Official Report 1009KB pdf
The next item of business is a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on recovery and improvement in schools and early learning. As ever, the cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
16:31
As the First Minister said earlier, and as I stress again, our focus is on the wellbeing and learning of children and young people during this challenging period. We know that omicron is a serious threat and we need to do all that we can to ensure that schools and early years settings can stay open, with as little disruption as possible.
I start by thanking all those who are involved in Scottish education for their on-going work. School leaders, teachers, school support staff, children, young people, their carers and families are making sure that learning continues despite Covid-19.
Today’s publication of the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels—ACEL—data shows many young people succeeding in gaining fundamental educational building blocks, despite the interruptions to their schooling forced on them by the pandemic. However, it also shows an exceptionally disappointing, but unfortunately not unexpected, overall drop in attainment in literacy and numeracy among primary school learners in 2020-21.
The issue is not unique to Scotland; education has been impacted worldwide. Our equity audit, which was published earlier this year, highlighted the impact of the pandemic, particularly on those who are affected by poverty. Last week, the annual report of the chief inspector of the Office for Standards in Education noted that “nearly all” children and learners have been affected by the pandemic. A recent report from the World Bank documents evidence of pandemic-related learning loss in 28 countries, at all income levels.
I reaffirm my Government’s commitment to delivering excellence and equity in education. Before the pandemic, the year-on-year trend in the ACEL data was positive. Our education system was making progress in response to the focus on improvement. We are building on that with today’s publication of the national improvement framework and the national improvement plan. We are demonstrating our long-term commitment to that approach to the education system. New initiatives build on earlier learning about what works and what teachers, schools and young people tell us they need.
As part of that learning process, this year, we have amended the national improvement framework’s vision, priorities and drivers to better articulate the centrality of children and young people, their voice and their rights. We have increased our emphasis on early learning and childcare, to reflect the importance of the early years in children’s learning and preparedness to learn.
The national improvement framework and national improvement plan underpin our long-term plans and it is right that we reaffirm our commitment to a mission that began before Covid and will continue when it leaves us. However, we recognise that Covid-19 has changed everything. That is why we have already committed £0.5 billion to support education since the start of the pandemic. Local authorities were asked to target that funding towards wellbeing, literacy and numeracy, support for families, and support for attendance or engagement with learning.
Local authorities and schools worked together to ensure that support was available where it was needed. As children began their phased return to in-person schooling in the spring, we asked schools to focus on their wellbeing first. Children cannot learn well if they do not feel well.
Schools have responded innovatively. Across Scotland, they used digital platforms including glow and the national e-learning offer, supplemented with online and offline resources and targeted interventions for key areas of the curriculum, including literacy, numeracy and wellbeing, to maximise support to children and young people.
Given our concern that Covid would impact negatively on education, the Government has already put in place policies to support the education system to support learners. The education recovery strategy drew those together and aimed at closing the gap created by the pandemic. We are providing further support for learners who are sitting exams in 2022, ensuring access to the in-school mental health and wellbeing support that young people need, expanding funded early learning and childcare, recommitting to tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and recruiting additional teachers and support staff.
On top of the 1,400 teachers who were recruited in 2020-21, we have committed to bringing a further 3,500 teachers and 500 support staff into the system by the end of this session of Parliament. The school census data, published today, shows that, in September, we already had over 2,000 more teachers in the system than we did before the pandemic. We provided £240 million of investment for those staff, and Thursday’s budget set out how we are supporting their retention with a further £145.5 million per year from 2022-23.
Those additional staff bring the ratio of pupils to teachers to 13:2—its lowest since 2009—directly supporting children by increasing the amount of teacher attention that is available to each child. That is a powerful injection of resource, providing additional support to the system while Covid is still causing staff absences. It supports schools to help children and young people whose education has been most affected by the pandemic to regain their confidence and build their skills. Once the effects of the pandemic are less, that increase in staff will support improvements in attainment.
