Official Report 1092KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-15060, in the name of Miles Briggs, on funding for teachers and schools in Scotland. I invite members who wish to participate to press their request-to-speak buttons now or as soon as possible.
I advise members that we have absolutely no time in hand, so you will be required to stick to your allocated speaking times. If you start your peroration at the point at which you should have concluded, your microphone will be switched off.
15:50
Deputy Presiding Officer, from what you have just said, I think that you would make a good headteacher.
I thank my Scottish Conservative colleagues, Liam Kerr and Sue Webber, for the power of work that they undertook as my party’s spokesman on education and skills and as the convener of the Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee. In taking up my new role, I look forward to working with the cabinet secretary and education spokespeople from other parties.
We on the Conservative benches want to work to make sure that all of our young people have the best start in life, so I am pleased that the Scottish Conservatives are using our first party business debate under Russell Findlay’s leadership to raise the concerns of parents, teachers and our young people about the situation in many of our classrooms today.
I am proud to have attended good state primary and secondary schools in Perthshire. Looking back, that good, high-quality comprehensive Scottish education gave many of us the opportunity to get ahead, regardless of our background. It was a system where teachers had the freedom and ability to focus on teaching and making sure that young people were equally focused on learning and achieving the best possible outcomes.
I know, from teachers who I have spoken to since I was given this job, that today they want the same opportunity to deliver for our young people in schools, but reforms over the past few years have significantly reduced that opportunity. We have now seen that reflected in outcomes, with the decline in literacy and numeracy.
After almost two decades of Scottish National Party rule, the opportunity for our young people to succeed has been undermined, our global reputation has been severely tarnished, standards have been allowed to fall, subject choices have shrunk and our schools are plummeting down international educational league tables. New data that was published in August shows that pass rates for national 5, higher and advanced higher qualifications have all fallen, while the attainment gap between the richest and poorest pupils in our country is increasing. We have to be honest that not all is well in Scottish education. If we are to realise the potential of all of our young people, we urgently need to fix the problems that our schools face and help to restore Scottish education standards to where they should be—at the top of the international educational league tables.
After 25 years of devolution, educational decline has taken place in Scotland, and most of that time has been under the SNP Government. There is real concern about the cabinet secretary’s decision to withhold £145 million of funding from local authorities. That will risk teacher numbers across Scotland declining further, and teacher numbers in Scotland have already fallen over the past two years. Parents, teachers and young people are concerned by the real threat to teacher numbers in Glasgow and to the school week in Falkirk, and ministers cannot just blame councils for the situation when it is SNP ministers in Holyrood who hold the purse strings.
We need a proper national workforce plan, and it should shame SNP ministers that so many qualified teachers are already struggling to obtain permanent employment in Scotland today. The Scottish teachers for permanence campaign estimates that more than 3,800 qualified teachers in Scotland are searching for permanent workplaces across the country. The situation is unacceptable, and the teaching profession is looking for leadership, not excuses.
Furthermore, the SNP’s consistent underfunding of local authorities has placed additional support needs services in a precarious position; the numbers of ASN teachers has consistently declined since 2010. More than 250,000 pupils in Scotland need additional support, and they have been consistently let down by this SNP Government, which has overpromised and underdelivered. Pupils, parents and teachers deserve better.
The Scottish Conservatives have always tried to work constructively to deliver for our young people. That is why I have to say that I have a major concern about the decline in literacy levels in Scotland, with more than one in four Scottish state school pupils not achieving literacy levels. If our young people cannot read, they cannot learn. Scotland faces a growing literacy crisis, with up to 30 per cent of secondary school students having a reading age two or more years below their actual age, and many are much further behind.
Scotland’s literacy challenges are not a recent development, but they are getting worse. The Clackmannanshire study, which was published in the early 2000s, was a landmark piece of research, but ministers have failed to deliver what that research suggested. At the same time, literacy rates in England are improving, so we need to learn from some of the teaching down south. Specifically, I appeal to the cabinet secretary to look at how we can reform literacy teaching in schools.
Over the recess, I looked at phonics teaching, and there are compelling findings from the work that is taking place in English schools. I hope that the cabinet secretary will be open to pursuing that approach, because the effectiveness of phonics teaching is now quite obvious. The study found that children who were taught phonics excelled not only in word reading but in comprehension and spelling. Despite those compelling findings, Scotland has made limited progress in implementing the study’s recommendations at the national level. That is why I make no apologies for the approach that I intend to take in focusing on outcomes and looking at how we can empower our teaching professionals.
There is nothing more important for the future of Scotland than the education that we provide for our young people to enable them to go on to achieve their potential. After 17 years of SNP Government, the facts are that classroom standards are plummeting, violence is rising, young Scots—often those from the poorest backgrounds—are being left behind, teacher numbers in Scotland are declining, secure full-time posts are scarce and there is the risk of cuts to school hours and to the number of additional support assistants. In the coming weeks and months ahead of the election, the Scottish Conservatives will demonstrate how we want to bring common sense back to our classrooms and put Scottish education back to where it should be—at the top of international league tables.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that the Scottish Government withholding £145 million in funding from local authorities will risk teacher numbers across Scotland declining further; notes that teacher numbers in Scotland have already been declining for two years in a row; acknowledges that many teachers are already struggling to obtain permanent employment; recognises the efforts of the Scottish Teachers for Permanence Campaign, which represents 3,800 teachers searching for permanent work in Scotland; expresses alarm about potential cuts to classroom assistant numbers and the school week due to shortfalls in local authority funding from the Scottish Government, and believes that Scottish Government funding should be used to improve Scotland’s schools.
Thank you, Mr Briggs. That was exemplary time keeping to kick us off.
15:57
I take this opportunity to welcome Miles Briggs to his new position in education. I know that he cares passionately about improving outcomes for Scotland’s children and young people. In that endeavour, he will always find an ally in me.
Miles Briggs made a number of points relating to phonics and literacy, and I am particularly interested in those issues. I give him a commitment that I will come back in Government time to debate those very issues, with a focus on how we can improve literacy following the pandemic.
