 The next item of business is a debate on motion No. 1, 635, in the name of Liam Kerr, on improving the performance of the Scottish education system. I invite members to participate and press their request-to-speak buttons ASl as soon as possible and to speak to them and move motion around 11 minutes. Last week, we saw the publication of the Program for International Student Assessment, orpes and statistics there are a four-yearly analysis of almost 700,015 year old pupils across 81 countries, sitting mass science and reading on which are generally seen as the gold standard. The results held some deeply uncomfortable truths for Scotland with scores in the subject at all-time low the scores have fallen since the last report in 2018 and are lower than the cwestiynau cyd-dweud yn Gwyrdd yma. Y drofwyr yw 2018, yma hwnnw, 11 ymgyrch, 7 ymgyrch, a ymgyrch yn Gwyrdd yma, oedd amdano Linsley Paterson yw Edinburgh University yn gwybod ychydig o gydigwyr Cymru o'r 20 ymgyrch yn cyd-dweud yn cael eu cyd-dweud i'r cerddau o'r sgolion o'r mid-secundi gyda'r Llywodraeth. Felly, mae'n ffawr i'w gwybod i'w gyrch yn gwybod i'w o'r six months in reading and a term in science, but crucially, this is not simply a reflection on some of the particular circumstances of the last four years, because what they also show is that Scotland's science score was down 14 points on 2015, significantly lower than the UK as a whole. In maths, the score has dropped 20 points since 2015 and is significantly lower than the rest of the UK. A reading score was 33 points shy of where it stood in 2000 and is at its lowest ever level. To quote Alex Massey, 15-year-olds are producing the kinds of scores that would have been expected from 13-year-olds a generation ago. Some suggest, of course, that this is only one study and it is, but, remember, that is virtually all we have. As, rather than addressing what appeared to be the early signs of falling education standards, the Scottish Government decided to withdraw from the Tims and Pearls assessments over a decade ago. The scrapping of the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy in 2016 led this Parliament's education committee in 2019 to conclude that the lack of baseline data means that no meaningful conclusions on upward or downward trends can be reached at a time of reform within Scottish education. Now, whilst I welcome the re-entry of Scotland to Pearls and Tims, that data will not be available until 2026, 20 years on from the previous measurements, which is a problem, as it is trite that what gets measured gets fixed. And even absent those measurements, we as a Parliament surely have a duty to try and come up with solutions and I look forward to colleagues across the chamber setting out what they feel are the underlying issues and their solutions. Yes, Kate Forbes. I agree with the member that what is measured matters. Does he therefore accept that statistics like PISA, while it's important, have very limited provision in terms of helping us to understand the Scottish education system? Liam Kerr. No, I simply can't accept that because what we're measuring here, Kate Forbes, is maths, science and reading, and we can measure the trends over a very long time. In fact, what they are showing is some extremely worrying trends that we all have a duty to address. Let's be absolutely clear about this, Presiding Officer. This is not the fault of our young people who, like everywhere, have had to deal with challenges in the last few years that are unprecedented, nor is it a failure of our teachers and their staff who continue to do absolutely everything to deliver in a context that is far from ideal. As the courier put it, this report is a damning indictment of the failure of successive education secretaries to get to grips with their most important task, ensuring that every child in Scotland gets the best possible education for them, such as John Swinney, who apparently dare not even come to the chamber today, like Fiona Hyslop, Angela Constance or Shirley-Anne Somerville, who succeeded in telling the chamber without evidence in 2021 that he has cautious optimism that standards are improving shortly before abandoning the education bill, of course, and culminating most egregiously in the Scottish Government's press release last week in response to the PISA figures showing Scotland's worst-ever performance in science, reading and maths. That Scottish education maintains international standing. I listened very carefully to the education secretary's statement yesterday and I was encouraged by much of the tone and the acknowledgement that, after previous failures, it finally sounded like we have a cabinet secretary who will take responsibility, which is why I was rather surprised and disappointed and will not vote for the amendment in her name today, because, rather than acknowledge and deal with PISA, as she seemed ready to do yesterday, her amendment today suggests that yesterday's figures trump PISA. A stance that Professor Lindsay Paterson claimed would be either disingenuous or evidence of dismaying statistical ignorance. That starts with acknowledging the issues, not seeking to slopey shoulder blame and to take responsibility for the solutions, to address issues such as the epidemic of violence, ill discipline and poor behaviour, which was also revealed by the PISA results. They showed that Scotland has more frequently bullied students and our young people are twice as likely to witness a fight at school than the OECD average. In that context, the behaviour in Scottish schools report last month was clear. A perceived lack of consequences for pupils who frequently engage in disruptive behaviour leaves educators unsupported. By failing to teach those who are permistrating the behaviour that life has consequences, by suggesting that abuse and violence do not lead to sanctions, we fail them as much as we fail the victims. Whether those victims are teachers going off sick or pupils absenting themselves from school after being disrespected or verbally or physically assaulted, that means boundaries and genuine consequences for perpetrators. Perhaps, as some commentators suggest, immediate removal from the classroom with proper resource put towards educational psychologists and the like to work with the perpetrator to see if they can be returned and help to learn and ensuring that the teacher and the other children can also learn. Not the extraordinary policy of five councils seem to have adopted just last month, part of which states that school bullies should not experience negative consequences or punishment due to their behaviour. It means looking again at what is happening with curriculum for excellence and addressing why, as the University of Stirling has found, since 2013 and its introduction, there has been a decrease in the number of subjects studied and entered into by fourth-year pupils. Looking at genuine vocational studies, those whose skills and talents lie elsewhere than the academic route are properly catered for, none of which is news. In 2021, Shirley-Anne Somerville said, 10 years on from curriculum for excellence being introduced, it is right and proper that we review how it has been implemented. We accept in full all 12 recommendations from the OECD, albeit that it remains somewhat questionable how many have been achieved and perhaps the cabinet secretary will assist later. I am very grateful to Liam Kerr to give way and on that point, and does he still agree with that conclusion that the OECD reached in 2021 that curriculum for excellence was the right approach, that the failing has been in the implementation from those at the top of the pyramid about the curriculum for excellence for those who are at quite the chalk face? I am very grateful. Yes, we do. The principle of curriculum for excellence, I think, where the chamber is on board with is the implementation, particularly under this Government that has been found all too wanting. As well as looking at the teacher numbers, there are over 1,500 fewer secondary school teachers compared to when the SNP came to power, and 350 fewer primary school teachers than last year. Statistics that were released yesterday show that the number of teachers still teaching after their teacher induction scheme is lower than every other year since 2017, and almost 5,000 of those who go on to teach are on temporary contracts, fuelling job insecurity and lowered morale. In a context where the preference waiver payment is failing, with fewer than 7 per cent agreeing to be sent anywhere in Scotland, leading to the teacher shortages that I am constantly hearing about in places such as the north-east. Meanwhile, in the midst of rocketing numbers of pupils reporting additional support needs, there has been a decline of 700 support for learning teachers. All that in a context in which, despite a promise to cut class sizes in P1 to P3 to 18 or fewer, class sizes, as we learned yesterday, remain just over 23 on average, which is why it is disappointing that the Liberal Democrat amendment was not accepted today. I am hearing from teachers who say that the incidences of classroom violence are actually driving them out of the education system, and that is why we are losing so many really, really high-quality value teachers, and this Government is just not supporting them. I think that is right. I am grateful for the contribution. That is certainly what I am hearing, and I am sure, actually, that what everyone across the chamber is hearing. A final quick point, Presiding Officer. Perhaps the cabinet secretary will elaborate in closing on why the reform of Education Scotland, an agency that, according to a recent annual report, costs over £30 million a year to run, remains outstanding. That cannot wait, given that, last summer, Scottish Conservative research found that over 1,000 schools in Scotland have not been inspected in the last 10 years. That is 44 per cent of them. I want to hear, in the cabinet secretary's response, her thoughts on what to do about matters such as those, and our own proposals to give head teachers more powers than budgetary autonomy, to deliver a new deal for teachers by cutting red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy, and to ensure that we have a curriculum focused on the development of digital skills, subject-specific knowledge and adult education and apprenticeships in the workplace. 16 years of SNP decline shall not be undone in the two and a half years left that we have to endure of this Government. That is bigger than party politics, and we all have a responsibility, whether currently the Opposition or whether the Government, to acknowledge what the data is showing us, to take responsibility and ownership of uncomfortable truths, not to seek scapegoats in our young people, our teachers, our local authorities for a lack of action at government level, and to confront difficult realities. Ultimately, the future of Scotland's economy, our NHS, our justice system and, above all, our kids' futures depend on the actions that we take now, and that is why I move the motion in my name. I am grateful to the Conservatives for bringing forward this afternoon's debate on Scottish education. There have been a number of updates to Parliament in recent weeks, and when we return following recess, there will be subject to parliamentary approval at fuller time to debate proposals relating to qualification reform. As I said yesterday, post-pandemic Scottish education is at a juncture. There is much though to be positive about in Scottish education, but I recognise the need for improvement. It is in that spirit that I will engage with today's debate, and I will be listening to any tangible solutions from the Opposition or indeed to my own party to that end. To Mr Kerr's point, that is bigger than party politics. I spoke yesterday about this year's impressive set of achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data, also known as ASL. That is the most comprehensive and up-to-date national picture that we currently have of young people's attainment in literacy and numeracy. The ASL data shows that for both literacy and numeracy, the proportions of primary school children achieving the expected CFE levels are at record highs for children from both the most and least disadvantaged areas of Scotland. The attainment gap in literacy and primary schools is the lowest level on record, and we are also seeing the gap reduce in secondary schools. I want again to pay tribute to our young people and to their teachers on achieving those results. I know that it has been a really difficult time for all of them since the pandemic, which I think makes this data all the more impressive. Whilst I would hope that everyone in this chamber can welcome that progress, I have seen some commentary questioning the ASL data because, of course, it is predicated on teachers' professional judgment. I wholeheartedly reject that view. It is, I think, an insult to the teaching profession. Scotland's teachers are skilled and trained professionals. The judgments that they make should be trusted. Much in the same way that every year we trust our teachers to set, mark and agree the national standard in our final examination system. I am very grateful to Jenny Gilruth for that point. The cabinet secretary is right to trust our teachers. They are graduate professionals who know their job and, more importantly, know their children who they teach. Can the cabinet secretary explain why she was unable to mention the PISA results in the proposed amendment, which may have made it easier to come to a consensus across this? I am going to come to measuring the PISA results, which I spoke to yesterday in my update to Parliament. I think that the PISA results are important in giving that whole picture in relation to progress within the education system. All I am doing at the current time is putting on record the results that published yesterday, which I think are welcome in terms of some of the trajectory. I am more than happy to give way to the member. Just a very quick question. What is the reason for the considerable gap between the PISA results and the ASL results? Why is that? I think that there are two different data sets. Of course, the ASL results are predicated on teacher judgment. The PISA results are predicated on survey data. That means that, if you speak and engage with the OECD as I have done, it is very difficult to draw comparisons across countries in terms of the way that you might use the ASL data. There are different data sets. I do not think that it is possible for us to look at each and draw comparisons. In the totality, it is important that we have a wider data set. That is why the Government has committed to rejoining Tim's and Pearl's data sets, and it was good to hear the member welcome that news in his contribution. It is also worth saying that the ASL data set are official statistics. They have been produced in accordance with the professional standards that are set out in the code of practice for statistics. One of the key findings from the recent PISA data that the member alluded to has been the increase in the numbers of pupils with an identified additional support need. As I mentioned in the chamber yesterday, although that figure is now nationally nearly 40 per cent in some of our schools, like the one that I visited on Monday, it is nearer 50 per cent. The PISA data gives the Government an opportunity to recast how we support the cohort of young people. It goes without saying, however, that pupils with additional support needs achievements should be recognised. Indeed, 75 per cent of those in the 21-22 cohort with an additional support need left school with one pass or more at SCQF level 5 or better. I would like to make some progress, if the member does not mind. In the same cohort, 93 per cent left school with one or more qualification at SCQF 4. Additionally, the latest figures from 21-22 show that spend on additional support for learning by authorities has reached a record high. We have also invested an additional £15 million since 2019-20 to increase the provision of support staff in Scotland. I heard the member's challenge in relation to additional support needs teachers, but it is worthwhile saying that that investment has led to over 1,000 additional support staff across Scotland, bringing the total number to 16,606, a record high. That investment is reflected in young people's outcomes. I mentioned some of the progress that we have seen in relation to young people with additional support needs and their outcomes. The Conservative motion notes that the PISA report highlights challenges facing the education system. Both the First Minister and I have accepted that the PISA results are not good enough, but there is an assertion in the motion that Scotland's positions in mathematics and science have dropped below the OECD average. That is not accurate. Scotland's PISA results