If, as now seems likely, the long awaited Green Paper on Scottish education does not appear this year or next, then the battle lines for the 2003 Scottish Parliament election can already be discerned.

From being, by its own account, the radical new force for change in education, Labour will rest on Jack McConnell’s laurels, as he presents himself as the man who has brought peace and prosperity to Scotland’s schools. But this spin will be as false as all the others, predicated as it is on further privatisation and the extension of national testing by stealth. Change will come about with a pretence at consultation but such change will merely fiddle with the present arrangements, usually to the detriment of those actually in the classroom, be they teachers or pupils.

The Liberals will have a similar tinkering agenda, with small adjustments being proposed just to differentiate themselves from their coalition partners.

The Tories’ headlong rush to the right - a conversion to hard line policies more Gadarene than Damascene - has already been signalled by the appointment of the ultra-rightist Murdo Fraser as deputy education spokesman. As Brian Monteith, the party’s education spokesman, withdraws more and more into the role of its thought policeman in chief, his deputy will be the one making the pronouncements and those pronouncements will focus on more privatisation, more selection, more praise and money for independent schools and a general welcome for any Executive proposal that meets those objectives.

My own party will take a different tack, starting with a strong support for new thinking about education in general. However, contrary to the approach of Tory and Labour at Westminster over the years, and now Tory and Labour at Holyrood, we start from a presumption in favour of learning and teaching as the core activities. It was a refreshing change to have an amendment couched in precisely those terms accepted during the debate on assessment in mid-September. But we need to do more than talk about such issues - we need to act on them.

The key lessons of the SQA disaster have not yet been learned. Education as a bureaucratic activity, managed from far above the classroom and ignorant of the needs of young people and those who teach them, has been a recipe for disaster. We need to reverse our thinking and to seek to empower what we should increasingly call “the school community”: teachers, pupils and parents all engaged in a shared concern for progress in learning.

This thinking needs to be the basis for the development of funding and support strategies that can be enhanced by an increasing depoliticisation of education. I am still a strong advocate of an education convention - SNP policy at the past two elections - which would bring together all the parties along with stakeholders. This convention - very similar to arrangements in place in Ireland and elsewhere - would inject practical knowledge and a degree of development by consensus, elements that are sadly lacking today. Any administration should bring ideas and proposals prior to either primary or secondary legislation. And a government that insisted on proceeding in face of opposition would have to pay a heavy price.

Putting in place such a structure would be my first aim. But my second would be to have a set of proposals for discussion within such a convention. Chief among those would be proposals to alter the balance of power. Classroom teachers faced with daily difficulties in discipline need solutions not distant task forces. Schools suffering year on year budget cuts imposed by local authorities need not just more money but more ability to guard that money from outside interference.

Proven success stories from other places - such as the STAR initiative in Tennessee - need to inform thinking and resourcing so that reductions in class sizes are not merely cosmetic.

There are many pressing problems - the conclusion of the McCrone arrangements, the simplifying of existing assessment arrangements, the crying need for more public investment in our infrastructure - but there are also large challenges ahead. Teacher shortages in key subjects are likely to become more pressing and an economic downturn will create pressure on budgets and pressure on young people.

cotland needs a new consensus about the purposes of education and how we can best achieve them. I am delighted that the Parliament’s education committee is going to treat that great debate as a priority in the coming year, with a major consultation exercise and a major series of hearings. During that debate we must hear a great deal from schools and teachers, parents and pupils, starting with a rejuvenation of the ideas that once made our nation a great place to learn and continuing with practical suggestions about how ideas can be made reality. The unity of the graveyard - the acceptance that everything is fine - would be a second best and one that would quickly be abused by politicians and administrators.

The real prize is to energise school communities, give them much more control of their own destinies, support them with true public investment and ensure that equality of opportunity, the establishment of the highest standards and a passion for getting the best for all are again at the heart of what we call education. That will not be achieved by stoical silence. It may be achieved by honest and rational debate.

Michael Russell is SNP Shadow Minister for Children and Education.