The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-15430, in the name of Liam McArthur, on education. I notify members at the outset that we are very tight for time. There is no extra time at all in the debate, so brevity would be appreciated.
14:40
I am aware that we have had numerous debates on education, even since the start of the year, but I make no apology for returning to the subject. Education, after all, is the key to unlocking the potential of each individual. It lies at the heart of what we aspire to be as a society and it determines our success as an economy. It is an area in which Scotland has traditionally excelled, and many aspects of our education system are still genuinely world class.
However, there are warning signs that in some areas trends are in the wrong direction and that the education system is failing far too many people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. The recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development captured that picture well. It offered signs of encouragement but confirmed that we are seeing falling standards in literacy and numeracy, while the gap in attainment between the rich and the rest remains wide and largely untouched.
The OECD concluded that we are at “a ‘watershed’ moment” for education in this country, and a leading educationist told the Education and Culture Committee this week,
“If we’re not careful, we could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats agree, which is why we are prioritising education—and proper funding of education—over the next five years. Ministers will argue that that is what they are doing, but too often their actions lack ambition or willingness to put their money where their mouth is. Good examples are the expansion of early learning and childcare and the establishment of an attainment fund: both policies are worthy in themselves, but they are underresourced, underdelivered and, in the case of the attainment Scotland fund, poorly targeted.
Meanwhile, savage cuts of £500 million to council budgets—the very same councils that are required to deliver school education—and an obsession with national testing in primary schools seem to be consistent with a determination to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
For clarity, and for members who were not involved in the informal discussion in the Education and Culture Committee, will Liam McArthur confirm that the individual to whom he referred also said that Scottish education is well above average and is seen worldwide as a beacon of good education standards?
I think that that is exactly what I said in my opening remarks. Scottish National Party ministers never tire of lecturing other parties on the need to offer alternatives and to make it clear how they would pay for their policies, despite the fact that SNP ministers are able to magic up money for projects whenever the mood or the news cycle dictates, and despite the Government running an underspend of hundreds of millions of pounds.
However, the challenge is not an unfair one, so I will respond. Unlike the SNP, the Scottish Liberal Democrats are determined to use to the full the powers of this Parliament in order to make a difference in education. With those powers, we can make a real difference in education. Earlier today, my colleague Willie Rennie set out plans to transform Scottish education in the next five years. By committing to raising income tax by 1p, we would be able to spend £475 million more on education next year alone. That would be the biggest investment in education since devolution. What a difference that could make. It could help to redress some of the damage that has been done to our college sector in recent years by a Government that is hell-bent on slashing budgets, jobs and places. There are 150,000 fewer places, which represents 150,000 lost opportunities for people who are looking for the skills that they need.
The extra resources could help to reverse some of the savage cuts that John Swinney is making to council budgets—cuts, let us face it, that will dig deepest into education and children’s services at local level.
Will the member give way?
I will not, at the moment.
There would also be an opportunity to deliver on ministers’ promises on early learning and childcare. Currently, a mere 7 per cent of two-year-olds from more disadvantaged backgrounds are reaping the benefits of free provision, rather than the promised 27 per cent. South of the border, the percentage is 42 per cent. That shortfall is unacceptable and does nothing to help to address the attainment gap.
Save the Children and others make it clear that the foundations for the attainment gap are established in the earliest years—often before a child is even born. Evidence shows that for every pound that is spent before a child is three, £11 is saved later in life. As well as helping to close the attainment gap, that represents investment in our economy and the social wellbeing of our country. Consequently, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have placed a high priority on targeting resources at the early years and at those who need it most. The approach is reflected in our consistent argument for extending free early learning and childcare to two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds, and it is why we have challenged this Government’s approach to its attainment fund.
As I have done on many occasions, I again welcome the additional resources, but how ministers have decided to spend the money is wrong. First, it was targeted at a mere half a dozen councils. Since then, more local authorities and schools have been added to the list to the point at which the minister boasts that 64 per cent of disadvantaged pupils now benefit from funding. However, 11 councils, including Orkney Islands Council, Shetland Islands Council and Aberdeenshire Council, remain excluded. Children from poorer backgrounds in those areas, whose needs may be every bit as great as their counterparts elsewhere in the country, are deemed by this Government to be ineligible for that support. They are not alone: it appears that almost 30,000 children are set to lose out in a postcode lottery that is entirely of ministers’ making.
I thought that lain Gray in the education debate earlier this month summed up the absurdity of the situation very well when he talked about Cochrane Castle primary school and St David’s primary school in Johnstone. They share one building, but while one school gets attainment funding, the other does not. In some cases, the inconsistency is not just between neighbouring schools but between neighbouring streets. How on earth can that be squared with the First Minister’s promise to close the attainment gap completely?
I assume that the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning are serious in their intentions, so they must recognise that funding should be based on the needs of the individual child wherever they live. That is the underlying principle behind the pupil premium. It works south of the border—thanks to the Liberal Democrats. We want to see the same principle being applied here in Scotland.
Given their history on tuition fees, I am always somewhat apprehensive about a Liberal Democrat talking about finances for education. How much would the pupil premium be for each pupil? What would be the total cost? How much would the 1p rise in income tax raise?
I have explained that the 1p increase would deliver an extra £475 million a year to education. As a former spokesman on finance for the Liberal Democrats, I am sure that Chic Brodie would acknowledge that.
This year’s funding that is available south of the border equated to £1,320 per primary pupil and £935 per secondary pupil. For an average-sized school, with average numbers in receipt of free school meals, that represents £200,000. Many schools use the funding for individual coaching, but other projects have included summer classes for pupils moving from primary to secondary school and transport for extra-curricular activities.
According to the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills—Ofsted—in 2014,
“The pupil premium is making a difference in many schools.”
Similarly, the National Audit Office noted last year that
“Early signs are that the pupil premium has potential”.
That is effusive praise, by auditor standards.
Are there areas that need improvement? Yes. Will it take time for the approach to demonstrate its full value? Probably. Is it delivering results in closing the attainment gap at primary and secondary levels in England and does it merit being rolled out here in Scotland? Absolutely.
The minister’s spin doctor was busy earlier in the week dismissing the idea as “unfunded” and “unproven”. Both of those are untrue. I presume that that spin doctor is less open to embracing new ideas than the First Minister and Ms Constance declare themselves to be.
