Meeting of the Parliament 18 May 2022
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I appreciated the couple of moments to prepare.
In lodging the motion, I had been hopeful that it might, even at this late stage, allow the Scottish Government to see its way clear to reversing its position on the cuts that have been made to funding for our most vulnerable young people in our poorest communities.
Nothing in the very short Scottish Labour motion is very critical of the Scottish Government or of either of the parties in the Government. There is no excuse to vote against the motion, other than not agreeing with its premise that it is wrong to ask the poorest children to shoulder the cost of new services for others.
The motion asks for reflection and a change of course. The motion was lodged before this morning, when we heard from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills that the commitment that the First Minister had made to substantially close the attainment gap by 2026 was to be abandoned, and that the green light was being given to backfill cuts with pupil equity funding money. I have to say to the cabinet secretary that nobody in the Scottish Labour Party will in any way tolerate using Covid as an excuse not to honour that timetable for our young people.
Scottish Labour recognises and welcomes the resources that all local authorities will use to challenge and tackle poverty and low school attainment in their communities, wherever they are found. Poverty exists everywhere and can be hidden. In the face of yearly savage cuts to council budgets, Scottish Labour councillors and councillors of any party are right to grasp any resource that the Government puts on the table.
Just this morning, the cabinet secretary told the Education, Children and Young People Committee that, timetable aside, closing the education gap between the richest and the poorest remains
“the defining mission of this Government.”
However, the Government must be judged on its actions rather than on its words.
Nine local authorities will suffer a 60 per cent cut to their attainment challenge funding. Dundee will suffer a 79 per cent cut, Inverclyde will suffer an 82 per cent cut, North Ayrshire will suffer a 75 per cent cut and Renfrewshire will suffer a 71 per cent cut. I could go on. Those are not just percentages; they are real cuts.
A report from the Dundee City Council earlier this year identified 106 posts that can be cut to make the saving. They are vital posts. They are teachers and they are speech and language therapists who work with incredibly vulnerable young people, helping them to meaningfully engage with learning. They are school and family development workers who themselves are backfilling the decimation of social work provision.
I recently visited a primary school in Dundee where an outstanding headteacher told me that she could not countenance losing those workers. If they go, there will no longer be statutory provision on which to fall back. A former headteacher of 20 years’ standing from Dundee told the Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee that he had no idea how the city would cope.
The local authorities were originally selected because of their very high levels of deprivation, and we know that that deprivation has not gone away. In Scotland child poverty continues, shamefully, to grow under the Scottish National Party and the Tories.
We also know that the pandemic has been worse for the poorest communities. Infection and mortality rates and school absences were higher, and we know that the impact on education has been severe.
The little statistical evidence that the Government has gathered shows that the attainment gap is now wider than it has been since the policy began. To choose to make cuts in these communities “beggars belief”, according to the Educational Institute of Scotland. It has said:
“we have been absolutely appalled at the levels of funding cuts ... It beggars belief. We do not understand why those cuts would be made at a time when we know that poverty levels are rising, when the pandemic has absolutely bludgeoned some communities and we know that individual families and the young people within those families are struggling as a result of Covid.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 20 April 2022; c 31.]