The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-18059, in the name of Jenny Gilruth, on the Education (Scotland) Bill at stage 3.
I invite members who wish to participate in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons as soon as possible. I appeal to members who are leaving the chamber to do so quickly and, almost more importantly, quietly.
I call on the cabinet secretary to speak to and to move the motion.
19:57
Thank you, Presiding Officer, for the opportunity to address the chamber this evening on the Education (Scotland) Bill, following our lengthy and detailed sessions yesterday and today.
Before I turn to the content of the bill, I thank members for the constructive way in which they have engaged with me as we have sought to improve the bill. That includes around 16 hours of detailed and thoughtful deliberation on amendments with the Education, Children and Young People Committee at stage 2, the many discussions that I have held with members ahead of stage 3, and the open dialogue that I have had with members as we have sought to find common ground. Members have been clear in their desire for change and about the need to rebuild confidence and trust in our public bodies. That has been a key theme of the amendments that we have discussed today and yesterday.
I also thank the wide range of stakeholders from across our education system who have engaged with the committee and with me throughout the bill process. They have been instrumental in informing our deliberations.
Given that the bill provides the scaffolding that supports the wider range of education reforms, it has been vitally important to get its provisions right, and I think that we have arrived at that point today. Through the creation of a new qualifications body and an independent inspectorate, the bill enables a more responsive, trusted and effective national education infrastructure.
I agree with the cabinet secretary that the bill creates an independent chief inspector of education, but how would she describe the change from the Scottish Qualifications Authority to qualifications Scotland? In truth, is it not the case that the only thing that is really changing is the name?
I do not accept that critique from Mr Kerr. Indeed, we have spent two days of parliamentary time debating lengthy amendments that have sought to change the type of organisation that we want to have. One of the points that Mr Kerr rightly made at stage 2 and via amendments at stage 3 was about cultural change. That has to happen as a result of the legislation. I believe that many of the amendments—including some that Mr Kerr worked on—will help to create a new and different type of organisation that works with the teaching profession in a different way.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
Do I have time in hand, Presiding Officer?
There is not really any time in hand, cabinet secretary.
I will give way to Ms Duncan-Glancy.
Does the cabinet secretary admit that the new organisation will have the same functions and the same leadership as the SQA?
I do not accept the member’s latter point about leadership. A new chief executive will be appointed, and a new chair of the existing organisation was appointed in late 2023.
I want to come on to talk about, in general terms, the refocusing of Education Scotland, which also has a role to play. I know that Ms Duncan-Glancy was interested in that issue in relation to her amendments that would have set up curriculum Scotland, which I was sympathetic towards. That is why the response to a Government-initiated question that I published on Monday sets out the focus for the next steps on the qualifications journey. The response to the GIQ in relation to Education Scotland that I published in June last year set out a refocused purpose for that organisation, too.
In addition, we have created the centre for teaching excellence at the University of Glasgow, and the totality of our structural reforms will provide a revised and refreshed system that supports continuous improvement and helps to meet learners’ needs. Although the bill is rightly focused on reforming public bodies, we cannot lose sight of the people those bodies serve: the children and young people with whom the future success and prosperity of this country rests, and the teachers who work in our schools every day to provide excellent learning experiences.
Scotland’s teachers are fundamental to reform. Only with their support will we be able to effect broader change to improve our curriculum and our qualifications and to raise teaching standards. Ultimately, through the bill and the cultural changes that I mentioned in response to Mr Kerr, we can create a system in which our public bodies collaborate with one another, and with children and young people and their parents, carers and teachers, to drive improvement.
That is why the bill provides for a range of different voices to be heard on the board of qualifications Scotland. As a result of Mr Greer and Ms Duncan-Glancy’s amendments, the bill includes enhanced provisions that will ensure that the perspectives of young people, teachers and business have suitable representation in board discussions.
That is why the bill now sets out a list of groups that must be invited to participate in the production of the learner charter and the teacher and practitioner charter, which will provide greater transparency and accountability and the opportunity for greater involvement in decisions that affect education.
That is why, thanks to Mr Kerr’s amendment, the legislation provides a cast-iron guarantee that the chief inspector will have suitable teaching and educational leadership experience. It is also why, as a result of amendments lodged by Mr Greer and contributions from Mr Briggs, greater reassurance is provided in the bill that membership of the chief inspector’s advisory council will be representative of the needs of those who receive education.
It is fair to say that the committee and I have probably spent more time considering and debating the location and scope of the accreditation function than any other matter. I put on record my thanks to all the staff in the SQA who, as a result of our deliberations, have had to contend with a significant degree of uncertainty and anxiety over a period of time. Members put forward a range of different options at stage 2 that would have removed the accreditation function from the qualifications body. However, none of the alternatives provided a compelling case for change. Therefore, I believe that the compromise position that we have managed to reach through the amendments of Mr Rennie and Mr Greer represents a significant step forward.
The cabinet secretary mentioned the accreditation staff in the SQA. It is not only as a result of our deliberations, as the cabinet secretary said, that they have had to content with uncertainty. In a letter to the cabinet secretary, the accreditation staff said:
“Accreditation staff have endured over four years of uncertainty, and it is deeply concerning that their future remains unresolved”.