Today, I want to listen to the challenge from Opposition parties. As the Government amendment sets out, we will call on the Parliament to unite behind the basic principle that teacher numbers in Scotland should be maintained and that local authorities should use the £145.5 million that is on offer from the Scottish Government for that purpose.
Scotland’s teachers are the beating heart of our education system. They play a crucial role in our children’s education and are vital to our collective ambition to close the poverty-related attainment gap. I say to those in my former profession that the Government values them, their expertise and the compassion that they provide our young people every day. The extra mile that they go for our children makes a difference, and we are lucky as a country to have them.
Not a single MSP or political party believes that the real challenges that our schools face, which Miles Briggs outlined, will be solved by having fewer teachers in our schools, so I ask colleagues across the chamber to unite to make it clear that that funding should be accepted by local government to maintain teacher numbers.
Let me be clear with members about what voting against the Government’s amendment will mean. They will be making it clear that they support giving local authorities the green light to cut teacher numbers.
Dr Sue Ellis, a former professor of education at the University of Strathclyde, has stated that councils are
“stuck between a rock and a hard place”,
and I am sure that the cabinet secretary has seen the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities briefing about that. Does she agree that that is the position that the Scottish Government has put councils in on teacher numbers?
I would not agree. A number of local authorities have managed to maintain teacher numbers, and I would like to give them the funding right now. I would like to have given it to them in February, but a number of local authorities that Miles Briggs knows about have not done that, as we have recently debated in the chamber. The proposition that I think is being advanced by the Conservatives today—Mr Briggs can correct me if I am wrong—is that I should allow funding to flow out of the door, knowing that some local authorities have cut teacher numbers. That is not a position that I can justify.
I want to reiterate again today the Government’s long-standing policy and financial commitment to protecting teacher numbers.
Will the member take an intervention?
I have no time in hand, unfortunately.
As education secretary, I will fervently defend that policy. I am absolutely clear that it will be much more difficult for our schools to respond to the challenges, whether it be the programme for international student assessment—PISA—results, behaviour, attendance or increasing additional support needs, with fewer teachers. The professionals who make a difference in our schools are our teachers.
Labour’s Opposition debate back in May established that we had unanimous support across the Parliament for protecting teacher numbers. In May, colleagues specifically asked the Government to prevent teacher job losses. I expect that members from across the chamber will therefore support the Government’s amendment, which calls on the COSLA to do just that. I am looking to make sure that the funding is issued in such a way that it is spent only on maintaining teacher numbers and not on other things, in line with the 2024-25 budget that Parliament voted for.
Members will recall the historical position on that funding. It allowed it to flow to local authorities, which then put the Government in a challenging position come teacher census day, when some councils maintained or increased and others that had taken the money cut jobs anyway. This year, we know that some councils have budgeted with the expectation of the funding flowing, and they have cut teacher numbers. That is not a position that I can support, because it is that ring fencing that is protecting investment in Scotland’s education system. There have been more than 2,000 extra teachers in Scotland’s schools since 2018, and there have been 725 extra learning support assistants in the past year alone, which means that we have the lowest pupil teacher ratio in the United Kingdom. There has been £1 billion of investment through the Scottish attainment challenge, which is supporting an extra 3,000 staff, including 1,000 extra teachers.
I recognise the challenges that are faced by those who are seeking permanent employment opportunities, and the Tory motion also references that. It is an issue that I am deeply frustrated by personally, because it relates directly to the local authority employment practices that differ across the country and are not currently in the gift of the Government. It is, however, worth reminding Parliament that the number of teachers who are employed in permanent positions has remained roughly stable at 80 per cent since 2014. However, as I was discussing with a teacher in Fife only this morning, precarity of employment, particularly at the primary level, can have a deeply detrimental impact on the wellbeing of teachers and it also directly harms retention. It is for that reason that the Government will look to accept the Labour amendment.
Presiding Officer, I am conscious of the time. There is a lot to be positive about in Scottish education. The Government is clear that we will not withhold funding from any council that can show in the annual census that it is spending it on teachers. Many councils in Scotland have done exactly that, and I thank them. However, I ask members across the chamber to unite behind the Government amendment tonight and to make it clear that the £145.5 million that is being made available should be accepted by local government to maintain teacher numbers.
I move amendment S6M-15060.3, to leave out from first “believes” to end and insert
“calls on COSLA to accept the £145.5 million that is being made available by the Scottish Government to maintain teacher numbers, in line with the Budget (Scotland) Act 2024, as voted for by the Parliament.”
16:03
I am pleased to open the debate for Scottish Labour and to welcome Miles Briggs to his new role. Teachers are the beating heart of our education system. They are crucial to supporting our young people and their attainment. They help young people to rise above their circumstances and buck the trend. I know that that is true because I am here, in this place, because of that.
The cabinet secretary also recognises that. She has said that teachers are crucial to raising attainment and closing the attainment gap, which is why it is such a disappointment that the Government has failed to recruit the 3,500 more teachers that it said it would recruit and that teacher numbers dropped by 160 across Scotland last year, which has left teachers overworked and undersupported. While teacher numbers are dropping, everyone knows that we need more teachers in some localities and subjects and to meet commitments on non-contact time and class sizes.
To add to the mess, we are in the bizarre situation where we have vacancies in teaching, yet thousands of newly qualified teachers are unable to get permanent jobs. Of the more than 2,800 teachers who completed their probation a year ago, only 29 per cent are in full-time permanent positions. The situation is having a real impact on people’s lives. One teacher told Scottish Teachers for Permanence:
“I am now into my 5th year of teaching and am still working between fixed term contracts and supply work. I strongly believe that the lack of permanent jobs is having a negative impact of teachers mental health however it is also severely disruptive to the children”.
However, recruitment is not the only issue—we also have a crisis in retention. A recent survey by the General Teaching Council for Scotland found that, among those who left in the early stages of their careers, 40 per cent cited difficulties in securing a post, 19 per cent cited lack of support and 18 per cent cited stress. The situation is unsustainable. Our amendment seeks to address that—the Government’s amendment falls short of doing so—because we recognise the importance of supporting teachers and the staff around them.
