‘I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror’

In a more just nation, all those who have occupied the post of education minister at Holyrood would be hanging by their heels from the ceiling of the debating chamber. The failure of Scotland’s political class over the past 16 years to use the one major, transformational power in their toolkit in any courageous or radical way is shaming.

They have gone out of their way to avoid falling out with teachers, local education authorities and trade unions. They have sneered at the efforts of successive Labour and Conservative governments at Westminster to improve the lot of poor kids stuck in rotten schools (and sometimes succeeding). They have remained wedded to the interests of the producer at the expense of the consumer — that is, they have put the truculent, noisy education establishment above the powerless, faceless parent and child. Their pride in the purity of their egalitarian ideology has condemned generations of those who most needed their help to a life of low expectations and unfulfilled potential.

It might seem unlikely that an SNP first minister would be the one finally to step in and say ‘enough’. And yet Nicola Sturgeon believes herself to be the one. In this interview, she makes it clear she wants her time in office to be judged above all else by her impact on our schools. She really means it, and we are therefore entitled to take her at her word, and to hold her to account.

This is what happens when I ask her which decision taken as First Minister so far has made her most proud: ‘I wouldn’t use the word proud because I think this is a work in progress, but deciding early on that education and the attainment gap was going to be my yardstick. It’s not something I’m going to say is job done in a year or two years or probably even five years, but that’s the one that I’m going to measure myself against.’

The metrics prove that since Holyrood opened its doors the performances of our worst schools and kids from the toughest backgrounds have barely shifted. It actually takes considerable effort to screw up this badly. So, let’s hear it: how will she deliver where others have fallen short? ‘The one thing I’m not going to do — and this is not a defensive thing — is trash Scottish education, because I don’t actually think that is merited. One of the big problems is a lack of objective evidence to tell us just how good or not it is.’

This is why she recently announced, to predictable grumbling from the education establishment, that she is bringing national testing back to primary schools. ‘It’s not going to change the performance of our schools in and of itself but if I’m going to say judge me against this then I need to know where we’re starting from and then be able to measure where we’re getting to.’

‘We need the best leaders and teachers in our schools and then trust and empower them to get on and do it’

There are some fine state schools in Scotland. But too many fail their pupils. And it seems to me there are some basic rules behind successful reform. One, you have to be willing to remove headteachers and teachers who are not up to it. Two, you have to give good heads the autonomy to run their school largely as they see fit — and make sure the local education authority is kept at arms’ length. Three, establish a national culture that demands high standards — every school, regardless of intake, should be a school for swots. Four, encourage diversity and variety, allowing best practice to emerge so that others can copy it.

The First Minister is certainly saying the right things. ‘Schools need to have much more autonomy to drive the improvements themselves. I’m a product of our state education system, I’m a passionate believer in it but children don’t come in a one-size form so our system shouldn’t pretend to be one-size-fits-all. So how do we make sure it is much more catered to the different needs of different children? That means, with head-teachers and teachers, having the best leaders in our schools and then trusting and empowering them to get on and do it.’

Oh, and there’s a fifth rule, without which the rest are moot: you must be willing to have and win fights. This, in clubby little Scotland, is where Sturgeon is most likely to fall down, just as her predecessors did. So far everything she’s said could have come from the lips of Tony Blair or Michael Gove, but they would tell you that delivering it in practice is a different matter. The London Challenge, which revolutionised schooling in the capital and which Sturgeon is studying closely, was pretty brutal — one council privatised its LEA, with a stunningly successful outcome. I spoke to a Labour councillor involved in that process and asked how he squared it with his political principles. ‘My principle is that I’ll do whatever it takes to give working-class children the best opportunities in life,’ he said.

So, Ms Sturgeon, is that something you can say — that ideology will not get in the way? ‘When you’re talking about children and what gives them the ability to get on in life my ideology or my political beliefs are secondary to doing that. Let’s not get caught up in how we’ve always done things but let’s not make it a turf war between national and local government or the public and private sectors.’

