Official Report 312KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S7M-01963, in the name of Katherine Sangster, on improving attainment, tackling inequality and strengthening national standards. Members who wish to speak in the debate should press their request-to-speak button now.
15:03
Scottish Labour has always believed that education has the power to change lives and that a child’s future should never be determined by where they are born or how much their family earns. Our ambition is to break the link between family circumstances and attainment for good.
I recognise that there is much that Scottish education gets right. In particular, there is the extraordinary commitment of our teachers, support staff and those who work tirelessly every day to support children across our schools. However, celebrating what works must never mean ignoring what does not. The question that we should ask is not simply whether pass rates have increased but whether our education system delivers for all.
We know that the poverty-related attainment gap remains stubbornly wide, that care-experienced children continue to leave school with fewer qualifications than their peers and that progress in literacy and numeracy has been inconsistent. We need to understand where progress is being made, where children are being let down and what needs to change, and that starts with having the right information. That is why Scottish Labour is calling for much greater transparency in education data.
We cannot improve what we are unwilling to measure, and we cannot close the attainment gap if we do not properly understand it. Our proposals are practical and pragmatic, and they are designed to give the Parliament, parents, pupils and teachers the information that they need.
The debate on this year’s programme for international student assessment results highlighted precisely why the existing measures are not enough. PISA is a valuable assessment, but, when we have so few other consistent national measures, it inevitably carries too much weight in the debate.
The 2025 results showed that, compared with in 2009, Scottish 15-year-olds lost the equivalent of eight months in their reading ability and an alarming 19 months in their mathematics ability. Those figures are nothing short of appalling, and they are what should have dominated our discussions. Instead, we had arguments about international comparisons, the limitations of PISA and the fact that it provides a snapshot only every three years and at one particular age. I accept those limitations, but that is precisely my point: PISA becomes such a significant event because it is one of the few objective comparable measures that we have available in an otherwise opaque system.
That is why Scottish Labour is proposing five practical measures. First, we want to reintroduce the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy. That survey gave us an independent, nationally representative picture of literacy and numeracy across Scotland, helping us to track standards and understand the impact of deprivation on attainment. Bringing back that focused, anonymous survey would give us that picture again without placing unnecessary pressure on pupils or schools. Most importantly, it would show where our children are falling behind, where support is needed and how we close the poverty-related attainment gap.
Secondly, we need to look beyond exam results and understand what children actually experience at school. Attendance is not participation, and we need a national picture on what they are taught, the opportunities that they get and the support that they receive, along with a national report to share best practice.
Thirdly, we need a longitudinal study that follows children from school into their working lives so that we can understand where inequalities emerge, what makes a difference and what support leads to better outcomes in the long term.
Katherine Sangster rightly talked about the reintroduction of the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy. Is she in favour of scrapping the national testing that was brought in under the previous regime?
I would be open to having that discussion. The important point is that we return to the data that I have been talking about.
Fourthly, we need standardised education data from across Scotland. Differences in definitions, collection methods and reporting can make it difficult to have meaningful comparisons. We need consistent standards across local authorities and schools, which I note is a point that is also referenced in the Government’s amendment. That would allow us to properly identify trends, understand inequalities and measure progress. Without consistency, we cannot build a reliable national picture or properly understand why outcomes differ.
Finally, we want to establish a Scottish education data dashboard—a central, accessible resource that parents, pupils, teachers and researchers can use to see at a glance what is and is not working. When taken together, those five proposals would help to create a culture of openness and accountability in Scottish education.
Better data is not an end in itself; the important point is what we can achieve with it. It is about building an education system that is worthy of Scotland’s young people, in which we understand what is working, recognise where children are being let down and target support where it is most needed.
I have listened carefully to what Ms Sangster is saying, and I think that there is much that we agree on. Internationally, we are part of PISA, the trends in international mathematics and science study and the progress in international reading literacy study. We also collect achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data, have standardised assessments, do behavioural research and monitor attendance. Does she agree that rather a lot of data is being collected, but that we could work to bring it together in a much more coherent way? Does she also agree that, if we do that, we need to ensure that it will not put more pressure on our teaching workforce?
Yes, I accept that we do not want to put more pressure on the workforce. However, our recommendations have not come out of nothing; they came from the expertise of people from whom we have heard evidence about what they need in the education system. We need the measures that we are asking for, but the data needs to be in one picture.
Education has the power to transform a child’s life chances. It can break the cycle of poverty within a generation and it is one of the most important ways in which we can deliver on the Promise. We must be honest about the reality facing some of our most vulnerable children. After all, one in seven care-experienced children leaves school without a single qualification. Such figures should concern every member of this Parliament. Education is fundamental to keeping the Promise, but we cannot claim to be delivering for care-experienced children if we are accepting such outcomes. Our children deserve a Government that is prepared to face uncomfortable truths, not shy away from them.
I also want to acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifices that our young people made during the pandemic. Those who were at the lowest risk from the virus gave up much of their everyday lives to protect those who were more vulnerable. Their education was one of those sacrifices. We all recognise the profound impact that the pandemic had on learning and the particular challenges faced by children whose education was disrupted, but those young people deserve more than our thanks. They deserve action and an education system that understands the impact of that disruption, recognises where children have fallen behind and provides the support needed to help catch them up. That is what better evidence can help us deliver.
I want to be absolutely clear what this is not about. It is not about criticising our schools, undermining the incredible work of our teachers or collecting information for the sake of it. Instead, it is about giving our education system the tools that it needs to improve. It is about ensuring that parents are not left in the dark about their children’s education; that teachers have the evidence that they need to identify challenges and target support; that pupils’ experiences are heard and understood; and that this Parliament has the information necessary to hold the Government to account.
Those are practical and pragmatic steps towards a more transparent and accountable system, and I do not see why we have to wait to implement them or why, as the Government amendment suggests, public sector reform is required. Childhood is short and too important for political point scoring. Surely we can all agree that parents deserve transparency, pupils deserve to have their experiences understood and teachers deserve proper evidence. Scotland’s education system has a proud history. Our ambition should be to be world leading again, but that ambition must be matched by honesty about where we are succeeding and where we are falling short.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, Scottish Labour believes that education has the power to change lives and that it is one of the greatest tools for tackling poverty, improving life chances and delivering on the Promise. Let us be led by the evidence to understand what works and be prepared to change what does not. Better data will not solve every challenge in Scottish education, but it will help us make better decisions about how we tackle them. Ultimately, our children deserve an education system that sees their potential, meets their needs and gives every single child in Scotland the chance to thrive. I therefore urge the chamber to support the motion.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that the international performance of Scottish education has declined; further recognises the need to improve the experience and attainment for all young people in Scotland; believes that achievement in education is a key factor in breaking the cycle of poverty; agrees that Parliament must do more to break the link between family income and educational achievement; believes that, in order to address issues within the education system, they must be better understood, and calls for the reintroduction of the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) and standardised reporting across all local authorities to ensure consistent reporting on absences, behaviour and additional support needs and enable the education system to get it right for every child.
15:12
I will begin my remarks by addressing the hoax threats that have been made to schools across Scotland today. Police Scotland has been investigating the threatening messages that were sent to a number of schools this morning. The messages were very rapidly assessed by Police Scotland as not being credible and are being treated as hoaxes. As a parent and as a constituency MSP, I understand just how concerning this will be for parents, pupils, carers and school staff, and I take the opportunity to repeat Police Scotland’s advice that there is nothing to suggest any threat to the public from the content of those emails, which have been received widely across the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
That said, parents need the highest levels of assurance when it comes to their children, and I want them to have that. I have just come from an urgent meeting that I convened with Police Scotland, councils and wider partners across Scotland to ensure that the response is co-ordinated and that communication is as smooth as it can be. I will remain in close contact with Police Scotland and councils. In the meantime, I want to reassure parents, once again, by highlighting Police Scotland’s advice that there is nothing to suggest a threat to the public and the robust procedures that have been followed by Police Scotland and our education authorities.
I thank the cabinet secretary for the clarity that she has provided. She will be aware that this is the second time that this has happened in the space of a month. I know that she is aware of the alarm that it causes to many parents and the impact that it is having on the education of many children, so I thank her for providing that reassurance in a timely manner. Can she provide any additional context and information as to why this keeps happening?
I very much understand Mr Harley’s close interest in the matter. However, I hope that he will understand that, along with Police Scotland’s assurance that there is no threat to the public, a considerable amount of work is ongoing across Police Scotland and in counterterrorism right across the United Kingdom and—as members will have seen from press reports—Europe to understand the motivations and the individuals behind the hoaxes. It would not be appropriate for me to say more at this point, except to assure members that the authorities have the matter very much in hand.
Moving to the substance of the debate, I thank Katherine Sangster and Scottish Labour for bringing the motion to the chamber. There are few more important things than the success of our young people, and we all agree that education is the cornerstone of that. There is much that I agree with in Ms Sangster’s motion and her remarks this afternoon. I agree, to quote her motion, that
“achievement in education is a key factor in breaking the cycle of poverty”
and that, as a Parliament, we
“must do more to break the link between family income and educational achievement”.
I also appreciate how she grounded her motion in GIRFEC—getting it right for every child—and I agree with her on the need to
“improve the experience and attainment for all young people in Scotland”.
I also agree that data is a really important part of that. There is much that we are aligned on, and I hope that she will see that reflected in the Government’s amendment, in which I have deliberately used much of her wording. There are, however, some reasons why I cannot support the Labour motion today, which I will come back to.
First, I want to be clear about what the Government is seeking. At times, we can be guilty of getting into the detail, as we must on a whole range of issues, and forgetting to be clear about what we are seeking to achieve. In education, which is a broad remit, I am seeking excellence and equity.
In answer to a question that I asked the cabinet secretary’s predecessor about another issue, which had to do with racism in schools, Jenny Gilruth volunteered that she accepted that
“broader issues in relation to our education data”—[Official Report, 19 February 2026; c 52.]
were lacking. What issues of education data does the cabinet secretary believe Jenny Gilruth was referring to, which will command her priority attention if we are to fill the gaps that undoubtedly exist in data collection?
That was a somewhat convoluted question, to which I will try to give a straightforward answer. Rather than speaking to what my colleague was referring to, let me be clear that, as I said in my intervention on Katherine Sangster, I agree that, although a significant suite of data is collected on educational performance across Scotland, it can be done differently between councils, which can make it difficult to co-ordinate and assess. As I will come on to say, and as I said to Ms Sangster, we could collect that data more effectively and in a more aligned way, which would help us to have a clearer picture.
However, I was talking about excellence and equity. I want to stress that, when it comes to education, we should never be afraid to talk about excellence. We should be proud to talk about excellence, and we should challenge our young people to achieve their very best. Of course, excellence for one child will be different from excellence for another. That is where the second part—equity—comes in. It demands that we tear down the barriers to an excellent education. From my perspective, to achieve both excellence and equity, we need to get the basics right and we need to be prepared, at the same time, to seize the considerable opportunity for change that is coming for this Parliament in the four and a half years ahead. My motion makes it clear that the Government believes that change is required, and I have made it clear that, as the education secretary, I intend to oversee that reform.
I want to talk about those reforms. However, before I do, let me address some of the fundamentals, because, as I said, those things go hand in hand with reform. Our programme for government made it very clear that we will be focused on the ABCs of education: attainment, attendance, additional support, behaviour and curriculum.
On attainment, I had the pleasure of overseeing results day 2026 for the Government, and our learners outdid themselves. We saw increases in academic attainment across the board, in national 5, higher and advanced higher. We saw a narrowing of the poverty-related attainment gap and a surge in vocational awards. Subjects such as journalism, personal finance, childcare and construction are preparing our young people for the world of work. Amazingly, awards in those areas are up 121 per cent since 2019. It is worth saying that that mix of academic and vocational excellence is, to me and my colleague Alyn Smith, the hallmark of an education system that is working well and seeking to get it right for every child.
It is interesting that that balance, which we have been pursuing for many years, is what UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is now working to create in England, with technical qualifications. In fact, it is because of the pursuit of that balance that we have, on the one hand, a joint record-high number of young people in positive destinations in education, training or work and, on the other hand, a record number of young Scots from our most deprived backgrounds going to university. Those are examples of excellence of different kinds, and, to me, they are equally valuable.
Will the cabinet secretary reflect on an exchange that I had with the minister last week around positive destinations? Those measurements are taken only three and nine months after a young person has left school, and it strikes me that a wee gap exists in the data when we hear about the 18 to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training. Will the cabinet secretary consider extending that study?