The Labour Party seems to be supportive of the idea of a pupil premium, although the thesaurus has been used to find other ways of expressing the approach. However, I genuinely welcome its support for the principle of targeting funding at the needs of the individual child—which is something that the Labour peer Lord Adonis, who is a fan of the pupil premium, argued for strongly.
Meanwhile, the Tory amendment claims that it was all Dave’s idea. I question that. The political drive behind the pupil premium certainly came from Liberal Democrat ministers in the previous UK Government. Nevertheless, I welcome Liz Smith’s support, although clarity is needed on how the Tories plan to pay for such an approach north of the border. I am sure that Ms Smith will come to that in her speech.
It seems as though the Scottish National Party is the only party that is advocating an area-based approach, rather than one that is based on the needs of the individual child. That is a shame, but it will not stop the Scottish Liberal Democrats continuing to argue for a more effective and well-funded approach.
The gaps in attainment and achievement continue to scar lives by preventing the potential of each and every individual from being realised. Those gaps are a drag on our economy and, invariably, a cost on our society. That is just one of the reasons why Scottish Liberal Democrats have taken the decision to prioritise not just education, but the means of delivering the ends. It would be the biggest investment in education since devolution, and it could deliver transformational change. I hope that, in the next session, Parliament will have the courage to use the powers at its disposal to make that happen.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that the introduction of a pupil premium in Scotland would help enable every child to fulfil their potential, close the attainment gap and ensure a world-class education system; believes that it would give schools thousands of pounds of extra funding that they could spend to raise standards and increase attainment in every classroom; notes that it could provide practical support such as one-to-one tuition, extra staff and equipment, breakfast clubs and outreach programmes to help engage parents; recalls that Liberal Democrats in the previous UK administration successfully made the case for, and introduced, the pupil premium in England in 2011, now worth £2.5 billion a year, and that the party also subsequently secured its introduction in Wales; notes that Ofsted has said that the pupil premium “is making a difference” and that the National Audit Office observed that the gap between disadvantaged and other pupils narrowed by 4.7% in primary schools and 1.6% in secondary schools between 2011 and 2014, following its introduction; notes that, in comparison, the Attainment Scotland Fund only makes a difference in those areas and schools selected by Scottish ministers, currently ignoring the additional needs of disadvantaged children in 11 out of 32 local authorities; believes that tying funding to those children who need extra help the most, wherever they may live, through the pupil premium, would be fairer and more effective, and calls for it to be urgently introduced to help propel Scottish schools back to the top of the class.
14:50
Two weeks ago in Parliament, the cabinet secretary set out the Government’s determination to focus on the twin aims of excellence and equity in our education system to deliver a world-class system that has at its heart the tenet that all Scotland’s children must be able to achieve their educational potential and which, in the process, breaks the link between poorer attainment and poverty. We have a duty to take bold action to ensure achievement of those twin aims.
The recent OECD report confirmed that we are, with curriculum for excellence, on the right track and that our system has many strengths, including our holistic approach, the four capacities, professional engagement and a high degree of consensus on and enthusiasm for learning and teaching. I see that in action week in and week out when I visit schools.
We already know that our system is a good one and that it is delivering higher standards of achievement for most children. Last year, there was a record number of passes at higher and advanced higher grades and more young people received qualifications relating to wider skills for life and work. More students are staying on at school until sixth year, fewer are leaving with very low qualifications or no qualifications at all, and all young people can now undertake relevant work-related learning as part of their curriculum. More than nine out of 10 of last year’s school leavers were in employment, education or training nine months later.
Therefore, we are in a good place, but I accept that we cannot be complacent. We know that some children from our most deprived communities do not do as well as they should. In an excellent and equitable educational system, we cannot allow that to continue. That is why we already have a relentless focus on improving the outcomes of those children, which is supported by the additional four-year £100 million attainment Scotland fund.
The minister has set out the funding that is available and has explained the “relentless focus” on those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, but he will be aware that many of those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds—roughly 36 per cent of them—do not fall within the ambit of the attainment fund. How are their needs being prioritised to the same extent as those of other pupils elsewhere in Scotland?
In addition to the local authority-based approach, 57 schools have been identified and, beyond that, there are many sources of intervention in the lives of individual families and communities. Those things are recognition of the fact that there are many solutions to the problem. I strongly defend the major intervention that the attainment fund represents.
The focus has been on primary schools, because we know how important early preventative work is in improving children’s longer-term outcomes. Some 54,000 children in more than 300 schools in our most deprived communities have benefited from the funding.
Local authorities and schools have worked hard to put in place approaches that will really make a difference and which are based on evidence of what works. They have thought long and hard about their schoolchildren and how the funding can support them. The result is targeted and focused work on literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing within and beyond the school. Alongside teachers, there are family link workers, speech and language therapists and community learning workers who are paid for by the attainment fund. Alongside that there is work to develop programmes and approaches to close the equity gap.
The pupil-premium approach that is in place in England and Wales, which some members seem to recommend, is yet to be shown to have had an impact. The June 2015 National Audit Office report concluded that it was too early for the impact to be known. It also concluded that per-pupil funding had fallen in real terms in 45 per cent of schools between 2011-12 and 2014-15, with funding for the 16 per cent most disadvantaged secondary schools having fallen by more than 5 per cent over the same period, despite the introduction of the pupil premium.
In Scotland, our average per-pupil spending in 2014-15 for both primary and secondary education was higher than spending in England. The attainment Scotland fund will provide additional funding to the children and communities who face some of the greatest challenges. We will continue to do that.
It is clear that where there are large concentrations of children who are living in deprived communities, there is a greater need for support. Our approach delivers that. We will continue to review how we target funding to ensure that we reach the children and young people whose outcomes are impacted greatly by living in poverty.
Although our focus is on schools where there are high concentrations of children living in deprived communities, we are also aware of the need for universal support to close the attainment gap. We have enhanced the support that is already available by putting an attainment adviser in place for every authority and by developing the national improvement framework, the primary 1 to 3 read, write, count campaign and the making maths count programme.
We must not lose sight of the fact that success is elusive for a small number of our children—and for a significant number of our children from deprived communities. The gap in attainment is narrowing, but if we are to achieve our ambition of delivering a world-class education system for all our children, we must and will do more. Our approach to targeted funding through the attainment Scotland fund is, I believe, clear evidence of our determination to achieve just that.