I fear this is naïve. The reason reform has been so confrontational in England is because, ultimately, you can’t do it any other way — the education establishment is allergic to change and will try to block you. They will not be willing partners. And if they are, you’re probably not doing it right.

‘I’ll be confrontational with anybody if it’s about improving the educational experience of kids’

She insists she’s up for a scrap if need be. ‘If anybody decides to be a block to making sure we’ve got the best education system then they should be moved out of the way. I’ll be confrontational with anybody if it’s about improving the educational experience of kids that come from the kinds of communities that I grew up in. I don’t want it to be a lottery in life as to whether you get the chances to do what I did or not.’

Encouragingly, she tells me she has rethought her opposition to Teach First, a successful project in England that attracts bright young graduates to work in the most disadvantaged schools. ‘I’m interested in different routes into teaching and I’ve been speaking to the GTC about the changes they’re making because they’re looking at [that]. But how do we get the best graduates in to our schools? I’m open to anything that does that. One of the things I have learned about Teach First is that they’ve changed what they do quite dramatically. Now they take all of the entrants through getting a teaching qualification where they didn’t previously, so there’s been a lot of evolution. Whether we would bring in Teach First as an organisation or just find our own ways of doing the same thing, that’s a different discussion.’

For those of us who have been making the reform argument for many years and watched it fall on Holyrood’s deaf ears, it sounds like there might finally be a shift. Does she understand that, having set the bar high, she is asking to be judged at that level?

‘You only get one shot at being First Minister. If you don’t set yourself up to fail you’re not actually trying to use it for anything. If you go into anything you do in life saying I’m not going to try that because I might fail — that’s perhaps one of the things about our entire country that we’ve got to change. We don’t do things in case it goes wrong. Take that attitude and you never achieve anything.’

On the subject of confrontation, it might be said that your government is coming to be defined by its unwillingness to take on vested interests, by kow-towing to unions, buying off pressure groups, not wanting to upset the various strands of the Yes coalition.

‘I don’t think that’s fair. If I were to read the newspapers there wouldn’t be a single day where in one I wouldn’t find a characterisation of me as a Bolshevik leftie taking the country down all sorts of horrendous paths and in another I’m conservative and timid and not doing anything. Neither of those characterisations is true. You know, I want to go to my bed every night knowing that whatever you think about me or whatever anybody else thinks about me, I’ve done what I think is right. If I apply that principle I won’t always get it right but I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.’

Neither left nor right. It’s an interesting way to describe herself, particularly given the debate over the Parliament’s new taxation powers. She has rejected Kezia Dugdale’s call for a 50p top rate, and although she has refused to follow George Osborne in hiking dramatically the threshold at which people begin paying the 40p rate, she has said she will raise it a little. It all feels quite centrist — there’s not much that would offend your classic Daily Mail reader — and, entertainingly, some of her most prominent cheerleaders have reacted with apoplexy. It seems like the Unionist argument in favour of giving Holyrood full income tax powers — that it would normalise Scottish politics and force the SNP to pick losers as well as winners — may have been right. Sturgeon’s calculations are changing.

I ask if she’d have been calling for a 50p rate if she were in opposition, knowing that the honest answer is ‘yes’. There is a long pause. ‘Em… I’m not in opposition, I’m in government and I’m not principally opposed to a 50p top rate of tax. I’ve taken a pragmatic view at the moment. This is 17,000 people we’re talking about. I have independent analysis from the civil service saying “this could actually lose you money”. When you’re in government and you actually have to worry about the money to fund your public services you can’t ignore that. You’ve got to have pragmatism as well as principle.’

It feels like you’re having your cake and eating it, saying something to both sides: we’re not doing it (but we might do it).

