The Sunday Herald hustings

The SNP has put forward substantial proposals to help reform and improve our education system.

Because, while there are some real success stories in Scottish education, recent surveys have made the case for that reform clearer than ever

The successes should not be overlooked and are testament to the hard work of teachers and pupils.

Curriculum for Excellence has received heavyweight international endorsement from the OECD. And we have seen record exam passes and record numbers of school leavers heading to positive destinations at the end of their school careers.

At the same time, key areas have been identified where we need to improve and we will work incredibly hard in government to ensure that this happens.

We are providing teachers and schools with the tools that they need to improve literacy and numeracy – and our National Improvement Framework will help continue the progress we are making.

We are providing more resources, creating the Pupil Equity Fund and the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which is benefitting from an additional £750 million to directly tackle the poverty-related attainment gap.

And the Pupil Equity Fund is benefitting from £120m of funding directly to head teachers, with this additional money helping drive up standards in schools. We are also working hard to increase our teacher workforce and investing in early years.

This, coupled with policies such as the Daily Mile and free school meals, can have a real, positive impact on the lives and educations of our young people.

We have more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university than ever before. This has been achieved through hard-working teachers instilling aspiration in our young people which is then backed up financially by the Educational Maintenance Allowance, an allowance which has been scrapped for disadvantaged students south of the border.

John Swinney has written to every teacher in Scotland, giving clear instructions on reducing workload, ensuring bureaucracy is minimised and our teaching professionals are freed-up to teach.

This is a Government who are serious about retaining the very best teaching staff to ensure our young people have the best possible start in life.

Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray

Education is the single most important economic investment a government can make. We need to give our people the skills they need to compete for the jobs of the future. Yet under the SNP Scottish schools have missed out on more than £1bn of investment, we have 4,000 fewer teachers, 1,000 fewer support staff and literacy and numeracy rates have declined.

John Swinney is trying to use recent poor results in literacy, numeracy and science to justify his ‘reforms’. This is a wrong-headed attempt to centralise schools, and has been rejected by teachers, parents and educationalists.

The reform our schools need is to have enough teachers, with enough support, enough time and enough resources to do the job they love.

Labour would use the powers over income tax to invest in education. That means more investment in our classrooms, nurseries, and increased bursaries for the poorest students in further and higher education.

We would reform our schools, starting by scrapping unfair charges for exam appeals that the SNP government introduced. Exam appeals can be the difference between a young person going on to college or university and all the opportunities that brings. It simply isn’t fair to have any form of financial barrier to that.

Young people from working-class backgrounds find it harder to go on to university and when they do get there they rack up the highest levels of debt.

Those who would use college as a route out of poverty see the ladder drawn up with 150,000 fewer college placers under the SNP.

Labour believes that where you come from should not impact on your future, we would reverse the SNP cuts to education and ensure the next generation get the opportunities they deserve.

Scottish Tory education spokeswoman Liz Smith

The greatest gift we give to any child is the ability to read, write and count so significant focus should be laid upon the teaching of basis literacy and numeracy from the earliest years and on ensuring our teachers are well trained to deliver these skills. We need more teachers, including those who have specialisms in additional support needs, and we need to encourage more routes into the teaching profession, some of them supported by bursaries in key subjects.

The Curriculum for Excellence is confusing. Whilst there is general support for its principles, it has lost its way because the balance between teaching skills and core knowledge has swung far too much in favour of the former and because few people understand what standards are expected at each age level. Teachers have been swamped by endless paperwork instead of being able to get on with the job they are trained to do. We need much more emphasis on core knowledge and traditional subjects, most especially between P6 and S2 where there is the greatest concern about falling standards.

Thirdly, we need to push power down to teachers. The education systems which achieve the best results are those which set teachers free from top-down interference and which encourage diversity and choice. The one-size-fits-all system in Scotland has not worked and that needs to change. If there are charities, groups of parents and educational organisations who are capable of running schools they should be allowed to do so.

Standards in Scotland's schools are slipping. The Scottish Conservatives believe we can change that but only if we place the right emphasis on the features which used to make us the envy of the world.

Ross Greer, Scottish Greens external affairs and education spokesman

The major issue facing Scottish education is budget cuts. The Scottish Government cannot pass the buck and blame councils after they have handed them years of reduced budgets. This has an acute impact on those with additional support needs, totalling one-in-four young people, with over 500 ASN [additional support needs] teachers and hundreds of support staff cut since 2010.

In addition, meeting additional support needs is challenged by inconsistent and sometimes inadequate teacher training. At some universities modules on additional needs are optional and/or addressed late on. This leaves many newly-qualified teachers forced to learn on the job, having entered the classroom without the training or the specialist staff support they need.

For young people with ASN, it has become a postcode lottery of where their teacher was trained and whether or not the specialist staff have been cut. This has an affect not just on them but on all young people in the class as overstretched and under-equipped teachers try their best to support them.

It is right that we include as many young people in mainstream education as possible but when the resources aren’t there it’s an isolating, damaging experience.