I make no bones at all about the fact that we measure the immediate destination and the follow-up destination. In much of the discussion that I know Mr Smith is leading on 18 to 24-year-olds, we must be very clear about what they are doing. However, we are clear about that—indeed, we monitor employment rates and other things that those young people are doing. It does not take away from the fact that that is an incredibly positive result for our young people.
Attainment is improving, but we must strive for more, particularly to overcome the Covid setbacks that Katherine Sangster was absolutely right to acknowledge. The significant reform of our curriculum that is under way will support that. It will clarify the role of knowledge and the progression that each young person ought to be making while still giving flexibility to our teaching workforce.
Covid also affected attendance, and, as a society, we need to accept that it has changed the way that some people see their obligation to attend. Although attendance has been up for two years in a row, which I am happy about, I want it to continue to improve.
It is also important that we create an environment that enables each and every young person to learn, with particular focus on those who require additional support. I have said in the chamber previously that we will implement the McManus review and the national staged intervention model.
Behaviour in relationships is another fundamental issue. I want to be clear that we should expect the very highest standards in our schools. I state unequivocally that violence, aggression and bullying of any kind are unacceptable. Ultimately, poor and disruptive behaviour must be dealt with. All of that is true; nonetheless, it is still true that the vast majority of our young people are conscientious, kind and respectful. We must address poor behaviour, but we cannot allow our young people to be written off.
Will the member give way?
I am conscious of the time, Presiding Officer, but I am happy to take another intervention.
I hear what the cabinet secretary is saying about behaviour, but a vital element of correcting behaviour will be the sanctions that are available to teachers and headteachers. Will the Government take a lead in that area and get behind our teachers in specifying those sanctions and the consequences that can flow from bad behaviour?
I am absolutely behind our teaching workforce. I will say a few things about that. First, we need to monitor incidents and there needs to be certainty of follow-up. I want to support our teaching workforce with that.
Secondly, this morning I was in a discussion with the First Minister about his intention that every school in Scotland should teach anti-misogyny. That is important not only for pupils, because teaching is a largely female workforce and I want to support teachers in that way, too. However, I will not subscribe to what I think is quite a Victorian notion that we should just throw young people on the scrap heap by readily excluding them from school, with all the damage that that brings them later in life.
I have run out of time a bit, but, having looked at the fundamentals, I will turn to the opportunity for reform. Notwithstanding the very many strengths of Scottish education, our attainment, our poverty-related attainment gap and our performance data have not improved enough over the past decade. There remains significant variation in learning outcomes across Scotland. As we are in a three-month period of dialogue with national Government and local government on local government and public service reform, there is a question about education, which, for me, is this: “If you had the opportunity, after 25 years of devolution, to do more of what is working well but to change the systems that we have developed that are not serving our learners well, what would you do?”
I have been thinking very carefully about what reform in education needs to look like. We commissioned a report from John Wilson, with his decades of experience, to draw on and to inform that work. I want to see better use of data, I want performance information to support earlier intervention where improvement is needed, and I want us to be able to properly monitor whether improvement is happening. I have been having discussions with stakeholders across the board about what needs to be done, and I can confirm to colleagues today that I will be reaching out to spokespeople across the chamber to engage with them on what they believe is needed. I hope that there is a clear consensus on the need to drive reform.
Members will not, for a moment, hear me say that change is not required. Indeed, I believe that it is integral to our continued success, and it is a core part of my plans. I will work with anyone across the chamber who seeks that, too, because the Government does not have a monopoly on good ideas and I am interested in members’ views.
Let us not allow this debate about how we move forward and improve to turn into the running down of young people’s achievements or the concerted efforts of our teaching and local authority staff. I speak to many teachers, and they are fed up with the way in which teaching is characterised. That is not to say that they do not want scrutiny or change, but they want the positive work that they are doing across Scotland to be recognised.
I look forward to hearing contributions from members across the chamber. I will leave them with the thought that change is coming and I want to work with them all to shape that.
I move amendment S7M-01963.3, to leave out from first “recognises” to end and insert:
“celebrates the achievements of Scotland’s young people, as reflected in the 2026 National Qualifications results with academic passes up at every level and a 121% increase in vocational awards since 2019; notes that there is a joint record number of young people in positive follow-up destinations such as college, work and apprenticeships, and more young Scots gaining a place at university, including a record number from deprived backgrounds; recognises the contribution of Scotland’s dedicated and hardworking teaching and school staff; notes the need to improve the experience and attainment for all young people in Scotland and believes that achievement in education is a key factor in breaking the cycle of poverty, and affirms that, in the pursuit of excellence and equity, the Scottish Government should drive meaningful reform across the education system, including by working with parties across the Chamber to identify priorities for school assessments such as the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and Scottish National Standardised Assessments, and embrace the opportunity of public sector reform to enhance performance, reduce unwarranted variation and empower school leaders across Scotland.”
15:26
I, too, thank the cabinet secretary for her timely reassurance on the matter of the hoax bomb threats in our schools.
Education should be about opportunity. It should be the means through which every young person can fulfil their potential, regardless of their family income, their postcode or their background. That is why I begin by thanking Katherine Sangster for bringing the debate to the chamber. There is much in her motion that I agree with. We should be concerned when educational outcomes are unequal. We should be concerned when too many children face barriers to achievement because of poverty. We should be willing to have an honest conversation about how we measure progress and how we hold ourselves accountable on improving outcomes.
It is also important that we recognise the successes in Scottish education. Behind every set of statistics are thousands of dedicated teachers, support staff and school leaders who are working hard every day for Scotland’s young people. There are real achievements to celebrate, and no one is served by talking down the efforts of those who work in Scotland’s schools. However, recognising success and pursuing improvement are not contradictory objectives. If we are serious about raising attainment and tackling inequality, we need good evidence, proportionate assessment and policies that support children and families.
Will the member give way?
I would like to make a little bit more progress, but I will take a pause in a moment.
At a time when many families continue to face financial pressure, we know that expensive and restrictive uniform requirements can create unnecessary costs. Uniform policy should support inclusion and not place further burdens on parents and carers. Making such guidance statutory is a practical step that would help to ensure consistency and fairness across Scotland. I am proud of the work that Scottish Greens did with the Government to deliver new guidance for schools and councils. The recommendations that were introduced in 2024 included allowing generic, low-cost uniform items that families can buy from a range of shops, rather than forcing them to purchase expensive branded clothing from specialist suppliers. Although most councils are following the spirit of that guidance, putting it on a statutory footing would mean that every family could feel the benefit of it, wherever they live. That is what my amendment calls for, and I encourage members to vote for it.
I am happy to give way to Jenny Young now.
The member talked about the need for more data. In that spirit, will the Scottish Greens support Scottish Labour’s motion and the call for the immediate reintroduction of the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy?
I will come on to that in more detail. I have some concerns about it, because it would bring in an extra layer of bureaucracy for teachers, given that it would sit on top of the standardised assessments rather than being done instead of them. Our argument is that we need to reform and review instead of adding more testing.
Reform of Scotland’s education system has been on the agenda since devolution, but the time for review is over and the time for implementation is now. Critical independent reports—those of Louise Hayward, James Withers, Angela Morgan, Ken Muir and more—have been left unread or their recommendations only partially delivered.
The success of this Parliament will be determined by what it does and not by how much it reviews, thinks or ponders about the future without securing it. We have already seen where system reform has worked. The success and transformation of Qualifications Scotland are the result of the Parliament coming together to deliver change for the better.
Reform cannot exist in silos. We cannot reform the organisations that deliver and inspect qualifications and assessment without revisiting the qualification and assessment methods at the core of the system. I respect the views of those, including the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic, who favour the retention of exams in principle. What I am talking about, and what Louise Hayward recommended, is not the abolition of exams but the creation of a system that supports the rounded progress and development of pupils.
I understand where Laura Moodie is coming from in relation to assessments, but does she not believe that the evolution of artificial intelligence presents a risk to what she is laying out in her argument?
I think that everybody is concerned about the potential risk of that, but I believe that we should trust our teachers, who have the required skills and knowledge. They know their pupils—and their pupils’ voice—better than others, and we should trust them to make the judgments on that basis.
When we speak to young people, employers and parents about what a successful learner looks like, we use words such as “creative”, “resilient” and “adaptable”. However, there is no higher in creativity, no nat 5 in resilience and no Scottish credit and qualifications framework in adaptability. A Scottish diploma of achievement would value transferable skills, capturing the diverse achievements of every learner in Scotland. That would require a cultural change that no longer measures Scotland’s education system on narrow academic pathways and, instead, celebrates success across the network of paths that lead to a fulfilling life. In that regard, I fear that we will look back at the end of this parliamentary session or the next and regret that we did not take one of the boldest reforms in education for generations.
There are direct issues being faced in our classrooms right now that we cannot afford to wait to address. I am glad that the Government’s amendment recognises the contribution of Scotland’s dedicated and hard-working teaching and school staff, and not forgetting the lecturers and staff across Scotland’s colleges and universities. However, for most of those people, that recognition will not be felt in their day-to-day life. Teaching unions rightly raise workload as one of the key issues that contribute to unsustainable pressures in Scotland’s classrooms and on outcomes.
In looking at outcomes, we must review how we measure them. Scottish national standardised assessments, or SNSAs, are widely regarded as an additional layer of bureaucracy. Research conducted by the Scottish Greens found that teachers think that SNSAs create unnecessary work, add little to the development and learning of pupils and are irrelevant to their teaching.
In my view, the way forward is to scrap SNSAs and, instead, bring back the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy. Doing so would make the workload of teachers that bit lighter and reflect the trust that we place in our teaching workforce, all while we ensure that we consistently monitor progress and attainment. The £3.5 million that is spent annually on delivering SNSAs could be reallocated to supporting literacy rates among pupils. The same amount of money could provide the 25 per cent of primary schools in Scotland that do not have access to books with furnished and fully stocked libraries. That proposal from the National Literacy Trust offers a cost-effective opportunity to invest in the next generation, so that they can discover a love of reading, reach their full potential and develop the skills that they need to thrive.
Although my position on SNSAs is slightly firmer than that of the Government, I am pleased to see in her amendment that the cabinet secretary acknowledges the need to
“identify priorities for school assessments such as the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and Scottish National Standardised Assessments”.
The challenge before us is not to choose between excellence and equity; Scotland’s education system must deliver both. We should celebrate achievement wherever it occurs, while remaining relentless in our determination to break the link between poverty and educational outcomes. Today’s debate provides an opportunity to move that agenda forward. By improving how we gather evidence, by reducing unnecessary burdens on schools, by making uniform guidance statutory and by reconsidering assessment arrangements, including SNSAs, we can take practical steps that benefit learners across Scotland.
I move amendment S7M-01963.1, to insert at end:
“; recognises that, where data collection on pupil performance across local authorities is standardised, it should be done in a way that supports both the progress and attainment of pupils and tackles the bureaucracy placed on teachers; welcomes guidance on school uniforms that includes key recommendations to limit costs, and calls for this guidance to be placed on a statutory footing as soon as possible.”
14:34
Let us go back to August 2015, which was when Nicola Sturgeon asked us all to judge her on her education record. Those words will continue to haunt this Government’s corridors, unless it changes course.
I welcome this debate on Labour’s motion. All too often, Opposition parties are forced to bring to the chamber debates on education while the Government responds with an all-too-familiar message of “nothing to see here”. The motion that is before us, rightly, argues for the need to improve attainment, tackle inequality and strengthen national standards. I disagree with little in it. However, the Government’s amendment seeks to paint a picture of Scotland’s education system as being world leading, a beacon of excellence and a shining example for other countries to follow. I wish that that were the truth. We used to be proud of our education system, but, today, we find ourselves having to challenge a Government that seems more interested in defending its record than in improving it.
I do not like the cabinet secretary’s portrayal of anyone in the chamber who challenges the Government on our education system as talking down our educational professionals. I blame not them but the Government’s lack of action over many years, because it has been more interested in gimmicks and headline-grabbing announcements than in the hard graft of getting the basics right.
We have seen that in the form of free laptops and bikes—undelivered; laminated behaviour cards; the muting of school bells; and welcome-to-school bags. [Interruption.] Does someone want to intervene?
I was speaking, from a sedentary position, about the repeated talk about laptops. No child in any school in Scotland who knows how to work a laptop does not have access to one. Perhaps Meghan Gallacher should temper her remarks.
Giving access is different to promising to give all pupils a funded laptop, so I ask the member to reflect on her party’s policies in that respect.
Parents do not want gimmicks; neither do teachers. They want classrooms in which children can learn, teachers can teach and every young person can fulfil their potential.
