Brian Taylor: Question One: Now Swinney has moved on, how will we sort out Scotland’s struggling schools?

Still, Nicola Sturgeon had declared that education was her top priority. As her deputy, he could hardly jib at addressing that objective. It has not ended well.

Partly, he may be relieved to relinquish the turbulent, confused world of education, with its vested interests and its internal contradictions.

However, he may also feel that he is exiting the exam room with his paper half-finished, after a year in which this hideous plague has added massively to educational problems.

He remains deputy First Minister and has a new role which appears to be almost entirely about performance, most notably with regard to pandemic recovery.

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His detailed remit includes statistics, public service reform, efficiency and co-ordination at several levels.

Further, he will be supported in office by George Adam, the wily and insightful Minister for Parliament Business, aka Chief Whip.

There is a potential flaw in all of this. Just how is Mr Swinney to co-ordinate economic recovery, for example, when the relevant civil servants are primarily answerable to other Cabinet colleagues?

Mr Swinney must rely upon his own force of personality, which is considerable, and the support of the First Minister, which is decisive.

In Cabinet, he will be the enforcer, the whip. Alternatively, if he is blamed for failings in departments he does not directly control, then he could be the whipping boy.

The familiar cry of “deputy heads must roll” might once more be heard. My bet is that John Swinney, sagacious and respected, will steer cautiously.

What, though, of the remit he leaves behind? What of Scottish education?

Not all that wonderful, since you ask. Yes, there are daily miracles in Scottish schools. There have been improvements but, viewed another way, we still seem to be slipping down international league tables, by comparison with previous results.

Further, progress in eliding the attainment gap between pupils from different economic backgrounds has been agonisingly slow.

Potential change is in the offing. In 2019, Scottish Ministers commissioned an independent review of the Curriculum for Excellence. The CfE is intended to provide a coherent structure from the ages of three to 18.

The review, led by the OECD, is expected to report at the end of June. My expectation is that it will outline particular problems as pupils enter the upper years of secondary schooling.

Being open to satire, I rather like the caricature of CfE: that it is not a curriculum, that it is not about pursuing excellence, and that, therefore, the only true word in the description is “for”.

However, that is decidedly too glib. One would hope for a thorough scrutiny of the OECD assessment. In particular, I would hope for a discussion liberated from the entrenched interests with which education is beset.

Please, let us not see the new verdict as an assault or otherwise on cherished ideals if it can be demonstrated that the ideals themselves are chimerical or that practice differs somewhat from those stated aims. Let us judge from first principles.

Yes, we need a broad general education in the earlier years. Yes, we need then to move to closer study which may lead to externally-assessed qualifications.

Much of this is currently the subject of dispute, particularly after external exams were disrupted, leading to the row over the use of algorithms to modify results.

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I think we need to calm down somewhat about this, especially as the controversy is adding to pupil stress.

Firstly, I take the point about the evident unfairness of the algorithms and I appreciate the argument that it might be less pressured for pupils if they were continuously assessed.

However, I believe that colleges, universities and employers will still require some form of commonly agreed performance measurement. In-school assessment is neither equitable nor reliable if, as seems possible, it is open to individual manipulation.

In addition, there will generally be a need to assess results in the round, if only to ensure that a particularly tough exam paper does not unfairly land one cohort of pupils with poorer grade Highers. For life. We need a fairer system, not the scrapping of modulated exams.

Then there is the fundamental question of what we teach. Life skills, certainly. Scotland and the world around us, most assuredly.

But do we teach facts and figures or equip our pupils with the capacity to acquire information for themselves? Do we, in short, side-line rote learning and instead inculcate a sense of curiosity?

Again, I get the concept. We want young people to challenge orthodoxy. We want inquiring minds.

As Edwin Morgan said of Holyrood, we “want it to be filled with thinking persons”, adding that “a nest of fearties” is to be shunned.

However, we also need to acquire knowledge. By close study. You cannot learn calculus or German grammar through the medium of dance.

Further, we need, as a society, to respect learning. There can be an occasional tendency to exult in ignorance. “Me, I don’t know anything about science! What am I like?!”

This is long-standing. For example, the folk myth of Robert Burns is that he was an uneducated ploughman. In truth, he was a highly-read polymath whose letters display erudition to the point of affectation.

Finally, we need to rediscover the true role of education; to inform and enlighten. It is not baby-sitting nor crowd control.

Perhaps part of the response to the OECD report will be to implement a pledge in the SNP manifesto which is to “intensify our approach to empowering the teaching profession”.

I once met the new head teacher of a school in a disadvantaged area. She told me she demanded of her staff that they step up their expectations, that they challenge and exalt their pupils.

As the late, very great Jim McLean said, in another context, if you accept mediocrity, that is most certainly what you will get.

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