Meeting of the Parliament 27 January 2016
The result of the division is: For 60, Against 39, Abstentions 14.
Motion, as amended, agreed to,
That the Parliament believes that the £100 million Attainment Scotland Fund, which is additional to the almost £5 billion invested in education every year through local authorities, is rightly targeted at the primary schools that serve the most deprived communities in Scotland, with over 300 primary schools, which together support 54,399 pupils from deprived backgrounds, 64% of the total number of such pupils, benefitting from the funding; notes that this funding is providing a wide range of support to close the attainment gap including additional teaching and other specialist staff, support for parents to engage in their children’s learning, literacy and numeracy tools and extra training for teachers; further believes that the package of universal support that has been drawn together through the Scottish Attainment Challenge, including the appointment of attainment advisors for every local authority, the introduction of the Attainment Challenge Innovation Fund and the continued progress of the Raising Attainment for All programme will help ensure that there is support for every local authority to close the poverty-related attainment gap; recognises that the Scottish Government will continue to work with key stakeholders to explore and consider further approaches that will support schools to close the attainment gap, and acknowledges that the OECD’s review of Scottish education recognised the Scottish Government’s determination to focus on achieving both excellence and equity in the education system and that the national improvement framework has the potential to be a key means of driving work to close the attainment gap and strengthen formative assessment approaches.