That brings me to the challenge that I put directly to the cabinet secretary today. We could spend our time on listing every educational failing, every missed target and every broken promise, but that would achieve nothing. After a productive meeting this morning with educational experts, I know that calling out the Government will not bring change. I do not want to waste more years in this Parliament on trading political blows while generations of children miss out. We need to work together on education reform. Here, therefore, is an idea for the cabinet secretary—
Will the member take an intervention?
No, as I wish to make some progress.
I want us, as a Parliament, to look at the work that was undertaken by Michael Gove and Nick Gibb during their time in office. The mention in this chamber of a Conservative Government is uncomfortable for some members; however, the education of our children should surely matter more than which political party developed a successful strategy. Does the cabinet secretary really want to be remembered as the one who had the opportunity to improve Scottish education but refused to consider proven approaches because they were associated with a different political party?
The cabinet secretary knows that I am putting together a round table to examine the reforms that were undertaken in England and what Scotland can learn from those. She can still be part of that discussion if she wants, and I put that challenge to her today.
The reforms that were introduced in England were not about simply changing the name of a quango or announcing another review but about challenging the culture of low expectations and putting knowledge, standards and evidence back into education.
We need only look at phonics. Learning to read is the gateway to almost every other area of education. If a child cannot read confidently, how can they access mathematics, science, history or geography? Phonics gives children the tools to decode words, build fluency and develop the confidence to read independently. Those reforms are best associated with Nick Gibb and the work that was undertaken during the Conservative Government.
I am listening to what Meghan Gallacher is saying, and there is no one with whom I will not discuss the opportunity to improve education; I have been clear that that is what I want to see. I wonder, however, whether she has had the opportunity to read the first published draft of the new curriculum—I appreciate that it is a large volume of documents—and how far she finds that it meets the challenge that she sets out today, in particular in respect of knowledge in the curriculum.
Here we go again—we have a lot of things in draft, and we have had a lot of reviews. I am done with that. I just want the Government to get on with doing what it needs to do, and part of that is about learning lessons from other parts of the United Kingdom.
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s approach of reaching out and having discussions across various parts of our United Kingdom, but that has to be heartfelt. Again, if the new curriculum is already in draft, why are we not getting on with it? I think that everybody will want to know the answers to those questions.
I know that I have gone past my time, Presiding Officer, so I will finish by quoting Keir Bloomer, a former director of education, who spoke about the lack of data. He said:
“We know far too little about how the Scottish system is actually performing. The lack of data is a serious matter in Scottish education. We used to be better informed than we are now.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 11 March 2026; c 6.]
I agree, so let us do something about it.
15:41
I thank Katherine Sangster and Labour for bringing this important debate to the chamber. The Scottish Liberal Democrats will be supporting the motion.
The SNP has had almost 20 years of governing our education system. It has, to be frank, taken what was once the envy of the world and overseen continuous decline. Now here we are, left asking why children from poorer backgrounds are still more likely not to achieve their potential; why additional support needs are going unmet; why attendance is reducing among pupils across Scotland; why we are struggling to recruit secondary school teachers; and why teachers are facing increased disruption in classrooms.
That decline is starkly illustrated in my own family. According to the PISA results, my 15-year-old daughter is now statistically likely to be academically a full year behind her cousin of a similar age in England in both maths and science. For me, that is unacceptable and sad to hear.
All of that is why Labour’s motion matters. We have to have trackable data to enable us to understand the problem and learn how to fix it. The motion’s call to bring back the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy is one that the Scottish Liberal Democrats have made previously, and we will support it.
However, there are other, more fundamental questions that we should be asking in this debate about what is going on in education today. Why is the Government spending time on things that are nice to have—and which, to be frank, can be considered gimmicks—rather than focusing on what will make the biggest difference to children’s lives? Those in staffrooms are literally laughing in disbelief at the SNP’s spending £2.7 million on a schoolbag scheme that nobody has asked for.
We have also put thousands of Chromebooks and iPads in front of pupils as young as five. Scottish Borders Council alone has a contract with Apple that is worth £16 million. That is despite the director of public health at NHS Borders, and 70 general practitioners, urging against the practice on health grounds. I understood why that came in post Covid, but when we realise that something is not working, we should be fleet of foot enough to pause it and change practice. Many teachers there do not want to use those devices but feel compelled to do so because of a top-down policy from distant management in a far-too-large local authority.
In addition, at a time when we have an acute teacher shortage in secondary schools, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has estimated that it will cost up to £310 million to implement reduced class contact time for teachers. There were only 28 trainee physics teachers in Scotland last year, when the national target was 131. That means that the SNP is training only 21 per cent of the teachers that we need in a crucial STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—subject. Just last Thursday, Fraserburgh academy had to send secondary 1 pupils home due to a lack of teachers to supervise them, and this week it is the S2 pupils who are being sent home.
Giving teachers an extra 90 minutes out of the classroom to plan and prepare or recalibrate is a “nice to have”. However, with the pressures facing schools, I question how removing teachers from classrooms will improve learning and pupil regulation, particularly in the parts of Scotland where subject specialists are already scarce.
Mr Dunlop has gone past the point that I wanted to ask him about—that is because I could not get my button to work, which is entirely my fault.
Mr Dunlop talked about the lack of physics teachers—I think that those are the ones that he singled out. Does he realise that there is a shortage of STEM subject teachers across the United Kingdom, because the public sector cannot compete with industry, which offers lucrative careers and lucrative salaries that the public sector cannot meet? Does he not at least acknowledge that, and that the problem of having a shortage of STEM subject teachers predates even my days as a teacher, which began more than 40 years ago?
I totally recognise that. As we have discussed in the Education and Gaelic Committee, there are ways around that, and we have to look at them. The point that I was making is that removing those few physics teachers that we have from the classroom will only reduce the ability of our students who want to study physics and learn. That is the reality. We have not got anyone to replace those teachers.
It is not unsurprising that the Scottish National Party’s plan is half-baked, because, let us remember, it was agreed only with the threat of strikes and an election looming—that is why the SNP rushed it through. Ministers have made a mess of the policy from the start, and doubts are being raised about how it can be implemented.
Meanwhile, pupil support assistants—who are less vocal than the teachers, are on the lowest pay for highly skilled jobs, and support children with complex physical disabilities and additional support needs—are seeing their jobs cut. We have 12,000 hours a week less of PSA support in classrooms than we did in 2023. That is despite a 710 per cent increase in additional support needs since 2007.
Even children with less severe needs are going without help, as we have a host of non-attender pupils who are unable to get into the school building at all. Indeed, a focus group of primary school leaders that I led this week told me:
“A significant part of the problem is the ongoing lack of support staff, coupled with the poor levels of pay for what is an incredibly demanding and essential role. Additional support needs of learners are exploding. It is creating a ticking time bomb for Scotland. At its heart, it feels like we are failing the future of these children.”
I am grateful to Mr Dunlop for focusing on additional support needs. The issue is important to me, which is why I listed it among the fundamentals that we must get right.
I hope that Mr Dunlop will welcome the fact that we have nearly 17,000 pupil support assistants in Scotland, which is the third-highest level on record. Further, since 2012-13, the sums that local authorities are spending on additional support for learning have increased by about £540 million to reach more than £1 billion. The story of additional support needs in Scotland has not been one of disinvestment but of investment. We are, of course, seeing that Lucy Powell is also starting to consider that that level of investment is required in the rest of the UK.
I welcome that, but I think that our statistics are different, because there has been a drop of 12,000 hours a week in PSA support that is actually being provided in the classrooms. Pupil support assistants are no longer dedicated to specific schools and classrooms, so the important continuity of relationship with children is being lost. That is why the Scottish Liberal Democrats have consistently called for an additional 2,000 pupil support assistants. That would be a tangible investment in children’s education, helping teachers to manage the workload, regulate classrooms and ensure that pupils get the additional support that they need.
My final point is on the cabinet secretary’s remarks on public sector reform. If we want to make the increasingly scarce resources work, we also need to return trust to our teachers and the community around schools, give headteachers the power and resources to make decisions that best suit their pupils, and give real powers over governance and engagement to parents and the community, unleashing their skills and support to help the whole community thrive. If local government reform is going ahead—
The member must wind up.
Okay. If local government reform is going ahead, let us place high schools and the catchment areas at the centre of properly localised government.
In conclusion—
No, the member must wind up.
Sorry, but I was just making up my time from the interventions that I took. I have one more—
The member got his time back and has gone considerably over his time. He must wind up.
So, I will conclude now—
No, the member must wind up.
Okay, I will wind up. I hope that we can be ambitious for the futures of our children because that is the future of Scotland.
I move amendment S7M-01963.4, to remove from “and enable” to end and insert:
“; believes that pupil support assistants provide essential support to children with additional support needs and teachers; calls for education funding currently directed towards initiatives such as the Welcome to School Bag and digital screens in primary school classrooms to instead be invested in the recruitment of, and better pay for, pupil support assistants; agrees that continuity in relationships specifically between pupil support assistants and pupils must be prioritised, and calls for headteachers and the community to have more devolved powers to choose the interventions that best meet their school’s needs and enable the education system to get it right for every child.”
15:49
I welcome the motion’s focus on improving attainment, tackling inequality and strengthening national standards. We will support it, along with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendments. I also welcome the cabinet secretary’s willingness to work with other parties.
After nearly two decades of Scottish National Party control of education, the evidence of decline is clear. The Parliament is right to demand better data so that the system can be held to account. The latest PISA results make the scale of the problem plain. In mathematics, Scotland scored 467 against England’s 492, which is a 25-point gap. In science, the gap is also 25 points. In reading, Scotland sits at 488, while England reaches 497. As Duncan Dunlop said, a 20-point gap is roughly equivalent to a year of schooling. Scotland’s mathematics performance in 2025 was significantly lower than in every PISA cycle between 2003 and 2018. Reading and science scores also remain well below the levels that were achieved before curriculum for excellence was introduced. Although England has improved its position, Scotland has slipped, and parents, teachers and employers see the consequences. There are weaker foundations in literacy and numeracy and there is a greater variation between schools, while young people are leaving the system less prepared than they should be.
Achievement in education is a key factor in breaking the cycle of poverty, yet the link between family background and outcomes remains too strong. If we are serious about addressing that, we must first understand what is happening in our schools. That is why the motion’s call for the reintroduction of the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy and for standardised reporting across all local authorities on absences, behaviour and additional support needs is both timely and necessary. Without consistent, comparable data, we cannot identify where progress is being made, where problems are concentrated or whether resources are reaching the children who need them the most. Too often, we are asked to accept that the system is getting it right for every child, while the evidence that we have is incomplete or inconsistent.
The Government’s proposed response—an evolved curriculum for excellence under the curriculum improvement cycle, with new frameworks due from 2028—does not inspire confidence. The papers that are meant to provide the evidence base for those reforms have been shown to contain fabricated sources and basic factual errors. An academic at the University of Edinburgh identified around 20 references to articles, books and reports that do not exist. One citation was for a book that was supposedly published in 2025—a date that was impossible when the documents were written. Another claim asserted that more than 200,000 pupils had studied higher physical education, when fewer than 150,000 pupils sat national five, higher and advanced higher qualifications combined that year. Education Scotland has acknowledged that artificial intelligence was used to edit the reports. That does not reassure; it raises further questions about oversight and the integrity of the process. If the evidence base for curriculum reform cannot get simple statistics right and invents sources that do not exist, it is difficult to have confidence that the resulting frameworks will address the problems that PISA has identified.
The SNP has had nearly 20 years in power. Curriculum for excellence has been in place for most of that time. The results speak for themselves. Our children deserve a curriculum that specifies clear knowledge, rigorous standards and honest evidence. They also deserve the consistent national data that the motion calls for, so that the Parliament and the public can see what is working and what is not. Reintroducing the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy and requiring standardised reporting on absences, behaviour and additional support needs would be practical steps towards that.
Until the Government confronts the real causes of falling standards and equips us with reliable data, rather than papering over problems with flawed documents, parents will have every reason to question whether this latest exercise will succeed where previous ones have not.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I was so keen to speak in the debate that I forgot to move my amendment earlier. I therefore do so now.
