Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Official Report 880KB pdf

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Education

The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-04456, in the name of Iain Gray, on the Scottish Government and education: 10 years of letting down teachers, parents and pupils.

14:42  

Too often, when we debate education in general and schools in particular, we forget the historical context. The truth is that the responsibility of this Parliament and this Government for the education of our children and grandchildren sits at the front of a long and broad historical sweep. It is 500 years since the reformation, which, in Scotland especially, had the revolutionary idea of universal schooling running through it; 145 years since school attendance became compulsory; 50 years since circular 600 comprehensivised our schools and ended the 11-plus; 35 years since standard grades heralded assessment for all; 15 years since the launch of the national debate on education, which led to curriculum for excellence; and 10 years since this Scottish National Party Government assumed responsibility for our schools.

That responsibility began neither when Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister nor when John Swinney became the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills; rather, it spans the introduction of curriculum for excellence in schools and covers a fifth of the history of comprehensive schools in this country. A cohort of pupils have almost completed their whole schooling under the SNP. It is therefore right and reasonable to take this moment to judge the Government’s record on education, as it has invited us to do, but to do so over the past decade.

I suppose that, in a way, the Government’s amendment tries to do that, too. There is not much in it to disagree with, but the trouble is that it is ridiculously partial. Above all, it fails to mention the repeated evidence of slipping standards in literacy, numeracy and science from the Government’s own Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy, its improvement framework data and, most dramatically, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s programme for international student assessment results.

The Scottish Government acknowledges the challenges, but ignores the failures. If we take this week’s positive destination figures, which the amendment references, it is welcome that more young people are leaving school for a positive destination, but we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that children from poorer families are still three times more likely than their richer counterparts to be not in education, training or work. This week, the SNP put out a press release on the figures, which featured—somewhat inappropriately—the convener of the Education and Skills Committee. I have it here. He welcomes the figures, as we would expect, but he then spends two thirds of his remarks denouncing schools in England. The release is completed with a link to the Scottish figures and six links to information on English schools.

For the whole sweep of the history of our schools, we have aspired not even just to have the best schools in the world—[Interruption.]

I ask Mr Sarwar and Mr Dornan not to have a discussion across the chamber.

We have aspired to have the best schools that we can imagine. Now, it seems that the Government’s benchmark is to be less bad than England. Is that really the level of aspiration that the party of Government sets for what the First Minister called her “sacred responsibility”?

I hear what the member says, so let us talk about the situation in Scotland. Is he aware that West Dunbartonshire Council sought to cut the school week by half a day? That had to be reversed by the opposition, which called a special meeting. What would that have done for the poorest people? Every school in West Dunbartonshire qualifies for additional funds. What does Mr Gray have to say about the way in which his party treats education in Scotland?

To tell the truth, when it comes to cutting the school week, what I remember best is the massive public meeting in Renfrewshire when the council there was run by the SNP. I attended to support the parents who were fighting that.

Curriculum for excellence is about setting our sights higher and freeing our teachers to teach, inspire and innovate to the maximum. The education secretary occasionally asks me whether we still support curriculum for excellence. We do, and it is exactly because we support it that it pains us to see the mess that this Government has made of its implementation. The decade of CFE implementation has been a decade of cuts to school budgets. We now have more than 4,000 fewer teachers, more than 1,000 fewer support staff and class sizes that are increasing steadily.

Yesterday, the education secretary said that spending on schools increased last year. It did, but the same figures show that school budgets are still hundreds of millions of pounds lower in real terms than they were in 2007, when the SNP came to power. One swallow doth not a summer make, nor does one year undo a decade of cuts. In any case, the Government has achieved the remarkable feat of losing thousands of teachers’ jobs and creating a teacher shortage at the same time. As the education secretary said earlier, he has increased the number of teacher training places, but universities struggle to fill them.

Iain Gray cites teacher shortages. Does he feel that it is sensible for Labour-led Aberdeen City Council to have written out to teachers to offer them voluntary severance or early retirement while complaining of a teacher shortage?

Every council in the country has laboured under the strain of the £1.5 billion of cuts that local government has suffered in the past few years.

Mr Swinney sometimes likes to accuse us of being to blame for the shortage and of talking teachers down, but I am a teacher to trade and members will not catch me talking teachers down. I know that a fully trained professional teaching force has always been the greatest strength of our schools, and I know that, despite the cuts, our teachers deliver remarkable success and inspire our children every day of the week. We should thank them, but if we keep cutting their number, those thanks are worthless.

We pay teachers less than similar countries do; we provide them with less preparation time, fewer support staff and fewer resources than other countries do; we put them in front of bigger classes than pretty well every other country in the developed world; and then we wonder why we cannot recruit enough of them. Thanking teachers means nothing unless we listen to their concerns.

The Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee has done just that. It has listened to teachers, who told it that they had lost confidence in the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland and that reductions in additional support staff were making life difficult. However, the education secretary rubbished the committee’s work. He said that it was not a proper sample, and then he told the committee that the valid view was what teachers told him when he visited schools. I am reminded of the old chestnut about the Queen thinking that the world permanently smells of fresh paint.

Now we hear that the cabinet secretary has delayed his governance reforms, but, again, he is not listening. The responses to the review tell him that its proposed reforms miss the point. The Educational Institute of Scotland, which represents teachers, said:

“The greatest barrier is and has been the imposition of austerity driven budgets and the underfunding of the Scottish Education system over the past period.”

It is not just teachers; a group of parents from Aberdeen said:

“Local council budgets have been reduced year on year for a considerable number of years. Teacher shortages impact the ability to deliver excellence and equity for all”.

Dundee City Council, which is run by the SNP, said:

“The real barriers have been imposed on councils over recent years following a series of past and present reductions to the budget.”

The Royal Society for Edinburgh summed it up neatly when it said:

“it is not clear how the proposed governance changes will lead to improved educational experiences and outcomes”.

Is not the real reason why the Government has delayed its great reforms that the responses are telling it that they are the wrong ones and that what we actually need in our schools is more resources, more teachers and more time?

There is also little or no support for the plans to centralise school budgets. Mr Swinney sometimes asks me whether we support anything that he does. Well, we do: we support the equity fund to close the attainment gap. Why would we not support that? From the moment the attainment fund was introduced, we said that it should be bigger and that it should follow pupils to whichever school they attend. We even argued that entitlement to free school meals is the best proxy for poverty and that funds should go direct to headteachers. The Government clearly agreed, because that is what it has done.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that that £120 million is set against cuts of £170 million to councils’ core budgets, nor can we ignore the fact that the devolution of that £120 million of funding is set against the removal of core school budgets from local control and their being set centrally by a formula. In other words, £120 million has been devolved and £4 billion has been centralised. To paraphrase the First Minister, only in the world of the SNP can that be called decentralisation and not centralisation.

There is a primary school in my constituency with more than 1,000 pupils—it is one of the biggest in the country—while others just down the road have fewer than 20. The idea that some algorithm at Victoria Quay will know enough about those schools and the communities that they serve to make a rational decision on their budgets is ridiculous. To remove local control of their budgets does not serve the interests of the parents, the schools or the teachers any more than it serves their interests to cut teacher numbers, reduce support staff and increase class sizes.

Our schools need reform, but we need reforms that take teachers and parents with us. We have tried to maintain an open mind on the education secretary’s core reform of national standardised assessments, but he has failed to take teachers with him. That is why the vast majority of councils are saying that they are going to use those assessments on top of what they did before, which will increase workload and testing. It is also why we have seen the league tables that we were promised we would not see—and the defence that the Scottish Government publishes not the league tables but just the numbers, which someone can then put in order, is just ridiculous.

Our schools need reform. The new exams need to be reformed because they are narrowing the curriculum and reducing attainment. Local charging for exam re-marks needs to be reformed—indeed, it should end. The senior phase needs reform backed by a comprehensive career guidance system, and achievement could be universally acknowledged, maybe through a Scottish graduation certificate. Every school should have a counselling service available to it, and a breakfast club, and there should be more collaboration between schools and within and across education authorities.

The SQA certainly needs to be reformed, refocused and resourced; the inspectorate should be independent again; and Education Scotland should serve teachers and not ministers. If it was regionalised, perhaps it could provide the strengthened “middle” that the OECD has suggested that we need. Above all, our schools need more teachers with more support, more time and more resources to do the job that they do so well. That is the core reform, and failure to deliver it is the defining characteristic of the SNP’s decade in charge of education.

The cabinet secretary should not delay his reform programme. He should ditch it now and start to invest properly in schools. That is what parents, teachers and SNP councillors tell him, too.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the evidence submitted to the Education and Skills Committee that many teachers have lost confidence in Education Scotland and the SQA; notes Scottish Government figures, which show falling numbers of teachers and support staff; is disappointed in the results of the OECD’s PISA worldwide survey, which show a decline in reading, maths and science scores in Scotland in both absolute and relative terms; notes a number of significant responses to the Scottish Government review of the governance of schools, which question its thrust and direction, and believes that its stewardship of education is failing teachers, parents and pupils.

14:56  

Iain Gray said that it is “right and reasonable” to hold the Government to account. That is, of course, correct. The Government is here to be held to account, and I accept that accountability. However, all parties in Parliament need to be consistent.

Iain Gray’s criticism of my amendment was that it is “ridiculously partial”. My amendment acknowledges that despite the progress—I will come back to progress—that has been made,

“there remains significant challenges in closing the attainment gap and raising standards for all; further acknowledges the wider challenges that exist within Scottish education, including budget pressures, the wider impacts of poverty on educational opportunity, teacher recruitment, teacher workload and the role of key agencies, such as the SQA and Education Scotland”.

That is a fair assessment of Scottish education. Iain Gray’s motion says absolutely nothing good whatsoever about Scottish education. It is a disgraceful motion for him to have lodged, and I utterly refute its characterisation of Scottish education. Mr Gray referred to schools in his constituency. I refuse to believe that if he went into Knox academy, Dunbar grammar school, North Berwick high school, Ross high school or Preston Lodge high school, he would find their character to be as pathetically miserable as the characterisation in his motion.

I regularly go to all those high schools, and what they tell me is that they ain’t got enough teachers and cannot recruit teachers for the vacancies that they have.

What those schools will also tell Mr Gray—[Interruption.] Lewis Macdonald is shouting that I should answer the point. I have answered in my amendment the points that are at issue about teacher recruitment, workload and other issues. Mr Gray’s miserable motion fails to take account of the fact that we have a record number of advanced higher passes, the second-highest level of achievement in higher passes, and a rising number of positive destinations being achieved by young people as a product of the education system. What is stopping Mr Gray putting some of that on the record to compliment what our teachers and pupils are able to achieve? What is wrong with celebrating what is actually achieved in the schools of Scotland?

Mr Swinney mentioned teacher training and recruitment. That is precisely the crisis that local authorities across the north of Scotland face. Mr Swinney referred to that in answering Richard Lochhead’s question earlier. All that he has done in the past six years has failed to address that teacher recruitment crisis.

We have introduced 11 new mechanisms to encourage people to join the teaching profession, we increased postgraduate diploma in education intake by 19 per cent last year, and I have increased the intake by 370 teachers this year. For my efforts, Aberdeen City Council wants to offer teachers voluntary redundancy. How is that in any way a sensible step for Aberdeen City Council to take?

The Government has set out in the national improvement framework an agenda for strengthening education based on the foundations that we have. I am the first to accept, as I have accepted in the Government’s amendment, that challenges exist. However, there is an opportunity for the political parties in Parliament to work with the Government to progress the agenda and to contribute positively to it. What concerns me about the characterisation of Scottish education that we have heard from Mr Gray today is the unwillingness to acknowledge the strength of the performance that has been achieved.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Hold on a second.

We have had a 30 per cent increase in higher passes since 2007, an increase to 93.3 per cent in positive destinations being achieved by young people leaving education, and nine out of 10 young people from deprived communities are now continuing in education, with the attainment gap among young people from deprived backgrounds who are able to achieve qualifications at Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 5 closing from 36.8 percentage points to 20.9 percentage points. Those are achievements in Scottish education. I do not understand why Mr Gray will not celebrate them.

