In the last of her series of interviews with the new SNP Cabinet Secretaries, Mandy Rhodes interviews Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop
If the difficulties in trying to arrange a date to interview Fiona Hyslop are indicative of her workload then this woman needs a break. Arranged dates came and went as university funding, class sizes, school funding, religious education and charitable status of independent schools, among others all hit the headlines and became yesterday’s chip paper. Eventually we finally meet up and she apologises profusely for the number of rescheduled interview dates. “I am so sorry but in my defence, the other day I met with the education minister for Oman and it works out that I am actually doing the job of five Omani ministers,” she says. “So, ask a busy woman to do a job well and she will... but it might involve some juggling.”
And as the newly installed Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Hyslop had to, literally, pick up those juggling balls and run with them. She may have had nearly four years as the education shadow on the opposition benches to try and plan her strategy but she was still thrown onto a steep learning curve last May. Education doesn’t just get set in aspic while a new government organises itself; children keep going to school, exams still happen and students don’t just stop attending lectures (ok, bad analogy) and as an embryonic minister, Hyslop was having to make decisions in May and June that would become effective in the new school and college terms a couple of months later. As other members of the new SNP Government had time to get their feet under the table, clear their desks of any detritus left behind by previous ministers, she was put in charge of Scotland’s education system right in the middle of school term. There was no chance to stop the world and plan and on top of this, she was one of the first SNP Cabinet Secretaries to be plunged into a controversy, with claims by the Opposition that the SNP’s manifesto pledge of reducing class sizes to just 18 was already under threat. It’s little wonder that her own three-year-old son, when asked at nursery to draw a picture of mummy, proudly drew a piece of art with his mum’s face smiling out of a TV screen.
Nine months on and the lady herself looks as if she is thriving on the challenge. But then Hyslop is a woman who is well used to juggling life’s challenges. She is the mother of three children; one at secondary, one at primary and one in nursery – offering her a convenient domestic microcosm for her portfolio which she now views as a wraparound service – one-stop education from cradle to grave. She may have had little time to stand back and smell the coffee but is adamant that it is all do-able and is dismissive of any suggestion that she is superwoman.
“I think in many ways it might be slightly easier for me because my children don’t know anything different. My two older ones were very young, three and eighteen months, when I first got elected and my third was born into it all. I think it’s really sometimes more challenging for someone who finds that their life has to adapt and change once they have been elected.”
Hyslop is something of a quiet veteran of the SNP. She may have been a contemporary of Wendy Alexander and Sarah Boyack at Glasgow University but says she found the whole breeding ground for future Labour Party acolytes – the university debating society – a boorish and intimidating environment. Her political awakening came from more bookish pursuits and her nationalist membership was born out of an intellectual argument which also embraced her socialist values and international outlook. She joined the SNP at university and by 1990 was on the national executive. Now in her early 40s, it’s hard to remember the party without her. She sees herself as a veteran and has the bar-room tales to back this up but she has also steered a fairly straight course and not aligned herself to any particular factions. She is seen as a moderniser – she took charge of the reform of candidate selection in 1999 – and a solid politician. Civil servants have privately praised her approach. She is also a strong and capable woman who admits to having a slightly devilish streak and while many would see her as a serious player, she is also capable of laughing at herself and the party.
Sitting now as a key player in the new Government and describing the dynamics and professionalism of the various ministers, she laughs at the many memories of past days of canvassing as an illustration of how far things have come for the party that only had 9 per cent in the polls when she joined.
“There we were, the future leaders of Scotland, out canvassing on one of those dull and dreary days in some West Lothian town and I looked around; Alex was in the bookies, Nicola was in the hairdressers having her eyebrows plucked, Bruce was hobbling around with a dickie knee and there was me, heavily pregnant - we didn’t exactly look like the winning team but, hey....”
She also reminds me of the time when she was “unexpectedly” pregnant with her youngest son in 2004. “People kept asking me when I was going to take time off to prepare for the birth and I just kept going because there was so much to do and then one particular incident when I was eight months made the decision for me.”