I move, as an amendment to motion S4M-15430 in the name of Liam McArthur, to leave out from “the introduction of” to end and insert:
“the £100 million Attainment Scotland Fund, which is additional to the almost £5 billion invested in education every year through local authorities, is rightly targeted at the primary schools that serve the most deprived communities in Scotland, with over 300 primary schools, which together support 54,399 pupils from deprived backgrounds, 64% of the total number of such pupils, benefitting from the funding; notes that this funding is providing a wide range of support to close the attainment gap including additional teaching and other specialist staff, support for parents to engage in their children’s learning, literacy and numeracy tools and extra training for teachers; further believes that the package of universal support that has been drawn together through the Scottish Attainment Challenge, including the appointment of attainment advisors for every local authority, the introduction of the Attainment Challenge Innovation Fund and the continued progress of the Raising Attainment for All programme will help ensure that there is support for every local authority to close the poverty-related attainment gap; recognises that the Scottish Government will continue to work with key stakeholders to explore and consider further approaches that will support schools to close the attainment gap, and acknowledges that the OECD’s review of Scottish education recognised the Scottish Government’s determination to focus on achieving both excellence and equity in the education system and that the national improvement framework has the potential to be a key means of driving work to close the attainment gap and strengthen formative assessment approaches.”
14:56
I rise to move the amendment in my name and, in truth, not in any great opposition to the motion from the Liberal Democrats because—Liam McArthur alluded to this—our proposals bear significant similarities.
However, in developing our proposal we consulted rather more than a thesaurus to find a different name for it. One thing that we consulted was the research and analysis that have been done on the pupil premium. I argue that the proposal that we are putting forward today—as we have already done on a number of occasions—is a more focused and detailed proposal. It is closer, in fact, to what has been introduced in Wales, where changes were made to the pupil premium precisely in order to address some of the flaws that had been identified with it. Perhaps the most significant flaw was that, although Ofsted, as Mr McArthur said, found evidence of effectiveness, it also found evidence of headteachers banking the pupil premium as part of their overall budget and not using it in any way to help to close the attainment gap. Our proposal—I will come to this later—tries to avoid that possibility.
Where we very much agree with Mr McArthur is on the weaknesses of the approach of the SNP Government. We have argued previously, and continue to argue, that the attainment fund, although welcome, is inadequate in that it does not have enough funds and is wrongly targeted. The minister rather gave the game away when he said that he will continue to consider how it is targeted. Since the fund has been announced, the Government has shown every sign that it is making it up as it goes along when it comes to targeting.
In the past I have given examples of some of the worst results of that approach. Mr McArthur referred to one: the two schools in Johnstone—Cochrane Castle and St David’s—which are on one campus with one entrance, one gym hall and one dinner hall. Pupils come from exactly the same streets, but one of the schools gets attainment funding while the other does not. In fact, the one that gets no attainment funding is the one that has more pupils from poorer parts of that community.
We see the same thing elsewhere. In Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire I have seen a street that is divided by a catchment area boundary, so that children from the same street go to two different schools. In one of those schools the children will benefit from attainment challenge funding and in the other they will not.
Earlier this week, I was in the Scottish Borders, where only two schools get attainment challenge funding. Both are in Hawick, which means that no schools in Galashiels, where I was visiting, benefit at all. I have also—and not surprisingly—previously highlighted the example of my constituency, where not a single school benefits from attainment challenge funding.
That is why we have proposed an alternative called fair start funding, in which £1,000 follows every child who is entitled to a free school meal to primary school. That approach would benefit pretty much every primary school in the country, but it would also mean that—as in Wales—the headteacher would have to use the resources in connection with a suite of agreed evidence-based interventions that we know will make a difference.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but I am really pushed for time.
Our approach would also provide a lesser fund to nurseries for free nursery place entitlement. After all, Mr McArthur is right to point out that, as all the evidence suggests, intervention must take place as early as possible.
What would be the benefit of all that? In the Borders, which I have already mentioned, primary schools would share £860,000. East Ayrshire—a council area where at the moment only six primary schools benefit—would get £1.9 million and my East Lothian constituency would get almost £1 million, which would mean that every year some schools in my constituency would have a fund of around £85,000 that they could use to employ additional staff or classroom assistants, buy particular equipment, run literacy or numeracy programmes or do whatever the staff and headteachers of those schools think would be possible.
Draw to a close, please.
Schools in the Borders and East Ayrshire would benefit to the tune of over £100,000 a year.
The proposal would lead to a transformational change in the future of the children concerned and a transformational change in our country’s future, which is why we think that it is worth not just the support of Opposition parties but of the Government.
I move amendment S4M-15430.2, to leave out from first “pupil premium” to end and insert:
“fair start fund for children from poorer families in nursery and primary education would ensure that every child from poorer families gets the required support to catch up with the rest, no matter where they live or go to school; notes that Scottish Labour’s proposed fair start fund would link funding to children and ensure that every school has an attainment fund equal to its needs; further notes that it would be used to tackle the attainment gap by allocating £1,000 for each primary school pupil and £300 for each nursery school pupil from a deprived background, with decisions on how this money should be spent taken by head teachers; is deeply concerned that currently in Scotland more than 6,000 children leave primary school unable to read properly, more than one quarter of three and four-year-olds at nursery do not have access to a qualified teacher and that the OECD found that the achievement gap between the most and least deprived is growing; understands that the Scottish Government’s flagship Attainment Challenge Fund misses the vast majority of pupils who need support, with at least 1,500 schools in Scotland and one third of local authorities not receiving any of this funding at all, and believes that the half a billion pounds of cuts to local services such as schools coming from the Scottish Government’s budget means there is a real risk that pupils already at a disadvantage will get left even further behind.”
Thank you. I am afraid that I must reiterate that we are very short of time.
15:02
We are delighted that the Liberals have chosen this topic for debate, because it is incumbent on all of us, ahead of the election, to set out our manifesto stalls with regard to addressing the attainment gap. All parties in the chamber agree very much on the need for additional funding, but clearly there are sharp differences about its allocation.
The pupil premium is part of that debate. I know that the Liberals like to claim credit for the measure, but I have to correct them on that; it is actually a long-time Conservative pledge, and I have the evidence to prove that right here. The policy has some very specific advantages in doing two things: first, identifying those most in need; and secondly, creating the incentives to ensure that every effort is made to target resources on the pupils in question. I notice that, in response to Willie Rennie just last Friday, the cabinet secretary said that the policy is
“neither costed nor proven to work.”
I want to challenge her on that, given that the facts—or most of them, anyway—prove otherwise.
