blyniad y myd? Mae peth yn meddwlgo. Gwisef aeth opIr e如果 e bwydda'i existem invitef cymdeithas y gyrraedd? I will just give a few moments for people to get themselves organised. I now call on Andrew Constance to speak to you and move the motion cabinet secretary 14 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Despite the fiscal challenges of the last eight years, education in Scotland has made real progress. This government has rebuilt or refurbished 526 schools. Curriculum for excellence is setting higher standards for achievement than ever before. This year saw a record number of passes at higher and advanced hires and more people received qualifications relating to wider skills for life and work. We know that more students are staying on at school until six years, made possible for many by our retention and now extension of the educational maintenance allowance. Through developing the young workforce, we are ensuring that all young people can undertake relevant work-related learning as part of their curriculum. We know that fewer people are leaving school with very low or no qualifications and more than nine out of ten of last year's school leavers were employment education or training nine months later. We know that more of our population is educated beyond tertiary level than any other European country. We have a world-class higher education system, and our commission on widening access is working to ensure that all children will have an equal chance of going to university. We should all join in celebrating the achievements of our children and young people. If we are to realise our ambition of a more socially just Scotland, I know and we know that there is much more to be done. We must build on success to ensure that every child and young person, of their background, receives an education which gives them the skills that they need to thrive rather than simply surviving life, an education which allows them to fly and not just get by. We want an education system focused on attainment and achievement built around delivering equity and excellence and, crucially, aspiration and ambition. An improving educational attainment for all children and tackling inequality are at the heart of this Government's agenda. Educational excellence is the means by which to achieve our ambitions as a nation and to close the attainment gap. No child should be born to fail. I want every child in Scotland to have every chance to fulfil his or her potential. We owe it to them to rise to the challenge of inequalities that persist within our education system. Core skills are crucial to success. We have therefore stepped up work to improve children's numeracy and literacy skills. Education Scotland inspections will increase their focus on raising attainment and literacy. We are spending £1.5 million per year on the Read, Write, Count campaign for primary 1 to 3 children. Through the Making Maths Count programme, I have committed to providing more support to secondary school maths teacher to prepare and share resources. According to the charity National Numeracy, it is culturally acceptable in the UK to be negative about maths. We need to change that, Presiding Officer, and we need to create a much more positive attitude to maths as an essential skill for learning, life and work. That is why I am establishing an expert group to explore those attitudes and to promote greater enthusiasm for and confidence in maths and numeracy among children and young people. I can announce today that this group will be chaired by Maureen Wakenna, Executive Director of Education in Glasgow. The group will be tasked with the following. First, to establish a better understanding of the negative public perceptions in relation to maths and numeracy and how that can be addressed. Secondly, recommending practical, cost-effective approaches to encouraging greater public enthusiasm for maths and numeracy. Thirdly, considering how best to address the areas for development for learners identified through the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and other sources. We know that early learning and childcare contributes significantly to achievement and attainment in the early years and throughout children's school education. We know that high quality early learning and childcare has major benefits in particular for those from the poorest families and that it contributes to narrowing the attainment gap for those children. We are taking action here. Already this Government has done more than any other part of the UK to increase the entitlement to free early learning and childcare for all three and four-year-olds and, for the first time, over a quarter of all two-year-olds. Over the coming years, we will almost double that entitlement from 600 to 1140 hours per year. We are taking action. I am very grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for taking intervention. I noticed the careful use of language there that is doing more than the rest of the UK. Not in relation to two-year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, where those from 40 per cent of the most disadvantaged background are benefiting from early learning and childcare south of the border, whereas the position north of the border, as she rightly says, while extended, is still only a quarter. It may well be the UK Government's aspiration for 40 per cent of two-year-olds south of the border to be accessing early learning and childcare, but the last figures that I have seen on this matter showed that only 13 per cent of two-year-olds south of the border were actually able to access that. There is also well-published information that shows that 40 per cent of local authorities in England are not meeting the target. That is a typical example of the Liberal Democrats' over-promising and under-delivering. That is something that this Government most certainly will not do when it comes to childcare, because we are determined to increase the quantity of hours available, but not at the expense of quality. Quality and quantity have to go hand in hand. We are also taking action to raise the attainment of children in school. There is the £100 million attainment fund, £11.7 million of that funding this year has been made available to the seven challenge authorities. A further 57 schools have benefited from that fund this year, and that means that over 300 schools in total and over 21 local authorities are now involved. I want to be clear that it was always our intention to extend the reach of the fund beyond those first seven authorities this year. I am all too aware that there are pockets of poverty in every classroom, in every school, in every local authority, the length and breadth of Scotland. This is the scale of our ambition and reach to ensure that we are working hard to close the gap wherever it exists in Scotland. Can I just say that Audit Scotland did say that some schools have achieved better attainment results in their level of deprivation would indicate, suggesting that the gap between lowest and highest performance cannot be wholly attributed to deprivation? We all accept that it is a factor. What are you doing to look at all the other factors? We can all be agreed, Mrs Scanlon, that deprivation is a factor that impacts on the attainment of our children. It is, of course, a shame that the Tory Government is continuing to progress with welfare cuts, which will definitely have an impact on the attainment of our children. Perhaps the £103 million that this Government is spending on mitigating your Government's welfare reforms could indeed be better spent on education if we did not have to pick up the pieces of your failing Government south of the border, Mrs Scanlon. Where I will agree is that the Audit Scotland report does raise some very interesting and indeed fundamental issues that it is not always about how much we spend often. It is about what we do with our time and resources as well. The real prize from the fund will be the learning that we gain from individual schools and authorities about what works. Learning that can and will be shared across Scotland is part of the universal support that we are putting in place to raise attainment. The first attainment advisers are in post and we are on course to have appointed attainment advisers to every local authority by the end of November. Advisers will work in the front line reaching into every learning community in Scotland to build capacity in schools. The quality of our workforce and the excellence of our educational leadership provide the bedrock of our education system. All teachers must play their part and we must ensure that they have the support that they need to do that. We are developing a new national improvement hub that will provide teachers with a range of tools and resources to help them raise attainment and to improve performance. That is why it is taking to the end of November to have an attainment advisers in place in every local authority. Some of your colleagues in the front bench with an education brief have highlighted that we most certainly do not want to be adversely affecting the teachers that are available in the classroom. We have proceeded with care to get the right people in place and to ensure that there are no unintended consequences of recruiting the much needed attainment advisers. I want to focus on the national improvement framework. Since I became education secretary there has been a strong debate around the need for more information on how our children are doing, particularly in primary and lower secondary schools. Meaningful information is a key tool in informing learning and teaching. That debate informed a programme for government which had education and the new national improvement framework at its very heart. The framework is the next phase of curriculum for excellence, building on a strong record of achievement. It will bring together key information from a number of areas to evaluate performance and will inform the action to be taken to improve achievement for every child. This is not about narrowing the curriculum or forcing teachers to teach to a test. It is not about a return to high-stakes testing. Assessment will inform not replace teacher judgment. Assessment is not anend in itself. The framework is about meeting the needs of children, knowing how well they are doing in the classroom and identifying where schools and local authorities need more support. Assessment is just one part of that framework, which will also look at the key areas across education, school improvement, school leadership, teacher professionalism, parental involvement and performance information. The framework sets clear priorities so that everyone working in Scottish education is clear about what they are trying to achieve, to improve attainment, specifically reading, writing and numeracy, improve children and young people's health and wellbeing, improve sustained school leaver destinations for all young people and close the attainment gap between the most and the least disadvantaged. Last week I wrote to every headteacher in Scotland to express my thanks for the significant contribution that they and their staff have made to implementing curriculum for excellence. Their professionalism and leadership are fundamental to achieving the improvements that we all want for our children. An intrinsic aim of the framework is that it will provide parents with meaningful information about their child's progress. Parents and parental organisations have a crucial role in working with us to ensure that the framework meets their needs. Starting in Edinburgh next week, we have eight engagement events aimed at teachers, local authorities and parents. In the coming months, I want teachers and parents to continue to have their say and to shape the national improvement framework. The successes of Scottish education today are a testament to the hard work and commitment of pupils, teachers, school leaders, parents and everyone involved in our education system. They deserve our recognition and our thanks, but there is more to do. I make no apology for setting the bar high. I want every child in every community to have every chance to fulfil their potential and to realise their dreams no matter who they are, no matter where they go to school. That is more than an ambition. It is indeed, Presiding Officer, our moral imperative. It is up to each and every one of us to shape the education system to ensure that it delivers that. I now call Nian Gray to speak to Unmove Amendment No. 14311.2. Mr Gray, 10 minutes or farewells. Thank you Presiding Officer. I will always relish the opportunity to celebrate Scotland's educational success and debate how we should build on it and so I'm pleased to rise to move the amendment in my name this afternoon. We've been proud of our educational system for centuries and rightly so. Almost every great leap forward in educational thinking has seen Scotland at the forefront. From the common place that 500 years ago, Aberdeen alone had as many universities as the whole of England, to the idea that everyone should be able to read, write and count legislated for as far back as 1696 in our predecessor Scottish Parliament or in the 19th century, the first women to formally enter undergraduate study, the Edinburgh 7, recently commemorated by the Cabinet Secretary's colleague Fiona Hyslop. All the way to his recently, Presiding Officer, is my own school days when the flawed system of selective schooling was replaced with modern comprehensive. Scotland made that leap forward where else were others privaricated leaving a fractured and fragmented system. These are historical successes we can and should be building on. A global reputation we should aspire to regain. An accessible equal educational system, broadened curriculum and world class in quality. How limited then the success the government claim in their motion, damned by their own faint self-praise. I'm reminded of the head scratching long ago as I wrote report cards and searched desperately for something, anything positive to say about some pupils. Perhaps the most egregious piece of empty back patting in the motion is the phrase, 97% drop in primary one pupils in classes of 26 or more. Presiding Officer, we passed a law in this Parliament in 2010 which capped primary one class sizes at 25. The question is what is going on with the other 3%. They appear to be in classes which are illegal. This is not a success. It is a failure because the solemn election promise from the SNP was class sizes of 18 in P1, P2 and P3. I have to say take some kind of utsba to put your broken election promises into law and then expect a round of applause for having done it. The truth is that class sizes have gone up under this government and no wonder because there are 4,200 fewer teachers in our schools and a recruitment shortage to boot. The Scottish Government's own literacy and numerous surveys shows that standards are falling. As for more young people getting the qualifications they need, that is a hollow boast too since higher pass rates have fallen last year and the year before and in the crucial STEM subjects actual numbers have fallen too. For those who get the qualifications to go to college they will find 140,000 fewer places there. So a success goes, this is pretty fragile. But if the Scottish Government has done one thing right and the Cabinet Secretary spoke about this, it was sticking with curriculum for excellence. But what a mess they made of that too. Done without enough support, on the goodwill of overstretched teachers and initial results from national fives last year showing that unintended consequence has been a narrowing of the curriculum once lauded for its bread. The lowest point of course was the farce of the new higher mass exam. Alarm bells rung by teachers, parents and thousands of pupils signing petitions. The Cabinet Secretary refused to listen and now tries to hide their blushes behind an unprecedented 34% pass mark. This morning the SQA told the education committee that the new higher mass exam was too hard but that it had done its job. Well it did not do its job for the many pupils who gave up or left the exam in tears and have seen their prospects damaged. It is still time the Cabinet Secretary did her job and made sure that this was sorted for next year. And then with the attainment challenge, at least the Government is trying to do the right thing. For the greatest failing of our educational system is the stubborn fact that your success remains predicated on how well off your family is rather than your talent or how hard you work. We have made very clear that we support the Government and finally beginning to try and address this but they are making such heavy going of it. First we had those attainment advisers. The Cabinet Secretary and the First Minister couldn't agree on how many there were going to be. The Cabinet Secretary said 12, the First Minister, overruled her to put one in every local authority. The adverts came out and we saw that they might be part time, they might be full time. They might be for a year or they might be for two. Now I heard what the Cabinet Secretary said about November. I hear that the grand total of seven have been appointed so far. And then there is the attainment fund, £25 million a year but no allocation formula. First seven local authorities got a share. And of course we pointed out that that meant many schools in this city for example facing great educational barriers got nothing. So another 57 primaries were pulled out of the hat, identified who knows how. Presiding Officer this is making it up as you go along. Worst of all, the attainment challenge, worthy though it is, is now sinking into a row about testing. Now we've been clear that the current situation of local authorities buying in different diagnostic tests is inefficient. More consistent data to drive policy is a good thing. But a return to high stakes testing in primary schools is not. Now I know what the Cabinet Secretary says she agrees with that. But the truth is that the First Minister has tried to pretend to one audience that they oppose national testing and to another that they are boldly, radically bringing it in. James Maxden once said of politics, if you cannot ride two horses at once you shouldn't be in the circus. On testing the First Minister has tried to ride two horses and she has fallen off. We're now in the position where the EIS are up in arms and the Tories and the leaked table lovers in the media have thrown their arms around the First Minister's national tests. I don't think that's what she meant to happen. Last month, Kezia Dugdale suggested that if we're serious about closing the attainment gap, the inspection system should be shifted towards unannounced inspections and assess work to close the gap. Now the Government has announced just that yesterday. In a newspaper briefing, teachers are up in arms again. The right idea but cat-handed execution making it up as they go along. Now we support the cutting of the attainment gap and the national framework and for that reason and that reason alone we will hold our nose at the empty self-praise of the Government motion tonight and support it. But this is an incompetent mess and the Cabinet Secretary needs to get a grip of it. Yet the greatest failure of this Cabinet Secretary and this Government has been the failure to protect the education budget. This Government over years now has been cutting educational spending even while it has been increasing in other parts of the United Kingdom. Now, though it tells us that cutting the attainment gap is a priority, it plans to spend 10 times