remained, based on the 2022 survey results, similar to the OECD average for both maths and science. For reading, Scotland actually performs above the OECD average. I accept that, since the last round of PISA, Scotland has seen a reduction in PISA scores. We need to see improvements, but let us be accurate about what PISA is actually telling us and what it is not telling us. We also need to take that holistic view of educational performance in the round. I can give you a little bit of time back. I am very grateful. Surely what PISA is telling us is not that, in the last few years, Scotland has somehow flatlined. It is saying that, over a considerable period, there has been a significant and long-term decline under this SNP Government. I thank the member for his intervention. What I am reiterating and what I have stated previously is that our results remain, based on the 2022 survey results, similar to the OECD average in maths and science. He seems to believe, from his hand gestures, that Scotland is a unique country in respect of our results. We are not unique by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the independent OECD calls those results the Covid edition. Covid has impacted on the outcomes for our young people. I hope that the member understands that. That is not unique to the Scottish system. I believe that I have no time in hand. On Monday, the cabinet visited Haddington for a public meeting. As George Adam observed following the meeting, the best questions that the cabinet received and the most challenging came from the school pupils in the audience. Whether that was on global warming or on asylum, they raised the big issues of the day. That speaks to a difference that we have already seen recorded by PISA as recently as 2018 in its assessment of global competence, where Scotland was one of the top-performing countries. That important PISA study assessed young people's ability to examine local, global and intercultural issues, including sustainability, and to interact effectively with people from different cultures. I am conscious of time. I want to touch briefly on some of the progress that we have been able to make since the pandemic. The ASL data previously mentioned is supplemented by our examination system. Were the overall pass rates at national 5 higher and advanced higher this year were above the 2019 pre-pandemic levels, and the attainment gap during that time since the pandemic has narrowed. Of course I accept that not everything is perfect, which is why we must commit to redouble our efforts to secure better improvements in the Scottish education system to deliver better outcomes for our children and young people. We are already responding to PISA in a robust and comprehensive way, focusing on mass and curriculum improvement. We were taking a range of steps that I set out in detail in the chamber yesterday. I have also committed to expanding the range of objective data that we have available to us, as Mr Kerr alluded to in relation to rejoining a number of international surveys. Part of Scotland's improvement journey has to be about our education reform programme, which I think is going to help to drive the measures that we need to see to improve outcomes. As part of the reform of our national education bodies will deliver change in practice and in culture, Mr Kerr mentioned the role of the inspectorate and the interim chief inspector was recently appointed. She will play a pivotal role in providing the critical leadership that is required to deliver the change that is needed. However, I am also ensuring that the voices of teachers and those with a stake in the education system are heard at every opportunity. That is why there has been on-going consultation and engagement in the new qualifications body and ways to maximise the positive impact that I think reform can deliver. I am committed to designing a new centre for teaching excellence with teachers, professional associations and other stakeholders. I am grateful to the council of deans who I met earlier today to talk to some of their work to support that venture. There is a lot to be positive about in Scottish education, although I accept that there is work to be done to secure improvements. For my part, I am focused on those improvements and I set out some of those in the chamber yesterday. I do not shy from the challenge and the implicit opportunity must not be missed, but in that same spirit, the Opposition cannot shy away from where there are real positives in Scottish education, record attainment levels in primary, a record low attainment gap in literacy and in primary schools, exam pass rates above the pre-pandemic level and the highest investment per pupil and the lowest pupil teacher ratio in the UK. However, in the rush to attack the Government, which I accept is part and parcel of the approach to politics, the Opposition is also dismissive of some of the achievements of our pupils, teachers and support staff. I ask them today to engage with the substance of the data rather than the politics, and if they do so in me, they will have a willing partner. In that spirit, I move the amendment in my name, which sets out the facts and accepts that there is a need for improvement. I hope that members across the chamber will be able to support it. I welcome this debate today, because it comes at a time when I think that there is consensus on education that enough is enough. In the last week, a range of statistics have laid bare this Government's 16 years of inaction and broken promises in education that it has ultimately let children down, left teachers exhausted and allowed too many pupils to fall through the cracks. PISA data reported that Scotland's once-world-leading education system has declined in international rankings and the attainment gap has grown. Summary data on Scottish schools revealed concerns around teacher numbers, pupil attendance and behaviour, and ASL data showed pupils with additional support needs continue to be more likely to miss important milestones at every stage of their school career. It should not have taken it to get this bad or taken this long before the Government acknowledged the scale of the problem. Teachers, parents, pupils and cues of experts have been sounding alarm bells for years, but instead of listening, the Government has long grasped concerns by setting up groups and reviews and removed us from international studies that could have given us the vital signs of the path that we were on and that have ultimately camouflaged the decline. I was pleased to detect a bit of a change yesterday from the cabinet secretary on her statement, as she finally appeared to grasp the gravity of the situation. I look forward to hearing more detail on those proposals. That really was a welcome change, but for those thousands of children who started school as the SNP took office, I think that it could be too little, too late. The failure to address the long-standing systemic problems in the education system in Scotland that has got us where we are means the problems faced are numerous. The solutions must therefore be too. I hope that the recognition that we saw yesterday developed beyond vague statements, because it is vital that we reverse the decline, and much of that includes some of the issues that are outlined in today's motion. Class sizes are getting bigger, support staff numbers are dropping and attendance rates are plumeting. Teachers are being crushed under the weight of policy developed on high without their involvement. Their drowning in paperwork is struggling to find the time for lesson planning, and they are facing an exodus of their colleagues who cannot bear the pressure anymore. In some areas, we have probation teachers filling vacancies because such is the scale of their recruitment and retention challenge. The SNP has recognised what some of the solutions could be, and in some they have even committed to implementing them. On so many, teachers have been left waiting in some cases for over 15 years, and they have not just been met with a lack of delivery, but things have actually got worse. Despite committing in 2007 to reduce class sizes to 18 pupils or less, many teachers still have over 30 pupils in their classes. There are more classes with more than 18 pupils than there were back then. The pupil-teacher ratio is flat-lining rather than improving. That means that teachers are being stretched even more. Chronic shortage of non-contact time for teachers—another promise that the SNP has failed to deliver—is compounding the challenge. The cabinet secretary knows that I have raised the issue with her on a number of occasions, and that I remain disappointed that the Government has still not given a timescale as to when that will be delivered. I say this to the Government, not just on this policy, but on every commitment it announces. When they make a promise, they should have already done the work to ensure that they can deliver it. People understand that those issues are tricky and that they need time to sort. Of course, they understand that they want to talk to people about it. What they do not understand is being presented with things that they assume have been thought through, only to realise that they have not, and ultimately to be let down when they are never done. It is not fair that the Government is leading teachers and pupils uphill, leaving them there waiting for action that never ever comes. According to the Scottish Government's survey, more than two thirds of teachers have had enough of it. They are all considering leaving the profession due to the overwhelming workload and lack of support. At the same time, we are seeing a fall in teacher numbers, driven by a decline in primary education for the second year in a row. The teachers who are there are a few support staff to help them out. The cabinet secretary knows that, earlier this year, the national discussion stated that, with more than a third and has now said that the PISA data has pointed out, sometimes 40 per cent and in some classrooms, 50 children are identified as having an additional support needs. I cannot be considered additional any more, and the cabinet secretary has accepted that, and it was in the national discussion. However, it is a fundamental feature of our education system, so I cannot understand why there was no mention of that in yesterday's statement. The ASL data made it really clear that those children are less likely to reach the expected levels of reading, writing, numeracy, listening and talking at every stage. They are five times more likely to be excluded and have lower attendance rates, especially in the second year. To leave them off the statement, relying on proposals that were more than three years old is just not good enough, we need up-to-date, targeted, ambitious action for pupils with additional support needs, and we need progress on the Angela Morgan review. Right now, despite the best efforts of teachers and school staff, educational inequalities are being exacerbated because the system is under so much strain, it is struggling to meet the needs of everyone, never mind pupils who have additional support. The curriculum for excellence, of course, was designed and intended to deliver personalised learning, but I am afraid to say that the SNP has failed to give teachers the time, the space and the resources that they need to make it happen. The Government's management of our education system, and it gives me no joy to say it, is characterised by a lack of coherence, years of under-investment, a failure to prioritise the need of children, schools being starved to resources, overcrowded classrooms, outdated facilities and a lack of qualified teachers. It cannot go on any more. If the cabinet secretary and the Government detect exasperation and anger in my tone, it is because I am exasperated and angry about the situation on behalf of pupils and teachers who have been let down across Scotland. Scottish Labour believes that we have to now take the necessary steps to support teachers, invest in our schools and that if we do that, we can create a system that empowers young people to reach their potential. Have I got time? The member is just concluding. I am afraid. I am sorry. I only have half a minute left. It cannot go on. We need to create a system that empowers young people to reach their potential. That means promised action on reduced class sizes, increased non-contact time, prioritised support for children with additional support needs and reversing the trend of cuts to local authorities. We have to hold the Government to account on this for leaving children struggling and teachers overwhelmed. I will not apologise for that, but where they come to the chamber with specific actions that will make a big difference to education in Scotland, we will support them. With a fair, equitable and ambitious system, education can unlock the potential in every single young person in Scotland. That is the education system that Scottish Labour believes in, and that is the sort of education system that we will fight for. Unfortunately, there is not really any time in hand this afternoon due to the pressure of business at the back end of the afternoon, so I will have to require members to stick broadly to their time limits. With that, I call Willie Rennie up to six minutes. I am grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer, for your permission to leave the chamber early this afternoon, but I want to apologise to colleagues as well for having an important appointment that I must attend. We are not really debating whether the pizer results were bad, because the First Minister has already admitted that they are. They are the worst ever. Yes, the education secretary is right. All countries have declined since the pandemic, but Scotland has declined more than most. We are behind, and that stings, we are behind England on reading, on maths and on science. That is in the context, we must remember, that, back in 2016, we were promised a dramatic closure of the poverty-related attainment gap, but also a dramatic rise in improvement in performance. In short, big improvements were promised, but instead we have had decline. Yesterday's ASO figures did not really change that analysis. I am disappointed with the education secretary when she describes them as record high. They have only gone since 2016. That is not a great achievement to have a record high for results that, in such a short period of time—I am sorry, I have not got enough time. I have got a lot of constructive things to say this afternoon. It is not a shock. I was also disappointed yesterday with the Government's ambition on the poverty-related attainment gap. They admitted that it is only going to be reduced by a third by 2026, when it was promised to be closed completely. It is reasonable to say that the last set of reforms have not worked. They were always an incoherent mix with no central philosophy. The fundamental weakness, though, was that the Government did not really know what was wrong with Scottish education before it embarked on those reforms. If he does not know what is wrong, I do not know how he can fix it. I asked Shirley-Anne Somerville, the last education secretary in the education committee, what she thought was wrong with education. She told me that it was the weak middle, which would be strengthened by the creation of regional improvement collaboratives. They have now been ditched, so I am not sure what the Government now thinks is the problem with Scottish education. To be honest, I am not even sure that it was an answer at the time. From today, I do not think that we have really got an explanation as to what the current education secretary thinks is wrong with Scottish education. It is not just the last set of reforms. We need to acknowledge that curriculum for excellence has not delivered on its promise. Everyone agrees with the principles, but the implementation just has not worked. I know that the decline in education performance stretches back some time before curriculum for excellence, but the decline has accelerated since its introduction. It looks like there is a link. Many have focused on the move from 2-2-2, the split through to the BGE, the broad general education and the senior phase, the two-term dash, the narrowing of subject choice in the senior phase. Those are all issues, but it must be something much more fundamental. I think that it is the balance between knowledge and skills. It is not one or the other. It has got to be the balance. That is where yesterday's statement was interesting, with a specific reference to knowledge in the review of maths. It is something that Carol Ford, Keir Bloomer and Lindsay Parterson have been highlighting for some time. I know that the education secretary has been in discussion with them. Perhaps the dilution of knowledge, particularly in primary, could be the reason why we have struggled with our