Meeting of the Parliament 15 May 2019
I was going to start by saying that, perhaps for the first time in his life, Tavish Scott is right. However, I found his speech rather depressing. Nonetheless, his motion states that
“there is no more important investment than in the education of Scotland’s young people”.
They are the future of this country—on that point, he is right—and, unless we have an education system that ensures that they all have the same opportunities to succeed in life, irrespective of which party is in Government, we will all have failed them.
Today’s motion questions the Government’s focus, mentioning its
“policies, staff conditions, recruitment and retention, or the means of measurement of Scottish education.”
I do not want to be the pupil who blames the question, but a bit more focus and a full debate might have allowed us to make more progress today.
I am sure that, as the cabinet secretary said, we all welcome the recently agreed teachers’ pay settlement. The enhanced pay deal means that an unpromoted teacher will now earn more than £41,000 a year. The deal means that we avoided industrial action and that our children’s education did not suffer, and it also secured a commitment to tackle workload, to support teacher professional development and to enhance leadership.
On the subject of workload, I recall that, when the original pay deal was rejected, I was in a pub with two of my good friends and former teaching colleagues, both of whom had voted to accept that deal. Neither is an SNP voter. What can I say? I attract such people. However, both were of the view that the difficulty with the deal was not just the money that was on the table; their growing concern was about their workload in relation to children with additional support needs. For that reason, I very much welcome the fact that the Government’s amendment contains a commitment to review the use of co-ordinated support plans. We know that additional support needs are increasing and that that is partly because we now have a system that is better equipped to identify them.