How does the cabinet secretary respond to that?
You have one minute left, cabinet secretary.
I have in front of me a letter from Unite the Union that I quoted to Ms Duncan-Glancy during yesterday’s proceedings. It said that relocating the accreditation team to another body would not deliver the outcomes that the Education, Children and Young People Committee or Parliament appeared to be seeking. I have to say that the inability of the committee to arrive at a decision on the matter at stage 2 has helped to continue the unease and anxiety that those staff have experienced.
The purpose of the bill is to bring Parliament together around a solution to the challenge that exists in relation to accreditation. I am pleased that we have been able to do that with not just one party in the Parliament but two.
We will now have the statutory review that I mentioned. Importantly, that will go beyond where the function is located to consider in detail the scope of that function. In committee, we debated that matter at length. Of course, within qualifications Scotland there will also be a chief accreditation officer.
Presiding Officer, I am conscious of time.
First and foremost, we need to pass the legislation, to fully realise our shared goal to improve our education system and, as a result, improve outcomes for our children and young people. I urge members to support the Education (Scotland) Bill to make that a reality.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Education (Scotland) Bill be passed.
For the avoidance of doubt, I clarify that there is no time in hand and that members should please stick to their allocated and agreed speaking times.
20:05
I thank the Parliament’s legislation team and, following these late sittings, the wider parliamentary staff, as well as Government officials and colleagues across parties for the constructive engagement that we have had on many elements of the bill. I also make special mention of our researchers, from all parties, because they have put in a power of work in attempting to improve the bill.
During stage 3 amendments yesterday, Pam Duncan-Glancy stated that the bill was a “job half done”. I agree. After all, this is the main education bill that has been introduced by the Government during this session of the Parliament.
We should not forget why we are here today. The 2020 exam scandal brought into sharp focus the failings of the SQA and the Scottish National Party ministers at that time. The changes that the bill was meant to take forward to respond to a range of reports and reviews, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s review of the curriculum for excellence and Professor Ken Muir’s report “Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education”, have not been achieved.
I joined the Education, Children and Young People Committee last October, just in time for the signing off of its stage 1 report on the bill. I am sorry to say that it feels as though the bill has been rushed through the Parliament in the last week of term and that it does not reflect what the cross-party report envisaged.
As my friend and colleague Liz Smith has stated, the bill is now the sixth attempt by the SNP Government to reform education in Scotland. It is clear that SNP ministers’ policies and half-baked reforms are not delivering for our young people. The stage 3 process has felt more like the Scottish Government trying not to take forward reform rather than providing a bill that could deliver the full recommendations of the reports of the cross-party committee and Ken Muir.
In addition, the pace at which the bill has moved through the Parliament, landing in the last week of the session, is problematic. Either ministers should have introduced the bill earlier or we should have delayed stage 3 until after the summer recess, so that important discussions—really important discussions—to develop a cross-party consensus could have taken place and the bill could, potentially, have received the confidence of all parties in the chamber, as happened last week in respect of the Deputy First Minister’s work on the Scottish Languages Bill.
Scottish Conservatives have, however, engaged positively and lodged a positive and significant set of amendments to try to shape a stronger bill that would deliver the outcomes that we all want. I note Ross Greer’s comments in the chamber yesterday in relation to the difficulty of legislating for culture change. I agree. However, the failure to take forward as part of the bill important reforms such as the independence of the chief inspector and child protection reforms will not provide the reset or the independence from ministers that the organisations need.
I fear that the Government has ended up in a weaker place and that the bill has ended up as a weaker response, which is not what we need to truly set up qualifications Scotland as a new organisation with the strong foundations that it needed. The question that we are all asking is: what measures in the bill will restore trust? Will the new organisation have a new culture? The jury is still very much out on whether that will be the case.
Scottish Conservatives were clear on our red lines over what we wanted to see in the bill, especially in relation to a new independent school inspector who would report directly to the Parliament. That has not been achieved. I regret that the bill has not been the opportunity that many of us had hoped for.
I approached the bill in the hope that we could genuinely work to restore confidence in our qualifications authority and the inspectorate. It was hoped that the bill would deliver a meaningful reform for Scotland’s education system, which is urgently needed. Instead, it is little more than a rebrand of the SQA.
Splitting the awarding and accreditation functions of the SQA is fundamental to creating a system that works, as the higher history scandal showed, with the SQA not being allowed to continue to mark its own homework. The SQA needed an overhaul, not a cosmetic makeover, and the bill’s proposed changes fall way short of what is required to ensure that the organisation can operate effectively and that it is properly accountable.
I believe that we could have built cross-party consensus on the bill if the minister had given us more time, and if the Parliament had had more time.
On the member’s point about it being only a cosmetic change, we are going from a situation in which the SQA has a single chief executive to qualifications Scotland being required to have chief executive, a chief examiner and a chief accreditation officer. The chief examiner would be accountable to an expert group, and the chief accreditation officer would be accountable to an accreditation committee. Does he really think that that is just a cosmetic change, bearing in mind that we have just passed an amendment that legally obliges each of them to act completely independently of each other?
