Meeting of the Parliament 18 May 2022
Oliver Mundell was bang on with that latter point. At the very least, you would expect the education secretary, if no other minister, to champion education. I know that the First Minister has sort of gone off education and does not regard it as the top priority anymore, because the numbers do not suit her argument. It is now a long-term ambition, instead of a “judge me on my record” matter. We cannot judge her on her record if she will not be in office any longer. It will take that long to get the progress that we are looking for.
For the education secretary not even to argue for an additional £43 million to plug the hole made by the Government’s cuts from nine challenge authorities across the country, is depressing. SNP ministers make the predictable argument that if we want to make the case against something, we have to find the money in the budget, even though we do not have access to the books and we do not know what secret pots of money they have for their favourite future schemes. SNP ministers should be standing up for these things, but they seem incapable of doing so.
The SNP has been slow-footed in closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Back in 2010, while we were in government in the UK, we were arguing for a pupil premium, which involved targeted funding for those in disadvantaged communities. That was five years before the SNP Government woke up to the problem. Who would have thought that the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition would be way ahead of the SNP on closing the poverty-related attainment gap?