Meeting of the Parliament 17 January 2024
I am not necessarily sure that I agree with the rationale behind Ms Duncan-Glancy’s thinking. Her motion looks to me a bit like a copy-and-paste job. Nonetheless, I will turn to the task at hand and attempt a dissection of the Labour Party motion.
Scotland’s PISA results were published in December 2023. As I set out in my statement to Parliament then, both the First Minister and I have accepted that the results were not good enough. I have previously outlined a comprehensive plan on how we will improve attainment and achievement by, for example, focusing on curriculum improvement, which I updated the Education, Children and Young People Committee on this morning. Our curriculum improvement cycle will start with maths, led by a maths specialist, with English and literacy being the next subject area to be reviewed.
Although the PISA results are important, they are one data set that should not be considered in isolation. As Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, I spend much of my time going in and out of our schools, and I am always blown away by the committed teachers and young people. Only last week, proud pupils at St Paul’s Roman Catholic high school in Pollok told me about their journey to achieving gold status in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework’s school ambassador programme. There are many positives in Scotland’s education system, so it is somewhat disappointing that the Labour Party could not bring itself to acknowledge in the motion a single positive achievement by our pupils and teachers.
Another data set that is strangely lacking from the Labour motion is the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data. The ACEL data that was published last month shows that, for literacy and numeracy, the proportions of primary school children achieving the expected curriculum for excellence levels are at record highs for children from both the most and the least deprived areas of Scotland. I remind members that the ACEL data is predicated on the judgment of the teachers who we trust to teach our children and young people every day.