Education and Social Mobility

Neil Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I declare an interest at the start, in that my wife is a primary school teacher. I shall focus the majority of my brief contribution on education as a key social enabler.

The Scottish Government are embarking on an Administration-defining mission to close the attainment gap between the most and least affluent school pupils. Nicola Sturgeon’s Government are to allocate £750 million during the course of the Scottish parliamentary term through the Attainment Scotland fund and focus on improvement in the key areas of literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing.

That is a welcome intervention, but, in terms of education policy, most crucial in narrowing the attainment gap and realising social mobility will be the Scottish Government’s support for local authorities on teacher numbers and retention. The Scottish Government have a good record on that front. In 2006, 16,000 primary 1 children were being taught in classes of 26 or more; as of 2015, that was down to 657. That is very important for me, as a recent report highlighted that and Shotts has, in some areas, 32% of children living in poverty.

The End Child Poverty figures should shame us all and serve as a big wake-up call to North Lanarkshire Council, which failed to maintain teacher numbers last year, despite having some of the highest levels of child poverty in Scotland. I encourage the Scottish Government to keep pressing local authorities on the number of teachers and classroom assistants in employment, so as to help those areas, such as Airdrie Central ward in my constituency, that have such high child poverty ratios.

It is important for us to get it right for children as early as possible, as highlighted by Action for Children. That is why recent and planned childcare interventions up the road are so important, on top of the childcare plans outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). Every nursery in the poorest local areas will have an additional qualified teacher or childcare graduate by 2018. It was also recently announced that childcare funding will change to follow the child, a very welcome intervention. In another welcome development, every child born in Scotland will receive a baby box—a box of essential items to help level the playing field in the very first days of their life—starting next year.

If we are serious about improving social mobility and helping people along, however, the UK Government must do more in other areas. I hope tomorrow’s autumn statement will see greater investment in good quality affordable and social housing. We should also expect plans from the UK Government on how they hope to overturn the stagnation in average wages since 2009.

Education policy can help children out of poverty to some extent, but we cannot expect teachers to fix everything for us in this regard. The real win will come when this Government commit to addressing the causes of child poverty: low incomes, poor housing, social security cuts and insecure work.