LAST week I wrote about how the council’s complacent SNP leadership is more interested in constitutional grandstanding on Brexit and Catalan independence than focusing on the day job here in Glasgow.

Unfortunately, in this matter they are no different from their Holyrood colleagues who just a few weeks ago opposed a Scottish Conservative motion that would have unequivocally established it to be the priority of the Scottish Government for the education of our children to take precedence over their divisive nationalist agenda.

Just a few days ago, SNP MSP and Cabinet Minister Mike Russell stated that he believed an independence referendum should be held by the end of next year. So let’s be clear, it is the SNP’s position that it is of greater importance to try to rip apart the United Kingdom, in the midst of a health crisis where all four nations of this country should be standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, than to focus on restoring our schools so that young people from all corners of society are given the opportunity to succeed in life.

Five years ago Nicola Sturgeon claimed education would be her ‘number one priority’ but over that period she has consistently agitated for a referendum on seceding from the most successful union of nations in history – and now members of her own party are admitting they’d be happy to see 25 years of hardship in an independent Scotland as a price worth paying to further their nationalist fantasy.

While the SNP have been arguing among themselves for almost a decade about what latest currency plan they wish to adopt and then jettison once its economic illiteracy is laid bare, the Scottish Conservatives have been getting on with the work of developing education policy that will equip our kids with the best chance in life.

Under the SNP, Scottish educational performance has hit record low levels according to the OECD in two of their three categories while reading performance has stagnated since 2006. The SNP have had 13 years in charge of Scotland’s schools and still over 60,000 pupils in Scotland attend a school described as ‘showing major defects and/or not operating adequately’ (Poor) and a further 1050 kids attend schools described as ‘economic life expired and/or risk of failure’ (Bad).

Under our plans, we would commit to no pupils going to a school in a ‘Poor’ or ‘Bad’ condition by the end of the next Parliament and would establish a new independent school and education inspector that would report to the Scottish Parliament instead of the Scottish Govern-ment to ensure that scrutiny over education is genuinely accountable to the electorate.

I’m pleased to announce this week my group will be bringing a motion to a full meeting of Glasgow City Councillors urging them to endorse these proposals and put on the record our belief that, as the public body responsible for running this city’s schools, it should plainly be our priority to focus on closing the attainment gap and improving educational standards over debates on separation.

I challenge any SNP councillor to defy the logic behind our plans to increase the number of teachers in Scotland by 3000 or implement a national tutoring programme to give extra support to pupils who have fallen behind their peers during the Coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, to their shame, I won’t hold my breath that they’ll be able to put aside the nationalist interest in favour of better educating our city’s young people. By contrast the priority of my group and my party is clear – we want the next decade and beyond to be dominated by debates on education not separation and it is only a rejection of the Scottish National Party at next year’s election that will give us all that opportunity.