Meeting of the Parliament 30 October 2024
As the cabinet secretary knows, the situation for pupils with additional support needs in Scotland is, as the Education, Children and Young People Committee has said, intolerable, and it is not improving on the Government’s watch. The result is that one in four children is being rejected by child and adolescent mental health services. One in six children who are identified as being in need of treatment waited more than four months to get help. The problems are deeper and wider than the Government seems to recognise. It thinks that the answer to the crisis is to hold councils to ransom by withholding £145 million from them—that beggars belief.
The gross underfunding of local authorities means that education in general is in crisis. Some schools are having to use pupil equity funding money to recruit staff. Glasgow is cutting 450 posts, which is leaving some schools with only one member of staff in front of a class, and others are reducing teacher hours. The situation is out of control, and I am afraid that I do not think that the Government has grasped the depth or scale of the problem.
However, it does not have to be that way. A good, committed Government that is showing leadership can support education. The UK Labour Government has just demonstrated that today in the budget. It has put the many before the few by adding VAT to private school fees, tripling funding for free breakfast clubs, increasing school budgets by £2.3 billion, investing in school-based nurseries, increasing support for ASN by £1 billion and announcing an additional £300 million for further education. Those are the choices of a Government that supports education, and people in Scotland need the SNP Government to do the same.
I move amendment S6M-15060.3, to insert at end:
“; further believes that there should be regular and transparent national level data collected on vacancies in teaching roles and the numbers of registered teachers on supply lists, alongside closer monitoring of the proportion of newly qualified teachers who are in teaching roles, and reiterates that the Scottish Government should publish a comprehensive plan to address gaps in the teaching and school staff workforce as resolved by the Parliament on 15 May 2024.”
16:07Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.