Last Thursday we had
visitors. The Secretary of State for Education, Youth and
Sports from Baden
Wurttemberg visited Parliament to find out how we are
addressing the issues that are facing our young people and
to compare our efforts to theirs. It’s always interesting
to compare and contrast our way of doing things with that of
our friends and colleagues from our European partners. I
have more confidence after each of these meetings that
Scotland can and should rejoin the family of nations as an
independent state, taking a full and active part in world
affairs.
I was out and about in
Glasgow at the
weekend, just enjoying myself and having lots of chats about
the forthcoming election in Glasgow North-East. The rumours
are that the bye-election will be almost exactly a year
after the earth was shaken in Glasgow East with the victory
of John Mason MP. There will be plenty party activists the
length and breadth of the country who remember that summer
night in Glasgow – and some who remember the next morning
less fondly …
I was delighted, too, to be
the guest of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for dinner and a
discussion on science in schools – how we train the next
generation of scientists, how we make sure we stay at the
forefront of innovation in science. It was all subrosa,
though, so I can’t go spilling the beans.
And it was refugee week
this week, the topic being ‘Home’- launched in Parliament by
the Scottish Refugee Council – find out more on their
website at
http://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/ - and I was
delighted to renew my acquaintance with Amal, one of the
Glasgow Girls who won the Campaigner of the Year award a
year or two ago. As you can see in the photograph, Amal has
become a beautiful young woman, and she is absolutely
thrilled that the SNP Government changed the rules on asylum
seekers which allowed her to go to university. I couldn’t
help thinking that simple human decency should just be
expected rather than being a surprising turn of events – but
I still revelled in Amal’s excitement!
She gets to move her
education forward while we were moving Scottish education
forward. Fiona Hyslop MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education
and Lifelong Learning, has finished her careful
consideration of capital funding for schools and she
delivered a peach of a speech on Wednesday as she laid out
how she’s going to wedge £1.25 billion into school building
programmes. There’s £800 million to go in starting as
capital grants (or cold, hard cash) – a massive investment
in the future of our education system – and plenty more to
be levered in from elsewhere. Having spoken to
Fiona afterwards, it’s
quite clear that she’s pleased that we’ve got to here but
she’s not sitting back, she be chasing that investment into
the school estate, keeping an eye on it, working with
councils to get delivery, working to make sure that the
investment delivers real and tangible long-term
improvements.
It turns out, too, that the
SNP Government has exceeded the pledge we made in our
manifesto. We promised to match the programme that Labour
had, match it brick for brick, school for school – and we’ve
done better than that.
Labour promised 100 new or
refurbished schools by the end of 2009 – we’ve already done
150 – and we’re expecting to reach 250 by 2011.
At the time we won the
election in 2007, there were around 260,000 pupils in poor
classroom accommodation. By 2011, that figure will already
be down to around 100,000, and with the new funding from the
SNP Government, it’ll be down to 65,000. The ambition of
this Government is to make sure that no child in
Scotland is sitting in a
substandard classroom. It’s an ambition no other party has
aimed for because they thought it was impossible, we think
it’s only impossible if you never try.
Labour’s response was
predictable – Rhona
Brankin claimed that this programme was woefully thin.
Surely that made Labour’s plans just woeful? The another
Labour MSP popped up to ask whether the schools would be
built before the election. Funnily enough, the SNP focus is
on the school pupils rather than the voters – getting the
schools built is what matters.
I had a wee exchange with
Fiona as well:
Christina
McKelvie (Central Scotland) (SNP):
It is
refreshing to have a Government that takes the time to get
the right solution rather than rushing into a massive
mistake. That brings me to PFI. Bad design, poor building
and poor value for money have been the hallmarks of PFI and
PPP. How will the Scottish Government ensure that Scotland's
future schools are well designed, well built and
environmentally sustainable?
Fiona
Hyslop:
Christina McKelvie raises an important point
about the design of schools. We will work with Architecture
and Design Scotland, the Carbon Trust and others to ensure
not only that the designs are appropriate for modern-day
learning in a 21st century environment but that
they are energy efficient, which is essential to ensure that
they contribute to the climate change challenges that lie
ahead.
It is appropriate and
important to involve the pupils themselves in the design to
ensure that we get quality results. I have visited and,
indeed, opened a number of schools that have been started
since this Administration came to power. The architecture
that could be delivered by listening to the pupils and
teachers in those schools delivers results. I expect the SFT
to draw on that talent, experience and expertise.
She finished it off by
emphasising that this was new money – money on top of the
money already allocated. A good day for
Scotland’s schools, I
think.
You can tell that we closed
it off, too, by the fact that
Iain Gray chose to avoid
the issue at First Minister’s Questions on the Thursday –
they couldn’t even find a wee angle that would make it look
like there might be a weakness. Instead Iain led with his
chin on the Climate Change Bill, demanding to know why the
target for emissions cuts was only 34%. He might well ask.
He might also want to ask his Labour MSPs who have been
working on the Bill, only one of them submitted any
amendment mentioning the target – and that was to fix the
target at … yes, you guessed it, 34%.
It was an irony not lost on
my guests from
Hamilton who enjoyed First Minister’s Questions before
joining me on a tour of the building. They also agreed with
the afternoon’s proceedings – legislation to end the massive
compensation claims of criminals for slopping out caused by
incompetence in the previous administration. I’ve always
thought that the people who should have our sympathy over
slopping out were the poor prison officers who had to
supervise it.
Also in the picture with my
Hamilton visitors is
Heather Whiteside who was on work experience with me for two
days in the middle of visits to Roseanna Cunningham’s
constituency office. She’s an extremely intelligent and
articulate young lady who will go very far in life, whatever
career she chooses, and I hope to be following the path of
that bright light for some time.
That rumbling you’re
hearing isn’t thunder, by the way, it’s my poor tum.
There’s a big formal dinner in Parliament tonight so the
canteen closed at 5 o’clock – I normally pop down about half
past seven to get a wee hot meal to sustain me through the
last couple of hours work before I drive home, I’m
famished. I see a chip shop in my future.