‘Well that’s kind of what governments do. They have annual budgets. I’ve said we won’t increase the basic rate of tax for the entirety of the parliament because I think it’s important to give two million folk that are working hard and finding it hard at the moment that kind of certainty. You have to base these decisions on the overall good of the country and maybe that’s the difference between being in government and being in opposition.’

Another area of controversy is the Named Person scheme, which appears at best half thought-through and, perhaps, dangerously ill advised. I find it philosophically indefensible for the state to intervene in the life of every family in Scotland in this way. The potential for it to go wrong, from minor busybodying to gross injustice, is huge. But the First Minister isn’t for turning.

‘If you’re a family that has no issues and is perfectly happy and is getting on with your life you never have to have anything to do with your Named Person. People ask why we don’t target it at the children at risk, but I defy anybody to say categorically and with certainty which children are at risk and which aren’t.’

‘I accept we have work to do in terms of reassuring people about the Named Person scheme, but it’s the right thing to do’

There’s a concern that a Named Person, feeling the weight of responsibility, might over-react and suddenly ordinary, guiltless families will have the authorities knocking on their door. The alternative scenario is that concerns aren’t reported for fear of causing offence and then something bad happens and there’s an outcry. Either way, the backlash would be huge. After 20 years covering politics I feel like I know a dog of an policy when I see one.

‘The system has been operating in a number of local authority areas and I’m not aware of any concerns that it’s working like that. I’m willing to accept we have work to do in terms of reassuring people who have concerns about it, but I think it’s the right thing to try to have a system in place that as far as any system can cuts down the opportunities for real concerns about a child’s wellbeing to fall through the cracks and then when it’s too late and the child has been found dead in their bed at home we all say we wish we had done something differently. This is not a state guardian system, it’s not a snooper’s charter, it’s not about people coming in and checking how you’re looking after your children, but if there are concerns niggling away at somebody about a child’s wellbeing surely we want those to be checked out rather than ignored, and if there’s no substance to them there’s no substance to them, but if there is we try and intervene before something horrendous happens.’

We can’t finish without talking about the ‘I’ word. The possibility of Brexit has put the argument for Scottish independence back into play. In such circumstances I could even see myself supporting it. But for that to happen, the discussion about our constitution needs to mature dramatically. The Yes campaign’s ridiculous projection of a land of milk and honey, its refusal to take concerns and fair criticism seriously, was immensely off-putting to a great many people. A more honest approach is needed from both sides. So how about you admit that if we had become independent on March 24 we’d now be in economic trouble, and I admit that this doesn’t necessarily form a conclusive case against being independent?

‘I look back on the referendum, and I think about it a lot, because I do hope we’ll do it again one day and so I want to get right things that we maybe didn’t get right then. I did hundreds of public meetings over a year or more and I never went into any of them and said it will be a land of milk and honey and there will never be any obstacles along the way. The overall presentation maybe appeared more like that, partly — and I’m not trying to blame the other side for how we conducted ourselves — but partly when you’re faced with a “hell in a handcart, the sky will fall in, we’ll be paupers” argument, you’re forced into a campaign that’s a bit polarised. I think that’s how that campaign developed with both sides at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

‘If we had become independent now would we have had a deficit? Yes. Would it have been a sizeable deficit that was a challenge for us? Yes. Would it have been what the GERS figures say? Probably not, because the assumptions in GERS would undoubtedly have changed during the independence negotiations. Countries the world over have deficits and they deal with them and that’s the position we would have been in and we’d have been able to make our own choices.’

What interests me is the choices Ms Sturgeon will make based on the powers she already has. On education and tax, she is showing dangerous signs of being the most interesting person to have held the top job. And anyway, for the next decade the likelihood is that we’re stuck with her, and she with us. If at the end of it all she can look at herself in the mirror, and we can look at her without wanting to hang her by her (high) heels from the ceiling of the debating chamber, that in itself will be some kind of achievement.

This interview appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on Monday, April 4, 2016