I move amendment S7M-01963.2, to insert at end:
“; expresses serious concern that the Scottish Government has failed to reverse declining school standards, close the attainment gap or adequately support the rising number of pupils with additional support needs (ASN); notes that around one in four primary pupils is not achieving expected literacy levels and one in five is not achieving expected numeracy levels, and that Scotland recorded its poorest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results to date with pupils falling behind their counterparts in England in reading, mathematics and science; condemns the Scottish Government’s focus on headline-grabbing policies, including the proposed £2.7 million Welcome to School Bag, and its failure to deliver promised funded bikes and laptops; believes that the Scottish Government has failed to collect and publish reliable, comparable information on school performance and that positive destination statistics are wholly inadequate as a measure of educational success; calls for consistent annual reporting, publicly available and comparable over time and across all local authorities, on attainment, the attainment gap, attendance, persistent absence, exclusions, classroom violence, disruptive behaviour and ASN; questions the effectiveness of Education Scotland in driving improvement, and calls on the Scottish Government to deliver a credible and comprehensive plan to raise attainment and restore confidence in Scotland’s schools, to prioritise a knowledge-based, evidence-led curriculum with literacy, numeracy and subject knowledge at its core, and to establish clear national standards, measurable targets and robust accountability for educational outcomes.”
Thank you. That is now on the record.
We now move on to the open debate.
15:55
I welcome the debate, because education is one of the subjects where I genuinely believe that there is more that unites us across the chamber than divides us. I welcome the tone of the debate. Perhaps the debate does not unite everyone, but I hope that I can still continue that tone, and it is my intention to do so.
We were reminded during a recent evidence session at the Education and Gaelic Committee by those who are involved in the education of our young people that education should stop being used as a political football. I agree, because we get nowhere if the debate becomes a rammy all the time. Having spent a fair bit of time involved in the education debate over the years, I know that we need to continue to challenge ourselves to keep an eye on the prize and deliver for our young people.
My oldest grandson, JJ, has his birthday today. He has hit double figures—he is 10 years old—so, happy birthday, JJ! It is because of him and his three sisters that I see education in Scotland from the perspective of a grandparent, as well as that of a parliamentarian. With that in mind, there is quite a lot in the Labour motion that I agree with—and there are parts of it that I do not agree with, but that is political discourse, not a rammy. We only have to look at the absolute riot of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in the previous session of the Parliament to see the way we need not to go. That culture was created by the former convener and, because of that, we achieved nothing as a committee. That is not the way to go.
As I have said, however, I welcome the tone that most of the political parties have taken today, and I want to continue that positive discussion. We all want our young people to achieve their potential, and we all want to improve attainment. Surely every member of the Parliament wants to break the link between the circumstances that a child is born into and the opportunities that they have in life.
One thing that we should start recognising and which sometimes gets lost in these debates is that Scotland’s young people are achieving remarkable things. We should be proud of them. The 2026 exam results showed pass rates increasing at every level of national qualifications, with a record number of national 5 passes. There has been a 121 per cent increase in vocational and technical awards since 2019. A joint record number of young people are moving into positive destinations after leaving school. Perhaps most importantly, talking about tackling inequality, a record number of young people from the most deprived areas have secured places in universities.
Will George Adam give way on that point?
I will later on.
Every one of those achievements is a young person who has worked hard, a family who have supported their child, and teachers and school staff who have helped them along the way. Sometimes that is all lost when we get caught up in a political debate on education.
I am not saying that everything in Scottish education is perfect; it is not. I know that there are challenges with attendance, behaviour, additional support needs and attainment. There are children who are not achieving what they should, and we have a responsibility to do something about that. However, recognising those challenges should not mean ignoring the progress that is being made.
For me, education is all about opportunity—one that I personally did not take up myself, because, as a younger person, I believed that I knew better than anyone else. Thank goodness I got rid of that part of my personality. As I say, it is about opportunity; in many cases, it can be life changing.
Coming from Paisley, I know that talent and ability are not determined by the income that is generated by your family. A child growing up in Ferguslie Park with as much potential as a child growing up in one of the wealthiest parts of Scotland needs that opportunity. As someone who grew up there, I know what that is like.
Our job is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to fulfil their dreams and aspirations. That is why the Scottish attainment challenge matters; around £1.75 billion has been invested in that over the past decade, with up to £200 million being invested this year alone. It is why free school meals, breakfast clubs and support for families matter, too, because we cannot separate what happens in the classroom from what happens in a child’s life outwith the school environment. A child who arrives at school hungry, worried about what is happening at home or struggling because their family is under financial pressure, is already facing barriers before the first lesson has even started.
No amount of testing, measuring or reporting will remove those barriers on its own, and that is why the Scottish Government believes that its approach is the way forward.
That brings me to the question of assessment. I understand why Labour wants further information and I agree that we need reliable evidence to identify where improvements are necessary, but I am not convinced that simply bringing back the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy is the answer. Indeed, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had previously raised concerns about the limitations of the old survey.
That does not mean that our current arrangements are perfect, but surely the sensible approach is to look at what information we collect, identify what is missing and work with those in education to improve it. I believe that simple solutions tend to work—that is the type of guy I am.
We need to be careful that our enthusiasm for collecting more information does not end up giving teachers further administration, because I suspect that most teachers would rather spend their time teaching children than filling out another form to tell someone that they have been teaching children.
Will the member give way now?
I will.
I agree with George Adam—I know that he always hates to hear those words—when he says that some things in our education system are good, some things are not so good and there are other things that we simply do not know. When he says that we should collect and use the data that we have, I think that that happens. However, the former Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills said that there were gaps in data collection. Does he not acknowledge that? Fundamentally, surely that is data that is relevant to the literacy and numeracy attainment of Scotland’s children and young people.
It always sends a shiver down my spine when Stephen Kerr says that he agrees with me. That said, I previously stated that, where there are issues and we need to fix the problems, we should do so. I am not saying that we should go back to a process that did not work in the past—the OECD said that it did not work, too.
My next point is crucial. More than 1,500 teachers and practitioners have already been involved in developing the Scottish Government’s proposals, because that is where the change can be made. The curriculum improvement cycle, which is the biggest thing that has happened for the past 10 years, will make it clearer what young people should know, understand and be able to do, and how they can progress. That gives us the opportunity to make a difference in education.
Will the member give way?
The member will not be able to take an intervention. He should be winding up.
With regard to what is happening currently, a number of individuals who have come to the Education and Gaelic Committee have stated that we are going in the right direction.
I started by saying that there is much that I can agree with in Labour’s motion, and I mean that. We have to talk about the issue and depoliticise the debate—
The member will need to wind up.
—because delivery is more important. This is about the young people, children and families we serve.
16:03
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
Labour’s motion recognises the need for better data. I want to spend a few minutes focusing particularly on additional support for learning in Scotland and improved understanding of the needs of young learners in Scotland.
Last year, Audit Scotland identified that 40 per cent of pupils in publicly funded schools were recorded as receiving additional support for learning, with the proportion in Scotland’s most deprived areas almost double that in the least deprived areas. However, the briefing paper also noted that it was simply
“not possible to determine the scale, complexity and nature of additional support needs across Scotland due to inconsistencies and gaps in data recording.”
The subsequent McManus review, which reported this year, similarly recognised the problem, stating that a
“clearer national picture of children and young people’s needs, support and progress must inform decision-making and improvement.”
It is precisely that clarity that the motion calls for.
Although we all recognise the growth and increasing complexity of need over the past decade, those who have been around additional support for learning for longer will remember the hope that was attached to the Doran review of 2012, the Morgan review of 2020 and other reviews. Those reports highlighted a gap between Scotland’s commitment to inclusive education and the reality that is faced by children, families and teaching staff. Now we have had the McManus review, further recognising the continuing pressures across schools and variation in provision across Scotland. Professionals in the sector could be forgiven for wondering whether the latest review will gain the traction that its predecessors did not.
Armed with better data, the Scottish Government and local authorities could better evaluate how additional support for learning is being planned for, funded and staffed.
In my former role with an autism charity, I was often concerned to hear of neurodivergent young people missing out on their education because they found it hard to cope in mainstream classrooms. That might have been because of sensory overwhelm or the social pressures of the classroom, or it might have been because the young people needed more processing time and communication that met their thinking style. I mention that because, all too often, such absences were not recorded as formal exclusions. However, when a parent is regularly asked to collect their dysregulated child after an hour or so in the classroom, or when a child disconnects from education because they cannot face that level of stress, we are talking about below-the-radar exclusion.
Therefore, I recognise and welcome the cabinet secretary’s commitment to better data recording on absences, as she has set out in previous answers to me in the chamber, and to the staged intervention model, as outlined in the McManus review. That must be actioned effectively if we are to gain a true picture of need and respond appropriately.
We also need to have a nuanced conversation about absences and behaviour that recognises that, in some cases, those are signs of unmet learning needs. At the same time as identifying and addressing the scale of disengagement from education, we need to recognise that inclusive education is not about whether a young person is in the same room as their peers; it is about whether they are in an environment where they can learn effectively and whether they feel that they belong.
Let us be clear: the need for consistent data does not mean that we should move to a one-size-fits-all approach. Although we need national measures of literacy and numeracy, educational attainment—particularly for learners with greater support needs—must be understood, recognised and celebrated on an individual basis, which might require a different pace of learning and a different measure of outcomes. We need to consider carefully how we define and measure outcomes for that group of young people, so that we can more accurately assess whether the support and the learning that are being provided are effective.
Every child has the right to an education and the opportunity to learn, but every child does not learn in the same way or thrive in the same environment. As the McManus review recognises, that needs to be reflected in curriculum design, not just in the staged intervention model that is under development.
No one doubts the commitment or ambition of schools, teachers and classroom practitioners in relation to young people with additional support needs. However, education professionals are being asked to meet increasingly significant and complex needs without the capacity, resources and learning and development opportunities that they require to do so. With robust data to hand and adequate resources to meet identified needs, schools and teachers could more accurately allocate the required resources for additional support for learning, whether it is for well-trained learning support assistants, environmental adjustments, communication aids or other accommodations.
We can develop a deeper understanding of the needs of our young people who require additional support. Fundamentally, we can better determine what is working and where we need to do more. We need shared learning on progress and impacts, as the McManus review called for.
The sector will need greater resourcing. Teachers are under considerable pressure to deliver in classrooms that include learners with diverse and specialist needs, and they require the training, support and staffing resources to meet those needs. This year, the Scottish Government has received more than £0.5 billion as a result of increased spending on special educational needs in England. I hope that the Scottish Government will take the learning from the McManus review and the increased resources at hand to grasp the nettle, so that we have an education system in Scotland that is truly inclusive.
16:08
Every child in Scotland deserves the opportunity to fulfil their potential, and every child should have the chance to succeed regardless of the circumstances into which they were born. Having looked at the motion, I can see that there is a clear connection between educational achievement and tackling poverty. Education can transform lives, open doors and give young people opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach.
However, if we are serious about breaking the relationship between family income and educational achievement, we must look more closely at the earliest years of a child’s life in education. It will come as no surprise to colleagues that I want to use my time in the debate to again make the case for the introduction of a kindergarten stage for children who are currently in primary 1. The cabinet secretary knows well my interest in that area, as did her predecessors in the previous parliamentary session, and I look forward to our meeting in early December.
Two weeks ago, I hosted a successful event that brought together experts, practitioners and people with a deep understanding of early childhood development. There was a shared recognition that Scotland has an opportunity to rethink its approach to the education of our youngest children. The expertise is there, the evidence deserves serious consideration, and I believe that the time has come for us to move the discussion forward.
At present, Scotland expects children to begin formal primary education at around four and a half to five and a half years old—an idea that is based on the thinking, cultural and societal needs of the mid-1800s. Internationally, that is a very young age to introduce the expectations and structures that are associated with formal schooling, and it is much younger than in most other countries.
Children develop at different rates. As we know, their emotional, social, physical and cognitive development does not follow a uniform timetable, yet we often expect children of the same age to meet the same expectations regardless of their individual development or circumstances. That is a huge factor in educational inequality. A child growing up in a household experiencing poverty might have fewer opportunities for outdoor play, to explore their surroundings and to experience the language-rich environments that support early development. Those differences can become apparent before a child even walks through the doors of primary school.
By the time that children begin primary 1, some of those inequalities are already established. We then spend considerable time and public money trying to close gaps that have been developing since the earliest years. Surely, we should be asking whether we can do more to address those inequalities before they become embedded. That is where the kindergarten proposal offers a real opportunity. Organisations such as Upstart Scotland have made a compelling case for a distinct relationship-centred and play-based stage covering approximately the ages of three to seven.
That would be an educational approach with a clear purpose. Play is central to how young children learn. Through imaginative play, outdoor activity, storytelling, music and practical experiences, children develop the foundations that support their later academic achievement. They develop language and communication. They learn to co-operate with others, manage their emotions, solve problems and build confidence. Those are essential foundations for successful learning throughout their lives.
It is vital to stress that a kindergarten stage would not mean abandoning literacy and numeracy. Children who show an interest in reading, writing and mathematics should be encouraged and supported at their level. The difference is that learning would respond to children’s individual development and we would not place the same formal academic expectations on every child at the same age.
