Scots turn green in a crisis

Scotland is looking to copy Ireland's National Education Convention as a way of resolving its current education crisis. The idea has come from a leading academic and is set to be discussed the Scottish Civic Forum, a non-elected body which complements the Scottish parliament.

It has long been a cliche of Scottish public life that it had one of the best education systems in the world. This may once have been the case and Ireland looked to Scotland when reforming secondary education in the 1960's. However statistics show that Scots pupils have long been performing worse than other western nations.

The issue was brought to head this summer when the Scottish Qualification Agency (SQA) turned the nerve-racking time of exam results into a farce. First it sent the right results to the wrong people. Then it sent out some wrong results, and even when they were corrected some pupils still had incorrect grades.

This prompted Professor Lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh University to suggest Scotland followed Ireland in the creation of a National Education Convention. The Convention was set up a decade ago following a critical report by the OECD on Ireland's secondary education. It brought together academics, trade unionists, politicians and business in a successful bid to raise standards.

The idea will be discussed by the Scottish Civic Forum which was created so that experts could discuss policy ideas which could then be used the Scottish parliament. Vice-convener of the forum is Ms Isobel Lindsay who said: "What has happened with the (exam) crisis has only stimulated debate about what has gone wrong. In a way it has been a stimulus to people to ask - is Scottish Education going in the right direction?"

She said the next meeting of the forum in October would "consider the possibility of establishing a national convention on education, and we would certainly be looking at the Irish experience." Professor Paterson said the fact his proposal had gone this far was "very encouraging indeed".

It is just one of a growing number of policy areas where Scotland is borrowing from Ireland. The Scottish Executive's drugs policy was heavily influenced by the Irish example, as are plans for a Freedom of Information bill.