Mr Swinney must acknowledge that I did celebrate successes in education in my speech. The point that he misses is that the motion is about his and his Government’s stewardship of Scottish education, which is succeeding in spite of his failures and not because of his successes. He has yet to tell us about one of his successes.

I will go through them again in case Mr Gray did not hear. Since 2007, when this Government came to office, we have had a 30 per cent increase in the higher pass rate. This Government has seen an increasing, year-on-year delivery of 93.3 per cent—[Interruption.]

Just a wee minute. I would like to hear all speeches, please, thank you.

Yes—those achievements have been by the young people of Scotland, but they have done that in an education system over which this Government has been presiding. That is what Mr Gray has to accept as part of the process. On his point about his speech recognising all of the achievements, I ask Mr Gray to go and look at the miserable motion that he lodged, which characterises Scottish education in an unrepresentative fashion that does not take account of the progress that has been made. Mr Gray must take account of that progress.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I am sorry, but the cabinet secretary is in his last minute.

Okay, Presiding Officer.

I will conclude by outlining some of the measures that the Government is taking to address the issues. The Government has made available £120 million of pupil equity funding directly to schools to ensure that they can take into account young people’s circumstances in order to boost their educational attainment and possibilities. The Scottish attainment challenge fund puts £50 million directly into nine local authorities in which there are high levels of deprivation, and there is Government support in place to maintain the number of teachers at 51,000 in the schools of Scotland so that they are all able to contribute to the high-quality education of young people. That is what the Government is doing.

I am interested in having a debate about how we could strengthen education, but we have to have that debate from the standpoint of what is being achieved already in education. After a process of reform, it is performing at a high level in respect of achievement of positive destinations, and in respect of higher passes and advanced higher passes. Those are being delivered as a consequence of our efforts. We are determined to ensure that we improve that performance in a way that is consistent with the national improvement framework, and that we work with schools and local authorities to achieve that.

It would help us if the Opposition would engage in constructive debate rather than carp from the sidelines, which is exactly what Mr Gray has done today.

I move amendment S5M-04456.2, to leave out from first “notes” to end and insert:

“congratulates pupils and teachers on their achievements during the period of curriculum reform including, in 2016, the record number of Advanced Higher passes and second highest number of Higher passes ever achieved by young people; notes the most recent statistics, which show a continued increase in the positive destinations for young people leaving school in 2015-16, including a record figure of 88.7% of young people from deprived communities continuing their education, entering training or getting a job after they leave school; acknowledges that, despite this progress, there remain significant challenges in closing the attainment gap and raising standards for all; further acknowledges the wider challenges that exist within Scottish education, including budget pressures, the wider impacts of poverty on educational opportunity, teacher recruitment, teacher workload and the role of key agencies, such as the SQA and Education Scotland; recognises that Scottish education has always been a collaborative effort involving local government, the Scottish Government, key agencies, professional organisations, teachers, parents, pupils and educationalists, and believes that the recommendations made by the OECD in its 2015 review of Scottish education should form the basis for the way ahead in Scottish education.”

I call Liz Smith. You have seven minutes, please.

14:28  

I will start on what I hope is a constructive note, because I think that some of Mr Gray’s analysis is correct, and that some of the cabinet secretary’s analysis is correct. That exchange between them flags up what I think is a deeper problem, which is not about who is right and who is wrong but about the nature of the evidence by which we make our judgments. That came through very strongly at the meeting of the Education and Skills Committee this morning, but it has also been coming through in many studies that have been done on Scottish education.

One of the base problems that we face, which has been picked up by the OECD and by some of our education experts, is that in order to make a value judgment—which is what we are all looking for; I do not doubt the integrity of every member to do what is best for education—we need to be absolutely clear that the base evidence is relevant and accurate. One of the great sadnesses about CFE was that evidence was not taken at the appropriate time. It is therefore very difficult for us to measure progress—or, in some cases, the lack of progress. That judgment is crucial, so if we are going to do what is right for education—which will bind together some points that Mr Gray made and some points that the cabinet secretary has made—that evidence is also absolutely crucial.

I will go back to evidence to the Education and Skills Committee. The committee has been criticised on the bases that some of the judgments that we have made have not been formulated around a wide enough evidence base, that evidence has been unbalanced, and that, in some cases, the committee has perhaps not given due credibility to some people who have been involved in the debate. I worry about that, because I think that one of the most important things in Parliament is its committee system and how we scrutinise what is going on. I give credit to the committee’s current convener, who I think has had a very difficult job in trying to marshall the evidence.

The committee had to apply a lot of our value judgments on what teachers were saying to us in formal evidence to committee, in evidence that we heard in private focus groups, and in evidence that we, as members of the Scottish Parliament, collect when we go round the schools. We have had to listen to the teachers in great numbers and to all the associations that represent them, but it does not matter whether it was geography teachers, the Modern Studies Association, computing experts or people in the unions, because much of the other part of the research base was not there, which makes making a judgment difficult.

On assessing where we stand on CFE just now, I say that there are very good things going on in Scottish education—of course there are, and we need to acknowledge that. Incidentally, just before I came into the chamber, I heard about the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland being ranked third in the world for performing arts education institutions. That is a tremendous accolade for Scottish education, and we should all recognise it. [Applause.]

However, let us not detract from the motion. Mr Gray is absolutely right to flag up a lot of the great difficulties in education just now. When the PISA results came out, the cabinet secretary had the good grace to acknowledge the extent of the challenge that we face. Let us just deal with the extent of that challenge, because—my goodness!—it is extensive. The PISA scores show us exactly where we have to go to ensure that we are bringing Scottish education up—not just for the lower attainment group but for the higher attainment group, as well. It is not just about closing the attainment gap; it is also about raising the level of the whole of Scottish education. We know from the PISA scores exactly how much we have to do.

We also know that we have problems in teacher recruitment, which were well spelled out by the Labour Party this afternoon. Last week, we learned that we have serious shortages in key subjects including English and maths. That is a serious worry for education.

Will the member take an intervention?

Of course.

Does Liz Smith agree that closure of the undergraduate primary teaching degree course at the University of Edinburgh will be a further hindrance to recruiting teachers?

Yes, I agree. There are serious concerns about that closure, so it must be looked at. I know that the cabinet secretary has initiated a new discussion about routes into teaching and how we undertake professional training of new recruits. There are serious questions to be asked about that because—let us be honest—the teacher shortages are very serious, as Richard Lochhead said in committee this morning.

Those are serious concerns for education that we must not shy away from, because if we pretend that the evidence is not accurate or that there is a way to get round it, we will not deal head-on with what curriculum for excellence is supposed to be doing. We all agree—and I record Conservative support for it—with the principles of curriculum for excellence, but the curriculum is currently not being delivered particularly well.

I will finish by coming back to the point that came up throughout our committee meetings in November and December, when the education agencies found it very difficult to give us cast-iron reasons why certain decisions had been taken. For me, that is a worry, because even if I disagree with a decision I want to know why it was taken. If we do not know why decisions were taken, we will never be able to make progress. I say to the cabinet secretary that one of the most important challenges that we face is in ensuring that education agencies make the right decisions, based on accurate evidence—which we all know we are trying to collect.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member is in her last minute.

For that reason alone, we must do something positive to ensure that delivery of curriculum for excellence meets the aspirations of all the teachers who do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances, and that it meets the aspirations of parents and pupils.

We move to the open debate. I can give everyone a tight six minutes.

15:11  

I will take the opportunity to raise an issue that I have raised several times with the Scottish Government: the situation that is faced by our pupils who have additional support needs and by our vital support staff.

We know, because parents tell us, that the number of pupils who require additional support has more than doubled since 2010 while the number of support staff has gone down. The Scottish children’s services coalition warned that we

“face the prospect of a lost generation”

of children with additional support needs, and just last week, the Association of Heads and Deputes in Scotland made a submission to the Education and Skills Committee in which it warned that teachers do not have sufficient resources to deal with increasing demand. When I and other members raise the issue in Parliament, ministers are always quick to tell us that the large increase in numbers is down to changes in how additional support needs are calculated. Of course, I acknowledge and understand that, but given that we now have better data and a better understanding of pupils’ additional support needs, surely we should be seeing an increase and not a decline in the number of additional support needs staff. I have heard ministers argue in Parliament time and again that the large increase in additional support needs is partly due to temporary support needs, but that does not justify the falling number of support staff in our schools year on year.

It is not just the number of support for learning teachers that has reduced since 2010. We also have 4,000 fewer teachers overall, as Iain Gray said, and there are 1,000 fewer support staff since the Scottish National Party Government came to power. That is the record that we are considering in this debate. That means that the overall team that is needed to keep a school running from day to day, from librarians to cleaning staff to teaching assistants, has been much reduced over the past few years. More and more pressure has been piled on to teachers, and the subsequent misguided plans for school governance reform are all the more difficult to implement when the basic resources that our pupils need are being constantly cut back.

Unison’s report, “Hard Lessons: A survey of Scotland’s school support staff”, which was published a month or so ago, after Unison surveyed 900 support staff, sets the issues out clearly. If our teachers are telling us that they do not have the resources that they need in order to cope with additional learning needs, the Government needs to listen to their concerns and use the powers of Parliament to reverse some of the cuts to local authorities, which some members want to deny.

I declare an interest, not just as an elected member of South Lanarkshire Council but as a parent and a person who listens to people. I noted a Twitter comment that came from a parent—I do not know where he lives. He said:

“My son has an autism diagnosis, and arranging necessary support in education and health is a constant battle for us. I know that it is the same for parents across the country.”

He does not care about the political colour of the local authority. The point is that resources are missing.

Monica Lennon has raised—as she has done before—the allocation of resources to local authorities. For 10 years, we were told by Labour politicians in this chamber and in local authorities that we needed to unfreeze the council tax and to free up local authorities to raise revenue locally. We have done that. Can Monica Lennon tell me what her local authority in South Lanarkshire did and what other Labour-led councils did in relation to the council tax?

I am not going to waste time talking about things that are on the public record. I had hoped that Mark McDonald would say something about the parent who texted to tell us about their experience. The council tax has not been frozen, anyway, because council tax bills will rise.

The point is that we are here to discuss—[Interruption.] The minister can point his finger all that he likes, but—

Please stop, Ms Lennon, and sit down a minute. That is not appropriate, minister.

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

Let us talk about the attainment gap. Attempts to close the attainment gap—this Government’s attainment gap—will continue to be made more difficult if the focus and attention of our classroom teachers is being constantly divided and stretched because of pressure to meet additional support needs without the help that they need to do so.

More resources in our schools to support children’s mental health and wellbeing are part of the broader picture around resources. We have a delayed mental health strategy, and I have been asking the Minister for Mental Health—we welcome that post and acknowledge that it is an important one—to work with the cabinet secretary and the education team not to point fingers but to find solutions. I await a reply from the First Minister, although I asked about the matter a few weeks ago.

Every young person with additional support needs deserves the help that will allow them to succeed, and to receive the education to which they are entitled. Behind all the statistics that we all mention are young people who are struggling to get the education that they deserve because of lack of resources, and teachers who are struggling to keep up with demand.

Recently, I heard from a young carer who has a younger brother with significant additional support needs who attends a special school. That young woman told me that because of staffing cuts at the school and escalation of her brother’s needs, he is now sent home from school after lunch every day. That means not only that he is missing out on his full educational entitlement, but that there is increased pressure on the family in terms of their caring responsibilities and the arrangements that they have to make. We must do more to ensure that cases like that cannot continue to be the norm. We cannot shrug our shoulders. Every child in Scotland deserves the chance to fulfil their potential, and it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that our schools and teachers have the resources that they need to do that.

The SNP Government has been in power for 10 years. That is a decade of stewardship of Scotland’s education sector that has seen staff numbers fall and pupil outcomes decline. That is not good enough. All the people in Scotland’s education sector deserve much better than the failing efforts of the SNP Government.

15:17  

I remind members that I am the parliamentary liaison officer for the cabinet secretary.

