House of Commons
Wednesday 6 March 1996
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Education (Scotland)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Wells.]
9.34 am
Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus, East): I appreciate the opportunity to raise the issue of education in Scotland, but what I really want to refer to is the crisis in education in Scotland. I am happy to see that hon. Members from all parties are in the Chamber, and I hope that they will all have an opportunity to express their views on a matter that concerns everybody in Scotland. Education is deeply rooted in our traditions, and I hope that there will be enough time to allow everyone who wishes to speak an opportunity to do so.
For centuries, education has been a Scottish priority.It is embedded in our national culture. Embedded in that culture also is a reverence for learning and an endeavour to provide the highest quality for all.
The traditional philosophical strengths of the Scottish system are there for all to see--a national comprehensive unified system from elementary through to university level, allowing each person to develop their abilities to the fullest, irrespective of wealth, background or any other consideration; a system staffed by an all-graduate-trained professional work force; a Scottish generalist flexible approach that is nowadays ideally suited to our ever-changing modern world, allied to an egalitarian attitude that ensures that the highest quality of education is available to all as of right.
In the Scottish tradition, high-quality education applies across the nation. The well-being, quality and accessibility of our education provision is of national and strategic importance to Scotland. In the past, we educated ourselves out of poverty. I want us now to educate ourselves into prosperity as we approach the future. Scotland's comprehensive education system is a model for success, but sustaining and building on it will require new resources.
The principle of equality of access to education is now under threat, and only an independent Scottish Parliament with real control over our resources will ensure that Scottish priorities once again hold sway. The Scottish education system is somewhat battered, but it is basically sound and strong. It is simply under-resourced, and the most serious threat faced by Scottish education in the long term is persistent underfunding. According to a survey carried out by the CBI in 1994, spending on secondary schools was only 88 per cent. of the OECD average, while the figure for primary schools was 78 per cent.
Everyone acknowledges the importance of early years education in Scotland, but we have a poor record of providing publicly funded pre-school education compared with other European countries. I want that record to be destroyed. I want Scotland to be at the forefront of Europe, instead of trailing behind other countries, as we are now.
There is a mood of crisis in Scottish education. There is frustration, as Scottish local authorities are made to carry the can for the Conservatives' botched reorganisation of Scottish local government. There is anger among Scottish teachers and parents at the fact that the children of Scotland will suffer as a result of the spending cuts forced on Scottish local authorities. That anger and frustration--if the Minister did not know about it--spilled out on to the streets of Edinburgh on Saturday 24 February, when 40,000 parents, teachers and pupils marched to protest against the cuts that threaten Scotland's education system.
It is clear that services will be put under severe strain. The Association of Directors of Education in Scotland anticipates that total cuts in education funding will range from 2 per cent. to 7 per cent.--possibly even more.
The predicted total cuts are estimated to be around£95 million. This week's changes give some authorities £38 million to hand back to council tax payers, with£30 million concentrated on only 10 authorities, but that does nothing to protect vital services. Education is, by definition, the single largest local authority service, and the largest provider of employment in local authorities. As such, it has been the victim of underfunding, not just this year, but in previous years. Reorganisation has merely brought to a head and served to deepen a crisis that was already affecting the funding of our education system and the morale of our teaching profession.
The Scottish School Boards Association has estimated that a local authority with an average education budget of £60 million will be facing a typical 10 per cent. cut. That would result in the loss of between 90 and 180 teaching jobs and around 40 non-teaching posts. The quality of education for Scotland's young people cannot help but suffer as a consequence. I am informed that, for an average council, the cuts will mean £4 less per primary school pupil and £7 less per secondary school pupil to spend on books and equipment.
I had the honour of listening to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Shimon Peres, in this very establishment describing his absolute policy of providing a computer for every Israeli child. In Scotland, we cannot even provide our children with books, never mind computers. That is a massive irony for one of Europe's major computer-producing countries. The percentage of books given to our pupils in Scotland is one of the lowest in Europe. It is about time that we caught up with the 21st century, instead of trailing. Scotland's once proud record can be restored only if we give our pupils the very best in modern technology and an advantage when they start out in their school career.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
It was probably a slip of the tongue on the hon. Gentleman's part, but as I understood it, Mr. Peres said at the meeting that he wanted to provide "access to" a computer for every child.
