Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 February 2021
That is the pathetic kind of behaviour that we get from Mr Rennie and his colleague Mr Cole-Hamilton on a regular basis. We have public servants in those organisations who have worked very hard during the pandemic, and the first part of Mr Rennie’s motion sticks the boot into those public servants. I will not associate the Government with that type of shabby behaviour—and the Liberal Democrats know all about shabby behaviour this week, if I may say so. [Interruption.] I will not take another intervention—I have to close the debate.
On some of the substantive choices, Mr Rowley put some fair points to me about the funding for school education. I have boosted school education funding by sending money directly to schools for five years in pupil equity funding, giving headteachers control over the budgets at their disposal. Mr Rowley then attacks me for funding the national agencies. If I had not funded the national agencies, there would not be a digital network in place that allows every single school pupil in Scotland to have a digital account that enables them to access remote learning. That is what investment in the national agencies has brought.
Mr Gray laid into the SQA for all the preparations for the assessment in 2021. One of the recommendations of the Priestley review was that the SQA should bring together a stakeholder group in the education system involving professional associations, Colleges Scotland and directors of education, working with the SQA. It is called the national qualifications 2021 group, and the members of that group are the authors of the guidance that is available to the education system. The SQA has not gone off into some ivory tower to make up that guidance itself; it has been working, as the Priestley recommendations said that it should, with the wider education system.
I put those two points on the record to indicate that some of this debate has been, frankly, gratuitous.
Clare Adamson hit the nail on the head. So did Oliver Mundell, if I may say so, if I can get through the persistent personal attacks that Mr Mundell makes on me in parliamentary debates—that is part of his character in Parliament now. As I worked my way through all that, Clare Adamson and Mr Mundell made exactly the right points, asking what effect on outcomes there has been as a consequence of the SNP Government. The effect has been that more young people have been getting better qualifications over the 14 years of this Government. Mr Mundell shakes his head, but I suggest that he goes away and—