international performance, but there is also an issue with implementation. Teachers feel as if they were cut adrift. They were left to reinvent the wheel, class by class, to produce materials in some crude attempt to empower them. I would support classroom materials co-produced by teachers nationally, which teachers could adopt for application in their own class. To assist that, we need the reintroduction of subject principal teachers so that we can have subject specialist leaders across the country who can assist with that. At all stages, standards should be set for teachers to assess the attainment of pupils. I am still not convinced about SNSAs as they bring all the negatives that come with league tables, but none of the benefits of independent assessment. I hope that the education secretary will extend yesterday's change on the balance between knowledge and skills for maths to other subjects, but will also look at standards at every level and the production of materials for the class. As we consider the reform of the education inspectorate, we have to ask ourselves the question why the predecessor did not pick up the following standards of Scottish education. Why was that not identified and how can we make sure that that is not repeated in future? On behaviour, teachers were insulted last week with the inference that they were the problem and they required to be retrained. The £900,000 was paltry, but it was the principle of claiming. The only changeable announcement in last week's statement was that training of teachers was essential to solve the problem of violence. I just do not accept that. We need to change the guidance on discipline so that there are clear boundaries and consequences. When I was at school, there was perhaps a little bit too much punishment. I think that the move away from that is right and we have moved to understand more, but I do worry that we now perhaps understand a little too much. We need to look at how the nurture agenda is working so that it does not act as an incentive. I am supportive of the nurture agenda, but we need to make sure that we get it right. We also need the resources and the specialist back-up to make that work. We need an education secretary who is on it and we want to support her. Thank you, Mr Rennie. We now move to the open debate. I call first Sue Webber, who will be followed by Michelle Thomson. Ms Webber, up to five minutes please. Thanks, Presiding Officer. The headlines tell a sorry tale as the latest PISA study confirms Scotland has fallen to record low levels in maths, reading and science internationally. The cabinet secretary, as Willie Rennie has just said, should not be so proud of this dismal performance. Maths and science are lower than the OECD average. PISA also shows attainment in maths, science and literature has risen in countries such as Japan and Korea. Two of those categories other countries have also seen increases in attainment, for example Singapore, Italy and Israel. Remember that Covid was global and cannot be used as an excuse for anything any longer. Education expert Professor Lindsay Paterson pointed out that the results show that the decline between 2012 and 2022 is the equivalent of losing 16 months of maths teaching and eight months in reading. The loss of 18 months in science schooling is truly shocking. It is vital for our competitiveness in an increasingly digital world. We must really wake up and smell the roses with this. We are falling behind. Despite that, Professor Paterson has also pointed out that since 2010 and the introduction of the curriculum for excellence, the attainment gap between the poorest and the wealthiest backgrounds has widened. Remember that it is after all about priorities. Closing the gap was once claimed to be the priority of the SNP and the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. The Scottish Government behaviour in schools report has also found that levels of disruption have increased across all of the surveyed categories. Low-level disruptive behaviour, disengagement and serious disruptive behaviours have all increased since 2016, along with the decline in most reported positive behaviours. I will come as no surprise to anyone in the chamber who wants to focus a bit on mobile phones. The Scottish Government behaviour in schools report could not be clearer. In secondary schools, the behaviour that is most commonly reported is having the greatest negative impact was pupils using and looking at mobile phones or tablets when they should not be. It is said that more than half of secondary school staff said that this is one of the three behaviours that had the greatest negative impact. Of course, most pupils are well behaved, but all suffer from the consequences of disruption and are vulnerable to distraction. We know that mobile phones are not only the cause of growing school discipline programme problems, the report also cites rising incidences of drug and alcohol consumption. However, if mobile phones are a significant contributor, then the removal must surely be part of the solution. Gordonston school has made headlines earlier this year when phones were banned and the headteacher Lisa Kerr was spot on to argue that we do not allow them unfettered access to other addictive substances, so why mobiles? She claimed that it is lazy, irresponsible and dangerous not to place controls on young people's access to an online world in which they and we simply do not fully understand and can't control. Frankly, I agree, and quietly other schools are following suit. I am afraid that I do not have the opportunity, Mr MacGregor, and I am really apologised for that. However, here in Edinburgh, the headteacher at the Royal High School has taken the opportunity to strengthen their mobile device policy. Devices are not permitted to be used during the school day, and this is being strictly enforced. As a result, there has been a marked improvement in pupil engagement with pupils taking more, talking more and being less heightened about what they are missing on their devices. Headteacher Pauline Walker says that it has taken a couple of weeks for pupils to realise that the school was serious, and now they are far more engaged and less anxious about what they might be missing on their phones. However, no, they will be confiscated for the rest of the day if they are seen in use. One problem cited in this behaviour in school report was also the perceived lack of consequences for pupils who engage in the serious, disruptive behaviour. So it is essential that they know that rule-breaking means trouble. Banning mobile phones in schools will not solve deep-rooted problems, but it will help. A consistent and enforced mobile phone policy restricting their use is vital if we are serious about tackling the behaviour issues in our school. It was heartening to learn yesterday that refresh guidance will be forthcoming to reinforce that banning mobile phones in our classrooms is an option for headteachers to use. I thank the cabinet secretary for our commitment yesterday to write to me with further details on this. In closing, the Scottish Conservatives will restore excellence in our education through learning in schools, giving teachers and school staff the support that they need and every young person the chance that they deserve. No one in Scotland can be satisfied with their latest PISA ratings data. However, given long-term trends, no one amongst the developed economies can be satisfied. In this short speech, I will explain more. I have been impressed by some of the qualitative analysis in the PISA report and some of the external expert commentary, including from Andreas Schleicher, the highly regarded director for education skills at the OECD. We should not ignore but we must take care in interpreting some of the statistical data. As a recent article in The Financial Times put it speaking about data for English schools, critics argue that PISA rankings give a misleading picture as the difference in performance between some countries is not statistically significant and methodological issues mean that the headline scores can be overinterpreted. One serious issue is a failure, yes, of course. Andreas Schleicher also made a further point and that was that attainment in Scotland was declining long before Covid came along. Does the member recognise that and does she agree with that? It goes back to the point from the Labour front branch with which I agreed. One serious issue is the failure of many advanced economies to meet some things standards. The UK is among some of the worst. We cannot overlie the broad statistical data and have to look at the qualitative analysis of long-term trends. A lack of understanding the wider trends and more in depth analysis is what is missing in the Tory motion, which frankly just seeks superficial headlines. There has been a long-term trend across advanced economies of a decline in educational performances measured by PISA. As Andreas Schleicher points out, Covid was not the only cause of the decline standards in advanced western economies. He argues that one striking trend over the past decade has been the constant deterioration of average reading and science scores in the OECD. The developed world no longer has a monopoly over good education. The world is no longer divided between rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly educated countries. What can we learn, which I think surely is the point of this debate, both from the decline in developed countries and the high performance in countries such as in East Asia? Finland, once thought as having a particularly successful education system, is a case in point. Its learning loss since 2018 was almost three times the OECD average in reading and four times higher in science. Schleicher argues that this is because Finland has relaxed its academic expectations for students. It has also argued that there has been a trend in the wealthy countries towards commodifying education where pupils and students become consumers and teachers become service providers—one thing that we ffarociously resisted in Scotland. In contrast, successful Asian countries are geared around high expectations and strong social relationships between teachers and students. In other words, a key issue is the culture that surrounds and informs the education experience. During a debate in my early days, as a member of this Parliament, I argued that our college sector, following the Cumberford Little report, should strive for excellence rather than competence. I think that we need to assess whether we have a sufficient focus on excellence in the wider education sector, too. Again, quoting Schleicher, he argues that the lesson is that we have to achieve student wellbeing not at the expense of academic success but through academic success. I acknowledge that Covid has had a significant effect. Truancy rates across the UK have increased as is the case in many other countries coming out of Covid restrictions. Countries that impose shorter lockdowns were more likely to have relatively higher attainment. Education systems were also more resilient where children had the skills to learn autonomously and where pupils felt more supported by their teachers. Finally, I want to raise a Covid-related issue, not from PISA, but as a result of observations from our own professional speech and language therapists in Scotland. Glen Carter, the head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy, Scotland, in an important report in January of this year stated that, we are facing a spoken language crisis in Scotland. If no action is taken, those issues will have a significant impact on children's mental health, learning and future life choices. There has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of young children needing communication support in Scotland. Starting school with weak language skills makes early years education extraordinarily difficult. If we do not act, it will increase the attainment gap. We need to find ways to better support pupils and teachers in tackling the language crisis, which is partly caused by the pandemic. I welcome comments on this particular point from the minister, our cabinet secretary. I have only scratched the surface of the qualitative challenges that we face. I hope that this is in the area where the education committee can play its part in making a contribution in learning lessons for the future of Scottish education. I certainly intend to play my part. The PISA statistics that were published last week were a gut punch. I have rightly generated anger across the country, and they should serve as a wake-up call to this Government, but I have to ask, Presiding Officer, how many such wake-up calls do they need to be? The contribution so far, in my view, is a reek of complacency and denial, a listless torpor of a Government. Frankly, it is out on its feet, out of ideas and increasingly out of time. The cabinet secretary is keen to emphasise that this is the special Covid edition of the PISA figures. She is less keen on observing that the outcome is a decline across the entirety of the 16 years of this Government, which they have done nothing to check and, frankly, have only served to accelerate. On the impact of Covid, the decline in Scottish performance post-pandemic has been worse than in economically comparable countries across the OECD. It is little wonder, Presiding Officer, given the risible nature of the education recovery plan that was published in October 2021, which amounted to a series of re-announcements of previous projects and an aspiration to put back in place just some of the teachers that they had already cut. There was no concerted action to help those groups that were most impacted from the pandemic, and that shows in those figures. Frankly, they never even got round to cutting off the bottom of the doors. Our nation is at an all-time low in maths and science and our joint lowest level in reading in the history of those figures. Urgent action is needed to arrest the long-term decline that the SNP Government has presided over. I listened with some dismay yesterday when the cabinet secretary was cautioning that this data should not be read in isolation, something that we are hearing again twice now from the back benches of SNP members. I certainly hope that PISA does not become the new ger's figures for the SNP, methodological quibbles, internet conspiracy theories and rampant whataboutery. Last month, the IFS warned that Scotland had experienced the largest decline in maths of the UK nations. In 2006, it was the best performing of all the UK nations. What are those other wake-up calls that I refer to? Let's give you just a small selection of some of them. In 2015, the OECD perspective on CFE report, in 2018, research from Professor Jim Scott was damming on the variation in the curriculum structure across Scotland. Also in 2018, research from professors Priestley and Shapira on the narrowing of the curriculum. Their further work in 2023 showing dramatic reduction in subjects taken in S4 under CFE across Scotland. 2018 also a key year, not at this moment, but 2018 also Professor Lindsay Patterson writing for the London School of Economics. No baseline data was ever collected to allow us to trace curriculum impact. 