as much on cutting the price of an airline ticket than it does on closing the attainment gap. Rather than cutting tax, the greatest information from local government shows that spending this year will go up by 3.3 per cent on education. I wonder what message he has to Labour councils the length and breadth of Scotland who are responsible legally and operationally for delivering education. Ah, so spending on education is not the responsibility of the education secretary. I think my theme is that it's time the Cabinet Secretary started to do her job. As for any increase in this year's budget, that will be terrific, but it will be making up only a little bit of eight years of erosion of education budgets. The truth is, rather than cutting tax, we should be increasing the attainment fund, beginning to reverse the college cuts, providing a proper system of student support for students in FE and those going to universities from poorer families. Soon we will have the power to impose a 50p top tax rate. Will the Cabinet Secretary commit now to use that to help those youngsters from our poorer families get a better start in life? The potential rewards are great and it can be done. In Wales, a Labour Government for whom education really is a priority have cut the attainment gap by over 11 per cent in just three years. So the question to the Cabinet Secretary is, is she serious about educational equality or is it just words? Will her report card forever read, must try harder, too easily distracted from what really matters? Thank you very much and I now call on Mary Scanlon to speak to and move amendment 143.1, the Scalony of six minutes or thereby. Can I thank the Scottish Government for holding a debate on education? In recent years, many education debates have actually been in opposition time. On the same consensual note, can I also agree with one sentence of the Government's motion that they must do more to raise standards for all children? We can all agree with that. But what we do have difficulty with is the congratulatory tone of the Government's motion welcoming education successes since 2007. Well, let's look at the education successes, Dr Allan. I'm very happy to tell you about your records since 2007. Scottish Survey on Literacy and Numeracy. In literacy, an average 12 per cent fewer pupils were doing well on S2 than P7. In numeracy, there's been a 24 per cent fall in pupil performance between primary seven and S2. So why do pupils' performance deteriorate as they progress through school? Surely the opposite should be the case. So much of the debate in this chamber is focused on the desperate and critical need for computing, science, engineering maths and maths. And yet, in the last two years alone, according to the Learned Society's submission to the Education Committee, the National Force in Fives previously standard grades, computing subjects down 29 per cent, engineering related down 13 per cent, chemistry down 11 per cent, biology down 8 per cent and physics and maths down 5 per cent and the Scottish Science Baccalaureate launched in 2009 from 151 entries in 2012, now 92. Angela Constance. Scotland would be interested to know that since 2007, the number of STEM-higher entries has went up by 12 per cent and the STEM-higher passes has been up by 15 per cent. We can trade in numbers. This is factual, accurate numbers from the Learned Society and that's in the last two years. I think if you're going to get better, you should start taking responsibility for your own record. And then on colleges, the Scottish Government are always very keen to tell us that the loss of almost 150,000 part-time places were replaced with full-time places. Well, that sounds quite reasonable. However, when the 150,000 part-time places were cut in the five years to 2013-14, the full-time places that were found as a result was 3,000. In other words, for every 50 part-time students that were turned away couldn't access a course, for every 50 part-time students cut, one full-time place was created. I feel very passionately about the 48 per cent cut to part-time students because I was that student some years ago. As a teenager with a full-time job, I joined the Qs at night classes at the College of Commerce in Dundee to do hires and typing qualifications. I taught at night classes for many years and I could never have gone to university later on had I not had the opportunity to do a part-time course. Presiding Officer, I ask the Scottish Government not to dismiss part-time courses as hobby courses because they are insulting many people across this country. Of course, it's also very disappointing that college places for over 25s cut by 41 per cent, 74,000 fewer places than five years ago. The nationalist government shows a distinct lack of understanding for those who deserve a second chance after their school experience. The Audit of Scotland report also confirmed, well, can I just give you this figure because I'd be delighted if you would respond to it. In terms of the Wood commission, there's actually been a cut of 70 per cent in the under-16s attending colleges in the last five years. That's not what Ian Wood was asking for. I'd be delighted if you would respond to that. Wood also spoke very favourably about the college reform programme and how it had placed a great platform and opportunity for the success of our children. Of course, we are reinvesting in modernised school-college partnership, but I wondered if Mrs Scanlon would recognise that the numbers of under-25s and over-25s studying full-time at colleges has actually increased. I don't know if you actually heard what I was saying. 150,000 part-time students cannot find a place due to the cut. The full-time places that you have created are 3,000. On that point, there's also a desperate need for IT courses and in further education, student numbers 24,000 fewer students. I see I'm sort of rapidly running out of time. On testing, we are in favour of testing or assessment, whatever you want to call it, as a diagnostic school tool to ensure that no child is left behind and children are being left behind just now. We hope that the Government will work with teachers, work with schools, learn—I mean, my last minute—no, and I've given way twice, and it really was a total waste of time when I did that as well. I hope to learn from good practice and ensure that pupils' needs are at the centre of their proposals. Unlike the EIS report regarding the SQA, when they say, very disappointed, the SQA's apparent inability to respond appropriately to significant feedback from teachers, a matter of deep and ongoing frustration. This is not necessary. A collision course with teachers is unhelpful, a dictatorial, arrogant approach is even less helpful. We want every child to get the help they need, when they need it, and for them to perform well in secondary as well as primary. So I hope the nationalist members who are very vocal in the front bench today, I hope they will understand why the Opposition parties aren't exactly overwhelmed with joy at your record. To be quite honest, I've never seen such long amendments. I think most of us could have written about five pages, but it wouldn't have been acceptable to presiding officer, but the amendments today are incredible. So I think it's also worth adding a comment, and it was the point I made to the Cabinet Secretary at the start. Audit Scotland have done a lot of work on attainment. You need to look at more than deprivation. My final point is to ask the Cabinet Secretary to look at why pupils needing additional support in English get help for sitting national 5, but they get no help for national 4. That would make a step in the right direction to looking at attainment levels. Thank you very much. A bit of time in hand today. Mr MacArthur, six minutes or thereby. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Like previous speakers, I need no persuading about the many strengths of Scotland's education system. I see evidence of it on a daily basis in my own ornate constituency that I know is replicated in schools and colleges and universities and other settings across Scotland. So I want to go on record again. My thanks to our teaching and other staff for the contribution they make in helping shape lives both young and old. Having attended Orkney College UHI's graduation awards ceremony last week in the spectacular surroundings of St Magnus Cathedral, I also pay tribute to the pupils and students for the hard work that they put in. However, Deputy Presiding Officer, today's debate is not simply a celebration of the successes of our education system. As Iain Gray pointed out, it asks Parliament to consider how we might build upon those successes. That's not an invitation to wallow in self-congratulation or gloss over the extent of the issues that need addressing. Rather, it places an onus on all of us, particularly ministers, to be honest about where things are not working as they should and where improvement or change is needed. That, I think, is the recurring theme in all three of the amendments this afternoon. I'll focus on the aspects that I identified in my own amendment, but I readily acknowledge and share some of the concerns highlighted by Iain Gray and Mary Scanlon, notably in relation to the significant cuts to college budgets, courses and staff. It's fair to say that those cuts, which the little Democrats were at least successful in getting the Government to mitigate to an extent, have had a disproportionate impact on some of those most in need. That, in a sense, illustrates perfectly the mismatch between Government aspiration and action. The Cabinet Secretary is absolutely right to identify the urgency of closing the gap in attainment between those from poorer backgrounds and their wealthier counterparts, although surely after eight years in office this is not a revelation to ministers. However, while the rhetoric is faultless, although the First Minister has gone as far as to claim she intends to close the gap completely, which appears to fall into the category of, as the Education Secretary referred to, over-promising with the potential of under-delivering, the action to address the problem too often appears inadequate in certain instances, Government policy is actually exacerbating the problems. In terms of the gap itself, all the evidence shows that it begins to open up in the earliest years, even pre-birth, but worryingly, despite the now almost universal acceptance of this fact, we see from the most recent survey of literacy and numeracy that the gap is widening. By the age of five, the gap in reading attainment between children from low-income and high-income families is more than a year. Thereafter, the gap is only likely to widen and certainly will become more difficult and costly to close. That is why Scottish Liberal Democrats have been so adamant about the need to improve and expand early learning in childcare for two-year-olds from the most deprived backgrounds. I welcome the Scottish Government's agreement last year to extend provision of decision that will be making a profound difference to the lives of those now benefiting. However, I also firmly believe that we can and should go further, matching what was put in place south of the border, thanks to the Liberal Democrats in the last UK coalition Government. John Mason? I thank the member for giving way. He has asked for more resources to understand it for colleges, and he is asking for more resources for early learning. Has he got somewhere that those resources would come from? Liam McArthur? That is the complaint of the Government time and time again. However, when it suits the purposes, it seems to be able to juggle things around within their own budgets and come up with headline figures for the Lakers flagship initiative. We have been arguing this case with childcare. On childcare in particular, as John Mason will recall, we were told that we would need the resources that would only come with independence, even to move us to the modest 25 per cent of two-year-olds that are now covered miraculously. By a budget change at the 11th hour in the budget last year. I entirely accept the concerns of many in the children's sector who wish to avoid a Dutch auction on early learning in childcare. They are absolutely right, as indeed is the education secretary, that we need a ruthless focus on quality and the importance of wraparound care. However, I do not see this as incompatible with the Scottish Government showing more ambition now. They could extend provision to cover 40 per cent of two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds, allowing them to benefit in the same way as their counterparts in England. Of course, the support is targeted at those who need it most. That, I believe, is the most effective approach. Contrast that with the Scottish Government's attainment fund, which has taken an area-based approach. Ministers appear to have tacitly accepted that this is wrong by allowing a number of primary schools across the country now to access the fund. However, the fact is that children living in poverty in many parts of the country, including the Highlands and Islands, the North East, the South West and Edinburgh, are still denied access to the £100 million available. Their needs, it would seem, are not as great or as important. I am sure that Angela Constance would dispute that, but it is difficult to draw to know what other conclusion to draw. It is also why Scottish Liberal Democrats have long advocated a pupil premium approach targeting the individual child and their specific needs, rather than an area or a school. That approach may need to be adapted in Scotland, but the very least ministers should be looking to pilot it, rather than simply depositing it in the too difficult box. I hear Mr MacArthur talking a lot about a pupil premium. I wonder if he can point to the hard and fast evidence that shows that the pupil premium has led to an improvement in outcomes for students. The evidence that I have seen has showed that it is not led to sustained improvement. If he can point to the evidence, let us have a look at it. The sustained improvement, presumably, would need some sort of longitudinal study to develop that, but it is telling that saving the children and other children's charities very much makes the same point about targeting the resource on the individual children who need it. A rethink is also required by the Government in relation to their plans for national standardised testing. The Education Secretary and First Minister insist that this is needed to help to close the attainment gap and help and will not herald a return to teaching to the test and lead tables, but few believe them. Initially, very conditional support from the EIS was paraded by ministers desperate to justify their plans and reassure a sceptical public, teaching profession and pupils themselves. At the EIS, I quote, it will be almost impossible to put in place safeguards which would stop national assessments leading to league tables, target setting agenda, which curriculum for excellence was supposed to have ended. Only the Conservatives have been unequivocal in their support of the SNP's plans for standardised testing, but then they have no problem with league tables. Finally, let me touch on the issue of teacher numbers and class sizing. The Minister's motion asks us to celebrate the Government's successes, yet with 4,000 fewer teachers than in 2007 and a class size commitment for P1 to 3, which has never been close to being honoured, this self-congratulatory tone seems at best misplaced. Even the agreement reached to safeguard teacher numbers is proving problematic. It is putting individual local authorities already constrained by a never ending council tax freeze in a straight jacket. Council representatives told the Education Committee recently that the lack of flexibility is causing huge problems in matching teacher supply with demand, while resulting in large numbers of support staff being laid off. The comparison was made with the police and the effect on civilian staff jobs. Again, hardly progressive. None of what I have said detracts from the success and quality of education in Scotland, nor is it talking down the work done by teachers and others working in the sector. However, if we are serious about building on success, addressing weaknesses that exist and making genuine headway at last in closing the attainment gap, we need to be honest and ambitious about what needs to be done, and I move the amendment in my name. Many thanks. We now move to the open debate at six minute speeches, and I call on George Adam to be followed by Cara Hilton. Six minutes or thereby. Thank you, Presiding Officer. For me, dealing with the attainment gap is one of the most challenging, important issues before us that we debate here in this chamber. The Scottish Government's new out of Scottish attainment challenge will be backed by the attainment fund that has already been measured with £100 million to help pupils from our most disadvantaged communities offering opportunities now. There has been much said about many of the subjects and debate over how we are doing, and maths has been mentioned. I am not one for boring the chamber with Audit Scotland reports. On that occasion, I think that I will look at the last PISA scores that I mentioned in maths that Scotland appeared to be doing better in maths in Norway, Sweden, Wales and England. If things are so badly, it seems that why are we such a success story in those types of subjects? You have to see that sometimes facts and figures are used by the Opposition in a way to try to make their own arguments. School education in Scotland is getting better. I could just make this point at the moment. School education in Scotland is getting better with record exam results and a record number of school leavers in work, education or training, but we must never stand back. There is no place for self-congratulation here, because we continue to look to the future to look and see what we can do for the young people of Scotland, because the Scottish Government has prioritised in raising attainment and closing the attainment gap. They do not believe that reducing teacher numbers is the best way to deliver those goals. That is why the Scottish Government made £51 million offer to local government to protect teacher numbers, and that was accepted by all 32 local authorities. In the point of teacher numbers, why when George Adam was a councillor and the SNP was in government here, why he voted to cut over 200 teachers from the teacher compliment in Renfrewshire Council? Mr Henry, we could actually sit here and have a Renfrewshire Council debate, but this is the Parliament of Scotland. We are here to talk about the future of our young people and make sure that we can deliver that future. The Scottish Government's new attainment fund will be backed by the attainment Scotland fund of more than £100 million. If Mr Henry wants to talk about the real issues that are happening in Renfrewshire, let's talk about areas such as Ferguson Park. Let's talk about areas that for decades have actually been left where, if you have been born, my own father was born in Ferguson Park. The attainment gap was there when he was born in the 1940s and it has continued during that time. Now the Scottish Government is saying, no more is that acceptable, no more will we allow for people to be targeted because of where they actually come from. The fund will initially target schools with the biggest concentration of households in deprived areas. It won't be just plucked out of the sky. It's actually identified