Before I do so, though, I want to flag up the academic work of Sue Ellis and Jim McCormick, both of whom are, I think, respected as much by the Scottish Government as by the rest of us. That work clearly shows that the majority of deprived children do not live in the most deprived areas, which means that the usefulness of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation is very limited, given that it targets the whole school or, in some cases, the whole local authority by postcode. As Iain Gray and Liam McArthur have made clear, the benefit of the pupil premium is that it follows the individual child—although there is one proviso to that, which I will come to in a minute.
In England, the 2015-16 pupil premium varies from £935 to £1,900 per annum, and that money is paid to pupils who have been eligible for a free school meal in one of the six previous years. The money is paid directly to the school on behalf of each recipient pupil—which amounts to three out of 10 pupils in England and Wales—and it can be spent by the school in a way that best fits the pupils concerned. As for Iain Gray’s comments about not banking the money, I think that there is a way round that.
Recently, there has been a great deal of attention on helping schools to focus individually on the most disadvantaged pupils. Indeed, the reports from the vast majority of headteachers make it very clear that a high proportion of them have clear evidence that the pupil premium is working for the most disadvantaged. Of course, that can be measured, more than anything else, by the outcomes in these schools. The minister will perhaps be interested to read the 2015 Sutton Trust report, which helpfully provides some of the evidence that we need to ensure that the policy can be taken forward.
The cost of pupil premiums in 2014-15 was £2.5 billion, which was 6 per cent of the total schools budget down south, but the important thing is that schools are held absolutely to account—if necessary by the Comptroller and Auditor General—for exactly how they spend the money. There are no edicts from local or central Government. There are no right answers, but there is full autonomy and accountability.
One of the best and most important lessons to be learned from schools in England is that it is entirely up to the schools not to treat disadvantaged pupils as a homogeneous group. There are other advantages, but I will not go into them just now. The Liberals probably would not accept them, because they involve the provision of greater incentives to those who are at the cutting edge of encouraging academies and free schools. That is perhaps more a debate for down south, but it is nonetheless important in principle for up here, particularly at a time when we have more parents—who, incidentally, are wedded to the best values of the state sector—wanting some diversity in the state provision of schooling. That is something that the Scottish Conservatives want.
Both the Labour Party and the Liberals have committed to much higher tax rates in order to fund education. The Scottish Conservatives will not do that. We have based our costings on the Scottish Parliament information centre figures and the Scottish Government figures that were produced at the end of last year, which include the £100 million that has been promised for the attainment fund, and we have related that to the supplementary financial memorandum to the Education (Scotland) Bill that was published last week. In that memorandum, the Scottish Government acknowledges that there are clearly significantly increased costs, so it is presumably in the business of providing that money.
To our minds, the basic amount would be £136 million. I am happy to put on the record how we calculated that.
Will you draw to a close, please?
However, we can use the supplementary financial memorandum to drill down further into that. The Scottish Conservatives are happy to put before the electorate not just the principle of our proposal but the costings.
The First Minister said:
“Our overall aim is to raise standards everywhere, but to raise them most quickly in the areas that most need it.”
I entirely accept that, but it will not happen if we use the SIMD. It has to be done on a pupil-by-pupil basis.
I move amendment S4M-15430.1, to leave out from “Liberal Democrats” to end and insert:
“in 2007, the Conservatives led by David Cameron proposed the introduction of the pupil premium, after which, along with the Liberal Democrats in the previous UK administration, they successfully made the case for, and introduced, the pupil premium in England in 2011, now worth £2.5 billion a year, and that the pupil premium has been successfully introduced in Wales; notes that Ofsted has said that the pupil premium ‘is making a difference’ and that the National Audit Office observed that the gap between disadvantaged and other pupils narrowed by 4.7% in primary schools and 1.6% in secondary schools between 2011 and 2014, following its introduction; notes that, in comparison, the Attainment Scotland Fund only makes a difference in those areas and schools selected by Scottish ministers, currently ignoring the additional needs of disadvantaged children in 11 out of 32 local authorities; believes that tying funding to those children who need extra help the most, wherever they may live, through the pupil premium, would be fairer and more effective, and calls for it to be urgently introduced to help propel Scottish schools back to the top of the class.”
We move to the open debate. I ask for speeches of four minutes, please.
15:07
Recently, Parliament has dedicated a considerable amount of time to educational attainment, and it is quite right that we have done so. I am sure that the ambition that all of Scotland’s children are given the opportunity to fulfil their potential regardless of their background is shared across the Parliament, and it is in that spirit that I welcome the chance to speak in this afternoon’s debate on education.
However, I must say that I was more than a little disappointed to hear Willie Rennie describe Scotland’s education sector as being at “crisis point”. Although there is recognition that there is still work to do, particularly in areas such as attainment, it is rather disingenuous, to say the least, to describe Scotland’s schools as being in some sort of crisis.
I realise that the Lib Dems might not be in a rush to consult the opinion polls, but I draw Mr Rennie’s attention to the recent Survation poll that showed a positive net satisfaction rating of plus 28 per cent from voters in favour of the SNP’s record on education. Such positive poll ratings are not exactly indicative of an electorate that considers Scotland’s education system to be universally failing.
Indeed, the SNP in government has taken a number of positive steps in its drive to improve standards in Scotland’s schools. On Monday, the First Minister announced a further £230 million for the construction of 19 new schools across Scotland, and since 2007 the Scottish Government has worked with local authorities to rebuild or refurbish more than 600 schools across the country.
Last week, thanks to a parliamentary question that was lodged by my colleague George Adam, we heard that the number of school leavers going into education, work or training is at a record high, contributing to the highest level of youth employment for a decade. The number of children in Scotland who are benefiting from free school meals has more than doubled to over 259,000 in the past year, providing vital support to children from low-income families.
Earlier this month, the First Minister unveiled the innovation fund as part of the package of support through the £100 million Scottish attainment fund. The innovation fund is open to all schools, not just schools in the local authorities that have been targeted for support through the attainment fund, and it complements the work of the attainment advisers who have been recruited for every council area.
I have listened carefully to the case that the Lib Dems have put forward and I have tried to do so with an open mind, but I have yet to hear any compelling evidence that a pupil premium approach to tackling the attainment gap would be more effective than the attainment challenge programme that the Scottish Government advocates. The Lib Dems argue—we heard it again here today—that the pupil premium has been a rousing success in England.
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have the time—I apologise.
