Meeting of the Parliament 28 May 2025
There has been some discussion of the need for collaboration between national and local government to achieve a sustainable teaching workforce. The Liberal Democrat motion, which the Scottish Greens support, rightly highlights the failure to meet the target of 3,500 new teachers. The Parliament must come to terms with that shortfall.
However, one key omission, which was highlighted by the cabinet secretary and others, is the role of local authorities. It is therefore good that the Government’s amendment adds reference to the need for any new plan for the teaching workforce to include local authorities. Such partnership working with our councils is crucial. As I mentioned earlier, I want £186 million to be used to recruit and retain teachers in our schools, but I also respect the fact that local authority elected representatives have as much democratic legitimacy as we have, and they are the employers of those who work in our schools. There is an obvious tension between those two positions.
The Conservative amendment touches on a number of issues that were raised during that party’s most recent business debate. Again, it refers specifically to pupil support staff. That goes hand in hand with long-term workforce development. One issue relating to support staff is that, starting in around 2019, Government statisticians could no longer distinguish between ASN staff and classroom or general pupil support assistants; from that point onward, they began to group those two categories together in the school staff census. That is why the Scottish Greens worked with the cabinet secretary to develop policy proposals for a system of accreditation and registration of ASN staff.
However, it is not only about support staff. There has been a significant reduction in ASN teacher numbers relative to the number of pupils. In fact, there has been no increase in the number of ASN teachers in our schools even in absolute terms. We must give teachers the opportunity to move into ASN specialist teaching as a point of career progression—and the only way that we can encourage more teachers into ASN teaching is by making it a promoted post. That requires additional resourcing, but so does a long-term strategy for teacher workforce recovery.
That is why at the root of the debate is something deeper: how we fund education at its core. Scotland’s failure to reform local government finance in 25 years is being felt in our schools. We must give local authorities far more powers to raise revenue, and we should give them the option of using those powers if, and however, they wish.
It is not normal to have a tier of government that raises only about 20 per cent of its funding. The Greens have put forward proposals for a carbon emission land tax, a demolition levy and a stadium levy. We believe that, ultimately, councils should have a power of general competence to raise that money for themselves. However, we accept that that will not happen immediately to resolve the issue that we have discussed today. That important issue cannot be a stand-off between the Parliament and local authorities—between central planning and local delivery. Neither should we reduce it to a waiting game to see who blinks first.
I am glad to see an indication of forward movement from the Government, but we cannot support pupils without supporting teachers. We should not settle for reactive measures, nor can we support teachers without supporting councils, or support councils without reforming how we fund them. That is where the long-term discussions must start.
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