Those changes will be improvements to the internal structures, and I hope that they work, which is why we have supported the amendments. However, I do not think that they provide the radical change that students and teachers across the country are looking to the Parliament to deliver. I have been disappointed by the fact that the Parliament has not been bolder and that the Government has been complacent in its work with parties for the bill.
As I have said, the bill at stage 3 is not the education bill that it should be and, therefore, we will not support it at decision time.
I was caught on the hop there.
I call Pam Duncan-Glancy to open on behalf of Scottish Labour.
20:11
Scotland’s young people are our greatest asset, and it is incumbent on us all to legislate to ensure that the education system delivers the greatest opportunities for each and every one of them. Countless reviews, academics, experts, teachers, pupils and parents have been crying out for reform of the system, not least because, in 2020, the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney, oversaw the SQA’s downgrading of the poorest students. That was pivotal in aligning the entire sector and country on the need for education reform. However, on a key aspect of that reform, which is to abolish the SQA, rather than voting for reform, the Parliament is being asked to vote for a review. A credible qualifications system cannot be run by a body that sets exams and accredits and regulates itself. That is a fundamental conflict of interest, yet that conflict of interest remains at the heart of the bill.
Scottish Labour offered solutions. We proposed separating accreditation from delivery so that the body that awards qualifications would not judge its own standards. We offered three routes—a single curriculum and regulation body, an independent chief regulator that would be answerable to the Parliament, or a stripped-back inspectorate model that would be free of conflict. All those proposals were rejected.
I am listening to Ms Duncan-Glancy. Of course, I have read much of the position in Labour’s press release, but the Labour Party accepted 40 Government handouts. It seems to me rather incoherent that, on the one hand, Ms Duncan-Glancy was happy to work with the Government on those amendments but, on the other hand, the Labour Party is positioning itself against the bill—which, I put on the record, will abolish the SQA. Is the Labour Party now in favour of maintaining the SQA?
First, the bill will not abolish the SQA, which is exactly why we will not vote for it. Secondly, we worked with the Government to try to improve the bill because we know that, if it is enacted, it will have a massive impact on children and young people in Scotland. It is our job as parliamentarians and legislators to scrutinise the Government’s legislation. The Government may not like the fact that we propose amendments and sometimes win them, but I am afraid that that is just how the Parliament works. We did our best to make the bill one that could be supported, but we cannot support a bill that does not abolish the SQA.
For the fullest consideration, there is much more in the letter from Unite the Union that the cabinet secretary has quoted that the Parliament should hear. As well as saying that accreditation staff have endured over four years of uncertainty—not just during the immediate scrutiny of the bill—the letter says:
“As detailed in our evidence submitted at Stage 1, our members’ preference would have been to have an independent Regulatory and Accreditation Body”.
It goes on to say that,
“Given that the optimal position of an independent Regulator has been removed from consideration”,
its members
“believe that further independence”
has to now be achieved
“with minimal disruption”.
The Government’s dither and delay has ground down staff and let pupils down. Instead of abolishing the SQA, the bill will allow the current leadership to transfer wholesale. On whether key functions will be properly separated from the qualifications body, Scotland’s young people are being told, “Not yet”.
We were told that the bill would rebuild confidence in Scottish education, but confidence comes from credibility, and credibility comes from clarity, independent scrutiny and transparency. That is what all the reviews suggested, that is what Professor Muir recommended, that is what the Educational Institute of Scotland told MSPs, and that is what witnesses told the Education, Children and Young People Committee. Incidentally, it is also what the cabinet secretary committed at stage 2 to delivering, but she has not delivered it. After months of scrutiny, all that we have is a review.
We need a qualifications system that is fit for the future—one that respects the efforts of learners, supports the judgment of teachers and earns the trust of employers and universities. We need a curriculum that is broad and inclusive, and we need an inspectorate that can challenge where necessary, but also celebrate excellence. On that point, I am pleased that the Government has delivered on the independence of the inspectorate.
When it comes to reform, this is a job that is unfinished. We should not have needed a review to be put in legislation. That work should have been done in advance—indeed, it should have been done the first time, when John Swinney tried. However, that work was not done then and the current cabinet secretary has not done the work either. We desperately need a system that is transparent, accountable and, above all, independent—one in which the SQA is abolished and scrutiny is protected. The bill does not do those things and that is why we cannot support it.
Education is the first duty of any nation that calls itself just. That is why we lodged constructive amendments at every stage of the process—some with the Government’s support—that were designed to strengthen the bill. Although some of them were accepted, the Government has left reform unfinished with a bill that does not deliver. A review is not a new regulator; a consultation is not a commitment; and action delayed, however well intentioned, is action denied.
Education reform cannot be delivered on foundations that are half built. Therefore, Scottish Labour cannot support the bill. That is not because we do not want reform but because we do, and the bill fails to deliver that. Scotland’s young people deserve better than this.
20:17
The bill was a long time coming. For me, the cabinet secretary and some others, it has been nine years in the making; for other members who have been here since before 2016, such as Willie Rennie, it has been even longer than that. The case for this reform has been made across many years. Given the amount of effort that has gone into the bill for that length of time, I thank the Government’s bill team and the legislation team in the Parliament for the huge amount of work that they have put in to deliver it.