However, a recent YouGov survey of teachers in England found that less than half of teachers believe that the pupil premium has been effective. Indeed, 4 per cent of teachers said that they thought that the policy had had a negative impact on disadvantaged pupils. Furthermore, the report last year by the National Audit Office suggested that any reduction in the attainment gap as a result of the pupil premium has been marginal at best. I quote directly from the report:
“While the attainment gap has narrowed since 2011, it remains wide and, at this stage, the significance of the improvements is unclear.”
That is hardly a rousing endorsement of the pupil premium policy that the Lib Dems advocate.
Removing barriers to educational attainment is a challenging but important undertaking. The OECD report in December underlined many of the successes in our education system, highlighting clear upward trends in recent years in areas such as attainment and positive school-leaver destinations. However, the OECD review group highlighted a number of challenges, and there is undoubtedly much more work to do to ensure that our education system delivers for every child in Scotland.
I believe that a good-quality education is key to ensuring that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have a ladder of opportunity to escape the poverty trap. I therefore welcome the Scottish Government’s determination to further strengthen Scotland’s education sector and to ensure that our young people leave school with the education and the skills that they need to fulfil their potential.
Before I call our next speaker, I remind members that the code of conduct requires that no member in the chamber turn their back on the Presiding Officer.
15:11
I agree with Stewart Maxwell that a range of factors will be important in closing the attainment gap. Those factors include the school buildings and facilities in which young people are taught. That is why I welcome the partnerships that have been put in place and acknowledge the investment of the Scottish Government and local authorities in them. Last week, I visited a new school build in Glasgow where three primary schools are being pulled together into one. That shows that local authorities are doing innovative work to get new facilities in place. I ask the minister to agree to visit Inverkeithing high school in my constituency, whose building is in a dire state and in need of replacement. Although I welcomed the announcement last week about new buildings for some schools, I was disappointed that Inverkeithing high school was not one of those schools, because school buildings are important.
It would be wrong not to mention the massive pressure that education authorities are under up and down the country. I would probably not use the term “crisis” about education. I would prefer to acknowledge the hard work going on in schools in every community in Scotland by the teachers and all the other staff in schools, who are under immense pressure. We just need to talk to teachers locally to know the pressure that they are working under because of the difficulties that are being caused by the budget cuts that are taking place.
Although those budget cuts might not be affecting teacher numbers, we are seeing the number of classroom assistants being cut and continuing professional development being cut, which will have a massive impact. Fife Council is an example of a local authority that focused millions of pounds on raising attainment. A big part of that was about leadership, so there was a major investment programme in leadership in schools. There was also a major investment programme to ensure that teachers had the support to be able to do more to lift attainment and numeracy and literacy levels. If education authorities are making cuts in the areas that I mentioned, that will have a negative impact on attainment levels.
Another criticism that I have heard of the Government’s scheme, which is well intentioned, is that it tends to be just input based, with little regard to outputs, and to involve project after project. We find that more and more staff spend their time trying to write bids and write projects, but we need to move away from that.
Labour’s proposal on the fair start fund would allow us to target money at schools and do something about that.
Alasdair Allan talked about the OECD report. I would be the first to recognise that there are many positives in that report on the curriculum for excellence and the direction in which we are going, but I want to mention a few other points. For example, page 80 of the report says:
“Not all the findings can be described as positive. Education Scotland inspection reports, for instance, gave as many as one in five schools only a ‘satisfactory’ evaluation in inspections”.
That is quite staggering. Those schools were not good, very good or excellent; they were “satisfactory”. That cannot be satisfactory for the Parliament. That shows that there are areas in which a lot of work has to be done.
There is not enough time for me to draw attention to other parts of the report. It talks about the number of different projects and the danger that we will end up with little strategic direction and focus.
You must close.
We can learn a lot from authorities that have brought about major improvement and focused that improvement.
In conclusion, I think that we have to start looking at outputs and move away from looking simply at inputs. That is the main criticism that I level against the Government.
I would appreciate members trying to keep to their four minutes.
15:16
Our aim is to have an excellent and equitable education system in which every young person throughout the country is able to achieve their full potential regardless of their family circumstances or the background that they were born into. I feel that I have said that or something very similar to it on numerous occasions in our debates. That is because the debate on the issue is very important. We all may disagree on how we will get to our goal, but we all know that the issue is one of the most important. The First Minister in particular is to be commended on ensuring that it is a major issue.
The £100 million attainment Scotland fund is rightly targeted at the primary schools that serve our most deprived communities in Scotland. We have allowed parts of our communities to fail in education for far too long; we have done that over years or decades. I have mentioned before and take no pride in mentioning again that there is an east-west divide in my constituency. One area is an area of deprivation and another is obviously an aspiring area in which people are doing a lot better financially. That makes a difference in young people’s attainment and what they do in education.
With the national improvement framework and the attainment advisers, we have the opportunity to ensure that we systematically get the resource to the right child at the right time. The attainment adviser’s job will be to ensure that they get that resource. When Education Scotland came to the Education and Culture Committee, it mentioned that, if extra funding or resource was needed, the attainment adviser would be able to find ways to do things nationally and work with other local authorities in the area.
Will the member give way?
I would love to, but I do not have much time.
That shows that the attainment adviser’s position and the framework are important parts of the debate and that the Government is moving the argument forward.
The recent OECD report on Scotland’s education system recognised the Government’s determination to focus on achieving both excellence and equity in our education system. As I have said, I do not doubt anybody’s commitment to trying to close the current attainment gap, but the Scottish Government is already tackling that through the £100 million attainment fund.
This week, the committee had an informal session in which we spoke to educationists—my colleague Mr McArthur mentioned that. One said to me that £100 million is more than enough to achieve what we want to achieve, but they wanted to know how we would get there and do that. For me, that is what the debate is about. We should consider the Scottish Government’s plans and how we will move forward.
The attainment Scotland fund is already supporting more than 300 primary schools that collectively serve 54,399 primary-age children who live in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland. That is 64 per cent of the total across Scotland. We are well aware that there are children who live in poverty who do not live in the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Scotland—we have already mentioned that in the debate. That is why the £1.5 million attainment challenge innovation fund has been included. It will support other schools across Scotland to explore and develop innovative approaches to raising attainment.
Another thing that has also already been mentioned is the £230 million scheme. In these challenging times, the Government has been able to invest £230 million to build 19 new schools. When we are talking about targeting and how things are, we only have to look at one of those schools: St Fergus in Ferguslie Park, which will be rebuilt. That shows that the Government is moving in the right direction. There is still plenty of work to do, but we need to rise to the challenge and work together to make sure that we do it.
