Meeting of the Parliament 17 January 2024
I thank my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy for bringing the motion to the chamber on behalf of Scottish Labour. She was right to begin by highlighting the PISA statistics. The scores for maths and science are at an all-time low, reading scores are at their joint lowest level and Scottish pupils are now a full year behind their English counterparts in maths.
The cabinet secretary has rightly acknowledged—as has the First Minister—the challenge that those statistics present for this country. As other members have highlighted, they are central to any chance of recovery in our economy, social infrastructure and communities across Scotland.
There are clearly questions of resourcing. We have already discussed issues around the budget settlement and the challenges that will emerge from that relating to local government finance, which flows through into our schools, and the cuts that have been made to university places and to college provision across Scotland, none of which will serve our country well in years to come. However, I will focus on the issue that Willie Rennie just highlighted: the programme of reform that the Government was supposed to follow.
Those reforms have variously been botched or have stalled and, to be frank, are now non-existent. It emerged this morning that international expert Dr Naomi Stanford, whom the SNP Government asked to help implement the recommendations of the Muir report, resigned in despair at the glacial pace of change under the Government. She had asked for some significant and substantial changes that would justify her continued involvement with the Government’s work. No evidence of such changes was forthcoming, and she removed herself from the process. That was a year ago. We are a year further on but have seen no further progress.
All of that speaks to a reform agenda that has ground to a halt. We must have great sympathy for people such as Ken Muir, who put in a huge amount of work, and the many people around the country who were asked questions and gave their experiences of the education system over a long period. That was at the behest of this Government. They were told that their opinions would count and that they would result in changes—and they have resulted in nothing. Whether through Government incompetence or intransigence, there are real consequences of that lack of reform, which we see in the PISA figures.
The evidence from our teachers is also clear. Member surveys through the EIS revealed that 71 per cent of teachers are unhappy with their workload, which is, crucially, highlighted in our motion today. We must do the best that we can to improve the situation that our teachers find themselves in.
I will take a moment to highlight a situation that I have raised with the cabinet secretary before: the lack of a primary school in my constituency. Back in 2015, in the Western Gateway area of Dundee, home owners were promised a school by the SNP council and they were paying an extra £5,000 per house on a roof tax to help pay for it. Last year, SNP councillors failed to secure funding from the Government to pay for it. In response, I have had warm words from the cabinet secretary and from the First Minister in November; however, frankly, those have amounted to nothing.
More than 130 people attended a community meeting in Dundee in December, at which SNP councillors were completely unable to provide any assurances about the delivery of that school. Residents are outraged that this saga is now dragging on into a ninth year. When will the school ever be built? When can the people who live in my constituency get the school that they were promised and that they have paid for?