Meeting of the Parliament 12 January 2016
This is unusual: the Conservatives are supporting the Government’s motion today. The reason is that the Government has accepted the OECD’s recommendations, acknowledged that there are areas for improvement and expressed its determination to focus on excellence and equity, which will involve not just considering councils and teachers but ensuring that no child is left behind, so that, as I would like, every child can
“achieve their full potential regardless of their family circumstances or the background that they are born into.”
We fully accept that. It makes a nice change to have a Government motion that is constructive and considers the facts.
It will come as no surprise to Iain Gray that we are not supporting a 50p tax rate. It will come as even less of a surprise to Liam McArthur that we are not supporting his amendment, given the Liberal Democrats’ opposition to testing.
I ask the cabinet secretary to clarify when she sums up her point about publication of information. I listened carefully to what she said, but I am still not sure whether it will be mandatory on every local authority to use the new assessment tests in the national framework. There seems to be a bit of doubt in that regard, so clarity would be helpful. However, we very much welcome the Government’s reintroduction of national assessment in primary and secondary schools. As I said, the main point is that no child should be left behind.
On literacy and numeracy, the new teachers will be welcome, but another issue is the time that is allocated to literacy training in teacher training colleges. Freedom of information requests have been made over the years by Stewart Maxwell and others, and we have learned that as few as 25 hours are spent on literacy training in Scottish teacher training colleges, compared with an average of 90 hours in English colleges. When we consider the teacher training programme, it would be enormously helpful if the Government committed to giving teachers the tools and the support that they need to do the job that we expect them to do.
We also welcome the investment of £100 million for the attainment fund, but we want to make sure that the money is effectively spent. We would like to see the attainment fund money go directly to schools that have a high proportion of children from socially deprived backgrounds, so that individual pupils with poor attainment are identified and supported in order to improve their attainment levels.
If we look at the OECD report, despite its 180 pages—which I did look at—we see that it has picked out quite a few figures from the Audit Scotland report, which I have highlighted many times. My main concern is in the transition from primary 7 to secondary 2. Attainment is not perfect but it is not that bad between primary 4 and primary 7. However, between primary 7 and secondary 2 something strange happens in Scottish education and attainment dips dramatically.
Scottish adolescents are also less likely to report liking school than are students in many other countries, and liking drops sharply in secondary school, according to the OECD.
The figures show that in order to close the gap we need to increase the percentage of pupils who are performing “well” and “very well” at any given level, but that percentage is falling. It fell between 2011 and 2013, with the proportion of primary 7 pupils who were performing well going down by 6 per cent in those two years, and it also went down in secondary 2. However the dramatic difference was that in 2013 in primary 7, 66 per cent performed well, while in secondary 2 only 42 per cent did so. That is too huge a reduction not to take a significant look at it. The figures were for numeracy.
In respect of reading, there is also fall. In primary 4, primary 7 and secondary 2, there was between 2012 and 2014 an overall fall in performing well, and there was also a drastic fall between primary 7 and secondary 2. If the money is to be spent wisely, we have to understand what that has happened—why there is such a deterioration in performance between primary 7 and secondary 2 and why performance has deteriorated in the last couple of years.
We all want pupils with low attainment to do better and we all hope to close the attainment gap, but I do not think that any of us want standards for those from deprived backgrounds to fall. People from the least deprived backgrounds, as well as those from the most deprived backgrounds, are performing less well.
I appreciate that my time is almost up, Presiding Officer, so I will leave it there.