Chamber and committees

Will the minister take an intervention?

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.

That is reassuring. The sector will be worried about the timing and the vulnerability of a number of settings, but I accept that you work to the timescale that you have.

I have a question on the 1,140 hours workforce. You have covered the matter extensively previously, but I continue to hear about concerns from the private, voluntary and independent sector that it is not able to recruit early learning and childcare workers and that people who work in that sector are often displaced into the local authority sector. Is that still a risk to the success of the policy?

You recognise that there is a tension between a policy objective to give headteachers autonomy and a group of headteachers not being enabled to take decisions in relation to their pupils. There is a tension between the policy objective of equity funding and, because of where the threshold is set, that opportunity not being available in all schools.

That is helpful. I wonder whether you have reflected on a point that is linked to the point that Mr Ewing made. There is a small group of predominantly smaller rural schools that tend to end up being ineligible for any of those funds and, anecdotally, headteachers in those schools say—I think that most reasonable people would accept that this is the case—that there is significant poverty, deprivation and exclusion from opportunities in rural areas. The headteachers of those schools do not have the opportunity to ensure the provision of educational equity for their pupils. Is that something that you would look at when considering the success of a policy?

That is helpful. I have a question about college funding, which is an issue that other members have brought up. You have said that the college sector has not experienced the same unpredictability as the university sector. However, there is a long-standing feeling in the college sector that it has not had the same funding flexibility and that, over time, that makes it more difficult for colleges to make strategic decisions. If colleges are under significant financial pressure from day to day, it is more difficult for them to reshape matters. Do you accept that, given the Covid pandemic, it is not fair to expect colleges to react nimbly and quickly when they do not have the funding capacity or reserves to reconfigure their offer?

We have already heard that more than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money has been put into the pupil equity funding scheme. You have talked a lot about the importance of being clear about the policy objectives. On a number of occasions, the Scottish Government has attempted to position the policy as being about giving headteachers greater autonomy at the same time as enhancing equity. Have you reflected on that and on whether it is possible for one policy to have two different aims?

As I close today’s debate for the Scottish Conservatives, I will return to where my colleague Meghan Gallacher began. We have heard time and again in the debate about the widespread support and unity across Parliament for the policy aims behind provision of 1,140 hours. Speaking as one who was also a member in the previous session and who has been party to a number of debates on the topic, the question for me has always been about delivery.

Eligibility is one thing, but access is another. Siobhian Brown talked about learning to be kind at nursery. If I was trying to be kind, I would say that we have had two different debates today; SNP members talked about the principles behind early learning and childcare, which we can all get behind, but they have perhaps been too kind to their own Government, because they did not get into the nitty-gritty of practical delivery on the ground. That is the real question.

I fundamentally disagree with the minister on that characterisation. The Government, local authorities and everyone across Scotland are dependent on the PVI sector, but it is not well supported. It continues to pick up the slack because the sector cares about the policy and is keen to deliver the hours. I will come back to that in more detail later.

If what the minister said is correct, why would Audit Scotland acknowledge this morning that the risks in relation to the workforce that it previously identified continue to exist? It has been persistently raised in Parliament, since the policy was first announced, that without increasing the workforce we will not be able to provide access. We can announce eligibility, but people will not get the flexibility or access that they want if we do not have the workforce to deliver it.

It is important to remember that ELC settings also provide increased parental choice and, in many cases, are leading innovation in the sector. They often work in the hardest-to-reach areas, including my Dumfriesshire constituency; they are the voluntary groups and childminders who serve many small rural and remote communities. They certainly do not feel well supported or valued, but feel that they are second to local authority provision, even when it is not available in the communities that they serve.

They have also worked hard during the pandemic and, in many cases, are willing to provide the greatest flexibility in respect of available hours. That is not to say that there is not good partnership working in some local authorities, as my colleague Brian Whittle pointed out. The challenge is in ensuring that best practice becomes universal.

It is not good enough for the Scottish Government simply to say that it is down to individual local authorities. This is a Scottish Government led policy; the Scottish Government must, for that reason, be willing to continue to drive improvement and best practice across the country. The success of the policy is too important for it to get stuck in the chasm between local authorities and the Scottish Government, which has become all too common an occurrence when it comes to education policy.

It is clear that the expansion to 1,140 hours continues to have broad support and has the potential to be truly transformational. If it can meet the needs of our young people and their families and benefit our society, it is a policy that the whole Parliament can be proud of. We simply ask the minister to recognise that, despite the delay in introduction of the policy, we are still seeing many challenges, and we are not there yet.

That demands a watchful eye, and willingness to get a handle on what is happening on the ground and to question, where necessary. It also comes with a responsibility to be the embodiment of the partnership working that we all want to see, which means that we must treat all partners as equals in the process.

We simply cannot afford to see the number and choice of settings being reduced. In fact, in a vibrant and well-supported sector we should see an increase in the number of providers and more people wanting to get involved, not fewer settings. That should be across all parts of the sector.