Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 03 June 2021
I promise that I will do my best to be generous, Presiding Officer.
I have paid a great deal of attention to that since coming into post. I appreciate that the council will be going through a consultation process. It has put together a package and it is important that that is now put to parents and people across the city for them to have their say. The consultation is exceptionally important and the Government should not be involved in that process. We look forward to hearing back from parents about what the council has had to say on the issues that are covered in the consultation and the recommendations. I will leave it there for the moment, but I am sure that we will come back to the subject once the consultation has closed.
We are also committed to ensuring that every schoolchild in the country has the access to the technology that they need to support their education during the current session of Parliament.
Those are big ambitions, but we will start delivering them early. That means that, in the first 100 days, we will make free lunches available to all primary 4 children in Scotland as the next step towards extending them to all primary school children all year round. That will extend to primary 5 children in January 2022 and will include the provision of free school meal approaches to all eligible children and young people in primary and secondary through all the school holidays. We are providing over £49 million in funding to our local authorities to support the implementation of those approaches in 2021-22, which represents a significant investment in the health and wellbeing of our children and young people.
To help families and give pupils the best start in life, we will increase both the school clothing grant and the best start food grant, which helps families with children under three to buy healthy foods, and we will take steps to remove charges for core curriculum activities and for music and arts education, including instrumental music tuition. We will also agree the first allocation of funding to councils for the refurbishment of play parks. Before we formally expand the Scottish child payment next year and prepare to double its value, we will provide interim support for eligible children, including a £100 payment near the start of the summer holidays.
I am proud to say that, during the first 100 days, we will also complete one of the major legacies of the previous session of Parliament. From August, all three and four-year olds, and two-year olds who need it most, will be eligible for 1,140 hours of free early learning and childcare each year. We know that high-quality early learning and childcare can make a huge difference to children’s lives, particularly when they are growing up in more disadvantaged circumstances, and it is a cornerstone of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Collectively, we can now focus on realising the transformational benefits that the expansion will bring, including improved educational and development outcomes for children, enhanced family wellbeing and greater employment and training opportunities for parents and carers.
However, we do not intend to stop there. In the current session of Parliament, we will expand childcare further, both by developing the provision of wraparound care and after-school clubs and by working with children and young people to enable them to develop their own charter for school-age childcare in Scotland.
Of course, in Scotland, we will prioritise fundamental children’s rights. We will press on with the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to the maximum extent that is possible and fight any legal challenge to stop children’s rights.
I hope that that programme outlines our determination to deliver improvements with pace and urgency, but I also want to be clear with Parliament that I am open to considering what further reform is necessary with the clear purpose of doing all that we can to improve outcomes for children. That includes reducing the variability in the outcomes that children and young people achieve across the country.
I hope that I can reassure those who work on the front line in our education establishments that that will not mean extra pressure or work for them at this critical time, as we look to recovery. I do, however, want to look at options for reform that ensure that schools get the best possible support and challenge to enable them to improve further and to do what we all want to find—the very best for our children in their care. Enabling them to focus relentlessly on providing the highest quality of learning and teaching to our children must be critical to my work, as must ensuring that those who work in education and outwith schools are fully focused on doing everything that they can to provide the highest quality of support.
Today, I signal my intention to start that process by considering how to reform our two key national education agencies—the SQA and Education Scotland. That will include looking at their roles, their remits and the purpose of their organisations, as well as considering their functions and their governance arrangements. That will be a key priority for me and it will be informed by the findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development review, which will be published on 21 June, as I said to Parliament yesterday.