However, the bill did not actually need to happen. There was nothing to prevent the SQA from performing better and there was nothing in the legislation that underpins it that prevented it from doing a better job than it did. The issue is that it simply did not do a better job, and legislative change has been required in a dramatic manner to compel better performance. Indeed, towards the start of the previous session of Parliament—in 2017, I think—the Education and Skills Committee, of which the cabinet secretary and I were members, published a report that proposed significant internal change—primarily cultural change—to the SQA. However, it missed that opportunity. It had the opportunity to change and it did not take it.
In 2020, after the scandal of the alternative certification model, with young people being graded based on their postcode rather than on their abilities, there was no apology from the leadership of the SQA. The Government apologised, but the leadership of the SQA never did. It was more focused on having a credible national data set than on meeting the needs of individual young people and learners and delivering what each of them deserved.
In many ways, it was worse for teachers. The SQA’s approach to teachers over years and, indeed, decades has verged on and in some cases surpassed the definition of hostility. I emphasise that I am talking about the senior management team at the SQA and not the whole organisation. There are about 1,000 staff at the SQA—1,000 brilliant, talented and dedicated individuals—and they will make qualifications Scotland a success.
The bill, which was significantly amended through the legislative process, will create an organisation in which staff will have to work with teachers, students and others. They will have to consult extensively before making key decisions, which is something that the SQA not only did not do but often refused to do. Staff will have to co-design the learner charter and the teacher and practitioner charter and set out the principles that will underpin their work. The two committees that will lead on that work will be made up entirely of learners and of teachers and practitioners, and they will link directly to the organisation’s board. That link is currently missing between the learner panels that the SQA has convened or outsourced and the current organisation’s board.
There is a point of learning from the national qualifications group that was set up during the pandemic, in which young people were included but in an entirely tokenistic and disempowering way. The chief examiner—a role that we have just agreed to create—must be an educator. Again, that has been missing from the system. Too often, key decisions have been made by those who, to be frank, did not understand the impact that they would have in the classroom.
The board will include experts who will have that direct experience. That means having at least five teachers and lecturers on the board rather than the situation that we have seen for the past five years, whereby there is not a single teacher or headteacher, or the situation that we saw at one point when there were three management consultants compared with just one teacher. There will be someone on the board speaking for staff and there will be a duty to recruit young people to the board. We are setting very high expectations of those board members.
At this point, I put on the record my thanks to Shirley Rogers, who has already begun the transformation of the SQA as it stands, leading to the creation of qualifications Scotland. As Miles Briggs said a moment ago, we are trying to legislate for a change in culture, and that is exceptionally difficult. However, under the leadership of Shirley Rogers, the culture at the top of the SQA is already changing and it is preparing to meet the expectations that we have set out for qualifications Scotland. I certainly welcome that.
This is a huge opportunity for us to move forward with an organisation that is driven by the voices of teachers and students in particular, and the Scottish Greens will be proud to support the bill at decision time.
20:21
Earlier today, I was reading a speech by Tavish Scott from 2017, in which he made a passionate case for change, but that case was primarily about the inspectorate, not the SQA. The SQA issue came at a much later stage, during the pandemic, with the examination results scandal. At that point, excitement and passion was generated because there had been frustration, almost from the point at which the inspectorate and the new Education Scotland had been created, as there was a feeling that no public body should be marking its own homework.
That is why there was, at that point, a real cry that the functions should be separated, and later on, the Parliament agreed to that by majority vote. However, it took years for the Government to implement that decision, and we have reached the final conclusion of that process today.
During all that time, those staff have been waiting in limbo. Since that point in 2017, my biggest criticism has been that the inspectorate missed the big issue in Scottish education: the decline in the international performance of our education system. It was once one of the best, and then it slipped down the rankings, but the inspectorate missed that completely.
That is why, in a sense, we need a much-strengthened inspectorate that carries heft in the Scottish education system and can challenge without being intimidated by any part of the public sector. I am afraid that, so far, that has not been the case. Likewise, that applies to Education Scotland, which has now been split from the inspectorate. Those bodies need to be given greater support, because we need them to be strong and to challenge public authorities and schools. They need to appoint senior people, whom we currently do not have in place. That needs to change, and it needs to change quickly.
Finally, with regard to the SQA, the alternative certification model that was used during the pandemic stimulated the desire to abolish that body after many years of trying to get it to change. If we are frank, however, the SQA has changed. We can see the culture change that is being led by Shirley Rogers, who is already making a dramatic impact on the body. However, it still requires a plethora of committees, engagement processes, learners’ panels and advisory groups to ensure that the voices of young people, parents and teachers, from across the education system, are built into the SQA.
We now have the charters to ensure that we get the culture right, and we have the important review on accreditation. One of the criticisms that staff have levied at the Education, Children and Young People Committee, and at the Government, is that we agree the form before we agree the function. That is why the review is the right thing to do to decide what we will do with quality assurance and the scope of accreditation. Only then can we decide where to put it. I am afraid that the alternative amendments in stages 2 and 3 were trying to discuss the form before the function. We need to get it right this time and to do it in a professional fashion to ensure that it is indeed right.