I heard someone’s voice when I read the Labour Party’s motion. It was not the voices of my registration class, chattering away as we began our school day. It was not the voice of my primary headteacher, Mrs Wood, the sound of which could stop us dead in our tracks. It was not the voices of the young apprentices who I had the fortune to meet on Monday at Diageo in Leven. [Interruption.] Now I cannot hear myself for Labour members talking.

No, it was the ominous voice of a character who we might associate with hogmanay—Mr Happy himself. I am not talking about lain Gray; it was of course the Rev I M Jolly: “Hello. What sort of year have you had? Has it been happy for you? Did something wonderful happen to you?” Well, we had a record number of advanced higher passes, four out of 10 students from Scotland’s most deprived areas left school with at least one higher or the equivalent and more than 90 per cent of school leavers are now going on to a positive destination. I would say that it was not too bad.

However, far be it from me to be accused of blind party loyalty when it comes to the challenges that we undoubtedly face in education. As any good teacher would do, I tried to find an area—any area—of today’s depressingly predictable Labour motion that I could agree with or at least give an ounce of recognition to.

Labour moves

“That the Parliament notes the evidence submitted to the Education and Skills Committee that many teachers have lost confidence in Education Scotland and the SQA”.

I find it hard to disagree with that part of the motion. Some teachers have lost faith in those organisations—we know that through the committee’s work. I know that from working in our schools. It should therefore be incumbent on every party and every member of the Scottish Parliament to ensure that that trust is restored.

We know that the OECD results are not good enough at the moment—no SNP members have denied that—but the data that the OECD provided has been the catalyst for the Government’s education reforms.

Ms Gilruth makes the perfectly fair point that we need to rebuild trust in the SQA and Education Scotland. I made at least two suggestions for reorganising Education Scotland to do that. What does she think the Scottish Government should do?

What do I think the Scottish Government should do? On where we go from here, I will discuss some of the issues that I came up against in the classroom with the organisation of those structures.

It is important to look at the rhetoric and at what Labour-run authorities do on the ground. There is a narrative that necessitates radical reform, so for the motion to leap to the assertion that the Government’s

“stewardship of education is failing teachers, parents and pupils”

is beyond parody.

Will the member give way?

I would like to make progress, thank you.

In the governance review, all authorities were asked:

“What changes to governance arrangements are required to support decisions about children’s learning and school life being taken at school level?”

Here is what Labour-led Fife Council said:

“The review paper states the wish to see more decisions about school life being driven by schools themselves, starting with the presumption that decisions about children’s learning and school life should be taken at school level. However, there is no identification of what decisions about school life are not currently driven by schools. Therefore, it is not possible to identify, at a local level, what changes to governance arrangements are required.”

I declare an interest as a former principal teacher who worked for Fife Council, and I will tell members which decisions about school life are not currently driven by schools in that authority.

First, on resources, procurement practice in Fife’s schools means that staff have to purchase textbooks and jotters from a predetermined provider. It does not matter if a school can source those resources more cheaply elsewhere—it will pay what the authority has agreed to.

I recently met a headteacher who was forced to use her school budget to pay the authority—her employer—£3,000 to have essential painting work carried out. The head knew that she could have the painting work done more cheaply through a local company but, because of procurement practices, she was not allowed to do so. Another headteacher in my constituency told me that she had to use her school budget to pay for her entire school to be linked up to wi-fi whereas, in new schools across Fife, wi-fi is provided free of charge and her counterparts do not have the cost deducted from their school budget.

Last year, my office submitted a freedom of information request to Fife Council that focused on this very issue. We asked for details of all spending on procurement by the council annually since 2012 in each primary and secondary school in Fife. The response stated:

“The information you have requested is subject to an exemption in terms of Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act”.

The Labour motion

“notes Scottish Government figures, which show falling numbers of teachers and support staff”.

However, across the water in Fife, Labour is proposing to cut 100 front-line teaching posts that are vacant. [Interruption.]

I am sorry—sit down, please, Ms Gilruth. I know that we are all passionate about the debate, but conversations across the chamber are not helping. Please continue, Ms Gilruth.

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

The EIS has called the proposals “a recipe for disaster” and has asserted that they will increase staff sickness rates and class sizes and pile further pressure on the education service. There is an abject disconnect between the rhetoric from Labour in the chamber and the reality in Labour-led councils.

Talking of teacher numbers, in November 2014, I had a vacancy in my department, but I was not allowed to advertise for a new teacher. Instead, another teacher, who was employed by the authority on a four-day contract elsewhere, was parachuted into my department from another school. That teacher was employed on a permanent contract with the authority.

Fife Council regularly moves individuals around schools according to contractual obligations, with no cognisance whatever taken of pupils in that process. Eventually, a job might be advertised, but that is usually done internally, which does not allow for a wide range of applicants to be sourced nationally and, furthermore, works to protect individuals who are already employed in the council. Is that closing the attainment gap? I think not. When it comes to teacher vacancies, the Labour-led council is resolutely focused on job protectionism.

A narrative of resistance to change runs through Labour-led Fife Council’s entire response to the governance review, which absolutely reflects the response that is presented in today’s motion. However, the argument that we have aye done it this way no longer stacks up. In Levenmouth and Glenrothes, one child in three lives in poverty. The structure for the delivery of education needs to be questioned, and the OECD results have provided the catalyst for a shake-up of Scottish education. Is it not time that the Labour Party got behind improving pupils’ life chances and really put kids before cuts?

15:24  

I thank Iain Gray for introducing this important debate on education. I put on record my party’s thanks to teachers, support staff and everyone else who is involved in the hard work that is carried out daily in our schools. At a time when workloads are increasing, it is imperative to thank them for their continued drive and ambition to ensure that the education of Scottish children is the top priority. However, over the past few months, it has become clear that that has not been the Government’s top priority. From falling standards in numeracy and literacy to the fall in teacher numbers, education has taken a back seat.

At meetings of the Education and Skills Committee, it has become evident that Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority have lost the respect of many teachers and parents. From surveys and submissions, the committee has heard from teachers and parents about the steady erosion of trust in those education agencies. An example comes from the treatment of candidates for the SQA exams. I am sure that many of us remember the days of sitting exams—the hours of revision and the trepidation that we felt going into exam halls. Perhaps a few more hours of revision would have reduced my trepidation.

The Scottish Association of Geography Teachers asked its members about the 2016 higher paper, and 54 per cent said that it was poor and possibly the worst ever—nothing like the specimen or previous papers. That is not the only subject to have been affected. In recent times, the new higher maths and computing exam papers have had errors and been unlike specimen papers. A petition was signed by 20,000 pupils to demand the lowering of the pass mark for the national 5 mathematics exam after it contained completely different content from previous exam papers. We might expect some teenagers to rebel—and not without a cause—but not in their tens of thousands.

The situation is worrying. I am glad that Mr Swinney admitted in November that

“it is intolerable if there are errors ... in exam papers.”—[Official Report, Education and Skills Committee, 2 November 2016; c 19.]

However, we are still left wondering whether more errors will arise in future exams unless action is taken.

Unfortunately, the issue does not stop with exam errors. The guidance that the SQA has distributed on qualifications is lengthy, unclear and perplexing. The Education and Skills Committee has heard how complicated accessing the guidance is; one example relates to physics, for which 81 pages of guidance are spread across five different documents. That is leaving teachers to drown in a sea of jargon—that is not my word, but that of Dr Janet Brown, the SQA’s chief executive. It is not only many teachers but parents who have been overwhelmed with jargon. The National Parent Forum of Scotland criticised communication and said that it could not take part in the survey about the SQA’s performance because people did not understand the survey.

The situation has to change. We need clarity in guidance on national qualifications. We need to ensure that teachers and the SQA are singing from the same hymn sheet. We need to make sure that our school pupils face consistent and trusted tests. They will live with their qualifications for years to come, so it is only fair for education agencies to treat them consistently. Our young people should not have to hit a moving target.

Action must be taken to ensure that Education Scotland and the SQA rebuild the trust of teachers and parents. I reflect on the words of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney, who said:

“I readily concede that the world of education is complicated”.—[Official Report, Education and Skills Committee, 21 December 2016; c 4.]

Let us keep it simple. One thing is absolutely clear: Mr Swinney should note the concerns that have been raised in today’s debate and set about fixing the problems to get Scottish education back on track.

15:28  

The thrust of my speech relates to my role as the convener of the Education and Skills Committee. However, I would be slacking from my duty as an MSP if I did not comment on the tone of negativity and defeatism that oozes from the Labour motion. I am at a loss to understand how Labour’s depressing and negative attitude to Scottish education helps pupils, parents or teachers. How does constant criticism from that Opposition party do anything to encourage teachers in their undoubted challenge of closing the attainment gap?

The day after the best figures for destination outcomes have been announced, we have today been told again by Labour, which is no longer even the main Opposition party, that the chances of our children amounting to anything are slight. Why is it saying that? Because it has nothing left to offer but doom and gloom. It hopes that, if it squeezes any signs of positivity out of politics, people will go back to Labour. Fat chance—has it learned nothing in the past 10 years?

Local government needs to be accountable for its role in the education system. Teacher recruitment is the responsibility of councils, not the Government. If Iain Gray has questions about staff recruitment, perhaps he should speak to his colleagues in local authorities across the country.

Why is it that every time we hear about problems in education, they are the fault of local government, but any time anything good happens, it is because of the Scottish Government?

That would be a good point if it was factual. The reality is that we are talking about teacher numbers, and the responsibility for them lies not with the Scottish Government but with local authorities. Members are quick to put the responsibility on the Scottish Government—and it should take responsibility for what is its responsibility—but they have to put the responsibility at the local government level if that is where it lies. In the same way, if Labour ever gets round to it, it should criticise Westminster when responsibility for a problem lies there.

We know that the SNP Government has cut £1.5 billion from the local government budget, and we know from yesterday’s Accounts Commission report that more than 70 per cent of local government services spending goes straight to schools. Will James Dornan take responsibility for his Government’s cuts and their consequences?

I would love to take responsibility for the fact that the funding goes straight to schools, but I will give that credit to John Swinney.

We must recognise that the figures that came out show that local authorities still have huge reserves and that the cuts to local authority budgets were exactly in keeping with the cuts to the Scottish Government budget from Westminster. Westminster is the one level of government that I never hear the Labour Party criticise—why that is the case has always been a mystery to me.

If Labour was serious about supporting education, we would have had a different motion—one that recognised where Scottish education is, acknowledged that we still face numerous challenges and made suggestions about how we face up to those challenges.

I will put my convener’s hat on now. [Laughter.] Well, my first one was my MSP’s hat. It is nice to have two faces for the debate; I have been told that that comes in handy for politicians.

We will wait and see about that.

Other members have discussed the review of the agencies. I will discuss the information that the committee has gathered on school education since the recent inquiry concluded.

Before I do that, I thank the thousands of educators up and down Scotland who have committed their time and careers to giving our children, young people and many adults the best start that they can. Educators are more than just teachers. They are often the only constant in the lives of some of our most vulnerable children, and I highly commend anyone who has the courage and good will to enter the field of education.

Parents in Scotland want the best for their children, and it has been my pleasure to meet parents who take an active role, through many different organisations, in moulding our education system. I had the pleasure recently of visiting the joint campus of St Margaret Mary’s and St Conval’s in Castlemilk, which is having a hugely positive impact on pupils and staff. As is often the case with such things, there was a shaky start, but now everyone can see the benefit of the joint campus, although there are clearly still some issues.

On 12 January, the committee held a chamber debate in which I spoke in detail about the evidence that the committee took from teachers and others and about the issues that arose from it. I refer members to my speech in that debate.

The committee has continued to focus on inclusivity and has made sure that it hears directly from those who have practical experience of school life, as they are best placed to inform our work. By my calculations, we have through various means taken views from more than 200 teachers since the inquiry began into the SQA, Education Scotland, the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland. That excludes social media comments received but includes five more focus groups, a school visit, formal evidence taking and written submissions from teachers on issues such as additional support needs and personal and social education. We also have the results of a survey that was sent to headteachers on subject choices in the curriculum for excellence senior phase. That number of teachers does not include those who contributed views in correspondence that we received, unprompted, from teacher collectives. As the convener, I am delighted with the committee’s progress in establishing itself as a conduit for the views of children, young people, parents and front-line staff.