Mr. Welsh:
I am happy to stand corrected--he did indeed. But I think that his long-term ambition would also
The cuts that the Government have forced on local authorities will mean between £100,000 and £200,000 taken from school maintenance budgets, larger classes, older equipment and reduced course choice. They will mean that services such as transport for school pupils will be cut to the statutory minimum and that special education needs provision will be cut, particularly on the residential side. During the debates on local government reorganisation, we were all worried about meeting the needs of children with specialist needs. The Minister must ensure that those needs are met, because those children are particularly vulnerable.
Language tuition will suffer, with the loss of foreign language assistants. They have always been a unique and special feature of the Scottish system. There will also be a reduction in exchanges--the opposite of Scotland in Europe. Scotland has always been internationalist-minded and had a connection with Europe, but we will find that language tuition will suffer because of the cuts.
As well as jobs being lost in teaching, there will be reductions in supply cover. At a time when greater and greater demands are being placed on the teaching profession, with the five-to-14 programme and "Higher Still", teachers face a reduction in the educational development service and service support. There will also be delays in the implementation of national guidelines--for example, for devolved school management. There will be a reduction in grants and subsidies to voluntary organisations and increases in charges for school meals, letting and music instruction. Schools operate not in a vacuum but within the wider community, and the cuts will affect the community and a school's relationship with it.
Charges for nursery education are being introduced, and thus, for the first time in Scotland, there is a retreat from the principle of free provision at the point of delivery. That is the situation to which the Government have brought us, and it is unacceptable.
A reduction in the community education service, including youth work and adult education provision, must follow from cuts. The closure of outdoor education and arts centres is threatened. For many people, community education is an access to the mainstream education system, and the access will simply be denied if that provision dries up or is limited.
There will be a reduction in support for key preventive education strategies--for example, in drugs, HIV and health education. That comes at a time when the Scottish Secretary is supposed to be spearheading a ministerial task force on drugs--his other policies are producing the opposite result. It is no wonder that 40,000 parents, teachers and pupils took to the streets of Edinburgh in protest. If that did not get through to the Minister, nothing will.
The general secretary of the biggest teaching trade union in Scotland, the Educational Institute of Scotland, Mr. Ronnie Smith, wrote to the Secretary of State on29 November and 21 December 1995, seeking a meeting between the right hon. Gentleman and the EIS. It took nearly three months and the largest demonstration of its kind ever seen on the streets of Scotland's capital to evoke
a response from the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), and even then, it was only for him to offer his junior Minister. That says everything we need to know about the importance that the Government attach to Scottish education.
In each of Scotland's major cities, we can see where the axe is poised to fall. Glasgow estimates job losses, increased class sizes and reduced subject content. Glasgow's education department states that there will be
In Aberdeen, a £24.5 million shortfall exists between the cost of providing services to the city and the capping limit determined by the Scottish Office, which will result in a 10 per cent. cut in its base budget. Aberdeen council states that education will have to bear a significant share of the cuts--a minimum of 6 per cent., or £6 million, taken out of the system. It goes on to say:
It also says:
The council also points to a significant impact on the private sector resulting from reductions in buildings and maintenance contracts. Education also affects other businesses within the community that it serves.
In Edinburgh, £2.3 million will be taken out of the education budget in net terms--1.5 per cent. of the total education budget will be lost. Community education will be reduced by 5 per cent., with the threatened closure of the theatre arts centre and the drama centre. By the end of the year, 100 fewer teachers will be employed in Edinburgh, although again there will be no compulsory redundancies, thankfully.
In Dundee, the education budget will be cut by 5 per cent., with the closure of two secondary schools, four primary schools and a £1 million reduction in expenditure on property maintenance. Happily, there will be no compulsory redundancies, but there will be an overall reduction of 30 teaching posts in 1996-97, and a further reduction of 20 teaching posts in the next two years.
In addition to the damage being done because of the Minister's budget, the Government are creating a blight on curricular development. The funding crisis, allied to resentment by teachers because of their excessive work load, are badly affecting the five-to-14 programme and "Higher Still". Research shows little progress with the environmental, expressive arts and religious and moral educational elements of the five-to-14 programme.In secondary schools, there may now actually be a regression away from that programme towards the traditional secondary 1/secondary 2 curricula, with some implementation in English and mathematics, but little in other subject areas.
