Meeting of the Parliament 07 December 2022
I will not give way. I have taken a number of interventions.
The SNP is leaving many newly qualified teachers without jobs. Of nearly 1,800 probationers from 2012, only 400 had a permanent contract last year, and 400 were so scunnered that they had left teaching altogether. That is a tragic waste of talent. How on earth does the cabinet secretary think newly qualified teachers can get on with the rest of their lives or plan for their futures when they do not even have a permanent contract? How does that make teaching in Scotland the attractive career that we all need it to be? Why is the cabinet secretary not banging the table to fix the problem?
The SNP likes to pretend that it is succeeding on attainment by focusing on the attainment gap, but, writing in The Sunday Times in June, Professor Lindsay Paterson criticised the SNP’s approach and showed that the marginal gains in narrowing the attainment gap were only a reflection of
“a fall in attainment at the top end”.
It is not so much about levelling up as it is about levelling down. He also said that today we know
“less ... about the performance of Scotland’s schools than at any time since the 1950s”.
The SNP has taken us out of the international comparison tables on attainment—it is so reluctant to face reality that it simply does not measure attainment. Therefore, I ask the cabinet secretary to commit today to putting Scotland back into those international comparators so that we can learn how we are doing for our young people and our children.
The First Minister said that her neck was on the line and that education is her “sacred responsibility”. It is a shame that she did not even bother to turn up this afternoon for a debate on education, which is rare enough in the parliamentary timetable. However, it is no wonder, because what little data we have illustrates just how much the SNP is failing.
Fewer pupils at primary school are achieving the expected curriculum for excellence levels in reading, writing, numeracy, listening and talking than was the case in 2018. That is pretty much every subject area at primary school. That is not a debating point, or a matter to cover up or evade by dissimulation: it is a national disgrace and a scandal. Will the cabinet secretary tell us what she will do to address overall attainment in our schools, which has been made worse by her Government’s inaction?
Another critical challenge that we face is availability of subject choice across all parts of Scotland. We are falling behind on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with uptake of those subjects being at a five-year low. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of people studying modern languages, especially French, German and Spanish, compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. What is being done to recruit teachers in STEM subjects and modern languages? What is being done to promote and facilitate subject choice and to attract more pupils into those subject areas?
The First Minister decreed that Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority are to be scrapped. No one, least of all the leadership of those bodies, whom I have ever spoken or listened to in those organisations seems to be at all prepared to accept that they have failed. Now—surprise, surprise—those selfsame people are designing the new system. Only the SNP could create such a Lilliputian scenario.