The committee is mindful of the diverse evidence that we hear and the challenge of analysing it to make recommendations to the Government. It is worth noting that a theme that has arisen from a number of the recent focus groups is the continued support for curriculum for excellence.

Beyond that theme, we have heard very different experiences by hearing from so many individuals, as members would expect. Each focus group and each written submission reflects distinct experiences of different teachers in different settings, who are teaching different ages of pupil and different subjects.

The evidence also highlights that, if we really want to know what is going on in education, the committee needs to keep doing what it is doing. We need to keep going out to schools, holding focus groups and gathering more information to further inform our work.

The committee has agreed to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny on the education bill and it will lead on the scrutiny of that bill. To ensure the best scrutiny, it is crucial that our deliberations are informed by all those who have something to say. Although we have heard a number of concerns and comments about how we could improve things in different aspects of education, nowhere have I got the sense of doom that the Labour Party motion has dragged us down to.

I thank all those who have contributed to our work and I encourage them and others who we are yet to hear from to contact us with their perspective on school education. The committee’s website has a video on the front page that details all the different ways in which people can get in touch.

I urge all members to accept that, although there is much room for improvement, Scottish education is still something that we should all be very proud of, and we should all make sure that parents, pupils and teachers hear that message loud and clear.

15:35  

I am grateful to the Labour Party for bringing forward this debate. The SNP Government has asked to be judged in this Parliament on its success in education, particularly on closing the attainment gap between the most and least deprived young people. The Scottish Greens focused our Opposition business debate on education and I am glad that the Labour Party has chosen to do the same.

As Liz Smith said, we all agree on the principle of high-quality education for everyone; the issue is how that can be achieved. Although I am glad that the Labour Party has brought the issue to the chamber, I would have liked to see not just the issues, but the solutions in the motion.

I am reassured at least that the Government amendment omits the most controversial aspects of its education policy. It does not mention standardised testing or the deeply unnecessary education governance review. I believe that the Parliament remains completely unconvinced by the focus on governance and structure, when the issues are clearly policy, delivery and resource. Following the concerns that have been raised by teachers, parents and others, the Government should consider whether the review will be a costly and time-consuming effort that addresses a question that is entirely different from the one that is being asked by so many—where are the resources? Where are the staff who used to be there? An as-yet abstract level of regional governance will not resolve that issue.

The other major component of the Government agenda that the Greens do not believe addresses the major issues in education is the introduction of—or the expansion of—standardised assessments. There is simply no evidence to suggest that the assessment of six-year-olds is needed. Teachers need the time and the resources to support their pupils. When they are not overstretched and overworked by the loss of colleagues and resources, teachers know their pupils as individuals and they can support their pupils’ individual needs. The standardised assessments approach runs counter to the principles of the curriculum for excellence, and the Greens will continue to oppose its expansion.

It is easy to criticise—I have done plenty of that in meetings of the Education and Skills Committee, including this morning—but we all have a duty to come forward with solutions. In the unselected Green amendment, we outlined specific proposals to improve education and the lives of our young people, and we ask that the cabinet secretary takes those on board.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s movement on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex inclusion in schools, but it is not enough. Nine in ten LGBTI young people have experienced bullying at school based on who they are and many have even been driven to self-harm or to attempt suicide. Despite new guidance in 2014, a culture of intolerance has persisted. The Education and Skills Committee received damning evidence of that in a recent round-table discussion.

We cannot continue to act as if nothing is wrong or expect guidance documents alone to resolve the issue. It would be a welcome first step if the Scottish Government could at least agree today to take on the two proposals for inclusive education from the TIE—time for inclusive education—campaign, which were outlined in the Green amendment. Explicitly recording all incidences of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools is vital. We look forward to ensuring that the Scottish Government and our local councils live up to their responsibility to LGBTI young people on that issue.

Proper training for teachers on those issues is also an essential step forward. It would finally undo the legacy of section 28, which we found still looms large over many schools. By ensuring that LGBTI issues are addressed in both initial teacher education and in free-to-access further training, we can take a meaningful step towards inclusive education for all our young people.

Does the member agree that the same training is required for the other protected areas such as disability, race and gender? Does he agree that we should not put one above the other and that all the protected areas should be looked at as a whole?

I agree that all teachers require training in all issues of protected characteristics and I would take an intersectional approach to all oppressed minority groups. I will cover that later in my speech.

With a majority of MSPs now having signed up to the TIE campaign’s pledge, I am optimistic that Parliament will ensure further progress towards genuinely inclusive education. For LGBT young people in particular, that is a pressing issue; they cannot afford for us to wait.

The Government must ensure that all new teachers receive proper training on additional support needs. One in four pupils in Scottish schools has an additional support need. As the definition has become broader, the training, resources and specialist teachers have not kept pace. Indeed, the number of staff has gone backwards, with one in seven ASN teachers having been cut since 2010.

At last week’s Education and Skills Committee round-table on additional support needs, we heard how teachers and pupils are not being adequately supported. That included the damning example of a member of staff being directed to watch “The Big Bang Theory” to better understand Asperger’s syndrome. We should not read too much into a specific incident, but that is indicative of the results of budget cuts and the erosion of ASN training. Again, I am sure that the Parliament will hold the Government to account if it fails to ensure that more training, and more accessible training, is available for teachers.

Finally, the Green amendment called for the Scottish Government to poverty proof our schools. The EIS has run a great campaign on the issue by highlighting what schools can do across a range of issues from hunger to homework. With one in five children in Scotland living in poverty, schools must be supported to help their pupils.

I am disappointed that our amendment was not selected, but I ask the closing speakers from all other parties to respond to what the Greens and the EIS are calling for. The Government has at least acknowledged in its amendment the contribution of budget cuts, teacher workload and the exceptionally poor performance of agencies, including the SQA. Labour has laid out the issues that are being faced across the board, although, as I said, the Greens would like to see more solutions coming forward and not just problems being highlighted.

The Greens will continue to propose the solutions that we believe are necessary to provide a high-quality and inclusive education for all Scotland’s young people.

15:41  

I recognise the privileged position that Mr Swinney holds as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, which I would contend is the best job in the Government. I was a little sorry that it was not Mr Chips that we got today but Mr Angry.

All of us who understand the power of education and have felt or seen its liberating power and how it supports people to achieve their potential, who have watched a child struggling to learn or an adult celebrating learning for the first time, would relish Mr Swinney’s job as a chance to make a real difference to Scotland, despite its challenges.

I know that the Government’s strategy for today is to say that the Labour Party is being negative, but saying it does not make it so. It is because of my optimism about Scotland and the potential of education to liberate our young people that I insist that the Scottish Government focuses on what it could do to make a real difference to people’s lives. As we all know, it cannot just be about caring for education; it is about effective action that is shaped by an honest understanding of the scale of the problem and an approach that is based on evidence of what has been done and will be done to make a difference to the lives of our young people.

The strategy for today’s debate is to delegate blame and there has been manifest whataboutery in the chamber. Members demean themselves if their only job is to delegate blame rather than to look at the challenges confronting education.

Who is to blame for the percentage of pupils achieving highers going up from 42 to 60 per cent since 2007?

A well-prepared intervention goes down well, but that makes my point for me. This is not simply about who takes credit and who takes the blame; it is about how we ensure that our education system is fit for purpose.

I do not want to lay at John Swinney’s door all the woes of the education system in the past 10 years. As a back bencher long before that, I was willing to take on my own Government and local authority over what they were doing. I only wish that those on the back benches who can give voice to criticisms of local government would occasionally find the voice to take on their own front bench. We know that John Swinney has been doing the job only since last May, but there is no doubt that his decisions as finance minister to cut local government budgets and disproportionately cut college budgets have made his job now a great deal more difficult.

There are massive challenges. I recommend to members the measured and thoughtful report of the Education and Skills Committee, which was unanimously agreed. The report seeks to address the grave anxiety that our education agencies, particularly the SQA and Education Scotland, are creating. It is car-crash television. In an attempt to give people confidence, more questions are thrown up about what is happening in our schools.

For our teaching and other staff, there is an issue about confidence. The report was, in part, shaped by the evidence of teachers—an overwhelming, heartfelt response, giving voice to their frustration at what they were expected to do and their professional frustration at what was happening. Something serious is going on. If this Parliament is serious about being rooted in the real world, it needs to listen to that.

The cabinet secretary’s approach to that report has been the ministerial equivalent of saying, “Nothing to see here; just move on.” Sadly, rather than reflecting on what the report says, the cabinet secretary settled for what is easy: faux outrage in this debate, rather than fierce determination to understand what is being said. He throws up a straw man—or, perhaps, on international women’s day, a straw person—and says that, of course, the evidence is not a balanced enough sample. However, we know that what the responses said chimed with every bit of evidence that we have heard across the board. It will not do to belittle or impugn the motives of those who raise concerns. What an irony that the side of the chamber that I am on is accused of talking down teaching at the very time that the Government comes after those teachers who dare to raise their voices to say that there are problems.

Will Johann Lamont give way?

The truth is that, in response to criticism—

Will Johann Lamont give way?

The member is not giving way.

In response to criticism, the Scottish Government has not opened up its thinking to what is possible in education.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Johann Lamont has made a very serious allegation about the behaviour of Government ministers, suggesting that we would somehow go after teachers for what they said in their responses. I want to give Johann Lamont the opportunity to withdraw that allegation or to substantiate it with evidence. It is a very serious allegation about the conduct of ministers.

That is a point of debate, not a point of order. You have put your comments on the record. Please continue, Ms Lamont.

I am happy to withdraw those comments, if that is how they have been interpreted. I made the simple point that we are accused of talking down teaching at the same time as, when teachers raise their voices in this report, it is suggested that their motives are that they have other axes to grind. That is the fact of the matter.

The Scottish Government has not opened up its thinking to what is possible in education policy. It has settled for lines to take. No matter how well the cabinet secretary, the First Minister and the back benchers parrot them, lines are all that they are. They are things to do, but they do not add up to the serious, thoughtful and focused approach that is required.

What does the Scottish Government need to do? It needs to stop settling for debating points. It needs to understand how threadbare the support for additional support needs is in our schools. It needs to listen to Enable, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and others. It needs to recognise the challenges in numeracy and literacy and address the questions around the curriculum for excellence, in particular the needs of national 4 students who, in my view, have been shown a lack of respect as young people. It also needs to understand fully the causes and consequences of barriers to learning.

In the end, the issue is about resources. Local authorities cannot be condemned for making cuts when, over the past period, the Government has consistently targeted local government for those cuts. I hope that Jenny Gilruth recognises the irony in what she said about cuts in Fife.

We need to have a conversation across the chamber about how we can properly invest in education, use those resources effectively and focus on the needs of young people, because education is the means by which they can achieve their potential.

15:49  

Since I was elected to this Parliament, it has become clear to me—I think that this is recognised by everybody—that the early years of life are the most important ones for learning. That is when the foundations of our future are laid and when we begin moving down the path that will take us through childhood and our teenage years and, ultimately, to adulthood.

It is good that the Scottish Government states that it is committed to improving and increasing high-quality and flexible early learning and childcare that is accessible and affordable for all children and families. However, education experts repeatedly stress the importance of maintaining a registered teacher workforce in all pre-school settings, and the added value that those specialists can give to nursery establishments. Indeed, the First Minister made a firm commitment recently to make that a top priority of the Government as it is a way to close the attainment gap, for which the most effective work has to be done in the earliest years. Despite that, the numbers of early learning and childcare teachers are down since 2007. In 2007 there were 1,672, but there has been a 41 per cent decrease; that is a significant decrease in nursery teacher numbers, which affects all our communities.