My final point is on safeguarding and child protection. I am pleased that the cabinet secretary has laid out a process for ensuring that the concerns that the General Teaching Council for Scotland and others have expressed about the supervision and oversight of the system—not individual inspections—in relation to those two aspects are properly considered.
The bill is a good step in the right direction. Now, we need to let those bodies get on and develop a strong place in Scottish education so that we start to improve in our performance.
Thank you, Mr Rennie. We move to the open debate, with back-bench speeches of up to four minutes.
20:25
I am pleased to stand tonight to speak in favour of the Education (Scotland) Bill. As deputy convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I start as others have done by thanking everyone who has contributed to the bill and helped to shape it as it made its way through our Parliament.
After months of scrutiny by the committee, I am looking forward to making the final few changes to the bill with the amendments that were in front of us today. Now we can get on with dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and driving forward with improving our education system.
Although we are looking to improve it, we should not forget that our starting point is that we already have a great education system thanks to the hard work of teachers up and down the country and to the pupils, too, who I sometimes think do not get enough credit.
I said that the system is great, not perfect. That is because there is always room for improvement, some of which will be directly achieved by the bill and some enabled by it.
The most talked-about change that the bill will deliver is that the Scottish Qualifications Authority will be replaced with a new national qualifications body for Scotland, aptly called qualifications Scotland. Our committee heard a great deal about how the SQA could improve. We heard that our teachers felt that there was a disconnect between the SQA and their profession and that the SQA’s work did not seem to take account of the reality in our schools. The stand-out example for me was when qualification requirements were changed during an academic year. That is being changed.
Qualifications Scotland will be a new authority, with new governance arrangements, new people, including a headteacher, and a new ethos. Those changes might be seen as small to start with, but those small changes will add up and I am certain that, over time, they will mean substantial and tangible improvement for our pupils and teachers.
The bill also seeks to create an independent inspectorate to ensure that every child gets the great education to which they are entitled. However, the whole bill—new qualifications authorities and inspectorates, and all the amendments that we have seen as the bill moved through Parliament—is only one step in a journey. The end of that journey is when every single child in Scotland has the best chance to succeed in life and poverty does not hinder their life chances.
The Scottish Government has been clear, time and again, that it will do everything that it can to close the poverty-related attainment gap. That is not only about an education bill and new organisations but also about the investment of billions in our schools estate and £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge, expanded free school meals and breakfast clubs, school uniform grants, the game-changing Scottish child payment and, before that, the baby box and best start grants. What a contrast to the United Kingdom Government’s continuing to balance its books on the backs of children through their shameful two-child cap—actually, something else for my list is that it is this SNP Scottish Government that is abolishing the two-child cap in Scotland.
We can make no better investment than in our young people—it is an investment in Scotland’s future. Today, we can help to build that future by passing the Education (Scotland) Bill and pushing on with improving our education system.
I call Davy Russell, who is this evening making his first speech in the Parliament.
20:29
Thank you, Presiding Officer, for giving me the opportunity to make my first speech.
Being elected as the member of the Scottish Parliament for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse is one of the biggest honours of my life. I will start my speech by paying tribute to my predecessor, Christina McKelvie. While chapping doors during the election campaign, I spoke to many people across our community and, as members might expect, I heard plenty of different views on the various political parties and the characters within them. However, regardless of where I went or who I spoke to, I heard genuine warmth and affection for Christina. She was a passionate MSP and a friend to many across the chamber. She served my community with distinction and will always be fondly remembered. [Applause.]
On the campaign trail, I had hundreds of conversations with people across my community, and education was one of the big issues that came up time and again. I heard from parents, teachers and even grandparents who were worried about the state of our schools and who feared that the next generation was being deprived of the opportunities that previous generations had.
Scotland’s education system was once the envy of the world. An old friend of mine, Len Murray, a former lawyer who passed away a few years ago, said something during an immortal memory that stuck with me. He said that, in the years
“of the great Scottish Enlightenment … in the ... 18th century … Scotland produced more men of letters, more men of learning and more men of science than did any other nation on earth.”
That was as good as it got. Scotland maintained its educational high standing in the world right into this century. However, on the SNP’s watch, standards have been plummeting, attainment is declining, violence is rising in our classrooms and kids’ backgrounds are holding them back from reaching their potential, because of the SNP’s failure to close the attainment gap. Trust in our education system is on the floor after the SQA’s shameful attempt to downgrade the results of working-class pupils during the pandemic—a move that was signed off by John Swinney, who is now First Minister.
The SNP needs to give itself a shake and ask itself, where did it all go wrong? On its watch, education has been—and still is—a shambles. The educational bus has no engine, no steering wheel and an extremely poor driver who has lost his way.
A new direction is desperately needed to deliver the education system that young Scots deserve, but the SNP is just rebranding its failing institutions. We cannot tackle tomorrow’s challenges with today’s complacency.
A good education is a key driver of efforts to reduce child poverty. The status quo is not good enough, and I cannot sign off on more of the same, so I will vote against the bill. The SNP has wasted an opportunity to do right by Scotland’s young people. Building a better future for the next generation is one of the most important missions of any Government. That starts with education, because education is not just about exams; it is about equipping young people with the confidence, curiosity and character to thrive in this world.