It matters just as much that the teachers in our classrooms are highly skilled and well supported in their continuing professional development. Our commitment to reduce class contact time for teachers by 90 minutes per week will help to facilitate teachers’ access to extended professional learning and collaborative planning opportunities. We hope to have that in place for August 2022. However, the timing of the change will be determined by the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers and will be dependent on capacity in the system. I am grateful to the SNCT for working with us on those changes.
I noted in my statement on the Scottish attainment challenge on 23 November that the pandemic is likely to have impacted the poverty-related attainment gap. We are determined to focus our resources on supporting the attainment and life chances of the children and young people who are most impacted by poverty. We are investing £1 billion in targeted funding over this session of the Parliament—up from £750 million in the previous session of the Parliament—with up to £200 million to be distributed in 2022-23. We have already delivered on our first 100 days target to ensure that the first instalment of that funding this year is available to local authorities, alongside a £20 million pupil equity funding premium.
Furthermore, we are determined to reduce variation in educational outcomes in different parts of the country. Variation that reflects responsiveness to the needs of children and young people in different communities, using assets available in different places, is a good thing. It can mean that local professionals are responding creatively and imaginatively to different circumstances and needs. Variation that disadvantages children from different areas in their life chances is not acceptable. Education is central to improving the opportunities of our young people, and we must support schools to ensure that they do that for all pupils.
I have already announced plans, working with partners across education, to develop a framework for recovery and accelerated progress, which we will publish in the new year. Planning and reporting will be streamlined to enable us to understand what schools and local authorities expect to achieve and by when, using local stretch aims. Schools and local authorities will set out their ambitions for improvement, using local knowledge and professional expertise. The Government will work with partners to develop the national picture on the pace of expected progress later in the year.
Today’s revised national improvement framework and the national improvement plan for 2022 respond to the recommendations that were set out in this year’s reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Audit Scotland and the international council of education advisers.
Key improvement activity includes the on-going provision of professional learning and leadership opportunities, enhancements to teacher empowerment, and the expansion of the Education Scotland and local authority joint work on collaborative improvement.
Despite the on-going challenges of Covid-19, it is right that we maintain our focus on future improvements. In 2022, a sub-group of the curriculum and assessment board will consider how to better understand children’s and young people’s achievements across all four capacities of the curriculum for excellence, as successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. The group will consider whether a sample-based survey can add value to our understanding of progress.
We will also carry out a consultation exercise early in 2022 to review the key measures in the national improvement framework. We remain committed to teacher judgment as the primary means of assessing progress in the broad general education. National standardised assessments, which are being delivered this year in the highest numbers since their introduction, continue to play an important role in supporting teacher judgment.
Local authorities have strategies in place to improve aspects of education. Local plans have been analysed by Education Scotland, and they inform the 2022 national improvement framework and improvement plan. Improving literacy and numeracy is already a common feature of the work that is undertaken by a number of regional improvement collaboratives. I know that local government is also mindful of the recommendations in the Audit Scotland report that are focused on tackling variation and the need for locally driven improvement activity.
It is, of course, the role of Education Scotland to support local improvement through national initiatives. It provides support at universal, targeted and intensive levels, and it continues to work with the regional improvement collaboratives and local authorities to identify and implement interventions to improve outcomes for children and young people. We must pull together around those who have felt the pandemic hardest, and focus resource where evidence shows that the impact has been most extreme. I have therefore asked Education Scotland to engage directly with authorities that have experienced the biggest falls in attainment, to support them in planning interventions with the greatest opportunity for success.
Scotland already has the national response to improving mathematics partnership board, and we will set up a national response to improving literacy group. Both groups will examine the existing landscape in Scotland and internationally, and seek opportunities to enhance the professional learning for teachers and the classroom experiences for young people. In light of today’s attainment data, I will ask both groups to develop evidence-based recommendations in spring 2022, with a view to implementing changes as soon as possible.
It has been a turbulent 20 months, and the pandemic continues to bring new challenges. Every person who works in schools and services for children and young people is dealing with the impact of the pandemic on themselves and their families, while also supporting the children in their care and continuing to support their learning. As we go into another difficult winter, I do not underestimate the level of personal commitment, integrity and energy that that takes, and I thank teachers, early learning and childcare practitioners and other education staff for all that they continue to do.