The round-table event that the member held on the issue was extremely positive and good. From the evidence that he has and his expertise in the area, can he say whether we could make the proposed change within the current structures or whether we would need a change in legislation or in buildings and so on? I suppose that I am asking whether it would be expensive, because it certainly seems to be a very positive approach.
I will come on to that.
I believe that there is valuable international experience for Scotland to consider. Countries such as Finland, Estonia and Switzerland have established play-based approaches to early education. Most strikingly, the evidence is clear that there is no detriment to children from starting formal schooling later. Indeed, PISA scores and other measures often demonstrate that there are greater academic as well as emotional benefits. We should be willing to learn from that experience and consider what could work in Scotland.
I assume that the member is talking about guided play, because young people would need to be at a certain level when a young person enters official school. There would need to be a basic understanding of literacy and numeracy, otherwise it would be very difficult for teachers to pick that up.
There are already great examples of the approach in Scotland, and I will come on to that.
If we want to improve attainment, we must consider the foundations on which attainment is built. If we want to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap as well as the issues with behaviour and neurodivergence, we must give children from all backgrounds access to experiences and relationships that support their development. A universal kindergarten stage could help to achieve that ambition and meet the challenges that our educators face. It would give children across Scotland access to high-quality play, outdoor learning, supportive relationships and language-rich environments. Those opportunities should never depend on the income of a child’s parents.
I appreciate that introducing a kindergarten stage would require proper planning and consultation but, to go back to Carol Mochan’s point, I reassure the cabinet secretary and other members that it would not be a start from scratch; it would be more of a natural transition from good work that is already in place. To go back to Meghan Gallacher’s point, many schools are already implementing play-based approaches in P1 and sometimes in P2. We would be making that the standard and learning from good practice across the country. We would not need new buildings, and there would be no need to disrupt the good work in early learning and childcare that the cabinet secretary is driving forward.
Will the member give way?
Maybe in two seconds.
The kindergarten phase could simply replace the current primary 1. Staff training would be required, and the current standardised testing in primary 1 would need to be moved back by at least one year, but I still think that it is a very achievable goal.
The recent event that I hosted demonstrated that there is growing cross-party support and enthusiasm for taking the idea forward and that there is considerable expertise to do so. There is a growing recognition that Scotland should examine whether our current approach reflects what we know about how young children develop and learn.
We have an opportunity to be ambitious for Scotland’s children. We frequently talk about raising attainment and closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Those ambitions must begin with the experiences that we provide in the first years of a child’s education. Covid and the lockdowns had a detrimental impact on our young people, and our response needs to be dynamic and something that can help all our young children. Kindergarten would offer just that response and allow us to right a Victorian-era policy.
16:15
As a former teacher, I welcome this debate, and particularly the recognition that we must do more to improve educational attainment, tackle inequality and break the link between family income and a child’s educational achievement.
I acknowledge the tremendous work that is already being undertaken by teachers across Scotland. Every day, dedicated teachers work hard to support children with different abilities, backgrounds and learning needs. They show an enormous commitment, often in challenging circumstances, to giving every child the best possible start in life. This debate is not about criticising that work; it is about building on it, supporting our teachers and ensuring that every child, wherever they live in Scotland, has access to the same strong foundations for learning.
One of the most fundamental building blocks of education is learning to read. I will therefore focus on that aspect, and I was delighted to hear that the cabinet secretary welcomes all ideas. Reading underpins almost every aspect of a child’s education. Without secure early reading skills, children can quickly fall behind, and those difficulties can become increasingly difficult to overcome.
That is why I believe that Scotland needs a stronger, more consistent national approach to the teaching and assessment of systematic synthetic phonics. Scotland already recognises the importance of systematic synthetic phonics in early reading instruction. However, recognising its importance is not the same as ensuring that every child receives a consistent approach, wherever they live or whichever school they attend.
Unlike England, Scotland does not have a statutory national phonics screening check to assess children’s early decoding skills, and I believe that we should seriously consider introducing an equivalent. In England, children undertake a phonics screening check in year 1, usually at the age of about five or six. That assesses their ability to decode words using phonics, including unfamiliar and made-up words. Children who do not meet the expected standard receive further support and are assessed again in year 2. The principle is simple: identify difficulties early, intervene promptly and give every child the best possible chance to succeed.
I would like Scotland to establish systematic synthetic phonics as the consistent foundational approach to early reading, supported by a compulsory national screening assessment at an appropriate age, potentially in primary 2. That would provide an early identification tool in order to secure appropriate support. That does not mean imposing one commercial programme on every school or undermining teachers’ professional judgment. Teachers should retain flexibility over the resources that they use, but there should be clear national expectations about the skills children must develop and how their progress is assessed.
That brings me to the call in the motion to strengthen standardised national reporting. We need to have a range of comparable data—
The member will need to wind up.
Okay, I will just finish up.
If we are serious about breaking the cycle of poverty, closing the attainment gap and getting it right for every child, we must build on the excellent work that is already happening in our classrooms and ensure that every child in Scotland gets every opportunity to become a successful learner.
16:19
Not much has been said across the chamber that I disagree with. It is heartening to know that we have our young people and our learners’ interests at heart, and I encourage members across the chamber to take the cabinet secretary up on her offer to talk to and have discussions with her, because I know that she has a genuine desire to do the best for education in Scotland.
I praise Joe Long for his speech. It is incredibly important that we give voice to the voiceless in this chamber, and I agree with much of what he said.
I congratulate Scotland’s young people on their achievements. There are so many things to be proud of. Examination passes have increased at every level, more than 120,000 vocational and technical qualifications have been awarded, and a joint record proportion of young people are going on to positive destinations after leaving school. I take the point that has been made about ensuring that we check the data and the sustainability of that situation, but I still want to celebrate that achievement. We have also seen record numbers of young people from our most deprived communities securing places at university.
It is important that we recognise all those achievements, because they represent different young people with different abilities, ambitions and ideas about what they want to do with their lives. Behind the figures are young people who have worked incredibly hard alongside the teachers, support staff and families who have encouraged them.
It also makes me think about how we recognise achievement and whether the value that we place on different types of learning has kept pace with the opportunities that are now available. When we talk about raising attainment, we need to consider what we mean by “achievement”, how we measure it and what it looks like for different children. I absolutely want children to achieve the best possible results in literacy, numeracy and across their education. Those foundations are essential, and they will open up plenty of opportunities throughout their whole lives.
I also want us to think about the messages that children receive throughout their time at school and what success looks like. For some, university will be the right path, but for others it will be an apprenticeship, college or vocational learning. Those things should be seen not as lesser options but as different routes by which young people can develop their knowledge, skills and abilities.
James Withers has raised interesting questions about how we describe qualifications and whether the different names and titles that we give them contribute to a hierarchy in how they are perceived. Some qualifications that sit at the same level within the Scottish credit and qualifications framework involve different types of learning, but do young people, parents and employers always understand and know that? We can change qualifications and introduce new pathways, but if the surrounding culture does not change, too, we risk continuing to judge young people against a very narrow idea of success.
That question about culture also applies to how we deliver education in our schools.
On the member’s point about qualifications sitting at the same SCQF level, I point out that there is also an issue with colleges and, in particular, employers not necessarily knowing what some of the qualifications mean. What is her response to that?
I agree. We have much to do to ensure that those things are well known to business and industry. We could all do a bit more and play our part in ensuring that we have a culture change in that respect and that people know and understand that those options are as valid as a university education.
I have met headteachers who are doing some remarkable things, and what has struck me is their willingness to challenge the way in which things have traditionally been done. That takes bravery, especially when they are working within a system that still measures their success against long-held established expectations.
I am glad that Karen Adam has mentioned headteachers in particular, because it is their leadership capabilities that often define a school’s merits. Does she agree that we should be investing more effort in providing headteachers, or potential headteachers, with the leadership skills that they need to be that type of leader?
Absolutely. We should be supporting our headteachers with anything and everything that they need. A lot of them already have those leadership skills, but we need to create a pathway for them to be able to do things. I will come on to talk about that, as part of the Government’s amendment highlights that very issue.
A headteacher might recognise that, before a child can properly engage with learning, they need to feel safe, supported and understood. That can mean investing time in relationships, emotional development, family engagement and understanding what is happening beyond the school gates. It is about nurturing our learners and helping children to develop emotional intelligence so that they can communicate their needs and build healthy relationships. We are not preparing children for a life where nothing goes wrong; we are helping them to become capable of dealing with difficulties and knowing when and how to ask for help.
Schools are still accountable for attainment, attendance and educational outcomes, and the benefits of that work beyond the school gates may not appear immediately in the figures. However, that does not mean that attainment does not matter; it just means that the route to improving attainment may not always look as we have traditionally expected it to. I welcome the Scottish Government’s amendment, which mentions the opportunities that we have with public sector reform, including in particular to empower school leaders.
Some of our young people face barriers that have very little to do with their ability to learn. We have to ask whether we are gathering the information that helps us to understand what is happening behind the figures. If a child is persistently absent, do we understand what is preventing them from attending? If they are struggling to achieve an expected level, have we understood why, and what support might make a difference? Better information should lead to better support for children, rather than simply giving us another way to measure the difficulties that they face. We need to understand those barriers. However, the focus must be on what schools can do to help children to overcome them. What does that delivery look like? That brings me back to how we recognise success.
A child who spends years believing that they are not very clever may carry that belief well into their adulthood, even when they have abilities that could take them further than they ever imagined. I do not want our education system to be a place where children learn what they supposedly cannot do. I want it to be a place where they discover what they can do.
16:27
I welcome the opportunity to speak in this Scottish Labour debate on education. Improving the life chances of our children and young people is not only an ambition that is shared by pupils, parents and teachers; as Michael Marra made clear, it should be a national priority for Scotland.
As the father of two primary school-aged children, I join many other members across the chamber in paying tribute to all the excellent teachers and support staff who work in our schools. I know very well from my children’s school how dedicated our educational professionals are to supporting our children to succeed. I also acknowledge the innovative work that is going on in our schools to equip our children for the future. There are many examples of that, but I highlight in particular the recent appointment by Mearns Castle high school in East Renfrewshire of the first principal teacher of AI literacy anywhere in the UK.
In acknowledging the positives and strengths in Scottish education, however, we owe it to our pupils, parents, teachers and other school staff to have an honest assessment of and debate about what needs to improve and, crucially, to have a plan to improve it. The truth is that the PISA statistics that were published in September were the worst ever for Scotland. Reading ability has declined yet again, as have standards in maths, and our score for science is again way behind England’s. It is little wonder that the chairman of the commission on school reform said that it was the poorest set of results that Scotland has achieved. However, the Scottish Government’s response to those statistics has focused mostly on denying that there is a problem. As other members have said, if the Scottish Government does not even acknowledge that there is a problem, what hope is there of the same people fixing it?
A key problem on which we need urgent action, which has been mentioned time and time again, is the issue of school attendance. What hope do we have of improving attainment if kids are not turning up at school? Attendance by school pupils is lower than in England, and absences have remained significantly higher after the pandemic. We are now approaching seven years since the first lockdown and the current cohort of pupils have attended school less and had less time in class than their pre-pandemic peers. I think that the cabinet secretary said that she was happy about something, but I do not think that there is anything to be happy about in relation to the attendance figures.
Related to that, during my advice surgeries last week, parents and carers came to me for help in two separate cases and raised with me that their child had been bullied for a sustained period. I am talking not just about verbal insults but about physical assaults and violence. I raised the issue with the local authority. However, that is happening across Scotland, and it is important for the Scottish Government to hear that. The cabinet secretary is not in the chamber, but I am sure that the minister will pass that on to her. We are seeing such incidents more and more. Given the level and frequency of violence in our schools, it is clearly inadequate that the Government lacks a strategy to tackle the issue. At the very least, parents and children should expect schools to be safe environments.
Will the member take an intervention?
Do I have time, Presiding Officer?
Yes.
Can I tempt Neil Bibby to agree that, as I said in my earlier intervention, there need to be clear consequences for poor behaviour and that the range of sanctions that are currently available to teachers is very limited? Does he agree that we should back our teachers and headteachers by spelling out to them that they will have the backing of policy makers and lawmakers if they exercise their right to make those sanctions stick in the case of persistent, very poor behaviour?
I agree with the member, but that is only part of the solution and not the whole of it. There is also an issue about resourcing—to make our schools safe environments requires resources as well as consequences.