I was born in Quarter, which is near Hamilton. I still live there today. I started my career as a roads apprentice in Hamilton before working my way up to director level. Until the by-election, I had the honour of representing His Majesty as a deputy lord lieutenant of Lanarkshire.
My life has been spent serving my community, but throughout my life I did not expect to become a politician. However, I knew that the opportunity to be Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse’s voice in the Scottish Parliament would be the best way that I could serve my community again.
Mine is a story not of privilege but of standard education through the two good schools that I went to. Perseverance, hard work and further education—that is the spirit that I bring to the chamber.
As I said on the night that I was elected, the only thing greater than being elected as my community’s MSP was the feeling when my grandson was born, which was 10 weeks ago, on the night that I started my political journey. Holding him in my arms reminded me of exactly what is at stake here. It is not just about policy or politics—we can get by without that—but about the kind of Scotland that we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren. I entered the Scottish Parliament not with the answers but with a deep-rooted belief in public service, a commitment to listening and an unshakeable resolve to stand up for the people who sent me here.
To the people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, I thank you for putting your trust in me, and I will work every day to earn it. My promise to you is simple: I will be your voice in the chamber, and I will never stop fighting for a better, fairer and more hopeful future for us all. [Applause.]
Thank you, Mr Russell. We move to closing speeches. I call Ross Greer to close on behalf of the Scottish Greens.
20:36
I congratulate Davy Russell on making his first speech in the chamber. I find that, nine years in, the novelty and privilege of being in the chamber have certainly not worn off yet.
I start by re-emphasising the point about the robust governance mechanisms that we have put in place around accreditation for qualifications Scotland. Whereas the SQA has, until very recently, had just a chief executive, qualifications Scotland will at all times have a chief executive, a chief examiner and a chief accreditation officer. The chief examiner will be accountable to the expert group on standards, and the chief accreditation officer will be accountable to the accreditation committee. We have just agreed to separate their roles in law and to require them to act independently of each other. That addresses form, but we need to be honest that the Parliament was not yet ready to make a decision on function in terms of the scope of accreditation. However, we have agreed a clear process for that going forward, and I think that we have struck the right balance.
The claim that what we have agreed to today does not meet the demands that have been set out by teachers and young people in particular rings a bit hollow. Teachers and young people have not been talking to us about the specifics of where the accreditation function sits; the most common piece of feedback that we received from those who are directly involved in the system was a desire for a change of personnel at the top of the organisation, and that is what we already have, with a new chair, a new chief executive and a new leadership culture that is being developed as a result.
I want to talk about the next steps. Now that we have addressed the questions of structure, we need to move on to how to reform our qualifications and inspection systems. Scotland’s exam system is still stuck in the Victorian era. We still have a high-stakes, end-of-term exam model that is largely unchanged from when it was set up about 150 years ago. There are problems with that for a whole range of reasons. It is abysmal for young people with additional support needs in particular. It is not appropriate that, when it comes to exams, the one-stop solution for young people with additional needs is to simply get more time in the exam hall. For the young people who struggle most with that format, having to sit in the exam hall for even longer than everybody else is not a solution and often makes things worse.
We now have alternative data sets. Once we resolved the issues in 2020, we had a comparison between what happens when teachers use their professional judgment to issue grades for their young people and what happens through the exam system. That poses a question for us: were teachers really overrewarding working-class young people in particular, or do we have an exam system that penalises those young people compared with their colleagues from more middle-class backgrounds?
We have an opportunity to balance the system with more continuous assessment, which is a much more accurate reflection of young people’s knowledge and abilities. The proposals that Professor Hayward set out provide an opportunity to do that. They are bold, but they are exactly what we need. We have a 21st century curriculum in Scotland, and it deserves a 21st century qualifications system to match up with it. That is how we can meet the expectations that the OECD review, in particular, has put on us.
I ask the chief inspector to be bold, too. It would be honest to say that our current inspection system is not driving improvement. Inspectors often have a similar experience of life to that of the King, because everywhere that they go smells of wet paint. I propose that we move to a system of peer review. That could be done in different ways—we could have teachers who take a week or two out of school each year to take part in a peer review exercise with teachers from another school and another authority area, and we could have three or four-year secondments as career progression opportunities. That would mean that those who conducted inspections always had direct, recent experience of being in a classroom.
I finish by congratulating, in particular, the young people who got us to this point—those in the Scottish Youth Parliament and those elsewhere who demanded change and forced us to deliver it. The bill provides major change. It delivers what young people and teachers have demanded. Tonight’s vote will be one of the most significant ones in this parliamentary session. The SQA’s abolition will get the headlines, but what is much more important is the far stronger organisation that we are putting in its place—one that will put the voices of young people and teachers at its heart from the start.
20:40
I want to go back to human rights. Articles 28 and 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child give our young people the right to an education and indicate what that education should cover. In a sense, I am following on from the previous speech by talking about what our young people are feeling and what they are experiencing. I note, with the greatest respect to the youngest and the oldest members of the Parliament, that the reality is that the school experiences that children and young people are having at the moment are so different from the school experiences that we had. Likening our experience to theirs does them a disservice.
