Meeting of the Parliament 08 March 2017
Yes, I agree. There are serious concerns about that closure, so it must be looked at. I know that the cabinet secretary has initiated a new discussion about routes into teaching and how we undertake professional training of new recruits. There are serious questions to be asked about that because—let us be honest—the teacher shortages are very serious, as Richard Lochhead said in committee this morning.
Those are serious concerns for education that we must not shy away from, because if we pretend that the evidence is not accurate or that there is a way to get round it, we will not deal head-on with what curriculum for excellence is supposed to be doing. We all agree—and I record Conservative support for it—with the principles of curriculum for excellence, but the curriculum is currently not being delivered particularly well.
I will finish by coming back to the point that came up throughout our committee meetings in November and December, when the education agencies found it very difficult to give us cast-iron reasons why certain decisions had been taken. For me, that is a worry, because even if I disagree with a decision I want to know why it was taken. If we do not know why decisions were taken, we will never be able to make progress. I say to the cabinet secretary that one of the most important challenges that we face is in ensuring that education agencies make the right decisions, based on accurate evidence—which we all know we are trying to collect.