COMMON sense tells you that if a foreign student is educated here in computer skills – and pays their own fees to boot – it would be sensible to let them stay on after graduation and contribute to the local economy.

But in 2012, the Tories scrapped the post-study work visa scheme in order to reduce “immigration numbers” – as if students were immigrants. Result: A loss of valuable skilled talent across the UK.

Four years on, the Conservative Government is doing a reverse ferret. But there’s a catch. The government has reintroduced post-study work visas only as a pilot scheme for four universities. Guess which ones? Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London and Bath. Not a Scottish university in sight. So this week, I asked Jo Johnson, Tory universities minister and brother of Boris, if he would add a Scottish university to the pilot list. As ministers do, he ignored my question. At least Boris makes jokes.

At Holyrood, education is also in the spotlight. Education Secretary John Swinney is creating a new £100 million dedicated education fund to boost pupil attainment. This is being financed by increasing the amount paid by householders in the top four bands of the council tax. That’s a tough call, though three quarters of folk will pay the same or less. But it means more resources for schools. Here is the big innovation: Swinney is proposing to give the cash directly to individual schools to spend as they see fit for their own pupils.

Yet local politicians are resisting Swinney’s plan. Why? Swinney knows from his long years as Holyrood’s finance secretary that some local councils use any extra money for schools they get from the Scottish Government for other things. His solution is to bypass these politicians and give money directly to teachers. Inevitably, there have been crocodile tears from local politicians who see their power being eroded.

In East Lothian, opponents of Swinney’s plan are claiming that any extra money raised from adjusting council tax bands will be “taken out of the county” and used elsewhere. In fact, the Scottish Government has said categorically that this won’t happen – details of the scheme are still out to consultation – but why let the truth stand in the way of protecting a politician’s vested interests? You’d think there was a local election sometime soon.