Katherine Sangster set out Scottish Labour’s plan for an overhaul in relation to data transparency, which is a sensible and pragmatic proposal that is aimed at improving our education system. Something that I do not think will help to improve things for our children is the education secretary’s—or should I say “the secretary for cutting education’s”?—announcement that she will give the green light to two extra in-service days being taken out of school pupils’ education. I am not against teachers having extra in-service days if they need them, but the Scottish Government should be paying for those days, and not Scotland’s school children through a reduction in their education.
First, there are clear childcare issues for parents. What are working parents meant to do with their kids on those extra days? Will the cabinet secretary or the Scottish Government provide childcare support for parents on those days? Secondly and more importantly, why should this generation of children, whose education has already been affected by the pandemic, have two days of education taken from them? Those children have a legal right to 190 days of school education each year, but the cabinet secretary seems quite happy to make that 188 days next year. Outside the Queen’s platinum jubilee and Covid, I am not aware of a case since 1987, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, in which the number of school education days that a pupil in Scotland could expect has been below 190.
The reason why we need in-service days is to give our teaching workforce the time that it needs—which it has clearly communicated to me that it needs—in order to acquaint itself with the new curriculum and be ready to implement it for our young people. I strongly suggest to the member, first, that he reflects on his opposition to teachers having time to navigate the new curriculum and, secondly, that he takes that up with the Educational Institute of Scotland, which has been crystal clear to me that that time is needed.
Teachers might require in-service days. I said that when the cabinet secretary was at the back of the chamber. I am not against teachers having extra in-service days, but why is she taking them out of children’s education? Why will children lose out on two days of education to provide those in-service days? The Scottish Government should be paying for those days, and not Scotland’s children. Maybe the cabinet secretary should reflect on that and the implications for families who will have to find childcare for those extra days.
[Made a request to intervene.]
Will the member take an intervention?
The EIS might support the proposal, but how many of Scotland’s parents does the cabinet secretary think support her proposal to cut the number of education days that children will receive? I am happy to give way to her if she wants to clarify that point.
Kate Campbell has also tried to intervene but, unfortunately, we do not have time.
Okay. Maybe the cabinet secretary will reflect on the matter, because for her to give that proposal the green light is outrageous and unacceptable. In my opinion, it is the start of a slippery slope. It is not fair on Scotland’s parents, who are juggling childcare, or on Scotland’s pupils, who will lose out, nor will it do anything to improve children’s education, which is what this debate and Scottish Labour’s plan are all about.
16:34
This is an important debate. I have been genuinely interested in the breadth of contributions that we have heard so far this afternoon, which I think reflects the complexity of what we are talking about.
I struggle with talking about the attainment gap as though it is unique to education, because growing up in a low-income household is something that impacts people in many ways, including their physical health, their lifespan and their likelihood of success in all kinds of areas. It should not be that having a family who are on low incomes means that people cannot succeed in education, but, sadly, that still seems to be the case for many.
There is an idea, which has been repeated by members from across the parties today, that education breaks the cycle of poverty. I understand why people say that, but I worry that, structurally, that is an oversimplification. I do not want to inadvertently claim that poverty is in any way a result of poor education. There are well-educated people who are struggling out there, and often the reasons for somebody struggling in school have nothing to do with what is happening in the classroom. A lot of the time, I feel as though the cause and the effect are being mixed up. If people are well off, they can afford to go to university. It is not that going to university necessarily made them well off. Even if a young person in poverty succeeds in getting into university, like I did, they might have to drop out due to the cost. Those from the most deprived areas who go to university are more likely than their peers not to return after the first year.
I appreciate the member’s nuanced and considered approach to the issue, because it is not black and white. However, I am puzzled as to why, 10 years ago, the former First Minister said that her defining mission would be about closing the poverty-related attainment gap in education. Why did the then First Minister say that if the member so strongly disagrees with that assessment now?
I am grateful to Willie Rennie for his strong belief in my persuasion skills, but, as I was not here at the point when the former First Minister said that, she might not have got the message as to what my nuanced approach is. I do not necessarily say that hers was the wrong approach; I am responding to some of the comments that have been made today and am trying to squeeze a different point into the debate.
We know that children who live in poverty often struggle in lessons, however well crafted those lessons might be and however skilled the teacher is, because they are arriving hungry, tired or traumatised. Their parents or carers might be less available to help with homework, and they might not have access to the same after-school groups or experiences that their more well-off peers have.
I am not denying that educational attainment can help somebody into highly paid work or support them to be a more adaptable employee in the future, which are both very important issues, but I urge caution over this overreliance on the idea that we can break the cycle of poverty through education. Income is not wealth. Many high-earning professions, regardless of someone’s qualifications, are looking for a history of unpaid internships, expensive extracurriculars and family connections. Much of what will close the attainment gap will sit in the cabinet secretary’s colleagues’ portfolios, be they social security, health or housing.
I turn to education itself. It is really good that developing an understanding of vocational education is increasingly being reflected in Government publications and arguments.
When I was little, I always liked learning. I did not enjoy the social aspect of school, and I would quite often spend lunchtime in my history teacher’s classroom watching “Doctor Who”, but I loved reading and taking quizzes. My little sister was what my family called “not academic”, but she was very intelligent. She approached school differently from me. That often led to unfair comparisons between us from folk who seemed to think that there was one way to learn, one way to be smart and one way to succeed. There is not. I do not know how many qualifications my sister has at this point. She is doing visual communication, she is thinking of taking paramedicine, and she has skills in photography, hospitality and social care. If we want to get it right for every child, we have to get it right for those who are just not suited to a rigid school timetable and written exams. Everybody has something different to offer.
Despite our differences, one thing that my sister and I had in common was the struggle of being young carers. I had 100 per cent attendance at school for years, but that changed when I was in secondary school. Mam’s health was getting worse, mornings were difficult and I was often late. My own health was deteriorating as a result, and sometimes I missed school. The school insisted that Mam come in for a meeting before school one day, to discuss that. Given that the lateness was linked to getting Mam ready in the morning, that was difficult and, predictably, we were late for the meeting. Mam was in a lot of pain, I was upset and we were both stressed. We ended up getting an apology.
When I spoke to young carers last year, I found that the position has not universally improved. Better understanding of home situations is needed to ensure that young people who are struggling to do the best that they can with the hand that they were dealt are not put in even worse situations or are not discouraged by their school’s response.
According to the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, young carers are more likely than other unpaid carers to live in the most deprived areas. They are more likely than other young people to be working part time while at school, to try to keep their family going. They are more than twice as likely as their peers to experience food poverty. Those are just the young carers that we know about. They are not the ones who have been told to say nothing, because social work might take them away; not the ones whose parents react to the stigma that still exists and try to hide the fact that their child is helping out at home; and not those who do not even realise that what they do is caring. We will never close the attainment gap without schools becoming much better at dealing with, supporting and educating young carers.
We need to look at the groups that are struggling the most. There is a huge overlap between low-income households and those with disability, neurodivergence, caring responsibilities or other inequalities. Each group has distinct needs. Public services must be flexible enough to respond to—and not overreact to—those needs. Young people with challenges are too often the ones who are expected to adapt—
The member will have to wind up.
—and are then criticised for being unable to do so. They should be met with support instead.
16:41
One of the things that I—and many others, I am sure—think about a lot at the moment is the breadth of the challenges that we face together as a democracy and a society. The fact that we face those together in a situation in which the pressure—[Interruption.] Sorry, Presiding Officer, there was just a mild distraction there. I will start again.
In a situation in which we face so much together as a society, and in which the constraints on us collectively are so large, the issue of educational improvement in a world that is changing so rapidly should be something that brings us together. What has been good in today’s debate—I commend the drafting of all the amendments and the leading proposition in the motion—is that this should be an issue that we can come together around and seek common solutions for our constituents.
Given the pressure in the current era, we as a Parliament need to get better at agreeing certain things collectively and working towards them in the medium and longer terms, instead of seeing short-term political opportunities. There can be almost no area that is more important than education. We come at this with a collective determination to help our young people, but we are in a world that is moving so rapidly in terms of technology and our economic competitiveness. Much of what we consider normal in our education system, as well as in others, will face challenge in the period ahead, in a way that we have not yet anticipated. We need to be cohesive in our adaptability to that.
Some of us—I mean those of us in the chamber and beyond—value the wisdom of people who have been in certain disciplines for a long time. We should respect their experience. However, we must also be cognisant and mindful that things are changing at pace and that our systems will need to flex and bend.
Further, we must hear from our young people. The younger generations in Scotland and elsewhere are remarkable. When I was at school at the turn of the century, there was a sense of optimism in the air. The world was getting better and things looked brighter. Our young people who are growing up now have gone through really challenging times and have had to build their resilience due to a massive financial crisis, huge changes in the constitutional set-up following Brexit, a pandemic, a war in Europe, continuing challenges from existential crises such as climate change, and the emerging challenge of artificial intelligence.
While we try to create greater excellence and equality in that situation, although the old necessities of numeracy and literacy are extremely important in our education system, aspects such as critical thinking, creativity, technological understanding and more vocational skills will become increasingly important.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will, if I have the capacity.
As usual, Ben Macpherson is giving a very thoughtful speech. However, is he not also making an argument for the importance of the establishment of building blocks of knowledge in our education system? Context is necessary in order to apply critical thinking. If the contexts of the basic building blocks of knowledge are not there, we can sometimes drift.
I respect individuals and experts who argue strongly from their viewpoint of a need for more knowledge content in our education system. However, I also respect the position that adaptability, flexibility and the ethos of the curriculum for excellence were right for an emerging and changing world in the 21st century. Rather than the either/or situation that is sometimes presented, the truth is, as is so often the case—albeit not necessarily as much as it should be at the heart of our politics—in the middle, in the grey and the nuance. If we as a Parliament can get to that position on the issue of education, we, our debate and our society will be all the better for it.
The curriculum improvement cycle that is coming up presents an important opportunity, and I commend the Government for its leadership on that. We should all seek to feed into that constructively, as the profession and others have done. Constituents have brought me a number of points for feeding into that process, and I would be grateful if the Government would be open minded in hearing their positions. For example, one constituent, who is the youngest member of the biggest endometriosis support group in Scotland, seeks the placing of a greater focus on women’s health issues. I cite that as a small example—there are many others.
One area that others have, rightly, emphasised relates to some of the work of the Criminal Justice Committee. Although the cabinet secretary is absolutely right—and I could not agree more—that the vast majority of our young people are good and hard-working people who are achieving remarkable things, unfortunately, a minority of them are engaging in really challenging behaviour in our classrooms and streets. I fear that that minority is growing. We must work cohesively and collectively to address that issue before it continues to grow, because its consequences in our society, for those young people and those whom they affect, including teachers in our classrooms, are serious.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I would take an intervention, but I do not think that I have the capacity to do so.
Unfortunately, the member does not have time.
I will just say that that is one example. We used to assume that we could rely on good discipline in our classrooms. It is an example of the several things in our system—and in our society—that we cannot take for granted and on which we need to work together to make sure that they are improved.
We move to closing speeches. Any member who wishes to make such a speech on behalf of their party should press their request-to-speak button.
16:48
I like the new freedom that Ben Macpherson is showing in the chamber. Free from the whips, he is able to bring new thoughts and views.
Although I recognise what Emma Roddick said about complexity and the nuanced roles of education and poverty, it would be wrong of members not to recognise that we are 10 years on from when Nicola Sturgeon promised to close the poverty-related attainment gap. That was not our promise—it was hers. Although the cabinet secretary made no reference to Nicola Sturgeon’s commitment of 10 years ago, we should recognise that, when First Ministers make promises in the chamber, they should be held to account for those, because education plays a role in lifting the opportunities of everyone in society.
I would not, for a moment, suggest to Willie Rennie that there is not a great deal more work to be done, but I hope that he will welcome just three examples of the poverty-related attainment gap having closed. The gap has been reduced by almost two thirds since 2009-10 for initial leavers; the Scottish Qualifications Authority exams this year showed a narrowing of the gap across the academic board; and a record number of young people in Scotland from the most deprived backgrounds are going on to university. That is hard evidence of a poverty-related attainment gap being eaten away at.
On the Government’s own SNSA-inspired assessments, the figures have hardly changed at all. There has been up and there has been down, and the cabinet secretary will choose other statistics, but the Government’s own teacher-related assessments show hardly any difference. She should recognise when the Government has failed to deliver on its promise of 10 years ago.
Nonetheless, I give her credit for not mentioning the iconic free schoolbag policy that was in the SNP manifesto. It is almost as if she is embarrassed by the policy, because she knows that it makes not a jot of difference to educational performance in Scotland. That is why she did not mention it in a speech on education.
