Chamber and committees

Chris, does what Helena Good has just described play into your earlier points about assessment, measurement and how things are going to radically shift?

I agree with you, and you have neatly led on to my final question. How on earth do we begin to tackle the challenge? I am mindful that, as parliamentarians, we need to support the education sector to keep up with the pace of change, which is startling and almost unfathomable at this point.

Will the member take an intervention?

I have listened with interest to the member’s highly selective quotes and statistics, and I am wondering whether, at any point in his speech, he will come up with positive measures to start to address some of the complexity in the situation or whether he is just going to moan.

No one in Scotland can be satisfied with the latest PISA ratings data. However, given long-term trends, no one among the developed economies can be satisfied either. In this short speech, I will explain that more.

I have been impressed by some of the qualitative analysis in the PISA report and some of the external expert commentary, including from Andreas Schleicher, the highly regarded director for education and skills at the OECD. However, we should not ignore the fact that we must take care when interpreting some of the statistical data. Indeed, a recent article in the Financial Times put it this way with regard to data for English schools:

“critics argue that Pisa rankings give a misleading picture as the difference in performance between some countries is not statistically significant and methodological issues mean the headline scores can be over-interpreted.”

It does. It goes back to the point made by the Labour front bench, with which I agree.

The failure of many advanced economies to meet sampling standards is a serious issue. The UK is among the worst, so we cannot rely too much on the broad statistical data and must look instead at the qualitative analysis of long-term trends. Any understanding of those wider trends and more of that in-depth analysis are missing from the Tory motion, which, frankly, just seeks superficial headlines.

There has been a long-term trend across advanced economies of a decline in educational performances measured by PISA. As Andreas Schleicher points out, Covid was not the only cause of the decline in standards in advanced western economies. He argues that one striking trend over the past decade has been the constant deterioration of average reading and science scores in the OECD and that the developed world no longer has a monopoly over good education. He says:

“The world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated countries.”

What can we learn from the decline in developed countries and the high performance of countries such as those in east Asia? Surely that is the point of this debate. Finland, which was once thought to have a particularly successful education system, is a case in point. Its learning loss since 2018 has been almost three times the OECD average in reading and four times higher in science. Schleicher argues that that is because Finland has relaxed its academic expectations for students. It has also been argued that there has been a trend in wealthy countries towards commodifying education, with pupils and students becoming consumers and teachers becoming service providers—something that we have ferociously resisted in Scotland.

In contrast, successful Asian countries are geared towards high expectations and strong social relationships between teachers and students. In other words, the culture that surrounds and informs the education experience is a key issue. During a debate in my early days as a member of this Parliament, I argued that our college sector, following the Cumberford-Little report, should strive for excellence rather than competence. We need to assess whether we have a sufficient focus on excellence in the wider education sector. Andreas Schleicher argues that the lesson

“is that we have to achieve student wellbeing not at the expense of academic success, but through academic success”.

I acknowledge that Covid has had a significant effect. Truancy rates across the UK have increased, as is the case in many other countries coming out of Covid restrictions. Countries that imposed shorter lockdowns were more likely to have relatively higher attainment, and education systems were more resilient where children had the skills to learn autonomously and where pupils felt more supported by their teachers.

Finally, I want to raise a Covid-related issue, not from PISA, but as a result of observations from our own professional speech and language therapists in Scotland. Glenn Carter, the head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists Scotland, stated in an important report in January this year that

“We’re facing a spoken language crisis in Scotland. If no action is taken these issues will have a significant impact on children’s mental health, learning, and future life chances.”

There has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of young children needing communication support in Scotland. Starting school with weak language skills makes early years education extraordinarily difficult. If we do not act, it will increase the attainment gap. We need to find ways of better supporting pupils and teachers in tackling the language crisis, which has been caused partly by the pandemic, and I would welcome comments on that from the minister or the cabinet secretary.

I have only scratched the surface of the qualitative challenges that we face. I hope that the Education, Children and Young People Committee can play its part in contributing to learning lessons for the future of Scottish education. I certainly intend to play mine.

That leads me on to my next area of questioning, which will apply to you all and is about renewables. I thought that £960 million for the green industries growth accelerator was a relatively low amount. I recall what Richard Hughes said about how we got slightly ahead of the curve, but there is significant competition for investment and the UK has to compete globally.

I saw the £960 million as a signal. Given the wider fiscal environment, and given that companies are faced with a choice and can invest in other locations, that changes the risk profile of the UK, because of appetite and ability in a longer-run environment. I would appreciate your thoughts about that as well.

Would you not therefore have expected to see incentives to encourage investment in AI, rather than the investment in plant and machinery that we spoke about earlier?

That long-range looking back and the figures that you have set out are very helpful. I was not entirely clear from the autumn statement what the significant trigger factors would be that would make the change from what you have set out as the position over the past 15 years. In fairness, some of that is because of the lack of flexibility for all the areas that we have discussed, such as debt servicing and so on. Correct me if I am wrong and being somewhat pessimistic.

I appreciate that talking about technology can be very complex, but what consideration are you giving to the impact that artificial intelligence might have on productivity? I understand that any answer will, in essence, be wrong, but what is your thinking? That is one area that could have an impact.