2019, the Parliament's own education committee, the damming report on the implementation of CFE, the narrowing of curriculum and the failures in transitions, certainly. I've listened with interest to his all highly selective quotes and statistics. I'm wondering if, at any point in his speech, he's going to come up with positive measures to start to address some of the complexity in this situation, or is he just going to moan? Michael Marra. I think it's fair to say that the current situation is well worth a moan, Ms Thomson. I think that there's a whole variety of issues that we have brought to this chamber over recent years. Talking about the necessary reforms in education, we have completely neglected to undertake, because only in June of this year there was a report on the national discussion. Scottish education was brutal on the structure and the operation of CFE. In 2021, the OECD report was published after the SQA scandal that it presided over, where the SNP ministers cut the grades of the poorest kids in Scotland. That led directly to Professor Ken Muir being commissioned to report on the reform of the SQA in education Scotland, something that we were happy to support, Ms Thomson, in terms of positive measures to reform education in Scotland. There were warm words from the education secretary at the time, but none of it ever happened. The SQA never scrapped. Education Scotland never reformed. Despite Shirley-Anne Somerville's assertion, she wanted to progress at pace—at pace, would you ever believe it—that she would have operating models for new bodies in place by the end of this year? That year was 2022, and we were at the end of 2023. Nothing done at all. Professor Muir must wonder why he ever bothered at all. Professor Louise Hayward then was gone forward with more of her recommendations in the work that she did, further delayed by the cabinet secretary. Why embark on serious challenging work when you could have another working group, another consultation, another statement, another discussion? Perhaps the people of Scotland will not notice that the Government is not really doing anything at all, because I used to warn about the glacial pace of education reform, Presiding Officer. Frankly, it slowed to an absolute standstill. This is the hard work of genuine transformative reform that could set our education system back on track, but it is piled under too difficult that a Government only interested in political stunts, easy wins and giveaways. We are past the point that I am afraid, where this cabinet secretary can garner any sympathy for being the latest one in the door, having to clean up the mess of our predecessors. She is getting on with this work, scrapping the regional improvement collaboratives, which were the defining education achievement of John Swinney's calamitous tenure as education secretary. Maybe she might look at Shirley-Anne Somerville's decision to slash poverty attainment funding for the most impoverished communities in Scotland. Let's remember that eight years ago, Nicola Sturgeon said that she wanted to be judged on all of this, calling it a defining mission. God forbid that anything else that the people of Scotland care about should be subject to the same missionaries' zeal when whatever matters to them most comes under the focus of this Government. Presiding Officer, this is a really serious debate today, and as a member of the Education and Skills Committee, I am pleased to take part in it. First, it is important to acknowledge that there is much to be positive about in terms of Scottish education. We have the lowest pupil teacher ratio, the highest spend per pupil and the best paid teachers in the United Kingdom. Higher education is more affordable, as is further education, and this year's exam results have shown continued progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap. However, there are big challenges, and we need to work to continually improve. That we must acknowledge. As we move forward, we would serve our constituents better if we are constructive and we work together and put our young people first. As some colleagues know, I used to work in a school in the office, and I did so during the academic year of 2009 and 2010. I think of those times often to help me in this role to put myself in the shoes, so to speak, of staff and pupils. I think of the context that we are in since that time, when curriculum for excellence was being implemented. I think of the consequences of the financial crash, the years of Conservative and Lib Dem austerity, the welfare reform that took place during that period, the negativity of Brexit and the disruption that caused, and, of course, the pandemic. During that period, we have seen context in which society has been under severe challenge. In that period, not only have we seen initiatives from the Scottish Government directly to intervene to improve our education system and to help our young people, but also in the space of equality and social justice. Whether that is the Scottish child payment lifting around 90,000 children out of poverty or the pupil equity funding that I know in my constituency makes a really significant and important difference. I would say to some Opposition members, while, of course, you should hold the Scottish Government to account, you would serve your constituents better if you also put pressure on your colleagues at Westminster who hold the power when it comes to so much of the social security system. All of those challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic. It is right that we need to move beyond the pandemic and that we must not use it as an excuse. However, the PISA results, while important and demonstrate the need for improvement, do factually reflect the core hope of young people who experienced unprecedented disruption to their education because of school closures during the pandemic and the behavioural changes that are affecting schools up and down the UK and beyond and across the majority of the countries participating in PISA. That is why all across all three countries in the UK reading maths and science saw reductions in its scores. I appreciate the particular challenge of Scotland and we must take that seriously. However, we have not seen declines in our young people in Scotland going on to further and higher education. We also need to keep in mind that there are positive destinations that the vast majority, as far as I can recall, of our young people are going on to positive destinations. The PISA report outlines that, for Scotland and for many other comparable European countries, that is also a crucial time for reform and colleagues have been right to raise that. To achieve the changes that we want to see, we must move on from political knock-about and the language of league tables and into a serious and collective sense of determination to reform our system to recognise the wide array of skills and achievements of our young people and to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Reforms that I would like to see and those that we have considered at committee are how do we move to a position where we are not teaching to the test to the same way but also achieving consistency? That is really difficult. How do we improve our primary education system, as Willie Rennie emphasised? How do we improve the situation for those with additional support needs, as Pam Duncan Glancy was right to point out? How do we embrace new technologies, as Michelle Thomson emphasised? How do we enhance our teacher training and continue professional development? I would like to quote Professor Muir, who wisely said that, as a system, we genuinely need to learn lessons from the introduction of curriculum for excellence. It is questionable how successful we were in doing that. Professional learning and engagement of all staff and the philosophy of any reform or change is critical. It is about learning lessons from where we did not get it right in introducing curriculum for excellence, did not get it quite right. It is about sharing the philosophy, developing the understanding and, critically, ensuring that teacher education programmes in Scotland and the continued professional development that teachers require are provided upfront as part of the reform process. That also requires reform in here about how we discuss this issue. Again, I would quote from committee Professor Humes, who said, I want a much more hard-headed kind of political discourse in which things are described as they are and ideas are engaged at a proper intellectual level. It is not all about promotion, advertising and getting the headline in tomorrow's press. That applies to all political parties in this chamber. Education is important. It should be about real issues, real aspirations and realistic aspirations that are not overhyped or boasted about. Let's rise to that challenge in our political discourse and also in how we reform our education system, listening to experts and working together. The only true advantage that we have is to learn faster than our competitors. That was used by a good friend of mine, Frank Dekwys, the director of coaching of British athletics and now one of the most revered sports and business coaches in the world. What that means, Deputy Presiding Officer, is that an increasingly competitive world in which we live is not enough to improve if those we are in competition with improve faster. The net result is that we still fall further behind. That is what PISA results starkly highlights. I listened to the cabinet secretary yesterday in her statement to Parliament and Covid reared its ugly head again. That catch-all for everything bad that is happening across Scottish Government portfolios. However, the inconvenient truth for the cabinet secretary and for the Scottish Government is that Covid was a pandemic and it affected the whole world and the Scottish Government managed to oversee a much faster drop in PISA numbers than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Despite the cabinet secretary's claim to have greater teacher-pupil ratio than the rest of the United Kingdom, outcomes, Deputy Presiding Officer, are not the strongest suit of this Government. In fact, it should be noted that the sharpest relative drop in PISA rankings in Scotland happened between 2012 and 2015. Try linking that to Covid. Education is a cornerstone of every portfolio and solutions to just about every challenge facing a country are rooted in a flourishing education system that gives pupils every opportunity to develop their talents and be all they can be. Get education wrong and every portfolio suffers. Unfortunately, we have a Scottish Government who are only interested in headlines irrespective of outcomes. Look at health, where education is such a pivotal role. It will tell us that the Scottish Government is put a... Of course, I'll take it. I'm very grateful to Brian Whittle, give way, and I apologise for interrupting me in the sense that he talks about education being the cornerstone to every portfolio, which I absolutely agree with. But education is not the cause of failings in every portfolio, which seems to be pointed out by some people. Brian Whittle is absolutely correct, but it is the solution. That's what that's the point here. In health, the Scottish Government is telling us that they have a record levels of investment into our health service. More nurses and doctors than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, yet the outcomes tell us that we are the unhealthiest nation in Europe. In the economy that continues to underperform our poor health record is the biggest drag—highest levels of economically inactive, highest levels of disability unemployment. Education is so much more than maths in English, in physics and chemistry. It's about developing a youth to be confident, resilient, aspirational risk takers and innovators that Scotland has such a world reputation for. What the current Cabinet Secretary and her predecessors seem to have a complete blind spot to is the solution that our schools desperately need. It's not more academic classes, but a complete change in the learning environment. We need to tackle poor physical and mental health, poor behaviour, attainment and poor nutrition. We need to unshackle our teachers to allow them to do the job that they love and what they are trained to do by directly looking at those solutions and the answers to the current performance slide that could be addressed. It's about creating an inclusive and active environment to feed that thirst for knowledge that some youth should have, embedding the huge opportunities that the green economy brings and enthusing our pupils that Scotland has a place to stay where the brightest of futures is there for them to grasp. The decline in PISA reflects a decline in physical activity, in music, in art and drama and much of the extracurricular activity that is once enjoyed by school pupils. Those activities draw in active minds. They give an outlook for enthusiasm. They deliver aspiration, self-discipline and an appreciation of application. They help to create an environment where learning is varied and exciting. The Scottish Government's response to PISA results was to try and persuade us that Scotland has maintained its international standing, and quite clearly they are managing its sharp decline. Curriculum for Excellence was voted in by this Parliament from across this chamber, but it is in the implementation that the Scottish Government once again failed. Innovation is something that we should all get behind, but in doing so, we have to be prepared to accept if it is not gaining the results planned for, be prepared to listen and adapt. Not getting everything right the first time is not a crime, but not getting it right and continuing to plough the same furrow with our head in the sand is criminal. In knowing all the warnings from across agencies, teachers and this Parliament, with their usual massaging of figures and nothing to see here attitude, typifies a Scottish Government to place little stock on outcome rather than headlines. Education should be something that brings this Parliament together. Failing to get education right has such a profound impact across all of society, and Scottish society is having to live with the reality of an SNP failure to grasp the enormity of the problem that it has created. Judge me on our education, said Nicola Sturgeon. It is just a pity that Scotland has to wait more than two years to get rid of this Government and start the process of rebuilding our once envied education reputation. John Mason to be followed by Jamie Greene up to six minutes. I am pleased to speak in today's debate. Education is clearly a hugely important subject, so it is good that the Conservatives have brought forward this debate today. One of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless but sits on the front bench, was mocking me yesterday as I had mentioned something of what school was like in the 1960s and 1970s when I was there. Perhaps it is worth remembering some of the changes since then. Class numbers were well over 30, not unusual. I and many others lived in fear of our teachers. We spent hours and hours on spelling correctly. Memorising times tables was an absolute key, and we got belted if we could not answer questions from the homework that we were meant to have done. I think that most of us would agree that there have been improvements in all of those factors since then. When I go into schools in the constituency nowadays, there seems to be a much healthier relationship between pupils and staff. I think that our schools are turning out much more rounded individuals than they did in the past. Mr Mason, of course, was a pupil at Hutchison's grammar school, as were Mr Sarwar and Mr Yousaf. Does he think that they are more rounded individuals as a consequence of their more modern education at that school than he was from his time there, being bullied and blutered as he has just outlined? I do not think that my school days were the happiest days of my life if that answers his point, but I would accept that spelling and grammar has deteriorated when I take on a younger member of staff, sometimes their spelling and grammar can be pretty grim, but then again so it is in the newspapers I read and on the BBC. Last Christmas I was given a book called Bad Data by Georgina Sturge from the House of Commons Library and it really is an excellent read. One of the messages is not to believe all that politicians tell you when they quote data or when they make comparisons with data, either between jurisdictions or over time. So when we look at the PISA figures or any other analysis, I do think that we always need to be asking ourselves, are we really comparing like with like? Are we sure that this is an objective comparison or is it, to some extent, skewed by other factors? I appreciate the member given way. Does he not recognise that there has been a litany of reports over many years regarding identifying just many of the failures that are pointed out through these statistics? That is the context that we have to see in and we need the genuine reform that they recommend. I think that we need to take all of the factors into account, but I think that we have to compare like with like and I think that comparing a Scottish curriculum or lack of it with a very tight English curriculum is not a fair comparison. There was a good article in PISA in The Herald last week by James McEnany. He started off with a quote, a lot of the response to PISA has been characterised by panic, puffed up rhetoric and a somewhat tenuous relationship with the concept of accuracy. That is fair enough. He goes on to point out that Scotland's declining PISA performance was a feature prior to the first election of the SNP. Then he notes that at international level there has been a widespread decline in the performance of 15-year-olds. Specifically, he points to Germany, which improved dramatically between 2000 and 2012, up 24 points in reading and maths, up 37 points in science, but now Germany is back to four points lower than it was in 2000. He does not argue that the data itself is a problem, but rather that the application of the data can be. The Conservative motion is certainly wide-ranging and covers a lot of ground. It says that solutions should be explored without being very specific as to what those solutions should be, although it does propose re-entering all statistical comparisons and benchmarks. However, as has been said by others, measuring a problem does not solve it, weighing the