Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2025
Yes, I agree. That is not to say that the social role that the schools provide is not important, because it is incredibly important and schools do it well. The headteacher I met in Dundee took the view that her responsibilities go beyond the school gates—almost into households—as she wants to understand her families well so that she can do her job properly when she is in school.
Nevertheless, we have seen the effect of that burden on the standards and the poverty-related attainment gap in schools. I think that the minister is overstating the improvement in that area. I recognise that there is some improvement in primary schools and among school leavers, but achievement in S3 is pretty flat and the improvements in primary schools are quite small. I do not think that we should overstate the improvement that has taken place since 2016. We are supposed to be closing the poverty-related attainment gap completely by next year, but we are nowhere near that. Let us not overstate these things; let us focus on the differences that we can make.
We can have endless debates about the Scottish Qualifications Authority and so on, but that is not as relevant as the improvements that we need to make to the core of education, so we should focus on education reform. We have talked repeatedly about additional support needs, behaviour, mobile phones and the relationship with absences. All of those things are incredibly important and are fundamental to the education system. However, we also need to look at other aspects that, to be fair, the cabinet secretary is looking at. Those aspects include the role of knowledge and the place of extracurricular activity and project work. All of those things are incredibly important, and we also need to look at the place of vocational activity. In Scotland, we have never properly cracked how we can get parity of esteem for vocational subjects. That is all part of improving overall performance. If we can improve the overall performance, we will have a chance of giving every child, no matter what their background, the chance to succeed.
I will raise one final point, which Miles Briggs also raised. The private, voluntary and independent sector is incredibly important in early years education, but we are in danger of undermining the good work that we have done by not paying the same for the private, voluntary and independent sector as we pay for council provision. Why should people get paid less for doing exactly the same job? That needs to be sorted.