through the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, which will benefit from greater access to expertise and resources, ensuring that we can get additional teachers materials for classrooms and resources to develop a new out-of-school activities. Westerhales education centre I've mentioned before, Presiding Officer, when the education committee visited, and they showed us how they actually found a way to be able to target to make sure they had resources in for when a child was having difficulty in providing the support. That, for me, Presiding Officer, is a way forward. Yes, I will do. Mr Adam makes some good points, but the fact of the matter is, Westerhales education centre still is receiving no money from the attainment fund. Would he support me in a 50p tax rate so we can spend more money in Ferguson Park and what can get some support too? I would say to the member that we're dealing with the here and now and how we can actually make that difference. I'm saying that two of the primary schools within Ferguson Park, because of the way that this has actually been set out, are actually receiving that funding. That proves, Presiding Officer, that the funding is going to the right places to ensure that we can improve and vote and improve in literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing in these primary schools, with a clear objective to give all primary school aged pupils, regardless of their background, the best start in life. Scotland has the best educated population in Europe. ONS figures from June 2014 showed that Scotland is the most highly educated country in Europe and among the best educated in the world. More than two-fifths of people aged 25 to 64 are educated to college and university level. Presiding Officer is outstripping Ireland, Luxembourg and Finland at the top of the table. The rest of Europe, including the UK, is a whole, falls below two-fifths. In 2013, Scotland has the highest proportion of usual residents with NVQ level 4 or above qualifications. This is not the case in England. So much so that Joe Grice, the Office of National Statistics, chief economic adviser, said that the proportion of the population going into higher and territory education in Scotland actually has just about the highest in the world. Scotland also does very well in terms of people in working-age populations 16 to 64 that have a qualification at NVQ 4 or above. Both of those are quite strong indications of the skilled workforce in Scotland. Even with all those good things happening in education, we need to overcome the barrier of poverty. That is not an excuse, as we cannot underplay the role that poverty plays. An additional 100,000 Scots children will be living in poverty, as the Cabinet Secretary already said, by 2020 because of the UK welfare reforms. This is before the next round of cuts are due in 2017-18. With a majority Conservative Government Westminster, there is worse yet to come. The Scottish Government will do all it can to minimise the impact of this with the limited powers of this place, but we must, as always, need to ensure that all our children of all parts of Scotland are given the opportunity to succeed and be everything they possibly can be. I'm pleased to be able to speak in today's debate on how we can build on Scotland's educational success. Across the chamber, we all want Scotland to have an education system to be proud of. We're all ambitious for our children and for our young people, and we all aspire to have Scotland in which every single child has the opportunity to fulfil their potential, regardless of their background. As a mum with three children now at primary school, I see every day the huge value of an excellent education and the dedication of our excellent teachers and support staff, and there's no greater investment that we can make than in our children and ensuring that all children get the best possible start. It's very rare that I quote Tony Blair, but Tony was absolutely spot on when he said, education, education, education should be the top three priorities of a progressive government. We will only ever achieve a fairer, more progressive Scotland and indeed a fairer, more progressive world if we ensure that life is fairer, better and more equal for every child. The Scottish Government's motion today paints a very rhod— Just a moment, would those who wish to make interventions please do so, not from a sedentary position? I'm going to pay particular reference to Front Bench. The Scottish Government's motion today paints a very rosy picture of Scotland's educational success and of the SNP's achievements in this area, and today I would like to focus on progress in closing the attainment gap. It's very interesting that there's no reference at all in the Government's motion of literacy, although I was pleased that the Cabinet Secretary did outline the steps that the Government is now taking to address this issue. All the evidence shows that ensuring that every child leaves school able to read well is key to tackling educational inequality into closing the attainment gap. Right now in Scotland, one in five children growing up in poverty leaves primary school unable to read well. This is four times higher than for children from the least disadvantaged backgrounds. We can only turn this around by intervening early to ensure that every child has got a good level of language skills well before they start school. Save the Children's Ready to Read report, published in June, revealed that Scotland's poorest children are starting school already struggling with language and literacy. Children from more deprived areas are twice as likely to struggle with language development from as early as three years old. Those are struggles that continue into primary school, into high school and into the workplace. A language gap, which not only affects children's learning and opportunities in school but throughout their lives. Children who read well by the end of primary school do better at high school, they leave with better exam results and they do better in the workplace. In contrast, the poorest children are half as likely to go to university in Scotland and cuts to college places and budgets means even less options are now available to young people from the more deprived backgrounds. A child poverty is set to rise thanks to the Tory Government's cuts to tax credits and austerity policies. The need for further targeted investment to support the early years workforce with language and communication development is all the more urgent if we are going to turn this around and ensure that every child in Scotland has the best foundation for success. In our excellent briefing for today's debate, NSPCC Scotland highlighted the Marmot report, which concluded that the foundations for virtually every aspect of human development are laid in early childhood. What happens during those early years has a lifelong effect. Attainment advisers in schools is a great idea, but only by prioritising initiatives to target pre-birth to three years will we prevent the attainment gap in education opening in the first place. I would also like to see more commitment from the Scottish Government and from local authorities to ensure the proper funding and support of speech and language therapy services. Speech and language therapists have a vital role to play in providing early intervention to prevent speech, language and communication difficulties and in supporting children and their parents in and out of the classroom. Yet funding for these services has been cut in recent years. Given the key role this service plays in supporting children, parents and teachers, I hope that the Scottish Government will be taking action to ensure that every child in Scotland has got access to high quality speech and language therapy services wherever and whenever they are needed. Turning to the attainment fund, I am pleased that Fife has finally been included, but while that is an initiative I welcome, it will make little difference to most children or most schools, although I note the Cabinet Secretary's commitment to roll that out. In my Dynfremland constituency, only two schools will benefit from the attainment fund since serfs in high valley fields in Zavart and Oakley. Yesterday, I visited Lindburn primary in the Abbey View area from my constituency. This is an area that is situated in one of the highest levels of multiple deprivation in Scotland, yet it is not receiving a penny from this fund. If we are really going to end this cycle of disadvantage, helping some children in some schools is not good enough. Every school in every area needs to be focused on closing the gap. Breaking the cycle of disadvantage is a huge task, and once again I encourage the Cabinet Secretary and the Scottish Government to learn more from the success in Fife, where significant progress has been made to address the issue and to close the gap. Fife has invested £7.8 million in early years to give children the best start in life, including the development of a family nurture approach, delivering wide-ranging family support and targeted parenting programmes and investing in extended family nurture centres across Fife. On top of that, £2.5 million has been invested into initiatives to close the gap, with a focus on the quality of learning and teaching such as investment in classroom assistance and literacy programmes. The results speak for themselves, Deputy Presiding Officer. The most recent literacy figures for Scotland revealed a worrying drop in standards in Fife literacy levels are on the rise. For pupils from the 20 per cent most disadvantaged backgrounds, performance in reading accuracy is above the national average, and reading comprehension has shown a highly significant improvement. Fife is successfully starting to close the gap, too, with a 10 per cent improvement among children in the most deprived areas of Fife in literacy levels. The approach that the following in Fife works is a huge credit to the Labour-led administration. To illustrate what can be achieved when new approaches are adopted and when ending the cycle of disadvantage is the top priority and is at the centre of all we do, I am running out of time to conclude that it is time for the Scottish Government to stop congratulating itself and to start taking decisive action to make our education system fairer for every child in Scotland. In Scotland today, a child's educational outcomes depend more on the parents' income and background than on any other factor, and it is an absolute outrage that almost half of our poorest children who started high school this August are unable to read or write well. These are children who have spent all their time at school under an SNP Government. We will rightly be able to claim educational success when every single child in Scotland can fulfil the true potential. Right now thousands of young Scots are being left behind, and that is not a record to be proud of. Thank you very much. I now call on Stuart Maxwell to be followed by Hugh Henry up to seven minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. One of the central goals of the Scottish Government since 2007 has been to use the limited powers of this Parliament to strive for a fairer, more equal society. Decades of mismanagement in the years before devolution created a legacy of inequality, immigration and a feeling of hopelessness amongst many people who felt that they had less opportunity than the generation that preceded them. Unfortunately, poverty as we all know was embedded in our society and the eradication of it is a generational project that cannot be solved by a single Government or a single session of Parliament. Nonetheless, we can always do more to build momentum towards creating a society that gives all of Scotland's young people hope for the future and an opportunity to make the most of their talents no matter their background. Undoubtedly, education is one of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal to create the fairer and more equal society that everyone in this chamber would like to see. Since 2007, the Scottish Government has invested in our education system, improved it and made progress on the vital long-term project of eradicating poverty. I believe that if we continue on the path that has been set, a child born today in one of our most deprived communities by the time they leave school should have the same chance of going to university as a child born in one of our most affluent communities. But we are fighting against damaging Westminster austerity and extremely damaging cuts. There are no quick and easy fixes and therefore we must continue to build on our achievements to ensure that the promise of a more equal future becomes a reality. The £100 million that has been invested in the attainment Scotland fund will help to facilitate that change. The First Minister's recent announcement of an expansion of the fund has meant that over 300 primary schools will soon have benefited from the additional funding to improve literacy, numeracy and health. Scottish Government programmes such as the early years collaborative, raising attainment for all and developing the young workforce will have real benefits for our young people. In 2008, just two in ten students from the most deprived areas of Scotland obtained at least one higher or equivalent. Last year, we had doubled that amount to four out of ten. While progress is welcome, I believe that we can do more to increase the rate of change. To do so, the Scottish Government must work collaboratively with universities, colleges, local authorities and other organisations around the country, particularly the third sector. In my own region, West College Scotland demonstrates how this partnership works in practice. As a regional college, they have helped to implement policy by co-ordinating efforts across local authority boundaries. In fact, the college recognises that tackling the attainment gap does not start at college, which is why they work with local schools to develop skills and employability for the future. West College Scotland also offers programmes to 3,000 senior-phase students in 40 schools, with almost half of this education being delivered to students from the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland. This is a clear example of how the Scottish Government programmes such as developing the young workforce can and will deliver positive results. However, the attainment fund and the other measures are only parts of the answer. We need to ensure that our young people are taught in schools that are fit for purpose. That is why I am delighted by the priority that the Scottish Government has placed on renewing the school estate. Since 2007, we have built a refurbished one-fifth of all school premises across the country, more than 500 in total. I am also pleased with the work to protect teacher numbers with the Scottish Government providing £51 million of additional funding to support local authorities. Providing that funding, there must be recognition that the hiring of teachers is the responsibility of local authorities. That is why I welcome the fact that all 32 local authorities have now committed to protecting teacher numbers. I look forward to them honouring that commitment in the years ahead. As we move towards a parliamentary election in 2016, I am confident that the education policies that we have pursued in government will be vindicated with a new mandate from the electorate. Pupils have achieved record exam results and there are now record numbers of school leavers entering work, education or training. This year, we have seen students achieve 156,000 higher passes up 5.5 per cent from 2014, while advanced higher passes have increased by 4 per cent to a record level of 18,899. Recently, published Scottish Government figures also indicate that the number of young people not in education, employment or training has fallen to an all-time low. That progress has meant that the number of 16 to 19-year-olds not in education, employment or training has decreased across 30 of Scotland's 32 local authorities. The percentage of 2013-14 school leavers in a sustained positive destination as of March 2015 was 91.7 per cent, a rise of 1.3 per cent on 2012-13. Is Mr Maxwell got any critique of the education attainment gap in Scotland? Does he have any concerns about it or is everything just hunky-dory? Of course, I said at the start of my speech, I said very clearly, we're not doing enough, we're not going fast enough, we're not going far enough. There is work to be done but this is a generational change. We have generation upon generation of people from Scotland who have lived through poor attainment, who have lived through years of poverty. Your own party has been in power for decades, after decades, after decades in the UK and under those decades of Labour Party misrule. People in Scotland have lived in poverty and have not gained the attainment through educational opportunities that they should have done. You have nothing to teach us, Mr Finlay, when it comes to supporting the working people of this country, the poor people of this country who suffered under Labour governments for decades and I will not take any lessons from you on that matter. The modern apprenticeship scheme has contributed to those results and we have managed to increase the number of modern apprenticeships by 60 per cent since coming to power in 2007, well above the rates that we inherited from the previous Labour Liberal Executive. It's clear that the Scottish Government has a strong track record of delivering improvements to our education system and that's without mentioning that we've increased the available hours for free early learning and childcare by 45 per cent to 600 hours per year. Polling from earlier in the year reflects the trust that the electorate has in this Government. Not only did respondents trust the SNP with education more than all of the other parties put together. Voter trust for SNP education policies outstripped Labour by more than two to one. However there's always more to be done and I want to ensure that all of Scotland's young people have an equal opportunity to fulfil their potential. We've achieved a lot in these past eight years but I want this Government to have the opportunity to build on that success. Together we can continue to build an education system that not only gives our young people the best start in life but breaks the dreadful decades-long link between poverty and a lack of opportunity once and for all. I'm sure that Stuart Maxwell will want to correct the record at some point in his comments about Labour's record and power in relation to poverty, in particular child poverty, because it's on record that Labour did cut child poverty in Scotland and across the UK during its term of office. Indeed, since Labour left power, child poverty has increased here in Scotland and across the UK. On the motion today, what is depressing about the motion and the contribution from the Cabinet Secretary is her poverty of ambition and just how easily pleased she is. She seems to think that it is something to boast about. She wants to take the starting point in her motion since 2007. I remember the debate in the run-up to the 2007 elections and I remember the cast-iron guarantees that were given to teachers and to the electorate that teacher numbers would be maintained. Lo and behold, what has happened is that teacher numbers have indeed fallen by 4,000 across Scotland. Apparently now it's not the Scottish Government's responsibility, it's the fault of the local authorities. That was the case, Presiding