Peter Peacock, Scotland’s minister for education, has a can-do kind of demeanour, conscientious and confident, chippy even. He could easily pass for an earnest councillor (he did for many years) or a not too unpopular deputy head of a medium-sized secondary school.

Unfortunately, his influence extends far beyond such narrow confines. I say unfortunately because beneath the veneer of harmless mediocrity is a man of steely purpose. And Peacock’s purpose is not to correct the dismal education record Scotland has had of late, but apparently to prove his credentials as a Labour ideologue.

This much became clear last week when he embroiled himself in a row about a fast-track teacher training scheme, trails of which in London have been met with wide acclaim among education chiefs and the prime minister.

When James Douglas- Hamilton, the Tory education spokesman, suggested that the idea might be copied here, Peacock lost the plot. He fired off an angry letter, the tone of which leaves us in no doubt about his unreconstructed Labour sympathies.

Written on Labour party rather than ministry notepaper — whether by mistake or to make a point, we don’t know — the letter slated the Teach First scheme, which receives backing and funding from Westminster, as “reckless, disastrous and shabby”.

Teach First, under which top university graduates are allowed to train as teachers while giving lessons, establishes “entirely new ground in education policy” ranted a disgusted Peacock. Obviously, new ground is something the minister of a struggling education system must resist at all cost.

In Scotland, there is no need to explore novel ways of recruiting the brightest and the best to the teaching profession because they are already in it, according to Peacock. “We are ahead of the game,” he insisted.

He has since backtracked a little and tried to distance himself from his own letter, but the damage is done. He is exposed as a doctrinaire stalwart of old Labour and that is bad news for Scotland’s schools.

Now we learn that Scotland has lost out to Newcastle over a donation of at least £1m because of this dogged refusal to countenance educational alternatives. Irvine Laidlaw, the Tory tycoon, wanted to put his money into schools in deprived areas of Scotland, but was turned down for ideological reasons.

Although his ties are to this country, his vision of a city academy, similar to those in England, was anathema to our education unions, the local authorities and, presumably, the education minister.

Peacock came late to Labour politics. He was an independent at Highland council and was only inducted into the Labour party on the eve of devolution. This may explain the eagerness with which he has embraced party orthodoxy. It is almost as if he is making up for lost time in trying to convince his colleagues on the back benches of his bona fides.

Where other Labour politicians have accumulated their party political baggage over the years, he has acquired his overnight. It has not done his career any harm but it bodes ill for the future of education in this country.

With 57% of 14-year-olds unable to meet reading targets and two out of three pupils in their second year of high school failing to achieve writing standards, this is no time for entrenched attitudes at ministerial level.

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