Despite the new and on-going challenges of Covid, we remain determined to make sure that schools and, through them, our children and young people have the support that they need now, through taking opportunities and building the foundations for further improvement as we move forward.
The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues that were raised in her statement. I intend to allow about 20 minutes for questions, after which we will need to move to the next item of business.
The shocking results reveal the brutal impact of Covid on young people, which has been heightened by years of Scottish National Party failure. Scotland’s schools came into the pandemic unprepared after 14 years of the SNP letting standards slip. The double whammy of Covid and the SNP’s botched reforms has sent the attainment gap between the richest pupils and the poorest pupils spiralling to its worst-ever level, and the grim statistics show that, despite the best efforts of teachers and parents, pupils throughout Scotland are not reaching the expected levels of attainment in reading, writing, numeracy, literacy, and listening and talking.
Dreadful results on that scale should shame Nicola Sturgeon. She promised to close the attainment gap but, instead, it is wider than ever. Education has never been her top priority—and that shows. The SNP Government has let down our children and young people.
Cabinet secretary, are you ready to admit that it was a mistake to deny the need for catch-up plans for our young people? Will you say sorry for failing and then abandoning this generation of pupils?
You should speak through the chair.
I fully and readily accept that the figures are exceptionally disappointing but, unfortunately, they are not unexpected, given the fact that we are in a global pandemic. In my statement, I gave some examples of how the pandemic is also impacting on England and, indeed, further afield. That context is exceptionally important.
I absolutely agree with Oliver Mundell that the work that teachers and support staff have done in our schools to support children and young people has been exceptional under the most difficult of circumstances. The Government has supported them to the best of our ability during the pandemic with, as I said, £0.5 billion of support for a number of areas—including but not limited to support for teacher numbers. We will continue to take action, including on teacher numbers. We will also continue to empower teachers to make decisions about what is right for them at the local level. That is why the attainment fund and the pupil equity fund are so important. We are committed not to a top-down approach from Parliament but to providing resources that enable schools to make the decisions that are right for them.
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. I associate the Labour Party with what she said about thanking teachers and education staff across Scotland, as well as parents and pupils.
The cabinet secretary is right to say that the statistics are not surprising, but they are shocking and hugely problematic for this country. We might disagree about whether the actions that the Government has taken during the pandemic have been sufficient, and we do disagree about its record over the past 14 years, but surely we can agree that today’s figures tell us that more of the same cannot be tolerated. It would be insufficient just to ameliorate or undo the Government’s cuts, given the unprecedented scale of the challenge that we now face. Unless we see the necessary reaction and a resolve that young people of Scotland will not now bear the scars of the pandemic, today’s numbers will represent the diminished life chances of a generation. It is that stark. We must give them the opportunity and the resources that they need and the hope that they require.
Will the Government commit to an urgent analysis to assess the full impact of the pandemic on education so that it can tell us what action is required to save the situation? What further action will be taken to recruit extra teachers now, not during the next five years? Will the Government reverse the cuts that it made to the Scottish attainment challenge fund in the budget last week, as that resource has never been more needed?
In my statement in November on the Scottish attainment challenge fund, I said that, during the current parliamentary session, the money has increased from £750 million to £1 billion, and that that is part of our response to the pandemic. We have, unfortunately, been expecting the exceptionally disappointing statistics that I have given today, although, of course, we have not seen the full impact until now.
Today’s evidence, along with some of the recent analysis of the health, mental health and wellbeing of our young people, is a demonstration of the impact of the pandemic.
I will seek consensus wherever I can on the matter, and I agree with Michael Marra that the young people of today should absolutely not bear the scars of the pandemic. The Scottish Government’s work to ensure that that does not happen has been quite clear for some time. For example, to demonstrate that, I point to the young person’s guarantee for those who are moving out of schooling and to the work that we are doing to increase the recruitment of teachers and the attainment funding.