Officer. Then why make that promise in 2007 if you either were not in a position to deliver it or if you had no intention to deliver it? But there is a further issue. I listened to George Adam's contribution where he said that we could have a debate about Remfrewshire Council if we want. Only in so far as let's look at what people say and what people do in action. George Adam, when he was a councillor and when the SNP was in power in the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government, voted to cut the number of teachers in Remfrewshire by 200. A deliberate action by the SNP council working with the SNP Government to have fewer teachers in Remfrewshire. So if it's the fault of councils and not the Scottish Government, then in Remfrewshire clearly the SNP council is to blame for that fall. But there's also a poverty of ambition and the cabinet secretary being easily pleased when it comes to the class sizes. Again we were told ahead of 2007 that class sizes would be cut by 2011. I remember questioning the First Minister and indeed other ministers at the time and we were promised that it would be done and yet I had documentary evidence that the officials in the Scottish Government told the universities had told the Scottish Government officials that it could not be delivered by 2011 and indeed might not even be delivered by 2015. The Scottish Government officials told the cabinet secretary and yet ministers still persisted that that would be delivered even though they were told and knew that it could not be done. So where is their ambition in terms of that when they knew that they could not deliver? By far the greatest sense of disappointment is when it comes to the debate about the deprived areas and more affluent areas and what's been done in the attainment fund. It's only taken eight years to waken up to this problem apparently. It's only taken eight years to give a commitment that something would be done and indeed what we see when they come to action is but a pittance in regard to the overall scale of the problem. Now, if you really wanted to match commitment by local authorities, the Scottish Government could match the £3 million that Renfrewshire Council is investing to do something about it but instead the Scottish Government has decided to give Renfrewshire Council something in the region of £240,000 to £250,000. Now, George Adam has also told this Parliament that the funding is going to the right places. Well okay, let's see what that means. Renfrewshire, my area, George Adam's area, £240,000, Dundee, a similar sized authority, £2,145,000, North Ayrshire, a similar sized authority, £1 million, £965,000. According to George Adam, the money is going to the right places. Will that be news to the people that George Adam represents in Renfrewshire who he believes do not deserve any additional funding, certainly? George Adam. Is Mr Henry saying that the fact that funding is going to areas like Fergusley Park that there's actually an opportunity to get that? Is he saying that that's a bad thing? Is he saying that the Scottish Government is actually making that opportunity there? Is he now saying that's a negative? Hugh Henry. I think George Adam's in many respects has the attention span of a goldfish and a lack of vision that reminds me of proverbs of 2918 because there is no vision and ambition. He asked about Fergusley Park. Well of course I couldn't complain about money going to Fergusley Park. But what I can't complain about is in my own area of Johnston, where St David's is getting a small amount of money and the school that sits in the same shared campus with it, Cochran Castle, is getting nothing. I can complain about Auckland Lodman Primary in Johnston Castle, one of the poorest areas in Renfrewshire, not getting a single penny. So I can complain that there is a disparity of funding in Scotland. There is insufficient funding, but George Adam can tell us and tell me and tell the people that he represents that it's right that Dundee gets nearly 10 times more than Renfrewshire. And it's right that North Ayrshire gets nearly eight or nine times more than North Ayrshire. And he is content with that. Well frankly, Presiding Officer, I am not content. And it's a disgrace that, as Ian Gray and others have pointed out, that the poorest pupils in our schools are still failing to get the life chances that those in better off areas are getting. Why is it that they're in Linwood? You have less chance of getting the exam results that you need to go to university compared to Houston just up the road. It's not because we have poorer teachers. It's not because the pupils are any less bright. It's because their life circumstances and life chances are not as good. And that's where this government is failing. Thank you very much. We now move on to Fiona McLeod to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. Seven minutes or thereby please. Thank you Presiding Officer. A few weeks ago in the programme for government debate, I made a speech talking about literacy from the earliest years and I gave many examples in that speech of the amazing work that the Scottish Government is doing on raising literacy standards for our youngest children from the very earliest days. And I'm sad that Kara Hilton's not in the chamber to remember the facts and figures that I gave in the last debate because we are working hard. This government is working hard. But during that debate I noted also that the importance of not just working with our youngest children from the earliest days through all their years at school, but what I noted in that debate was how important it is that the child is at the heart of the work we're doing, but that we have to work with the child's parents, the child's family, the child's carers in order to ensure that our literacy standards and our attainment gap is closed. So I wanted this afternoon, Presiding Officer, to build on that speech that I gave a few weeks ago and I think it's appropriate that the title for this debate is building on Scotland's educational success because we have had successes. Stuart Maxwell gave us the facts and figures of those successes, but he also said, which he said, I accept and our government accepts, all the way to our First Minister, that despite those successes, despite trying to break the logjam of generations of an attainment gap, that we know we're not finished and that it is our ambition, it is our vision to ensure that this is the generation where finally that gap ceases to exist. So there are many, many literacies that we have to tackle in our lives and reading is at the heart of them all, but there's health literacy, digital literacy, economic literacy, social literacy, emotional literacy, all these are important. They all come together to be part of ensuring that we are the best person that we can be. But today I want to talk about how lifelong learning supports our adults to help our youngest children. Lifelong learning is about the fact that human beings never ever stop learning. We never stop learning as individuals for ourselves, but when we are learning for ourselves, we're also learning and contributing to the learning of others. Again, I would refer to many of the Scottish Government initiatives where it looks like the child is at the heart of what we're trying to do, but it's built with their family, their carers and their supporters around them. I'm absolutely aghast that she's going to go on and talk about lifelong learning. I wonder if she's spoken to the Scottish Adult Learning Partnership to hear from them about the savage budget cuts that are happening in lifelong learning and in community education where much of that lifelong learning is happening. You're not having the real world. Mr Finlay, I'm sure that you have learned over the four years that I've been in this chamber with you that I like my evidence. Let me turn to adult learning. The Scottish Government recognises how important adult and community learning is. We've had the literacy action plan since 2012. We've had the statement of ambition on adult learning in 2014. In my speech at the beginning of the month, I quoted extensively from the Standing Literacy Commission's report of 2015. But when you come to community learning, can I just remind you that in Education Scotland's inspections of over 192 community learning sites, more than 80 per cent were inspected as good or better. We are working for lifelong learning because we as a Government absolutely believe that from the earliest days all through our lives this is the generation that we will ensure finally break what your party, what Mr Finlay's party, the Labour party, have presided over 50 years of neglect of education and the attainment gap. If I can return to my theme of the child at the heart with the family and supporters around it, much of the evidence for what the Scottish Government is doing in this area is borne out by research carried out by the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy. From the research that we found on that about the child with the family being part of how we break this problem that we have with 20 per cent of our families and individuals having poor literacy, you can go to Dundee and look at the Education Scotland-funded Learn with Fred project that is under way at the moment. At the beginning of that, and again I refer you back to, we need the evidence, we need the information, at the beginning of that 44 per cent of the adults said that they shared a book a few times a week with the children in their care. By the end of working with Learn with Fred 88 per cent were sharing books with the children in their care more than once a day, not a few times a week more than once a day. So it's about if parents literacy is developed then they have the confidence to help their child. So in conclusion, using the evidence from many, many of the initiatives and projects that the Scottish Government funds and supports, working in partnership with local authorities, with third sectors, but partnerships within the family group, that's how Scotland's educational attainment for all ages can flourish. Mr Henry, there is no poverty of ambition in this government. In the few minutes that are left to me, can I really sort of finish with, I've found this quite a bad tempered debate, but I've also found it a very illogical debate. I was thinking about the national improvement framework when the cabinet secretary said clearly, we need evidence so that we can evaluate if the £100 million investment in the attainment fund actually allows us to make and meet that attainment challenge. But then I listened to Mr Gray's contribution and actually wrote down some of it. Mr Gray said to himself, more consistent data is needed. He then attacked the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for introducing the national improvement framework. He then went on to say that the SNP was adopting Labour party policy because we need more consistent data in order to ensure that we're doing the right thing. He then went on to say, and I have it in quotes, that this government has a cac-handed attitude towards closing the attainment gap. I find that utterly offensive, but if anybody in this chamber is cac-handed, it has to be the opposition with their completely illogical attacks on the work that this government is doing now and will continue to do in the future. Thank you very much. Now Colin Stewart. Stevenson to be followed by John Pentland. Seven minutes or thereby please. Fisgama, Presiding Officer, and of course hopefully one member of the front bench recognises that I said good afternoon. The word math is a very important word not in English alone but in Gaelic where it means good. I'm delighted that the Cabinet Secretary and her contribution right at the top of her contribution said that we need greater public enthusiasm for maths. I'm seeing my Gaelic pronunciation as clearly amused the Cabinet Secretary and I'm sure entirely justifiably. Both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendments of course delete all reference to maths from the government's motion before us today. Mary Scanlon in her contribution emphasised the importance of maths but brings forward a resolution that deletes all reference to maths. Replacing it with numeracy, important, fair enough but numeracy was when in the motion in the first place perhaps this tells us that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats simply don't count in this debate. But I have to say that far from being the worst of legislators in terms of their ability to deal with maths and I want to draw your attention to the 1897 Indiana Pi Act that was House Bill 246 which sought to define in law a value for Pi and to define that value to be 3.2 rather than the 3.1416 etc. because it's a transcendental number and can it be defined in the real number system that we all know that in reality it is. That was passed on 6 February 1897. Fortunately the Senate in Indiana had another look at it after the bill went to the Temperance Committee which may tell us something about the mood of the representatives who passed this bill in the first place. So if we get it wrong here there's always the comfort that others get it even more wrong elsewhere when we're dealing with maths. The making maths count initiative is a very important one as the Cabinet Secretary said in her press release on the 3 September. Maths has a vital place at the heart of our curriculum and when I was a school student our deputy head of the school was Doc Engels, a Lancastrian and a mathematician and his duty was to impart an enthusiasm for maths among his pupils. So the very first thing he used to do with each class and I was one of the classes with whom he did it, we went round the school searching for infinity. We looked in the dustbins, we took the blackboards down and we even went out of the sports field to contemplate infinity. The point is that more than 50 years on from that it still is imprinted in my memory and I remember it. Of course in the sixth year he brought his tax return to the class and did that with us. Either to tell us how little he got paid for trying to impart mathematical principles and practices to us or to show us that there was some modest value in being able to add up numbers and minimise them. Perhaps as an inspirational teacher we most admired his celebration of our head teacher's appointment, he had gone for the job and not got it when he always used to come in on the anniversary of the head teacher's appointment wearing a black tie. The motion that is before us talks about mathematics, it talks about numeracy and I think that there is an awful lot that can be said on that particular subject and a lot of it is in quite unlikely places that we can use to infuse our school students. In particular I commend The Simpsons. The Simpsons is actually written by a team of writers most of whom are mathematicians and almost every episode of The Simpsons has a mathematical conundrum within it. It has, for example, got a sideways reference to Fermat's last theorem just after it had been solved, which has four numbers expressed to the power of 12 on a blackboard in one of the scenes. Of course if you use a calculator it shows that Fermat's theorem has been solved but the reality is the trick is there is a digit about 17 points across to the right that shows that it has not actually been solved. That sort of thing introduced into the classroom, watching The Simpsons being part of mathematics might be a useful thing for us to contemplate encouraging teachers to do because if we make mathematics relevant to real life we make mathematics a matter of enthusiasm for our kids. It also takes part in literature as well and Fiona McLeod has just spoken about literacy. Well Dante is infernal, one of the keepers of the gates of hell was Belfiga and he has his own special prime number named after Belfiga. It is 1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-6-6-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1. 0-0-0-1. 31 digets yn total. Of course, it is symmetric when you add up the digit summit that comes to interesting things as well. Mathematics is in religion. If you are a Hindu, you are guided by the Vedic texts. The Vedic texts actually discuss what the Hindus believe are the five times of infinity—the infinity of point, of line, of area, of volume and, of course, the infinity of time—and introduces the concept of 1 and of 0. There are many places in our culture and in our lives where mathematics can be used to make relevant to people the important thing, but perhaps the great Internet Mercen-Prime study is the best of all. The latest Mercen-Prime is, of course, 2 to the power of £58,885,161 minus 1. That is a really fascinating number to be getting on with, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much. I now call on John Fentland, followed by Sandra White. Presiding Officer, I would like to begin by thanking the First Minister for agreeing that the people of Scotland should judge the Scottish Government on its record, and in particular its education record, though presumably she will be hoping that people consider only the nationalist version. We have already been reminded of some of the facts that show that, over the past eight and a half years, the Scottish Government report card would have red-failed on teachers. In 2007, there were 52,446. In 2014, there were just 48,442. I am no doubt that even Stuart Steveson will be able to know that 4,000 teachers have gone, so not very good. In primary class sizes in 2007, the average primary class size was 22.8 for P1 to 3, and primary as a whole. In 2014, it was 23.3 for both, and the percentage of P1 to 3 in classes over 25 pupils rose from 25.8 to 26.7. As Iain Gray said, whatever happened to that manifesto pledge to reduce class sizes to 18? The school building programme was also heavily delayed, but several years passing before a brick was laid that had not been part of the Labour programme. Those who were students will also remember, and may never forget, the abandoned promises to replace student loans with means-tested grants and that whopper about paying off the debts of Scottish graduates. Of course, we should not dwell in the past. Not all the educational problems can be shrubbed off as being due to the management team now consigned to the back benches or, more lately, blamed on the UK or even past Labour administrations. Amazingly, such excuses are accepted as noted yesterday by Kevin McKenna. You know a party has attained a state of political nirvana when many people believe what it says is true merely because they have said it, and that was in the national so it must be true. Unfortunately, we still have skeptics in our schools. Many primary teachers, for example, are quite rightly very skeptical about the SNP plan to reintroduce national testing. Secondary schools are struggling to cope with the very messy introduction of the curriculum for excellence, as seen by the lack of advanced higher courses this year. Universities too have reservations about the plans for higher education. If colleges are relatively quiet, it is probably because the people most affected by the Scottish Government policy are the ones who are no longer there, the staff laid off and the students are unable to take the courses that have been cut with 140,000 fewer college students than in 2007. The SNP have ignored the importance of colleges in tackling inequality in education and employment. They trumpet their determination to tackle the attainment gap but it is a determination that has not been very evident today. There are more concerned with universal measures that benefit the better off more than the poor, rather than the measures that target those who need it. We know that over 6,000 pupils left primary school in 2014 for the poor standard of reading. The member for giving way raises the important subjects of both of colleges and of the support that we give to our students. Will he recognise that the 104 million pounds in support of the college students this year has been a record? For a good reason. Do you also recognise that you have been college priced by 140,000? We know that pupils from the richest fifth of households have doubled the chances of the poorest fifth to get one or more hires and go on to further education. The SNP has laterally decided that it must do more but its own version of poverty denial seems unable to accept that it should have done more over the last eight years. The attainment gap is not something that has suddenly been sprung on them. It is something that has been sidelined by their constitutional obsessions. Money to tackle such problems is of course welcome but it is not just about the money, it is about what you do with it. It is about the understanding that it is part of a wider problem in equality and tackling that. It is about having a coherent strategy to tackle the attainment gap that is factored into the educational decision making, not just an afterthought. We also need to make sure that the other issues are addressed in the same way, such as getting more students, especially girls and staff, to take extended courses and getting not just more teachers but also the right sort of teachers to address our educational needs. This requires long-term planning that has clearly not been evidenced in recent years. The current shortages are an incontrovertible proof of that, and to Andrew Constance's say, the Scottish Government is now beyond its original four-year period of office and is living and borrowed time. I hope things are getting better but please do not deny that there is still a lot of room for improvement because if you do not accept that your party has made mistakes, you cannot begin to address them. Many thanks. I now call on Sandra White to be followed by John Mason, the generous seven minute. