Meeting of the Parliament 15 May 2024
Just imagine what the world would have been like if Ross Greer had been in government for the past three years.
Conditions in schools are really challenging, and I think that the education secretary knows that. The report that the Education, Children and Young People Committee published this morning highlights that additional support for learning is now in an intolerable position. Pupils are being forced to fail because of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Teachers now have to deal with multiple needs in one class. Sometimes, up to half of the whole class can be identified as having an additional support need. That puts incredible pressure on teachers. That, combined with the behavioural issues that we all know about that lead to violence and low-level disruption, interrupts education.
Then there is absence. Pupils are regularly absent from the classroom and teachers have to spend a lot of time trying to get them to catch up. Newly qualified teachers can spend up to six years on temporary contracts. That all adds up to an intolerable position and it is why we are seeing teachers facing burn-out and considerable mental health problems.
I like the cabinet secretary’s approach of reaching out to other parties. I have to remind her, however, that this is not year zero and that the Government has been there for 17 years, so she will forgive us for holding her to account for its performance in that 17 years.
The most recent set of promises in the 2021 election raised expectations among teachers that there would be free school meals, free laptops, lots of extra teachers and a reduction in teacher contact time. Most of that has fallen away, because we are nowhere near getting those 3,500 teachers. In fact, we are going in the opposite direction, partly thanks to the cabinet secretary’s colleague in Glasgow City Council, who has obviously not got the memo and is reducing teacher numbers.
This is not just the Opposition being wicked; it is the reality facing local government, because the Government has made significant cuts. On the one hand, it says that we have to increase teacher numbers, but, on the other hand, it has decreased the overall funding that is available for local authorities.
Expectations have been raised, teachers are now feeling really disappointed and, to be frank, they are not listening to the education secretary any more. That is because this is not the first time—we have been here before. Back in 2007, we were promised that class sizes would be 18 or fewer for primary 1, 2 and 3, and 3,000 extra teachers were promised. Both of those promises were quickly dumped when the Government was faced with reality.
However, the most curious thing that I am interested in exploring—I hope that the cabinet secretary will address this in her summing up—is the latest research paper on reducing teacher contact time by 90 minutes. It has not been endorsed by the Government, but it has been produced under the Government’s auspices. All of a sudden, the Government has discovered this new wheeze in that, because the pupil roll is falling, first in primary schools and then in secondary schools, we might not need to recruit another 3,500 extra teachers in order to meet the 90-minute reduction in teacher contact time. I am wondering why that has suddenly just been discovered. Surely the Government knew that in 2021, when it made the promise. Why on earth did it make the promise to recruit 3,500 extra teachers in 2021? Surely it did its homework and worked out that the pupil roll was falling.
More important, what does that mean for all those who are being trained through initial teacher education just now? On the 3,500 extra teachers, we are not quite reaching that with secondary schools, but we certainly are with primary schools.