The number of children with additional support needs is increasing, and they need a host of staff to support them—not only teachers. As the saying goes, it takes a village. That is why it is worrying that the number of ASN staff has dropped and that the support services around schools have been somewhat hollowed out.
Will the member take an intervention?
Do I have any time in hand, Presiding Officer?
Not very much.
I will take a brief intervention.
Does the member at least acknowledge that, in the past year alone, the number of additional learning support assistants has increased by 725, specifically because of ring-fenced investment from the Government to protect funding to the sector?
As the cabinet secretary knows, the situation for pupils with additional support needs in Scotland is, as the Education, Children and Young People Committee has said, intolerable, and it is not improving on the Government’s watch. The result is that one in four children is being rejected by child and adolescent mental health services. One in six children who are identified as being in need of treatment waited more than four months to get help. The problems are deeper and wider than the Government seems to recognise. It thinks that the answer to the crisis is to hold councils to ransom by withholding £145 million from them—that beggars belief.
The gross underfunding of local authorities means that education in general is in crisis. Some schools are having to use pupil equity funding money to recruit staff. Glasgow is cutting 450 posts, which is leaving some schools with only one member of staff in front of a class, and others are reducing teacher hours. The situation is out of control, and I am afraid that I do not think that the Government has grasped the depth or scale of the problem.
However, it does not have to be that way. A good, committed Government that is showing leadership can support education. The UK Labour Government has just demonstrated that today in the budget. It has put the many before the few by adding VAT to private school fees, tripling funding for free breakfast clubs, increasing school budgets by £2.3 billion, investing in school-based nurseries, increasing support for ASN by £1 billion and announcing an additional £300 million for further education. Those are the choices of a Government that supports education, and people in Scotland need the SNP Government to do the same.
I move amendment S6M-15060.3, to insert at end:
“; further believes that there should be regular and transparent national level data collected on vacancies in teaching roles and the numbers of registered teachers on supply lists, alongside closer monitoring of the proportion of newly qualified teachers who are in teaching roles, and reiterates that the Scottish Government should publish a comprehensive plan to address gaps in the teaching and school staff workforce as resolved by the Parliament on 15 May 2024.”
16:07
I was proud of the £145 million that was included in the budget when the Greens joined the Government in 2021. It was the most significant request that we made in that first budget, but I am not suggesting that it was entirely down to us. We put that forward, but SNP colleagues clearly supported it, too. That should have been enough for every teacher in Scotland who was on a temporary contract to be moved on to a permanent one and for recruitment to hundreds of new permanent teaching posts, but that obviously did not happen. There is no single reason for that. Inflation had a significant impact, as it seriously eroded the spending power of the Scottish Government and local authorities. The resultant pay deal with the teaching workforce made maintaining numbers with the same amount of funding far more challenging. It is also a reality that that happened at the same time as the introduction of the Verity house agreement, which was a reset of the relationship with local government.
Will the member give way?
No, I am afraid not; I do not have time.
We need to rethink that approach; £145 million of public money was spent with the intention of resulting in more teachers, but we ended up with fewer teachers at the end of that first financial year. I do not think that that is all the fault of the Scottish Government. Councils have seriously undermined trust, but they are not the only ones that undermined the Verity house agreement; the Scottish Government clearly undermined it with the council tax freeze. We need to see all that in the wider context.
The issue here is threefold. Quite legitimately, the Scottish Government wants to protect teacher numbers and, quite legitimately, councils want to avoid having to make devastating cuts in other areas. Pam Duncan-Glancy mentioned support staff as an obvious example of that. However, the money does not exist to resolve both those challenges simultaneously. That funding question needs to be resolved in the longer term. The proposed Green amendment spoke to that, and I will come back to that later, but there is a much more urgent need to find a compromise now.
The first issue is a point of dialogue. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities wants to declare a formal dispute, and the Scottish Government rejects that. To be frank, I think that that is a semantic point and I do not particularly care. However, there is a need for some kind of space for more dialogue.
COSLA has rejected the First Minister’s most recent response to it. It insists that the issues of teacher numbers, the national care service and the council tax freeze should be discussed together outside the annual budget process. As much as I have sympathy with the Scottish Government’s position, I think that showing some good will and, at the very least, agreeing to that discussion taking place outside the budget process might create the space for us to make progress.
Over the past couple of weeks, councillors in a variety of local authorities have raised with me another issue, as they were not sure whether this was an all-or-nothing position. If some councils were to fail to spend the money as the Government had prescribed, would the money be taken back from all councils? From what the cabinet secretary has said, that is not my understanding—I see that she is nodding. This is on a local authority by local authority basis. However, there is clearly a communication issue that is hampering any chance of reaching a compromise.
I return briefly to the impact of the pay deal, because we need to acknowledge that the same amount of cash simply will not pay for the same number of teachers as it did a couple of years ago. As some kind of compromise, the Government should be open to discussions about maintaining spend as opposed to maintaining overall teacher numbers. Compromise is possible and the Scottish Government should be open to one. I do not expect that we will hear about it in the debate, if for no other reason than the constraints of time. Local authorities will also need to show far more willingness to compromise than they have shown. At this point in time, something needs to give, and it is teachers and young people who are losing out unless we can come to some kind of agreement.
16:11
I do not know what kind of crazy logic leads to the conclusion that cutting £145.5 million from local authority budgets will protect teacher numbers. Local authorities will have to respond to that if their funds are cut even further. How do they balance the books? The Scottish Government knows that local authorities are under tight financial constraints, so there will have to be a reaction.
I find it hard to follow Mr Rennie’s logic. As we have heard today, we have had two years of consecutive reductions in teacher numbers, but the Government has not acted to claw back funding. We are now going into year 3. Willie Rennie will recall that, earlier this year, I said, “Let us not fund in this way in the future. Let us fund through a grant process, which, up front, asks local authorities to agree to maintain teacher numbers.” However, they refused to do that.