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and following on from John Pentland and possibly the other parties as well, seem to start their contribution off by saying that this Government, this SNP Government, is basically crying from the rooftops how wonderful we are. I think it was John Pentland that said there, if you do not accept that you have more to do, then basically you have got to look at yourself again. Well, I would just like them to actually look and read the Government motion. In the Government motion it mentions notes however that the Scottish Government, even names the Scottish Government, notes however the Scottish Government needs to do more to raise standards for all children, securing its twin names of equality and excellence. Now, I should read and think about it. We do admit that things do other things, but I think we have done a good job so far. If I would just like to give you not a history lesson, but I will be betting my own background, I was very, very fortunate as a mature student to go back to college on an access course, very, very fortunate to get that opportunity. I see people coming into my office and I'm sure there's other MSPs that had, obviously you're not going to name a constituent, but a young chap who had a raw deal in life and I had great help from SAS and others to ensure that this young man, as I said, who had a really hard time in his earlier life, got the course that he wanted in Glasgow University and got the funding as well. I was overwhelmed and so with himself and others that he was managing to do that. I can't thank everyone enough that helped me to be able to go on through access to a further education to go on to Glasgow College, which is now Caledonian University, and to think all these years later I could still help that young man as other have to. I think that's a good thing to be able to do, so I just don't understand why this carping constantly all the time. We have admitted in the motion that, yes, the Scottish Government needs to do more and I think we've been pretty honest about it, but I would like to quite blow a trumpet, not from my perspective or even from the Scottish Government's perspective and George Adams had mentioned before and touched on a number of things. Scotland has the best educated population in Europe, not my words, not the Scottish Government's words, the Office of National Statistics. There was the best educated population in Europe, better than Ireland, Luxembourg and Finland. I mean, let's be realistic about that. Is that not something to be proud of? I should not be proud of that fact that we have done that, instead constantly, constantly saying that actually we've not done very well at all. What did that day or say to the pupils and the students in our schools at the moment? What is that day to the teachers in our schools at the moment? If you are just constantly, constantly saying that actually we're no good and yet here we have these figures, not from us, not from me, not from the Government, the ONS saying Scotland has the best educated population in Europe. I won't go on to mention other things that George Adams says, but there's another viewpoint as well. Scotland has four universities in the top 200, more than any other country per her a population, apart from Switzerland. Is that not a good news story as well? I'm not saying it because it's a good news story. I'm saying it because it's the absolute truth. We should be proud of the fact that we have these fantastic universities, we have the fantastic further education and the fantastic colleges. We should be proud of that. We shouldn't constantly ridicule the people who attend them and the basis of the people who actually lecture and teach in them. Now in Sunday, Presiding Officer, I attended the STUC Women's Weekend School and it was very good, lots of good questions, question and answer sessions and one of the questions that came up from that STUC weekend school was about school assessments. I was happy to answer that and I've been absolutely more than happy to thank the Cabinet Secretary because I did say when I was there that we're having this debate and I would ask the Cabinet Secretary the issues that they raise there and I do thank her very much for a clear and concise contribution which she gave about the assessments in regard to this issue and it made it very very clear and I think we have to get this out loud and clear. It's not about testing, it's not about testing, it's about attainment and ensuring that no matter what background you come from basically you can look at improving your literacy, your numeracy, your health, excuse me, and your well-being and that's what it's all about. So I do think thank the clarity in that particular aspect and I think it was Mary Scanan actually mentioned is to give the young kids in the primary schools the best start in life that they can have. What's the matter with that? Surely that's what we all want to give our kids the best start in life and can I just say as well out of the local authorities 30 local authorities already do assessments in the primary schools so I can't go over why this is so bad as you might call it a testing it's not testing as I said before I thank the clarity that was given by the cabinet secretary. Liam McArthur. I'm very grateful to Sandra White and I think what Sandra White is saying echoes very much what the cabinet secretary was saying earlier on in relation to standardised testing. I hear what the aspiration is but with the evidence and with the information is available on a school by school basis as EIS have pointed out it's difficult to see what safeguards are in place to stop this becoming league tables that will come into fruition. Sandra White. I think that's the point I'm trying to make it's not testing it's not league tables it's about giving kids the best chance in life and could I also just say Larry Flanagan in the very beginning you know in the first week 10 days when it was announced about the assessment said it was a good thing and then all of a sudden he changed his mind so I haven't spoken to Larry yet about why he changes his mind but certainly I will attempt to speak to him when I next see him. It's not about league tables it's not about that and I think we have to be clear on that matter it's about giving kids the best chance in life no matter where they are and I don't see how anyone can argue it in that point. Thank you very much Presiding Officer. Many thanks. If members take interventions could they please remember to repress the request to speak buttons. Join Mason to be followed by Neil Findlay. Thank you Presiding Officer and I think when we debate education in this place I think it is important that we need to try and get a proper balance in a number of ways on the one hand there's much to be proud about in Scottish education both in the past and in the present but on the other hand there has been and there is now room for improvement and I think the motion today strikes that balance very well celebrating what we're doing well but also stating that quote the Scottish Government needs to do more to raise standards unquote and mentioning balance also means we do have to accept a balance between local and central government both clearly have a role in education and especially for school education and preschool education and I don't think it serves anyone any great purpose by the one side blaming the other much of the time obviously central government does a more responsibility for colleges and universities I think we have to accept to the time of severe pressure on budgets we pretty well have to assume that all budgets are being cut and I know there are some exceptions but if the Scottish budget is being cut then broadly speaking then as the Scottish budget passes on there will be cuts across a range of sectors and we have to remember as I've said in previous debates that if we want to spend more on one sector then we have to think about spending less somewhere else. When it comes to local schools I want to mention one or two and I have to say I'm really impressed when I go into local schools in my constituency by what I see there. Just on Friday I was at Barnham and High secondary six special day along with Frank Macavite and Annabelle Goldie so that was a fun time and I have to say it was a very lively and able and engaged group of young people that were there that day a very large secondary six compared to what it used to be and really engaged in issues that are going on. Can I mention to the equal opportunities committee of which I'm a member and recently we've been carrying out a study we are carrying out a study on race ethnicity and employment but education has very much become a factor and has been touched on in that study as well and it's been especially interesting to see how BME young folk are in many cases doing better than white Scottish young folk in education at a range of different levels however when that feeds on to the employment situation we see that that is not actually feeding through and it does seem that many BME folk who could potentially be good employees are not getting into the positions that they might have expected. Now I accept that that is moving slightly away from purely education but I think there definitely is an education link there and I think it does go to show that counting educational qualifications is part of the picture but it is not the whole picture when we're looking at a young person moving through life into employment and so on. And of course we still do have a whole range of questions and I think it's good that we look at the national picture but I think there's always a danger that it becomes too simplistic. We want more graduates we would say but at what stage are we producing too many too many graduates in an ideal world would we actually want 100% of young people going into higher education presumably not and also the question of are we producing the right graduates in the right subjects. I was speaking to one of my colleges just recently over the summer and the point about how many people wanted to go into a particular course but that they also made the point that they as a college have a responsibility not to raise expectations and take too many people into one course when they know that at the end of the day there's only a certain number of jobs there so our colleges and their universities have a responsibility to train people for the jobs that we know are actually there. If I can just go back to the BME angle on education for a moment in July I took part in a panel on education on behalf of the Equal Opportunities Committee as part of African Challenge Scotland week in Glasgow and I have to say I find it very refreshing to see the enthusiasm especially of many from an African background and other BME families for education. I think many of our head teachers would say how much the schools have benefited from having youngsters from different backgrounds and families involved in their schools. It was interesting too at that particular event with an African audience to listen to some of the questions that were asked and which I think showed perhaps a lack of understanding sometimes about how the Scottish education system works and I just throw that into I think that we have to make sure we are explaining the strengths of the system and how it works to different people. For example the question as to why do we never fail children i.e. all the children from primary six moved to primary seven well of course for last that's normal but in some countries children are held back until they pass a certain exam. Now I note the point in the Government's motion about raising standards but the reality surely is too we have to remember that at a time of reduced budgets even maintaining standards on a reduced budget has to be considered an achievement. This was brought home to me yesterday when a constituent visited my office they have a link with education system in a neighbouring council and they told me that learning support teachers had been moved since the summer into ordinary class teaching now that's something I will be following up with that local authority but I think it does emphasise the difficult choices that local authorities are also having to make with restricted budgets. Now another issue that people have been parents have been bringing up with me recently has been the presumption of mainstreaming for youngsters with additional needs for example autism and again I would completely accept that some youngsters will cope better than their parents expect in mainstream schools but there is clearly a budget pressure in this area too and councils like Glasgow are obviously tempted to save money by mainstreaming more children and I think there is a danger too that we focus too much on what can be measured and it's good that we look at the big picture and how many are passing this exam and how many are passing that exam and so on but the danger is that that leads us to give less attention to young people on the fringes and that's just what I'd like to touch on in the last 30 seconds if I have that. I attended the awards ceremony at Cardinal Winning secondary in my constituency in June and that's a school for pupils with additional learning needs and I have to say what a tremendous job they do and I found it really moving to see the clear commitment of the staff and the pupils appearance sorry but this is a school with just 160 pupils and a much higher ratio of staff than most schools and if we are too focused on exam results or getting youngsters into HE then my fear would be that a school like that it gets left out at the edges I think I have to conclude there but just to emphasise that let's why we talk about the big picture let's not forget about the individual and what how we can help each individual be they two or age five or age 17 to really fulfil the best potential which isn't always university but the best thing that they can do thank you many thanks I now call Neil Findlay to be followed by Gordon MacDonald thanks very much Presiding Officer and I want to declare an interest at the start as a teacher for nine years before entering this Parliament and a member of the EIS teaching union still I'm a member and I want to pay tribute to the EIS for their new document that they've produced face up to child poverty a very practical piece of work that they've given to every one of their members in Scotland about how they tackle issues of poverty in the classroom and I know the excellent work that teachers in Scotland are doing helping children and learners achieve fantastic things anybody who visits any of our schools for a length of time will see innovation occurring across a very wide range of subjects but teachers know better than anyone else the challenge of tackling the inequality and educational attainment that we are speaking about today and many teachers feel their achievements are occurring in spite of government policy not because of it they know that they're under staff they know that there are 4,000 fewer teachers in the classrooms in the staff rooms than when they this government came to power they see the classroom assistants and the support staff disappearing from our schools too if you look at the Audit Scotland report and that just takes a snapshot of three years 22% fewer business managers 12% fewer lab assistants 5% fewer admin and 22% fewer quality improvement officers I wonder if there's any link between falling attainment and the fact that all of these people have gone from our schools because schools can't function without these individuals you need the business manager to take all the stress and pressure of the head teacher you need the lab assistants to set up the labs in the classrooms before teaching the admin staff to do all the various admin duties in the school and the quality improvement people the officers to keep driving up standards if you take them out of the school then inevitably somebody else has to try and do that work and all of that I think is one of the real tragedies because in my experience it's the support staff in our schools that are often some of the most trusted members of staff for the pupils the pupils often build up a level of trust and have a rapport with these very skilled staff members helping pupils mature and learn and cope with their learning of course but also the social and emotional side of school so cuts to teacher numbers but also to these vital support posts are a really backward step I would argue and the reality is teachers are under huge pressure instead of workload being reduced what we see is workload increasing we all know teachers who regularly in school until eight or nine at night who go injured in the school holidays or at weekends two or three friends of mine are janitors in school and they talk regularly about teachers being in school all the time they can barely get them out the door at night and that's not a one-off it happens time and time and time again the situation is not good for the teacher for their own families and ultimately not good for the pupils that they teach either neither is it helpful in tackling the inequality and attainment levels that we see continuing and president officer local government is central to tackling that inequality in the constituency of the cabinet secretary herself the council has had to cut 89 million pounds from its