Chamber and committees

One point struck me as I was listening to the exchanges before. I do not know whether you already do this, and forgive me if you do. Does each child in your system have a file, such that it does not matter which part of Scotland, or even the United Kingdom, they live in or move to? I am thinking about simple things such as council tax bills. If we had such a database, all the data about someone’s life, their needs and the support that they require, whether through the national health service or mental health services, would be in there. Do we, or can we, do that?

Obviously, the people who could access such a file would be very limited.

10:45

As you said, children cannot be moved out of residential care overnight. One solution might be to try to grow the number of foster placements in the community, but my understanding is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that.

I have a couple of questions about what happens in schools. First, there is the new probationer offer. To me, it is pretty gold standard in offering three years of secure employment, one of which is the probationary year, and it is a really positive development for people who are thinking about entering teaching. However, I suppose that every benefit might bring a cost. One of the concerns that has been raised is what the probationer offer means in terms of employment prospects and permanent contracts for people who are currently qualified and looking for such contracts, but who find that a lot of the capacity is taken up with the three-year probationary placements that are being given. What discussions have you, as cabinet secretary, had with local authorities about managing that?

Can I ask a question?

My question is slightly related to what the cabinet secretary just said. You have spoken a lot about the very good work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to improve the life chances of less advantaged children. We have heard successive education ministers and other members of the Government talking about closing the attainment gap. What is your response to the view that it is really difficult—some would say impossible—to close the attainment gap?

Although the ambition to narrow the attainment gap is one that everybody should strive for, some argue that it cannot be fully closed, because children start from very different circumstances. Despite Government mitigation measures and the good work that is done to level the playing field, some children have very difficult—even chaotic—home lives, while others have highly supportive parents. Given the vastly different circumstances into which children are born, is it possible to close the attainment gap?

I will ask a slightly different but related question, sticking with the theme of what happens in classrooms. I have already raised the issue of mobile phones in schools with you. There is not a teacher in the world who would not be happy to see a ban being given statutory underpinning. However, teachers have contacted me about the issue, and my concern relates to the caveats and opt-outs that we know there will be.

There are two concerns about the proposal. The first is that there will be so many opt-outs that it will, in effect, become meaningless. The second is that, if the policy is to be enforced, schools will face pushback, whether it be from pupils, parents or both. Should that happen, schools will need to know what their position is and what powers and sanctions they can use to—I am going to say the word—force compliance. There needs to be compliance if the policy is to mean anything, and that needs to be consistent across the country.

Are any discussions being held among schools, the Scottish Government and local authorities about giving schools the powers that they will need to enforce the mobile phone ban in the way that will be required, so that they can create a better climate for learning and teaching?

I have a couple more questions. The first is an easy one. You have spoken a lot today about the roll-out of breakfast clubs, which I think is welcome. They are very important for pupils and their wellbeing during the school day.

When will we see the roll-out of free school meals to all primary school children? Although many parents welcome the free breakfast offer, they are concerned about the gap in provision for older primary pupils during the school day.

This is my final question. There is a lot of emphasis on Gaelic, which is to be welcomed by the committee and more broadly. There will be workforce issues involved in achieving this, but is the Government’s ultimate goal for Gaelic to have parity with modern languages in secondary schools, so that any child, in any school, who wishes to study Gaelic in the same way that they might study French, Spanish or German will have that opportunity?

I have jotted down a few ideas.

I agree that we need to be looking at the childcare offer. The commitment to deliver childcare for children from nine months until they reach the end of primary seven by the end of this Parliament is hugely ambitious, and the committee should periodically take stock of progress towards that. The scale of the commitment is so huge that we need to keep an eye on it.

We also need to look at college and university funding: what funding is being provided and how that money can be better spent in a time when resources are scarce. I am also thinking about apprenticeships. We need to remember that 98 per cent of our children in Scotland go on to positive destinations, so good work is already going on. However, we need to make sure that we get better value for money where possible.

I would like us to look at the poverty-related attainment gap. We could perhaps carry out visits to look at best practice, because some schools are doing excellent work on the poverty-related attainment gap.

10:15

We need to consider pupil support assistants who help children with special educational needs. We need to professionalise that work, because recruitment and retention is a challenge, and that situation does not serve the children well. There is a bigger space for specialist centres for children with additional needs who cannot be accommodated in mainstream settings. I understand why there is an inclusion agenda: including children with special educational needs in mainstream schools is an admirable aim. Ultimately, however, it fails the children, and it frustrates teachers, because they cannot deliver the kind of support that they need to provide. We need to have a serious think about that. We also need to consider behaviour, and how we can better support looked-after children.

I very much support the phone ban in schools, which I think is long overdue. As I said in the chamber, we need to consider how we support schools in enforcing the ban. As the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic told us, the ban will work seamlessly in some schools. However, in other schools it will be a real challenge—and some of that challenge will come from parents. Any system will have to have exclusions—and the cabinet secretary talked about that. However, we do not want there to be so many exclusions that it just becomes a tick-box exercise, and things are not getting done at all. That is a real danger. We will need to monitor that when the relevant bill is introduced.

I would also like us to talk about the impact that the private finance initiative has been having in our schools every day. In my constituency, PFI is costing around £30 million a year. That is £30 million off the top of two local authorities’ education budgets, before they have bought a jotter or a pencil. That is bordering on the criminal. It has cost our schools £9 billion so far across Scotland, and there is still £6.7 billion left to pay. That is not justifiable in any world. We need to revisit that and see what can be done to free us from the chains of that appalling legacy.

We also need to think about Gaelic education and about trying to make it more mainstream. Every child who wants to learn Gaelic should have the opportunity to do so, but that means training and delivering more Gaelic teachers in mainstream schools, which has resource implications.

I will end with this: Scotland is the only country in the world, as far as I am aware—somebody from the Scottish Parliament information centre might contradict me—where children do not learn about the history of their nation as a matter of course. I cannot understand why that is. Scotland gave birth to the enlightenment, but nobody in any secondary school anywhere in Scotland will have ever heard of it. I am bewildered by that. Teaching Scots about their history should be a compulsory part of broad general education. No other nation in the world would understand why we do not do that.

There has to be a greater emphasis on life skills and financial education. We also need to take a closer look at curriculum for excellence in the round and consider how it is delivering the life skills that our children need.

In reference to what other members have said about evaluating what goes on in schools and how education is delivered, that is done as a matter of course in schools under “How good is our school?” which is the benchmark and the working document for every school.

I promise that this really is the last thing that I will say. Part of school education is learning about culture and being taught literature. I know that there has been a greater emphasis on teaching Scottish literature in secondary education. However, I do not think that it has worked well. The literature that is taught shows the underbelly of Scottish society, if I can put it that way. This morning I jotted down the names of 12 Scottish writers whose works would enrich any child’s life. If we want to teach Scottish literature, we have to teach inspiring literature, rather than only talking about the underbelly of the nation. We are dealing with children, and we are trying to build positive outlooks.