The five-to-14 programme is a curricular revolution, rather than a development of existing principles, which is not easily compatible with the existing secondary school approaches to S1/S2, or with the pattern of subject-based teaching at secondary schools. There can be no meaningful implementation in secondary schools until the new curricula are in place in primary schools. If the reform had been adequately resourced, the morale of
teachers was higher and there had been no funding crisis, the reform might have had a chance. In the absence of those conditions, I am told that the future of the five-to-14 programme looks bleak, and that "Higher Still" may well turn out to be an expensive paper reform that will never be implemented.
So far, the Government have made no commitment to the on-going and recurrent costs of implementing "Higher Still". I give them fair warning that, from my reading of the mood of teaching profession, unless new and adequate resources are forthcoming, teachers will refuse to implement "Higher Still", which is part of a long line of Government-imposed changes. I participated in some of them when I taught in a secondary school and when I worked in further education.
The system has had a series of changes, such as the raising of the school leaving age or the implementation of the modular system in further education. The changes were introduced and back-up resources were promised, but they took two, three, four or five years to arrive.In the meantime, education staff were left to cope. Cope they did, but they have reached the end of their tether. They are saying that it is not on for the same thing to happen with "Higher Still". I hope that the Minister is aware of the teachers' mood, and is going out among the schools, because that impression has been given to me strongly. Will he make it clear what extra resources the Government will make available for the changes? Unless there is an early change of direction, the new Scottish qualifications authority may end up presiding over two entirely different examination systems.
The Scottish education system has its own well understood fundamental principles that the Government are endangering with the imposition of alien ideas, unwanted by teachers or parents. There is a consensus across the whole of Scotland on common goals, ideas and educational philosophy, but the Government are not part of it. It is time they listened rather than dictating events to suit themselves.
The Government's proposed nursery voucher scheme will soon have to be debated. Concerns are being expressed in another place that that scheme is the thin end of the wedge.
How long will it be before the Government start to regard the market as a solution to the problem of educational provision instead of concentrating on the mainstream bulk of Scottish education? That is where improvements and changes should be made--to the national system that provides education for 98 per cent. of our children. Nursery and pre-school education should be a natural part of Scotland's national education system, with places available for all three or four-year-olds whose parents wish them to have pre-school education.
At the upper end of the scale, there is chronic underfunding of the Scotland's world-renowned higher education system. Scottish further and higher education has been suffering from a near 30 per cent. real terms reduction in unit funding over the past six years, culminating in 1995 with a 4.5 per cent. cut, in addition to a forecast overall cut in resources of some 10 per cent. That is all against the background of a 50 per cent. increase in student numbers since the late 1980s. The very success of further and higher education has been turned into a problem by the Government.
The higher education sector has reached a near 40 per cent. participation rate in Scotland--the Government's official target for the year 2000. Yet its reward has been projected further cuts of 10.2 per cent. in real terms by 1998-99, on top of the 28 per cent. cuts over the past six years. The Secretary of State is responsible for that situation. He may try to pass the buck over primary and secondary education to local authorities, but he cannot duck--there is no hiding place--his cuts on higher education.
Funding for individual institutions will be announced on 14 March, but the overall funding package is already known, and has caused widespread concern. Resources for 1996-97 have been cut. The Minister seems pained by that. He obviously does not know that resources have been cut by £7 million on top of the 3 per cent. efficiency savings, with reductions for future years of around 4 per cent. He might not know that, but the providers of education do, because they have to cope with it, as they have had to cope with the £6 million cut in last year's capital budget.
The effects of the Government's funding failures are already to be seen in deteriorating buildings, poor access to equipment, under-resourced libraries and overworked staff. One university reports that units of resource per student have declined by 30 per cent. in the past seven years. That is all happening in a service that is a major income earner for Scotland.
In 1993-94, Scottish universities attracted £536 million to Scotland from overseas students, through research income and in their role as employers and users of local services and businesses. Universities are major players in city economies. For every £100 they generate, they create an extra £79 of economic benefit elsewhere. For every 100 full-time equivalent jobs, they add 124 elsewhere. The Government's failure to invest in education is holding back Scotland's economy and creating unemployment, while their downright barbaric attitude to student grants is limiting access to universities for young Scots.
"closure of schools on an unprecedented scale and within a time frame that is driven by budgetary constraint".
"redundancies and closures can be avoided in year one but given the reduction in compensation for the mismatch problem, additional burdens and the need to avoid a similar situation next year, significant rationalisation in 1997/98 is unavoidable."
"a number of council staff jobs have been lost equivalent to at least 10 FTE or £300,000 cost."
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