We are already making great strides with the number of teachers. The teacher census, which came out today, shows that we have more than 2,000 more teachers now than we had in 2019—that is more teachers than at any time since 2008. We are also fulfilling the commitment that we made for the first 100 days of this Government to provide local authorities with the funding that they require to recruit the teachers that we so desperately need, because it is local authorities that are the employers. I am sure that they will follow up on that, as I expect them to do.
The Scottish Government is investing in teacher recruitment. In the budget last week, it unveiled the biggest increase in investment since 2007. The publication, “Summary statistics for schools in Scotland”, which was published today, shows that the investment is paying off, with the lowest pupil to teacher ratio since 2009. Will the cabinet secretary set out the importance of that in driving recovery in our education system?
Kaukab Stewart is right to point to the significant and sustained injection of teaching resource that is providing additional support to the system while the pandemic is causing staff absences. It is also supporting schools to help the children and young people whose education has been most impacted by the pandemic. As she rightly said, the additional staff have led to the lowest ratio of pupils to teachers since 2009, which is directly supporting children by increasing the amount of teacher attention that is available to each child. [Interruption.] Measures are in place on our commitment to have an additional 3,500 teachers and 500 classroom assistants by the end of this parliamentary session, to ensure that that work is sustained.
As well as reminding members to turn their mobile phones off or to silent mode while they are in the chamber, I ask for succinct questions and answers, so that we can get through all the questions in the time that is available.
The cabinet secretary set out the Scottish Government’s intention to reduce teachers’ class-contact time by 90 minutes per week. School closures are still taking place due to the on-going pandemic, so that approach could impact the ability of young people to catch up on lost schooling. Given that 90 per cent of teachers think that pupils did not fully engage with home schooling at the height of the pandemic, does the cabinet secretary share my concern that this is not the appropriate time to cut teachers’ class time with young people?
I genuinely think that Meghan Gallacher is missing the point on this. I said in my statement that the intention is to bring in the approach by August 2022, but we will work with the SNCT to ensure that there is capacity in the system to allow that to happen and, in particular, to ensure that young people are provided with the support that they need. There is absolutely no suggestion that the Scottish Government will do something that would diminish the number of teachers, or reduce the amount of time in the school system before the system is ready. We are working hard to recruit more teachers to ensure that the change can happen.
I thank teachers and staff in Glasgow for their hard work and the success that is demonstrated in the stats that were released today.
That said, the data on achievement on curriculum for excellence levels shows wide variation in local authority performance, including in the context of comparative quintile deprivation levels. Will the cabinet secretary say what lessons we can learn from that and, more importantly, what steps she will take to improve the situation?
Mr Doris raises an important issue. It was an issue before the pandemic and we are determined to take further action on it. Mr Doris will be well aware that the refreshed Scottish attainment challenge programme aims to increase the pace of progress and, importantly, tackle the variation that he described, which has been a stubborn feature in Scottish education for too many years.
We are right to look across the system. We have a shared objective with local government to develop a framework to support recovery and accelerate progress, with better collaboration, greater support and greater challenge, where that is necessary, across all parts of our education system, and with streamlined planning to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap, through the identification of the local stretch aims that I mentioned in my statement. That will be a key area in seeking to reduce the variation that Mr Doris mentioned.
In her statement, I heard the cabinet secretary say “reaffirm”, “better articulate”, “increased our emphasis”, “already put in place”, “drew ... together”, “already delivered” and “already announced”. Given the agreed urgency of the situation, what is there in her statement that is new and will narrow the attainment gap?
I mentioned some measures in my statement. There was not time to go into all of them, but I am sure that Mr Whitfield will read the national improvement framework now that it has been published.
As I said in my statement, we have known for some time, through the equity audit, that we were going to have disappointing results. We knew that this was a challenge that all education systems would face, which is exactly why we have been not just planning but taking action on the matter. I would—rightly—be criticised if I stood up today to suddenly make new announcements in great detail because we had done nothing up to this point. We have been taking action and we intend to keep doing exactly that.