To Mr Greer’s point about consensus and trying to work with local authorities—
Briefly, cabinet secretary—
That is exactly what I have been doing since February to get funding out the door. Local authorities will not agree to it. Some of them want the funding, and they want to cut—
Briefly—
Is that a position that Mr Rennie supports?
I can give you some of the time back, Mr Rennie.
The Scottish Government is working on a misunderstanding. The education secretary seems to think that local authorities, including SNP-run Glasgow City Council, are hellbent on destroying Scottish education. Why on earth does she think that? If the Westminster Government were treating the Scottish Government as she is treating local authorities, there would be an outcry.
Where is the Verity house agreement? Where is the historic concordat where local authorities are supposed to be working in partnership with central Government, when we are now regularly issuing threats because, somehow, local authorities cannot be trusted with our education system?
The cabinet secretary has really destroyed the relationship with local authorities and schools. The people who are paying the price are teachers, because there is complete incoherence in the Scottish Government’s position. There are promises about, and difficulties in, recruiting 3,500 extra teachers, partly to cut teacher contact time by 90 minutes and—it has been in the commentary—about making sure that there are more permanent places and cutting temporary contracts. However, none of that has been done.
I understand the cabinet secretary’s problem, but to think that local authorities are the problem in the relationship, rather than the funding that she is providing to local authorities, is a complete misunderstanding of the issue. Ross Greer is bang on about that point; he highlighted the fact that the money does not have the same value as it used to have. Inflation and pay deals have gone through the roof, which has affected the money in a way that John Swinney said in May was an issue. Indeed, he said that we
“live in the real world”.—[Official Report, 9 May 2024; c 13.]
The education secretary is not living in the real world, and she is expecting local authorities to live not in the real world but in her world, where she is able to regularly issue threats about funding. Her position is illogical.
There is also a problem with what is happening to the pipeline of teachers. We know that there has not been the recruitment of an extra 3,500 teachers, yet the pipeline continues from initial teacher education. Teachers are coming into the primary education world in particular thinking that there will be a job for them, but the Scottish Government has not provided the funding that is necessary for them to be employed.
The education secretary is not living in the real world, but these teachers are expected to live in the real world without a job or an opportunity or without a permanent contract for years on end. I think that the education secretary knows that I am right about this; she knows that she has an incoherent position, where she is expecting local authorities to live within an incredibly tight financial budget but deliver the promises that were made in her party’s manifesto back in 2021. She is incoherent and she needs to sort this out—otherwise schools, teachers and local authorities will continue to suffer.
16:15
The whole problem with the £145 million is that there is, frankly, no specific agreement about how that money will be spent. I have asked that question a hundred times. I have asked to see the documentation that goes with the agreement on the £145 million, but it has never been produced, because it does not exist.
I will use my time to address the impending crisis in the Falkirk Council area. The council is proposing to cut the school week due to SNP funding cuts, which would mean less time in the classroom for children to learn. It is axiomatic that the more time that children spend learning in the classroom, the better it is. Falkirk Council’s proposals would remove the equivalent of a full year’s teaching from children and young people, and I am completely opposed to those proposals, as are many parents and pupils across Falkirk who have been contacting me and pressing the issue. It is an urgent issue for them and it is causing great anxiety. Falkirk Council needs to drop that ridiculous plan.
If we sit here long enough and listen to Government ministers going through their register of excuses, we find a theme. It goes like this: “That has nothing to do with us. These matters are in the hands of local authorities. There would be outrage if we did anything.” That is a typical response from members on the Government front bench. On this issue, that response is especially disingenuous because the reason why councils such as Falkirk are thinking of taking the drastic step of cutting the school week is that they have not been properly funded by the SNP Government for more than a decade. We are now in the 18th year of an SNP Government, so the SNP can no longer pass the buck for the mess that it has created. It must take responsibility.
Given what we have put the children and young people of Scotland through over the past few years, the last thing that we should be doing is reducing the school week. We should not be cutting back on their education; we should be investing in their education. We should not be cutting teacher numbers or sticking newly qualified teachers on disposable temporary contracts; we should be reducing classroom sizes and widening subject choice. We should be empowering school leaders, but, given the cabinet secretary’s poor track record, I fear that nothing will change. Willie Rennie is right—the cabinet secretary is living in a parallel universe, not in the real world.
Barely a few weeks ago, we passed motions that called on the Government to reverse its position on a couple of issues, including one related to education. The SNP ministers have just ignored the passing of those motions. That is why, when I saw the amendment in the cabinet secretary’s name, I burst out laughing. The amendment refers to a vote of this Parliament, but those ministers could not care less about the votes of this Parliament. Such is the contempt that the SNP has for this Parliament, and such is the general apathy towards the proceedings of this Parliament, that they calculate that they can get away with it. So, here we are again, debating Scottish education thanks to a Scottish Conservative motion.
There is a reason why the Scottish Conservatives are passionate about education and why we feel so strongly that the burden of Government spending cuts should never fall on classrooms. We believe in creating greater equality of opportunity right across our country, and education and skills training are the golden ticket to accessing a lifetime of opportunity. If it really needs to be explained to members of the SNP Government how awful the consequences of cutting the school week would be for children and young people, their prospects and their families, the ministers frankly do not deserve to sit where they sit a day longer. They are failing Scotland, they are failing our children and young people and their futures, and they are failing the future of Scotland. The cabinet secretary should desist from the sort of grandstanding and posturing that we have heard from her in the debate. It is writ large in her amendment.
Look in the mirror!
You can hold up a mirror, if you like.
You need to conclude, Mr Kerr.
I am the Opposition and you are the Government. If you cannot do the job, you should remove yourselves. You should act to ensure that school hours in Scotland are protected.
16:20
As I am following Willie Rennie and Stephen Kerr, I might, for once, try to take the heat out of the debate—there is a first time for everything. Perhaps I can bring us back to talking about education and how we can move forward with that.
