Hansard

I start by putting on the record my thanks to the minister for the kind conversations that we had earlier in her tenure. She has the sincere and hopeful good wishes of the Labour Party. There is much to do.

It is vital that the debate, and the work of our Parliament, shapes the recovery of education from the pandemic. In the past 24 hours, the UK Government’s adviser on educational recovery has resigned because of the paucity of ambition of that Government and its failure to grasp the scale of the challenge. I hope that we can give some expression to the truly epic scale of the challenge that we face in Scotland, and that we can begin to reveal some of its nature and agree that we will require there to be a radical comeback plan from the Government that is commensurate with what must be achieved.

However, today’s debate will inevitably be informed, at least in part, by what happened yesterday and the general dismay that has greeted a process that fails every test set for it other than its mere existence. After eight months, six promises and two missed deadlines, we have a vague outline of an appeals procedure that does nothing to address the core concerns of all involved. We should not have been here in the first place. We should not have had to drag out of a reluctant Government a process that is demanded by natural justice, under the UNCRC, and mandated by the urgent review that was undertaken into the most recent SQA debacle.

Our amendment asks for an urgent review of the SQA. I am glad to hear that a review will happen, but it should be urgent. It is required quickly, particularly because the SQA’s role has become untenable, given the repeated crises that it has faced and its role in the failure of our children, their generation and our future.

I know that a catalogue of cases is waiting on the minister’s desk about young Scots who have been failed by the processes that were put in place last year, and many thousands will be suffering this year. They all deserve a future and the best chance of a better life.

I will address the core substance of the Green Party’s amendment in my closing speech. We are strongly minded to support it, but I want to hear the debate and the minister’s response in the meantime.

All our eyes should be fixed on what is at stake here. It is not just about blame; it is about making things right. That is why Labour has focused on the appeals process, on a resit guarantee and on a no-detriment policy for entry to college and university. Our amendment can help to put hope back into the hearts of young Scots who want a better future for themselves, their families and their communities.

Our response must be about remaking our future. The unique greatness of Scottish education is a founding myth of the nation as we conceive it, but it is no less powerful for being demonstrably untrue. The shape of our society economically, intellectually, emotionally and politically has been written by three great phases of expansion in education: elite professional education; mass secondary education; and mass higher education. Each phase changed the character and path of the nation.

The question that we should ask ourselves is this: do we have the imagination, ambition and moral drive to create a fourth great phase of universal education that could unlock the transformative potential of our population? Can we summon the collective will and common endeavour to make universal digital education unlock Scotland’s great potential?

That fourth great wave of educational expansion would be about universal digital skills, enhancing lives across our country. It would transform how, where and for whom we deliver education. The why is urgent. We are living through ever-accelerating change in the global environment and we must be prepared to change with it. Our values can endure, but they must be made relevant in a world that is moving at an astonishing pace. Technological change is happening at the fastest rate that it has ever been and at the slowest rate that it will ever be. Look at the returns delivered to investors in recent years and the rise of the digital giants. Think of the return on investment that we would receive in Scotland if we truly invest in our new generation of digital talent.

We have an economy that is detaching itself from physical roots, and the frictionless productivity of software. The Logan review, which was commissioned by the Government, begs the simple yet wicked question of how we can afford to put tech experts into our classrooms. How do we go about filling urgent skills gaps, such as those in the app development company in Dundee that would and could have delivered 300 highly paid jobs in the city in the past two years had software engineering skills been available? How can young Scots get those jobs? Education is the currency of the information age. It is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, but a prerequisite.

Wrapped around that challenge are two further deeply complex problems. The affront of educational inequality does much more than rightly offend our moral sensitivities; it holds back our country. That those people from the poorest backgrounds remain so ill-served must be addressed and we know that progress in doing that has not been made to any real extent. It is shameful that our debates, yesterday and today, around SQA appeals will be of no relevance whatever to the growing number of Scots who leave school with nothing.

The third challenge is that of the pandemic and the impact of lockdown, which has fallen disproportionately on people with the least and has made inequality all the greater. Many young people in this country have gone backwards in school performance in the past year. We need a comprehensive plan laying out a response that is commensurate with the great scale of the task, covering: childcare and early years services, where home working is breaking their business models; a loss of school time that is unprecedented since the advent of universal education; an already-precarious college sector that has students not completing courses, with drops in applications and apprenticeship numbers dramatically down; and our universities, which are in need of an urgent route map to less restrictive physical distancing to ensure that applicants turn into students this autumn.

I say to the minister that the scale of the challenge is considerable. I do not believe that the rhetoric that we have heard so far, or indeed anything that I have seen published, grasps the true scale, across all our institutions, of dealing with the impact of the pandemic. All our efforts are required. Labour’s amendment will help to stem some of the immediate problems that we face and, crucially, I hope that it will start to rebuild hope in the hearts of our young people whom we believe are the promise of a better Scotland.

I move amendment S6M-00204.3, to leave out from “, and welcomes” to end and insert:

“; recognises the need for an ambitious plan of National Recovery in the education system; calls on the Scottish Government to establish a National Tutoring scheme and a ‘resit’ guarantee, which offers young people impacted by the cancellation of exams in 2020 and 2021 the opportunity of a funded college place to take their qualifications again, and further calls on the Scottish Government to introduce a ‘no detriment’ policy for further and higher education access and institute an urgent review of the SQA.”