Earlier this year Green MSPs won an extra £160m for councils over what the SNP proposed. This prevented further cuts to education but it must only be the start. We need to reverse almost a decade of cuts and get the staff back into classrooms. Governance reviews won’t change things, getting the staff back will.

Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesman Tavish Scott

After a decade of educational mismanagement Scotland’s schools need clarity, support and the resources to deliver for pupils and parents.

"The SNP have cut teachers numbers across Scotland, reduced the money for local education budgets and utterly mismanaged the implementation of a complete change in how we teach in Scotland’s schools. The results are clear.

Scotland has slipped down the international education rankings and recently recorded its worst-ever performance in reading, maths and science. Fewer than half of S2 pupils can now write to the standard they should. That is totally unacceptable.

That is why we have proposed real investment in education.

This would go to early years’ provision, schools, teachers and badly-needed additional support needs assistants. By investing now for the long term Scottish education can change for the better.

Our method is the Pupil Premium introduced by Liberal Democrats elsewhere in the UK.

After years of disparaging an educational approach that works, SNP ministers finally agreed to implement it in Scotland. However, we are already years behind other parts of the UK.

We need to let teachers teach by cutting bureaucracy and stopping the re-introduction of Thatcherite standardised testing.

This rigid system is misguided and makes teaching to the test inevitable. It will not help schools and teachers already burdened with bureaucracy, increasing class sizes, and cuts to education budgets.

Liberal Democrats want every child and young person to have the best start in life. Investing in education is at the heart of building the high-wage, high-skill economy we want to see across Scotland.

David Coburn MEP and leader of UKIP Scotland

UKIP believes that every Scottish child should receive the best possible education and training tailored to their skills, providing them with the qualifications and abilities they will need in the marketplace.

We believe commerce should be taught in schools to enable and encourage pupils to set up their own businesses and have a career as a self-employed entrepreneur.

Under the SNP 180,000 working-class college places have been lost in a blind attempt to reach a 50 per cent degree target. UKIP believes that not all jobs require a degree and that many jobs actually require more ‘hands on’ technical learning.

Many vocations such as nursing have been forced down the degree route to the detriment of the nurses as well as to the patients.

UKIP wants a proper balance of educational institutions with high quality universities alongside high-quality further education colleges such as apprenticeships, technical schools, grammar schools and vocational training.

UKIP would review the curriculum to ensure that it is producing the future workforce Scotland needs.

It is necessary to end political correctness in schools and introduce a specific Act aimed at banning damaging political propaganda being passed off as fact. Indoctrination of young minds is wrong.

What we must give them is the desire and capacity to think freely for themselves. Scottish school pupils should be taught to think and not what to think.

Our future relationship with Europe.

Stephen Gethins, SNP candidate in Fife North East

Now more than ever it is absolutely vital that Scotland has strong SNP voices standing up for our interests against a hard-right Tory government intent on trading away Scotland’s jobs and industries.

Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in Europe – and the Scottish Government has sought to engage with the Tory government in good faith since the referendum.

We put forward substantial compromise proposals which would have allowed Scotland to retain its place in the single market – but they were rejected out of hand by a Tory government determined to drag Scotland out of the world’s largest marketplace.

However, this vote is now an opportunity for people across Scotland to have their say on those proposals and if the SNP win the election in Scotland it will give us a mandate to have a place at the Brexit negotiating table.

The Tories have long promised a UK-wide approach, and whether you voted Leave or Remain it is clear that Scotland's voice should be heard.

But it is also only fair that Scotland should have a choice on its future at the end of the process of leaving the EU. The Scottish Parliament has voted for this, endorsing plans for an independence referendum – not now, but when the terms of leaving the EU are clear. And polling shows that most people in Scotland believe that the UK Government would be wrong to try and block Scotland having that choice when the time is right.

The dangers from the Tories’ hard Brexit plans are all too clear. Research shows that it threatens to cost up to 80,000 jobs over a decade, while also costing Scotland’s economy up to £11bn a year by 2030.

Meanwhile, the Tories’ disgraceful refusal to guarantee residency rights to EU nationals living here directly threatens our economy and our public services, with doctors’ leaders warning it risks stripping the NHS of medical staff.

Scotland didn’t vote to leave the EU, but we now face being dragged out of Europe against our will, with potentially disastrous consequences for jobs, investment and livelihoods.

A vote for the SNP will be a vote to protect Scotland’s interests and our place in the single market – and our ability to continue to trade and travel across Europe.

Scottish Labour’s Europe spokesman Lewis Macdonald

Labour stands for what the majority of Scots want. We want a strong Scottish Parliament in the United Kingdom with a close relationship with Europe. We want to see a deal that prioritises jobs and living standards, builds a close new relationship with the EU, protects workers’ rights, environmental standards, membership of cross-border security agencies like EuroJust and Europol and provides certainty to EU nationals living here.

Leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for this country and would do damage to our economy and trade. We will reject 'no deal’ as a viable option and if needs be negotiate transitional arrangements to avoid a cliff-edge for the economy.

