Chamber and committees

The member mischaracterises my speech, because my point is exactly that we have had almost 15 years of SNP government and some of those things should have started a long time ago. It is not good enough just to keep bringing in migrant labour to plug the gaps. We need to start doing something here in Scotland to train our young people for the future. Does he agree?

Mr Fairlie is using the usual SNP trick of cherry picking parts of the amendment. I am interested in whether he agrees that his Government has failed when it comes to supporting our colleges, and whether he thinks that that is acceptable or good for young people in this country.

What is the cabinet secretary going to do in relation to the university and college sector, which is urgently looking for guidance that would allow it to safely restart small-group, face-to-face learning in September?

Can the minister confirm whether guidance will be issued before the Parliament breaks up for the summer recess so that the plans can be properly scrutinised and universities have the time that they need to plan for having students back on campus?

Will the minister take an intervention?

To ask the First Minister what steps the Scottish Government is taking to ensure there are sufficient resources in place to prevent schools exceeding its maximum class size limits during the next academic year, in light of reports that a number of schools are currently exceeding these limits. (S6F-00058)

I thank the First Minister for her answer, but I want to talk about reality, not ratios. While the First Minister seeks to manipulate the figures by including those whose main job is to support classroom teachers, schools across the country are being left with no choice but to cram extra young people into classrooms, which goes against everything that the Scottish National Party used to promise. How does the First Minister explain reports that suggest that numerous schools have more than 30 primary school children in a class at a time while the attainment gap widens?

With qualified teachers across Scotland looking for teaching posts, why will the First Minister not move faster in reversing teaching cuts and guarantee that this will be the final year in which we see our young people being so badly let down?

I am not sure that the young people whom the system is there to serve would agree with that.

The extent of the mismatch between the minister’s rhetoric and the reality of the situation grows every day. We do not have another 100 days to waste. It is time for the real action that was promised and that the Government has been so slow to deliver. The ambition in First Minister’s words from all those years ago will still unite the chamber, but that ambition must now be backed by deeds. If they are, there will be scope for constructive—and critical, where necessary—dialogue with the Opposition.

That is important because I believe that our best days can still lie ahead. Given how good my own education was at Moffat academy, a small rural state school that does not apologise for being ambitious on behalf of its pupils, I know what is possible everywhere.

We can and must do better as a country in the years to come. Our once world-leading education system can be that again. We can get back on our feet after the pandemic and we can avoid losing a generation to Covid. After all, despite 14 years of this SNP Government’s educational underachievement, we still retain all the ingredients of success. We have a motivated and skilled workforce, talented young people, dedicated parents and carers and a social commitment to the importance of education. Nothing that I say today is a criticism of those people—quite the opposite. I applaud their commitment and professionalism.

As I have said here before, the only thing that we are missing is a Government that is willing to do what is needed to properly support them. Instead, we have a Government that is often more interested in promoting its own political agenda than getting down to the hard work of advancing opportunities for future generations.

Rather than recognising and supporting the time-honoured strengths of our system, the Government, as it does in so many areas, would rather do things differently simply for the sake of it. The Government believes that, in the place of ambition, the lowest common denominator will do. It would rather blame others than acknowledge its own responsibilities and failings.

Excellence has been discounted as too difficult to aim for and been replaced by an attitude that being average or thereabouts—and maybe being better than some other countries, if we cherry pick the right statistics—will do. Likewise, equality is no longer about giving the maximum opportunity to all but has been reduced to ensuring that everyone is held back in equal measure. Our young people and their parents and carers, as well as educators, deserve better than that.

However, as I said, all is not lost; it is not too late. The key is simple: we have to return our focus to what happens in the classroom—teaching and learning. We cannot have a successful education system without teaching and learning. Instead of talking in the currently fashionable buzz words and jargon that have become the trademark of our education bodies, we need to focus on talking in the language that teachers and learners understand.

It means, in a very real sense, going back to the basics. It means restoring teacher numbers as a matter of urgency and not the First Minister patting herself on the back after the SNP cut teacher numbers to the bone and then seeking credit for incremental increases in the years that follow.