budget over the period of this government 89 million pounds that's resulted in services being reduced across the board including education councils no option councils in every area in scotland left with no option on teacher numbers the council needed 42 teachers to meet the demands set by the government and yet they were funded for seven seven teachers yes cabinet secretary my memory serves me right westloth in council will benefit to the tune of two million pounds if they need the teacher number commitment now that's more than enough for for nine teachers don't you think Neil Findlay but you're the first offer that the cabinet secretary made to the council was to fund seven teachers and then the council has to jump through hoops in order to in order to adhere to the demands set down centrally by the government that's not local democracy the council should make those decisions but that's what was imposed by the cabinet secretary and she should be embarrassed about what's happening in her own backyard that she can't even provide adequate funding for the schools in her own constituency and the difference we see in educational attainment is far wider than just simply what is happening in our schools the government wheel out a stream of new initiatives some of them very worthy given the appearance of doing something about attainment when in essence they know fine well that their record is not good if you just look at some of them student data grants cut by 46% lowest bursaries in the UK for the poorest students if we look at 140,000 college pure college places drop out rates the highest in the UK 5% cut in the schools budget over just three years increase and spend than less than Osborne and schools we see the attainment gap growing literacy levels falling we see appeals for state pupils down by 77% 77% child care expensive and difficult to access this is not i'm not the time this is not a record the cabinet secretary should use to pat herself on the back and whilst all that is important educational and health inequality will lonely be addressed when we invest in all of the other areas that impact on it and social housing when we deal with exorbitant rents when we tackle fuel poverty when we increase living standards and provide social work support and mental health services and pupil support to help pupils learn and we cannot address these inequalities if we continue to rip the heart and budget out of local government which is the front line in the fight against poverty and inequality thank you i now call Gordon McDonald to be followed by James Kelly thank you Presiding Officer the Scottish Government has put closing the attainment gap at the heart of its policy on education and announced that they will fund the Scottish attainment challenge to the tune of 100 million over the next four years in order to close the gap in attainment between children from low income and high income households. The First Minister visited my constituency last month and announced at the Westerhales Education Centre that the Scottish attainment challenge fund would be extended to three primary schools in my constituency, Scythill primary, Clomynstone primary and Canalview primary, taking the total number of schools benefiting from the fund to more than 300. It was significant that this announcement was made at the WEC as back in 2009 the school had some of the worst exam results in Scotland just 1% of fourth year pupils passed five standard grades at credit level but that dramatically changed in 2012 when the figure rose to 21%. The WEC put its improved outcomes down to a system of teacher mentoring to address attainment and behaviour with each teacher supporting about 15 young people each for about 25 minutes every morning. Encouraging the pupils, checking their homework, looking at agreed targets in different subjects and closely monitoring their record of attendance and behaviour. Dr Edward Sozo of the University of Strathclyde's School of Education writing in this autumn's Teaching Scotland magazine identified one other key approach. I found that the majority of Scottish parents from low income households aspire for their children to attain a university degree. This evidence that most parents have a high educational aspirations explains why approaches that effectively engage parents are successful in closing the attainment gap. In order to replicate that success in other schools we need teachers with the time to commit to assisting the pupils or have structures in place to engage with parents. Now the Labour amendment have highlighted that there are 4,000 fewer teachers than in 2007 but don't mention the drop in pupils or that the Scottish Government do not employ any of the teachers in our schools. In analysing the drop in teacher numbers it's interesting to note that the largest drop by any local authority is Glasgow City Council. Between 2007 and 2014 Labour-controlled Glasgow employed 567 fewer teachers, around 10 per cent of their total teacher workforce and 14 per cent of the total reduction in teachers mentioned in the amendment. But proportionally they weren't the worst. Labour-controlled Inverclyde has 17 per cent fewer teachers than in 2007. However the real culprit here is a Conservative Government whose austerity measures are decimating public sector budgets across the UK. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in their report Closing the Attainment Gap in Scottish Education highlights the link between poverty and attainment. They identified that lower attainment and literacy and numeracy is linked to deprivation throughout primary school and that parental social economic background has more influence than the school attended. The Scottish Government recognises this link and that's why it has retained education maintenance allowance when it was abolished in England. This benefits 35,000 school pupils and college students every year and from January 2016 an additional 22,016 to 19-year-olds will be eligible for the weekly grant. Families have always have also been supported as social security cuts hit our communities with the Scottish welfare fund helping 270,000 people across Scotland including 15,000 in Edinburgh. But it's not just about supporting people, we need to get young people into work instead of having generations that are the same family unemployed. Recently published figures highlight success in this area with the number of young people aged 16 to 19 not an employment education or training in Scotland at an all-time low. The official neat figure is 16,270 down from the previous year's figure of 9,970 and down from the 2003 total of 27,790 with nearly all 32 local authorities seeing a drop in their area. Youth employment in Scotland is at a record high and a number of modern apprenticeships has increased by almost 60 per cent since 2007. Much of that achievement of getting young people into positive destinations is down to the schools, teachers and the pupils themselves. The introduction of the curriculum for excellence has been a major step forward that gives teachers more flexibility, provides a broader education for young people and sets higher standards for achievement than ever before. Despite the media headlines, this has been another successful year for Scotland's young people with record numbers of higher and advanced higher passes with students across Scotland achieving a record 156,000 higher passes this year up 5.5 per cent on 2014. Advanced higher passes have increased by 4 per cent to a record level of 18,899 plus qualifications recognising life and work skills such as national certificates and national progression awards are up a massive 23 per cent. Figures published by UCAS on 4 August show a 3 per cent increase in the number of Scots securing a place at university compared to last year, and the 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas are more likely to be accepted to university under the SNP than in 2007. There is more to be done, there are budgetary challenges, but if educational outcomes and positive destinations are the measures of success, then Scottish education has continued to improve and deliver for Scotland's young people. I now call James Kelly to be followed by Colin Beattie. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Many other people have taken part in this afternoon's debate. I am ambitious to see a successful education sector in Scotland. I see in my constituency in Rutherglen, in Cambuslang and Blantyre. I enjoy going to the school prize-giving evenings where you see the success of local schools and the commitment of the teachers, the classroom assistants and all the staff who put in through the years. You see that that success manifests itself on those evenings. I see in my own family some of the success of some of that commitment that was put in. We can all agree that we want to see strong schools, expertly qualified staff and pupils coming out of those schools that are able to go on and fulfil their dreams and make a contribution to an ambitious Scotland. However, I think that we need to be honest about the debate that takes place. I think that some of the contributions from the SNP benches have sought to gloss over some of the issues that we have within our education system. The reality is, and the Audit Scotland report underlines this, that we have less money spent on our education system, less money spent in schools. When you spend less money, then that has consequences. Therefore, we have… I am grateful to Mr Kelly for taking intervention. I would never seek to gloss over any of the issues, but he accepts that in the city of Edinburgh, where the council has to pay out just a short of £40 million in service charges every year to service PFI contracts, that is a real barrier to the investment in education that all of us would wish to see. Just in terms of building projects, perhaps one of the issues that the Scottish Government should look at is its own pipeline in reference to the Scottish Futures Trust. Just last week, at finance questions, we heard a number of members raise concerns about how projects have been delayed. I think that the latest figures show that eight educational projects have actually been delayed, so perhaps the Scottish Government should pay greater attention to speed up the projects that they have actually got responsibility for. In that way, we would ensure that our pupils have buildings that are fit for the 21st century. That is in the fall-up to Jim Eadie's, because he has a constituency interest in the fact that the secondary schools in South Lanarkshire are equally a big bill there that is an impediment to investing further in education. James Kelly. South Lanarkshire Council has got an excellent school building programme. £812 million invested in primary schools and £312 million invested in secondary schools. The council has the foresight to promote that investment. A lot of it is funded from within its own budget. Again, the Audit Scotland report underlines that, because it recognises the importance of education within its budget and the importance of school building, the reality is that, if the Government is going to, as it has done, make cuts in education, then that will have a consequence. We see it in reduced teacher numbers and we see it in the literacy figures that many have quoted. Six thousand pupils leave in primary school with not an adequate level of literacy. Literacy is really important to a person's development, because the amount of books that they can read, the amount of words that they can accumulate, not only helps in their ability to communicate in a written form, but also orderly. Something that has become more and more important in the workplace. The other thing that the Government need to look at is the deficiency in the short forms in STEM subjects. There was an exchange between Mary Scanlon and Angela Constance about that. Mary Scanlon had quoted figures of greater than 10% drops in IT and engineering places. The Cabinet Secretary countered where the figure had gone up since 2007 and sat down quite satisfied with herself. I do not think that what Mary Scanlon was doing was that, even if we accept both sets of figures as correct, the figures might have gone up initially since 2007, but they have gone down in the last year. We need 150,000 additional engineers by 2020. That shows that we have a real problem just now that we are not addressing and the Government is not addressing. One of the things about this debate is that a lot of people on the SNP benches have spoken about budget constraints. The issue is whether we are ambitious for Scotland and ambitious for our schoolchildren and our college pupils. How do we expand that budget? How do we move it forward? One way of moving it forward is to raise the top rate of tax when we get that power, which will shortly come to this Parliament. I think that that is an issue that the Government should take on. There has been a real silence from the benches on that. If we really want to be ambitious, if we really want to move on and address the attainment gap, the literacy levels, then let us tax those that are better off, those that are able to take those tax rises on their shoulders. That way we can make a real investment that will make a real practical difference. Summing up, Deputy Presiding Officer, I think that we need more honesty about the debate around education. I think that the Government benches that they are right to laud their successes, but they should acknowledge some of the issues that are at play in the education sector, and they should also acknowledge some of their responsibilities in terms of the budget choices that they have made, and look at how they can expand the education budget. Many thanks. Our last open debate speaker before I turn to closing speeches is Colin Beattie. In these times of Westminster-imposed austerity, the financial challenges Scotland has faced over the past few years are clear. Foodbank usage is at record levels, and an estimated additional 100,000 children are expected to be living in poverty by 2020. That is even before we consider the impact of the next round of cuts during 2017 and 2018. At such levels of poverty, we will do nothing but exacerbate the attainment gap, and yet even in this negative climate, the Scottish Government has taken positive steps in placing education at the very heart of the programme for government. When we compare education pre-2007 with 2015, the progress made is clear. For example, most educational experts would agree that a child's education has vastly improved when class sizes are smaller. In 2006, more than 15,000 primary 1 children were in classes of more than 25. That figure is now down to 500, and work continues to reduce this figure even further. We have increased the annual funded entitlement of early learning and childcare to 600 hours, a rise of 45 per cent in hours for three and four-year-olds since 2007. This entitlement helps around 120,000 children a year, saving families up to £707 per child per year, savings that I am sure hard-pressed parents sorely need. Further, this entitlement is being rolled out to the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, reaching around a quarter of all children in that age group over the next year. Universal provision of free school meals for primaries one to three has also proven popular with parents, with over a quarter of a million pupils now registered. Providing school meals has a wide range of benefits for all children. Firstly, it takes away the stigma of such meals, potentially reducing bullying. Secondly, it provides a positive impact on nutrition and health. Thirdly, it saves families of every eligible child at least £380 a year. The 2010 evaluation of the English pilot of free school meals found that increasing entitlement was strongest among pupils from less affluent families and among those with lower prior entitlement. Therefore, the benefits of these meals are clearly recognised even out with the Scottish perspective. We are also setting out new initiatives to enhance primary school level education. Launched just last month, the Read, Write, Count, Literacy and Numeracy campaign will encourage parents and families to include reading, writing and counting in their everyday activities. All children in primaries one to three will receive a gift of books and literacy and numeracy materials to help with this. As something of a voracious reader myself, I strongly welcome this campaign, and I'm not alone. Sophie Mockson, the Deputy Director of Scottish Book Trust, recently stated, gifting a pack of high-quality books and literacy and numeracy resources directly into the hands of every pupil in P13, coupled with strong community outreach, will make a fundamental contribution to the lives and prospects of all children in Scotland, and especially those in our most disadvantaged communities. There's been some discussion of the introduction of standardised testing for primary school children, and we need to be clear about this. Such testing will not be a return to the national testing previously used, nor will it be used for the purposes of league tables. These assessments allow us to introduce greater consistency to the curriculum of excellence, increase support for teachers, provide reliable evidence of a child's progress, and crucially drive further improvements in our education system, ensuring that we're getting it right for every child. Of course, we must ensure that we support our young people through all stages of their education. The Making Maths Count programme, which was announced earlier this month, will aim to improve maths and numeracy attainment in both primary and secondary schools. A new group with a focus on preparing and sharing maths resources will be established to give greater support to secondary-level maths teachers, and an extra million pounds will be invested over the next three years to extend the roll-out of numeracy hubs. At secondary level, this past year has been another successful one, clearly reflecting the tremendous efforts of Scotland's pupils and teachers. Across the country, students achieved 156,000 higher passes, not only a record, but also an increase of 5.5 per cent in 2014. Advanced higher passes increased by 4.4 per cent to a record level of 18,899 in the same period. The Scottish Government strongly committed to college education, and I was delighted last week to put forward a motion highlighting the conclusions of a report by the Economic Modelling Specialist International. This report found, amongst other points, that society will receive £6.30 in benefits in return for every pound invested in Scotland's colleges, the average annual return on investment of 16.4 per cent, taxpayers see an average annual return of 15.6 per cent on their investment in the sector, and the corresponding benefit-cost ratio is £5.70 in benefits returned for every pound in costs. Edinburgh College, which has a campus in my constituency, is working with employers to create academies such as the East Lothian Hospitality and Tourism Academy. The aim was to create career opportunities for young people in the senior phase of curriculum for excellence, and the model proof is so successful that it has been expanded into a South East Scotland academies partnership involving a total of four academies, with a fifth due to be added next year. We also recognise the importance of universities in an educational context, and we have four universities in the world's top 200, more than any country but head of population, with the exception of Switzerland. Two of our universities are ranked in the top 100. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to visit Queen Margaret University and see the exciting plans that they have submitted for a commercial and innovation hub in Musselburgh. This hub will no doubt provide education and economic benefits for the local area, and I look forward to watching the progress of that hub. In conclusion, education is one of the most challenging aspects of government, and this is especially so in the current period of austerity. Without a doubt, education is one of the key routes out of poverty, and this Scottish Government must do what it can with the powers of its disposal to ensure that every child has the same opportunities throughout their education, and my thanks go to all those whose efforts have contributed to the impressive statistics that I have had the opportunity to quote today. Thank you very much. I knowed a couple of members and missing from the chamber who contributed to the debate, and I do hope to return soon. I thank you very much. I found it an interesting debate. I think it's achieved a historic first. I listened with interest as first Mr Henry invited Mr Adam to comment on something specific to Paisley. In this instance, the number of teachers. Then Mr Gray invited Mr Adam to comment on how he would use powers that he did not yet have—in this case, the 50p tax rate—and in both instances, Mr Adam seemed uncharacteristically shy about responding to both invitations. He did, however, I think, bemoan the fact that there was a bandying about of statistics, and that was perhaps inevitable. I think that there was certainly truth on both sides. As Nicola Sturgeon herself appeared to accept when she took over as First Minister last year, she seemed intent on drawing a line under what had happened in the past in relation to education, an acceptance of previous mistakes, a belief that things needed to be done differently, an acknowledgement that, for all the talk about being ambitious for Scotland's children and young people, the eye had perhaps been taken off the ball. Why else, indeed, would an attainment fund appear after eight years in office? I recall even the Education Secretary herself making less than convincing defences of the track record of her predecessor. The Minister now criticises the Opposition for focusing on things that need to change. Sandra White even seemed to suggest that we were talking down staff, teachers and pupils in their achievements. This is utter nonsense. It is what Opposition parties should be doing, holding Government to account on what they have done and planned to do, not what they say they have done. As John Mason, I think, in what was a very reasonably argued contribution, what he would accept is that it is also what more SNP-backed benches themselves should be doing. I wholeheartedly agree with much of what Sandra White had to say in terms of the great strengths of our education system. We have excellent teachers, excellent lecturers, researchers and staff. We have fantastic schools and colleges and world-class universities. We have pupils and students who regularly excel. We are all agreed, however, that we are not doing enough for those who do not excel, those whose chances seem to be too often preordained by circumstances beyond their control. Not enough does not mean doing nothing. I have to say that when the Cabinet Secretary said that we will not overpromise and under the lever, I could not help but think of the First Minister's commitment to close the attainment gap completely. On Reid's right count, as Colin Beattie referred to it, an excellent initiative, I think, supporting other initiatives such as Reid on Get On that I think are making a difference in terms of improving literacy rates, for example, making maths count. Again, an initiative that I would wholeheartedly support. I think that Stuart Stevenson, however, seems more concerned about the sins of omission in the Opposition amendments than he did in the sins of omission within the Government motion, which seems to make no reference at all to literacy. The early years collaborative, an excellent initiative extending early learning and childcare. I would argue that the Government could have gone further. It still falls short of what is available to most disadvantaged two-year-olds in England, but nevertheless progress. It also, I think, underscores the need for a targeted approach, and the fact that the Government is prepared to accept that. Contrast that with the attainment fund, which, while welcome, still is area-based, albeit with 50 or so primary schools added on top. It ignores the needs of children living in poverty in other parts of the country. There can be few, if any, schools in any part of the country who do not have at least one child living in poverty. I give way to the minister. I am grateful for some of the positives that he mentioned around the Government's very successful record. I just wondered how much of an input he had into when his party was in Government in the UK about the legacy that his Government will leave around 100,000 children potentially going into poverty through the welfare cuts. If we focus on the powers that we have within this Parliament—actually, the progress that we have made—the SNP hark on about the welfare cuts, having set up a welfare commission that seems to have come forward with the proposals that bear a very striking resemblance to what the UK Government has put through at a UK level. As Ian Gray said, the criteria in the attainment fund seems to be changing by the day, given the impression that ministers are making it up as they go along. Having moved away from an area-based, strict area-based approach, I hope that ministers will now go further in ensuring that all children, wherever they live, and we need the help to get the support that they deserve. I would argue that the people of premium provide such an opportunity to encourage ministers to at least pilot it. A rethink is also necessary on national standardised testing. The information will be available on a school-by-school basis—lead tables—and teaching to the test seems to be an inevitable consequence of that. The reason why Larry Fanagan's opinion on the change is that he is not convinced that the safeguards that the Government has put in place are worth the paper that he has written on. For all the talk about closing the attainment gap being an absolute priority, as many speakers have made mention in this debate, there are aspects of Government policy that cut right against that. For example, college cuts in courses and staff. The reduction in student grants replaced with loans is placing more of the debt burden on students from poorer backgrounds. That is not in keeping with the aspiration. The other areas where we are invited in the motion to join in congratulating the Scottish Government seem, at times, utterly bizarre. The class sizes of 26 and primary 1 look at a good deal less impressive when set against the commitment in the SNP's manifest of a class size for P1 to P3 of 18 on teacher numbers. Stuart Maxwell referred to those in his comments, but there are concerns about the way that this locks in specific numbers for each council, allowing absolutely no flexibility. As we heard from council representatives earlier this month, job losses in other support staff are a consequence of that, replicating what we are seeing in the police service. There is excellence in our education system, but as everybody has acknowledged in the debate so far, we are still failing too many of those from the poorer backgrounds. That does not solely rest on the shoulders of our schools or our colleges. I welcome the commitment from the Scottish Government to attach the highest priority to closing the attainment gap. In the past, on childcare, for example, ministers have been persuaded to go further, not necessarily as far as I want, but persuaded to go further. On the attainment fund, they have shown a willingness to change their approach. Again, not far enough, but still a willingness to change approach. I hope that the Government will heed the calls made this afternoon during this debate, so that we do build on the success and extend that success to all children and young people in Scotland. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Last month, when the First Minister put her neck on the line, as she described it, she spoke it in numbers. She said that 500 new schools have been built since 2007, record numbers are passing at higher and advanced higher, record numbers staying on in S6 and record numbers in meaningful school leaver destinations. Today, the Cabinet Secretary for Education has repeated that in her motion and also added that there are more young people entitled to the highest level of early learning and childcare and that the number of primary one pupils in classes of 26 or more has fallen by 97 per cent. Ian Gray asked in his contribution if that was all that the Scottish Government could come up with. I want to take on that theme about whether it is numbers that matter, because in the First Minister exchanges back in March 2013 and December 2013, the First Minister then and the Cabinet Secretary of that time both said that we should be talking about the quality of the delivery rather than talking in numbers. The Cabinet Secretary hinted at that herself this afternoon. James Kelly and Liam McArthur have been very careful to say that there are some very good things happening in Scottish education and, of course, that is true, there are. It is very important that we take time to congratulate those who are responsible. On this side of the chamber, we contend that those are being hampered by the lack of policy commitments to change the quality of delivery that is required to raise standards across the board. Let us look at childcare and nursery provision. In quantitative terms, excellent progress is 412 hours up to 475 and further progress in the Children and Young People's Act, which puts it up to 600. However, the fact remains that 50 per cent of eligible children in Scotland cannot receive their nursery entitlement because they were born in the wrong month. We have yet to have a satisfactory explanation from the Scottish Government about why that discrimination is allowed. Likewise, the SNP made very clear in February this year that they would double the spending on childcare from £439 million to £880 million. However, can we have some information about how staffing and infrastructure will be adjusted to meet the demand so that we are delivering the quality that is being asked for many of the young people's groups across Scotland? When it comes to schools, the SNP now has a very welcome emphasis on literacy and numeracy and closing the attainment gap. That has been forced upon them by the shocking statistics that tell us that one in six people still leaves school functionally illiterate, that Scotland is moving backwards when it comes to literacy and numeracy, and when 31 per cent of schools do not achieve at least a good award when it comes to inspections. The Scottish Conservatives have warmly welcomed the U-turn made on testing, but that testing must be qualitative. It is not about more testing, it is about better testing, and parents want that meaningful and consistent insight into how progress is made and how well their child's school is doing year on year, not necessarily against other schools but against itself. On the curriculum for excellence, there is cause for concern too. Politicians representing all sides of the chamber heard the heartfelt feelings of a student at the recent St Andrews University debating competition two weeks ago because he was arguing in his school because of the weak delivery of the curriculum for excellence. There was actually a lack of subject choice and a lack of the rigor required when it came to examination assessment. Only this morning at the education committee, Dr Brown of SQA was not clear in her answer about what went wrong in this year's new higher mass exam and how the moderation of both setting and marking of exams will continue to deliver the very high standards that we all expect. I would urge the SNP to be very careful about trumpeting the fact that it is the number of higher passes and advanced higher passes is about the quality of that delivery. On that theme, the curriculum for excellence identifies four objectives to develop successful learners, confident individuals, successful contributors and responsible citizens, which I assume were intended to be very much about the quality of the delivery. It is important when we are talking about education that we relate the changes to those four outcomes because if the experiences and the outcomes are improving, then perhaps we are making some progress. Perhaps we should be engaging with employers and community leaders about just how well our young people are engaged in being civic-minded, more tolerant, more outward-looking in their perspectives, more culturally involved as well as being better economically engaged, because those are the real measures about the quality of education. Finally, if we come to further and higher education—let me be very clear about this when it comes to colleges—because we know exactly what is happening to these institutions, despite their extraordinary collective efforts to provide top-class education, much greater accessibility and more support for people who are often furthest removed from the market. They have seen their real-terms funding cut, they have seen cuts in college places, they have seen lecturer numbers decrease, and they have had to suffer real pressures on their reserves. We know now that the higher education sector is facing exactly the same threat. I was very interested in what Sandra White was saying about our top-class universities. Yes, they are top-class, so let's not interfere in the way that they are governed, because quite clearly they are doing a jolly good job and they do not need some unnecessary interference from this Government that thinks that it can control every aspect of higher and further education. The quality of education is what matters most. I think that everyone across Scotland agrees that there is still much to be achieved in this regard, particularly when you look back at the success that Scotland used to enjoy. When resources are so tight, people wonder why on earth the SNP is handing out free school meals to those from middle-class families who can well afford them, why they want a universal named person system instead of ensuring that the money is spent on the most vulnerable, why there is a universal approach to Gaelic when it is essential that much more has to be done in Gaelic to find teachers and head teachers in the indigenous areas and why there is meddling in university governance when there is no evidence that there is a problem with the current system. It is time for the SNP to make sure that we are talking about quality, not quantity, and to alter its approaches, to build on the success in education and deliver on the right priorities. I welcome the opportunity to be and celebrate the contribution that students, professionals and education are making in Scotland today. George Adam was right that this debate should not be about celebrating success in partner cells on the back. We have seen the motion that the debate should be about the challenges and the priorities that we see in Scottish education today. Educational inequality has to be the top priority. Educational inequality is a symptom of a deeper problem of poverty, which we need to address. The focused nature of any programme is vital. In Cumbernauld, the variation in educational attainment is massive. In the council ward of Cumbernauld North, the child poverty level is 8 per cent far too high, but when you cross over the footbridge across the M80 into Cumbernauld South, a two-minute walk, child poverty jumps to a staggering 23 per cent. I am sure that we will have examples right across the country. Hugh Henry pointed out the difference between Linwood in Houston, the short geographic distance, but the massive difference in levels of poverty and then educational inequality. I accept the point that has been made in the debate today that educational inequality comes from other issues where pupils have English as a second language and where pupils have additional support needs, where pupils have speech and language therapy needs. However, we have to accept that the big difference that we could make is in eradicating poverty and the impact that that would make in educational attainment. The difference in child poverty impacts on the educational attainment of young people, which can stop them from breaking out that vicious cycle of poverty. The measures that we agree to tackle attainment must be focused on our most deprived communities. As a result, James Kelly had said earlier in the debate, Scottish Labour will use the additional revenues from a new 50p tax rate, redistributing from those who can afford it to those who need it most to invest additional resources over and above the Government's proposals to tackle educational disadvantage. We would double the number of teaching assistants in every primary school that is associated with the 20 secondary schools that face the greatest challenges of deprivation. We would introduce a new literacy programme for schools and recruit and train literacy specials. Literacy was a key issue raised by a lot of speakers in the debate today, but it was missing from the motion that we have added in our amendments. I hope that the Government will support that at decision time. We would recruit and train those literacy specials to support pupils in the associated primary schools and first and second year pupils in each of those 20 secondary schools that we have identified as facing those greatest challenges of deprivation. We would also offer support to parents so that they can learn with their children and we would introduce a special literacy support programme for looked after children. The Cabinet Secretary as well spoke specifically about maths, but I think rightly so the debate broadened out much further than that, to cover all STEM subjects. I think that one of the key points raised again was that by 2020 we would need 150,000 more engineers in Scotland by 2030. Over 7 million jobs in the UK are expected to depend on science skills and those science roles are exactly what we need. High quality, high skilled, highly paid jobs that other emerging economies struggle to compete with our highly educated workforce. By 2030, the 4 and 5-year-olds who are starting in primary school this summer will already be in work or possibly in the final years of university. If current spending levels continue, the same pupils with the same academic ability, the same attitude for science in England will have enjoyed over 10 years of state education with 80 per cent more spent in primary school and 27 per cent more in secondary school spent on science equipment according to the recently published report from the Learned Societies group. They also reported that 98 per cent of Scottish schools depend on external funding for science equipment, which has a bigger impact on deprived communities where parents struggle to make that contribution to their child's education out of their restricted household budget. Neil Findlay raised the issue of support staffing, particularly on technicians and science support staff. He rightly stated that there has been an overall drop in the number of science technicians with one authority cutting staff by over 50 per cent. As he said, these are the staff who maintain or repair what practical science