I have been a member of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in its many guises, on and off, for most of my time in the Parliament, and I wondered why that was the case. At the committee meeting this morning, Professor Hayward spoke about her report on the future of education in Scotland, and that is when I had an idea of why I enjoy working on the committee. It is because it is about how we can make a difference, how we can deal with challenges and how we can put forward the arguments. For us to do that, we all have to do it collectively. We need to take the heat out of the debate, and we need to take the politics out of it and find a way forward so that we can all have a discussion.
The basis of the debate is the fact that the Government offered £145 million for the retention and recruitment of teachers. As the cabinet secretary has said, that was not happening over a two or three-year period, so the Government said, “Let’s find another way of working.” The briefing from COSLA that we received ahead of the debate says that COSLA would be quite happy to work with the Government to find a solution.
One of the things that I found interesting in the committee’s meeting with Professor Hayward was that, when we are all talking about how to reform education, there are so many players and stakeholders in the sector that it is difficult to take everyone with you. Peter Bain also gave evidence at this morning’s meeting, and he said that there are two types of parents in the world—those who had a very good experience of education and those who had a bad experience of it. In saying that, he summed up me and my wife. I will leave it to members to work out which one had the good experience of education.
I love talking about these things because it is so important that we find a solution and a way forward together with young people in Scotland. I take on board what Miles Briggs said earlier about wanting to work with others to reform education and find solutions, because that is what we need to do. That is what the public want us to do.
Mr Rennie is very entertaining when he makes a speech—there might be an opening for him at Blackpool central pier during the summer—but we have to take the heat out of the debate. We need to talk about what people and parents want to hear about. That is a question that I have always asked when we have been going through the process of education reform. Parents are very important in education, and we need to bring them with us on our ideas. For parents and for the SNP, it is always about ensuring that we have the teacher numbers. The SNP and the Scottish Government have always pushed for that, and that is the whole point of the position that we are in now. We are looking at ways to work with local government to ensure that we get the teacher numbers.
On the committee, I find myself agreeing with Mr Greer more often than not, because we seem to have a meeting of minds on these things, and I agree with him on many of the issues that he brought up in his speech. It is about everybody sitting down and talking about how we can move forward. It is about delivery.
I cannot help being the way that I am. If I see a problem, I want to fix it. If something is broken, I want to ensure that it is fixed. I just cannot stop being that person. Sometimes, we need to take a look at ourselves and what we are saying in debates. It is great to have showpiece debates in which we can get a press headline, but the important thing for me is delivery for the children of Scotland. It is time for us to take the heat out of the debate, talk about the issues sensibly and move forward.
16:24
This disagreement between COSLA and the Scottish Government has been going on since February. It is disappointing that the Government has not resolved the issue and that schools will continue to miss out on funding. The Scottish Government now faces twin crises of its own making: a failure to retain and expand teacher numbers, despite its promise to do so, and the results of years of local authority underfunding.
In May, this Parliament voted to recognise the precarity in the teaching profession today. For too long, teachers have been running on good will. Research that the Educational Institute of Scotland published in June found that far too many teachers are working beyond their contracted hours and are reporting increasing stress and decreasing job satisfaction.
Many local authorities are struggling to fill posts at all. Data from the teacher induction scheme shows that only 66 per cent of council requests for probationers were fulfilled and that fewer than half of the required number of maths and computing probationary teachers were being delivered to local authorities. Those figures are made worse when we consider that fewer than a third of post-induction scheme teachers move into full-time employment. The Scottish teachers for permanence campaign group also states that we have thousands of teachers who want to work but are being denied the opportunity or are facing long waits on supply lists before gaining temporary employment.
Clearly, the current strategy is not delivering. We need regular publication of clear data that shows where we need more teachers and how many are on supply lists, and a workforce plan to address the staffing gaps in all areas of our schools.
The consistent underfunding of local authorities has also contributed to the dispute. Even if funding is released to retain teachers, as the Scottish Government has requested, other areas of education may face cuts. Additional support for learning, bus travel to and from school, and the length of the school week are all in danger. Funding for all of those things comes from core local government budgets, which have been disproportionately cut in the past 10 years, and COSLA has noted that there has been a cut of £63 million to the core revenue budget in 2023-24. Local government financing will remain an issue regardless of the outcome of the dispute.
The Scottish Government must work urgently to resolve this conflict with local authorities and publish a workforce plan to resolve the longer-term issues in the teaching profession, as was called for by this Parliament in May.
16:28
This morning, I was privileged to become the convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, taking over from my colleague Sue Webber, who did a great job for two and a half years. My new role has had a profound and almost immediate impact, because I have found myself sitting here agreeing almost entirely with two of my new colleagues, Willie Rennie and Ross Greer. I hope that that bodes well for the deliberations that we will have in the committee—although my saying that might not bode well for either of them.
However, I do not agree with every committee member. George Adam, who mentioned earlier that we met this morning, said that he wanted to take the heat out of the debate, but I think that there has to be heat in the debate. If we cannot get passionate and inspired about the education of our children and young people across Scotland, we should not be here. Of course, as Stephen Kerr said, the reason why we are here is that the Scottish Conservatives have again chosen to use our debating time in the chamber to focus on education. I took some comfort from the cabinet secretary saying that she will hold a debate on the issue in Government time, but we need to debate it far more in the chamber.
Just this week, we saw the Scottish teachers for permanence campaign group on our news channels. That issue is rising up the political agenda and the news agenda because it affects all our constituencies and all 32 local authorities.
In my time today, I will focus on my local authority—Moray Council. I spoke with the council leader, Kathleen Robertson, the education team and council officers to get some background on the situation that parents in Moray face, and that the community faces. In Moray, we have 54 schools educating 12,000 pupils. The budget for education is 40 per cent of Moray Council’s total budget, and 80 per cent of that goes on staffing. That means that, when the Scottish Government withholds money from Moray Council and other local authorities, it has an immediate and significant impact on our teachers, our pupils, our schools and the education system locally and nationally.
We have had significant problems with recruiting teachers in subjects including technical studies and home economics, but that has now extended to mathematics and English. We are struggling to recruit teachers across the board. Indeed, in some of our schools, pupils are going an entire session without there being a full complement of teachers in particular subjects. Not only is that having an impact on the pupils, but it obviously has a significant impact on the teachers who remain, who are having to pick up an awful lot of the slack.