I welcome two measures where things have changed, because I want to be positive. The curriculum review cycle is a positive development, and the increasing role of knowledge in that review is equally welcome. I also like the approach and attitude of the new Qualifications Scotland body, which is embracing partnership across the education sector to change the way that we develop qualifications. Those are two positive developments.
I liked Joe Long’s contribution, and his commitment to meeting additional support needs is commendable. Just last week, I visited Newburgh primary school, in my constituency, together with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, to see for myself the use of the fun with phonics approach to make a difference for young people. That early intervention to help with additional support needs is incredibly important.
I agree with Fulton MacGregor on the kindergarten stage, for which Scottish Liberal Democrats have advocated, together with others, for some time.
On the Hayward review, we should be accelerating work to ensure that vocational and technical qualifications get the long sought-after parity of esteem. The way to change that is to change the way that we measure success in schools. The insight programme has to change so that we place greater emphasis on those qualifications. There was furious agreement between Laura Moodie and Katherine Sangster on the abolition of SNSAs and the reintroduction of an improved SSLN in order to get a proper survey-based approach to measuring progress in our schools.
I agree with Neil Bibby and Stephen Kerr on the issues around behaviour. We need what I would call micro consequences so that young people know where the boundaries are, because that is the way that society works. I am not for punishment; I am for making sure that we can use modern techniques to encourage people. However, what is most important is that, if everything else fails, micro consequences need to be in place. I also agree with Duncan Dunlop, who addressed issues around underemployment and shortages in school teaching positions. It is incredibly important that we get the implementation of the reduction in teacher contact time right, otherwise we will further undermine performance in our schools.
I will say one final thing to the cabinet secretary. I do not think that she should use pupils to defend herself against criticism from those in the chamber who question the Government’s performance on education. They deserve better than that, and I think that the cabinet secretary can do better than that, too.
16:54
I would almost stand to say amen to what Willie Rennie just said. Ultimately, I know that there are always pleas from those on the Government benches—in particular, the front bench—that we remove some issues from party politics, but we cannot and must not remove political accountability, and SNP ministers cannot run away from the consequences of 20 years of their education policies.
We are where we are, and they would be wise to occasionally do what Alyn Smith seems to have begun to do, which is to do a little bit of a mea culpa and begin to say that things are not good enough and that they can improve. When ministers begin to be as honest as Alyn Smith appears to be starting to become, there will be scope and space for Opposition parties to believe that we can engage with the Government on a positive basis. Alyn Smith will not thank me for citing him as an example, because that will probably ruin his political prospects in the SNP.
I agree with something that the cabinet secretary said but did not expand on. Given that we have 32 local authorities and various forms of measurement, of course we do not have all the data in the form that we need it in, in order to be able to create policy. I do not know how we can create policy on anything, in any sphere of life, if we have not collected evidence that is consistent enough that we are able to use it to come up with some form of marker. I am amazed that the cabinet secretary can talk about the need for standardisation of data when we are 19 or 20 years into an SNP Government.
Right at the end of her time as education secretary, Jenny Gilruth was finally prepared to admit that there are aspects of education data that are completely blank. She was right to say that, and that situation needs to be resolved. That is the point that I tried to make to George Adam.
Jenny Young was absolutely right when she made her point about positive destinations, which she mentioned in a previous debate. The Government should stop using that measurement as a cover-all or a defence, because it is an inadequate measurement. If ministers are aware of what that measurement means, they will know why we object to the use of that term as a defence against issues with educational outcomes. If we look at the definitions of positive destinations—noting how short-term they are, how broad they are and how flexible they are—we can see that they are not of any use to us in measuring the positive outcomes that we all want to see from education.
I agree with the point that Stephen Kerr is making. Would he agree that a zero-hours contract is not a positive destination?
Of course, but neither are some of the voluntary positions that are mentioned.
I want our young people to pursue their life’s dreams. A number of members mentioned not dreams but aspirations. In that respect, I thought that Karen Adam spoke well. The truth is that, when we are small, we dream big. I have a number of grandchildren, as some members will know, and, when I ask them what they would like to do when they get as old as grandpa, they do not mention being politicians, which is interesting, but they mention grand ideas about where they would like to be and what they would like to do, including being an astronaut—in my day, it was a train driver. However, the reality is that, as they get older and go through the education process, children lose that aspiration. That is a sin that we commit against young people.
Ben Macpherson was on to something in his speech, which was a typically thoughtful one—I agree with Willie Rennie that he has been liberated from his ministerial shackles and is now able to say what he really thinks. We need a combination of knowledge blocks—those vital elements of knowledge—and the skills that Ben Macpherson spoke so highly of. However, we need to add aspiration to those two elements. We should be teaching and exemplifying aspiration to our young people. A number of speakers referenced that, including Karen Adam. We should inculcate aspiration in our young people.
In the time that I have left, I want to mention some of the other comments that were made in the debate. I cannot remember how long I have to speak, so I will just keep speaking.
You have about 30 seconds left, Mr Kerr.
I have how many minutes, sorry?
Thirty seconds.
Oh, my goodness.
I agree with what Duncan Dunlop said. As a proud Scot, it pains me to think that, in certain subject areas—he mentioned science—our pupils are a year behind the same age group in England. That should surely motivate us to say, “Come on, ministers. Face up to the failings and the reality of what we have here after your time in office. Stop defending the indefensible and start making the changes that we can all support, which will bring Scotland back to the front of the queue when it comes to educational excellence.”
16:59
I start by recognising what a good debate we have had. There has been consensus across the chamber and we have agreed that we need to be doing better for our young people. I ferociously agree with a few speakers. My speech will cover many of the themes about what ambition looks like that Karen Adam covered. I furiously agree with Emma Roddick’s view that, although education can be a pathway out of poverty, we cannot look at it as the only pathway: many people who get an education still find themselves trapped in poverty. As Jenny Young said, zero hour contracts can also trap people in poverty.
In fairness to Stephen Kerr’s grandchildren, I am still working out what I want to do when I am his age, but I am sure that I have plenty of time to get there. [Laughter.] My apologies to the member.
I thank Katherine Sangster for securing the motion for debate on Labour’s time, and I agree with the premise of the motion. The areas of concern are astute, and her speech clearly set out where the Government could make significant progress. I am happy with Labour’s new approach to cross-party working. If we had had more time, we could have been able to come to a consensus and we could have supported the motion, but I thank Labour for the opportunity for that cross-party work. I welcome the clarification that Labour is open to getting rid of the current testing regime; it is good to see the party coming to the Greens’ position on that. As members will know, I am keen to work cross-party on many of the issues. Perhaps there will be further opportunities down the line to do so.
Meghan Gallacher asked my colleague Laura Moodie an interesting question about assessments and AI, which is absolutely something that members will have to face, and we will have work to do on that. I do not believe that that means that we have to focus on the issue with regard to exam assessments, but we need to recognise that it is a problem. Meghan Gallacher knows that I like to work cross-party, so this is in no way a criticism of her and I say it kindly. I was at high school when Michael Gove introduced his education reforms in England. They were not well received in England and were overcomplicated at times.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will let the member in in a second.
His reforms widened the attainment gap between the poorest students and their peers. I would not go forward with that model, and I think that reports have shown that it was not as successful as she would like to portray.
No education reform will be perfect, but the evidence shows that there were real improvements in educational outcomes for young people. I hope that we can all agree and come to a consensus on the evidence. I think that we should open the door and learn from our UK counterparts, who have been through substantial education reform.
To be clear, I am more than happy to open the door and I think that we should be looking at all ideas; I was simply spelling out my concerns with Michael Gove’s approach.
I cannot believe that I have had three minutes already, so I will move on.
Although I will not be able to support Duncan Dunlop’s amendment, I thank the member for continuing to show leadership on students with additional support needs, as others in the chamber, such as Joe Long, who gave a fantastic speech, have done. Duncan Dunlop will know that I have raised that issue in the chamber many times. Many young people look to the chamber, so it is fantastic to see various parties showing leadership.
I do not have much time, and I will be closing. It was not mentioned nearly enough that, when we talk about inequality in our education system, we need to recognise that inequality is not spontaneous. We need to be looking at reducing inequality outside the classroom in order to reduce it inside the classroom. Children who are going home to damp, overcrowded homes will never achieve at the same level as children who have private tutors. That is a wider conversation, and I understand that it is not the subject of the motion. [Interruption.] I lost my sheet of paper.
I am happy that we have had such a wide conversation. It is unfortunate that I am unable to support Labour’s motion unamended, but I am keen to continue to work cross-party to ensure that we are getting the best outcomes for our young people, because they are looking to us to create a future for all of us.
17:03
I welcome the general consensus around the chamber. It is great to hear that everyone is looking towards the same path. Every child in Scotland, regardless of where they are born, their family circumstances, or how much their parents earn deserves the opportunity to receive the best education and fulfil their potential. However, we need to be honest about where we are. We know that Scotland’s education system is not performing as it should be. Our international standing has declined, there are persistent attainment gaps and there are growing concerns about standards, attendance, behaviour and discipline.
Education should be the great leveller, breaking the cycle of poverty and giving every child an equal chance to succeed. Equality of opportunity must never become an excuse for lowering expectations, however. Children should dream big and have the confidence to believe in themselves.
We need to get back to the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. Every child should leave school able to read confidently, write clearly and manage basic numeracy. Recently, I spoke to a college lecturer in the south of Scotland who told me that, after 11 years in education, some pupils still struggle with reading and writing. That is why I welcome the call to reintroduce the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy.
We cannot fix problems that we are unwilling to properly measure, but collecting more data is pointless unless we act on the findings. We need consistent national reporting on attendance, behaviour and additional support needs, alongside greater transparency and accountability.
Attendance must be taken seriously in our schools. Children cannot benefit from an education if they are not in the classroom. We need to consider how we help children by understanding their concerns. We must stop being afraid to talk about discipline. Teachers should not have to spend more time managing disruptive behaviour than delivering lessons. We need to restore authority in our classrooms and make it clear that unacceptable behaviour has consequences.
I have spoken to long-serving teachers who cannot wait to leave, and I have spoken to new teachers who struggle with the lack of support.
We must address the pressures within additional support needs provision. I recently spoke to a mother whose 10-year-old child had been recommended for assessments for autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder—ADHD and ODD—yet faced a two-year wait.
Families and teachers cannot be left struggling without the support that children need in order to thrive. Our children and their futures must come first. After all, they are the adults of the future.
Attainment, attendance, behaviour, mental health and properly resourced support services are all connected, yet young people are being failed. Our teachers feel unsupported, and there are not enough classroom assistants—every teacher I have spoken to has told me that. Having more of them would provide vital support to our teachers and for our children.
I represent rural communities, where access to services and opportunities can differ significantly from those in towns and cities. Just recently, I visited one community where children were doing a project on democracy. I said, “Why don’t you come to the Parliament for a visit?” They told me that they could not afford to do that, as they could not afford the bus.
A child’s postcode should never determine the quality of education that they receive, nor should success be measured solely by whether someone goes to university. Scotland needs skilled tradespeople, engineers, technicians and professionals. We are severely lacking in them all, as I know from running businesses. We must place greater value on apprenticeships, vocational qualifications and practical skills, giving young people different pathways to successful careers. That is another area where people are struggling, and I know that personally. Surely if young people leave school without understanding debt, loans, mortgages or pensions, we have failed to prepare them properly for adult life.
Schools cannot solve every problem caused by poverty or family circumstances, but they can provide stability, aspiration and a route to a better future. We need higher expectations, consistent national standards, greater accountability and properly resourced schools. Above all, we need an education system that puts children first and gives every young person the chance to succeed, regardless of their background. The greatest injustice that we can inflict on a child is to allow their circumstances at birth to determine their circumstances in adulthood.
17:09
I commend members on a genuinely useful and impressive debate today. I refer to my entry in the register of members’ interests: my husband is a secondary school teacher. I can assure members that I get lobbied on the issue almost daily.
There is a lot of common ground between the Labour motion, the Government amendment and a number of positions held across the chamber. I will highlight the last few words of the Government amendment, because we accept a lot of the premise that the Labour Party has brought forward. It says that Parliament
“affirms that, in the pursuit of excellence and equity, the … Government should drive meaningful reform across the education system, including by working with parties across the Chamber to identify priorities for school assessments such as the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and Scottish National Standardised Assessments, and embrace the opportunity of public sector reform to enhance performance, reduce unwarranted variation and empower school leaders across Scotland.”
I do not disagree with any of that, but could the minister identify what is a higher priority in our education system than literacy and numeracy?
That is a very high priority. Indeed, it is a priority for the Government, which is what we are talking about in the debate, and there is common ground across parties on how we measure that.
