Independence Transcends Education: A letter to Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP

Shirley-Anne Somerville was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills in May 2021.

Dear Ms Somerville

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has always maintained that education is her number one and top priority and has asked the people of Scotland to judge her on her record over education. The reality of the situation, however, has turned out very very different. Since former First Minister Alex Salmond’s referendum defeat in 2014, Nicola Sturgeon has had a blinkered vision to what her job description really is and has shown that in spite of her many promises she has shown that she has been constantly and solely obsessed with the constitution and has diverted vital resources and public money away from Scotland’s struggling public services, including education, in an attempt to secure a second referendum. There have been broken promises about class sizes, the attainment gap has not been closed, our system has fallen down the international rankings, councils have faced steep funding cuts and now we are faced with the latest prospect of Ms Sturgeon’s latest “plan” to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to “alter” classroom doors in schools?

While the money available to Holyrood has actually increased the majority of these funds have been allocated to less vital endeavours. Nicola Sturgeon is a public servant and an employee of the people of Scotland and for her currently holding the position as First Minister of Scotland she is very well, many would rightly say, too well recompensed. However as the years have passed we have watched as the health and welfare of school children, schools conditions and our children’s education have diminished and suffered greatly to the point where the Scottish education system, like every other public service in Scotland, is on its knees and the people have watched as Nicola Sturgeon herself has turned from a fairly polished leader into a rude, angry, intolerant one whose behaviour, including her responses to those who ask her questions at her Covid-19 briefings, is now totally unacceptable. As a politician she surely must understand that it is the difficult questions she needs to answer and her unacceptable belligerence is doing her no favours at all.

Scotland’s education system needs immediate attention and potentially a complete overhaul to repair the damage it has suffered over the last decade. However grave doubts maintain that Nicola Sturgeon is a woman on a very short fuse, unable to deal with the crisis we now face while she continues, wrongly, allocating hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to the SNP’s vanity projects and the party’s singular reason for existing at all. She makes wrong decisions for the wrong reasons because her lifelong dream, which has now turned into a toxic obsession for her and nightmare for everyone else, supersedes everything else in the country. Shocking things happened under Alex Salmond’s administrative reign and it would appear they are continuing to happen on Nicola Sturgeon’s watch as well. She has stated quite clearly that independence is her number one priority and transcends all other public duties and national priorities. This was further clarified when her devolved finance secretary Kate Forbes stated, at the SNP’s annual party conference, that independence, not health or education, would dominate the SNP conference. If Nicola Sturgeon was anywhere close to being a capable politician and public servant or as dedicated to serving the people of Scotland as she “claims”, she would have taken a more constructive hands on approach at her party’s conference and seized the opportunity to prove to the people on what really matters and addressed the challenges facing our NHS and education, beginning with providing ample funding and support, not wasting further resources and money on ludicrous and ridiculous vanity projects or seeking another pointless legal battle over the constitution.

Ms Somerville as the devolved education secretary of Scotland this situation should worry you greatly and you should be raising this with the First Minister on a daily basis to begin rectifying the situation and reminding her that her priorities are not the priorities of Scotland or the people.