According to Moray Council, there has been an increase in the number of referrals to occupational health for stress, anxiety and depression, which are the key reasons for teacher absence in Moray. We need to do something about that, not only for the generation who are being taught but for our teachers who are struggling, many of whom are at breaking point. That is why today’s debate is important, and it is why we need more than we have heard so far from the cabinet secretary, who said that we are pitting local government against central Government. We need them to work together to come up with a solution that delivers for everyone.
In my final seconds, I will focus on another issue that I have raised many times. People who are coming from England with qualifications cannot immediately get into education in Scotland. We have an Army barracks and a Royal Air Force base where many of the spouses were trained in England and have qualifications but they cannot get into teaching because they cannot get accreditation from the General Teaching Council for Scotland for 190 days. We have a strange situation in which, on Wednesdays, Moray pupils often go from high schools to the University of the Highlands and Islands Moray to be taught by a lecturer who is not accredited with the GTCS, yet if that lecturer was to come into a classroom in a Moray school, they would have to be accompanied by someone with that accreditation. I hope that we can discuss that issue more with the cabinet secretary, because it is one of the areas where we could make improvements in Moray.
16:32
I welcome Douglas Ross and Miles Briggs to their new positions.
Contributions from colleagues have shown that the situation is challenging. If we zoom out, we see that the number of teachers in Scotland has risen by 8 per cent since 2014 and that, despite a profoundly challenging financial situation, the Scottish Government is providing a record £14 billion settlement for local government in 2024-25, which represents a real-terms increase of 2.5 per cent compared with last year. Despite that, however, it is clear that changes are needed that go far beyond funding. The situation is difficult, and a more complicated picture emerges when we break down teacher training and recruitment figures, as members have mentioned.
Primary teacher education courses usually hit or exceed their targets. However, that has led to an oversupply, and many primary teachers are struggling to obtain a permanent contract. The picture is different for secondary teachers. Recruitment for the postgraduate diploma in education is much lower. Some subjects face more acute challenges than others. This year, Scotland’s 32 local authorities requested 117 technological education probationers but received only 39. For maths, 164 probationer teachers were requested but only 71 were allocated.
Secondary teacher shortages lead to subjects being cut, which reduces pupils’ subject choice. Lower teacher numbers lead to more stressful working conditions for teachers and may result in more people leaving the profession, which is not what we want. That also puts strain on others who stay. Research that has been carried out in England suggests that a lack of good promotion prospects and job security is a key factor in leading those who are considering careers in teaching ultimately to decide against it. We should develop an understanding of the factors that are at play in Scotland so that we can address the undersupply of secondary school teachers.
Some measures have been put in place, such as the preference waiver scheme through which probationers agree to be placed at a school anywhere in Scotland and they receive a payment as an incentive. I welcome the Government’s commitment to taking greater care to allocate those probationers to the areas of greatest need, but the numbers of preference waiver probationers are dropping. I call on the Government to carry out research to better understand why that is the case. Given the pressure on housing in many areas of Scotland and the high cost of living, it is perhaps not surprising that fewer people feel comfortable about taking that leap of faith. Concrete data on that would allow for targeted measures to tackle the root cause of that drop.
The importance of the role that teachers play in our society cannot be overstated. Despite best intentions, there is room for improvement, and I call on the Government to explore a more flexible and collaborative approach to training, recruitment and retention.
We move to the closing speeches.
16:36
Yesterday, it was Liz Smith and Willie Rennie agreeing with me; today, it is Douglas Ross and Willie Rennie. All that I can say is that I am glad that my party conference was last weekend rather than the coming weekend, or the notoriously restless membership might be proposing a motion of censure. However, there is something constructive and positive about our ability, particularly in yesterday’s debate on fiscal sustainability and on some of the points that have been made today, to begin to identify areas of consensus.
The core issue that we are dealing with in this debate is an unresolved tension that has continued for the 25 years of this Parliament’s existence, which is that education is considered a national issue and the Scottish Government is judged on issues such as teacher numbers, but it is our local authorities that deliver education and are the employers of those who work in our schools. No party, including mine, has proposed an obvious way to resolve that. I would certainly not support the complete centralisation of education—I do not think that any of us would want to see a situation in which this Parliament had nothing to do with education—but we are in that messy point in the middle where such conflicts emerge.
There is a democratic point here as well. I want £145 million to be used to recruit and retain teachers in our schools, but I also respect that local authority elected representatives have just as much democratic legitimacy as I do, and they are the employers of those who work in our schools. There is obviously a tension between those two positions.
On this specific conflict, as I said earlier, I think that compromise is possible. As much as I recognise that the cabinet secretary cannot have discussions with COSLA through the medium of me, I would like her to respond in her closing speech to my suggestion about maintaining spend rather than maintaining head count, and to say whether that is a potential area for discussion, at the very least.
The Green amendment that was not selected for this debate would have taken it into the grounds of local government finance, which is core to why we are here. That is one of the many consequences of this Parliament having failed for 25 years to reform local government finances in Scotland. It is not normal to have a tier of government that raises only about 20 per cent of its funding. We talk a lot about Scotland aspiring to be a normal European country, but it is normal for European local government to be able to raise a majority—at least half—of its funds. That is not the case here in Scotland.
There are a range of steps that we could have taken and could still take. Most obvious is that, at the very least, we should be revaluing council tax. We would not tax people’s income on the basis of what it was 34 years ago, but we seem to believe that it is appropriate to do that with council tax. We should let councils fully set the rates and bands rather than just being able to set band D and having everything else locked in around that. Ideally, we should replace the council tax. It was not the right system in the first place and it is certainly not fit for purpose now.
We should give local authorities far more powers to raise revenue or not—we should give them the option of using those powers if they wish. The Greens have also 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 do that for themselves, but we accept that that will not happen immediately to resolve the issue.
