A defiant John Swinney has insisted the troubled Scottish education system is on the verge of a "renaissance" as teachers prepared to ballot on strike action.
The SNP Education Minister told the party conference in Aberdeen that his controversial reforms are starting to work and the massive attainment gap between wealthy and poor pupils is closing.
With teaching unions and councils urging him to abandon or water down large parts of his programme, he insisted that "now is the time to press on" and claimed he was on a "moral mission."
But members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country's largest teaching union, voted to escalate a pay dispute to "strike readiness" and prepare...