Chamber and committees

I was, but I was not really satisfied with what you said. My understanding was that the OECD sent a paper to Scottish Government officials about who would participate in the review, and one of the questions in that paper was about which additional non-ministry academics should be approached. The Scottish Government and the OECD have been unable to tell me who was discussed and why you chose particular individuals. I am confused by that, because there are a number of voices in Scottish education who have fundamental concerns about curriculum for excellence and the principles behind it.

With respect, Keir Bloomer was not happy with the process either. He said that it was evident that it had been “stage managed by government”. Therefore, I do not think that it is right to reference him as a defence for not having taken time to speak to Professor Paterson.

Quite frankly, I find it shocking that the OECD did not have the time to speak to Professor Paterson, who is highly regarded in Scotland by Scottish teachers, parents and many people in academia. That the voice of one of the leading critics of the current curriculum was not included and only his papers read confirms many of my concerns.

The report skirts over issues around knowledge. It pushes points, but it does not question whether the capacities that are at the heart of CFE are what causes the problem. As a result, the report is less than it would have been.

I do not need an answer to that, convener. I am happy to let other members come in.

I return to the original line of questioning that you started, convener. I have serious concerns that the report is flawed and has not engaged properly with non-ministry academics. I have written twice to the OECD without ever receiving a reply, and when, after a freedom of information request, I asked the Scottish Government which non-ministry academics were suggested to the OECD, I was told that a planned phone call to discuss additional participants did not take place. I am therefore interested in finding out how the non-ministry academics were suggested and where the view that CFE had been universally embraced in Scotland came from.

I had not intended to ask a question, but I was confused by the comments about data sharing. I know that those issues have been kicking about for a while, and I understand them. However, if we put those issues to one side, the number of two-year-olds who are registering has fallen since the programme was introduced, so fewer two-year-olds are benefiting now than when the programme started. Does the minister have an explanation for that?

Also, I hear from local ELC providers that they are actively discouraged from engaging directly with families and that they have to wait for the local authority and others to identify them. They cannot go out into their own communities and publicise the offer. Is that correct?

Does Mark Ruskell understand that my constituents and many other people across rural Scotland are concerned to hear plans to halt road building? Does he recognise that there are some parts of the country that are not well served at the moment?

Far from offering a bold and ambitious plan to help us to rebuild and to recover from the pandemic, the SNP Government is simply offering more of the same. We are back to tired arguments that are peppered with grudge and grievance. That approach did not cut it pre-Covid and it certainly does not cut it now—unless, of course, we are talking about street cleansing in the First Minister’s home city, Glasgow, where cuts seem to be the SNP’s only answer.

The truth is that it does not matter how many shiny new policies and initiatives Nicola Sturgeon sets out, because the people of Scotland know the reality. They know that, just like in previous years, promises are made that are not kept. They know that the gap between the rhetoric and what happens in our communities is growing with each of the SNP’s 14 years in office. Worse still, the level of ambition has dropped, and the SNP’s promises this year seem even less noteworthy than last year—yet another sign of a tired Government that is out of new ideas.

Nicola Sturgeon might believe that she pulled off a great con trick in bringing the Greens into her Government to spruce it up, but I suspect that she will come to see that being anti-jobs and urban-centric and wanting to break up the UK are the very things that stood between her and the SNP majority that she craved and expected. She did not really need the Greens to help with that. The sad reality is that nothing that we have heard today takes away from the fact that we have a nationalist Government here at Holyrood that is more interested in a referendum than in recovery. It is beyond me how those in power expect people to believe that a referendum is possible in the first half of this session of Parliament while simultaneously claiming that a referendum will not take place until after the pandemic. It is a nonsense claim that hangs like a dark cloud over this programme for government. Worse still, it is a betrayal of the many sacrifices that people across this country have made during the past 18 months. Surely to goodness we deserve a break and a chance to focus on the things that really matter. That means not just talking about the challenges but having the will to take forward the policies needed without any distractions and the inevitable division.

Take education—an area where past promises loom large. Whatever happened to closing the attainment gap? Why can ministers still not tell us when they expect to see progress? What happened to the promise to make education the top priority? Perhaps the Government could remind us what happened to the planned education bill in the previous session of Parliament? Silence, because, rather than sort out any of the issues that the SNP Government has created on its own watch, and admitting that it has got things wrong and that its decisions have caused standards in our education system to decline, this Government would rather paper over the cracks with a combination of new policy initiatives that sound nice in theory but do very little in practice, and more radical reform that makes it hard to measure outcomes at all.

The fact that we had to wait for a report from the OECD for the Government to admit that anything was wrong is depressing. The criticisms in the report are even more shocking when we realise just how hard ministers worked to influence the findings and the limit that they put on dissenting voices even taking part. It should not have taken international concerns for the SNP to agree to act. Parents, teachers and educationists here in Scotland, as well as Opposition parties in our national Parliament, have been voicing concerns for years. Surely anyone who cares about Scottish education would want to work with people to make things better, not simply ignore them. As I asked last week, where is the big vision? Where are the plans to turn education around? When will we see a return to the tried-and-tested methods that we already know work? Silence. Instead, all we get from this SNP Government is the galling sight of the First Minister patting herself on the back for the belated decision to reverse SNP cuts to teacher numbers—cuts that left us badly short during the pandemic. No apology for doing it in the first place, and no apology to the young people who have already been let down. And so the Government ploughs on, making the same mistakes over and over again.

We see that today in the announcement on childcare. It is something that we on these benches support and called for but, once again, where is the detail? Where is the practical, evidence-based work on how that pledge will be delivered in practice? It comes at a time when existing early learning and childcare settings are struggling to recruit the staff that they need in order to fulfil existing plans. As is so often the case with this SNP Government, providers feel most annoyed not about the substance of what is being announced and set out in Parliament but about the fact that no one took the time to seek their views. There must be a better way to do government than this.

In closing, I say that this is not a programme for government that rises to the challenge of the day. It is merely a public relations exercise that tries and fails to repackage the SNP’s tired thinking and policies as something new and bold. Over the summer, perhaps there was too much focus on getting the Greens on board, and backing up their extremist plans, rather than on looking right across the chamber and our society to build a forward-looking coalition that is based on new ideas that respond to the challenges of today and does not drag us back to the arguments of the past.

Will the member take an intervention?

Our exam system, just like our education system, must be there to serve all pupils. That has not been the case in the past two years, which is shameful. Having considered the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, does the First Minister agree that it would be unacceptable to create a situation in which some young people could leave school with no opportunity to gain an externally assessed exam-based qualification? Does she recognise that exams are not a Victorian British legacy but a Scottish educational tradition?

To ask the Scottish Government how it will protect the interests of farmers under the draft co-operation agreement with the Scottish Green Party. (S6O-00088)