Meeting of the Parliament 15 May 2019
Here we are again. We are only two weeks into the month of May, and this is the second debate on education to have been led by Opposition parties in those 14 days.
I want to be very clear to the Scottish Government on one point. Scottish Conservatives’ position on this issue is not about political opportunism, as the SNP is fond of saying; parties across the chamber are genuinely and seriously concerned about the current state of Scottish education.
Stakeholders from all walks of life, as well as members of the Scottish Parliament, have highlighted the various ways in which our education system is deteriorating. Some examples of that are Scotland’s performance in the international programme for international student assessment—PISA—results continually declining under the SNP; teacher numbers having fallen by more than 3,100 since 2007-08; public opinion ratings of Scotland’s schools being at record low levels;·and the narrowing of subject choices for children entering S4.
Last week, the Education and Skills Committee heard from Larry Flanagan, the head of the largest teaching union in Scotland, who talked of an “explosion” in multilevel teaching since the introduction of curriculum for excellence. The combined class method of teaching is not ideal and has had a negative effect on everyone. One thing that could have begun to turn things around was the SNP’s flagship education bill, but that was scrapped just before the recess last summer.
Well, the Government may have scrapped the bill, but it has not scrapped the problems. The Education and Skills Committee has recently heard evidence from several stakeholders on the reduction in subject choice. In last week’s session, Francisco Valdera-Gil, from the Scottish Council of Deans of Education, pointed out that the reduction in subject choice is having knock-on effects on modern languages. He said:
“In 2011 and 2012, there were 28,000 students doing standard grade French and we have 6,000 or 7,000 now.”—[Official Report, Education and Skills Committee, 8 May 2019; c 25.]