Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
We can make no greater investment than ensuring that our children get the best start in life. We all want Scotland to have a world-class education system to be proud of and we all aspire to a Scotland in which every child has the opportunity to fulfil their true potential. We all know, too, that we will achieve a fairer, more progressive Scotland only if we ensure that life is fairer, better and more equal for every child.
It can never be right that a child’s postcode has more influence on their achievements in life than talent, effort and hard work. Therefore, I am pleased that, across the chamber, there is real recognition of the need to put closing the attainment gap at the centre of all that we do. However, the bill is a missed opportunity to be much bolder about tackling the inequality that undermines the opportunities of too many children throughout Scotland.
Ambitious goals are all well and good, but they must be backed up by concrete policies to end the cycle of disadvantage. Such a policy is Scottish Labour’s fair start fund, which would provide investment to support poorer children in every school and in every community. In my constituency, it would mean an extra £1 million a year on top of the Government’s attainment challenge fund going direct to schools to support measures to tackle the gap.
Our aspirations must be backed up with clear targets, too, so that we can really measure progress and ensure that schools and education authorities are able to recognise success. That is highlighted in the excellent briefing for the debate from the Child Poverty Action Group.
I am disappointed that the Scottish Government opposes Scottish Labour’s proposal to set a target of halving the attainment gap within a decade and that it opposed all our amendments to the bill. However, I am happy that the Education (Scotland) Bill starts to tackle the issue on the school week that I raised during the stage 1 debate and in our debate on the amendments. Every parent or carer in Scotland should have the right to expect a minimum number of hours of learning per week for their child when they send them to school. I hope that that change and the Government’s willingness to act will ensure that all children, wherever they live in Scotland, have an equal right to at least 25 hours teaching time a week during term.
Although parents across Scotland should no longer face cuts to the school week as councils are forced into desperate measures, the reality is that our goal of closing the gap will be threatened by the huge cuts to council budgets. In Fife Council, 45 per cent of the budget is spent on education. Local authorities throughout Scotland have said that the additional cuts that John Swinney has announced could have devastating consequences for local budgets for schools and nurseries. We cannot close the gap between the richest and the rest in our classrooms if we cut the budgets for our schools, nurseries and early years programmes.
I hope that the Scottish Government will think again, consider Labour’s policies and act now to protect education budgets. Let us use the powers of our Scottish Parliament to ensure that our children do not pay the price of austerity.
17:29