Meeting of the Parliament 09 May 2017
When the SSLN information first pointed to a decline in performance in Scottish education, the Government acted immediately on the issues that it raised. When a decline in performance was identified in the survey in 2014, the Government acted immediately to take forward the national improvement framework, which is regarded across the board in the education system as the set of measures that are required to be undertaken to support and concentrate on the agenda of improvement in every aspect of our education system. We should take great encouragement from the way in which the system has responded to that call for action.
Mr Gray raises the issue of more teachers and more resources. Of course, there is a rising number of teachers in our education system—there are more teachers this year than there were last year. On resources, the Government has put £120 million directly into the hands of schools so that they can determine how they close the attainment gap in their circumstances. Of course, in relation to the wider financial settlement for local authorities, the Accounts Commission, in its most recent analysis of the subject, showed that Scotland’s local authorities have been well treated by the Government in the context of the reduction in resources that we have available to us.
Finally, if there is a resources crisis such as Mr Gray highlights, why did a number of Labour local authorities not take the opportunity to supplement the resources that could have been available to them for this financial year by increasing the council tax? Until Mr Gray gives us a decent answer to that question, we will not take seriously his protestations on that point.