The SEJ shared the EIS Manifesto for Education with each of Scotland’s five main political parties, as elected to the Scottish Parliament in the last election, and asked them to share their views on the key issues facing Scottish education. Each party was given the same brief, and the same maximum word count, in which to state their case. Here, we publish each party’s response – complete, and unedited.

Scottish Conservative & Unionist

Our education sector has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and it is absolutely vital that we support teachers, pupils and parents in getting it back on its feet. The Scottish Conservatives thank everyone involved for going above and beyond over the last year.

There are many of the proposals from the EIS’s manifesto that are in line with much of what we have also called on the SNP Government to do.

We particularly welcome their calls for a significant increase in the number of teachers and teacher support. Our own proposals would see an additional 3,000 teachers recruited in order to tackle cuts and we were pleased to command parliamentary support for many of our calls.

These increases in resource would help ease the burden on our teachers, who were already hugely overworked even prior to the pandemic, which is another welcome key ask from the EIS.

Whilst ultimately we don’t agree with everything in the manifesto, it is one deserving of serious discussion and consideration which I urge the SNP to pay attention to.

The Scottish Conservatives will also look at these proposals from the EIS in conjunction with our own bold and ambitious proposals to support teachers, pupils and parents.

-Jamie Greene, Education Spokesperson for the Scottish Conservative & Unionist party.

Scottish Greens

The Scottish Greens have worked with and listened to teachers and lecturers throughout this session of Parliament. While others crumbled in the face of aggressive anti-teacher lobbying, we have consistently put staff and pupil safety first during the pandemic.

Using the influence our MSPs had this session, we’ve secured significant changes including:

  • Regular covid testing for school staff and senior pupils
  • £45 million for schools to recruit up to 2,000 additional teachers in the second half of this school year
  • Restoration of 124,565 grades lowered by the SQA last year
  • Funding to deliver the pay rise won by the EIS Value Education, Value Teachers pay campaign (secured during 2019/20 budget negotiations)
  • The funded rollout of universal free school meals for all primary pupils over the coming year

But we know there is far more still to do. The above is just some of what we’ve achieved with five Green MSPs, because we chose to focus on results rather than headlines. Imagine what we could do for schools with ten, twelve or fifteen?

Our manifesto contains a range of policies to improve attainment and pupil health & wellbeing, to support teachers by reducing workloads and increasing professional autonomy and to properly resource Scotland’s schools. I’m proud to share some of that with you now:

Teacher numbers:

We support the EIS key demands to both reduce class sizes to 20 pupils and reduce contact time to 20 hours per week. We will work towards this by recruiting at least 5,500 additional teachers.

Additional Support Needs:

We have repeatedly raised the crisis in additional support needs provision. Our efforts led to a review (currently ongoing) into the use, or more accurately, the disappearance, of Coordinated Support Plans. We will recruit 2,500 ASN teachers, making this a promoted post. In addition, we will make ASN assistant a distinct role, requiring training and professional certification and expand ongoing professional learning opportunities in ASN for both teachers and support staff.

Trusting teachers:

The expansion of performance indicators and data gathering exercises has maintained the pressure to ‘teach to the test’ which CfE was supposed to eliminate. We will end P1-S3 SNSAs (reintroducing the SSLN sampling approach), replace external inspections with peer-review processes and declutter the BGE curriculum.

Reform the SQA:

The exams authority is out of touch with the needs of teachers and pupils. Having held it to account over recent years (during which I secured a significant curtailment of the international jet-setting approach taken by senior managers!), I know just how much work is required to regain teachers’ trust. The Greens will start by removing the current board of management, replacing them with a board structure similar to that of the GTCS, where at least half of members must be certified teachers or lecturers.

Introduce a teacher-led kindergarten stage & start primary school at age seven:

Scotland’s school starting age is an international outlier, with plenty of evidence showing the detrimental impact of starting formal education too early. The move towards play-based learning in early primary has helped but it is not consistent across the country. We will raise the school starting age to seven, replacing P1&2 with a universal kindergarten phase delivered by teachers. This will cover the same hours as primary school but take a similar play-based approach and focus on social development as seen in Finland’s kindergarten system.