We have thousands of qualified teachers on temporary and short-term contracts and some recently qualified teachers who want to work but cannot find a job. Let us be more ambitious. Let us make the funding available now for all the roles that the Government has identified and train more teachers if we cannot fill them.

Focusing on teaching and learning also means admitting that curriculum reform has not produced the outcomes that we hoped for. It means respecting that all children need to learn the essential building blocks of knowledge to equip them through life and that the best way to obtain skills is through gaining knowledge. It means freeing teachers from the avalanche of paperwork and guidance that has engulfed them over recent years. Teachers do not need the 20,000 pages of guidance that accompanied the implementation of the so-called curriculum for excellence. They need the time and space to do the jobs that they are trained for, qualified for and dedicated to doing.

Of course, there is a more immediate concern, which has been brought on us by the unique circumstances of the global pandemic and that the Scottish Government must urgently face up to. Ministers need to recognise the learning that has been lost in the past year and not try to claim, as the previous education secretary did, that pupils’ time at home has been universally beneficial. Over the past year, most pupils in Scotland have lost out on an estimated 16 weeks of classroom lessons.

Although we pay tribute to the efforts of teachers and other school staff to provide the best possible online alternatives, the reality is that we have seen an unprecedented loss of learning, which risks widening the attainment gap between more affluent and less well-off pupils. There is a clear case for a comprehensive package of action to help recover that lost learning. That should include allocating additional funding to schools to provide effective interventions for individual year groups and the opportunity for individual disadvantaged pupils to get small-group tutoring. However, given what the First Minister has outlined of her 100 days plan, it would appear that nothing has been drawn up to help recover that lost learning.

For younger children and their parents, a summer of play will be welcome.?However, for many older pupils, whose education has been adversely impacted through no fault of their own, the opportunity for a summer of learning is what they really need. Therefore, we urgently need to hear from the new education secretary what her plans are, beyond those already outlined, to give pupils a genuine chance to catch up.

I do not think that promoting the opportunity for individual tutoring after a pandemic has affected many individuals in different ways is dictating something that would be unwelcome by most schools and most young people.

If the answer is that the education secretary has no additional plans, parents and pupils across Scotland will be owed an explanation as to why no meaningful action is being taken to help recover those 16 weeks of lost classroom learning.

In closing, I return to what is, for me, the most important point. Further decline and stagnation are not inevitable. There is no reason to believe that all is lost, but after 14 years of SNP failure, we do not have any more time to waste. Every young person deserves the gold standard education for which Scotland was once famous, and until the SNP owns its mistakes, rather than trying to excuse them away, progress will be slow.

At the moment, teachers, learners, parents, and carers are being asked to pick up the slack. That is not good enough, and it is time for the Government to act. Reversing the decision to allow grades to be downgraded on appeal and axing—not reforming—failing education bodies such as the SQA, will send a strong message that the Government is in listening mode and ready to reset and rebuild trust. Inaction will simply confirm more of the same and reinforce the cosy arrangement that is at the heart of this SNP Government that lets everyone off the hook.

We will find out in pretty short order whether the education secretary is John Swinney 2.0 or if she is serious about making the hard choices that are needed to improve the life chances of our young people. For the sake of Scotland’s pupils, parents, and teachers, and for the future of our country, we must all hope that it is the latter.

I move amendment S6M-00204.2, to leave out from “and parents have faced” to end and insert:

“, parents, families and carers have faced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic; commends the extraordinary work done by university, college, school, nursery and childcare staff over the last year to maintain education and childcare; notes, by way of contrast, the absence of meaningful and timely support from the Scottish Government and its education agencies and the pressure and anxiety that this has caused; recognises that there were significant challenges in Scottish education before the pandemic as a result of the First Minister’s broken promise to make education the number one priority, and calls on the Scottish Government to act with more urgency to reverse damaging cuts to teacher numbers, to bring all classrooms up to an acceptable standard and reduce class sizes, to put in place catch-up plans, including a tutoring scheme to make up for lost learning, to address the shortfall in college funding and to set out plans to enable in-person, small group learning at universities in order to prevent a generation of young people being lost to COVID-19.”

Did the member find it as puzzling as I did to hear the First Minister say today that she has full confidence in the SQA?