The debate allows me the opportunity to mention a report by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland called “This is our lives, it matters a lot.” A lot of the quotes in it relate specifically to the challenges that examination poses. The commissioner’s concluding assessment states:
“The pressure, anxiety, and stress that exams are placing on children and young people is not only reducing their ability to access their right to education ... but also affecting their right to the highest attainable standard of health ... This has been long recognised, including during the National Conversation on Education in 2023.”
I raise those points because of where we are. We are discussing the Education (Scotland) Bill, which provided the one opportunity during this parliamentary session to make a difference. It could have made a difference to the children who are coming to the end of their first year at school, to the children who are looking at this summer holiday as the step before they start school, to those who are transitioning to high school and to those who are transitioning from the end of their broad general education and moving into whatever assessment formula we decide to throw at them in a few years. However, there are also many children who are finishing education tomorrow or on Friday. What will they look back on? When they have their own children, will they look back at the difference that the bill made to their lives?
This is where I have a challenge with the procedures that we have undertaken during the bill’s passage. I thank the cabinet secretary for a lot of the discussion that there has been, but I humbly offer some advice: there is a difference between cross-party support that results in enough votes to get amendments agreed to and cross-chamber support, which is what Scotland wants and is clamouring for.
I raise those two points because the proposed Promise bill will be coming this way. I hope that every member in the chamber learns lessons about how the Parliament can work with the Government in relation to the way in which amendments are dealt with, the way in which assurances are given and the way in which all that can play out, as we have seen over the past two days of stage 3.
I take the opportunity to thank the cabinet secretary in relation to the amendments regarding child safety. I thank her for our discussions before stage 3 regarding the challenge that exists between our local authorities and the independent organisation that judges and monitors teachers, because we need to get that right.
I recognise that time is short, but it would be wrong for me to conclude without complimenting my newest colleague on a phenomenal first speech. He painted us something that I will leave as a challenge for everyone in the chamber: the concept of an education bus. Is the bill a simple repaint job when we had the opportunity to rebuild a vehicle that could take our children and young people into the future? Has there just been a change of steering wheel when what we needed was a navigator who knew where they wanted to go, knew why they wanted to go there and, perhaps most importantly, could take not just the Parliament but the rest of Scotland with them?
20:45
I might be the third person in line to do so, but I would like to extend my congratulations to Davy Russell and welcome him to the Parliament and the chamber. I also thank him for expressing the sentiments that he mentioned in his speech. I am three years into being an elected member, but I still feel a sense of excitement about the fact that I am here in this place.
I turn to my speech. Presiding Officer,
“reform is not in itself a panacea. Cultural change in both Government and our agencies will be essential if we are to build a new qualifications system that carries the credence that children, parents and the teaching profession will expect.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2024; c 24.]
Those are not my words—I am quoting the cabinet secretary—but I cannot disagree at all with their content or the sentiment that they express. However, here we are. Will the bill that we have just debated truly deliver a cultural change in both the Government and our education agencies? I think not. We could have been debating a bill that made a monumental change to our education system and truly embraced the concept of change that we all agreed was needed. However, unfortunately, much of its promise has been watered down and, in my opinion, it will result in little more than a rebranding of the already failing SQA.
In 2022, Professor Muir’s report recommended separating the SQA’s accreditation and regulation functions from its role as an awarding body. The report recommended that accreditation be transferred to a new national education agency, which would also take on responsibility for the curriculum and the professional support roles that are currently held by Education Scotland.
I totally agreed with the response that Miles Briggs gave to the intervention on his speech, because what we are looking at is simply an internal restructure. We were looking for radical cultural change—that is what we wanted to see from the bill—but, instead, the agency’s functions have not been separated in that way. Splitting the awarding and accreditation functions of the SQA is fundamental to creating a system that will work. As the scandal surrounding last year’s higher history exam showed, the SQA should not be marking its own homework. The truth is that it should have a complete overhaul—not just a cosmetic makeover and a name change.
The proposed changes fall far short of what was needed to ensure that the organisation operates effectively and is properly accountable. At every stage of the bill process, amendments were lodged with the aim of ensuring that the bill would offer not only reform but much more. At stages 2 and 3, Conservative members tried to amend the bill so that the cultural change that the cabinet secretary admitted was essential would come to pass. It is therefore extremely disappointing that the opportunity to enhance the bill—and, ultimately, to enhance our education offering in Scotland—has not been taken. I was incredibly disappointed that some of the amendments and the contributions, especially in yesterday’s proceedings—
Will the member take an intervention?
I will.
I am listening to Ms McCall express her disappointment, but I am also looking at the totality of amendments, both from her party and from Scottish Labour, that the Government supported. Does she not think it somewhat incoherent that, having worked with the Government on those amendments, both Labour and the Conservatives are now positioning themselves against the legislation?
I appreciate what the cabinet secretary is saying, but what I am seeing is—I will use a phrase that my colleagues have just mentioned—low-hanging fruit. The amendments that were accepted were the amendments—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but does the cabinet secretary want to intervene again?
No.
Thank you very much.
The disappointment that I want to highlight is down to some of the behaviour that was on display yesterday. Some of the amendments that were spoken to, and some of the contributions that were made, were met with what, in my opinion, were arrogance and contempt. I believe that that shows disrespect to the Parliament and does a disservice to the people who we represent. Members might have differing opinions, but every one of our contributions is equally valuable.
