Hansard

No, I would quite like to finish this piece.

I think that the Godfather himself could learn a few lessons from the approach of the Government in Scotland today.

Given the reported £2.2 billion in cuts to local authorities, which will impact on education, I can fully appreciate the principle behind Labour’s motion. However, we are at the stage of finalising manifesto commitments and costings. As that principle is essentially about ring fencing, it requires much wider debate and consideration, particularly given that we are opposed to an increase in tax.

Rather than micromanaging local government, the reduction of the attainment gap could be better managed if headteachers were given more autonomy and respect in the running of their own schools. It is teachers who know best which pupils need help and support and when they need it. As Audit Scotland stated, deprivation is “not the only factor” when it comes to low attainment.

I mentioned gangster tactics. When the Highland Council found out that the Government was attempting to impose—with no consultation whatever—a 25-hour week on primaries 1 to 3 only four days before the relevant amendment to the Education (Scotland) Bill was to be voted on at stage 2, even SNP councillors were embarrassed, but they kept their heads down and remained loyal, as they are expected to do. Such a lack of consultation is disrespectful to local authorities, which we expect to implement our education policy, and it usurps local democracy.

I only wish that pupils in Scotland could again be at the heart of the education system, rather than the constant battles between the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Educational Institute of Scotland.

As someone who was a lecturer in further and higher education for more than two decades before I entered Parliament in 1999, I know more than most just how much further education transforms lives. It transformed mine. I left school at 15, got a full-time job and started to go to night classes. As a single parent with two children, I returned to further education to get enough highers to get into university. I then became a lecturer in economics and the rest is history. Therefore, I know how further education transforms lives, and not just mine—over the years, I watched students who had slipped through the net at school get a second chance in further education.

As well as cutting the number of places for part-time students by 152,000, the Scottish Government has cut the number of places for students who are over 25 by 74,000—I was one of them. In 2014, almost 20,000 school students attended further education colleges, which represented a fall of 70 per cent. To be more precise, that was a fall of 48,000 students. Even the number of places for those in the 20 to 24 group had fallen by 9 per cent in 2014.

Therefore, when Audit Scotland states, correctly, that the merger process has had

“minimal negative impact on students”,

it is talking about those students who are still students. The merger process has absolutely had a negative impact by cutting 152,000 part-time places, 74,000 places for over-25s, 48,000 places for school pupils under the age of 16 and 9 per cent of the places for 20 to 24-year-olds. Further education is no longer a second chance for around 300,000 people; many people across Scotland now have no chance at all, thanks to the SNP. They deserve better.

The SNP Government is very proud of its record on further and higher education and on widening access, so I give its ministers the opportunity to explain to the chamber why it is that, in 2015, in England—which the SNP loves to criticise—18 per cent of the most deprived 20 per cent of young people were accepted into university, while in Scotland only 10 per cent of the most deprived 20 per cent went to university. Why is that? Why has England got it so right when we have got it so wrong?

I will close for the Conservatives, too, so I will continue my speech then.

I move amendment S4M-15588.2, to leave out from “education” to end and insert:

“the primary focus of education policy must be on reducing the attainment gap between the most and least deprived pupils; believes that this will be achieved by head teachers being given significantly more autonomy to run their schools, including giving Scottish Attainment Challenge funding directly to schools and ensuring that this money is awarded to deprived children, regardless of where they attend school; acknowledges the crucial role of vocational education and is disappointed that free tuition in higher education has been prioritised over adequate funding for colleges, which has in turn resulted in 152,000 places being lost since 2007; recognises the importance of substantially increasing funding for colleges, and regrets that deprived young people in Scotland are almost half as likely to get the chance to go to university as their peers in England.”