Chamber and committees

I would argue that a change to the system does not really change the prospects for those young people.

Why did the OECD approach you to write the review? My concern is that it asked you to conduct the review because it already knew your long-held and well-known views on the diminishing importance and validity of examinations, which are well explored in your work. Does that not create a risk of groupthink, whereby outside experts come in and tell us that curriculum for excellence is a world-leading, groundbreaking move, despite the fact that people living and learning in Scotland continue to see our once-world-leading education system being dismantled and slipping backwards?

You talk about culture, but would it not be better to work with Scottish culture to recognise the importance of Scottish educational traditions and seek to improve the examination offer, rather than going for more radical reform that might not command the trust and confidence of parents, teachers, young people and employers?

I am mindful that, during the evidence-taking session with the OECD, I was accused of being rude in my questioning. I hope, therefore, that Professor Stobart will see that I am not being rude—I asked the OECD similarly robust questions.

Leading Scottish educationalist Professor Lindsay Paterson has stated that your review is “awful”,

“ignorant of Scottish educational history”

and

“ignorant of current Scottish practice, failing to see that Highers remain the main entry requirement for university, not Advanced Highers.”

He said:

“It is not based on any systematic comparison with non-UK countries, but rather with an arbitrarily chosen group of places that seem to have been selected to make the case against exams.”

Furthermore, he notes that you fail to

“discuss the unfairness of non-exam assessment, for example the unavoidable advantage enjoyed by children from affluent homes with well-educated parents.”

How do you respond to those concerns?

What about grade inflation, which has been seen across the UK over the past two years? The argument made by some—I tend to believe it, based on my constituency experience—is that it ends up disadvantaging those who face the greatest challenges. You talk about the suite of considerations for entry to university, but these are the very young people who cannot access good-quality work experience, who do not have the same opportunities to take part in extracurricular activities and who do not have access to coaching for university entry exams. Why is grade inflation a good thing for them?

That was Professor Paterson’s point, and it was also highlighted by the Scottish commission on school reform, which has said:

“scrapping examinations and relying purely on teacher judgment would create a series of perverse outcomes including:

• Unintentional bias for or against certain social or demographic groups (for example against children from deprived backgrounds ... )

• Pressure put on teachers to award the grades required for university entrance, particularly in private schools and in the most affluent state school catchment areas

• Grade inflation caused by teachers wanting their children to succeed”.

You make a case against exams, but you have not touched on any of those issues.

Many people in Scotland will look at the suggestion that we should become more like the US, which is probably regarded as one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to access to education, and think that that would be a serious departure from the Scottish education tradition. In that tradition, the aspiration at least is that every young person will leave school with a meaningful qualification. Getting rid of that seems distinctly un-Scottish. I do not see how you feel that we can achieve equality of opportunity by removing the chance to sit exams for some young people but not others. Should we not be asking why some young people are leaving school without qualifications rather than lowering the bar for a group of young people who are consistently failed? Is that not a valid point?

It was interesting to hear you dismiss the percentage of pupils who leave school early. Given that they are often the individuals who have been most let down by the school system, do you not think that they have the right to sit for an externally assessed qualification before the education system gives up on them?

I just think that it is about recognising that successful learners are the people who go on to be active contributors and to make important decisions in our society. If we were to stop helping people to gain the qualifications that they need to break through the barriers that exist, that would be sad. That is what has been so powerful about Scottish education across the best part of a century.

The difference is about external assessment and the validity that comes from that. I will leave it there. I do not want to dominate the discussion.

This has been a wide-ranging and important debate, but I cannot help but feel that this is a topic in relation to which we are good at talking, but not doing. My colleague Pam Gosal quoted Confucius at the start of the debate, and although I am not normally into deep words of wisdom, I think that he is right: it is almost always what we do that matters.

After 14 years under SNP rule, it is not entirely clear what progress has been made. I cannot see any evidence of the parity of esteem for skills-based education that is so often mentioned. In an SNP Scotland, school and university-based education is the automatic default for many. In direct contrast, we now find that, in an SNP Scotland, it is a struggle for people to access training for real jobs and opportunities where identified shortages exist. That is not an accident; it has come about as a direct result of choices taken in ministerial corridors.

We do not have a well-balanced system, nor one that is working well. Behind that inconvenient truth, as we heard time and time again in our debate today, we find a lack of ambition. To be fair, many nice-sounding initiatives have been announced, but it is not entirely clear that they will meet the scale of the challenge that we face. Many members covered why some of the schemes are not delivering what was promised and why they are not as good in reality as they sounded when they were announced in the chamber. I do not wish to go back over those points, but they serve to reinforce my view that the Government is falling short.

The pandemic and the shocks that it has sent through our society and economy should be the wake-up call that we need to change our approach to skills and training. Of course, our task in building back better would have been easier if we were in a better position before the pandemic. However, there has been no real drive or sense of purpose in this area for more than a decade.

To understand how little priority has been given to skills and training, we have only to look at how our college sector has been funded and supported. In a country that was serious about vocational education, ministers would look to expand access to college places, to turbocharge the whole sector financially and to enable colleges to provide many more modular courses. Instead, colleges continue to be the poor relation—undervalued and underutilised.

We need to create a system that is dynamic and nimble and adapts to the changing needs of our economy. What is most important is that we need skills training and apprenticeship opportunities that work for people and are available when they need them. That is why Conservative members support a demand-led approach to apprenticeships. We believe that that will make them more attractive to employers and will therefore create more opportunities for employees. That is not about setting arbitrary targets; it is about reaching out to businesses, business groups and business representatives and opening up the opportunity to create as many new apprenticeships as possible. A number of my colleagues touched on that idea; I, too, would be keen to hear the minister’s view on it.

The fact that the SNP is missing its own targets does not mean that there is no capacity to create more apprenticeships, nor that employers are not willing to do more. Daniel Johnson was right to look at some of the processes for taking on and training apprentices, because they are often too complicated, particularly for smaller businesses. Emma Harper mentioned the farming sector. I, too, met George Jamieson recently. There is concern in the rural sectors, which are often under a lot of pressure, that people do not have the time and resource to support apprenticeships, even though they would like to do so. It is worth looking at what we do about that.

As I said, we need a change in approach. However, all that we have in the face of the urgent challenge that lies before us is an SNP Government that talks big on skills but delivers little; that believes that making announcements is the same thing as delivering change; that is out of big ideas and focuses instead on lots of small schemes and small pots of money; and that hopes that no one will notice that there is no real strategy underpinning its direction.

Rather than patting themselves on the back, ministers urgently need to wake up to the scale of the challenge that is faced by our economy, our society and individuals across Scotland. The harsh reality is that many of the stubborn skills shortages that have been highlighted today have been created here in Scotland by action, or lack of action, in the Parliament and at the heart of the Scottish Government. Although the pandemic has exposed many weaknesses and has increased the scale of the challenge, we cannot and should not accept that those things were not a problem before Covid-19.

However, all is not lost. We have everything that we need in order to succeed. Our education sector, workforce and employers are all ready to go. The only question is whether the Government is ready to move from words to action and to recognise, for the first time, the scale of the challenge that the people of Scotland face.

Given that his party has been in government for more than 14 years, does the member not feel that we have missed the boat when it comes to taking advantage of the opportunities that the renewables sector offers?