The new shadow education secretary in Scotland is Jamie Greene, it was announced this afternoon.
The West Scotland list MSP takes over from the long-serving Liz Smith, and will be expected to target what new Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw described today as “an education system in crisis”.
Mr Carlaw will announce more appointments in shadow junior minister roles and other areas of responsibility in the coming days.
In a clip pinned to the top of his Twitter feed, in which Mr Greene addresses Parliament, he criticises the Scottish government for ”subject-choice reduction in our schools, teacher shortages in Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths and] students in Scotland being squeezed out of university”.
Challenging the SNP on education
Mr Greene, who is 39 and holds dual British and Canadian citizenship, moves from his role as shadow cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity; he is also co-convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s LGBT+ cross-party group. On his section of the Parliament website, Mr Greene says that before his election in 2016, he was employed as a full-time sales director by Seachange International, a media technology business of the Netherlands-based Flight Forum.
Mr Carlaw said: “This is a brand new shadow cabinet designed to take on the SNP leading up to May 2021 [when the next Scottish Parliament election takes place], and take the Scottish Conservatives into government after it.
“We’ve got the best people fighting in the best places, and they’re going to bring us on to the next level.”
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Mr Carlaw added: “The SNP has failed to put Scotland’s best interests first, and has overseen a deterioration in almost every area in which it has responsibility.
“That includes an education system in crisis, a health service which is on its knees, and an economy which lags badly behind the rest of the UK.”
Liz Smith, a former teacher, has been the party’s education spokeswoman for the bulk of the time since she was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2007. Mary Scanlon, who has since stepped down as an MSP, held the role for a period from 2013, although Ms Smith retained an education role and was still widely viewed as the party’s main spokesperson on the subject. She has become known for her measured and forensic approach in successive parliamentary education committees.
Before becoming an MSP, Ms Smith was a political adviser to Sir Malcolm Rifkind and before that a teacher of economics and modern studies at Edinburgh private school George Watson’s College, which she attended as a student.
A recent coup for Ms Smith - a list MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife - was forcing the Scottish government to turn its review of the senior phase into a comprehensive review of Curriculum for Excellence.
She also recently pushed for education secretary John Swinney to publish the review he commissioned into the fall in the Higher pass rate, which he has now committed to doing.
