Back in 1997, Tony Blair told us education was his “personal passion”. His aim was to create “a world-class education system” for England in which no school failed and every child had the opportunity to fulfil his potential.

It has not happened, and you would have thought that Jack McConnell might have noticed. A quarter of English 11-year-olds leave primary schools illiterate and innumerate.

There are schools in every city to which no parent in their right mind wants to send their children. Employers complain that the qualifications of the graduates they employ are not worth the paper upon which they are printed.

A world-class education system? We are still waiting.

But the first minister seems keen to thump a very similar education drum. A new “excellence standard”, whatever this means, is to be established for schools to strive for.

Twenty poorly performing schools are to be transformed into “schools of ambition”. “Choice and diversity for different talents and ambitions”, he announced last week, “will be available to all”.

But, correcting the idea that his administration might be flirting with the idea of sending children with particular talents to particular schools, “there will be no elitist selection”. There is, it seems, to be no return to the “divisive failure of the past”.

Reflecting on the experience in England, my heart sinks. McConnell’s “schools of ambition” are England’s city academies. His is a glitzy, headline-catching initiative.

Entrepreneurs are to be encouraged to make donations to help transform failing schools. Their cash will help create new buildings, state-of-the-art resources, a learning environment for the 21st century.

It is possible, I suppose, that the resources will be sound — the debacle of the new Scottish parliament building suggests that they usually are.

The problem is that more cash is not the answer to the failures of the Scottish education system and that 20 new schools are not enough.

The first minister needs a more radical vision if he is to make any real difference.

Failing schools in England have had billions of pounds of public money pumped into them. Each of the city academies has cost more than £20m and, so far, to put it kindly, the jury is out.

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