Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 February 2021
I think that it was Mr Greene who said that he felt that these debates have been a bit like groundhog day during his time in the Parliament and with the education portfolio. As someone who is married to a retired teacher, I have lived through the introduction of 5 to 14, higher still, and curriculum for excellence, each of which was not without controversy, was put under intense scrutiny and grabbed the headlines throughout their time and throughout my time as a councillor and an MSP.
That said, we must remember that, despite the talk of complete failure, we still have a well-performing education system. We have more pupils achieving five or more highers at secondary 5 than ever before, and we have more positive destinations for our young people. Just before Covid hit, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland highlighted the fact that we have had a huge fall in the number of exclusions in schools. All of that is to be welcomed, and all of it is good.
Covid-19 has had a massive impact on our society, our learning and our teaching, and our school communities are no exception to that. Even a year ago, it would have been impossible to imagine that our schools would have to move to home learning, that the exam diet would be cancelled for two consecutive years or that we would be in a second lockdown. We are only just beginning to understand the extent of the impact on our young people and our school communities.
In all of that, we are all striving. Everyone in this chamber wants excellence and equity for our children and young people. In striving for those things, we know that societal inequalities and individual personal challenges have only been exacerbated by Covid, which has put immense pressure on children, young people and their families and carers.
I am pleased that, after the most recent period of school building closures, the Scottish Government commissioned an equity audit, which was published in January, so that it could better understand the impact on children’s learning, health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on disadvantaged students. Since the start of the pandemic, Scottish Government funding has led to an additional 1,400 teachers and over 200 support staff being appointed. New funding can be used to recruit further staff, which might include teachers, classroom assistants, home-school link workers and other support workers, as well as provide resources that families and schools need to support home learning, including additional digital devices where there are any remaining unmet needs for home learning resources. I am incredibly grateful to our hard-working, dedicated teaching professionals for their intense work in planning, organising and delivering learning.
Before Covid, the Scottish Government commissioned the internationally renowned OECD to undertake an independent review of curriculum for excellence, to help us better understand how the curriculum was being implemented across the country. We should not forget that it is still a relatively new curriculum. Only in the past few years have pupils who are finishing in senior phase been pupils who started primary school under curriculum for excellence. We could not have envisaged the impact that Covid would have not only on all our teaching and learning, but on that commissioned work. Nor could we have predicted the impact of the awarding of the 2020 exam diet, to the extent that it did happen. The Deputy First Minister made it clear that lessons needed to be learned from the awarding in 2020, and swift action was taken.
The Scottish Government also expanded the OECD’s remit to include wider issues to do with the broad general education, the senior phase and articulation between the two. However, I remain unconvinced by its observations about disadvantage in subject choice, because, at the end of the day, it is pupils’ outcomes that matter. We are seeing more and more pupils going on to modern apprenticeships and to further and higher education.
The Scottish Government has also had to acknowledge the constraints under which the OECD is operating due to the effects of the pandemic. In September—