I urge the Scottish Government to show some good will to COSLA, frustrating as that organisation can often be. I am not usually COSLA’s greatest defender, but there is a need for dialogue on funding for schools, the national care service and the council tax freeze, outwith the annual budget process. That is all that COSLA has asked for at this point. I encourage the cabinet secretary to show it some good faith and I ask that she, the First Minister or the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government agrees to engage in those discussions so that we can move this forward. We should not be in a situation where we are simply waiting to see who blinks first on a question as important as how our schools are funded and how many teachers are in our classrooms.
16:40
It is a pleasure, on behalf of Scottish Labour, to close this debate on education, which has, again, been brought to the chamber by an Opposition party. I welcome Miles Briggs to his new responsibilities and wish him well with those. I also extend my congratulations to Douglas Ross on his elevation to convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee.
This interesting debate has captured, if not the minutiae of what is so important about the issue, the field on which it is being played. Evelyn Tweed gave a very thoughtful contribution on the realities of what is happening. I found it particularly poignant to think of our COSLA colleagues requesting 117 technological education probationers, which is one of the hardest areas to recruit into, and receiving only 39.
Douglas Ross, particularly in his comments about Moray, articulately expressed the challenge of what it is like—I will use an old-fashioned phrase—on the chalkface. The reality is that our local authorities and our high schools and primary schools are facing enormous challenges. In debates in this chamber on a number of occasions, we have rehearsed—and certainly articulated—the challenges from violence in schools and the challenge of teachers seeking help for their own mental health, as a result of dealing with the mental health of their pupils, which they feel responsible for but are ill-equipped to deal with at times.
The complexities that young people are bringing into schools have never been faced in the education system before. Families are facing enormous challenges. Many members have spoken about the challenge of cutting core local authority funding, as doing so cuts the services that surround a school and enable it to carry out its function: to educate our young people.
I do not want to dismiss concerns about the issue in any way, but does Martin Whitfield recognise that local authorities have reserves? Indeed, the Accounts Commission believes that the target for local authorities is to have between 2 per cent and 4 per cent of unearmarked reserves in the general fund. Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council in my area has 16 per cent—£39 million—of unearmarked reserves in its general fund. The amount across the whole of Scotland is £480 million.
Briefly.
Could not local authorities access further funds from those reserves?
I call Martin Whitfield. [Interruption.] I can give you back some of that time.
I apologise for cutting across you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Time is incredibly tight in this debate on education that was brought by the Conservatives. Yes, there are reserves. I heard an interesting fact this morning—this applies to health—that an integration joint board’s entire reserves have been used up.
That is part of the argument, and I do not want to discount it. However, it also speaks to the other issue that I wish to raise. Oh, this means that I will have to begrudgingly agree with Ross Greer again. However, I will do so with a certain level of enthusiasm on this occasion. He articulated one side of the argument that people outside Parliament sometimes find challenging to understand or even to be aware of: the tension that exists between COSLA and this Scottish Government.
I say this in the kindest terms possible, but some of the contributions from front-bench members when Mr Greer was talking about that reflect the challenge that we have. I do not know the number of debates that I have been in when we have been asked to work together and told that, if we could only just agree, we could get the matter sorted.
Ross Greer has rightly pointed out one of the great challenges. There is a breakdown in communication. Sometimes, it is very challenging for individuals to accept that that is the case. However, if that can be accepted, that allows for the possibility that, when people sit in a room together, an agreement can be made.
I am disappointed about the shortness of this debate, although I fully understand that it was for very good reason. I will leave it there, Deputy Presiding Officer.
16:44
I thank Miles Briggs for bringing this hugely important topic to the chamber. It has been an interesting debate, at times, and I want to respond to points that were raised. However, I will start by reminding members that, in 2021, every single MSP in the chamber stood on a manifesto commitment to increase teacher numbers. We all made promises to the people who elected us.
I was in Willie Rennie’s constituency this morning, in the real world, talking to one of his real-life constituents. She has been impacted by the employment practices of a local authority, which, last year, took funding from central Government and cut teacher numbers anyway. The incoherence in his logic is simply breathtaking, particularly given that he stood for election in 2021 on a commitment to “boost the teaching workforce”, to quote the Liberal Democrat manifesto.
I turn to Stephen Kerr and parallel universes. I do not think that he has done his homework. He is huffing, he is puffing and he wants action. For his understanding, I do not agree with any proposals to reduce the school working week or school hours. Had he attempted to show his working, he would know that I have been clear that, should any local authority in Scotland propose to reduce school working hours, the Scottish Government would introduce regulation to protect learning hours and learning outcomes as a result. I give him the reassurance that that power rests with Scottish ministers.
George Adam spoke about the need for less heat and more light. I agree with Ross Greer that we need to move forward, and I think that the issue is the one that he alludes to in relation to the national care service and the council tax freeze, as well as the wider issues that Stephen Kerr alluded to in relation to learning hours. I suppose that, to some extent, that is also part of Willie Rennie’s argument, which seemed to be that funding should flow to local authorities irrespective of other issues. Again, I remind members of the COSLA briefing from December 2022, which showed that local authorities planned cuts of up to 8,000 to teacher numbers. Had the Scottish Government not taken direct action at the time, we would be in a far more challenging position now. It is because of that ring-fenced allocation and the protection of that spending that we have been able to maintain and increase teacher numbers by more than 2,000 compared with 2018.
Foysol Choudhury talked to longer-term issues in relation to the teaching profession. I recognise that time is tight, but it is worth while putting on the record some thoughts in relation to the Conservative motion, which also talked to issues that are associated with workload. I met EIS representatives only yesterday to talk about a substantive independent report that it published, which looked at challenges with regard to teacher workload post-pandemic. We need a renewed drive on reducing unnecessary teacher workload. We know that, in some schools, that is leading to burnout. Our trade union colleagues have undertaken substantive work on that issue, and I committed to work on that with EIS and our professional trade union associations, which represent our teaching workforce.
A key part of the challenge in relation to workload is reducing class contact time. I have committed to working with urgency on the issue with the trade unions. As I am sure that council colleagues know, it will not be possible to reduce class contact time by having fewer teachers in our schools.