equipment schools actually have left. They are the ones setting up the science equipment, the science labs outside of teaching time, setting up those complex experiments that teaching staff just do not have the time for, and it is hard to see those numbers increase as budget cuts continue to bite and we see the school pupils get less and less of that practical experience equipment for those jobs. There are also issues in schools and local authorities when it comes to computer science, which was raised in the chamber today in the shortage of computer science teachers. We have heard from committee before where local authorities do not even identify whether they have a computer science teacher. Often it is computer administration teachers teaching word processing, spreadsheet skills are then reclassified as computer science teachers, where it is those key skills in coding, software development that pupils need skills in those areas to take up the high-paid jobs of the future. As I have said, we would use that additional revenue from a new 50p top rate of tax, redistributing resources from those who can afford it to those who need it most, invest that additional resources over and above the Government's proposal to tackle educational disadvantage and ensure the pupils who face the greatest economic and educational challenges have the opportunity to achieve the qualifications that they need for a career in science, maths, engineering and technology. There are also other issues related to poverty and inequality that are impacting on educational attainment such as the increase in the use of private tutors and the use of placing requests. There has been a 300 per cent increase in the use of private tutors in the last year alone in wealthier families of the ability to give their child an extra boost compared to children and families who cannot afford private tuition. That can be used when a child is struggling on a particular subject or to help in the run-up to exams. In itself, that is not a bad thing, but where is that support in the run-up to an exam? Where is that support when a pupil is struggling in a particular area from that poorer background? The other areas that are impacting on educational attainment more harshly and more deprived areas are around college places. Colin Beattie said that this Government is committed to Scotland's colleges. That is okay to say, but Joe Biden said a paraphrase. Do not tell me what you are going to do, show me your budget. From the Government's actions on Scotland's colleges, it is clear to say that this Government is not committed to Scotland's colleges and the impact that that is having on pupils from more disadvantaged areas on adult lifelong learning and people getting their second chance bridging that attainment gap later in life. That the Government's action on college courses is failing them on all counts. I ask members to support the amendment in the name of my colleague Ian Gray at decision time and start to work together towards addressing the issues in our amendment. Many thanks and I now call on Angela Constance to wind up the debate. Cabinet Secretary, you have about 12 minutes or so. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This afternoon's debate has been feisty in parts, but I think sometimes that is okay and we have to accept and understand that we all get passionate about education. Of course, the mood was somewhat lightened by Stuart Stevenson's contribution, which I have to say that I greatly enjoyed. I want to thank him for making a particular mention of the Make Maths Count campaign. Our evaluation of the past and our actions for the future will be informed by the evidence, a mature and sober reflection of what works and what does not, and of our successes, as well as an accurate assessment of the challenges that we continue to face and where we have not yet succeeded. As a Government, we have always been open to learning from others, whether that is from home or abroad or elsewhere in these aisles. As Cara Hilton knows, five councils do good work in and around literacy, and that is not the first time that I have paid tribute to the work that they do. In terms of looking further afield, we have been informed by the work that has went on in New York and Ontario are, of course, only two examples. We have looked at the London challenge and, indeed, the challenge at Camrew as well, because I, too, met the Welsh Education Secretary when he was last in Scotland learning about the strengths of our curriculum and of teaching Scotland's future, but the reality is that Wales trails behind Scotland in terms of PISA, and, of course, they had a critical OECD report last year. But the reality is that the evidence shows that the attainment gap is narrowing under this Government, and, yes, there is far, far more to do. Can I say to Hugh Feth Henry that I am most certainly not one of these women that are ever happy, and for anybody that has ever lived or worked with me, they can, but testify to that. When you compare school leavers from the least and most disadvantaged backgrounds who attain at level SQF 5, the gap has fallen because the gap in 2007 was over 42 per cent. That gap is now 26 per cent, still too, too high, but a movement in the right direction nonetheless. And, yes, the least deprived are twice as likely to achieve at higher level, but in 2007 and 2008, they were four times as likely to achieve at a higher level. And when we look at children with additional support needs, looked after children, children with social emotional and behavioural problems, whether it's in terms of their qualifications or of their school weaver destinations, the improvement is upwards. But we concede and would never demure from the fact that there is much, much more to be done. The OECD recognises the importance of assessment as part of a modern and effective education system, and of course we await the OECD's report of our broad general education and the evidence that that will present to us. But with the national improvement framework, which standardised assessment is one part of, what we are trying to ensure is that we have a deep shared research-based understanding amongst professionals and education authorities in relation to how we break the cycle of disadvantage and underachievement in order that resources and time are directed appropriately. And in terms of standardised assessment, we are not returning to the high stakes national testing of the past. We're looking to the future where teacher judgment remains central and our commitment to the curriculum for excellence is absolute because education is indeed about thinking outside the box, and it is not, most certainly not, about ticking a box. I'm very grateful. I mean, I don't doubt the sincerity of the cabinet secretary, indeed, Sandra White, in her contribution made the same point, that the aspiration here is to provide information that informs decision making. But actually, where the information is available on a school-by-school basis, what is it to stop people taking that, turning it into league tables that may start informally but over time then become more formal? Cabinet secretary, what I was saying to Mr McArthur is, yes, there are concerns about the misuse of data, and no, we do not want to return to crude league tables because that is not in everyone's interests. But the national improvement framework is a draft national improvement framework, and we have given an undertaking to engage closely with all stakeholders, and in particular, with reference to how we publish and what we publish and when we do that. Can I say to our colleagues in the EIS and indeed to Mr McArthur that nothing is impossible? It might be hard, but nothing is impossible. For the sake of our children and their future, we shouldn't let anything become impossible. The reality is that we need to know the gap in every school, in every classroom before we can begin to close that gap. We have been talking, Presiding Officer, for 50 years, and we have been trying to tackle any quality in our education system for 50 years. The reality is that we have still not closed the attainment gap. I have to say, Presiding Officer, that is about to change because building on our strong foundations of the last eight years and building on our successes, whether it is in early years, curriculum for excellence, developing Scotland's young workforce, college reform or the billion pound investment that we make in our higher education institutions, we have a strong platform to springboard to future success. I would like to remind colleagues that this Government was re-elected in 2011 based on our manifesto, which was to maintain teacher numbers in line with pupil numbers. Teacher numbers have been broadly stable since 2011. Yes, there was a small dip last year, and it was this Government that took swift action and sought to invest £51 million to maintain teacher numbers the length and breadth of Scotland. Of course, it is important that nearly 60 per cent of primary school pupils are now in class sizes of 25 or below. Primary 1 classes over 25 are almost eradicated. I listen with interest to the Opposition proposals as to what we should be doing with regard to the 20 classes across Scotland. Less than 500 pupils compared to 15,000 pupils in 2007 who were in primary 1 classes of bigger than 25. I wonder what they really propose that we do with those 20 classes, the length and breadth of Scotland, who the reality is because of building works or they are in some sort of transitional arrangement. It is unusual for the Opposition to be taking such a heavy, heavy-handed approach. That is fairly straightforward. We passed a law here on class sizes. It should be enforced. We passed it five years ago. You've had plenty of time to enforce it. That's a really interesting issue, Mr Gray, and I think it gets to the heart of the matter about accountability in Scottish education. I look forward to your proposals about how that legislation is enforced with our colleagues in local government. On a point of agreement, I think that where we are agreed is on the power of the early years of early learning and childcare. This Government has done more than any other Government north or south of the border. I reiterate my earlier comments that it is not just about the quantity of hours. It is indeed about quality. That's why we have moved forward with an ambitious programme, but it is on a managed basis to ensure that our youngest citizens continue to get the best quality of early learning and childcare. I want to spend a moment on colleges. Collegies are indeed delivering for poorer communities, and they are absolutely key to widening access into higher education, building on the 50% increase in 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas that are going to university under the watch of this Government. That shift to full-time courses that lead to recognised qualifications and enhanced employability has contributed to the lowest level of 16 to 19-year-olds, not an education employment or training. Needs is at the lowest figure it has been since records began for that statistic. The fact that we are focused—not to the exclusion of part-time courses, but that we are focused on getting young people equipped for skills and the skills required for the workplace has contributed to the highest level of youth employment in a decade. Of course, female youth employment in Scotland is 10% points higher than it is in the UK. I am proud of this Government's record, because we trailed a place with opportunities for all, and unprecedented guarantee in these islands to our 16 to 19-year-olds of a place in education or training. I am very proud of that commitment to opportunities for all, and it is one that we stand by. Our colleges deliver 16% of provision to the 10%-most-deprived areas. 29% of college students come from our 20%-most-deprived areas. The number of women, the number of young people and the number of people over 25 studying full-time courses has increased. Of course, despite austerity, Mr Griffin, this Government still spends more than colleges have ever done. We spend £510 million, and we spend £526 million. What this Government has done is that we had the courage to reform public services despite austerity. Labour failed to reform public services, and it failed to reform the college sector at a time of comparative plenty. The same old carpent from the sidelines, speaker after speaker from the Labour Party—nothing new to offer in education. Of course, they do have the handy knack of calling for action that we have already announced, the Scottish attainment challenge and the national improvement framework being but two examples. I want to be clear when it comes to outcomes for young people, whether it is exam results, school leave or destinations, the record low needs level, 526 schools rebuilt or refurbished compared to their 328, or when you compare our offer to young people, whether it is free university tuition, educational maintenance allowance retained and indeed extended, record student support and the further education sector, up by 30 per cent in real terms. Opportunities for all, modern apprenticeships exceeding our minimum income guarantee to higher education students, students who have the lowest debt to any in the UK. I am proud of this Government's record, and of course it is far, far superior to that of our predecessors to the previous Labour Scottish Executive. Of course, we are not setting the barometer for success that we are aiming far, far higher, and we are not looking to the past or to past Labour Governments, we are looking to the future. While, Presiding Officer, like our colleagues and local government, like many families, the length and breadth of this country, this Government is living with the reality of Westminster austerity, but nonetheless we won't let our ambitions for our children be constrained, whether that by financial austerity or indeed by the constitutional settlement. And whilst we do deal with austerity day in, day out, as the party of government, it's our job, it's our purpose to seek to overcome, to remove barriers to education, to tackle poverty, to smash glass ceilings, find sustainable solutions to 21st century problems and make dreams come true for the many children and not the few. Thank you. That concludes the debate on building on Scotland's educational success. It's now time for the next item of business, which is a consideration of motion number 14313 in the name of Dolford Spatrick on the Scottish Parliament disqualification order 2015 draft. I call on Dolford Spatrick to speak to and move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, a debate on the draft Scottish Parliament disqualification order is an established item of business in advance of every Scottish parliamentary election. However, the draft order that I seek to approval of today is the first such order following the changes brought in by the Scotland Act 2012, giving Scottish ministers competence for this task. And that's obviously a welcome and sensible reform and members will be aware that we anticipate this Parliament receiving full competence over all disqualification matters going forward. Section 15 of the Scotland Act 1998 sets out the circumstances in which a person is disqualified automatically from membership of the Parliament, for example by virtue of being a judge, a civil servant or member of the armed forces. In addition, section 15 provides an order making power to disqualify specific office holders from membership of the Parliament thereby ensuring separation between the Parliament and the holders of various public offices so as to help to reinforce the independence from one another. The last order made under this power took effect in advance of the 2011 elections and it's therefore appropriate in advance of the next election that we update the 2010 order. The policy objectives is to remove, update and add entries to reflect the relevant appointments which have been abolished, renamed and created since the making of the 2010 order. The opportunity is also taken to update the Scottish order in terms of relevant office holders in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I would like to put on record my thanks to Scotland Office officials who work closely with my officials in coordinating input from across UK Government departments. Following the order laying, I wrote to the Presiding Officer, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission and the leaders of the main political parties on 25 June to draw their attention to the Government's laying of the draft order and in particular to its effect and scope. The criteria for disqualification are officers of profit in the gift of the crown or ministers, positions of control in companies, in receipt of government grants and funds, officers imposing duties which would prevent their holders from fulfilling parliamentary duties satisfactorily and officers whose holders are required and to be seen to be politically impartial. I hope that colleagues will join me today in approving the draft Scottish Parliament disqualification order 2015 and, with a view to bringing it into force well in advance of the elections on 5 May next year, and I move the motion in my name. Thank you, Mr Fitzpatrick. The question this most will be put to decision time. The next item of business is consideration of a parliamentary bureau motion. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 1432 on the establishment of a committee. Thank you. The question this most will be put to decision time to which we now come. There are six questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is at amendment number 14311.2, in the name of Ian Gray, which seeks to amend motion number 14311, in the name of Angela Constance, on building on Scotland's educational success, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14311.2, in the name of Ian Gray, is as follows. Yes, 33, no, 82. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. Can I remind members that the amendment in the name of Mary Scanlon is agreed to, the amendment in the name of Liam McArthur Falls? The next question then is at amendment number 14311.1, in the name of Mary Scanlon, which seeks to amend motion number 14311, in the name of Angela Constance, on building on Scotland's educational success, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14311.1, in the name of Mary Scanlon, is as follows. Yes, 46, no, 70. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is at amendment number 14311.3, in the name of Liam McArthur, which seeks to amend motion number 14311, in the name of Angela Constance, on building on Scotland's educational success, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 14311.3, in the name of Liam McArthur, is as follows. Yes, three, no, 81. There were 32 abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is at motion number 14311, in the name of Angela Constance, on building on Scotland's educational success, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 14311, in the name of Angela Constance, is as follows. Yes, 100, no, 16. There were no abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 14313, in the name of Joffith Smytrick, on the Scottish Parliament disqualification order 2015 draft, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 14322, in the name of Joffith Smytrick, on the establishment of a committee, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. That concludes decision time. We now move to members' business. Members should leave the chamber, should do so quickly and quietly.