Protect college lecturers

Green MSPs have supported every industrial action taken by lecturers in recent years, regularly joining picket lines. We strongly oppose moves to erode the role of lecturers. To prevent this, we will make it a condition of SFC funding that lecturing posts not be replaced by ‘course instructors’.

-Ross Greer, Education Spokesperson for the Scottish Greens

Scottish Labour

I want to begin by thanking you for your service, your commitment and the unflinching support you have given to our children and our country in this most difficult of times. The demands of the last year placed on our teachers may have changed – day to day – in nature but they have never reduced in scale. This has been a time of extreme pressure – delivering online work, running hub schools, learning new skills in technologies that were alien to so many of us a few short months ago. I know that our teachers have done all of this and much more whilst being carers, being community stalwarts and being home schoolers themselves.

If Scotland thought that teaching was a tough job then the last year of homeschool at the kitchen table has taught us that we really did not know the half of it. At least something good will have come from our hours of panicking because you no longer teach maths the way we were taught it. If an increased respect for the professional knowledge and skills of teachers can be part of the new normal then we will have gained something precious.

But respect, of course, is the least of what should be expected. That’s where the EIS manifesto demand on workload – with Scottish teachers having among the lowest preparation time in the developed world – begins to define what the professional future should look like. The need to recast and refund Additional Support Needs teaching. A recovery based on education for all. The EIS knows that education – primary, secondary and tertiary – is the promise of a better life, a better country and a better world. That mission must be matched with political will.

We know that the record of the current government makes for grim reading:

  • Teacher numbers below 2007 levels
  • Class size targets that were missed then abandoned
  • Falling support for pupils with additional support needs
  • Scotland’s performance in the international PISA assessment deteriorating
  • Pupils unfairly treated in the SQA results scandal
  • A stubborn attainment gap

I marched for a Scottish Parliament under an EIS banner as the teenage son of two school teachers. I know the service you give and I believe that Scottish Labour’s manifesto for this election in May will be worthy of your support and will reflect your own manifesto’s aspirations for your profession and for those you educate.

-Michael Marra, Scottish Labour Education Spokesperson.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Scottish Liberal Democrats will put recovery first. At the heart of that is education.

We needed everyone possible for our NHS. Now we need the talents of everyone possible for education.

It is why the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ Education Bounce Back plan offers unprecedented new entitlements for pupils and staff and extra resources in every school.

The answer isn’t to make children sit at desks for longer. Instead, this plan will make every hour of learning count for more. It will help every child achieve their potential.

Education Bounce Back commits us to:

  • A teacher job guarantee. No teacher should be unemployed or feel underemployed come August. Every qualified teacher should be guaranteed a full-time job (or parttime job if preferred). Benefits include smaller class sizes.
  • More pupil support assistants. They are a valuable addition to any classroom.
  • Expansion of outdoor learning and increased provision of residential outdoor education to engage children, boost mental health and make up for lost experiences. Every outdoor activity centre should be full year-round once the pandemic permits with new government support so nobody misses out.
  • Investment in local grassroots activities and sports with a Scottish Government funded entitlement for children and young people to use over the holidays. The platform for wider development is good health and wellbeing, emotional resilience, social skills and creativity.
  • A new programme of extra supported study for S4-S6, guided by the judgement of class teachers. Whole system bounce back is going to take years, but these young people don’t have years left in school. This is to guide revision and consolidate understanding, not extra classes with new materials. Children and staff opt-in with a financial bonus for those who lead sessions.
  • Grant families the legal right to both defer Primary 1 and have it replaced with funded early learning and childcare starting this August, removing the £4,500 price tag the SNP is hanging over families until 2023.
  • The enhanced Pupil Equity Funding won by Scottish Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Budget. It’s delivering from August an extra £20 million (16%) for children who need it. We will make PEF multi-year and permanent to enable long-term investments.

