to admit when you have made a mistake inevitably means you are unable to correct that mistake.
Thus, educational standards have continued to fall, NHS waiting lists have continued to grow, and there is a gaping, £1billion hole in the public finances.
If the SNP had admitted there were problems sooner – rather than blaming whoever or whatever else – they could have nipped them in the bud.
The SNP’s accountability-free culture has fostered many mistakes but the decline in educational standards is surely the most inexcusable.
While an £11,000 data roaming bill can ultimately be repaid, a child only gets one chance to learn – and, purely to avoid difficult headlines, the SNP has denied that to an entire generation of them.
That is a dreadful mistake and it is about time the nationalists owned up to it.
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