Chamber and committees

The situation has been agonising for university staff. A cloud has been hanging over them since November, which is seven months ago. They simply cannot understand why we still have no financial agreement four weeks on from the publication of the new financial recovery plan. One staff member had tears in her eyes as she told me about the toll that it is taking on her and her family. How much longer does the First Minister think that she will have to wait?

To ask the First Minister for what reason there has reportedly been no financial agreement between the Scottish Funding Council and the University of Dundee, in light of the alternative financial recovery plan being launched four weeks ago. (S6F-04138)

It was once the case that middle-aged working men were placed on incapacity benefits. They were from post-industrial communities and they were stuck on incapacity benefits for years. That had a detrimental effect on their lives, on the economy and on the country’s tax base.

The situation has changed. Younger people with mental health conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD and autism are stuck on benefits and support at a very young age. We are losing them not just at middle age through to their retirement but at a young stage in life. That is bad for them, because they are stuck on those benefits for their whole life. It is not good for their health, it is not good for the economy and it is not good for the country’s tax base.

We see that in the figures. The 16 to 64-year-old inactivity rate in Scotland is at 24 per cent. The level is 21.7 per cent in England, which is bad enough. That sits with the demographic challenge of our ageing population, who are not ageing well—they are ageing with long-term conditions, which places a significant pressure on public services, and those who are retiring early add to economic inactivity. That pincer movement is having a dramatic impact on our economy and on our tax base. In other words, it is just not sustainable—and that is without mentioning the impact on individuals who are struggling with their conditions for years on end.

I attended the St Andrews ADHD support group earlier this year. There were bright, intelligent people there—people who were full of ideas and really engaged, but who were struggling to get the support that they needed. One parent told me about their son, who was diagnosed with ADHD at school, where he got the right support and was stabilised. When he left school, he came off the medication, went off the rails and got into trouble—he had difficulties with the police and the justice system. They tried to get him back on, but three years later, they are still waiting.

All that time, he has been unable to work or to contribute—a bright young lad who could make a huge contribution to the country, and who could take the burden off the state. It is a crying shame that he is not just one; he is one of many. That is why we need to provide solutions.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ stepped care approach, with the four-tier national programme that has been talked about today, is of course the right route. People do not have to just take a medicalised route; some can perhaps get benefit from alternative methods of support. Waiting for years for even that is unacceptable, however, and that is why the pathway needs to be implemented with urgency.

Children 1st says that the medicalised route is not necessarily the appropriate way for young people and suggests that whole-family support is an alternative that can work. We need to get things co-ordinated fast, because the crisis has bedevilled the country.

I want to provide one further challenge to the NHS as a whole. If we are to deal with the economic inactivity levels, we will have to place the right priority and the right funds in the right places. If we do not tackle the issue of economic inactivity, we will not have the tax that is necessary to pay for our NHS services. My appeal to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is that he considers the overall allocation of resources and recognises that huge challenge.

The report says:

“Embedding continuity of care into everyday GP practice in Scotland has been underprioritised ... The GP Voice tracking survey found that under half of GPs (48%) felt they were able to deliver continuity of care which meets their patients’ needs.”

After 17 years in power, why are we in this sorry state?

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

Presiding Officer,

“I find myself ill with worry of how I will pay my bills. My car is broken but I cannot afford to fix it. My rent is £1000 but I cannot get a mortgage due to uncertainty of work. I lost my mum in the first term of becoming a teacher so have no other way of supporting myself. I cannot even gain money from universal credit as casually working supply … means I cannot claim anything.”

Those are the words of just one of the many teachers who are crying out for this Government to listen to their battle to do the job that they love—to educate young minds. I hear stark reports of 170 applications for one temporary position; of lives being on hold; of teachers being unable to start their family, get a house and settle down; of older teachers having sacrificed careers in industry for nothing; of teachers leaving the country for work; and of thousands leaving the profession. The problem is most acute in primary education.

In her amendment, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills blames local authorities. She says that they are the employers and they are responsible for local workforce planning, but councils are not responsible for the supply of new teachers. That is the job, through universities, of central Government.

