Meeting of the Parliament 30 October 2024
The Scottish Government is working on a misunderstanding. The education secretary seems to think that local authorities, including SNP-run Glasgow City Council, are hellbent on destroying Scottish education. Why on earth does she think that? If the Westminster Government were treating the Scottish Government as she is treating local authorities, there would be an outcry.
Where is the Verity house agreement? Where is the historic concordat where local authorities are supposed to be working in partnership with central Government, when we are now regularly issuing threats because, somehow, local authorities cannot be trusted with our education system?
The cabinet secretary has really destroyed the relationship with local authorities and schools. The people who are paying the price are teachers, because there is complete incoherence in the Scottish Government’s position. There are promises about, and difficulties in, recruiting 3,500 extra teachers, partly to cut teacher contact time by 90 minutes and—it has been in the commentary—about making sure that there are more permanent places and cutting temporary contracts. However, none of that has been done.
I understand the cabinet secretary’s problem, but to think that local authorities are the problem in the relationship, rather than the funding that she is providing to local authorities, is a complete misunderstanding of the issue. Ross Greer is bang on about that point; he highlighted the fact that the money does not have the same value as it used to have. Inflation and pay deals have gone through the roof, which has affected the money in a way that John Swinney said in May was an issue. Indeed, he said that we
“live in the real world”.—[Official Report, 9 May 2024; c 13.]
The education secretary is not living in the real world, and she is expecting local authorities to live not in the real world but in her world, where she is able to regularly issue threats about funding. Her position is illogical.
There is also a problem with what is happening to the pipeline of teachers. We know that there has not been the recruitment of an extra 3,500 teachers, yet the pipeline continues from initial teacher education. Teachers are coming into the primary education world in particular thinking that there will be a job for them, but the Scottish Government has not provided the funding that is necessary for them to be employed.
The education secretary is not living in the real world, but these teachers are expected to live in the real world without a job or an opportunity or without a permanent contract for years on end. I think that the education secretary knows that I am right about this; she knows that she has an incoherent position, where she is expecting local authorities to live within an incredibly tight financial budget but deliver the promises that were made in her party’s manifesto back in 2021. She is incoherent and she needs to sort this out—otherwise schools, teachers and local authorities will continue to suffer.
16:15