Hansard

In March, just as the country was starting to comprehend the scale and seriousness of the pandemic, we debated the state of Scottish education. The PISA results had just made clear what many teachers had long suspected: that, despite their best efforts, something was going wrong in Scottish education. Now, as we gear up to bear more restrictions once again, there is a strong sense of history repeating itself.

During that debate in March, we spoke about subject choices narrowing, the harmful roll-out of standardised testing, the decimation of the ASN and support staff workforce, and the overburdened workforce that remained. Those problems have not gone away—the list has just got longer.

Since then, Angela Morgan’s review has shown that parents and carers of children with additional support needs are battling a system that does not have the resources that it needs to help their children to thrive. Larry Flanagan of the Educational Institute of Scotland says that children will have been “severely traumatised” by the past few months and that “schools have been stripped” of the staff that are needed to support them.

The “credible” alternative to exams that the Scottish Government promised was anything but. Ministers were repeatedly warned by teachers, pupils and this Parliament that the 2020 exam alternative was going to crush ambitions and penalise pupils from poorer backgrounds the most. However, the warnings fell on deaf ears and teachers are now being asked to plan lessons without knowing what pupils will be assessed on or how those assessments will be made.

None of those problems will be addressed by the constitutional wrangling that both the Conservatives and the SNP are determined to put this Parliament through. The head of the Scottish civil service warned the SNP Government that the “de-prioritisation” of public services would be the result of its referendum planning. That is the last thing that is needed.

Instead of using their time to stand up for those at the hard end of the SNP’s Scotland, the Tories have leaned into the constitutional divide. Their motion offers nothing constructive. This debate could have been an opportunity to generate parliamentary consensus or for Opposition parties to force the pace of this minority Government. Instead, it has been used to play the political game that the Tories and the SNP enjoy so much. As a result, there will be no grown-up decisions made in the Scottish Parliament today.

I want to bring the chamber back to something more helpful for the teachers, pupils and parents who are doing their best in these challenging times. These are concrete actions that could make things better for everyone, and I believe that we should all be able to agree on them. My amendment sought to set some of them out.

We should get the 1,140 hours provision fully up and running as soon as possible, so that children have a safe space in which to be looked after and parents have the certainty of stable childcare while the working world gets back on its feet. The meeting to review the new timescale needs to take place urgently, as a first step.

We should embolden the pupil equity fund, so that it can be used to address the attainment gap as it was originally supposed to do, instead of plugging all the other gaps as it has been left to do. We should strengthen Covid testing for staff and pupils so that their return to school is not put in jeopardy. We should accept, and clearly set out how to address, the concerns that were raised in the Morgan review.

We need to get more boots on the ground, so that mental health support can be transformed. Child and adolescent mental health services waiting times should not be the only marker of how child and adolescent mental health is doing.

Money needs to be spent before crises demand it. Counsellors, educational psychologists and support staff need to be widely and consistently available across Scotland. Outdoor learning centres, which have offered generation after generation the opportunity to experience and learn outside the classroom, cannot be left to shut their doors. Colleges and universities should be setting up for the emergency that will exist long after a vaccine has been found. If we are to meet the 2030 targets that are set out in the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, they need to be ready for a mass programme of training and retraining.

Finally, the Scottish Government must request an early report on education from the OECD so that, when the Conservatives and the SNP try to throw constitutional blinkers over debates ahead of the election next year, voters might have a fighting chance of being able to clearly see the facts.

That is what Parliament should be agreeing on today.