Education Tracker: Debate By Paris Gourtsoyannis 01.12.11: Youth unemployment
Outgoing Labour leader Iain Gray chose the topic of youth unemployment for his last appearance in a debate, saying: “I chose this subject and to lead the debate in order to make it clear that, for us on this side of the chamber, there is no challenge more important or more urgent. “The unemployment figures that were released this
month were a milestone and an alarm call: 100,000 young Scots between the ages of 16 and 24 have no work,” Gray said. “That is the highest figure ever recorded and is a national crisis for Scotland because of the profound threat that it poses to the future prosperity, equality and fairness of our society.” Gray accused the First Minister of rejecting cross-
party offers of support on the issue, saying that when he met Alex Salmond after the May election, “I got no sense at that time that the First Minister had a plan for jobs or a real interest in working together on one. Indeed, there seemed to be little sense of urgency then, although it was clear six months ago where things were going.” Raising a theme that was repeated by the
opposition benches throughout the debate, Gray attacked cuts to college budgets: “The Scottish Government should admit right now that cuts of over 20 per cent to our colleges can only make this problem worse.” Salmond responded for the SNP, saying that “the
Government claims no monopoly on wisdom, and no party in the Parliament has a monopoly on concern.
FMQs
08.12.11: Teacher numbers
Labour leader Iain Gray challenged Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on education statistics released by the Scottish Government that showed a drop in the number of teachers in Scotland. “This SNP Government have now cut almost 4000
teachers out of Scotland’s schools – over 700 in the last year alone,” Gray began. “Only one in five new teachers can get a full-time permanent job. Class sizes are up, truancy is up, and applications to university are down. Two years ago, Fiona Hyslop was sacked for less. Is Mike Russell just going to be allowed to let our schools decline?” Sturgeon replied: “The agreement between the
Scottish Government, COSLA and teachers’ unions was the teacher numbers should not fall below 51,131 at this September census. In actual fact, teacher numbers at the September 2011 census were 51,286, higher than the level set in that agreement and of course teacher numbers reflect the size of our school rolls. “Iain Gray might want to reflect on the fact that
primary one class sizes are now at a record low, down from 23.1 in 2006. There has been a 90 per cent reduction in the number of primary one classes over 25 in under a year. Primary one to three classes down
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www.holyrood.com 12 December 2011
I do not believe for a second that any MSP comes to the Parliament without an obligation relating to, and an understanding of, the threat to society that youth unemployment poses.” The First Minister said that the government had
ensured that apprenticeships and training schemes would be supported by public contracts, and listed a number of private firms that had taken on graduates or apprenticeships as part of their investment in Scotland. The exchange between John Mason (SNP) and
Jenny Marra (Lab) was almost as heated as between their leaders, with Mason suggestion that “schools placed too much emphasis on the academic”, leading to a poor work ethic amongst young people, prompting an angry response from Marra. “I invite him to come up to Dundee and speak to
some of the young people to whom I speak every week, who are desperate to work—the young men who have left school and are desperate to get into the construction industry but cannot because there are no jobs available for them,” Marra said. “I am angry that, since two weeks ago, when
the unemployment figures came out, cybernats continually tweet me with their answer to the unemployment figures, which is that young people in this country do not want to work. That seems to be the message continually coming from members on the Scottish National Party benches and from those who tweet and put things on Facebook in their names.”
from the position we inherited from the previous government, and in terms of teacher employment, an extremely serious matter, there is improvement – 66 per cent of post-probationers in employment as opposed to 58 per cent last year. “Yes, there is more work to do but thanks to the
efforts of this education secretary, things are moving in the right direction.”
Events diary
12 December Copyright and IPR Issues and the College Sector Scotland’s Colleges Web conference, 16.00-17.00
14 December Work Placement Co-Ordinators’ Forum Scotland’s Colleges Argyll Court, Castle Business Park Stirling, 9.30-12.30
15 December Skills Cross-Party Group meeting Committee Room 2, 12.45-14.45, Scottish Parliament
20 December Connected for Learning: Flipping the Classroom Argyll Court, Castle Business Park Stirling, 9.30-15.40, Scotland’s Colleges
Committee 29.11.11: Tuition fees
The Education and Culture Committee heard from the Chairman of Universities Scotland, Alastair Sim, and the President of the National Union of Students (NUS) Scotland, Robin Parker, on the subject of tuition fees for non-Scottish UK students. The pair were first asked by Liz Smith (Con) what
modelling they had undertaken of how higher fees would affect the number of students from the rest of the UK (RUK). Parker began by claiming that research had been done by individual students’ unions that showed that prospective RUK students “were not sure whether they would decide to come to university in Scotland if they were faced with a £36,000 degree.” Sim said: “Individual universities have provisionally
set rest-of-UK fees at a level that they think will allow them to sustain a reasonable flow of rest-of-UK students.” He added that interim UCAS figures on university applications “do not appear to sustain an interpretation that demand from students who are domiciled in England for a Scottish university education is declining relative to demand for university education in England.” Parker maintained that higher RUK fees could have a
knock-on effect on the quality of Scottish universities. “The danger is that there could be a big decrease in the overall amount of money that comes to institutions. That would be bad, not only for the institutions, but for students, wherever they are domiciled, if it leads to course closures or cuts because of a lack of income,” he said. Sim also disagreed with his fellow witness on whether
the cost of degrees for RUK students made Scottish universities the most expensive in the UK. “I would, in Scotland’s interests, be wary of the idea that our degrees are more expensive gaining traction because once you compare the financial support and very substantial fee waivers available in Scotland with the picture in England, which is much more diverse than is sometimes understood, that story does not stand up,” he said. Pressed by several members of the committee on
when Scottish universities would finalise their fee levels and clarify the financial support mechanisms they intended to introduce, Sim said that the information couldn’t yet be provided. “You would probably find that any figures that we gave you were not of value because their accuracy would be dependent on a series of things that one can make assumptions about but about which one cannot know with any certainty at the moment,” he said. Sim later conceded: “This year, learners have not had
as much advance clarity about support regimes as one would ideally have wished. That will stabilise for future years.”
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