pig or comparing it to other pigs does not fatten it. Some of the language in the Conservative motion is a bit over the top. Demands that the Scottish Government uses its powers, implementation of curriculum for excellence has failed, calls for a fundamental rethink—all a bit black and white. Yes, I accept that there is room for improvement, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Of course, class sizes and support numbers are important factors, but let's also remember that we are in tight financial times, and we have to choose priorities among all that we would like to do in next week's budget. Is the NHS the priority, or is it the hospitality sector, or is it education, and if it is education, is it schools, or is it colleges, or are we going to support all of those sectors, in which case it will be to a limited extent? However, one thing is certain—we cannot do all that we would want to do within the budget, and especially with Westminster cutting NIC and giving companies corporation tax breaks, there is less money both in the UK and in Scotland for public services. We should remember, too, that the numbers of young people going to positive destinations is really high at 94.3 per cent. That seems to me to be a key measure. Of course, we want these destinations to improve over time, a higher level of training, a better job and so on, but we have debated here before, and I think that we agreed that university is not the right destination for everyone. There is a right path for each individual young person. Parental involvement is another key. I know that some schools have been using PEF money to strengthen those relationships. I remember a headteacher told me that it was like having two schools under the one roof, one set of pupils who had parental encouragement and support and another set of pupils who did not. It is clear that some of our families from ethnic minority backgrounds have a huge commitment to education, both the parents and the children, and they are doing very well, even in poor areas. With the best will in the world, I do not believe that schools can make up for all the issues that there may be in the home. In conclusion, I think that we need a bit of balance in all this. Yes, the PISA results are not great and we need to work on improving that, but let us not exaggerate the problems that our schools face. We all want Scotland to be one of the best places in the world for all types of education. Our universities clearly are world-class, so let us work together to ensure that our schools are too. Much of what I have to say today really does depress me because it has been three years since I sat at first on the front bench here in the education brief. It really depresses me because what we have heard discussed about the PISA rankings this week made for dire reading to those who really care about Scottish education, not those who dismiss the findings as simply not as bad as it could be, or even worse, who question the league tables themselves. I say to Mr McPherson that league tables matter, they really do, because whichever way you spin it, it made for grim reading. Let me finish. Every commentator worth their weight in academic salt has agreed with this. It made for utterly grim reading, but it is the only rose-tinted glasses that I see in this whole debate are sitting in the middle benches of this chamber, as is evident by the speeches, as is evident by the amendment and as is evident by the reaction to the PISA results. I have to say a reaction that was as quick as it was as desperate yesterday. Minister Gilruth took to the airwaves as quickly as she could to launch her own counter PISA defensive, which was seen to ward off all critique and criticism. Yet this annual report is next to useless, said the academics in response, and that's a phrase, I think, which will surely haunt Ms Gilruth. If the Government is keen to talk about results and reports, let's do that. Let's talk about the metrics that really matter. PISA matters. Why? Because it compares Scotland not just to the rest of the UK but to the rest of the world, and here's what it tells us. It tells us that the OECD average score for maths is 472. The UK-wide score is 489. Scotland sits at 471. Lower than Poland, lower than Switzerland, lower than Ireland. The OECD science average is 485. Scotland's at 483. Way below the UK average of 500 and depressingly below comparative nations, just Denmark and Sweden. It's not a one-off trend, it's a long-term trend, and that is what concerns me most. Here's why it also matters, because SNP members like to spend much of their time in this chamber lamenting about a global connected Scotland competing in Europe and competing on the international stage, yet to be perfectly comfortable with the fact that we trail behind so many of those countries with the very skills that make us competitive in the first place. The story is not much better on reading, as we've heard, and I do wonder what would the great figures of the Scottish enlightenment make of today's dismal rhetoric from SNP ministers in response, because every SNP manifesto, since 2007, promised to close the attainment gap, not narrow it, close it, so the statistics that really matter are the academic results themselves, the SQA results. Why? Because they actually compare pass rates across our communities. In 2023, one in four pupils from the most deprived areas achieved an A grade at their NAP5s. That compares to one in two pupils in neighbouring areas. Just think about that for a second. 13 per cent of pupils in our most deprived communities got a no grade award at NAP5. That compares to 5.7 per cent from those in our least deprived communities. That's identical to the statistics we read in 2019. We have made no progress on this whatsoever. Five years ago, the gap between our least and most deprived pupils, achieving a pass rate in their NAP5s, was 17 per cent. That was the established attainment gap. By this year, that gap had shrunk to credit to the Government, but it shrunk to 15.6 per cent. So, if the Government thinks that 1.4 per cent reduction in the attainment gap over five whole years is something to celebrate, they are clearly deluded, Presiding Officer. At the current rate, it will take 56 years to close the attainment gap. That is not a record to be proud of. Why is all of this the case? The answer lies in the litany of broken pledges, warnings ignored and an educational ecosystem that is gaping faultlights in it. We all know this already. The class size promise is broken. The teacher number promise is broken. The flagship education bill ditched. The SQA reform pledge ditched. The CFE reform pledge broken. Report after review after task force. The Donaldson report. The Cameron, Bloomer and McCormack reviews. All good reports and all had answers. All sitting on the shelves of numerous education secretaries, the majority of which were too embarrassed to show face today at this debate. Here's why I want to close, Presiding Officer, because the improvements that we see in our schools today are happening not because of the actions of this Government but in spite of them, and no amount of ministerial water boundary can mask one simple truth that too many parents and teachers have simply lost trust in the system. The fault of that lies squarely at the feet of this Government and this Government and no one else. I now call Bill Kidd to be followed by Paul O'Kane. As we've heard, the recent PISA report comes on the back of the global Covid-19 pandemic, which I'm not finished yet so hard on, which saw unprecedented disruption across society, including to the provision of education and for context to today's debate. I hope that we would all agree that this has undoubtedly impacted on Scotland's PISA results. It's not to say that we do not agree with or recognise the challenges that we face as set out in the Conservative motion. However, for context, I would have hoped for a recognition of the unique set of circumstances that we've all faced. The OECD—well, I will maybe later on—the OECD even described this edition of PISA as the Covid edition, saying that there had been an unprecedented drop in attainment globally, with mean performance in OECD countries down 11 points in reading and almost 16 in maths, equivalent to three quarters of a year's worth of learning. Brian Whittle I hope that Bill Kidd will at least accept that, during the Covid years, Scottish performance in PISA has dropped remarkably quicker than the rest of the United Kingdom under the same circumstances. That has to be levelled at the Scottish Government. Let's put it this way. As I said, the OECD described that as the Covid edition, saying an unprecedented drop in attainment globally. Now, there's variations on that, but that's not as if everybody has been great and Scotland's been terrible. For further context, this weekend's report by the Centre Right Think Tank, the Centre for Social Justice, might be of interest to all colleagues here. In their report, the CSGI stated that Covid lockdowns had a catastrophic effect on the UK's social fabric, especially for the least well-off, where the gap between the so-called halves and have-nots was blown wide open. Their research shows that during lockdown calls to a domestic health abuse line rose by 700 per cent, meant little health, and young people went from one in nine to one in six and by nearly a quarter amongst the oldest of children. Severe absence from school jumped to 134 per cent and 1.2 million more people went on working-age benefits, with 80 per 6 per cent more people seeking help for addictions. Alarmingly, they also argued that by 2030, if things remain in this route, more than one in four, five to 15-year-olds, which may be as many as 2.3 million children, could have a mental disorder. Andy Cook, the chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice, said that lockdown policy poured petrol on the fire that had already been there in the most disadvantaged people's lives. So far, no-one has offered a plan to match the scale of the issues. The report shows that we need far more than discussions on finance redistribution, but a strategy to go after the root causes of poverty, education, working debt, addiction and family. I am highlighting this report to stress the connection between inequality, poverty and the challenges that those factors create for our young people, both educational and in general life. It is also important to acknowledge and recognise, as other members have, achievements where they have been made. Scotland has record numbers of young people going to positive destinations, with 94.3 per cent of 16 to 19-year-olds in Scotland in employment, education and training. Liam Kerr. I am the social inequality piece. Does he, like me, bemoan the fact that the Scottish Government has failed so appallingly on the free school lunches implementation? I do not like to say, but if it was not for the fact that Westminster has cut our money so much, then we would have been able to deliver everything. Besides, it was this Government that actually made that commitment. Last year's achievement of curriculum for excellence levels results showed the biggest single-year reduction in the attainment gap in primary schools in numeracy and literacy. This summer, Scotland has the highest ever number of national 5 passes in an exam year, since the qualification was introduced in 2014. Higher and advanced higher pass rates were above those seen in pre-pandemic 2019. That data and those facts also help inform us as to the state of Scottish education and this Government's record. In that respect, it is important to look at the holistic picture rather than an isolated study, which I feel today's motion is in danger of appearing to do. I do not say that this is done deliberately or that it paints a misleading picture, as I am sure colleagues' concerns are well-intentioned. One final point that I would like to highlight that may have been unintentionally overlooked is that publicly much has been made over the comparison in the results between Scotland and England. However, it is worth or even essential to note that England did not meet the PISA standards of reporting result in a sample that was found to be biased in that more higher achieving pupils participated than lower achieving pupils. The OECD estimated that that likely resulted in an upward bias in the reported results of approximately seven or eight points. That is an important difference. However, in conclusion, in the spirit of co-operation and in recognition, of the challenges that we must face and overcome, we must all aim to work tirelessly with our colleagues from all parties to advance a common strategy of tackling the issues highlighted today. Finally, I also hope that, in her summing up the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, I will take the opportunity to acknowledge the words of the chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice, that any strategy must go after the root causes of poverty, education, work debt, addiction and family if we are to be successful and signal the Government's willingness to work with the education committee to achieve the same. In his speech at the opening of this Parliament in 1999, Donald Dure described the story of Scotland with vivid imagery of oaking our past, in particular the richness of learning and the value of drawing out ideas. He spoke of the discourse of the Enlightenment when Glasgow and Edinburgh were a light held to the intellectual life of Europe, a nation of poets and philosophers, of economics and science, of reason and wit, and the foundation of so much of our national life and our national institutions, institutions of which to this day remain integral and command pride. In that speech, he also spoke about the idea when quoting Burns that sense and worth ultimately prevail. That was understood by Tom Johnson, setting out the road to building a more equitable education system in Scotland, free of academic selection, where everyone had the chance to learn and get on. It was understood by Harold Wilson's Government, who set about with reforming zeal, putting in place that comprehensive education and creating the new universities broadening horizons for more and more people. It was, of course, understood by Dure, who recognised the fundamental importance of an education system here in Scotland as an institution of such importance to the lives of us all. A comprehensive school system, powered by exceptional teachers who want the best young people regardless of their background, colleges at the heart of learning at every stage of life providing opportunities to re-skill and retrain, are a world-leading universities curing diseases, developing technologies that previously did not exist and continuing to lead the discourse on international affairs, powered by people from comprehensive schools across Scotland. Governments are custodians of that institution. I would like to make some progress, if it will allow me. Governments are custodians of that institution, tasked with protecting it and enhancing it as part of the social contract, not for it to remain unchanging or unmovable, but to consistently build on its foundations. The immense power of this Parliament has given us huge opportunity to do that. Dure again, the past is part of us, but today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic Parliament, a voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future. For 16 years, this Government has had the opportunity to shape Scottish education. To narrow the attainment gap was, as we have already heard, a number one priority. To ensure that the promise that we make to all young people that the only limit is their ambition could be further realised. Yet where do we stand today? Promise is broken and decline normalised. In all three subject areas covered by PISA, the scores of Scottish 15-year-olds declined between 2018 and 2022, the drop of 18 points in mathematics, 11 points in reading and seven points in science. Over the whole decade from 2012 to 2022, the Scottish decline was equivalent to about 16 months of schooling in mathematics, eight months in reading and 18 months in science. In 2022, higher attainment fell by 13 per cent among the most deprived quintile. That is compared to a 5.9 per cent fall for the least deprived. The SNP has knowingly reverted to a system that fails the poorest pupils, and the poorest 20 per cent have been twice as effective as the richest 20 per cent. Teachers are stretched to breaking point with a lack of support and a lack of resource. Subject choice is narrowing in secondaries and universities are cutting courses. It is clear that this Government has no idea how to respond, other than to spin its way through and ignore the need for comprehensive change. What a waste. There is no institution in Scotland that is stronger after 16 years of the SNP Government, and that makes me angry. I am angry for teachers and support staff being so badly let down. I am angry for parents who are worried about the future for their children, particularly those parents of children with additional support needs. But I am angry most of all for our young people, who are missing out on the opportunities that were afforded to so many of us in this chamber. More warm words from the cabinet secretary will not cut it. The time for warm words is over. It is clear that this Government cannot fix the problem that it has created. It is beyond time for change. It is beyond time for us to act upon the countless recommendations that have been made in previous years. I am grateful for the member giving way. He began by reciting some examples of how his own party improved education in Scotland. I am more than happy to acknowledge the verity of those. Can he explain how he intends to continue that tradition by his party committing to the Conservative spending plans for the first two years of an incoming Labour Government, and how he feels that fits in with that tradition? When Labour Government and power across the United Kingdom education substantially improves through investment. That is clear. Children are listed out of poverty by the investment that is made because we will grow the economy, and in growing the economy, we will invest in public services. Let us look at the record of the Labour Government in Scotland, because I outlined some of it in my opening. Schools improved, things got better, teachers told us how they felt valued, and parents, crucially, had trust in their local schools. There has been a 10 per cent drop in the confidence in local schools since 2011. What does that say in the Scottish household attitudes survey? The Scottish Labour believes in an education system that enables our country to reach the potential, equips our young people with the skills that they rely on throughout their life, and responds to the needs of employers in building a high-wage, high-skilled economy. In Scotland, we are sense and worth prevailing. I welcome this debate on our children's and young people's education, and the focus is on how we can invest in better outcomes for our young people and their future. I agree that the recent outcome of the PISA results are a matter of concern, and I welcome yesterday's statement from the cabinet secretary and her commitment to real-terms improvements in Scotland's education system, for our young people, their parents and the future of this country. