Hansard

I thank Willie Rennie and the Liberal Democrats for using their party business time to hold the debate. It is important that we highlight the pressures that the teaching workforce faces. I am sure that everyone will remember a positive role that a teacher has played in their lives, from giving them a love for, or aspiration to study, a subject to providing the focus that is often needed to achieve their dreams.

We need to accept that the workforce challenge that Willie Rennie has highlighted in the motion is stark. That puts pressure on teachers and the school community, and it leads to an inability to deliver on and meet pledges that ministers have made on non-contact time.

When SNP ministers pledged to recruit 3,500 teachers, they did not make that pledge with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; SNP ministers said that they would deliver that recruitment in this parliamentary session. With less than a year to go, it is clear that they have failed. That pledge was made after 14 years of the same party being in office, and it is now likely to be missed by the end of this parliamentary session.

I agree with the call on the Scottish Government to

“develop a new, urgent plan for the teaching workforce, working with stakeholders”.

That should have been done at the very start of the SNP’s time in office. The Scottish Conservatives support a national co-ordinated education workforce plan, to include the ASN workforce, that would deliver additional support workers and classroom assistants across our local authorities.

This morning, the Education, Children and Young People Committee heard about the skills gap that must be closed if we are to align the needs of our economy with subject availability and choice in our schools. That was a key part of Willie Rennie’s motion.

We have concerns about the sharp decline in the number of teachers in key subjects such as maths, physics and modern languages and about the targets that the Government has set to train and recruit teachers in those subjects. Yesterday, I met the Royal Society of Chemistry to discuss its report “Future Workforce and Educational Pathways”. I do not know whether the cabinet secretary has had a chance to meet the RSC, which has made a lot of positive suggestions for growing the number of teaching professionals in such subjects. That is where growth in our economy will come from and where subject choice is critical.

I hope that ministers will take on board from the debate the need to update Parliament on what will happen with STEM. I hope that we will get a commitment from the cabinet secretary or the minister to use Government debating time for that important issue, which should include the recommendations on how STEM targets will be met, as there seems to be very little focus on that—there certainly is not any focus on it in the Government’s amendment.

I have spoken with teachers, and the message is clear that they feel overworked and undervalued. They are facing pressures in the classroom that they never expected in their professional lives. Instead of receiving the support and resources that they need, they face rising workloads, growing pupil violence and pressures to plug gaps that are caused by ministers’ failure to plan.

With fewer people entering the profession and more feeling that they have to leave, the SNP has made teaching in Scotland increasingly unsustainable. I hope that the debate genuinely presents an opportunity to highlight the pressures that the teaching workforce faces across Scotland. The problems with our education system are piling high on the desks of the cabinet secretary and SNP ministers, but resolving the workforce challenges must be the first step in developing solutions to the issues.

I move amendment S6M-17669.2, to insert at end:

“; continues to be concerned at the levels of violence being reported in schools, including unacceptable physical and verbal attacks and threats being experienced by teachers and the wider school community; notes the significant concerns over high levels of work-related stress being reported by teachers and the health and wellbeing of the profession; calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward a national coordinated education workforce plan, including data on additional support needs (ASN) and projections on workforce capacity for additional support workers and classroom assistants across local authorities as part of the ASN review; recognises concerns that absence cover is not being consistently applied across schools and local authorities, and supports the better provision of access to resources and training, including the delivery of a new model of support alongside the NHS Education for Scotland trauma informed practice training on neurodivergence and autism.”