That incident was a photocall that saw a heavily pregnant Hyslop wearing a hard yellow builder’s hat and her bare legs pushed into a pair of wellies during the height of summer to publicise the final days of building on the new parliament. The shoot ended with her firmly stuck in the wellies and four builders pulling her from either end to be unstuck. “Not the most glamorous start to my maternity leave,” she laughs. “I can remember Annabel Goldie coming round the corner to get her picture done and seeing me stretched out with these men pushing and pulling me trying to dislodge me from these wellies…Annabel said it was the funniest thing she had ever seen and I realised it was time to go home.”
It’s her children that keep Hyslop’s politics grounded in reality. She says that at the centre of her approach to the brief is a child in her mind’s eye.
“You can’t do education and child policy without thinking about a child. I’ve got a child at nursery, I’ve got a child at primary, I’ve got a child at secondary, which I think is extremely helpful for me in what do. It gives me a perspective and a reality check, and I think any mother would say to you that all they want for all children is what their child has, the love and nurturing and protection.
“I fundamentally believe we need to approach education in an all encompassing way that is not restricted to the classroom
I fundamentally believe we need to approach education in an all encompassing way that is not restricted to the classroom 
. In the same way that we see the health service looking after us from cradle to grave, so too with education, we should not view it as separate compartments of school, college or university, that’s why we call it education and lifelong learning - education is about your whole life and that’s why this is such a big portfolio because it should be cross cutting.
“Essentially, I had been doing the job for four years in opposition and I think I had been making an impact; I had certainly developed a concern about policy and obviously, Alex wanted a team around him that could hit the ground running and move things forward. But what I think is extremely impressive is not just the Cabinet Secretary team that we have, but we’ve got really good ministers, any one of which could actually be in a position to take a Cabinet Secretary position. So again, it’s the collective thing you do, it’s not just the Cabinet Secretaries, it’s the ministers as well. I think I was in the right time, right place, ready to hit the ground running, and obviously, I had experience behind me as well.
“I think I inherited a very strong education system from the previous administration and I think we do have a very good education system now
I think I inherited a very strong education system from the previous administration and I think we do have a very good education system now
. I think that was shown in the publication of the OECD report which was commissioned by Peter Peacock, who had very great foresight in commissioning it. I sat round the table with 14 experts from around the world who came here in December and we discussed the content of that report and it really gets under the skin of Scottish education. It recognises the good characteristics and shows that our biggest problem is complacency; we need to drive things forward. The fact is that a lot of children are just not achieving what they should be and what they identify is that it’s not the difference between schools that makes a difference, but it’s the differences between pupils within schools and it’s a poverty issue. The whole issue of early intervention came up again and again. These experts recognise that poverty and the impact that can have, and deprivation of all kinds can have, in children’s experiences become manifest in academic achievement at P5, so you have to have resilience to cope with it and that’s not just about education, that’s about family, that’s about support. So I think we’ve got a very strong system but I was very grateful to receive that report to give us indications of where we needed to go.”
Early intervention is a key plank of Hyslop’s approach to the future of education but how does she propose to tackle the here and now – children that are already experiencing major social problems and being disruptive to themselves and others. How do you tackle that?
“By taking a more holistic approach. We will tackle violence in the classroom, for instance, by tackling the violence in our society, by tackling the alcohol which helps fuel the violence, by tackling the challenges of firearms and knives and the knife culture we have. That’s as much about influencing behaviours as what happens in schools. We have to create a society where it’s intolerant of violence whether it’s in the classroom or out on the street. All that is often happening in schools is a mirror of the inside world, and if people expect teachers to be social workers, they’ve got to think again. Fixing society isn’t going to happen tomorrow.”
Yes, but what about the parents who have children going through school now who are worried about the effect the behaviour of others may have on their children’s education? They get vilified for trying to bend the rules to get their child into a better school.
“The vast majority of parents don’t try and move their child. I think it’s a tiny percentage – there are 157,000 pupils in primary school and I think there are something like 2,000 placing requests and most of them are primary one. So to put it in perspective, the vast majority stay where they are, for the small minority, and that’s up to them and they do it, and they tend to only do it in a few areas.
What about independent schools?
“Whatever you may have read about me in the Daily Mail, I think there is a place for private schools, they contribute really well to the education system within Scotland and quite frankly, I don’t think the state system could manage without having it there. But the challenge for us is to look at what private schools can provide that we don’t, smaller class sizes, dare I say, which is one of our big issues.
