Hansard

I begin by stating clearly that we welcome the bill as a clear signal that the Government wants to tackle the attainment gap in Scottish education. It is unacceptable that it remains the case that a child’s educational outcomes depend more on their parents’ income than on any other factor, be that ability, hard work or, indeed, the school that they go to. As well as being inequitable and unfair for the individual child and their life chances, that is a gross squandering of potential and talent that diminishes the future prospects of our society and our nation. Every child left behind shames every one of us.

However, this is no counsel of despair. Other countries do better than we do in addressing the issue, and our educational history shows that when we are bold and determined and prepared to invest for the long term, we can make a difference. Earlier this week, we had the 50th anniversary of the day—27 October 1965—on which the then Labour Secretary of State for Scotland Willie Ross signed the memorandum that ended the divisive system of selection at the age of 11 in Scottish education. That set in motion the comprehensivisation of our schools. The comprehensive system is fundamentally rooted in equality of opportunity and the valuing of all pupils.

On Tuesday at Moray house, a group of educational researchers from the University of Edinburgh presented their research on the impact of that reform 50 years on. Perhaps their most startling statistic was that, at the point at which comprehensive schools were introduced, 70 per cent of pupils left school without a single qualification. Thanks to comprehensive schools and consequent reforms such as raising the school leaving age, standard grades, higher still and, latterly, curriculum for excellence, that figure is now only 4 per cent or so. In the 1960s, around 18 per cent of pupils achieved at least one higher. By 2013, that figure was 60 per cent or more.

Therefore, progress has been made, yet we know that a young person is still twice as likely to gain the entry qualifications for a top university if their parents are well off than they are if their parents are poor. A young person whose family is poor is far more likely to leave school unable to read or write properly, and we know that literacy and numeracy standards are falling rather than improving. We know, too, that the replacement for standard grades—the new nationals—has led to a fall in enrolment and attainment for exactly those pupils who gained most from the reforms of recent decades.

We agree with the Scottish Government that the time has again come for a concerted effort to address the unacceptable achievement and attainment gap in our education system. That is the key purpose and principle behind the bill, and we support that. Of course, the great difficulty is finding a way to legislate for such a purpose. We must avoid the equivalent of legislating for sunnier summers and asking someone to report on what they have done to deliver that without having regard to its effectiveness. We must avoid what Keir Bloomer in his evidence to the committee characterised as

“pious thinking masquerading as law making.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 9 June 2015; c 20.]

The truth is that, too often, the present Scottish Government—as other Governments have done—has legislated and then failed to comply with its own well-meaning laws. The legislation to reduce carbon emissions and that to provide patient rights are just two examples. In our view, we must ensure that the section of the bill on equalities of outcome is strengthened, and we will seek to do that at stage 2, just as the cabinet secretary indicated that the Government would do. The requirement for education authorities to

“have due regard to the desirability of carrying out the functions in ... a way designed to reduce inequalities of outcome”

is simply not strong enough. We agree with the committee that that shared goal of the Parliament requires more than a

“passive recognition of the need to close the gap”.

There certainly must be a requirement for both local authorities and the Government to report on their successes and outcomes, not only on their plans and inputs. We also believe that both authorities and the Government must report more frequently than biannually. Other reporting requirements that are likely to appear in the bill later are almost certain to oblige them to do that.

The elephant that is not in the bill at all is, of course, resources. It is a well-rehearsed point that Labour members believe that we should commit to a higher tax rate for higher earners and devote the resources to closing the gap. I accept that legislation is not where such a policy would lie, but we will explore ways to ensure that the eventual legislation requires proper consideration of the resources that are devoted to achieving the purpose of the bill.

Although we should hold both education authorities and the Government to account for closing the attainment gap, the changes that will achieve that have to happen in schools, nurseries and communities. Their efforts and results also need to be scrutinised. At stage 2, we will lodge amendments to place obligations on the inspection regime to take account of success in closing the gap. Indeed, both my leader, Kezia Dugdale, and the First Minister have given some indication that they support our reformed inspection regime to that end.

If our aspiration and ambition is high enough, we should not just be comparing ourselves with our own past; we should be comparing ourselves with the rest of the world, too. We will look to amend the bill to reinstate the Scottish education system’s participation in international surveys such as PIRLS and TIMSS—the progress in international reading literacy study and the trends in international mathematics and science study—and to secure our continuing participation in the programme for international student assessment, or PISA.

We are in no doubt that investing in teachers, early-care workers and support staff is the key to improving results in our schools. We support the new headteacher qualification and the extension of GTCS registration requirements to the private sector.

We called for and support the new post of chief education officer to protect a degree of educational expertise in the management of education at a local level. We have seen the comments from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on the matter, and we believe that the Government perhaps needs to elaborate more on issues such as qualification and seniority in the management structure. In this instance, too much flexibility might not be the best thing, but the principle is certainly correct. We also welcome the sections of the bill on Gaelic-medium education and on the extension of children’s rights. Colleagues will speak more about those issues later.

On the section on extending children’s rights, we have concerns about how those rights are dealt with in the bill. We note the comments of many people who gave evidence to the committee in support of the principle of the change. We note that the cabinet secretary has already responded in part to some of those concerns, and we hope that the issue can be resolved at stage 2.

The bill is largely about what we, parents and pupils can expect from our education system. In our view, it represents an opportunity to deal with the anomaly that current legislation defines how many days a school should open but not how much teaching time a pupil or parent can expect to benefit from. That has been an issue in recent years in primary schools in particular, and we intend to lodge amendments to explore the definition of what constitutes a minimum school week, at least in primary schools, in order to provide clarity for parents as to what their children’s entitlement to education really means.

It is unfortunate—the committee convener was right to refer to this—that the most important section of the bill is not yet in it at all. Therefore, we cannot really discuss its proposals properly. I refer of course to the national improvement framework, on which the Government is currently consulting. The cabinet secretary knows that we support a change to the current position, in which almost all local authorities use different testing, particularly in primary school. However, she also knows that we do not support a return to league tables and high-stakes national testing, which of course can lead to problems such as teaching to the test.

I acknowledge that the improvement framework is out for consultation at the moment, although I note that some concern has been expressed that the consultation is not functioning particularly well. For example, an article this week in The Times Educational Supplement suggested that parents are not engaging with the process. Nonetheless, we expect the Scottish Government to be as good as its word and to produce a framework that will at that point have support from teachers, parents and educationists, which improves the data that we have to drive policy and to measure our success and which avoids the introduction of high-stakes national testing. As they say, we shall see when the framework comes forward. In the meantime, we shall with pleasure support the principles of the bill at decision time.