There is much to be proud of in Scottish education. Our longer-term plans will make it the best again:

  • We oversaw the landmark McCrone Agreement. Twenty years on ‘McCrone 2’ will reward staff with better conditions, careers and workloads.
  • Scottish Liberal Democrats have already led and won a vote at Parliament to overhaul the remote SQA and Education Scotland. Teachers should be at the heart of education governance and the independence of the inspectorate should be restored.
  • Raise the starting age for formal schooling making education truly play-based until the age of 7 (immediately abolishing national testing of P1s). Countries excelling in education and equity show this better prepares children to shine.

Scottish Liberal Democrats have been constructive throughout the pandemic. We’ve secured an extra £80 million for education in the Scottish budget, demanded the government doesn’t force teachers to choose between health and job security, opposed John Swinney’s exams algorithm, and helped secure mass asymptomatic testing to make the school day safer.

The last year has been hard. Staff have worked flat out to give everyone the best education possible. You deserve better than a government that is distracted.

With the Scottish Liberal Democrats there is a chance for change. We have proposals for every stage and every age. To get a good start in life, to excel at school and to help people retrain if they need to later in life. You can put recovery first.

-Beatrice Wishart, Scottish Liberal Democrats Education Spokesperson

Scottish National Party

This year has been unlike any other. Covid-19 – the single greatest public health crisis of our lifetimes – has had a profound impact on our society, indeed our whole way of life.

But this pandemic has also given us an opportunity not simply to go back to how things were, but to address with a renewed impetus many of the challenges our country faces.

All those involved in delivering Scottish education have, this year, faced an extremely difficult set of circumstances – with young people facing a loss of learning and lockdown being particularly difficult for those pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Collectively we have and will continue to work with the best interests of learners in mind, and I am absolutely committed to ensuring that their voices remain central to our recovery from Covid-19.

We know that poverty experienced in childhood can have lifelong consequences and that’s why the SNP continues to take action to transform the lives of children and ensure they get the very best start in life.

The Baby Box, the School Clothing Grant, Pupil Equity Funding, teacher levels at their highest since 2008, the Scottish Child Payment, the expansion of Early Learning and Childcare to 1,140 hours, free tuition, and a social security system dedicated to lifting people out of poverty are all examples of our actions.

These are all policies delivered by the SNP for the people of Scotland. And we stand ready to do all we can to avoid opportunities being lost to this pandemic, and to stop the Tories forcing more kids into poverty.

Currently, all 167,600 pupils in primaries 1 to 3 benefit from access to free school meals. The SNP has committed to going one step further to provide free school meals to all primary school pupils in Scotland, all year round – as the only country in the UK to do so.

We couldn’t be prouder of what our young people, our schools and our teachers have achieved during Covid-19. The delivery of remote learning has been a tribute to the efforts of our schools. This is evidence of an empowered profession delivering outstanding professional leadership and I am determined to build on this in the years to come.

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, it is heartening to see a continued high proportion of our pupils in positive destinations after leaving school, with a record percentage continuing in further and higher education.

And the poverty related attainment gap is narrowing. Over the last 10 years we have seen the gap close significantly at most SCQF levels with the difference in the proportion of school leavers achieving a pass at SCQF Level 6 or better among those from the least and most deprived areas decreasing by 9.6% compared to 2009/10.

Since the start of the pandemic, Scottish Government funding has led to an additional 1,400 teachers and over 200 support staff being appointed. And we recently announced a new package of £45 million – sufficient to fund 2,000 additional teachers – to help local authorities recruit additional staff, additional digital devices or provide additional family support.

In government, the SNP has been absolutely committed to giving everyone the best start in life, and ensuring that every single child, regardless of their background, is able to grasp their full potential.

Our commitment is a long-term one. As we continue to navigate our way through this pandemic, our central mission will steadfastly remain on delivering equity and excellence, reducing the poverty related attainment gap, empowering schools and the profession, in addition to creating new opportunities for the young people of our nation.

-John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Education & Skills