15:20
For some reason, the Scottish National Party still wants us to judge it on its record, so let us do that. After nine years of nationalist decline, the cabinet secretary’s coat ought to be on a shoogly peg. Does she or anybody in the SNP think that it is acceptable that young people from wealthier families are twice as likely to go to university, seven times more likely to get three As at higher level and 12 times more likely to become a medical student? Do the cabinet secretary and the SNP really take comfort from an OECD report that notes the poor literacy of primary and secondary students and the
“declining relative and absolute achievement levels in mathematics”?
Should the SNP really take comfort from the fact that the report says that we might have a good system if it was strengthened with a stronger role for local authorities—so that the Scottish Government had less control—and more money for councils? How can the SNP pretend that things are wonderful when we see the narrowing of the curriculum, the decline in modern languages study and the lowest teacher numbers for 10 years?
In the face of such a mess, what do the cabinet secretary and the SNP do? They reprofile £500 million from council budgets while their back benchers, many of whom are ex-councillors, say nothing. SNP councillors mutter but comply if they control the council and, if they do not control it, they blame the council rather than the Scottish Government. Cabinet secretary, in case you do not know this, education is a huge proportion of council spending. In some cases, it is more than 40 per cent. You cannot make such extensive cuts without harming education.
Mr Pentland, can you address your remarks through the chair rather than directly to the cabinet secretary?
United Kingdom cuts have been multiplied fivefold, with devastating consequences for council services such as schools and childcare. That severely undermines any good that is being done by the attainment fund. How much good that fund will do is highly questionable when it ignores more than 1,500 schools and 11 local authorities. Taking money away then making a big fuss about giving some back is not a solution to anything other than the quest for publicity.
The SNP is bereft of adequate answers but, with more than 6,000 Scottish children leaving primary school unable to read properly, we know that tackling the attainment gap must start in the early years. Scottish Labour has set out proposals that would more effectively target those who are in most need. The fair start fund would give primary schools £1,000 and nurseries £300 for every child who comes from a deprived background. The money would go directly to head teachers to spend in whatever way is most appropriate to tackling the attainment gap in their schools.
The Scottish Government needs to take on board the advice of the OECD, its poverty adviser and others who highlight its failings, no matter how unpalatable that may be. Those failings must be recognised if they are to be addressed, so sorting our education system will require a degree of honesty that is rarely seen from this Government. I will not hold my breath, cabinet secretary, but you could try being honest about your failures and then ask to be judged on your honesty.
15:24
This short debate will inevitably cover much of the ground that was covered in the Scottish Government’s education debate a few weeks ago. That is no bad thing, as it gives us an opportunity to highlight some of the many initiatives that are under way in our schools.
In Scotland, we spend about £5 billion every year on our schools, despite the UK budget cuts. Raising the attainment of our young people and working to close the attainment gap across Scotland is already a big part of that spend. We already spend significantly more on each pupil than is spent in England, for example.
A number of key programmes that have additional funding attached are in place to focus on many of the compelling issues in improving attainment. The £100 million attainment Scotland fund, which several colleagues have mentioned, is supporting more than 300 primary schools and more than 50,000 pupils from some of the most deprived areas in our country.
There is a host of other Scotland-wide initiatives, such as the challenge innovation fund, which also reaches out to our secondary schools and invites them to come up with new and innovative approaches to closing the attainment gap. The access to education fund is intended to identify and reduce the barriers to learning that are often more pronounced in our disadvantaged communities. That is a crucial piece of work.
Sometimes, we might think that the solution to those key issues is to provide more and more money. However, it can be as simple as providing a little support to youngsters to help them to overcome the most basic difficulties that they face before they even arrive to open a book at school. There are other initiatives, too, all of which seek to make a difference by giving our young people the crucial help that they need just to get on a level playing field with those who are perhaps more fortunate and by steadily improving performance across our country in the pursuit of excellence.
The independent OECD report confirms that improvements in attainment are taking place in Scotland. We are achieving scores in science and reading levels that are above international averages and we have record exam pass results and record numbers of school leavers who are working or staying in education. The decline in maths that began under Labour has been stopped. Further, we have almost doubled the number of young folk from our most deprived communities who are getting at least one higher. Those improvements have been recognised by the OECD and give us a solid foundation to build on.
Although the Ofsted report that the motion refers to records some positive differences that are being made in schools in England, it clearly says that it will take some time to establish whether the approach will lead to a narrowing of the attainment gap. A recent analysis by the Demos think tank, which was published in February last year, suggests that the attainment gap in England might be widening, with more than half of England’s local authorities reporting such a trend in 2014. Parachuting a completely untried scheme urgently into Scotland, as the Liberal Democrats want to do, while our own programmes are under way would be a ridiculous and dangerous thing to do.
If we are to achieve the step changes and improvements that we all seek and move beyond what the OECD report calls the watershed moment for education, we will need more than cash, new processes and assessment systems to help get us there. The report says that we need to improve what it calls the middle area, which involves networking and collaboration. It says that that will help us to achieve the new dynamic in learning and teaching that we need. Our new national improvement framework, with a reliable and consistent evidence base for assessment at the heart of it, and all of the interventions that are in progress, should give Scottish education the opportunity to realise its potential to be a world leader in education.
15:28
I thank the Liberal Democrats for securing this debate on educational attainment. I hope that we can move onward to attainment and achievement.
Like my colleague Liz Smith, I take issue with the part of the motion that says that Parliament
“recalls that Liberal Democrats in the previous UK administration successfully made the case for, and introduced, the pupil premium in England in 2011”.
I am afraid that, on this occasion, the Liberal Democrats are just plain wrong. The pupil premium was in a Conservative policy paper as far back as 2007 and was in the Conservative manifesto for the UK general election in 2010. Whatever claims the Liberal Democrats have about their power and influence in the coalition Government, they certainly cannot claim to have written that Conservative manifesto, although that is what they are trying to do today. Page 51 of that manifesto said:
“We will improve standards for all pupils and close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest.”
As well as supporting our long-standing commitment to the pupil premium, I would also like to consider the service pupil premium of £300 per pupil, which is available in England but not in Scotland. According to the armed forces covenant team, Scotland has its own needs-based formula for service children, which has been judged to be more effective.
