First Minister's Questions: Lessons learned

Exams are being held in schools across Scotland

This is, the first minister reminded us, the first day of school certificate exams in Scotland. Instantly, a twinge of memory assailed me.

There I was, an eager teenager in the great and noble city of Dundee, skulking furtively into a small hall off South Tay Street, close to where the Rep now stands.

It was, as I recall, April the 23rd. The subject was, I believe, arithmetic. I was about to sit my first 'O' Grade. (This was not, you will appreciate, yesterday or even the day before.)

As so often, Shakespeare puts these matters rather well. (He cropped up in 'O' Grade English; Midsummer Night's Dream, I think.)

Anyway, the Bard of Avon depicted the "whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail, unwillingly to school."

That was me - except that I was and remain far too cheery to whine; I had a duffel bag, not a satchel; and I found school a source of innocent merriment, not an aggravation.

From 'O' Grades to Highers and SYS. Then university in Fife where Shakespeare again loomed large in exams, my Honours subject being English. Exams, exams.

These and other thoughts arose randomly today as MSPs discussed the school curriculum. Their behaviour, it has to be said, was mixed. On occasion, unruly.

Ms Sturgeon said on Wednesday that she wants an independence referendum by 2021

Luckily, there were three teachers on hand to restore order. Liz Smith of the Tories, Jenny Gilruth from the SNP and Labour's Johann Lamont.

Each made substantive contributions. Each showed the effortless discipline which undoubtedly afforded structure to their classes.

Ms Lamont, in particular, displayed her mettle. As she arose, she encountered some decidedly unscholarly heckling from Fourth Year. Staring at them like a well-groomed basilisk, she growled: "It wasn't like this back in the day".

In her thoughts, it would seem, she was back in class, trying to instil a love of Keats and Shelley, Burns and MacDiarmid, into the souls of truculent teens.

Ken Macintosh, the Presiding Officer, wasn't a teacher. Before politics, he pursued a far less lofty profession. (He worked as a senior producer for the BBC. Rather good he was, too.)

But both his parents were head-teachers - and, plainly, that sense of pedagogical duty has rubbed off. Mr Macintosh intervened repeatedly to advise badly behaved MSPs that they were scarcely setting a good example to the young.

Why such an unruly session? Because, of course, we are back to the fault-line of Scottish politics; independence and the prospect of a further referendum. That tends to energise the lieges.

For the Tories, Jackson Carlaw stuck rigidly to Ms Sturgeon's day job. He asked about subject choice in Scottish secondary schools.

Too limited at S4, he averred. No, no, replied the FM, one needs to consider the offer across all three senior years. More people achieving Highers, more going on to university.

Patrick Harvie questioned the SNP's currency plan for an independent Scotland

Labour's Richard Leonard essayed a single transferable question, moving from the topic of poverty and benefits, to the subject of independence.

He was suggesting that Ms Sturgeon had neglected the issue of poverty while intent on pursuing the demand for a referendum.

It was, on paper, a cogent argument. But, on the day, it backfired. What, he demanded, was the first minister really after?

She rose, slowly and with menace. What she wanted, she declared volubly, was the power of an independent parliament, to run the benefits system in keeping with the needs of Scotland.

The SNP benches erupted. This hasn't been the easiest period for the party. Self-evidently, they'd rather be winning a referendum than deferring one.

They would rather be shepherding the economy of an independent Scotland than holding a difficult discourse within the party over which currency might, in future, be used, and when.

And so Nicola Sturgeon's spirited counter-attack gave them zest. They roared, they yelled. They gestured towards the Labour benches.

In the chair, Dominie Macintosh looked less than happy. You could tell he was itching to issue an instruction to see him in his study after morning assembly.

On to Patrick Harvie. He welcomed the FM's statement of the previous day. He backed independence. You could hear the "but" coming a mile off.

It duly arrived. SNP economic policy, he argued, resembled that pursued by UK Ministers. It was timid. It was tame. He was particularly excoriating about the party's Growth Commission - which will be debated at conference.

Ms Sturgeon steeled herself. You could just tell that she was tempted to retort: "What total and utter mince!"

But she didn't. Like a well-behaved prefect addressing an awkward school guest, she thanked Mr Harvie politely while, with equal politesse, dissenting gently from his economic perspective.

It was all, she said, part of the glories of independence. One could offer competing visions for Scotland. The wrong one or mine, the correct one - she didn't add.

Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats then had a go.He chided the FM for still contemplating a future cut in aviation tax. What, he inquired, would she say to Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish environmental campaigner?

Ms Sturgeon had an answer ready. Noting en passant that the aviation tax cut had been put off, she stressed the scope of the Scottish government's commitment to tackling climate change.

Lessons, lessons.