Douglas Ross made a number of really interesting points, not least in relation to his constituency and GTCS accreditation. He knows that I have a soft spot for Moray, having completed my probation year at Elgin high school some years ago, and I am happy to commit to working with him and the GTCS on what more we might be able to do in that space.
I am pleased to hear the cabinet secretary agreeing with Douglas Ross—[Inaudible.]
Can we have Liz Smith’s mic on, please?
—a very good speech. I must say that Mary Scanlon, one of our former colleagues, made the very same point nine years ago, and nothing has happened. Will the cabinet secretary undertake to ensure that it does happen?
My answer to Liz Smith’s point is yes. I have made that commitment today to Mr Ross—it is on the record. I am happy to also work with her on the issue. However, nine years ago, I was perhaps still in a classroom myself.
Douglas Ross hit on the solution, which is, in essence, how we can work with COSLA to reach a resolution to get the funding out the door. The First Minister and I have committed to exactly that, most recently in correspondence only last week.
I am conscious of time, Presiding Officer. I am asking members to unite behind the Government’s simple one-line amendment, which asks us to make clear that the £145.5 million that is being made available by the Scottish Government should be accepted by local government. It should be used to protect teacher numbers in order to improve outcomes for all of Scotland’s children. I hope that all the parties can unite behind the amendment in my name.
16:50
I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. Although the line-up may have changed, the salient points that have been made in the contributions from my colleagues are as important and pertinent now as they were when they were made under the excellent stewardship of my colleagues Liam Kerr and Sue Webber.
Again, the Scottish Conservatives are using their time in the chamber to highlight the issues—or, should I say, failings—surrounding education in Scotland. It is a fundamental Conservative belief that education is the key to every person going on to achieve their full potential. However, I would go further. Not only is education a powerful thing, but it is power—power in one’s self, power that comes from understanding and belief, power in one’s own ability to work through life’s problems, power in the job market, power that knowledge will provide a secure future and power that comes from knowing that you can do whatever you set your mind to. It is a gift. It is hope. It is potential. It is the bedrock and foundation of all the changes that we need in our society.
So why has the Scottish National Party Government failed on education? The cabinet secretary consistently contributes to debates by highlighting the amount of money spent but ignoring the lack of tangible results. For the money spent, we should be seeing rapid changes in literacy and numeracy, but that is simply not happening. It is not correct to say that attainment is improving, because it is stagnant at best. The dial has barely moved and it is moving in the wrong direction. It is not correct to say that that is solely down to poverty. As we know, education is the most tried and tested route out of poverty, and it is a lever that we are not pulling.
The cabinet secretary talks of maintaining teacher numbers but, when cash-strapped councils are left with no option but to cut teacher numbers in the first place and are then penalised by the withholding of £145 million, that all but secures an increase in cuts in other priorities that the Government is trying to avoid. SNP members are good at asking what cuts should be made, so I wonder whether they would be willing to advise our local authorities just where the cuts should come from. Would a reduction in ASN staff be preferable? What about early intervention specialists or social workers?
I am trying to listen to the member’s logic, but it is the case that a number of local authorities have maintained teacher numbers in the past year and some have increased them. We know that. The member is outlining the political choices that are being made by certain local authorities that believe that I should allow them to have the funding and to cut. Is that a position that the Conservatives support?
No. What I am saying is that, if local authorities are looking at cutting teacher numbers, which they are, and the Government is highlighting that it is going to withhold the funds, the only thing that can be done is to make cuts elsewhere if they keep teacher numbers the same.
I will add to a couple of contributions that have been made. I look forward to working with Miles Briggs, and I welcome his comments on literacy and phonics. I note the commitment from the cabinet secretary to bring that issue to the chamber for discussion, and I look forward to that.
Ross Greer and Willie Rennie mentioned the Verity house agreement. COSLA’s briefing for today highlighted that the £145.5 million will not fully support teacher numbers. The pay deal for 2024-25 means that local government needs to contribute £135 million, while the Scottish Government needs to contribute £43 million to meet the cost of the pay awards. There is an argument that the money will not maintain teacher numbers anyway. It is difficult for me to accept that the cabinet secretary can use the autonomy-for-local-authorities card as and when it suits, but not in this case.
We had an excellent contribution from Stephen Kerr. I think that passion in education is imperative, and I do not think that he was huffing. I disagree with George Adam—we should not be taking the fire out of this debate; we should be increasing the passion, increasing the drive to make change and increasing the prospects for children in Scotland.
Our teachers go to work hoping to impart their love of their subject to children, but most teachers and school staff in Scotland are witnesses to and are subjected to considerable instances of negative behaviour. According to a report on behaviour in Scottish schools back at the end of 2023, two thirds of staff had encountered general verbal abuse, almost three in five had encountered physical aggression and more than two in three had experienced physical violence between pupils in the classroom in the previous week. I refer to that report on purpose. An EIS branch report that came out in January 2024 backed up those findings. It stated:
“‘Violence and aggression’ is an urgent issue within Scotland’s schools, with incidents being experienced every week in over three-quarters of schools, and daily in many. Most schools reported that the amount of ‘violence and aggression’, including prejudice based violence, had grown in the last four years”.
What have we had from the Scottish Government in relation to that appalling working environment for our teachers? We have had a plan that was built on a plan that was based on a consultation, which has done precisely nothing. We are a full year on from the reports that I mentioned, and our teachers are still subjected to increasing levels of violence.
Our teachers are struggling. They need support. They need working conditions that will allow them to do their job. They need secure and permanent employment. They need to be able to trust that their local authority’s education department is equipped and adequately funded, and that it will work in partnership with them to empower the children in their charge.
We should be empowering our teachers to take control of the curriculum in their classroom. They should be able to experiment with different teaching methods that ignite interest. We should be delegating powers down to our headteachers, so that they have more control—including financial control—over their schools. What we do not need is a Scottish Government that hands out detention when local authorities step out of line.
That concludes the debate on funding for teachers and schools in Scotland. Before we move on to the next item of business, there will be a brief pause to allow front-bench members to change places.
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