Tommy MacKay, the educational psychologist, has been doing some thinking - as one might expect. He mused to fellow psychologists at their recent conference that new performance indicators might be the last produced by the Scottish Executive Education Department.
“In the past 10 years, the government department responsible for education in Scotland has been variously the SED, SOED, SOEID and now the SEED. The SED lasted for about 118 years, the SOED for about six and the SOEID for three.
“I’ve been doing a wee bit of statistical modelling here and I’ve worked out that the SEED should fold up around December 11 next year. After that, I expect Scottish Office personnel will carry pagers which give a warning bleep every time the name changes so that they know what department they’re representing.”