Meeting of the Parliament 24 May 2023
The transformative power of a good, world-leading education system can never be overstated. I know that first hand. My experience is not unique and it was not without significant challenges, but it shows that, when challenges in education are overcome and our education system works, that really can give young people a fighting chance at a future. However, when the system does not work, that potential is wasted.
That is why I have found it deeply sad, in the short time that I have had to witness it up close recently, that Scotland’s once world-leading education system faces the challenges that we see and are discussing today, such as regular challenges to authority, persistent refusals to adhere to school rules, online bullying of teachers and pupils, increasing bullying and harassment in schools, misogyny, pupils wandering around corridors rather than learning in classes, and physical and verbal abuse.
I am afraid that that deepening worrying culture in our schools is a sorry symptom of failure at the hands of a Government that has not delivered on some of its promises, which could have helped to avoid the situation that we are in. In failing, it has not only let down staff and pupils; it has put the future and the next generation of our country in jeopardy.
In her publicised remarks this week, the cabinet secretary was correct in noting that schools are facing challenges in the midst of a cost of living crisis that followed three very tough years of a pandemic. However, she must also recognise that the impact of those challenges was deepened by the Government’s inaction on recovery and its lack of proper analysis and a plan to rebuild from the trauma of the pandemic in schools.
Of course, the pandemic and the cost of living crisis impacted schools, but the problem was growing long before the pandemic. In 2018, there were 17,602 recorded incidents of abuse towards teachers in Scotland. No one should ever be made to feel unsafe in their workplace. Alarm bells should have been ringing for the Scottish National Party long before the situation reached that point. Instead, five years later, it is only just admitting that there is a problem. Of course, we welcome the fact that it has now done so but, in the meantime, the situation has escalated. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers has estimated that the number of its members who have experienced verbal abuse by a pupil has increased by well over a third since 2019, and 16 per cent of its members have reported experiencing physical assault this year.
My fear is that, rather than working to solve the problems, the SNP has exacerbated them by failing to meet promise after promise. One of the earliest promises, which was made way back in 2007, was to reduce class sizes. Sixteen years later, the proportion of classes with more than 18 pupils in them is higher than it was back then. That situation is not helped by a drastic fall in the number of teachers, which has reduced by more than 900 in that time.
Teachers are well skilled in identifying and well placed to identify the challenges and needs of their pupils, but the strain on their resources and time has left them overstretched and hindered in their ability to do that.
A decline in the number of ASN teachers who are available to support pupils who need support against a cluttered backdrop of the confusing and overlapping legislation that surrounds transitions and access to additional support has made things worse. Teachers are left to pick up the slack, and too often the same is true of their pastoral duties.
That is why I welcome the SNP’s commitment to increasing mental health support and counselling in schools. Doing that would not only have lightened responsibility on teachers; it would have meant better support for young people.