Education

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 9:44 am on 17 March 2005.

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Photo of Peter Peacock Peter Peacock Labour 9:44, 17 March 2005

I tell Tommy Sheridan with great respect that I would rather not because I want to keep pasting the Tories for a while longer if I can.

The Tories also have the gall to mention levels of attainment—they have an absolute nerve to do so—as if standards were lower today than they were when they were in office. The opposite is the case. Part of the Tories' plan is to talk down state schools, to try to undermine the system and morale and to paint a wholly false picture of what happened. Scotland is one of the top-performing nations in the world in education and all the objective evidence shows that. In the recent programme for international student assessment—PISA—study, only three countries outperformed Scotland in any significant way, and Sweden does not happen to be one of them.

We have seen steady improvement in our higher and standard grade passes. Under the Tories, just under 70 per cent of 5 to 14 pupils reached required levels in test results. Now almost 80 per cent reach required levels and, since the Tories left office, the average increase across the board has been 9 per cent. In English writing in secondary 2, the level is up by 14 percentage points; in English reading in S2, it is up by 20 per cent; and in maths in S2, it is up by 17 percentage points since the Tories left office. We all have a duty to ensure that attainment never goes backwards, and the only way in which that would happen would be if the Tories returned to office.

I admit that Lord James seemed to make an honest attempt to get more balance into what he said today, but the Tories misrepresent schools on indiscipline. Serious problems of indiscipline exist, but our schools are not riot zones as the Tories like to paint them. The system is not in chaos and total meltdown. As John Swinney mentioned, head teachers have not lost control of their schools and teachers have not lost control of their classrooms.

The Tories' record on indiscipline was truly abysmal. It was the Tories who gave rights to rowdy pupils in their Education Act 1980. It was the Tories who spent not a brass farthing on supporting teachers—nothing on staged intervention, nothing on restorative practices, nothing on the pupil support bases that they now argue for and nothing on in-service training or continuing professional development. What is worse, the Tories tried to sweep the evidence of indiscipline under the carpet. It was the Tories who refused to fund the study of teacher opinion on indiscipline in the mid-1990s and left it to the teachers unions instead. We have rectified that by picking up the task. The Tories made a blatant attempt to hide the facts from themselves.

We will not do what they did. We will deal with the indiscipline problems in our schools and we are already doing so. We regularly develop policy, survey teacher opinion and experience and employ extra support staff, who the Tories would cut if they got the chance.

Where the Tories failed Scottish education over so many years, the Executive is investing in and strengthening Scottish education. There are better pupil-to-teacher ratios, smaller class sizes, more teachers in training than ever before, the biggest school building programme in Europe, choice in what pupils study—