Hansard

I am delighted to open this morning’s debate. Apart from allowing me to outline the Government’s ambitions for all of our children and young people, it also gives me the opportunity to share a debate with Alasdair Allan for the first time in 20 years. I suppose that it is also the first time that the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning has let the two junior education ministers out to play.

The two core and inextricably linked aims of the education team in this term of government are to raise attainment and improve the life chances of Scotland’s children. At the heart of everything we do and of all our aspirations for our children is to ensure that we have happy healthy bairns who reach their full potential. The guiding principle for us all as parliamentarians in making decisions and expressing views should be that if something is not good enough for our own sons and daughters, it is not good enough for any child or young person growing up in Scotland. Educational attainment is the passport to social, cultural and economic prosperity and we are absolutely focused on the child’s needs throughout their learning journey from the early years to young adulthood.

I point out from the outset that in seeking to raise educational attainment we do not have a doom-and-gloom agenda. We have strengths and successes to build on. That said, I reassure the chamber that there is no room for complacency and when it comes to improving the life chances of our looked-after children I will not beat about the bush: the report card for all corporate parents at all levels of local and national Government says, “Can and must do better.” We also need to focus attention on reducing the gap between the lowest and highest attainers in education.

Although we can celebrate the fact that our education system performs well internationally; that we have excellence in higher education; that our 15-year-olds perform above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average for reading and science; that we have record levels of young people in further and higher education; that statistics and qualifications show that our young people are performing better than at any point in the past; and that—this is for Mr Macintosh, in particular—class sizes are at a record low, I reassert that there is still a job of work to do. That is why, among other things, the cabinet secretary Michael Russell has brought together a small group of headteachers with an excellent personal track record of raising attainment in their own schools across a range of circumstances. The group’s members will distil from their own real-life work experience what works to help our young citizens to be high attainers. It is crucial that we understand and share innovative practice and the group’s work will be concluded speedily.

I will also discuss the specific issue of looked-after children with the attainment group. Although I know that next week there will be a debate on permanence planning for looked-after children and that the Education and Culture Committee is holding a very welcome inquiry into the issue, I flag up to Parliament the learning hub. That is a strand of work that is being undertaken by the looked-after children strategic implementation group, which will oversee a variety of activities to boost and drive improvements in educational attainment.

Over and above our specific measures on attainment, how will we achieve systematic and radical change for our children, our country and our communities? For me, the starting point is the early years—the foundation years. When it comes to babies and very young children, including pre-birth, we will reap what we sow. If we are serious about giving our children the best start in life, we need to be serious about the fundamental shift both in philosophy and of resources into the early years, early intervention and preventative spend.

Apart from independence, preventative spend is the most radical and exciting agenda that the Government is pursuing. It cuts across all arms of Government, both local and national, and across universal and targeted services. This Scottish National Party Government has been brave and bold enough to grasp the agenda, despite the financial constraints that we are all living with.

I am currently finalising arrangements with local government and health partners in establishing the early years task force that will oversee a joint change fund of more than £270 million. That will be used to transform the lives of children and communities and to begin to unlock the potential of our universal services, whether in education or health, in prevention as opposed to cure, implementing that transformational change at a local level as envisaged by the early years framework.

Our wider programme of reform, including our legislative ambitions, is central to improving attainment. In essence, our future children’s services bill is about how to get all agencies to work together better in making smarter and quicker decisions for all our children.

I was struck by recent comments by Professor Buchanan, director of the centre for research into parenting and children at the University of Oxford, when she said that the job of universal services is to grow brains. I could not agree more. GIRFEC—getting it right for every child—and attainment go hand in hand, and improving attainment cannot be divorced from ensuring that children are safe, loved, happy, healthy, included and nurtured, have opportunities to play and are valued and respected.

There is a strong synergy between GIRFEC, the curriculum for excellence and the personalisation of services.