I urge the Scottish Government to end the birthday discrimination rule, which means that some children end up not getting the full care that they are entitled to; in fact, some are getting as many as 400 fewer hours of childcare. We have debated the matter before. For several years, the Scottish Conservatives have urged the Scottish Government to address that discrimination, and our plea again to the Government is for it to do something now. It is wrong that a child loses out on hundreds of hours of nursery education purely because he or she was born in the wrong month.

The discrimination also has a financial impact on families, who are missing out on hundreds of pounds-worth of free entitlement. That is set to climb further when the free entitlement is increased from 600 to 1,140 hours per year by 2020. That is not a complex thing to sort out, but it should be done with urgency. I urge the cabinet secretary and his colleagues to revisit the issue.

The other issue that affects many children is the lack of flexibility. In 2016, the fair funding for our kids campaign revealed that two thirds of nursery places are for half days only, which means that they are completely unsuitable for working parents. The campaign reported that 65 per cent of all nursery places in Scotland and 89 per cent of all council nursery places for three to five-year-olds were for half days only.

According to new research by the Family and Childcare Trust, childcare prices in Scotland have risen by an inflation busting 4.5 per cent in the past year, and only one in four councils in Scotland is confident that there is enough childcare in its area for every parent who works full time. The gaps are even bigger for parents who do not work regular office hours—shift workers and so on—for whom only one in nine councils said that there was enough care available. Unlike the situation in England, councils in Scotland do not have a duty to make sure that there is enough childcare in the local area. We need to revisit that urgently.

Lots of councils award partnership funding for only a year at a time, so there have been cases in which a child has had to move five times to different nurseries between the ages of three and five, because of a change in funding and a change in relationship. Again, that is distressing for children and parents alike.

Finally, I turn to additional support needs. A report by Enable Scotland, which was published at the end of 2016, revealed that inclusive education is still far from a reality for many young people. That includes not just education, but their friends and peers, what happens outwith the classroom and their opportunity to undertake activities for the whole school day. I welcome the fact that the number of pupils identified with lots of different conditions has increased, because there has been a change in the definitions.

However, we need to revisit the issue of mainstreaming as against those pupils who go to special schools. Mainstreaming should be for the majority of children, but I fear that we have moved too far away from looking at children who need the extra help that they can get in special schools. Too often in recent years when I have spoken to parents and visited different schools, I have heard horror stories of bullying and a lack of achievement because a child has been moved out of a specialist school and mainstreamed.

We need to start the debate afresh. We must take the principle—it is one that I know the Government agrees with—that we look at every child. However, we must ensure that the funding follows the child, so that they get the proper education that they deserve, and so that the families feel that they are being supported, too.

15:55  

I declare an interest as a board member of the Scottish Schools Education Research Centre.

Rarely have I felt as despondent about a debate as I do today about Labour’s motion. I say to the diminished group on my right that if parents, pupils and teachers believed a word of Labour’s negativity, I would not be here as the constituency MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw, because I would not be here without their support. The Labour Party strongly needs to reflect on that and on how wrong its representation of Scottish education has been this afternoon.

In February 2015, the Government moved to address falling teachers numbers, because the councils could not maintain the numbers. North Lanarkshire Council, as part of its 2015-16 budget, was planning to cut 126 teaching posts. When the Government stepped in to prevent that, the Labour council leader at the time, Jim McCabe, said:

“the gun being held to our head by the Scottish Government over teacher numbers is unacceptable.”

That is the reality of Labour councils when it comes to teacher numbers.

Despite the bleating, North Lanarkshire Council took the Scottish Government money to maintain the teacher numbers, but it was so utterly inept that it could not count the teachers properly and had to hand back £713,000 that could have been used for the education of people in my constituency and elsewhere in North Lanarkshire.

Iain Gray talked about his area, and I will focus on mine. Not only is North Lanarkshire Council unable to count its teachers; it is unable to monitor its contracts. A press report has mentioned an on-going investigation into a potential £20 million overspend on contracts. Despite that, Labour members come to the chamber today blaming our Government for cuts. They should hang their heads in shame.

Through the pupil equity fund, £2,067,600 is going directly to the headteachers in my area. I will be keen to see how they use that money. Berryhill primary school in Craigneuk is receiving the most funding—£140,400—because it is in one of the most deprived areas in Scotland. It is the only school in the area because, a few years ago, the Labour council closed St Matthew’s primary against the will of the local people. It is this Government that is supporting Berryhill primary school.

What else has the Labour council done? A few months ago, it closed Craigneuk library. That is cultural vandalism against one of the poorest areas in our country. I say again that Labour members should hang their heads in shame.

At Mavisbank school, which is a complex additional support needs school, the council is cutting instructors and early learning practitioners, who will be replaced by classroom assistants who cannot give the young people the one-to-one support that they need. Despite that, Labour complains to us about the support for additional needs students.

The Opposition will not talk about the £1.4 million of educational maintenance allowance that the Government allocated last year to North Lanarkshire Council. That money keeps our young people in education—

Will the member take an intervention?

I am sorry, but I am not taking any interventions.

Neither will the Opposition talk about the £2.8 million of European funding that the council received in last year’s budget. Goodness knows where that money will come from after Brexit.

Labour talks about the Government failing our young people. The students of New College Lanarkshire whom I welcomed to the Parliament only a few weeks ago because they had won gold, silver and bronze awards at the WorldSkills challenge were certainly not failed by the Scottish Government. Their achievements covered areas from music and technical make-up artistry to engineering. They will go on to be among the 93 per cent of young people who go on to positive destinations. We should all be welcoming the fact that that is the highest level ever of young people going on to positive destinations.

Is it not good that we now count those figures accurately? When Labour was in charge, it was happy to give money to schools to tackle the number of children who were not in education, employment or training even though it had no mechanism to follow the progress of those children. When she was this Government’s education secretary, Angela Constance implemented information sharing with the colleges to allow that to happen, so we now have accurate figures on what works.

What about the £729 million of private finance initiative costs that North Lanarkshire Council will incur for its PFI schools? Last year, it spent £21.3 million of its budget on financing PFI charges. The schools that are built in our area under this Government will remain in council control at the end of the contracts.

I want to talk about Thornlie primary, which gets pupil equity funding and which recently gave evidence to a parliamentary committee, and St Aidan’s high school, another school that gets pupil equity funding, which was a finalist in the TES awards only a few years ago. Let us get this right. I will work with anyone who is serious about improving education in Scotland.

16:01  

It should come as no surprise to the Deputy First Minister that there is only one Scott on the dux board at Anderson high school in Lerwick. He is right—that person is not me, but my sister. Every time I go to Inverness royal academy to see how my son is doing in his highers, I see Mr Gray’s name at the top of the dux board. Greatness is vested in many, just not in me.

At this morning’s meeting of the Education and Skills Committee, John Swinney accused me of brandishing a paper in a previous debate. I must confess that he got the better of me, so I thought, “What am I going to do today?” Today’s edition of The Herald gives me another opportunity to brandish a paper, because it includes a league table. There has not been much discussion of that in the debate.

I want to make some serious points that relate to the thoughtful coverage of education in Scotland in today’s Herald. The league table demonstrates a straightforward fact—that children from poorer backgrounds trail behind kids from well-off families. The attainment gap is wide and shows few signs of closing. In the top 50 Scottish schools that have been identified using Scottish Government data, seven of the top 10 schools have either no pupils or fewer than five pupils from deprived backgrounds. In fairness, most Scottish schools have a much greater social mix, but the tables reflect the fact that deprivation has an extremely significant impact on exam performance. Schools that serve middle-class areas do better.

So where should we go now? There has been political consensus around curriculum for excellence, but politics has delivered cuts to school budgets over many years. As teachers in Shetland said to me at the weekend, the number of classroom assistant numbers is down, there is less learning support and class sizes have increased. Since 2011, Scotland has implemented a new approach to teaching. At the same time, the money that is available to our schools has been cut. It is important to recognise that, on top of that, the exam system has changed, so it is no wonder that the implementation of CFE has been so challenging.

The results are worrying. They have been well rehearsed, and I will not repeat them. What is to be the response to that? The Deputy First Minister is reading the responses to his review of who does what. He has introduced a direct but as yet limited funding stream to headteachers that is based on the take-up of free school meals but, in effect, that means that the majority of funding for schools still arrives via local government.

I want to suggest that what education needs more than anything is a change in the culture of conformity. Education needs cultural change. Culture, as many people argue, trumps structure. The very core of curriculum for excellence is to open out teaching, to foster an engaged and enhanced profession, to provide a broad landscape for schools and to encourage innovation, yet, more often than not, the opposite is what we find.

If Scotland is to hold on to curriculum for excellence, make it work and deliver success for pupils and young people, we must be honest about what has happened since 2011 and learn from it. Curriculum for excellence was implemented by a Government board that, as James Dornan’s committee discovered, took no collective responsibility for what was happening; listened, but did not act on teacher workload pressures; and acquiesced while 20,000 pages of ever-changing guidance flooded the inboxes of every teacher in the country. It is not the curriculum for excellence management board, stuffed as it is with the educational good and great, that has finally begun to limit the endless centrally produced teacher guidance; it is John Swinney who, since last year, has been addressing that point, and I give him credit for that.

The governance review should start at the top, with the Deputy First Minister’s own department and agencies. I suggest that he separate school inspection from policy advice to ministers, as that, logically, should be in Mr Swinney’s office. Having an overall strategic plan is Mr Swinney's responsibility—and rightly so. The philosophy behind curriculum of excellence is putting trust in teachers, so let us prove that by trusting teacher judgment and trusting teachers to deliver the very strategic plan that the Government wants to introduce.

Mr Swinney needs to be clear about his national improvement plan, which should deliver results in areas where Scotland faces real attainment challenges. However, it should also recognise that the top 50 schools as set out in today’s Herald do not need lots more guidance—they are already delivering for pupils. One size does not fit all; indeed, that philosophy has failed across the whole public sector. Education Scotland has not worked, and the SQA cannot be an arm of Government, a regulator of exams and a monopoly service provider at the same time. Change needs to happen, and cultural reform must, above all, be about schools.

Today’s Herald features the Vale of Leven academy which, although it serves high-deprivation areas and therefore has a real social mix of pupils, has improved with regard to the attainment challenge, with the higher pass rate rising from 67 to 71 per cent in just four years. Many of the reasons for that have been detailed today, and I want to say a big “Well done” to headteacher Paul Darroch and his staff.

Scottish education needs innovation at the school level and an end to conformity. Real school leadership must be supported and good practice shared. Yes, school clusters should be put in place, with primary schools linked to secondary schools, and schools being close to colleges, to business and to work. The northern alliance is leading on that work in the north of the country—and there is more to come in that respect.

Instead of imposing everything from the top, we need to look at giving schools much more flexibility within curriculum for excellence and allowing them to find many more different ways of doing things. In that respect, I am thinking of Jim McColl’s technical school in Glasgow, and there could also be a focus on engineering, plumbing and many other areas.

Let me finish with this: the future has to be better. In a world of alternative facts, young people need the skills to sort out truth from lies. We need them to know that ignorance is not bliss; that experts matter and can make the difference; and that tolerance of others is important and valued. A moral compass and an open mind have never been more vital in the world in which we now live.

16:07  

Educators and others who work in schools and colleges across Scotland will be angry—and rightly so—at the wording of today’s Labour motion and Labour members’ apparent keenness to use our schools as a tool to attack the SNP with. As the cabinet secretary has acknowledged, there are clearly improvements to be made in our education system, but Labour’s constant attacks on teachers and classroom assistants are shameful and its continued failure to recognise the good work that is being done in our schools is having the same demoralising effect on our teachers that its continued attacks on our doctors and nurses are having in the national health service.

Let us look at the facts, which others have already pointed out. The percentage of pupils who have achieved at least one qualification at higher level or equivalent has significantly increased since 2007. At that point, 42 per cent of pupils were achieving that, and the figure now stands at over 60 per cent. I should say to Johann Lamont, who I see has left the chamber, that I resent her earlier accusation in response to my intervention that the question that I asked was planted and that I was somehow unable to come up with my own.

