Meeting of the Parliament 22 September 2015
In terms of sustained improvement, I presume that we would need some sort of longitudinal study to develop that. However, it is telling that Save the Children and other children’s charities make the same point about the need to target the resource at the individual children who need it.
The Government also needs to rethink its plans for national standardised testing. The education secretary and the First Minister insist that it is needed to help to tackle the attainment gap and will not herald a return to teaching to the test and league tables. However, few believe them. Initially, conditional support from the EIS was paraded by ministers who were desperate to justify their plans and reassure a sceptical public, teaching profession and pupils. However, the Educational Institute of Scotland now insists that
“it will be almost impossible to put in place safeguards which would stop national assessments leading to the league table, target-setting agenda which CfE was supposed to have ended”.
Only the Conservatives have been unequivocal in their support for the SNP’s plans for standardised testing, but they have no problem with league tables.
Finally, let me touch on teacher numbers and class sizes. The minister’s motion asks us to celebrate the Government’s successes. However, with 4,000 fewer teachers than there were in 2007 and a class-size commitment for P1 to P3 that has never been close to being honoured, that self-congratulatory tone seems to be misplaced. Even the agreement that was reached to safeguard teacher numbers is proving to be problematic. It is putting individual local authorities, which are already constrained by a never-ending council tax freeze, in a straitjacket. Council representatives told the Education and Culture Committee recently that the lack of flexibility is causing huge problems in matching teacher supply with demand, and is also resulting in large numbers of support staff being laid off. The comparison was made with police service reform and the effect on civilian staff roles. Again, that is hardly progressive.
None of what I have said detracts from the success and quality of education in Scotland, nor is it talking down the work that is done by the teachers and others who work in the sector. However, if we are serious about building on success, about addressing weaknesses that exist and about making genuine headway at last in closing the gap in attainment, we need to be honest and ambitious about what needs to be done.
I move amendment S4M-14311.3, to leave out from “Scotland’s educational success” to end and insert:
“the expansion of free nursery care for two-year-olds but is concerned that provision in Scotland still lags behind that available in England; believes that this support can help contribute toward addressing the difference in reading attainment between children from low-income and high-income households by the age of five, which is on average 13 months; understands that the average class size in the early years of primary school continued to increase to 23.3 in 2014, despite the SNP’s 2007 manifesto commitment to cut class sizes to 18 or less for Primary 1 to 3 pupils; understands that teacher numbers have fallen by approximately 4,000 since 2007 and regrets the rigid approach that the Scottish Government has taken to the enforcement of the teacher number guarantee; notes opposition to the reintroduction of standardised national testing and the views of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) that “it will be almost impossible to put in place safeguards which would stop national assessments leading to the league table, target-setting agenda which Curriculum for Excellence was supposed to have ended”; welcomes the Scottish Government’s decision to dedicate more resources to tackling the attainment gap; however, considers that, while the Scottish Attainment Fund will make a difference in selected areas, it ignores the needs of children facing poverty and disadvantage elsewhere in Scotland, including Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway and the Highlands and Islands, and urges the Scottish Government to introduce a pupil premium that targets funding at individual school-aged children in need, wherever they may live, as a means of helping close the attainment gap and improving equality of opportunity.”
14:49Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.