It is our job to be a voice for the people who we represent. The fact that the majority in the Parliament might disagree with the substantive points that are made in debates does not diminish those points or the need for them to be made. It is our moral duty to fully push the debate, and if members in the chamber think that Opposition voices should be silenced, curtailed or belittled they will push this institution towards dictatorship and away from democracy.
As I mentioned, the Scottish Conservatives will not support the half-hearted attempt at reform that the bill represents. As has been the case with so many bills brought forward by this SNP Government, we are debating a bill that is an acceptable move in the right direction, rather than making the necessary legislative changes to make tangible moves to improve outcomes for the people of Scotland. That is not what this Parliament was set up to do, and the public will not thank us for it. They deserve better.
I call the cabinet secretary, Jenny Gilruth, to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government.
20:50
I want to start by paying tribute to Scotland’s young people, our teachers, parents and carers. This bill is for them. That is why we are legislating tonight.
Jackie Dunbar rightly spoke about the strengths in Scotland’s education system. She said that we already have a great education system in Scotland. It is not perfect—I accept that—but we have a strong education system in Scotland, and I want to pay tribute, on the record, to those who work in our schools every single day to deliver that education to our young people.
Once again, I thank all members for their contributions to the debate. I am also very grateful for what has been, in the main, a constructive approach from all Opposition parties, with members having engaged with my office and officials over recent months. We have seen a slight deterioration in the past 24 hours—
I have spoken to all Opposition parties about this. Would the cabinet secretary acknowledge that the bill has been rushed? We have had to sit two evenings in a row to rush the bill through before recess. In hindsight, would it not have been better to delay stage 3 until after the summer recess? She might then have attracted cross-party support for the major reform that she is putting forward, which, it is clear, not every party is willing to support.
I have to say that there is some incoherence on that point. I was told that I was not going fast enough on education reform, and I was criticised by the Conservatives and the Labour Party for delaying reform. I did delay reform—by a year—for good reason, which I will come to discuss. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. There has been extensive engagement—
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
I say to Ms Duncan-Glancy that I would like to make some progress.
Our qualifications system is the reason why we are here today, and getting the reform of our national qualifications body right matters. Ross Greer was quite right to remind the chamber of the recommendations from the Education and Skills Committee in the previous session of Parliament, of which we were both members. Had the SQA listened to the recommendations in the committee’s report at the time, we might not be here today.
Similarly, Mr Rennie was right to talk about Tavish Scott’s impassioned interest in separating out the inspectorate function from Education Scotland, and he was consistent in that argument. If—when—the bill passes this evening, I am sure that he will be pleased.
I want to put on the record my sincere thanks to the members of my bill team for their diligent work and the support that they have given me throughout the past few months. They are hiding at the back of the chamber, but I will embarrass them by naming them. I thank Clare Hicks, Lisa Bird, Sean Stronach, Jaxon Parish, Nico McKenzie-Juetten, Judith Brown, Laura Barrie, Findlay Glynn, Tracy Manning, Shirley Anderson, Maria Crespo, Jack Buckley and Mark Byrne. [Applause.] I also thank Shirley Rogers, the chair of the SQA, for all the work that she has undertaken to change the SQA in advance of the legislation, and I pay tribute to our special adviser, Erin McKee, who has been at the forefront of negotiations with the Opposition parties.
When I was first appointed Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills in March 2023, I was told of the radical appetite for reform and the need to work differently—and to get it done tomorrow. With cautiousness and trepidation, I returned to the Royal high school, 5 miles from where we are today, and met with my former colleagues. In the staffroom that I once knew well, I sat and listened to our teachers. It was apparent then that there was a disconnect between some of the loudest voices that were advancing the case for radical reform and those at the chalk face, who were calling for pragmatism and asking for patience. Those discussions were pivotal in my decision to delay the introduction of the bill by a year to ensure that we really engaged with the needs of Scotland’s teachers.
Building in that time to listen has changed the way that the new qualifications body will work, with the creation of the schools unit already under way, led by former headteacher Sarah Brown. It has also changed the way in which curriculum reform is being delivered, with classroom teachers leading the national reforms across every curriculum area.
In my opening remarks, I mentioned several important amendments that I worked on with Opposition members. I wish to highlight the contribution that Liz Smith made in ensuring that the chief inspector recognises the important role that outdoor education plays in our system.
The bill focuses on our public bodies. It does not change how our schools are run, nor does it change how education is delivered, but it does improve the support that our public bodies can give our teachers, directly involving them in decision making, for example. It also ensures that young people’s voices are at the heart of the organisation and gives independence to the chief inspector to provide challenge and support.
The Education (Scotland) Bill provides Scottish education with an enormous opportunity. MSPs can vote tonight to abolish the Scottish Qualifications Authority; they can vote to establish qualifications Scotland—a new organisation that is designed with teachers, parents, carers and young people at its heart; and they can vote for legislation to drive the reform that is needed in Scotland’s schools. I hope that all parties take the opportunity to do so, and I commend the Education (Scotland) Bill to Parliament.
That concludes the debate on the Education (Scotland) Bill at stage 3.
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Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3