It is clear that, since the SNP took office in 2007, improvements have been made that have had a positive impact on education in Scotland. It is great to see the hard work of our fantastic teachers paying off, and it shows just how talented our youngsters are. The commitment to continually improving standards in our schools and ensuring that our young people have opportunities to go on to work, education or training is reflected in the percentages of our young people who are reaching positive destinations, as others have mentioned.

In North Lanarkshire, the percentage of school leavers in a positive destination rose from below 88 per cent in 2011-12 to over 92 per cent last year. I am confident in saying that schools across North Lanarkshire, including in my Coatbridge and Chryston constituency, are reaping the benefits of the Scottish Government’s commitment to education. We can now see excellent progress in aiding our young people to have the best possible chances in life. I am delighted to see that 66 per cent of school leavers in North Lanarkshire now go on to further or higher education and 22 per cent go into employment.

In Coatbridge and Chryston, the statistics are even better. Ninety-one per cent of high school leavers achieve a positive destination. That is something to take pride in as we continue to work to increase the number of young people who achieve positive destinations.

Last week, I had the pleasure of leading a debate on apprenticeships. The SNP’s extra investment in and focus on apprenticeships over the past decade have ensured that our young people are equipped with the necessary skills to allow skill gaps to be met and our industries to flourish and with the skills that they need to be at the forefront of our economy and jobs market. Colleges and universities are not for everyone. That is why it is important to offer opportunities such as apprenticeships to young people, so that they have the skills to take them forward in life.

We should celebrate the fact that Scotland has the second-lowest youth unemployment in the European Union. That demonstrates that we are taking positive steps in the right direction by investing in modern apprenticeships. During the debate last week, I highlighted the need for more black and minority ethnic young people and young women to be offered apprenticeships. That is worth highlighting again, given that today is international women’s day and we had an excellent debate about that in the Parliament yesterday.

Improving literacy is a key priority nationally, and it should be a key aim in North Lanarkshire. We know that improving literacy will help to close the attainment gap and improve the life chances of our young people.

I recently had the privilege of attending Coatbridge high school, which is my old high school, for its literacy festival. I accompanied the Deputy First Minister there. That was a two-day event that was organised by the school’s literacy group and which allowed every pupil and department in the school to benefit from a wide array of workshops and interactive activities. The festival offered young people the opportunity to experience an exciting range of speakers from across the expressive arts and allowed students to experience the rich diversity of the literacy world in their own school. That festival is innovative and it happens locally to benefit pupils. There was no doom and gloom when I went to that school. Teachers got on with it and wanted to find ways to help pupils to excel.

As the cabinet secretary has said, we recognise that there are challenges—that is obvious—but the SNP is committed to closing the attainment gap. In North Lanarkshire, which is my local authority area, schools will benefit from almost £9 million as part of the Scottish Government’s drive to improve standards in schools. Clare Adamson mentioned that. Broken down, that means that 120 primary schools and 23 secondary schools across North Lanarkshire will receive additional support and funding, which will be for the teachers and school leaders to decide how best to utilise to close the poverty-related attainment gap. That means £1.25 million for primary schools and almost half a million pounds for secondary schools in Coatbridge and Chryston. Almost half of the pupils in two of the secondary schools in my constituency—Coatbridge high school and St Andrew’s high school—are at Scottish index of multiple deprivation level 1, so that money will be very welcome.

The funding means that children from the poorest backgrounds will receive additional support to stop them having their chances limited by circumstances that are outside their control. As I have said already, part of my constituency is among the top 10 most deprived areas in the country. I am determined to help to change that. Closing the poverty-related attainment gap is vital, and the £120 million pupil equity fund will play a central role in making that goal achievable. That fund gives assurances to parents, teachers, school leaders and pupils that standards will be driven up and that the intergenerational cycle of deprivation will be tackled.

I see that I am running out of time, Presiding Officer. I had quite a lot more to say about nurture groups and play as ways of helping young people to learn, for instance, but, given that I do not have much time left, I will go straight to my conclusion.

There is a lot to be proud of in our education system, but there is undoubtedly more to be done, and the Government is up for the challenge. I am disappointed by Labour’s motion. The generations of people from Coatbridge, Monklands and across the central belt who voted for Labour while I was growing up would be shocked to learn that that is what Labour uses its valuable debate time for as the third party now in the Parliament.

You must close, please.

I urge Labour to start backing our teachers and young people. Instead of constantly seeking to use our teachers and classroom assistants as a tool to criticise the SNP, Labour should start being constructive and should work with the Government.

16:14  

I am pleased to speak in this debate and to support what has been said by Liz Smith and other colleagues. It is a matter of deep regret and alarm that 10 years of SNP Government has seen a decline in education standards in Scotland, as evidenced by the PISA survey, and a sense of drift and malaise that has knocked the confidence of a system that used to be regarded as a world leader. That position is in stark contrast to the significant attainment improvements in education over the past decade that have been seen in other parts of the United Kingdom. We should all, across the Parliament, be concerned about that.

As a Lothian MSP, I am acutely aware of the concerns of so many parents in my constituency about education standards and the reduction in teacher and support staff numbers. At portfolio questions earlier today, I highlighted the decrease in the number of support staff working in secondary schools in Edinburgh by almost a fifth since 2010, one of the greatest falls in Scotland. I am told that that we have the SNP councillors running the City of Edinburgh Council to blame for that, which is something that I will make sure that we do for the council elections in May.

However, other written answers that I have received from the Government indicate that there are many other worrying staff declines across a range of indicators. The number of teachers working in Edinburgh who have additional support needs for learning as their main subject declined from 166 in 2007 to 120 in 2016. Data also shows that the number of additional support needs staff in Edinburgh’s primary schools has fallen from 63 in 2007 to just 27 and that the number of such staff in Edinburgh’s secondary schools has declined from 70 to 44. Over the same period, West Lothian Council has seen a similar decline in the number of additional support for learning teachers, falling from 92 to 62. The number of centrally employed teachers with additional support needs for learning as their main subject in both Edinburgh and West Lothian has also declined.

Further, as Monica Lennon said earlier, across Scotland as a whole, the number of additional support needs teachers fell from over 3,400 in 2009 to 2,896 in 2016. At the same time, there has been an overall increase of 44 per cent since 2012 in the number of pupils with additional support needs, with one in four Scottish pupils now requiring additional support.

The Scottish Government makes much of its commitment to reducing the attainment gap—something that we would all welcome—but it is difficult to see how that is going to be achieved on the ground if the numbers of school support staff and additional support for learning teachers in our schools continue to be cut back so severely. The support for learning staff play a critical role in supporting pupils who might be struggling at school, and their absence piles the pressure on mainstream teachers. That is something that ministers need to address with Scottish councils.

The inspection regime is also vitally important in assessing how our schools are performing and what improvements and requirements are needed at school level. Again, it is genuinely concerning that the number of school inspections has fallen significantly since 2012 at primary school and preschool level as well as at secondary school level. However, it is specifically the severe fall in the number of preschool inspections that is important to consider because it is critical that we get early years education right. I believe that ministers need to look objectively at how they will reverse that trend in school inspections.

There is a specific school building issue that is of concern locally to parents in Edinburgh. Liberton high school is one of the last schools in Edinburgh in need of upgrade or replacement. It is a great school that has a strong and effective parent council that wants to see refurbishment and investment to ensure that the building offers the best learning environment for the children and is truly fit for purpose. We need to look at how that matter is taken forward over the next five years of this Parliament. In the spirit of consensus, I hope that the cabinet secretary will agree to meet me, the parent council and the City of Edinburgh Council to look at how we can take forward what is a vital investment for our young people in the south of the city.

This debate is vitally important. Education is fundamental to individual success across Scotland, the success of our society and the success of our economy. The SNP’s stewardship of our education system for the past decade has, indeed, let down parents, teachers and pupils. The Government’s review of governance is a great opportunity to change things for the better and ministers must not let that opportunity pass. The proposed new education bill can and must deliver for schools to ensure that we empower them and that there is a relentless focus on standards and attainment so that Scotland can regain its place as a world leader in education.

Fulton MacGregor’s comments earlier raised an issue for me, which I have also noted in the health debates that I take part in regularly in the chamber. In this debate, an important point that we need to consider across our parties is that our Scottish education system depends not on the SNP but on the teachers and support staff who deliver education day in and day out. It is time that SNP ministers started to understand that.

16:20  

A few weeks ago, as a member of the Education and Skills Committee, I joined a group of teachers from a range of primary schools, in this place, to discuss the issues that they face, freely and confidentially. In the group there was a mix of new and very experienced teachers, teachers in promoted posts and at least one recently qualified teacher in his probationary year.

What struck me most about the meeting were the absolute dedication and passion that those teachers had for the attainment and welfare of their pupils. Many of the teachers taught in schools in areas of extreme poverty and deprivation. Over the two hours of our meeting, it became very apparent that that single factor was the main hurdle they faced when working tremendously hard to get our children to achieve and learn.

We had a very wide discussion of the challenges faced in certain schools and the associated expansion of the role of the teacher to include social worker. One teacher told us that, as the deputy head, she is often the person who gets the children out of bed, clothes and feeds them and takes them to school. She is actually up early, chapping doors to get kids up and into school.

The teachers all said that the majority of the issues that children had that impeded their learning and put considerable strain on the teaching staff were things that happened outwith school and that stemmed from their early years. Among a number of the teachers, there was huge support for the 1,140 hours of free childcare as being a good way to target developmental issues at an early stage. Everyone present recognised the value of that in potentially alleviating some of the issues that those children face.

I come from a family of teachers, and the teachers’ words reminded me very much of my brother-in-law, who trained as a primary teacher, worked initially in a deprived area of Aberdeen city and later went on to work in a specialised school for children with extreme behavioural issues. He is now deployed back into primaries in the city as a behavioural expert.

When he was a primary teacher, I remember that his school had a real problem with actually getting kids to the gates in the mornings, and many of the kids who did make it were making their own way there. A very high proportion of those children would also have their breakfast at school, as there was no breakfast at home.

One of the teachers started going in early to play football with the kids before school, as an incentive to get more of them to come in. It worked. Those were children who often had no leisure interaction with any family members, and a game of footie before they went into the breakfast club was an incentive—something that they looked forward to and that made the difference between their staying at home and going to school.

After the meeting, I was left in no doubt about three things. The first was that the Scottish Government’s increase in childcare provision is a hugely important step in tackling educational and developmental issues stemming from poverty and deprivation. The renewed focus on tackling neglect is also hugely important.

Secondly, I found that giving headteachers the autonomy to spend the extra funding in their schools, through the attainment fund, to target the specific issues that their pupils and teachers face is absolutely the right thing to do—whether that be on ASL, extra classroom assistants or something as fundamental as having a fully funded breakfast club. Schools have differing needs and headteachers know what those needs are.

The third—and possibly the most important—thing was this. Tackling poverty is a fundamental priority of the Scottish Government, and we should all be asking for more welfare powers to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, because tackling poverty is not a priority of the UK Government.

Will the member take an intervention?

I have actually had my time cut, so I am not going to take any interventions, if the member does not mind. I usually do, so I am sorry.

The UK Government’s benefits and sanctions regime keeps people in poverty, drives people into poverty and will perpetuate the circle of poverty. That cannot stand. Children cannot attain when they are hungry and neglected, and schools cannot undo the effect of endemic poverty.

As for teacher numbers, I am lucky to represent part of a local authority area that has a great administration that put together a budget that protected teacher numbers. I give credit where it is due: alongside the SNP co-leader, Richard Thomson, sits the Labour co-leader, Alison Evison. We can work together. When they worked together and put forward their budget, the Tory and Lib Dem Opposition put forward an alternative budget, which would have cut nearly £8 million from the education budget.

Mr Gray would not take an intervention from me, so I will put what I wanted to say to him in my speech. You quoted an awful lot of people in your speech, Mr Gray and I have a quote for you. It comes from one of your party’s members, Liz Cameron, the executive member for children, young people and lifelong learning in Glasgow City Council. In the Evening Times last night, she was talking about the achievements of Glasgow City Council pupils. She said:

“Over the last 10 years more and more young people are choosing to stay on at school. As a result they leave with more qualifications and skills and on to positive destinations. The increase in our staying on rates for S5/S6 has risen from 45 per cent in 2006 to almost 70 per cent of pupils and it’s clearly reaping the benefits for Glasgow’s young people.”

