Meeting of the Parliament 22 September 2015
I think that we can all agree that deprivation is a factor that impacts on our children’s attainment. It is a shame that the Tory Government is continuing to progress with welfare cuts, which will definitely have an impact on our children’s attainment. Perhaps the £103 million that this Government is spending on mitigating the effect of the welfare reforms of Mrs Scanlon’s Government could be better spent on education if we did not have to pick up the pieces of her failing Government south of the border. However, I agree with her that the Audit Scotland report raises some interesting and fundamental issues, including the point that what matters is not always how much we spend but often what we do with our time and resources.
The real prize from the fund will be the learning that we gain from schools and authorities about what works. That learning can and will be shared across Scotland as part of the universal support that we are putting in place to raise attainment.
The first attainment advisers are in post and we are on course to have appointed advisers to every local authority by the end of November. Advisers will work on the front line and reach into every learning community in Scotland to build capacity in schools.
The quality of our workforce and the excellence of our educational leadership provide the bedrock of our education system. All teachers must play their part and we must ensure that they have the support that they need to do that, so we are developing a new national improvement hub that will provide teachers with a range of tools and resources to help them to raise attainment and improve performance.