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we avoid examining the PISA results in isolation and consider the inescapable influence that austerity and the pandemic, intensified by the current cost of living crisis driven by the Tories, has had on our youth's educational experience. With that said, as a mother of three teenagers, I have personally witnessed the extraordinary resilience that is displayed by our young people in navigating those challenges along their educational journey. In the face of adversity, their determination really does stand out. Yesterday's release of the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels certainly showcases this remarkable display of resilience, where the proportion of pupils' achieved and expected levels of literacy and numeracy have reached record highs. I welcome the noticeable rise in the proportion of primary pupils' achieved and expected levels of literacy and numeracy, and particularly how the positive trend extends across children from both the most and least deprived areas. I trust that everyone in the chamber today will agree that those achievements by our young people deserve not only acknowledgement but celebration. Presiding Officer, in the upper secondary education student assessment in Scotland, a comparison perspective report by Professor Stobart, the curriculum for excellence is described as a pioneering example of 21st century curriculum reform. That is in stark contrast to the Tories' unfounded perspective of a curriculum for excellence that has failed. Furthermore, Scotland's curriculum for excellence into the future report stated that the curriculum for excellence continues to be a bold and widely supported initiative, and its design offers the flexibility needed to improve student learning further, once again contradicting the notion of a failed curriculum for excellence. In response to the recommendations for review and improvements made by the OECD in this report, I welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to an ambitious process of education reform, which included let's talk Scottish education. That was the biggest public engagement exercise in education to be undertaken nationally in Scotland and ensures that learners' needs and experiences continue to be at the forefront of reform, shaping a future Scottish education that truly empowers and serves our young people. Scotland has indeed made commendable strides in narrowing the attainment gap and the continuous efforts in education reform aim to enhance this positive trajectory. However, we must acknowledge the harsh reality of the increasing number of families grappling with unimaginable financial hardships, consequently due to stress and just by poverty, a growing proportion of children and young individuals are forced to spend their education days grappling with anxieties, fatigue and hunger, instead of enjoying the opportunities for learning and playing. How can we expect our youth to fully engage in education under those circumstances? Nevertheless, within its limited power, the Scottish Government is advancing efforts to prevent poverty from hindering the education of our children and young people. Notably, that progress encompasses initiatives such as the transformative Scottish child payment, which has supported 43,885 children across Lanarkshire, an investment of £62.5 million. Additionally, there is the provision of the most generous, cultivating positive family relationships, enhancing emotional health and wellbeing, and consequently promoting active participation in the school day. To quote Barnadows, if we uplift those children and families out of poverty, get them the right access to support and mental health, then surely we can help children be ready in the class to learn. I completely agree. A few final points in closing. Michael Marra and others believe that the PISA results are worth a moan, but using PISA as a stick to beat education with and basically rubbishing the Scottish education system in its entirety is unfair and unhelpful. That undermines the teachers and staff working so hard to support wellbeing, and it undermines the achievements of our children and young people that go way beyond academic scores and exams. Let's be mindful of how political point-scoring can impact our schools and prioritise our young people's needs. This is my 19th debate on school standards, taking me through the eras of Fiona Hyslop, Mike Russell, Angela Constance, John Swinney, Shirley-Anne Somerville and now Jenny Gilruth, who has gone out of the class just like the rest of them. Jenny Gilruth was, of course, a teacher, and that's a big plus mark as far as I'm concerned, and she served on the education committee for a short time in 2016 and then again 2018-20 when the question of school standards was never far from the agenda. That was largely because Nicola Sturgeon had told the education leaders unequivocally, I may say, that education was her number one priority and that there would be a new education bill. John Swinney followed that up by telling us, and I quote, "...the status quo was not an option." No one disagreed. Looking back at the education committee's deliberation, there was plenty of evidence as to why. Jamie Greene, in fact, has just reminded us that we should consider if we would actually really be here again debating school standards if the Scottish Government had listened to and acted upon the collective findings of the Donaldson, McCormack, Cameron and Bloomer reviews into Scottish school education. Commissioned, I may say, by the Scottish Government and all carried out by experts in their respective fields between 2011 and 2016, because the collective message then was that, while Scottish education had much upon which to pride itself, the school system had to be shaken out of its complacency. How true that was. Of course, those reports between 2011 and 2016 appeared when there were other warning signs. At the very time, when the OACD, the Scottish Survey of Attainment, PISA reform Scotland, but also the Scottish Government's own statistics all produced compelling evidence that Scotland was flatlining and, worse still, that the attainment gap between rich and poor was widening, thereby disadvantaged a whole cohort of young people. That is something that has been absolutely fundamentally at odds with the basic principles of a good Scottish education, once renowned across the world. I think that we should remind ourselves of why Scotland's education was previously so good, because the curriculum was so well founded on systematic knowledge, including for weaker pupils, because primary school education placed such a considerable importance on every child being able to read, write and count properly and also on working hard and respecting the teacher, because teachers were highly valued by parents and well grounded in their own subject disciplines and because we took great pride in the pursuit of excellence. That is exactly how it should be today. There is absolutely nothing at all that is inconsistent between that and the original principles of a curriculum for excellence. That is why it won cross-party support and why it was so warmly welcomed by many international observers. The problem was and remains its implementation. With hindsight, and I think that Peter Peacock would agree with that, the title curriculum for excellence was actually a misnomer. It was not designed at all to be a new curriculum, it was designed to be a new methodology of teaching, and it is about this that so many questions have arisen. Several barriers have been put in the way of the pursuit of excellence, barriers that have meant that teachers' attention has all too often taken them away from their central role of teaching. As a result, frustration has set in and it has affected pupils' self-discipline in far too many cases. That needs to change. I admire Jenny Gilruth for her willingness to tackle that in discipline, but that needs to be accompanied by a system that inspires and delivers high standards. That is not the case just now. We need to free up our teachers, including those who do so much for our pupils with additional support needs, many of whom with genuine learning issues get labelled as badly behaved when they are not, and they have to exist in classes where there is no one-to-one attention. Secondly, the Scottish Government really does need to properly reform the education agencies, not just rebadge them and move the deck chairs around a bit, but properly reform them to enhance the support that is available to teachers, because that again has not happened. Thirdly, and I come to the point that was raised by my colleague Brian Whittle, we must ask ourselves what education is for, because we need to consider the intrinsic value of education. We need to stand back and ask ourselves from a holistic perspective what we are asking our schools to do. For me, that has to include the quality provision of extracurricular, perhaps it is better named as co-curricular activity, because, as well as successful learners, the curriculum for excellence is supposed to be about nurturing confident individuals and responsible citizens. We should never forget that, for many pupils, the co-curriculum is the most enriching part of their school career, but just because it cannot be easily measured, the agencies have never wanted to know about it. That is to the great detriment of Scottish education. I will finish on one very important point. I fundamentally believe that Scottish education has the ability to be the best in the world again, but it is only if we recognise what the problem is and accept that we have to do an awful lot more to achieve that ambition. Anybody who is related to a teacher, as I am, or has kids in school, as I do, knows that the impact of the past few years has been monumental on them. I think that they deserve our great thanks, and hopefully that is a point of consensus that we can all settle on. Perhaps the most effective show of gratitude is to get our next steps on education right. I fear that overly politicised debates often miss the wood for the trees, although there have been excellent contributions this afternoon. I also have great confidence in the cabinet secretary as a former teacher with an extensive network that I am sure of former colleagues to get it right. There is no public service as critical as education, in my opinion. Good-quality education that equips our young people with the skills, the knowledge, the ability to thrive and prosper is the most important duty on any society to give our young people. However, its success must be measured in outcomes, not obsessive debates about inputs. I want to talk this afternoon about two of the most critical outcomes as I see it. I am sure that I have many more, but I am going to restrict my remarks to two. The first is this. In our globalised world, our young people must thrive and prosper relative to their peers in countries around the world. There are plenty of questions about how helpful PISA results are, and surely we can all agree that they do not tell us the full story, but they do tell us something, and that something needs to be acknowledged. I want Scotland to flourish and prosper and outperform other nations to have lower poverty and more thriving economy and to lead the way on true equality. All that relies fully and completely on a good education system. We will all speak to parents and teachers, many of whom can point to great successes in our education system. I am consistently impressed whenever I visit a school. I am consistently impressed by their young people's knowledge, the breadth of education, the focus on values—I saw that today when speaking to Dingell academy in the Parliament. Equally, we have all heard the quality of evidence by young people, parents and teachers about ways in which Scotland's education system needs reform. The First Minister noted that last week, and the cabinet secretary has rightly acknowledged that today. Literacy and numeracy, skills and knowledge really matter. One parent told me with some concern that her daughter had just left sixth year never having studied algebra. She has never owned a scientific calculator. I was never a fan of algebra, so I am probably slightly jealous. Equally, that is a pretty critical element of a rounded education system. Liz Smith talked about aims. I was going to talk about clarifying the aim of our education system here this afternoon. If we boil it down, the question of aims is a very contested conversation. Education Scotland says that it aims to equip young people with knowledge, confidence and skills. What does it then say? Giving them a competitive edge in a global job market. All the comparisons that we have heard this afternoon with a previous golden age is, in my view, nonsense. Most of us were educated during that so-called golden age, and that might be all the evidence that we need—that it was not golden. What really matters is the modern day international comparison. I am grateful. I have interesting comments that Kate Forbes is making. Does she agree, however, that in the Scottish education system of the generation that she is talking about, that the ability not only to impart knowledge was also able to inculcate the rounded individual that has made Scotland what it was? Does she not think that that is important in the current system? I think that Liz Smith made some really excellent points in her remarks. I also think that we should look back at how we can reform the current system to echo the previous system, while also accepting that it was not perfect. As an aside, I am somebody who was educated 20 years ago or so, not just within the Scottish state system but across different countries' systems. I can point to the fact that it was not perfect 20 years ago. Secondly, my second outcome is that this aim must be true for all children, irrespective of whether they grow up in the most or least deprived communities in Scotland. The attainment gap is, of course, measured by educational outcomes, but we need to be clear that it is non-educational issues that are denying our young people equal opportunities—poverty, trauma, hunger, family instability and homelessness. There is no fix to the attainment gap without comprehensive support to families, households and wise economic interventions. That burden cannot fall to teachers alone. It just cannot. To expect