Hansard

We will vote for the Labour motion because, in a Scotland-wide context in which teacher numbers are down by more than 1,000 since the SNP came to power and the overall pupil roll has risen by more than 13,000, it cannot be right that Glasgow City Council will need to axe 450 teachers over the next three years simply to balance the books. News such as that, along with the huge shortfalls in the numbers of students who are studying to become teachers in key subjects, explains why the Government seems to be backing out of yet another manifesto commitment—this time, it is the commitment to recruit an extra 3,500 teachers.

It is not only Glasgow where there is an issue. In March, it was reported that the on-going trouble with recruiting secondary subject teachers in Aberdeenshire is reaching crisis point, with a particular shortage of English, science, technical, maths and home economics teachers. There are reports of Falkirk Council trying to plug a gap of £62 million by proposing to cut teaching time by up to two and a half hours a week. Parents have pointed out that that would lead to a pupil who starts primary 1 now losing a whole year of schooling. Orkney, Inverclyde and Clackmannanshire have floated similar plans. Further, around 11,000 teachers and school staff are stuck on temporary contracts, which is leading potential new recruits to ask themselves serious questions about the future.

There is no scenario in which an analysis of such statistics leads to good outcomes for teachers, pupils or parents—indeed, such statistics do not do that, as last year’s programme for international student assessment results show that maths, science and reading are at an all-time low. Labour’s motion refers to those issues, but the cabinet secretary’s self-congratulatory amendment would delete all of that and does not ask the serious questions.

In fact, the Government amendment reveals two concerning fundamentals. First, the Government would rather avoid discussing uncomfortable truths; it would prefer to make an amendment that diverts, distracts and dissembles, because it fears the optics of acknowledging a perfectly reasonable Opposition motion. It is pathetic. I trust that at least Labour, whose press release yesterday called

“on all parties to come together to demand that these job losses are stopped and that children’s futures are protected”,

will be voting for our amendment rather than opposing it simply because it comes from the Conservatives.

Secondly, the Government amendment reveals a sobering truth—after 17 years and nearly a decade of pretending that education is its number 1 priority, there is no plan. The Government specialises in pumping out pie-in-the-sky targets, often at the time that elections roll round, but it has no idea how to deliver any of them, and some would say that it has no intention of doing so. Rather than projecting five, 10 or 15 years into the future to ask what a thriving Scottish economy and the workforce to service it would look like, and then working back to define the whole environment from early years, through school and on to further education, higher education and apprenticeships, the Government prefers simply to react to each new piece of bad news with more unevidenced targets.

In seeking to lead from the future rather than to the future, the Scottish Conservatives have such a plan for teachers, and we have a plan for the economy, both of which are referenced in the amendment in my name—and neither of which I can recall the cabinet secretary asking me to discuss and work through, despite saying in her amendment that she wishes to do so.

We must have a sea change in our approach to the economy, to the futures of the people of Scotland, to the education that we provide to them and to how we strategise properly to create the best future for all. At decision time, let us see whether the Government can put aside performative posturing and party politicking and just once do what is right by the people of Scotland.

I move amendment S6M-13196.2, to insert at end:

“; takes on board the recommendations of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party’s New Deal for Teachers to support teachers, reduce contact time and properly fund local authorities; believes that enacting these recommendations would help to facilitate the recruitment and retention of teachers, provide the highest standard of education and work to better improve the link between the education system and employers, and calls, in that regard, for the alignment of skills to meet the needs of businesses and employers both for today and into the future, as set out in the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party’s Grasping the Thistle economic strategy plan.”