“I do think there is a role for those that want to send their children to private schools and we’re not doing anything to damage their situation with regard to charitable status, I’ve repeatedly stated that I think that it’s important that they demonstrate educational benefit, as I believe most private schools do, as well as a wider benefit and that’s something that I expect to continue.
“The point of education is to develop well rounded, confident individuals. And I could reel off the four pillars of the Curriculum for Excellence, but essentially, it’s about developing well-rounded, motivated individuals that can contribute to society generally and can also have a fulfilling life themselves as well as being able to contribute in an economic sense.”
Hyslop undoubtedly believes that education should be a vehicle to change lives rather than just offer an opportunity to learn to read and write. Does that responsibility ever feel just too overwhelming?
“No. I think if you stopped and considered that then you wouldn’t do your job. It’s challenging, and obviously, sometimes, you want to stop and think about the scale and the reach of what you’re doing but I know what I’ve got to do and part of that is to keep focused and get on with it and have that momentum to drive things forward. What you’re doing in government is different; obviously, you are making decisions and making things happen, rather than saying what should happen.
“I’m rather proud of the fact that for the first time since devolution we’ve got a single education system. I see my role as an overview one and giving a strategic objective for the portfolio as a whole. I see the links and I think that’s where the innovative policy and the changes and the difference will be made in how we best manage the links between all the different education tiers. So lifelong learning is where we need to get to but it starts right from the early years. I am very determined that being successful at early intervention and making the links all the way through will be the hallmark of what we do.
“The SNP Government is making policy decisions about transformational change which we won’t as Cabinet Secretaries necessarily see the benefit of. It’s not one-off initiatives that you see quick results from, it’s actually about taking a deep breath and saying, ‘we’ve got this country, we’ve got to get to the root causes of problems and deal with them, no matter how long that takes’. Instinctively, everybody knows it’s right and sometimes, you just have to go on, make the decisions, get on with it, instead of waiting for consultation, reflection and reaching the lowest common denominator. That’s why the Curriculum for Excellence is so important and I give credit to the last Government for starting it off but it needs a bit more political leadership than it’s had previously and I’m prepared to do that, and that’s what I will be driving forward in the next few months and the university task force, from day one I was talking to the university principals saying this is what I want to do, we need to challenge where we are going to be in the future and then quite radically preserve and protect the soul of Scottish universities but let’s get into a position where we second guess where we need to be and it’s not just all about money, it is very much about the function of universities, what they can and should do in the modern era.”
Does she think that to promise to write off student debt was a hollow pledge?
“It is achievable, and certainly servicing the debt is manageable. I think there are real concerns about the amount it is costing to service the loan charges and I think markets being what they are, there are real questions about cost to government of even servicing the charges and debt that has been sold off to banks, which we will never see. So I think there is a real financial flaw at the heart of the student loan system, full stop, let alone what it means for individual students. However, the tight settlement from Westminster meant that we had to make choices about what we did and if you look at the issue of the graduate endowment fee, where I did have other parties support, and the education committee still voted against it. Now do you really think it would have been possible to get a budget through Parliament with a sizeable amount to service the student debt when you had everybody against it? So we had to make firm choices. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to move forward on the agenda but we’re going to have to find more creative ways of doing it and find ways of, how when we’re a minority government, do you get something that others have difficulty with, through. I think we’ve done a remarkable job so far in managing to get a number of our policies through without that clear majority.”
Has she been surprised at how well the minority government has worked?
“I was a bit wary about how would this would work but it just shows you and I know that this has probably been said before, but we’ve got the type of government that people voted for in ’99, it is that give and take and it is making everybody work harder and you can really see that, with people trying to raise the game. It’s an opportunity for the whole democratic arena to move on. It has brought a fresh wind into the democratic aspect of Scotland.
“Of course it is interesting to watch the role reversal with Labour and I suppose the physical seating arrangements were quite striking - more for them than us - and I think their faces, when they suddenly realised they had to sit in the other seats, told a tale. Sometimes it is the physical manifestations of power that are the most striking but someone’s got to get on with the job. Everyone else gets to look at it, and see it, and see you on the steps of Bute House and say, ‘look, see what’s happening. Scotland has changed, changed forever’ but some of us are actually getting on delivering it, things don’t stand still just because we are making history.”
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