Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 23 September 2020
It has been the choice of Mr Swinney’s Government to make those decisions. That is why we have seen a reduction in teacher numbers. It is nothing whatever to do with what has happened at Westminster.
Let me come to the question of subject choice, which is relevant to the number of teachers. We know that there has been a reduction in subject choice and that that has had a significant effect on core subjects. Of course, that will get worse with Covid-19, but the reduction in core subjects has had a significant effect. As Iain Gray set out, it has also had an effect on multilevel teaching.
We also know that, on far too many occasions in recent years, the inability of some local authorities to find teachers to employ, often after extensive advertisement, has laid bare the fact that workforce planning is inadequate in some crucial areas. There are clearly barriers within the system that are preventing a more flexible and freer movement of qualified teachers across it.
As I have said before, I fully appreciate that we cannot turn that around overnight. However, we can make a lot of progress—and we should have been making that progress, because we were warned about the problem many years ago. To give Fiona Hyslop due credit, when she took over the job of Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, she said in 2008 that she was surprised that local government teacher requirements were not fully factored into national planning. She asked her teacher employment working group, as it was known in those days, to address that. However, on top of that came cuts—from 30 million teachers down to 22 million in 2016.
Too often, we have heard from probationers who have given evidence to the Education and Skills Committee that there are constraints within the system that create a disincentive to apply for some of the posts of their choice. Too often, there has been a disconnect between teaching universities, the General Teaching Council for Scotland and local government. Although that is beginning to improve, there are still situations in which willing teachers are finding it very difficult to get work because they have to manipulate the system to get the necessary accreditation. That puts some people off.
I will tell the Parliament about the Teach First situation, because I understand that, at one stage, Mr Swinney was interested in having a Scottish version of it. At the time, he spoke to the University of Aberdeen and the GTCS about having a GTCS-accredited Scottish Teach First programme. I will be interested to see whether he chooses to deny that, because that held the possibility of getting rid of some of the inflexibility in the system.
We also know that in 2016, the Scottish Government’s STEMEC—science, technology, engineering and mathematics education committee—report called for the routes into science teaching to be diversified. I think that we are making some progress on the STEM bursary scheme, but we have not had very many updates on that. I re-echo the Conservative Party’s support in 2015 for the Royal Society of Chemistry’s call for a dedicated science teacher to be assigned to every primary school.
Quite rightly, Mr Swinney acknowledges that he is ultimately responsible for decision making in education. The public agree, but they share our frustration that, despite all the undoubted talent in Scotland’s schools, we are not performing nearly as well as we should be, which is a conclusion that the OECD came to in 2015.
The oft-quoted mantra that education is the SNP’s top priority has proven to be no more than hollow words, especially when the main priority in this year’s programme for government is all about independence.
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