Let me take members back to the previous election, when the Scottish National Party promised to cut teacher contact time by 90 minutes per week. It then promised to create 3,500 extra teachers to make that possible, so universities got busy educating them. When the councils could not afford to recruit those extra teachers, there were few jobs for them. The Government failed to reach an agreement to cut teacher contact time, but the newly qualified teachers kept on coming. The Government then worked out that, with falling school rolls, it did not need 3,500 extra teachers to cut the 90 minutes, but it kept the new teachers coming.

Just one in four newly qualified teachers now finds a permanent teaching post. The Government’s working group admits that there are now 950 more primary teachers than jobs available. The result is that 950 teachers—plus many more with short-term jobs, zero-hours jobs or no job at all—are struggling to pay the bills and battling to stay in teaching, with the Government pretending that it has nothing to do with it.

The Government is failing to cut teacher contact time by 90 minutes and failing to deliver jobs for 3,500 extra teachers. It is failing teachers and pupils. Even today, the cabinet secretary points to others rather than accepting that this mess is of the Government’s making. When she stands up in a moment, the first words that she should utter are: “I am sorry”. She should apologise to all those unemployed and underemployed teachers.

The next tasks are to solve the 90-minute teacher contact time promise and the shambles of the 3,500 extra teachers, and to give clear guidance to the teacher workforce planning advisory group.

Although there are too many teachers in one part of the system, there are not enough in another. An example is secondary schools in Aberdeenshire. The cabinet secretary knows, because she visited Aberdeenshire not so long ago, that it is short of science teachers, maths teachers, technical teachers and home economics teachers. Claire Rennie—no relation—from Fraserburgh academy parent council says:

“While this has been an issue for many years, it is now very much at crisis point.”

In the 2022-23 session, Aberdeenshire Council requested 48 newly qualified secondary teachers, but it was allocated only 25. It got worse, as only 16 arrived—a third of what the council asked for. In the following year, 66 were requested, only 18 were allocated and just 12 started—a fifth of what was needed. Almost none arrived where the council has the biggest shortages. The effects of that are subjects being cut out in schools, primary teachers being brought into secondary schools, falling staff morale and declining pupil behaviour.

The problem is nationwide. Compared with when the Scottish National Party came to power, there are 363 fewer maths teachers, 91 fewer physics teachers, 216 fewer computer science teachers and 180 fewer technical education teachers. The number of modern languages teachers has fallen by more than a fifth.

What are the solutions? The cash incentives are clearly not working. The teaching bursary of £20,000 for science, technology, engineering and mathematics and for Gaelic has a poor take-up rate. The preference waiver payment for teachers to move to areas in which it is hard to recruit is not working, either. Those payments must be revamped. We need to look at where new teachers are trained, because they often remain in those areas to teach.

In making his reasonable contribution, does the member recognise that the Government has contributed to the surplus, and therefore the unemployment, of primary teachers?

I appreciate that teacher workforce planning is not simple, but the Government has made the situation a whole lot worse.

I move,

That the Parliament acknowledges the work carried out by Scotland’s teachers in schools across the country and commends them for all they do; recognises that the subjects that they teach provide important foundations for knowledge and skills in sectors that can be vital for Scotland’s economy; notes with concern, however, that there has been a sharp decline in the number of teachers in key subjects, such as maths, physics and modern languages, and that targets to train teachers in STEM subjects have been continuously missed; believes that, should these targets continue to be missed, and the decline in the number of teachers continues, it will add to the strain on the teaching workforce, Scottish education will suffer and Scotland’s ability to compete globally in important sectors will be impacted; further believes that a lack of permanent contracts for teachers will further compound issues with recruitment and training; notes that there are also high levels of unemployment and underemployment of primary teachers and teachers for some secondary school subjects; further notes the failure of the Scottish Government to make sufficient progress on its 2021 commitment to recruit 3,500 more teachers, which is set to be missed by the end of the current parliamentary session in 2026, and calls, therefore, on the Scottish Government to develop a new, urgent plan for the teaching workforce, working with stakeholders.

When will the cabinet secretary mention unemployed primary school teachers?

Although not as much as I would like, the Government has moved away from some of the damaging policies and rhetoric of the past, which I believe contributed to the housing emergency that we have now, with high levels of temporary accommodation and low levels of new starts and completions. Will the cabinet secretary guarantee that there will be no return to policies that damage investment in housing?