Sturgeon's Blairite pledge on education reform

Remember "education, education, education"? It was what Tony Blair said would be his top priority while he was Prime Minister.It was only one of many memorable phrases which Mr Blair coined.Here's another one:

That was mean to convey the idea that under Mr Blair's 'third way' public policy would be neither ideological nor dogmatic.

There would not, for example, be a choice to favour private sector solutions to problems over public sector solutions. Or vice versa.

The test of a policy would be whether it delivered the desired outcome.At the height of 'new Labour' there were many even in the party who were wary of such an approach, believing it to be a thinly disguised attack on the public sector.

Others - including opposition parties like the Scottish Nationalists - simply thought it was vacuous, that it was just another glib, meaningless, soundbite.

Which makes it all the more surprising that the SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has today deliberately used that most Blairite phrase.

In the course of her speech today on education, Ms Sturgeon said this:

The implications of this are, potentially, far-reaching. Since coming to power the First Minister has made improving school standards not so much a policy priority as a crusade.

Of all the domestic policy areas for which the Scottish government is responsible, and there are a lot, it is education on which Ms Sturgeon is most interventionist.She accepts that facts show the attainment gap between pupils from poorer backgrounds and those from better off families is worryingly wide.

She is determined to do something about it. And anyone who has observed Ms Sturgeon over the years know what that means. She won't let this go. It is clear she is driving her ministerial colleagues and the Scottish civil service very hard, which may be an uncomfortable experience for some of them.

And I understand that - whisper it - like Mr Blair the First Minister is finding the lukewarm private response from some in the "education establishment" frustrating.

Those at whom her frustration is aimed would be wise not to underestimate Ms Sturgeon.

They should understand the First Minister is not lacking in ambition. In her speech today she says:

There are those in education who say that is over-ambitious.

They would argue that you can never completely overcome the advantage which being from a better off background gives pupils, nor can you absolutely mitigate the disadvantages of poverty.

So how does the First Minister plan to achieve this ambitious aim?Well, there's a four year £100 million Attainment Fund designed to improve literacy and numeracy, largely aimed at primary schools.

Critics would say that £25m a year, while welcome, will end up being thinly spread, though the intention is to target schools where this spending will have most impact.

Ms Sturgeon promised that she would announce more action, and more detail, in the Scottish Government's Programme for Government (PfG) plans in two weeks time when Holyrood returns from the summer recess.But she gave a heavy hint that part of the plan will be to have some form of tests or measurements across primary and early secondary school education.

Picking up on her 'Blairite' theme, Ms Sturgeon put it thus:

Scotland has abandoned national testing in primary schools and the government says it will not be reintroduced.

However, as Ms Sturgeon pointed out, 30 out of 32 councils do what are called standardised assessments to help gauge pupil progress.

The First Minister said the government was developing a National Improvement Framework and she would give more details about this in the Programme for Government.

When I asked them, Scottish Government officials would not elaborate but it seems pretty clear that Ms Sturgeon wants some from of uniform assessments across Scotland.

Exactly how that will look will become clear, or clearer, in the next couple of week.

Questions remain, of course. Will these be published so the public can look at them? If they are how will the government avoid them being turned into league tables, which ministers say they are against and teaching unions implacably oppose?

Unlikely though it might be in the freedom of information age, if they are not published, then how can parents, and the public more widely, find out whether the moves to close the attainment gap are working?

In the end, of course, the test for the First Minister's reforms and her Blairite rhetoric is relatively, perhaps deceptively, simple.

If what is proposed works for Scotland's pupils, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, that is all that matters.

Since I first posted this blog, the First Minister has given further information about how the new testing regime would work.

Ms Sturgeon says the results will be published and accepted that, although the intention is not to create league tables, they could be created using the data.

This is a significant development in terms of education in Scotland where there has been a strong resistance to league tables from most educationalists, and most political parties.

It means that, in the reasonably near future, parents will have a lot more information on the performance of schools, in particular primary schools.

You can read more on this in the report by Daniel Sanderson of the Herald newspaper here.