Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2025
Teachers and staff do some really good things in schools. They achieve an awful lot and transform young people’s lives, and we should recognise that. However, I sometimes think that the Government is a hindrance rather than a help in that regard. We have massive challenges in our schools with behaviour, additional support needs and absence, which are all interconnected.
Moreover, many teachers leave the profession because they have just had enough—they are fed up with the regular attacks and the challenges of coping with the fact that 40 or 50 per cent of their classes, sometimes more, have additional support needs without the appropriate support to help them.
There is, of course, the long-vaunted closing of the poverty-related attainment gap, which has basically not changed since Nicola Sturgeon promised to close it about 10 years ago. In addition, international performance data triggered a serious debate about the performance of Scottish education.
The Government has lost its way. It spends most of its time repairing the damage that it caused in the first place, rejects the reviews that it commissioned and is failing to deliver on its own promises. Let us consider teacher contact time. It was a big promise, which the Government was supposed to have delivered by now. Although the last SNP manifesto promised that it would be 90 minutes a day, we know that it is 90 minutes a week. Teachers are furious, so much so that they are talking about going on strike at the start of next year. We should have delivered that promise by now, but the SNP has failed to do so and is typically blaming somebody else for that failure.
Then there is the poverty-related attainment gap. Although the cabinet secretary has not mentioned it, within a few months we are supposed to have closed the gap. The reality is that, although we are supposed to have made that progress, the gap has flatlined over the past few years, particularly in secondary school. It is worth reminding people—I know that it is boring—that the then First Minister said that we would judge her on education. However, she is nowhere to be seen now and the cabinet secretary does not even talk about that promise any more.
The education secretary has scrapped the regional collaboratives that the now First Minister introduced. However, you will notice that she continues to refer repeatedly to the fact that local authorities—32 of them—run the Scottish education system, with a hint that she wants to centralise education. If that is what she wants, she should come out and say it rather than just hint at it. If that is her policy, let us have that discussion. I do not think that Scotland wants to get into another debate about structures, just as we have done in the debate about skills. We should focus on the challenges that we face rather than have diversionary debates about structures.
On additional support needs, the cabinet secretary celebrates recruiting more ASN teachers, but it was this Government that cut the number of teachers in the first place, so it is not something that we should celebrate.
Finally, there was the Hayward review. That was commissioned by the Government and spent months—years—debating the issue and gathering the support of many people across the education world. However, as soon as the education secretary got a hold of it, she in effect rejected it.
The Government has no real vision. I do not really understand what it is trying to achieve. I would love it to focus, for instance, on parity of esteem between vocational and academic education, which would make a transformational difference to many young people who get lost at school because school does not fit their needs. I would love a proper programme of consequences and boundaries to empower teachers to manage their classrooms. I would love best practice on dealing with additional support needs to be shared across the country, so that young people with those needs get chances just like everyone else.
However, the Government is just lost. It does not seem to know what it wants to do with education. I just wish that that would change.