Hansard

Let me start by congratulating the cabinet secretary on getting the Education (Scotland) Bill to this stage and on its imminent approval—I believe—by the Parliament this evening. That is an achievement for any minister, and we will be supporting her in the vote tonight. That is because there are a good number of things in the bill that we certainly support, some of which have not had much of a mention.

We support the creation of a chief education officer; the headteacher qualification, which the cabinet secretary spoke about today and which is an important step forward in improving the professional standards of our teaching profession; and GTCS registration for all teachers in the independent sector as well as the state sector. We also support the measures on Gaelic-medium education, which happily were strengthened at stage 2, and the learning hours duty, which—as Liam McArthur pointed out—we did, in a form, bring in at stage 2.

I could not help but be a little amused when the cabinet secretary said that she had been made aware of the learning hours issue recently when she was in the Highlands. I have been aware of it since around 2010, when her colleague Derek Mackay was running Renfrewshire Council and tried to make exactly the sort of change that would have been outlawed under the provisions as they were originally drafted. Ever since then, I have felt that we should introduce such a duty. It may be new to the bill, but the concept itself is not new.

If I am being honest, the bill would, if it had stayed as it was, have been worthy but hardly earth-shattering. It became a much more important piece of legislation when it became primarily about closing the attainment gap with the introduction of the national performance improvement framework. We have already debated today the process by which that happened and some of the curious elements of it. At first the framework was not there, and then it was there in name but we did not know what it actually was.

It is worrying that it is still unclear—I think that Liz Smith used the word “cloudy”—as to what the framework will do, particularly in terms of testing. I have said that we accept the assurances that the cabinet secretary and the First Minister have given about national testing. I hope that the cabinet secretary understands that we, and teachers and parents, are taking a lot on trust in this area. I hope that I am right to do that, and that Liam McArthur is proved to be wrong and the Government does not reintroduce high-stakes testing.

The bill could have been much stronger. It is the type of legislation that is often criticised; I do not have the exact quote from Keir Bloomer—I think that Mr McArthur used it earlier in the debate—about

“pious thinking masquerading as legislation”,

but there are bad examples of that. The accusation could be made about our legislation on climate change and patients’ rights, for instance, that we are legislating for something that is terribly worthy but we do not really know how we are going to deliver it.

We have pressed the Government to show some confidence in its own legislation and the purpose behind it. That is why we wanted to ensure Scotland’s re-entry in the TIMSS and PIRLS global comparisons. If we believe that we are working towards a world-class education system, we should not be afraid to judge it against the rest of the world. That is why we wanted to set a modest target for the attainment gap in a decade, which the cabinet secretary resisted again today. I do not understand why. I am sure that I heard the First Minister talk about closing the attainment gap in a decade, and the target that we wanted to set was extremely modest by her standards. The danger is that people might conclude that she is not serious about what the bill sets out to do.

The greatest criticism of that type of legislation is that it legislates for an end but fails to will the means to achieve that end. That is why we have tried, at stage 2 and again today, to strengthen the bill by building in assurances that the means will be forthcoming. The Scottish Government sets obligations on others in the bill but dodges some of those obligations itself.

The cabinet secretary claimed a strong track record in investing in our children’s futures, but we know that that is not really true. The attainment fund is worth only £25 million in a budget of £4.5 billion, and 1,500 schools for children from poorer families get no help. The claim is not true in general either. The cabinet secretary cannot claim a track record of investing in children’s futures if she has cut 4,500 teachers and is cutting half a billion pounds from local authorities.

We support the bill and its purpose, but it could be so much stronger if it came with the commitments to make everything actually happen. We will pass the bill tonight, but tomorrow, when the budget comes to the chamber, we can show that we actually have the will to make it happen.