Who do we give the credit to for that?

Glasgow City Council.

Exactly. Do we give it to Glasgow City Council, or do we start working together?

Ms Martin, you must close.

It does not matter who does it, as long as someone does it.

Let me say at this point that all members should remember to speak through the chair and not to each other.

16:26  

I see it as my job, as an elected member on the Opposition benches, to speak truth, based on the evidence that is before me. If John Swinney thinks that we should be celebrating instead, if Jenny Gilruth thinks that we are being miserable, and if Clare Adamson and Fulton MacGregor think that we are being negative, so be it. I will continue to analyse the evidence that the Scottish Government publishes and I will continue to speak truth to the Government about my constituents’ concerns.

According to its own report card, the Scottish Government’s funding of education in Dundee is falling and its record on education is not good enough. I stress that that is to measure the SNP by its own standards, its targets, its manifesto commitments and its pledge to the people of Dundee.

Dundee’s schools have suffered cuts that are more than the average in Scotland. For example, the SNP made a manifesto commitment to class sizes of 18 for children in primary 1 to 3. Across Scotland, the SNP has managed to get just 12.7 per cent of P1 to P3 pupils into classes of such a size, but in Dundee only 2.6 per cent of children of that age learn in a classroom that has fewer than 18 pupils—that is 122 pupils out of 4,500. Members may call me negative and say that I should be celebrating, but by anyone’s estimates that is a broken promise and a huge failure of Government policy.

On school spending, Dundee City Council is ranked 30th out of 32 local authorities. Only two councils in Scotland spend less than Dundee spends on primary school education. With one in four children growing up in poverty in our city, we should expect the converse—that is, that more is spent where it is needed, and Kez Dugdale made the case for doing that. In 2010, Dundee spent more than £5,000 per primary school pupil on education; seven years later, under the SNP Government, every primary school pupil in Dundee has nearly £900 less spent on them—the amount that is spent is £4,151 per Dundee pupil, which is only £99 more than the lowest spend in Scotland.

In his opening speech, John Swinney said that school spending went up in Scotland last year. I say to Mr Swinney that it went up in some areas but it did not go up in Dundee. Why does the Scottish Government continue to preside over a system that allows the poorest local authorities to cut education spending while more prosperous councils maintain spending? Why will the Government not look to progressive taxation, as the Labour leader outlined?

When we learned a few weeks ago that the number of additional support needs teachers had fallen by 14 per cent in Scotland, it came as no surprise to me to find that cuts to additional support teachers in Dundee schools totalled 28 per cent—double the proportion.

I refute entirely the Government’s well-worn argument, over these past few weeks, that additional support teachers are no longer as necessary now that additional support has been mainstreamed into classroom teachers’ jobs—it always was and always will be. However, ASN teachers gave additional support to the children who needed it, and that support is now much more difficult to come by, as Monica Lennon told the chamber. I spoke to one ASN teacher who had gone back into classroom teaching because she was being asked to cover classrooms due to teacher shortages in her school so often that she was not able to carry out ASN teaching. She figured that she would be better with a class of her own. The Government has undermined ASN staff and has stripped out their resources.

We have all heard today the shocking figure that, under this Government, 4,000 teachers have been stripped out of Scotland’s schools. In Dundee, since 2010, 114 teachers have gone—a drop of 7.5 per cent. The Government’s own figures on reading and counting were published just before Christmas. If parents can have any expectation of their children’s time at school it is that they should at least be able to read and count. However, we find that less than half of pupils in Dundee are achieving the expected levels of numeracy by primary 7, although the national average is 68 per cent. Only just more than half of them—51 per cent—are achieving the expected levels of writing by primary 7. If Mr Swinney tells me that that is something to celebrate, I will get really angry. The Government cannot disassociate its cuts in spending over so many years and the lower spend per pupil in Dundee from those results.

The attainment gap is writ large over the map of our city. Only 20 to 30 per cent of pupils at Menzieshill’s Gowriehill primary school hit their numeracy targets. However, if we take the number 73 bus down to Broughty Ferry, we find that 90 per cent of pupils there hit their numeracy targets, and the Ferry has the only Dundee secondary school that is featured in The Herald’s list of top 50 state schools by exam results, which was published today.

You must close, Ms Marra.

I will, Presiding Officer.

What is the SNP’s answer to that? It is to close Menzieshill high school and swallow it up into a now-overcrowded bigger school.

The results for Dundee tell a great story about the attainment gap and this Government’s priority—and it should be dealing with it.

The final speaker in the open debate is Joan McAlpine. I can allow you only five minutes, Ms McAlpine.

16:32  

The Scottish local government financial statistics for 2015-16, which were published last week, bear quoting again because they show that, year on year, councils spent 2.7 per cent more on education in cash terms and 1.9 per cent more in real terms. Labour’s assertion is therefore simply not true. There is also a contradiction at the heart of Labour’s argument in the debate. Labour members claim that the SNP is responsible for education in all our schools and they blame the Government for the perceived failings that they have outlined. However, at the same time, they ignore the fact that it is councils that are responsible for schools.

I remind the member of the remarks of the SNP councillors in Dundee. They said that the real problem in education is not who runs the school budgets; it is the fact that the budgets are being cut.

Maybe the member did not hear what I said at the start of my speech. The budgets are clearly not being cut, as councils are spending more on education.

Will the member give way?

No. I have just taken an intervention and I have only five minutes. Sorry.

Labour members cannot say on the one hand that the SNP is taking power away from councils in education, and on the other hand that councils do not have responsibility for education. That just does not add up.

We have heard a lot of examples of Labour councils failing to maintain teacher numbers. In Dumfries and Galloway, in my region, senior Labour figures on the council regularly complained that they were not being allowed to cut teacher numbers by Mr Swinney when he was the finance secretary. Unfortunately, they pressed ahead with cutting the number of additional support needs professionals. That was entirely the Labour council’s decision. I and others—parents, in particular—spoke up about that, but the council insisted that it was doing it for sound educational reasons. That is another local authority decision that I am not surprised that Labour would like to distance itself from. Interestingly, last November, when the Scottish public was asked by YouGov who should run schools, only 21 per cent said that they felt that it should be councils. That is probably to do with the track record of many Labour local authorities around the country cutting teacher numbers.

Liz Smith, in what I thought was a more constructive speech than those made by many others in her party, said that curriculum for excellence should be assessed. I left it too late to intervene in her speech, but the point that I wanted to raise with her is that the introduction of standardised assessment is surely a way to do that. Another failure at the heart of Labour’s argument is that pupils are currently being assessed using a myriad of methods that cannot be compared. Every single party in the Parliament supported curriculum for excellence and, if we want to see how it is working, we need a standardised picture across the country.

It is interesting that Mr Gray and his colleagues have so many negative things to say about league tables, which of course will not happen in Scotland, but are keen to quote from the OECD’s PISA league tables. I acknowledge that the cabinet secretary has said that he is paying attention to the PISA slippage and is acting on comprehensive advice from the OECD to tackle some of the issues in education, but it is worth saying that we should not take the PISA tables at face value. Finland, which has been praised by all parties in the Parliament, has slipped in the PISA rankings, and the UK has slipped in some categories. There is a big debate in the United States about its performance, and a similar debate in Australia. It is probably worth taking that into account. Not everybody thinks that the PISA rankings are the only way that we should judge the success of our education system.

I think that the way that we should judge the success of our education system is through outcomes. One outcome that is really important is that Scotland has the second-lowest youth unemployment level in the whole of Europe, which is a reflection of what the Government has done on education. We also have record levels of advanced higher passes and the second-highest level of higher passes on record. Of course, we also have a record number of apprenticeships, showing that there are opportunities for people of all abilities. That is to do with the hard work of our pupils and teachers, and it is also to do with the Government’s policies.

We move to the closing speeches. We are very tight for time.

16:38  

I thank Iain Gray and the Labour Party for bringing the debate to the chamber, although I am sorry to say that it has been thoroughly depressing. Of course, I am in no way talking about the members who contributed; I am talking about the issues, concerns and simple facts of Scottish education today. At one time, Scottish education could have been debated with hope and optimism as a shining beacon—an example to the world. As Scots, we take enormous pride in our great discoveries and innovations, such as James Watt’s steam engine, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, John Logie Baird’s television and Alexander Fleming’s penicillin. However, where are the future leaders and innovators going to come from when today, as we have heard from members across the chamber, we have an unfolding crisis of confidence in Scotland’s education system?

Teachers have lost confidence in the ability of Scotland’s education agencies to deliver, and standards in reading, maths and science are falling well behind those in other nations of the United Kingdom and in Estonia and Poland. Conservative members are unequivocal that teachers are not to blame for that and that the blame lies with the SNP Government, which, for 10 years, has been asleep at the wheel and whose politics of lethargy have left us with a school system that quite simply is not working. As my colleague Liz Smith rightly pointed out, the curriculum for excellence has been implemented and delivered poorly. Scotland’s schools can ill afford more feet dragging from this lethargic Government.

We need urgent and radical reform—the real reform that Liz Smith set out in her opening speech and which the Scottish Conservatives are absolutely committed to.

In his opening speech, Iain Gray waved an SNP press release that denounced English schools, which is symptomatic of the SNP approach. Whether in health or education, the SNP simply wants to wash its hands of serious issues by talking about England or blaming Brexit. It is a Government that is devoid of leadership and responsibility.

In his opening speech, Mr Swinney attacked the tone of the Labour motion, yet the tone of his speech was defensive and angry. He stated that he “refutes” the motion, but I remind him that the motion opens with the phrase:

“notes the evidence submitted to the Education and Skills Committee”.

I am not surprised that he wishes to refute that, as it chimes with the nothing-to-see-here response that we have had from him to date.

Johann Lamont rightly stated that the committee has received “an overwhelmingly heartfelt response” from teachers—that is what she said, and it is true. Teachers have highlighted where the challenges are; the challenges have been laid bare and should not be refuted.

Monica Lennon rightly articulated the challenges that councils face to ensure proper support for pupils with ASN; she also highlighted the lack of resources, which is a really serious issue. I do not know what voices are in Jenny Gilruth’s head, but the voices that I hear are those of teachers and parents who have given overwhelming evidence to the committee. We should all hear their voices loud and clear. Ms Gilruth railed against EU procurement rules; she must be one of those six SNP bashful Brexiteers.

Bill Bowman spoke of the lack of confidence in the SQA and Education Scotland, and the importance of rebuilding the trust and confidence of teachers and parents. James Dornan said that education is the responsibility of councils, not the Scottish Government, and asked why we are not blaming Westminster—if he had mentioned Brexit, he would have had a full house.

Ross Greer mentioned support for TIE, which is very important. I am on record as giving my support to TIE, and I am delighted that a majority in the Parliament support that campaign. As I said to the cabinet secretary at the committee, we need to see urgency from the Government in delivering on that.

Jeremy Balfour highlighted the inherent unfairness in birthday discrimination, which we on the Conservative benches have long opposed. Tavish Scott was absolutely right to raise the serious issue that Scotland’s poorest children are nearly three years behind children from affluent backgrounds, which is deeply worrying. We also support the call for a separation between giving ministerial advice and inspecting: Education Scotland cannot be judge and jury.

Miles Briggs spoke about the worrying staffing declines in Edinburgh. Gillian Martin talks about cuts, but I gently remind her that it is the SNP Government that has—shamefully—cut 150,000 part-time college places.

Jenny Marra is correct that the Government may not want to hear about the reality of education on the ground, and that it is our job to highlight that and to challenge the Government even when it wants to stick its fingers in its ears. The Scottish Government tells us that education is its defining mission. From the damning evidence that we have heard in today’s debate, if this is how the Scottish Government deals with a defining mission, I dread to think about the areas of Government that do not gather the attention of Government ministers.

