Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2025
Before I became a member of the Scottish Parliament, I was a councillor on Aberdeenshire Council and sat on the education and children’s services committee. In that role, as in this role, I would often hear the words “attainment gap” being wielded as a political weapon, but an important part of the phrase was left out—the crucial part. The first part of “poverty-related attainment gap” would be omitted, so I am glad that we are focusing on that part today.
Poverty is not just a statistic—it is a lived experience. It is gnawing hunger. It is the humiliation of not having clean clothes or of having to wear ill-fitting clothes. It is the shame of missing out on school trips. It is the anxiety of knowing that you might not go home to a warm meal that evening. A decent mattress to sleep on in a room of your own, or having a space for privacy, can seem like luxury to many children.
Education alone cannot lift a child out of poverty when they are trapped in a cycle of deprivation. For a child who is cold, hungry or struggling with the weight of any family hardship, focusing on learning can feel absolutely impossible. How can children concentrate when they have not eaten since the previous day?
I have spoken with families who often feel judged because their child has a phone at school and it is known that they get support. People ask, “Why do they have a mobile phone?” It might be their only connection to a parent who works night shift or their only means of accessing vital services. Poverty is not just about income—it is about dignity and choices that people do not have the luxury to make. We need to ensure that we eradicate judgment, and the shame and stigma that are associated with it.
That is why tackling child poverty must be interwoven with every relevant Scottish Government policy. I commend the action that the Scottish Government is taking to mitigate the damaging policies that are being imposed by Westminster.
I am frustrated by the cognitive dissonance that I see from other parties over and over again. Do Opposition members think that 14 years of Tory austerity has improved our education system? No, it has not. Austerity was imposed by the Tories and is now backed by Labour, which has also imposed national insurance hikes. What do members think that will do to our education system? We have to work together on this, but Opposition members have to stop coming to the Scottish Government and asking it to sort out the mess that both the Labour and Tory parties have made at Westminster. I am asking those members to join the dots.
We also have to look beyond the symptoms of what we hear about bad behaviour in our schools and pay attention to the causes. We must be careful and sensitive in how we have that debate. We do not want to stigmatise children with additional support needs, nor do we want to stigmatise teachers and make the public think that teachers are not coping in their jobs. There are sensitivities around behaviour in schools, and it is important that the issue is not used as a political weapon.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation projects that child poverty will decline in Scotland while rising in the rest of the UK. The Scottish child payment has, as we have heard, been called “game-changing”, and that is for a reason—because it is.
In the budget, we are investing in education as a tool not just for learning, but for liberation from poverty, by expanding free school meals, increasing the school clothing grant and investing in bright start breakfasts. Those are not just numbers on a spreadsheet—they are policies that change lives for young carers and for children who are already, before they even get to school, having to administer medication to siblings or to provide emotional support to struggling parents. Our social security system recognises that reality and provides direct financial support, and people who receive that support should not be stigmatised for it.
There are those who say that benefits are a waste of money, or insinuate that people take advantage of the system. However, we should be clear that the real waste is the cost of inaction. Studies show that childhood poverty impacts on brain development, academic achievement and future earnings. The longer a child is trapped in poverty, the harder it becomes for them to escape it. Investment in poverty reduction is an investment in education, in health and in future prosperity.
Barnardo’s Scotland is working with hundreds of schools and has documented the real impact of poverty on participation in education. It highlights children who are skipping meals so that younger siblings can eat, and parents who are unable to afford uniforms.
We must also acknowledge the real financial commitment that the Government is making through investing around £3 billion per year in its mission to eradicate child poverty, address the cost of living crisis and break the cycle of poverty. That funding supports measures—