Meeting of the Parliament 12 January 2016
I believe that we are having this debate today not through the Scottish Government’s choice but as a reaction to criticisms of its education policy. It is easy to see why the SNP is under attack. Young people from wealthier families are twice as likely to go to university as those from poorer backgrounds; more than 6,000 Scottish children leave primary school unable to read properly; and teacher numbers are now at their lowest level for 10 years.
Finally, after nearly nine years in power and nine years of Scottish Labour pressure, the Scottish National Party has admitted that it needs to up its game. If it gets back into power, it will make education its focus—unless, of course, it decides to have another referendum.
What do we get? We get a framework that is designed for soundbites, that does not address the gap between the rich and the poor, that offers little by way of real change and that, for its big idea, has the reintroduction of national testing. There was an outcry from the professionals about that, and rightly so, because they thought that they had got rid of unhelpful league tables a decade ago. What we will now have is called standardised testing and definitely not—as the First Minister insisted in the newspapers—league tables. However, on January 6 the First Minister tweeted that the percentage of pupils who achieved curriculum levels in literacy and numeracy would be published by school. How will that work? How will the SNP stop people turning published results into league tables? Perhaps the cabinet secretary can explain that when she closes the debate.
Scotland has dropped down the European education league tables but, alongside the bad things that are happening, the latest OECD report highlights some potentially good things. It says that curriculum for excellence could be the basis of a good system but needs to be strengthened, and that there needs to be a more rigorous strategy that gives local authorities a stronger role. That might be a tad more difficult to achieve, given that councils are getting hammered by SNP cuts. The report also notes the poor literacy of primary and secondary school students, and the
“decline in relative and absolute achievement levels in mathematics”.
Since the OECD report’s publication, we have heard that pupils from well-off backgrounds were seven times more likely to get three As at higher than those from poorer areas, while 14 local authorities had fewer than five poorer pupils achieve three As. Enrolment in national 3 to 5 subjects has dropped by nearly 17 per cent since the introduction of curriculum for excellence, which means that pupils are doing fewer subjects. Overall attainment in those subjects has dropped by 24 per cent. Enrolment and attainment in modern languages are in steep decline, to the point where some subjects may no longer be viable in Scotland.
It is clear that if it is to rise again the Scottish education system, which used to be held up as a model for others, needs some TLC—it has not been getting that recently. We need to make education the first priority. Instead of just paying lip service to it, we need to invest in the early years and education as our most important economic policy. We need to tackle the vicious circle of poverty and educational underperformance, and we need radical action to change the way in which we fund education so that opportunity and achievement are not dependent on wealth.
Funding to tackle the attainment gap should be targeted, but not through the blunt instrument of providing grants to some schools and not others. It is a nonsense that one school can get funding while another school next door gets nothing, even though both have pupils who are suffering from deprivation.
That is why Scottish Labour wants to set up a fair start fund that will give an extra £1,000 for every child from a poor background in primary school, and £300 in nursery school. That would ensure that attainment funding was based on need. Like the Labour Government in Wales, we want that funding to be managed by headteachers, because they are the people who are best placed to decide which of the available measures will work best in their school with their children. That would be a permanent arrangement, not just a temporary sticking plaster.
If education is to be a national priority, we should not be viciously cutting the budgets of those who provide education, which is not only unfair but very short-sighted. To neglect the education of our young people is to neglect the future of our economy. For many reasons, education should be our priority. There should not be just lip service and sound bites on education; there should be real action to make a difference.