teachers to shoulder the responsibility for all that is completely unfair. They already have the essential role for educating, teaching and equipping our young people, to push them, to give them a sense of ambition and aspiration, to ensure that they believe in themselves and that they can achieve whatever they wish. That is a full-time job in itself. One of the things that exercises me the most is when politicians, including those in the chamber and others outside the chamber, suggest that education or schools should fix all of society's woes. They cannot single-handedly. My second constructive point is that I would like to see much better integration of services to support our young people and families more generally, to allow teachers to be free to teach and to free our young people to learn. In conclusion, the world has changed, and so must education. To hand all of our analysis solely on PISA results is short-sighted, but it confirms that the cabinet secretary and others are right to talk about reform. However, the success or otherwise of this debate must be measured in outcomes, not in inputs, but the success will determine the opportunities for our young people on an international basis, and the importance cannot be underestimated. I am very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is, as always, the pleasure to participate in the debate in this chamber, particularly with regard to education. What a crucial time we find ourselves in. I would like to start—I make no bones about this—of quoting a journalist, Barry Black, from the Scotsman, on 24 November. Teacher and scientist Carl Sagan once said that it is better the hard truth than the comforting fantasy. There cannot be any group of people in more need of hard truths than policymakers in Scottish education. There is a comforting fantasy, continually rehearsed by those at the top, that progress is being made on education equality in Scotland and that the gap in results between the richest and poorest pupils is closing. The hard truth is simply that it is not. He goes on to criticise not just the Scottish Government but all politicians who hide behind this fantasy. I think that there have been a significant number of contributions in this debate this afternoon that have pointed to the very same thing. I made mention to the cabinet secretary about the PISA comment in the amendment that lodged. The only element that the Scottish Government could find to quote in its amendment is that the PISA found that pupils in Scotland were less likely to witness issues with a number of aspects of behaviour in school than in other parts of the UK. Yet, across the chamber, we heard a call for us to come together across this chamber and recognise not just the challenges but also the benefits, also the good points. The difficulty is that that responsibility rests most forcibly with the Scottish Government because you are the people that are teachers, that are directors of education, that are local authorities, that are third sector, that are charities, look up to. And you are the people who have the responsibility to our young people to deliver on this. There have been many powerful and interesting contributions. Indeed, the cabinet secretary spoke about the changes that are bringing in and the review, first of all, in maths. I would say it's interesting that maths and literacy has been highlighted when, as we came out of Covid, health and wellbeing was trumpeted as the most important area, rightly so. But we have still heard of the challenging mental health problems that face our young people and, indeed, those that surround them. Again, much as ASN pupils were omitted from the discussion yesterday, so has health and wellbeing. And yet we've heard today the importance of the co-curricular, the physical education, the sports clubs, the associations, the things that our young people participate outside of school and through school that actually makes the quality of life that leads them to be happy, to lead them to have fun and for some of our young people to have areas where they can excel, whereas in some of our other areas they can't. But we look to maths, but we still need the question is what are we going to look at? Are we going to look at what's being taught? Are we going to look at how maths is being taught? Are we going to look at the sequencing that maths is acquired by? We heard about the logical steps of curriculum in the past in Scotland. They're the details that we need. They're the details that I think our teachers, our young people, parents and the people of Scotland are saying rather than another review that goes round the houses, because the Cabinet Secretary is aware that there is substantial work across Scotland about how maths can be taught successfully, both to children that are challenged by maths in high school but earlier on. We can identify that if those steps are missed, if those building blocks don't exist in P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6 and P7, they are going to be challenged in maths. Why can't we build on that? Why can't we accept that? Why can't we take it out? Because it carries with it pedagogical value. I want to make mention of Willie Rennie's comment, because the report did yesterday and the Scottish Government have indicated that it appears that through their stretch aims we're only looking at a 30 per cent reduction. I hope that there's an opportunity either to say that there will be other strategies brought forward to narrow the remaining 70 per cent, or is it in fact that we're settling that a 30 per cent improvement in the attainment gap will be sufficient? I want to make mention of Michelle Thomson's comments, because I think particularly—I think that we can argue about the value of PISA and any set of data can be challenged on how it is good. I think that your comments about the need for communication support, particularly in the early years, is incredibly valid. I think that we should all be aware of the challenges that our young people are facing in and as a result of Covid and that isolation, that their communication levels and strategies aren't at what was expected, which makes teaching them a challenge, particularly as they move up through primary education. I think that that was a very powerful contribution. To Ben Macpherson, his discussion about positive destinations, which were raised by others, I think that one of the challenges we have here is that simply it's measured for three months. We are outside measuring the positive destination of the children that left in summer. If they worked in a charity shop, they had one. If that's closed, they don't anymore. So on the acquisition of data, we need to follow this much further. I recognise that time is tight and there are a number of things that I wanted to make. I think that Brian Whittle's contribution was very powerful and has been echoed that the expectation that somehow our schools can solve all those problems is wrong, but the solution going forward for our young people is education. So I'll just finish by quoting my colleague Michael Marra and simply say how many wake-up calls do we need. I'm grateful. Thank you, Mr Whitfield. I now call on Jenny Gilruth to close on behalf of the Scottish Government up to seven minutes, please, Cabinet Secretary. I was reading a piece by the journalist David Leesog over the weekend who spoke of that perceived golden age in Scottish education that I think Kate Forbes mentioned and who queried whether or not that was ever the case. I think that it is worth Parliament reflecting that for generations of young Scots, school education was far from inclusive. It was for the academic and for the rest, they were sent elsewhere, encouraged to leave. School was not for them. I listened yesterday morning to a headteacher in North Lanarkshire on the radio describing the shift in school education throughout the course of her 30-year teaching career. She said, when I started teaching, it was very much about the academic side. Once children come in the doors, they become school pupils, once they leave they go home and there was a bit of detachment. However, now you want the community to be involved. We offer a drop-in on a Wednesday, a parent and toddler group on a Friday. It is about making sure that those doors are always open. That inclusivity of Scotland's education system was a key theme that emerged from the recent national discussion on Scotland's education system, a strength in our offer unique to our approach. As I set out yesterday in my statement to Parliament, a knee-jerk political response to the challenges that we face in Scottish education is not going to help our young people. We need to work together with our teachers while recognising the pressure that they are under to determine and to agree how best we can deliver on the improvements that we all want to see. I want to respond to some of the points that are being raised by members throughout the course of what I think has been, in the main, quite a positive and helpful debate in relation to educational improvement. I certainly welcome the commitment from many members to engage constructively with the Government for that pragmatic route forward. In relation to the ASL data, Mr Rennie, whom I know, is no longer in the chamber, but he talks about the PISA data. Cabinet Secretary, could you please resume your seat for a second? I just want to say that I am well aware why Mr Rennie is not in the chamber, unlike perhaps the Cabinet Secretary. I apologise, Presiding Officer. I am, and I have spoken to Mr Rennie, but I want to respond to his point as we discussed earlier privately. He mentioned the importance of the PISA data, and I again draw Parliament's attention to the ASL data, which are, of course, official statistics. Those are based on teacher professional judgments, and I very much trust our teachers to make those accurate assessments about our children's progress. I hope that members will agree with that sentiment. Mr Rennie also talked about co-production of support materials for our classroom teachers, and I agree with that sentiment. I think that there is opportunity through educational reform to look again at how we support the profession at the chalk face. I also agree with the assertion that Mr Rennie made around about curriculum for excellence and some of the way in which that curriculum development or change was implemented. I think that that was also raised by Brian Whittle. He might know that I was in the classroom at that time, and I think that there are ways—and I reflect on that now as a Cabinet Secretary in this Government—that we can improve that in the future. I hope that Parliament hears that some of my apprehension around where we have to on reform is that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. It is important that, when we drive forward those changes, we do it at a pace with the teaching profession and one that supports them. To Mr Rennie's point, which I thought was a really salient one, teachers are not second guessing where the changes in the curriculum are going to happen. As a case in point, I spoke very recently to the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers, who gave me a really good explanation about some of the changes that they could bring forward in their suite of qualifications. I think that that is why we need to trust teachers in driving the reform improvements that we need to see. That is exactly why yesterday, of course, I gave the commitment to Parliament that we will appoint a maths specialist to lead on improvements to the maths curriculum. I am happy to do so. I am very grateful. The cabinet secretary might not know this, but after some very difficult and contentious reforms that were taken by the Conservative Government, England's mass ranking in PISA went from 27th place in 2009, 17th in 2014 and now it is 11th, which is a considerable improvement. Will the cabinet secretary be engaging positively with our counterpart in Westminster to achieve the same thing? I thank Mr Kerr for his intervention. I am well aware of England's rankings. He will also be aware of where England is in terms of its approach to curriculum content and how it delivers education in England, which in my experience is a bit more prescriptive than that which we have in Scotland. However, I am more than happy to engage with my Conservative counterpart, Ms Keegan. I have not yet met her. She was not massively keen to engage with me, I should say, in relation to the recent rack issue that we experienced. However, I am more than happy to engage with Ms Keegan. My door is always open, as he knows. I want to pick up some of the comments that were raised by other members throughout the course of the debate. Michelle Thompson spoke about some of the challenge with PISA and the sampling discrepancies that can arise. She also mentioned the division between rich and poor countries, which I thought was an interesting point historically to consider, and to change the way in which we view education. The point that she made in relation to speech and language was well made. I will come back to that point, as I know what was made by another member. She raised the importance of excellence, and I think that the new centre for teaching excellence to my mind will play a key role, in driving some of the improvement that we need to see. I am conscious of time, so in the interest of time I will move quickly on to catch a few points that have been made by a number of other colleagues. Mr McPherson made an impressive contribution, and he spoke about the record numbers of our young people who are now going on to positive destinations. I think that that is welcome progress. He is also right to talk about the danger of teaching to the test, which is the point that I was making in response to Mr Kerr. In relation to the approach that we take with pedagogy and any potential shift towards that, I think that that would be one that we would want to guard against. Brian Whittle's point about getting education wrong and every portfolio suffers is a live point to me, considering that we are obviously engaged in budget negotiations at the current time. I think that he is absolutely right. I think that the point that Kate Forbes made about joining up services needs to perhaps be better reflected in how we future prefer budgeting in the Scottish Government, recognising that the education budget cannot do all the heavy lifting. We need those partners to come in and to plug the gaps where school education cannot be expected to do so necessarily. John Mason spoke about education in his day. I cannot imagine ever having been a teacher being paid to hit a child, but in my lifetime that happened in Scotland's schools. We have come a long way in the last 40 years, but I recognise the challenge today in relation to behaviour, and that is why, of course, I set out to Parliament a number of weeks ago the action plan that we will be taking forward with our local authority partners in relation to the issues associated with behaviour. I am very conscious of time, so I will, unless there is time in hand, move to summing up. I think that Scotland has a strong education system. That does not mean that I am accepting of the need for improvements far from it, but I invite the Opposition today to reflect on the role that it can play in building that better future for Scotland's children and young people. My view is that the chamber is Scotland's classroom. If you want better behaviour, let's start here. If you want more attentive pupils and let's have more attentive MSPs, if you want to stop the growth of the impact of misogyny in our schools, then consider who you follow on social media, what you share and how you engage with female politicians irrespective of party. What we do in this place matters. If, as I think we heard yesterday and to some extent today, there is consensus for improvement in our education system, then I will work with any and every party in this place to do exactly that. I am pleased to be closing the debate this afternoon. I would like to highlight some of the contributions that have been made across the chamber. I have a lot, so I will do my best to get around everybody. I want to highlight first and foremost the remarks that have been made by the Cabinet Secretary, Martin Whitfield, Liz Smith, Willie Rennie and Pam Duncan-Glan see when they are regarding the teaching profession. They deserve all our respect and I echo those comments. I also note that the ASL figures were mentioned by the Cabinet Secretary, Martin Whitfield, Michelle Thomson and Willie Rennie. I also note that Liam Kerr had made a comment regarding Professor Patterson's quote that putting the ASL figures above PISA would be either disingenuous or evidence of dismaying statistical ignorance. I think that it is important to restate that. I accept the point that the member is making and she quotes of course