I phoned Moray Council to ask what funding it gets for service children—especially considering that we have the Royal Engineers regiment at Kinloss and children of Royal Air Force personnel at Lossiemouth. I asked the convener of Moray Council what is given in Scotland as compared with the £300 per pupil in England. The answer was nothing. If such money is used in England so that new pupils who join a school receive a proper induction—including an initial assessment to avoid any potential gaps in their coverage of the curriculum—and if that is good enough for children of defence families in England, why is it not good enough in Scotland?
The Lib Dems claim that the pupil premium grant was their idea, but I add that the budget is now four times greater than it was at the time of introduction in 2010. That is certainly not due to any Lib Dem input—now or in the future.
Much has been said about the Scottish system and the English system. I do not think that anyone comes up with a system that is perfect on day 1. I am pleased to hear that a Labour MP, Frank Field, supported by two Conservatives, is seeking an early day motion to consider ways to improve the identification of children with low attainment, so that more children are eligible for the pupil premium. That is a grown-up way to look forward.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which is chaired by a Labour MP, is calling for improvements in identifying pupils who are in need. That is also the right way forward, and it should not be aligned to party politics.
There have been serious criticisms of the nationalist Government’s approach to closing the attainment gap. Despite the Lib Dems trying to rewrite history in their favour, the debate has been a helpful contribution to the on-going debate on attainment—and, I hope, achievement in the future.
15:32
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. It has shown that there is a growing cross-party consensus on tackling the attainment gap, but not necessarily on the methods. As was noted earlier, however, there does not seem to be much difference between our methods and those that the Lib Dem motion proposes. I am encouraged that members on all sides of the chamber are committed to ensuring that tackling educational inequality is a top priority for the Parliament during this and future sessions, as has been set out in parties’ manifestos.
It has been pointed out admirably by members that there is a gap in attainment between children from poorer backgrounds and those from more affluent circumstances. After eight years, the report card for the Scottish Government does not make for comforting reading. Pupils who entered primary 1 when the SNP began running our education system will now be hitting high school. In that time, that group of pupils has borne the brunt of education budget cuts, falling teacher numbers and the growing attainment gap—some will have watched their classmates from wealthier families pull away from them.
We welcome the Government’s ambition to close the attainment gap, but there is a big question mark over how that will be achieved. The Scottish attainment fund should be used to close the gap, but thousands of pupils across the country are missing out on support.
Under the SNP’s plans, more than 1,500 schools in Scotland get no extra support to close the gap between the richest and the rest. With £500 million of cuts to local services, including our schools, coming out of the Government’s budget, there is a risk that pupils who are already at a disadvantage will get left even further behind.
Labour members believe that there is action beyond what the Government is proposing that can make a difference. In the coming years, the Parliament will have a substantial suite of new powers, which will open up new choices in education. We would use the additional revenues from a new 50p tax rate on top earners to redistribute money from those who can afford it to those who need it most, by investing additional resources over and above the Government’s proposals for tackling educational disadvantage.
The SNP Government’s budget yet again slashes the funding for schools, which will make the problem even worse. We would use the Parliament’s new powers to introduce a fair start fund, which would give every primary school an extra £1,000 and every nursery an extra £300 for every pupil from a deprived family.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry; I normally would, but I am short on time.
The money from our fair start fund would go directly to head teachers—that is different from the pupil premium scheme that is in place in England—who would be able to choose from a suite of proven methods. They would be able to spend that money in the best way, as they saw fit given their local circumstances, to close the attainment gap between the richest and the rest.
As I have said, we would use the additional revenue from a new 50p top rate of tax to redistribute resources from those who earn more than £150,000 a year to those who need help most. That is over and above what the Government has committed to investing to tackle the educational attainment gap.
Given the consensus on tackling the issue and the weight of the support that we have found for tackling our education challenges, it would be a shame if the opportunity were to pass by for us to put more resources into schools to tackle the problem.
15:36
How we ensure that resources, services and opportunities reach the children who are most in need is indeed a central, fundamental question in how we deliver education in Scotland.
All targeting has to be done in the context of a strengthened universal offer. There are pros and cons with all forms of targeting and the danger with any form of targeting, if done in isolation, is that we miss our target—we miss the point. Getting the right blend of approaches is absolutely crucial.
Will the member take an intervention?
Perhaps later.
The bigger prize is about how we ensure that the universal service—that £4.8 billion investment in education—provides more for all children in order to maximise the impact of additional, more targeted measures. What we do and how we do it is important as well as what we invest.
Our approach is to target additional funding at local authorities and individual schools with the highest concentration of children who are growing up in areas of deprivation through the Scottish attainment challenge and the attainment Scotland fund, which is £100 million over four years—as I indicated earlier at question time. Those schools and those local authorities reach out to 54,000 children—two thirds of Scotland’s poorest children.
Of course we accept that the poorest children do not always live in the poorest areas; we also know that if we target children and young people in accordance with free school meals—although there are many cases where we do that and where we should do that—there will be other children in struggling families who will just miss out. The right blend of targeting and universality is absolutely imperative and we must, throughout our education system, get the right approach through collaboration.
As regards the attainment challenge approach, we have attainment advisers in every local authority who will knit together and spread the invaluable experience and learning that is being pioneered in the attainment challenge areas to ensure that it is spread throughout the country. That is an approach that is not new to Scotland because we have the raising attainment for all programme; the early years collaborative; and the schools improvement partnership programme.
Many authorities—the authorities that are most successful in tackling deprivation in their schools—have been at the vanguard of a clustered approach, where schools work with each other and local authorities work with each other.
Will the member give way?
No—Mr Gray would not take an intervention earlier. I do not want to seem churlish, but no thanks.
We have made it clear through the Scottish attainment challenge that we are encouraging schools with shared campuses—the two schools may serve two different catchment areas, as was the case with the school that I went to when I was growing up—to share resources and approaches because we know that not all children live in areas that are identified as poor.
The Government’s interest, which motivates me, the team of education ministers and the First Minister, is in what works. I am not interested in lazy ideology or in what has aye been—I am interested in what works, and the evidence on the pupil premium is mixed at best.
I had to wonder, listening to Liam McArthur’s speech, whether he was talking about the same National Audit Office report that I read, which stated clearly that some schools in England with very poor pupils actually had less money per pupil now, whereas in Scotland we continue to have higher spending per head. There is a spend of £4,899 per head per primary school pupil in comparison with £4,500 per pupil in England. Similarly, in secondary schools, the spend is more than £6,600 per head in comparison with £6,000 south of the border. The same National Audit Office report pointedly remarked that real-terms funding per pupil had decreased in almost half of the schools between 2011 and 2014.
