LABOUR SPOKESPERSON STANDS UP FOR TEACHERS AND TEACHING

Pam Duncan-Glancy, Scottish Labour’s spokesperson on education in the Holyrood parliament, was standing up for teaching in a big debate this week

We all remember our greatest teachers, and I want to take a minute to remember two of mine. Mrs Stewart taught me English. She made sure that I passed and could go to university, including by supporting my request for additional help to scribe in exams. Mrs Devine was the support for learning teacher who had high aspirations for everyone in her additional support for learning base, including me. She let me do my physio there, and, while I was doing that, she took the time to tell me that people like me could go to university. She encouraged me to go. She talked about what she could do to help to make that happen, which she then did. I want to pay tribute to them and teachers across Scotland who are doing their best every day to support pupils to achieve their best and be their best. To them, I say thank you.

However, I wonder whether the teachers who changed my life would today have the support that they need to do that for the next generation. The truth is that teachers are now expected to do far more work with far less time, money and support from their Government, and I regret that we are now seeing the dire consequences of that. Teachers are leaving the profession early, probationers are less likely to be offered permanent jobs, burnout is at its highest level in years, workloads are soaring and teacher mental health is suffering. In addition, because of the Government’s failure to fulfil its promises, teacher non-contact time is still too high and class sizes are still too big. In Glasgow, it is so bad that one teacher has asked whether we are determined to “burn out the existing staff while making school environments more stressful and stretched”.

Another said: “I cannot, in good faith, recommend teaching as a career any longer. I would leave for another profession if I wasn’t sustained by my commitment to the pupils”.

I thank those teachers for their commitment to their pupils, but it is unacceptable that good will is the only thing that is now retaining teachers.

Because of the Government’s cuts to local authority budgets and its delay on reform and on action on behaviour, current and future teachers have become disillusioned. Just over the weekend, a leading developmental psychologist spoke of the harm that that is causing and what the lack of support for teachers does to them and young people. Adults cannot support children if we do not support them. They cannot pour from an empty cup. Axing teacher jobs and not supporting teachers and school staff has consequences. We know that it will hit our most disadvantaged students the hardest, and there is no doubt that it will set back aims to bridge the attainment gap.

To make matters worse, in Glasgow, the cuts do not stop at teacher numbers—the essential MCR Pathways programme is at risk, too. That programme supports young people and doubles their chances at positive destinations. Cutting it will “let down our young people”, as one teacher has said. Cutting it would fly in the face of the idea that we can keep the Promise or close the attainment gap, and the Government should be ashamed that its colleagues in the council are even considering it.

The same can be said for cuts to the developing the young workforce co-ordinators programme. A teacher said of those cuts that “attacks on the jobs for DYW co-ordinators is an attack on the life chances of our children”. I agree.

The cuts are not the result of an assessment of what is best for our children. Indeed, any such assessment, if it existed, would prove quite the opposite. The cuts are a consequence of 17 years of failure to properly fund local authorities, and they reflect an abject failure of successive cabinet secretaries, including the current First Minister [John Swinney], to prioritise education.

Teachers have called the cuts short-sighted and have said that pupils who require the most support will be largely abandoned. Parents have said that the cuts will mean that there are no teachers to help with literacy and numeracy, to run parent and child activities or school trips, or to facilitate sporting competitions. There will be no music service, no new resources or subscriptions to learning services and no teachers to provide additional support to the pupils who need it.

On that issue, the Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee’s report, published this morning, laid bare how bad things are. It found that access to services outwith the education setting has diminished, that services in schools are now being delivered by school staff without appropriate support and back-up, and that there are issues in recruiting pupil support workers, teachers and other specialist staff that are having an alarming impact on the provision of additional support for pupils. The committee’s report says, and I agree, that that is “intolerable”.

For nearly 10 years, the Government has said that education has been its number one priority, but is the extent of that priority and the Government’s ambition for young people in Scotland deep cuts to the core provision of education and the talented people who work within it? We, on the Labour benches, will not sit back and accept that. Our ambitions for Scotland’s education system and Scotland’s young people go far beyond that. We will not watch the next generation of young people be let down by their Government’s failure to stand up for education.

That is why we call on the Government to act, to recognise that local authorities need sustainable funding, to publish a plan to address gaps in the teaching and education workforce, to protect staff in schools and, crucially, to prevent teacher job losses. We, on these benches, believe that education can lift the class, glass and step ceiling in the way of opportunity. We cannot do that with more of the same, so we say that it is time to stand up for teachers and stand up for the next generation, because Scotland deserves so much better than this.