THE UK Statistics Authority measures the output of National Statistics publications against three pillars - trustworthiness, quality and value - to maintain public confidence in them.
When it looked at the Scottish Funding Council’s report into College Performance in 2015/16 two of those pillars were found to be decidedly shaky.
While the raw data was “clear and insightful”, its presentation undermined both its trustworthiness and value.
It emerged earlier this year when the Scottish Government was facing sustained criticism over cuts to college funding, declines in student numbers, and botched mergers.
Yet the Scottish Funding Council’s report was unusually sunny in its outlook.
Helpfully for ministers, it repeatedly accentuated positive figures, sometimes in bold type, and claimed completion rates were more important than other less rosy indicators.
This was in spite of the fact that the report, like all those bearing the National Statistics stamp, should have been presented without bias, its figures left to tell their own impartial story.
“The overall impression could call into question the objectiveness of your statistical operations,” the watchdog warned the Funding Council with acid understatement.
The opposition say the quango crossed a line into political spin.
This is not the first time the UK Statistics Authority has felt it necessary to call out the SNP Government’s bad practice.
The UKSA previously refused to sign off the government’s crime statistics for 2012-13.
The UKSA also criticised the government for delaying the release of crime figures in 2014 until after the independence referendum, something it said could have been perceived as “politically motivated”.
The UKSA has also refused to endorse figures on domestic abuse, and last year questioned the trustworthiness and quality of crime clear-up statistics.
This could of course be the knee-jerk instinct of a nitpicker. It is a statistics authority, after all.
Of it could be a sign that, after a decade in power, the SNP government has become sloppy or even reckless in treating what should be objective data.
Some will argue that it is perfectly legitimate for a political party to trumpet good news and put a positive gloss on its record.
But there is a time and place for that - in the debating chamber, in manifestos, in campaigns and in other explicitly political environments where voters apply common sense and a pinch of salt.
A National Statistics publication on college performance is not such a political occasion.
Nor is a government quango like the Scottish Funding Council ever an appropriate vehicle for such a slanted presentation; its business is education, not PR.
It is troubling that a respected public body no longer seems to appreciate that distinction.
Standards do not slip at once, like a landslide, but erode over time. The decline is insidious either way. It must be stopped.
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