As members know, I am new to this role and to this Parliament, so I did not know why the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy had been replaced. I dug into it, and it was not scrapped. It is not like we scrapped it and are not doing anything else. It was replaced in 2016, following concerns about just how much it dug into the system. We have the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data, and the national improvement framework has 16 relevant measurements.
I am grateful for the explanation, but the minister must acknowledge that the key difference is that the SSLN was a statistically robust data set; its replacement was not as statistically robust and, critically, that disrupted the continuous data set, which means that we can no longer make comparisons with previous cohorts.
I would take that point, but it was a survey and it was insufficient.
It was a statistic.
There was a very different debate when it was abolished, as members might remember.
It is not that we are not measuring things. We have 16 measures in the national improvement framework and the ACEL data. For international comparisons, we have PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. We are not lacking data in this field.
I accept the point, particularly on a regional basis, that local authorities might be collecting things differently. I was drawn to Joe Long’s excellent speech about how we need to have a proper discussion about absence and participation, because I think that local authorities record that in different ways.
However, I must refer to our amendment. We are reaching out to parties to work with us to assess whether what we are doing is adequate. Simply positing the return of the Scottish survey on literacy and numeracy is not sufficient.
The minister must acknowledge that Jenny Gilruth has already accepted that there are inadequacies, so we do not need to conduct many more discussions and reviews on whether we have the data. She is already saying that we do not have the data. If she concluded that after a lengthy spell as the education secretary, surely the Government should know where the gaps are; otherwise, she would not have said what she said. Surely that is logical.
I suspect that the Deputy First Minister might take issue with that version of her comments. I am aware that she said that there were gaps in the data, but I think that she was talking about the regional aspect of how different local authorities apply different things.
As is clear in our amendment, we are seeking to reduce unwarranted variation, empower school leaders and work with parties towards this common aim. That is a genuine offer on our part.
I am grateful that Stephen Kerr did not praise me again, However, as he said, I am willing to accept that we are not doing as well as we need to do, and to work with other parties. I can say genuinely that that applies to the whole of the Government. We are willing to take this forward.
We have had a number of good speeches across the parties today. Katherine Sangster made a very thoughtful speech. I would take issue with her saying that the statistics system is “opaque”. My sense of it is that we are analysing too much, if anything. We need to clarify what we are doing, standardise it on a national basis and ensure that we do not overload the system with analysis paralysis, which was one of the concerns about the previous regime.
Laura Moodie made an excellent speech, particularly on the point of making uniform guidance statutory. That is a very sensible point for a lot of people, and we accept that analysis.
Meghan Gallacher also made a thoughtful speech, but she accused the Government of having a “nothing to see here” attitude. She knows me better than that. I am not here to justify things that are not working, and the same attitude is taken across the Government. We have embarked on the public sector reform processes because we are looking to do things differently by changing health boards, education systems, regional government and regional economic partnerships. All of that is on the table, because we know that we need to do better. The world around us and the skills landscape are changing at pace, and we need to keep up.
From the Liberal Democrats, Duncan Dunlop made a strong point about STEM, with which I, as innovation and technology minister, fully agree. He and other members will be hearing a lot from me about the Scotland does science programme. I have been working with the chief scientific adviser to raise awareness of the fact that we do brilliant science in Scotland, but not enough young people are being enthused about it early enough in their education. I take on that challenge as my responsibility.
George Adam made the strong point that the circumstances of a child should not be a barrier to their options and chances in life. We are all working towards making that the case.
As well as making the point about better assessing participation and absences, Joe Long mentioned the McManus review. He will be aware that the Government accepted and is implementing all the review’s recommendations. There is a lot of common ground on that. I also strongly agree on his point about ASN data varying locally. There is variance in how such data is collected, so we are comparing apples with pears.
For many years, Fulton MacGregor has been a strong advocate of the kindergarten stage of education. I can say, safe in the knowledge that I am not responsible for schools, that he makes a very interesting proposition. He is meeting the cabinet secretary because we are not closed to new ideas about how to do things differently.
I want to make a brief intervention about the kindergarten stage. As the minister and the cabinet secretary are aware, the expanded learning through play in the curriculum for excellence already goes beyond P1, but a big barrier to implementing a kindergarten-stage approach to learning is the fact that there are P1 SNSAs. That encourages teachers to teach to those assessments rather than provide play-based learning, which we know makes the biggest difference. As we take a cross-party approach in considering the assessments, let us bear that in mind and seize the opportunity to embed play-based learning.
Laura Moodie makes a strong point. There is a wider conversation to be had. Perhaps we are talking about the same things with different names, but there is a lot of common ground. I am very drawn to the idea of play-based learning.
As a former teacher, Amanda Bland has a very interesting perspective on the subject. She made a strong argument on the need for consistent national reporting, which is mentioned in the Government’s amendment. We are strongly working towards that.
Karen Adam gets a gold star from me for mentioning the Withers review. Members know that I am very much a fan of the Withers review and approach. I believe that that is a case of work undone, so I am strongly pushing us to, I hope, reject the idea that there is a hierarchy of routes—the idea that the only route to success involves a bucket of highers and a university degree. I reject that outright. We need real parity of esteem, so we must provide different ways into the system.
Neil Bibby mentioned the AI literacy teacher at Mearns Castle high school. I am aware of that development, and it has a lot to be said for it, because we, as a nation, need to upskill our knowledge and understanding of AI as a technology, with all its potential and all its risks. We need to have a realistic assessment of that, and I do not think that knowledge of the technology is sufficiently widespread outside of some tech specialists. The development that Neil Bibby mentioned is really interesting, and I am looking to update members on something like that fairly soon.
Emma Roddick made a powerful speech about the impact of poverty on attainment. How we measure that is one part of the process. I accept that, if there are things that we need to change, we can change them, but poverty is driving the lack of attainment, which is why we are investing so much in closing the attainment gap, as we have heard, and in fighting poverty.
In a thoughtful speech, Ben Macpherson made a point that I have made many times: the world around us is changing at pace. The skills landscape is changing, and the economy of the future will be markedly different from the economy right now. My wee nieces, who are aged 11 and 14, will have jobs that do not exist yet, and I am not convinced that we are sufficiently ahead of the pace of change.
Willie Rennie mentioned the curriculum review cycle as a positive development. I was glad to hear that, because we are serious about changing what is happening. I was pleased to hear Willie Rennie refer to Qualifications Scotland’s new attitude. I have been working with Qualifications Scotland a lot to try to simplify and declutter the skills landscape. It is not just school attainment that we are talking about; it is attainment right the way through into the lifelong learning journey. I think that we have an overly cluttered landscape in that space, and Qualifications Scotland is working on that at pace.
We have had a good debate, and there is a lot of common ground.
I like the fact that the minister picked out the things that I agreed with him on. Is there any chance that he could reflect on the issues that we disagreed on, so that we can make some progress?
Willie Rennie knows very well that I reflect on a lot of things that are not going as well as they need to go. I am not here to justify things that are not working or to justify the status quo; I am working hard to make sure that it changes.
It has been a good debate, and there is a lot of common ground across the parties. I am very glad to close it for the Government and to put forward the Government amendment. I hope that members will back it and that we can work together on the issue, because it is too important for us not to do that. We cannot allow our young people to be let down, and we need to work together to make sure that that work goes forward.
17:20
I direct members to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am currently a fully registered teacher with the General Teaching Council for Scotland, representatives of which I met this afternoon to discuss teacher recruitment issues.
I echo the point that other members have made that there has been a fair amount of consensus in the debate. That shows that we all want the best for our young people, but there might be shades of grey around how we think the outcomes can best be achieved. However, there has been a good degree of consensus, and I thank everyone for their contributions.
I was particularly struck by contributions from a number of members who touched on the hugely disruptive impact that the Covid pandemic had on education. I was a teacher during that time, and I saw that at first hand. I also saw the long-term impact on young people who went through transition points during those years, which underlines the point that was well made by several members.
I am slightly concerned by the conflation of public sector reform and education reform. To me, those are two very different things. Yes, we need public sector reform and we also need education reform, but they are very different. I caution against viewing education reform through the lens of cost cutting or rationalisation.
Joe Long made a powerful speech on support for people with additional needs, and a number of other members raised important points about that.
I thank Karen Adam for her contribution, in which she talked about how we recognise a range of achievement and the different paths that people follow. That is important, and it is also important that it does not get lost in talk about how we close the attainment gap.
Emma Roddick also made a powerful contribution, and her reflection on the experience of a young carer is really important. In my time as a teacher, I saw the additional burdens on young carers, which often go unseen by schools. It is very important to recognise that.
Amanda Bland made another good contribution, with helpful reflections on how we might improve the teaching of reading. I was not a primary school teacher, but I agree that that is certainly a worthwhile issue and one on which the Government seems to be listening.
Duncan Dunlop touched on the important issue of teacher shortages, which I discussed with the GTCS earlier today. There are huge difficulties, particularly in rural areas, but then there is an overheating of the sector, particularly in the central belt, with many teachers struggling to find work.
Overall, there are a huge number of issues, and there is no shortage of work for the Government to do.
This morning, I met a group of P6 pupils from Linlithgow primary school who were visiting the Parliament and who had plenty of suggestions as to how we might improve Scottish education, most of which revolved around having more PE and there being more pizza in the canteen. However, one of the pupils asked me why I became an MSP, which is a question that I sometimes ask myself. I told them about the boy in an S1 French class who I taught about eight years ago and who could not read a word of English. He was a native speaker of the language, but he could not read. Seeing that boy being failed by our education system was what lit a spark in me—a determination that things could and should be better.
The promise of Scottish education should be that, no matter who someone is or where they come from, if they go to school and work hard, school and education are a passport to a better life. However, with an attainment gap between rich and poor that has barely budged in 10 years, that promise is being broken for far too many of our young people. That is not to say that there are not good things happening in Scotland’s schools—of course there are. Every day in our schools, hard-working staff go above and beyond, and young people achieve great things. I totally and utterly reject the accusation that I am talking down our teachers and pupils—nothing could be further from the truth.
My argument is that we are still failing too many young people from deprived backgrounds, care-experienced young people, young carers, neurodivergent young people and young people with a range of additional needs that are not currently being met. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of teachers in insecure work or out of work altogether. Probationers do not get jobs and the supply list continues to grow, while teachers and schools feel that they are being stretched more and more thinly every year.
I will turn to the question of data. We certainly should not rely on PISA as the only empirical data about the state of Scottish education, but that is the situation that successive SNP education secretaries have put us in. It was John Swinney who, as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, scrapped the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy in 2017. If the minister is going to question the validity of statistical surveys, the ONS will be in for a bit of a shock.
We can engage on this issue when I meet Scottish Labour members about it. However, the changes that were made to the data in relation to the SSLN were informed by recommendations made by the OECD. Those recommendations reflected that the survey approach was not giving us the specificity that was needed to allow us to drive improvement work. That is something that we can pick up on. I get the feeling that Labour wants specificity in data that can be measured and worked on, but that will not be provided by moving back to the SSLN.
I do not think that the OECD said to scrap the data altogether. We could certainly enhance the data but, at the moment, we do not have it, and what replaced it was wholly inadequate.
The Government should be questioning—as I know that many teachers and parents across Scotland are also questioning—the significant gap between the PISA results and the rest of the data that is currently available on Scottish education. How can we be confident in the data that we currently have available when there is such a disparity? That is not to question the professionalism and the dedication of our teachers, nor the hard work and ability of our brilliant young people. However, the current system appears designed to say that things are always getting better, even when they are clearly not. It says that 95 per cent of 2024-25 school leavers went on to positive destinations, yet we know that a growing number of young people aged 18 to 24 are not in employment, education or training. I welcomed the minister’s comments last week that he is open to looking at a different measure, and Labour certainly stands ready to work with the Government to make that happen.
I have long felt that this Government’s rhetoric on the importance of education has not matched the seriousness with which it has treated the issue. Alarming PISA results and NEET figures have not yet provoked an adequate response. The cabinet secretary has pointed to the curriculum improvement cycle, and we are hopeful that that will bring the changes that are required. I know that teachers stand willing to engage with the process, but, so far, that process has amounted to their being sent AI-generated PowerPoint slides that are littered with errors and having two further in-service days. We support further reform, but it needs to be done in the proper way; there has not been significant reform in the past 10 years.
There is nothing to stop the Government reintroducing the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy and enhancing the process. Frankly, I cannot fathom why members across the Parliament would want to kick the issue into the long grass. I urge all colleagues to back Labour’s motion this evening.
That concludes the debate on improving attainment, tackling inequality and strengthening national standards in education.
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