The statistics on achievement of curriculum for excellence levels show that the attainment gap has widened during the pandemic. Will the cabinet secretary explain how changes to the design of the Scottish attainment challenge will support efforts to tackle the attainment gap across Scotland over the parliamentary session?
The support of £1 billion over the parliamentary session for the refreshed Scottish attainment challenge will continue the empowerment that we have seen for school leaders, which is an exceptionally important part of the funding and comes through the pupil equity stream. That will support headteachers to implement evidence-based approaches that meet the needs of children and young people who have been impacted and, importantly, to implement them in the local context.
We have recognised that poverty and the pandemic have an impact in every local authority area across Scotland, which is why we have chosen to distribute funding to all 32 local authorities to implement strategic approaches to tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities supported that change.
The cabinet secretary protested a little too much in response to Martin Whitfield’s question. The truth is that today’s statement is just as uninspiring as the education recovery plan was earlier this year. Not much is new. What will schools get from today’s statement? A new sub-group, a consultation and the threat of a discussion with Education Scotland. Does the education secretary really believe that that will be enough to tackle the widest and worst poverty-related attainment gap on record?
Schools already have 2,000 more teachers, as the school census has shown tonight. Schools already have the commitment that we have given on the £1 billion of funding that will go into the Scottish attainment challenge, which has been increased from £750 million.
We have taken action and we will continue to do so. We know that we need to do a great deal to support our children and young people, and Education Scotland will play an important role in supporting schools and teachers through the process.
What measures is the Scottish Government taking to expand early learning and childcare? Will the cabinet secretary reiterate how that will aid our overall education recovery?
We must continue to look at early learning, which is an important area that the Government placed a great deal of focus on in the previous parliamentary session. We have seen the impact of that on families during the pandemic.
We have our commitment to expanding provision to one-year-olds and two-year-olds in this parliamentary session. I am proud that we will deliver that commitment, just as we successfully delivered the 1,140 hours. Our determination for early learning and childcare to be an integral element is demonstrated by its position in the national improvement framework that has been published today.
Tackling the causes of poverty and reducing the unnecessary administrative burden on teachers will be key to closing the attainment gap. What progress is being made on two important initiatives: the production of statutory guidance to cap the cost of school uniforms and the review of the role of indicators and measures in curriculum for excellence, the objective of which is to reduce unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on staff?
I am pleased to work with my colleague in the Scottish Greens to move forward on our school uniform commitment. Mr Greer is right to point out that we are looking at addressing that on a statutory basis and at what we can do in the interim to make a difference to children and families across Scotland. I am happy to work with him and others who wish to contribute to that.
Mr Greer was right to point out the need to look at the data that we gather so that we gather the right data in the right way. I mentioned in my statement the work that is happening on data collection and I am happy to keep him updated on the issue.
The Parliament is absolutely united on the fact that one of the most important aspects of wellbeing is ensuring that more children have access to outdoor education. Why did that not feature in the cabinet secretary’s recovery plan? What is the Scottish Government actually doing to ensure that there is more support for outdoor education centres and their incredible staff?
I pay tribute to Liz Smith for her continued support for the outdoor education sector and for her determination to ensure that the Government does all that it needs to do on the issue. Outdoor education absolutely remains a critical part of the Government’s education plans. We saw further developments on it over the previous parliamentary session, and it absolutely remains a core commitment for us to continue that and see what we can do to further expand it.
Throughout the pandemic there has been significant disruption to education here in Scotland, across the United Kingdom and throughout the world. It is clear that we are not at the end of this. Could the cabinet secretary outline what lessons we have learned and what steps are being taken to improve matters?
Our education recovery plan, which was published in October, sets out our on-going response to the impacts of the pandemic on education and some of the important next steps that we will take. The plan draws on studies from our equity audit, which I mentioned earlier, and on the report from the international council of education advisers. It is important to include that international context. The plan sets out how we should invest the additional funding that we are putting in to support education recovery. That is further demonstrated in the detail of the national improvement framework and improvement plan, which build on the advice that we have received from the international council of education advisers, ensuring that we learn all the lessons that we can learn from the past few years.
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