John Swinney needs to confront the challenges that he has created over the past 17 years in local government and education.

Yesterday, I was with the Glasgow city parents group and many of the teachers affected. The cut in teacher numbers in Glasgow will hit people in the most deprived communities the hardest. It will hit the very same working-class kids whose grades John Swinney, as education secretary, attempted to downgrade—shamefully—during the Covid exams scandal.

Of the teachers I met, one told me that she had retrained two years ago and was now going to lose her job, another said that he had not been able to get a permanent contract since he qualified, and a third said that the cut does not feel like the thanks and reward that the Government promised teachers in coming out of the pandemic. John Swinney bears responsibility for the broken finances in our councils and the decimation of our education system, so he should not give us warm words or try to explain away the Government’s record. He should tell the pupils, their parents and their teachers what he is going to do to protect their education.