John Pentland’s rather downbeat contribution gives me an opportunity to talk about Labour’s record. His party’s time in office, aided and abetted by the Liberals, is littered with examples of Labour not meeting its own targets and then dumping them.
We in this Government are not afraid to be ambitious. We measure the attainment gap in Scotland by comparing the 20 per cent most deprived areas with the 20 per cent least deprived. South of the border, the attainment gap is measured by comparing the 20 per cent most deprived with the remaining 80 per cent. The task that we have set ourselves is far greater.
It was on Labour’s watch that we saw a decline in our international standing in accordance with the PISA—programme for international student assessment—rankings. I emphasise to John Pentland that it took action by this Government to halt that decline.
You must draw to a close, please, cabinet secretary.
We will not take any lessons from Tories and Liberals: the architects of austerity, welfare cuts and rising child poverty.
Dear, dear.
As a final point—
Dear, dear.
Order.
I say to Alex Rowley that 607 schools have been rebuilt or refurbished under this Government. That compares—I say to John Pentland—with 328 on Labour’s watch.
15:43
I will not argue with Mary Scanlon—it is unwise to argue with such an eloquent member of the chamber—but it is clear that there is almost a consensus across the chamber in favour of targeting support to those children who need it.
I pay tribute to the intellectual gymnastics of the education secretary in trying to explain, and then not explaining, why all kids do not get the support that they absolutely need by saying that we need to concentrate on areas that have the most poor kids. What about all the other kids—in East Renfrewshire, Kilmarnock and Paisley—who are deprived of the funds? I did not hear the members who represent those areas speaking up for the children there. I am sure those children, their parents and the schools are not happy about not getting the funds that they deserve.
I believe—unlike many members on the SNP side of the chamber, it seems—that every child deserves the chance to get up and get on, not just every child who happens to be in the right area that the SNP decides is the appropriate place in which to invest the funds. This is not some bureaucratic exercise: it is about giving kids a chance to get up and get on.
The evidence is clear that we are making progress on the pupil premium in England. The National Audit Office and Ofsted have both said that there is evidence for that, but SNP members prefer to rely on evidence that does not exist at all to support the attainment fund that it has just started.
There is no evidence for the SNP scheme, but there is evidence for the pupil premium and there is support for it from across the chamber. Iain Gray was right that we have learned about the pupil premium process as it has gone on. My colleague in Wales Kirsty Williams was at the forefront of arguing that it should be introduced in Wales. Lessons were learned from England to ensure that the scheme that was developed in Wales was even better. Equally, in England, lessons are being learned about the process. We cannot deny that, between 2011 and 2014, the gap in attainment in primary schools closed by 4.7 per cent—that is pretty clear. Liz Smith highlighted well some of the evidence from a trust in England that has been looking at evidence that supports the pupil premium.
The SNP, rather than adopt a scheme that is working, preferred to adopt a brand-new scheme so that it could call it its own. That is disappointing, because that new scheme misses out 36 per cent of the kids who deserve support.
I was amused by Stewart Maxwell. I do not think that he meant to say, “Crisis? What crisis?”—the words that brought down the Callaghan Government in 1979—but that was in effect what he said. He ignored the widening attainment gap in Scotland as highlighted by the OECD report. That report also highlighted that Scotland, which in the past had one of the world’s best education systems, is now slipping down the league tables.
Will the member give way?
No—not just now.
Mr Maxwell also ignored the fact that the education secretary said that 27 per cent of two-year-olds would get nursery education but now only 7 per cent are getting it. He also ignored the colossal, whopping, massive cut that is about to be imposed on councils of £500 million. Half of what councils do is education.
Will the member take an intervention?
If Stewart Maxwell is saying that that is not a crisis, I am afraid that I completely disagree with him. That shows that the SNP is increasingly complacent about the education system in Scotland. That is why we have proposed today an urgent investment in education with a penny on tax—we say where the money will come from.
There will be a £475 million investment for a transformational change in education in Scotland. SNP members can sit on their hands, but we are going to make the investment in education that pupils deserve. The money will be invested in the pupil premium, which has been shown to work in England.
Nonsense.
On colleges, the SNP Government has cut 152,000 places over the past few years, which has deprived many people of part-time and full-time courses. Older people have been deprived of places. We will repair some of the damage on that, too. We will stop the cuts to education in our schools. We will make sure that the SNP does not get its way on cutting the budget.
What about the UK Government cuts?
Mr Maxwell has an awful lot to say but, when it comes to it, he does not deliver.
We also need to invest in nursery education, because that has been shown to be the best educational investment that we can make. Experts across the globe have said that, if we invest in children before the age of three, we can actually change their life chances for the rest of their lives.
The reason why we need to invest in the pupil premium, in nursery education and in our colleges is not just to give kids the chance to get up and get on in the world but to provide skills for industry, because there is a massive skills gap in this country. Just last week I was in Aberdeen, where people were saying that there is still a skills gap, despite the fall in the oil price. We need to invest to fill the skills gap to make a difference for the future.
Our proposal is about giving everybody the opportunity to get up and get on and it is about improving the economy. That is why we propose putting a penny on tax for education. Some say that it is not progressive and it hits the poorest the hardest, but that is complete and utter nonsense. Somebody who is earning £100,000 will pay 30 times more than somebody on the median wage in Scotland. That is progressive.
What we have seen from SNP members is that, despite the grand words from the cabinet secretary and her deputy about excellence and bold measures, they actually often talk left but walk right. They never actually follow through on the rhetoric, and that is why the challenge has now been laid down to members of the SNP Administration.
If the SNP members really believed in changing the life chances of the people in their constituencies and in mine, they would adopt that bold, progressive measure to invest in education, to change life chances and to improve the economy. Instead they are just hiding behind the constitutional argument so that they do not have to take any action to change people’s life chances. They can adopt that approach if they wish, but we will not follow them.
Draw to a close please, Mr Rennie.
Thank you for reminding me, Presiding Officer. I am almost concluding.
The most important aspect that we must look at is investment in education. We have seen from the SNP Administration an enormous assault on the education system. SNP members may say that it is not a crisis, they may pooh-pooh the idea of a pupil premium, and they may fail to deliver on nursery education, but Liberal Democrats will not. We will put forward the proposals and we will fund them.
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