Meeting of the Parliament 18 May 2022
The First Minister is fond of telling us that education is her priority. She never tires of telling us how passionate she is about ensuring that every young Scot has a decent start in life, irrespective of their background or circumstances. However, for most of her 15 years in government, the evidence and the reality is that Scottish children born into the poorest families in the poorest communities have been badly let down. Pupils who live in more affluent families are still more likely to succeed in school and higher education.
When the Scottish Government belatedly launched the Scottish attainment challenge, Scottish Labour welcomed the recognition that investment and action were needed to close the poverty-related attainment gap. The funds allocated, although they are insufficient to fix the problems, were still a step in the right direction.
Four of the nine authorities that have been allocated attainment challenge funding are in my West Scotland region. That is a stark indication of the scale and concentration of poverty in the west of Scotland. Councils in the west have worked creatively to use those funds to make a real difference to the lives and educational progress of children and young people. Nevertheless, Audit Scotland has warned us of the challenges that remain. In a March 2021 report, it said:
“The poverty-related attainment gap remains wide and inequalities have been exacerbated by Covid-19. Progress on closing the gap has been limited and falls short of the Scottish Government’s aims.”
As has been said, that was in 2021, and we can now add the problems that are being caused by inflation and the cost of living crisis. As well as being a damning indictment of the Scottish Government’s failure to resolve the problems that we all know exist, that highlights the utter stupidity of cutting money from the authorities where the need is greatest.
As Michael Marra said, by 2025, funding for the nine challenge authorities will have been slashed by £25.3 million per year—that is 60 per cent overall. In total, there will be a cut of £63 million over the next four years, with cuts of 82 per cent in Inverclyde; 75 per cent in North Ayrshire; 71 per cent in Renfrewshire; and 58 per cent in West Dunbartonshire.
I say to the minister that I do not have a problem with providing extra money for education in every council across Scotland—it is badly needed—nor with reviewing how existing funding is being used and considering improvements. However, I have a problem with funding extra money for all councils by stealing it from those councils that the Scottish Government itself has identified as facing the biggest challenge with the poverty-related attainment gap. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Taking money from our poorest areas to help better-off areas is something that Boris Johnson would be proud of—it is the tartan version of the Tories’ so-called levelling-up agenda.