The Government’s true mission has only ever been, and only ever will be, its transcending belief in independence—independence at all costs, even if the cost is potential and opportunity for the next generation. It is time for the Scottish Government to get back to the day job and to ensure that all Scotland’s young people have the opportunity that they deserve to achieve their full potential. When the SNP does not, cannot or will not stand up for education in Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives will.

16:44  

Ross Thomson has said that I follow the nothing-to-see-here approach to the debate on education. I do not think that that is in any way a fair characterisation of the approach that I have taken to my office since I became the education secretary last May, as I have come quite openly and honestly to Parliament and confronted the difficulties that we face. The colleague sitting next to him, Liz Smith, acknowledged that when I dealt with the PISA results in December.

In my view, the amendment in my name is a balanced assessment of Scottish education. It acknowledges that, despite the progress that has been made on improving attainment in Scotland, which can be seen in the undeniable statistics on the improvement in performance,

“there remain significant challenges in closing the attainment gap and raising standards for all”.

It also acknowledges

“the wider challenges that exist within Scottish education, including budget pressures, the wider impacts of poverty on educational opportunity”

and the need to look at the work that the EIS has done on poverty proofing and the impact of poverty on school education, which Ross Greer referred to. Tavish Scott made the point that poverty is an undeniably significant factor in education.

In my amendment, I acknowledged the challenges of teacher recruitment and teacher workload. As Tavish Scott recognised, I have done a number of things to tackle teacher workload in the short period in which I have been education secretary.

It is not a fair characterisation to say that I am taking a nothing-to-see-here approach, because I am engaging directly with the issues and challenges that the teaching professions raise with me the length and breadth of the country in my regular and systemic discussions with them.

The cabinet secretary listened to teachers on workload and unit assessments for national 5, and at the time, I was happy to welcome that. However, there has been evidence since then that the changes that the SQA made to replace those assessments will create as much, if not more, teacher workload. Does he intend to take further action on that?

I am actively addressing that issue, which is a good illustration of the challenges that I face. The professional associations’ desire to remove unit assessments from national 5 has implications for borderline candidates between nat 4 and nat 5. There are very real challenges as a consequence of the professional associations’ unanimous wish for national 5 assessments to be removed. I am trying to address that issue as effectively as I can.

Ross Greer asked me to address in my summing-up speech the issues that he raised in his unselected amendment. I have addressed already the issues of poverty and poverty proofing. I acknowledge the importance of addressing additional support for learning needs and of recognising young people’s broader needs. We had a helpful discussion about that at the Education and Skills Committee this morning. Specifically, the Government is committed to working with local authorities and schools to have in place the resources and support to ensure that every child gets the support that they require. That is an essential part of the commitment in getting it right for every child. In their discussion with me this morning, committee members acknowledged the importance of ensuring that that support was focused on young people’s needs.

Ross Greer raised in his amendment the implications for the LGBTI community in Scotland of two issues. The first is the need to ensure that the personal and social education that is delivered to young people through the health and wellbeing aspect of the curriculum takes full account of LGBTI issues. The second is that we should also address problems with the recording of incidents to ensure that we have a proper record of young people’s experience, so that issues can be tackled and addressed. That is important, and we need to equip our teachers, through initial teacher education, with the knowledge of what can be done to address such circumstances. I happily give that response to Ross Greer.

Tavish Scott raised a number of issues about the reform of Scottish education. He made a substantial contribution to the debate with his point, on which I agree with him, that the culture of conformity needs to change and that we need an approach that develops and deploys flexibility in schools to address young people’s needs. In essence, that is what the question that is posed at the heart of the governance review is about. The governance review is dispatched with by the Labour motion as something that we should not be doing, but I think that there is a need for us to look at governance issues and I would be interested to hear what other members have to say about that. I am a bit surprised that the Conservatives will potentially support the Labour motion, given that Liz Smith just nodded her head when I said that there is a need to address governance issues. I would like to hear the explanation for that.

Tavish Scott made the very important point that leadership needs to exist in our schools if they are to be able to deliver quality learning and teaching. I am absolutely in agreement with him about that.

It has not been a particularly great debate for Scottish education. In a sense, it was summed up by the comments that were made by my colleague Gillian Martin as she drew her speech to a close. She quoted the convener of Glasgow City Council’s education committee, Baillie Liz Cameron, who is a Labour member. Liz Cameron made very positive remarks about improvements in Scottish education over the past 10 years, and Gillian Martin put those comments on the record. However, when Gillian Martin asked who was responsible for that Iain Gray shouted from a sedentary position that it was Glasgow City Council. It cannot be the case that Glasgow City Council is responsible for the great achievements in Scottish education that have been made while the SNP has been in government, and the SNP Government is responsible for all the failures.

That is why my amendment was drafted as it was. It is a balanced assessment that says that there are undeniable improvements and strengths in Scottish education. Nobody can deny that there has been a 30 per cent increase in the number of highers that have been achieved or that the number of advanced higher qualifications is the highest in history. However, there are also challenges, problems and issues that need to be addressed, and I am absolutely determined to address them.

16:51  

Iain Gray opened the debate by stating that when it comes to education, the Government’s track record does not begin in 2016, but exists within a context and a history. He was absolutely right, because the Government has had a decade in charge of education. It has a track record; when we look at the numbers, that record is clear. In 2007, there were 55,000 teachers and now there are fewer than 51,000, which is a fall of 4,000 teachers. In 2007, there were 21,300 support staff and now there are fewer than 20,200, which is a fall of more than 1,000 staff. In 2007, the average primary class size was 22.8 pupils and now it is up to 23.5. Spending on our schools has gone from £5.1 billion to £4.8 billion. The Sutton Trust report clearly spells out that

“bright but poor pupils ... are substantially behind bright well-off pupils”

with a gap of 31 months—a gap that is growing. Alarmingly, Scotland’s education system was ranked 10th, 11th and 11th in 2006 for science, maths and reading respectively, but their rankings have slipped to 19th, 24th and 23rd respectively, according to the OECD.

The Scottish Government says that education is its top priority and that it wants to be judged on its track record. However, its track record is clear and it is not good. John Swinney might be relatively new to his job, but his Government is not. The reforms that are needed fall at his door because resourcing and investment are the key reasons for the declines.

The way that John Swinney opened the debate for the SNP Government says much about his approach. He railed against the Labour motion and said that it is “miserable”, but in so doing he failed to acknowledge the wider problems, the wider evidence or the other opinions and criticisms out there. He pointed to the attainment gap as being the only thing that is a challenge. That is the whole problem. His parliamentary liaison officer, Jenny Gilruth, did a better job of acknowledging some of the issues that are faced. She pointed to the lack of faith and confidence of teachers in the SQA and said that issues from the OECD report need to be addressed. We heard none of that from John Swinney.

As Jenny Marra so eloquently put it, the debate is about truth. We need to face up to truth and to the realities in the education system. Liz Smith put it very well: she said that we need to look at the evidence, which is clear. We cannot simply dismiss the evidence that the Education and Skills Committee has looked at. There have been well over 600 respondents who have said clear and unequivocal things. They might not be representative, but the criticisms that have been made make a case for investigation.

We cannot ignore the OECD PISA study, in which the OECD gave an independent and authoritative analysis that says a great deal. Let us start with some of the positive things that it says. It clearly states that the quality of our teachers in Scotland is good. Just 8 per cent—much lower than in any other part of the country—said that staff are inadequately qualified, so the problem is not with the staff.

However, when headteachers were surveyed as part of the study, they made their criticisms clear. They said that they are hindered by lack of assistant staff, of teaching staff and of educational materials including textbooks and information technology. A substantial number of headteachers say that teaching is being hindered by lack of resources. That is not us saying that; it is headteachers. When the SNP accuses us of talking education down, and Fulton MacGregor accuses us of attacking teachers and pupils, perhaps they are suggesting that those headteachers attack schools and education when they point out the lack of resources. It is nonsense.

Reform is not new. The Government has presided over a decade of reform in our education system. The education system that we have is one of this Government’s making. When we hear evidence that the reforms are not working, that there are issues and that the reforms lack the support and confidence of teaching staff, we have to listen to that. Johann Lamont was absolutely right that the evidence that has been heard by the Education and Skills Committee should be sounding alarm bells loud and clear. That evidence deserves a serious and thoughtful response, which has been completely lacking from the Government so far.

It is a great shame that James Dornan seems to have dialled down the volume when it comes to speaking up about the criticisms and concerns that our evidence made clear. In a previous debate, he did a good job of presenting those criticisms in a balanced way. As he said, they raised credible issues, but he now seems to be far happier to play those criticisms down and to criticise Labour councils.

I do not think that I said anything in my contribution to today’s debate that went against what I said in my earlier speech. I was making the point that local authorities have to take responsibility for the things that they are responsible for. I would have said exactly the same thing if that had been appropriate in the earlier debate.

Likewise, the Scottish Government needs to take responsibility for the things that it is responsible for, such as setting the budgets of local authorities up and down the country that run our schools—77 per cent of whose service spend goes straight to schools. If James Dornan wants responsibility to be taken, let the Government take responsibility for that lack of funding.

We used to speak about breadth as a strength in the education system. It was one of our historical strengths when we compared ourselves to education systems in other parts of the country. However, there is serious evidence that there is no longer breadth and we are experiencing a narrowing in pupils’ choices. We heard evidence from one school that the changes that the Scottish Government has brought in have restricted pupil choice and progression. We also see a narrowing in subject choices. The move to six subjects has seen a sharp decline in numbers of pupils taking modern languages, for example; the number of pupils who are sitting and passing key modern languages qualifications has fallen by almost half. That is also reflected in the recent Glasgow Caledonian University survey of secondary 6 pupils, who said that their subject choices had been restricted by timetabling and resource constraints.

Bill Bowman made a useful contribution in highlighting issues with the SQA. He talked about teacher confidence, lack of accuracy in exams, and the sheer volume of guidance. When teachers cannot trust or have confidence in the examination body, we have to ask ourselves just how serious are the issues that face our education system.

I come to the question of resources. Speaker after speaker for the SNP was quick to point to councils and to blame them for the issues that face our schools. Clare Adamson, James Dornan and Joan McAlpine all pointed the finger. Joan McAlpine was happy to point to the figures that the Accounts Commission referred to last year, but she was a bit more reluctant to point out the fact that that same report showed that there has been a £1 billion cut in resource funding to our councils. That is the reality of the situation.

Although the Government might be quick to accuse us of attacking schools and talking down education, what we are calling for is investment in our schools and local authorities, so that they can spend the money that our schools need.

Ross Greer made an important contribution, and he was right to say that we need to look at solutions. It is a great shame that the Green amendment was not accepted for debate today, because it raised some serious issues about additional support needs and the support that we need in our schools. It is a great shame that all the cabinet secretary could do was simply acknowledge those points, because what we really need is action, investment and a reversal of the situation in which we have 1,000 fewer support staff in our schools. We will deliver child-centred education in our schools through investment and resources. Ross Greer and Monica Lennon were right to point that out.

There has been a failure in leadership in education. When John Swinney came to his current role, he wanted to hit the ground running, but he was running in the wrong direction. There can be no surer sign of that than the fact that he has so quickly slammed on the brakes on his own reforms. He has had two timetables for action, and they have slipped. He has launched a consultation, but has delayed the response. A proposed education bill is delayed, too.

We need to focus on fixing the problems that have been created by John Swinney and his colleagues. The three previous SNP education ministers who sit with Mr Swinney in the Cabinet have botched the reforms to curriculum for excellence and the exam system. However, the person in the Cabinet who is most culpable for the situation that schools find themselves in is John Swinney himself, because he is the one who set the previous 10 SNP Government budgets, and it is those decisions that cut the spending and the numbers of teachers and support staff in our schools.

Parliament should send a clear signal to the Government and should make clear our judgment of its record, because it is a record of failure in leadership, of mismanaged reform and of under-resourced education. It is a record that has failed our children, parents and teachers. As we vote this evening, we should be judging the Government on that record.