Lindsay Patterson. I just want to reiterate that we will not be putting any dataset above another. It is important though that we look at the dataset in the round and I hope that the member accepts that. The ASL data is predicated on teacher judgment. We trust Scotland's teachers every year to mark our exams to set the national standard and to set the examination papers themselves. I hope that the Conservatives trust Scotland's teachers' judgment in relation to the ASL data. I accept that and I will have other comments later on, which will hopefully address that because I would like to get on a little bit. I also accept that Covid and the fact that those were the Covid PISA scores that were highlighted by Michelle Thomson, by Bill Kidd, by the Cabinet Secretary, by Ben Macpherson, by Brian Whittle and by Michael Marra. I thought that it was interesting that there was an absolute split in the debate as to how fundamental that was to the PISA scores and any failing results and I think that that should also be highlighted. I also note that we have to move on from Covid excuses. It is incumbent on the Scottish government to see where Scottish policies are failing and to use its powers to move past Covid. If we are on a trajectory and that was highlighted by Covid and has been halted by Covid, then we have to do more to get round it. I will take an intervention. Just on that exact point, Michelle Thomson brought up Andres Schleicher. Andres Schleicher was very clear that attainment was declining in Scotland long before Covid. Does the member not recognise that? I do recognise that. I will happily jump forward on some of my notes to actually one regarding Michelle Thomson's comment. We are actually to look at long-term trends and I think if we do look at the long-term trends we find that the trajectory is downwards and it was long before Covid that happened. I comment on Pam Duncan-Glancy who talked about long-standing systemic problems not addressed for years and that the decline must be reversed and that teachers are under immense pressure and classroom sizes are still too large and I do not think anyone can argue with that. I also really want to comment on Sue Webber, my colleague, regarding mobile phones and it has the greatest negative impact. I do wonder that if the promise of a device for everyone in Scotland schools had actually come to fruition I would also give head teachers the opportunity to ensure that online work was monitored through that device and it would also give them a possibility to ban mobile phones within the classroom and I certainly think we should be looking at pushing that forward. I do accept Ben Macpherson's comment that it is right for us to scrutinise. I do not think that it is only right, I think that it is essential, especially when the education of young Scots are on the line. Brian Whittle made a comment regarding the cornerstone of every policy in this place is through education. I think that it is a perfect quote as well, highlighting the importance that it is not good enough to raise the rest of the world if the rest of the world raises it faster and better. I also want to comment that Liz Smith has made excellent comments regarding how we need to free up our teachers and remove the barriers to actually let them teach. I agree wholeheartedly that Scottish education has the potential to be the best in the world and that is something I think we should all recognise. In preparing my notes ahead of this debate, I had hoped to be more consensual. For example, the full and frank way that the cabinet secretary acknowledged the challenges raised in the PISA report yesterday was certainly welcome. It was her tone when calling for cross-party work for the good of Scotland's young people. Scottish Conservatives will always welcome any moves to drive improvement across school education and I look forward to debating education reform in the new year. However, I am afraid that it was the former First Minister who asked us and Scotland to judge her on her Government's record on education. The former First Minister also said that she had a sacred responsibility to provide equal opportunities to all children. When those statements were made, the Scottish Government was full of ideas and guidelines that it would put in place to empower local authorities. The Government took complete ownership of education for all Scotland's young people and it is more than disappointing to see some abdication of that ownership and I hope that that is only temporary. The SNP's record speaks for itself when it has been rehearsed this afternoon. The SNP Government presided over 16 years of failure in education, where the latest PISA study confirming Scotland has fallen to record low levels in maths, reading and science international. The SNP has starved schools and staff of resources and the implementation of their curriculum of excellence has been an unmitigated disaster. As Scottish Conservatives, we know that education is one of the routes out of poverty because through a thorough education, based on knowledge, facts, fundamental basics of reading, writing and counting, respect for teachers and fellow pupils, is a surefire way to change lives. As much as I know that the debate has moved on, it would be remiss of me not to return to some of the issues that need addressing as a matter of urgency. Bullying and violence. I have mentioned this before in questions to the cabinet secretary, but we simply cannot raise the issue and wait for a plan when it comes to discipline in the classroom. The current process across Scotland simply puts any consequences for bullying and violence within a classroom setting on to the victim. Bullied young people are the ones who have to alter their behaviour or move away from their friends to another seat or even class. Teachers are powerless to halt any violent or aggressive attack on pupils or even themselves. With the OECD report finding that bullying in Scottish schools is more frequent than the OECD average, that one in three of our students do not feel safe in schools and that pupils in Scotland are twice as likely to observe violence in school, then a real sense of urgency is required now and any delay is unacceptable. International standings. My question to the cabinet secretary on this topic was yesterday. I note the comments that PISA has a specific process, measuring 15-year-olds ability to use their skills in reading, maths and science, to meet real-life challenges. Given that that is the only international benchmark that we take part in, it is therefore the only league table that we can currently use to see how well Scotland is faring internationally. It is also important to note that all the other countries that take part in this are on the same criteria, so it is relevant to see just how well Scottish 15-year-olds fare in comparison to other countries in the application of that knowledge. Using our own internal processes is simply not enough to ensure that we are providing an education that will open doors and opportunities across the globe. It is disappointing that we have to wait until 2026 for Tim's and Pearl's international league tables so that we can properly assess our education system and make sure that it is fit for purpose globally. We need a comprehensive vision for education here in Scotland that I do not think that we currently have. A vision where every granny can look at the school her grandchildren attend and know that they will be in an informed learning environment where they will be engaged and empowered. Learning about subjects that will not only allow them to go on to a job, a college, a university or a positive destination but help them in a world where they will always need to balance money at the end of the month. A world where communication skills of grammar and punctuation are more necessary than ever before and language is essential for proper understanding. A world where information is filtered through AI algorithms so research and problem-solving skills are paramount to ensure that the truth is not masked behind opinion. They need to know that their grandchildren are safe when they are in a classroom and school grounds and that consequences are there for misbehaviour, that boundaries are in place so that the few are not disrupting the chances of the many. They need to know that arts and sports have just as much important as modern languages and calculus for a well-balanced body, mind and soul and that learning home economics is a skill that will help them through every walk of life. Until we have that vision, we are failing. Thank you, Ms McAll. That concludes the debate on improving the performance of the Scottish education system and it is now time to move on to the next item of business. The next item of business is consideration of business motion 11651, in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a business programme. I call on George Adam Minister to move the motion. I now call on Douglas Ross to speak to and move amendment 11651.1. Mr Ross. Thank you very much. I speak tonight to seek an addition into next week's business to deliver something that the SNP Green Government promised to do, a statement by the end of the year on the dualling of the A9. I am standing here trying to be helpful to the business manager and to Parliament. SNP MSPs may try to ridicule that, but I am simply trying to get something inserted into the business that they themselves promise. That is why we are moving this amendment to have that statement next week. The most recent promise for this Government was to provide a statement by the end of the year, but in the business motion just moved by George Adam taking us up to the Christmas recess and therefore the last opportunity this calendar year, there is no mention at all on that promised statement for dualling the A9. I do not think that it should be up to Opposition parties to use parliamentary process to force the Government's hand, but if they are unwilling to do so then we must. Let us just look at the history of this. In June, six months ago, the Government was planning to update this Parliament on the A9 project. It got one of its backbench MSPs, Jim Fairlie, to submit a Government-inspired question. That is used to announce to Parliament and the public a project or announcement that is ready to go. Then it got withdrawn, something that we believe has never happened in this Parliament before. I questioned the First Minister on this on 15 June and he told the chamber that the reason it was withdrawn was because we had a new transport minister and she needed time to look at the project. Now she has had several months to look at that and now we are told that she will not even be making this announcement and the statement will actually be the Cabinet Secretary. The First Minister told me that it is very important, the A9, and when we are ready to update Parliament with an announcement on the A9, we will absolutely do that, but they were ready to update Parliament back in June when they had that Government-inspired question. The First Minister went on to say, and this is a quote, that we will ensure, of course, that any update that we provide in a statement to Parliament is accurate. Let us just hope that the former transport minister, Michael Matheson, is not involved if we are looking for accuracy. After that, we then had the Cabinet Secretary for Transport telling us that the update would come, and this is a quote, by the end of autumn and before the start of winter. Well, autumn has been and gone, as has the start of winter, and yet there is still no update to MSPs and the constituents that we represent. Earlier this afternoon, the SNP business manager in response to my colleague Edward Mountain told the chamber that the Government expects to update the Parliament on the renewed programme in the coming days. So why have they asked this Parliament tonight to vote for a business statement that does not include a statement on the A9? If it is coming in the coming days, why is it not in our statement that we are being asked to support tonight? There have been repeated promises made to the communities for which this road is crucial that have failed to materialise from the SNP Government. There has been very little action on this vital road for communities from Perth to Inverness, and that is why it is so important. It is crucial that we hear the statement in Parliament before the end of the year. Scottish Conservative research has shown that it may take, at the current pace, over a century to complete the dueling of the A9 between Perth and Inverness. It must not take that long, so we need to know in a statement what the next steps are, when the phase will be in the ground and when the dueling will be complete. We have repeatedly tried to get a statement in this Parliament. When we were told that it would be by the end of autumn, we asked on the last day of autumn for a statement, we asked again two weeks ago, we asked again yesterday and indeed at the bureau yesterday, my colleague Alex Burnett, our party's business manager, was told that there was a cabinet process to follow. I mean just exactly how long does that cabinet process take? We still have no statement and Parliament deserves the opportunity to scrutinise the Government's plans on this. I am hopeful in conclusion that George Adam is just about to stand up and say he and the Government accept our amendment tonight that a statement will be included next week to deliver on their promises. If he doesn't do that, then the question falls to people like John Swinney, to Richard Lochhead, to Emma Roddick, to Marie Todd, to Jim Fairlie, to other representatives, Kate Forbes, whose constituents are expecting an update in this chamber. Surely they will want to vote with the Scottish Conservatives tonight to get that secured in the business for next week, because their constituents expect it. Thank you, Mr Ross. I now call on George Adam, minister, to respond on behalf of the parliamentary bureau. What we have heard from Mr Ross is a complete misunderstanding or just no clue of how parliamentary process works in the Scottish Parliament. It is extremely disappointing because the whole point of the parliamentary bureau—we all sit there as business managers—is to talk about business and to make sure that we get things in a space where we can discuss that and bring things forward. We have heard enough from Mr Ross at the moment, so it is down to basic respect of this Parliament. My job as minister for parliamentary business is to ensure that we work within our Parliament's processes. The Scottish Government remains committed to completing the dualling of the anign between Perth and Inverness, and we expect to update on a renewed programme in the coming days. I do not understand what the Conservative Party cannot understand about days. That sounds to me as if it is pretty imminent, but when you look at it, as everyone knows, the Scottish Government follows the parliamentary business process. That includes—I will explain that for Mr Ross's case, because he misunderstood that bit—the cabinet approval of the Scottish Government business and the bureau's consideration of the business programme as a whole, before finally approval for Parliament as a whole is sought. It is about using the processes within this Parliament to ensure that we can do that, not grandstanding here at decision time and actually doing it that way. The founding principles of this Parliament is for us to all work together to ensure that we deliver for the people of Scotland, and standing there for five minutes grandstanding is not part of that. As I said, the Scottish Government remains firmly committed to completing the dualling of the anign between Perth and Inverness, and to work to determine the most suitable procurement options for the remaining sections of the anign. The dualling is now well advanced, and the Parliament will receive an update in the coming days. I will repeat that once again. The coming days are in full pantos zone with the Conservatives at this point. Once the date for the statement has been scheduled, I will inform Parliament in the usual manner. Can we all just calm down here and allow Parliament to do its job and stop the petty grandstanding? The question is that amendment 11651.1, in the name of Douglas Ross, which seeks to amend business motion 11651 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out of business programme, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to a vote. There will be a short I will call the question again. The question is that amendment 11651.1, in the name of Douglas Ross, which seeks to amend business motion 11651 in the name of George Adam, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out of business programme, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We will move to a vote. There will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.