Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 February 2021
Today’s debate has pretty much summed up 14 years of SNP education policy failure. Not only is the Government wasting time and energy on plotting to hold an illegal referendum before Christmas this year, but any spare energy that it has left is being expended on hiding the truth at all costs. Let us make no mistake: if the Government had got a glowing report from the OECD, we would be having a debate on it in the chamber and, at the very least, it would have been leaked to the press. Instead, the report sits on the cabinet secretary’s desk, buried under all the other damning documents that the Parliament has demanded be published.
The claim that education is the Government’s number 1 priority is laughable and no longer holds any credibility. At the heart of the problem is the cabinet secretary, who has failed to get a grip of any of the key issues and has, at every turn, simply opted for the path of least resistance instead of demanding the change that is badly needed to restore our once world-leading education system.
It has not escaped my attention that many members who have served in Parliament for a long time recognise the repeated failures and a continued choice on the part of the cabinet secretary to push the issues further and further down the road. All the while, our young people are being let down.
We have all the essential ingredients of a world-leading system: a dedicated workforce, committed young people, parents and carers, and a will in the Parliament to work together. We have seen that once again during the pandemic, when many schools and individual teachers have gone above and beyond in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The only thing missing in all of that is the SNP. I have lost count of how many times the Government has lost votes on education, with the rest of the Parliament, despite our political differences, uniting to call for action.
No one who has sat on the Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee or followed its proceedings can have any confidence in Education Scotland or the SQA. There seems to be a kind of pact in place whereby they will let the Scottish Government off the hook when it comes to substandard outcomes in return for a free pass to mark their own homework and excuse away their role in events.
Over the past five years, I have visited almost every school in my constituency, with only the pandemic preventing me from completing the list. In every school, I have seen the problem of teachers and young people coming up against a system that speaks in soundbites and buzzwords, that thinks that it knows better and that, ultimately, does not seem to grasp the challenges on the ground.
As many members have pointed out, there is confusion about the lines of accountability and about who is making some of the key decisions and judgment calls. I am personally alarmed at the continued failings when it comes to ASN provision. It is progress that the cabinet secretary now seems to recognise that there is a gap between the rhetoric and reality, but, as every person at the coalface knows, that has been the case for years and nothing has been done.
Right across the education system, the very organisations that exist to raise standards and ensure equity and excellence are so detached from reality that it is hard to see how they can ever do their job effectively. I believe that that is why teachers have lost faith in those key organisations, as my colleague Liz Smith and others have pointed out. We just cannot accept that.
That is why, if we are serious about getting things right for our young people, we cannot let the matter slip into the next session of Parliament. We must own the issues and face them head on. Rather than being a convenient excuse to hit the pause button, the pandemic is a call to action that has highlighted the weakness at the centre of the system, and we need to do something about it. The cabinet secretary needs to do something about it. It is not enough just to wish the problems away.
15:23