Meeting of the Parliament 17 January 2024
Forgive me for not being present, although it might be timely to spare a thought for the many young Highland pupils who are off school today due to the snow and ice.
I will start my remarks with an observation that I think we can all agree with: there is probably no service as critical as education. When it comes to our duties to the public, we have an enormous weight on our shoulders to ensure that our young people, who are growing up through the school system right now, get the education system that they need to prepare them for the future.
I agree with Pam Duncan-Glancy that it is time for action, not debate, but that is precisely what the Scottish Government is doing, with Jenny Gilruth’s leadership on education making clear what is not working right now and the solutions to resolve it. All of Labour’s asks in the motion are difficult to argue with, but they are also all captured in the comprehensive plan that the cabinet secretary set out in December.
One of my biggest hopes for the debates that we have on education is that we move away from inane discussions about inputs and start talking about success as measured in outcomes, skills, knowledge and the ability to thrive. Education Scotland says that it aims to
“equip young people with knowledge, confidence and skills, giving them a competitive edge in a global job market.”
That is precisely why PISA is so important—because it is a global perspective. PISA matters because international comparisons matter. As I said in a previous debate, they probably matter more than comparisons with previous so-called golden ages, which I do not think actually existed.
In December, the cabinet secretary accepted unequivocally that the Government wants to disrupt the trajectory, whether based on attendance, behaviour or PISA figures. She stated that the Government has high ambitions, that being average is not good enough and that we need to pursue excellence. She also made some points in that statement that remain more relevant than ever. She agreed that knee-jerk political responses are not going to help our young people, that we are at an educational juncture, and that we need substantive responses. In the brief time that I have left, I will talk about what that requires.
The first thing is to ensure that our young people are able to read, write and count at a level that is comparable to that of their international peers. To do that, the cabinet secretary has previously promised to improve our curriculum in a planned and systematic way, so that it is relevant and forward looking, with high-quality teaching and learning. She set out the need to focus on maths education and make it a primary area for improvement—it was to be the first area to be improved. That would involve maths specialists, with a full-scale update to the maths curriculum beginning this year, which would then be tested with teachers next year. It would be accompanied by a thematic inspection of literacy and English, to ensure that the English curriculum is meeting those standards.
It is worth observing that we need to ensure that the gaps between Scotland and England and between Scotland and the rest of the world are closed when it comes to the best 10 per cent of pupils, so that we push our brightest as hard as possible.
Secondly, all of that will be in vain without ensuring that we deal with a poverty-related attainment gap—