Earlier today, First Minister Alex Salmond admitted, "education needed a fresh look" when he announced a mini reshuffle of his ministerial team. Fiona Hyslop, the under pressure Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning was demoted. She is to be replaced by Mike Russell, previously the Culture and External Affairs Minister. Fiona Hyslop takes over the role Mike Russell is giving up. Laurie Bidwell, Labour's Education Spokeperson in Dundee said:
"Today's move follows a dificult time for Ms Hyslop, who has been under fire for months over not delivering on the SNP's manifesto commitments. More particularly, not reducing primary school class sizes in years 1-3 ; not cancelling higher education student debt and not matching Labour's PPP school building programme 'brick for brick'. It will however take much more than a reshuffle of his pack to make some impact on the issues where Fiona Hyslop was not making much headway. The reason why local authorities were finding it difficult to follow her tune was down to tightly restricted resources. If her successor is more persuasive in Cabinet and commands more cash for schools some progress can be made reducing class sizes and building more schools. Ironically, to achieve that, Mike Russell will need to squeeze wasteful public spending such as the National Conversation, Scotland's most expensive blether, which until today he was promoting in his former role."