Scottish Labour recognises the benefits that Scotland and the UK have enjoyed from membership of the European single market, but it is equally clear that the Single Market within the UK itself is even more important to Scottish trade and the Scottish economy.

Other parties trying to insinuate that the EU Single Market is more important to the Scottish economy and Scottish jobs simply are not telling the truth.

Labour’s manifesto contains a ‘presumption of devolution’ – that all the powers coming back from Brussels be devolved to Holyrood unless there is a clear reason not to devolve them.

That’s a better future for Scotland rather than a divisive second independence referendum Scots don’t want. Instead we can have a Brexit deal that protects jobs and increases the powers of the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman Adam Tomkins

We are leaving the EU, not leaving Europe, and we now have an opportunity to build a new relationship with our partners.

The Scottish Conservatives are clear that this relationship should be built on close trading links. That will offer the best possible access for Scottish businesses to trade with and operate within the European Single Market, but also allow a fresh start with our European neighbours in crucial sectors like fishing.

We seek a bold and ambitious new free trade agreement with Europe – but because we’re leaving the EU that will also leave us free to forge new trade agreements with countries across the world. These deals will be better designed for our needs and offer progress in growing markets.

In this process workers’ rights, quality assurance and the UK’s leading role in science and innovation will all be protected and advanced – and no power currently devolved will be returned to Westminster. We also want to maintain close cooperation with our European partners on defence, security and intelligence – and the EU recognises our clout in these areas.

Contrast this clarity from Ruth Davidson and Theresa May with the chaos of the SNP’s position. Depending on who they are speaking to, the SNP have advocated for full EU membership, no EU membership and, most recently, a halfway house between the two.

The best way to get a good deal from Europe is a Team UK approach. Now is the time for us to unite and focus on getting the best possible deal – not on further division.

Ross Greer, Scottish Greens external affairs and education spokesman

The Greens campaigned to remain in the EU. Despite Scotland’s Remain vote, we face being wrenched out of the EU by a hard-right, hard-Brexit Tory Government in Westminster, one which we did not and will not choose. This comes after most voters here were persuaded to vote No, at least in part on the ‘promise’ that it was the only way to keep us within the EU.

The votes of 2014 and 2016 are not compatible and the UK Government has rejected outright the Scottish Government’s compromise proposals. It is clear that the Scottish people must be given the opportunity to decide our future once again. A government we did not elect has no right to do that for us.

The choice is stark and simple; Scotland can be a modern, progressive European nation in the EU or we can stick with an isolated, hard-Brexit UK lurching ever further to the right and tilting towards Trump’s America in search of an ally.

The Green vision for the EU is for a people’s Europe, protecting workers’ rights, the environment, welcoming refugees and reining in the banks and major corporations. Europe has its flaws but progress is being made, driven significantly by Greens, and Scotland can be a leader for that progress. We want to be at the heart of the EU, working to end the economics of inequality, corporate power, and unsustainable growth. These are problems that do not respect borders and it is through cooperation that we can tackle them

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie

Liberal Democrats are strong internationalists. That’s why, from security to the environment and jobs, Scottish Liberal Democrats recognise that it is in our interests to keep Scotland in the UK and the UK at the heart of Europe.

We are the only party campaigning to stay in both the UK and EU Single Markets, each of which supports business and jobs in Scotland. Simply put, the more Liberal Democrat MPs, the better the deal on Europe.

Independent research from the Fraser of Allander Institute shows the Conservatives’ extreme Brexit puts at risk up to 80,000 Scottish jobs. This isn’t good enough. We want a brighter future for our children, not Theresa May and Nigel Farage’s bad Brexit deal that will hurt you, your family, your schools and hospitals.

We will fight a hard Brexit and give the people the final say on the Brexit deal.

The other parties are all over the place on Europe. Labour voted with UKIP at Westminster to support hard Brexit, while the SNP want to claim it as a mandate for another independence referendum even though the First Minister will not even commit to taking Scotland back in again.

This election is the chance to change the direction of the whole UK.

David Coburn MEP and leader of UKIP Scotland

Due to Brexit more and more people are referring to ‘Europe’ and not to the ‘European Union’. The distinction is clear between the European Union as a supranational and sclerotic political system in terminal decline while Europe is a continent with a diverse and fascinating cultural heritage.

Through Brexit the UK will be able to create its own economic trade deals, regain jurisdictional powers and control the migrant influx which has been stressing our healthcare system, social housing and employment.

Our future relationship with the other nations in Europe will be based on friendship and free international co-operation.

The United Kingdom, of which Scotland is an integral part, will be far better off independent from the EU. The UK will no longer be forced to contribute billions to unrealistic EU projects from which we do not benefit.

The slogan of the European Union is ‘united in diversity’. Ironically, in a supranational federalist EU, there is no diversity at all because everything ends up in a bland cultural porridge.

Due to Brexit we will be ‘united in diversity’. The United Kingdom will cooperate economically with other countries. Brexit will prove that the peoples of Europe do not need an alienating and unelected bureaucratic system in order to flourish.