Scotland’s education failure: how it abandoned the skills–history dialectic

WHEN I FIRST ANALYSED parental perceptions of the value of apprenticeship learning in 2022, 46 per cent of Scots championed apprenticeships as providing children with better preparation for the future than a university degree. The latter could muster only six per cent of respondents in its favour, with the remainder opting for “don’t know” or “both equally”.

However, when it came to their own child, the pendulum swung wildly in favour of university, with 56 per cent of respondents in Scotland pushing their children toward a degree. Back then, parents undoubtedly feared that without a degree their children would be excluded by an increasingly detached, credentialed elite. The Times’ journalist Nicola Woolcock captured it perfectly with the Sartrean observation that “apprenticeships are for other people’s children”.

New research from BAE Systems reveals, to put it mildly, a substantial shift in parental perception. In just four years, that defensive consensus has completely reversed. Today, 63 per cent of parents say they would prefer their child to pursue an apprenticeship rather than university. This marks the final collapse of what I have long called the “Scottish trades paradox”: the gap between valuing trades in theory while defaulting to degrees in practice.

There are many reasons for this change: the transformation of universities from educational institutions into increasingly ideological environments, and AI’s demonstrated capacity to outperform many white-collar tasks have both accelerated this reckoning. Meanwhile, the electrician, the plumber, and the shipwright remain indispensable, because their work is rooted in objective physical reality that no algorithm can replicate.

But while the public has moved, our political establishment is performing what SELECT managing director Alan Wilson calls a “clever table magician” act. Here is the trick: politicians publicly laud the “workforce of the future” while, at the same time, funding for Scottish apprenticeship employers has fallen by thirty per cent in real terms over eight years. Now you see the money; now you don’t.

apprenticeship funding falls £15,000 per trainee behind England

This is not just fiscal neglect. It is the logical endpoint of what Roger Scruton called oikophobia – the repudiation of one’s own inheritance. Scotland’s educational establishment has spent two decades developing a Curriculum for Excellence that emphasises abstract “global citizenship” over mastery of our actual history and technical traditions. When the Scottish Government spends millions on curriculum initiatives while apprenticeship funding falls £15,000 per trainee behind England, the priorities are clear: not the “Somewhere” of Rosyth, but an abstract “Anywhere” that exists primarily in policy documents.

The academic case against the status quo is also gaining momentum. Professor Lindsay Paterson and Rector Bruce Robertson’s recent research demonstrates that the CfE’s “Experiences and Outcomes” are “generally vague and ambiguous”, producing learning that is “disjointed and fragmented”. This is the academic version of Wilson’s table trick: a system that claims to prioritise skills while stripping away the systematic knowledge that makes those skills possible. Paterson and Robertson’s work builds on E.D. Hirsch’s research showing that cultural literacy – shared core knowledge –is essential for genuine equality. When children lack this common inheritance, the progressive curriculum performs its own magic trick: making knowledge disappear while insisting it’s for everyone’s benefit.

Where do we go from here? Reversing this requires two foundational pillars of national literacy: history and technology – not as nostalgic subjects celebrating the past, but as dialectically linked foundations, each enabling the other and both essential for survival.

History first: we must restore chronological mastery of our shared heritage. Scottish children deserve to know that their ancestors were energetic participants in building the modern world. Scottish engineers, Scottish shipwrights, Scottish Enlightenment thinkers shaped civilizations far beyond these islands. Our thinkers and makars are of world-historical significance, and their legacy belongs to every Scottish child.

you cannot develop engineering excellence without understanding the traditions you inherit

Technology second: we must reframe the value of manual work. This can be achieved by centring the curriculum on Scotland’s industrial legacy. By studying the mechanics of James Watt, the physics of Lord Kelvin, and the principles that built the Clyde, we elevate technical knowledge to its proper place. When technical skill is taught as a rigorous historical achievement, a trade apprenticeship stops being something you do if you “are poor at academic subjects”. It instead becomes something you actively choose to do, preferably if you’re actually good with your hands! Sticking a badge on what will be regarded as a dumping ground, and calling it a junior technical college, is nowhere near enough to break the degree monopoly.

I have called history and technology “pillars” rather than subjects because, as Carlos Roa of the Danube Institute observes, historical memory enables technical mastery – you cannot develop engineering excellence without understanding the traditions you inherit. And technical mastery ensures historical continuity – a people who lose their technical capabilities lose their agency, their sovereignty, and eventually their distinct existence. Technical expertise has been, and remains, a prerequisite for national survival.

Ironically, progressivist educationalists already understand that dialectic. That’s why they teach Scottish pupils to be ashamed of Scotland’s (industrial) past whilst simultaneously denying them the systematic knowledge for technical excellence. This is not just educational malpractice. To paraphrase Matt Goodwin: it’s civilizational suicide.

When Scotland stops teaching children who built the Clyde and stops funding their apprenticeships, it’s not making two separate mistakes. It’s severing the connection between past and future, between who we were and who we can be. A nation that cannot transmit technical mastery across generations becomes dependent, derivative, and ultimately disposable. That is the end point of oikophobia.

The table magicians have had their moment. It’s time to demand something real – before there’s nothing left to save.