yn amlwg, ac mae'n gwybod i'n meddwl gael i'n meddwl gael arall i siaradiau i gael ar dda. Dwi gydag yn ddwy o'r busnes o'r fanau nrwys 1, 2, 3, 1, 6 yn y rai o'r Angela Constance o'r yn agonziadau.  I now call on Angela Constance to speak to and move the motion cabinet secretary about 14 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, our education system is improving and our schools curriculum for excellence has become embedded as the way we do education. Exam passes are at an all-time high, school leaver destinations are the best on record of students who left school in 2013 more than 9 out of 10 are in employment, training or education. But despite those improvements and there are improvements, we need to do more. School leavers from the 20 per cent most disadvantaged areas do only half as well as their equivalents from the most affluent areas. In the most deprived areas, the most deprived 10 per cent of areas are fewer than one young person in every three leaves school with at least one higher. In the most affluent areas, it is four out of every five. In the Scotland we seek, that gap is quite simply unacceptable. That is why we have made our top priority to raise attainment for all and ensured that all of Scotland's children and young people get an equal chance in their schools. Education will not fulfil its potential as a societal good until we have closed the attainment gap. Too many children in Scotland have their life chances determined by their postcode rather than their talent. No one in this chamber should accept that waste of potential. It undermines the economy and eats at the very fabric of our society. Education is the best give that we can give to people and, of course, it is a right. It should also be a passport to a better place. Liam McArthur is very grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for Giving Waste. She points to the postcode lottery. She is right in identifying that certain postcodes have particular problems with poverty and lower attainment, but we would all accept that we do not, that in almost every postcode there are those for whom the attainment gap is a very real and significant problem and that the approach on an area basis is going to miss out some of those who live in more affluent areas, but who are nevertheless subject to poverty. Mr McArthur raises an important point. There are children who are being held back from reaching their full potential in every school. That is true. There are children who need support, who live in more affluent areas or who attend a school in a more affluent area. Nonetheless, as we move forward, and I will speak about it later in terms of the Scottish attainment challenge, we need to invest a more targeted resource to those children most in need. That is why, as well as having a targeted approach, we also need to have a firm foundation, a firm universal approach also. Scotland is, by no means unique in having an equity gap and teachers all around the world struggle with how to make up for social disadvantage in their classrooms, but deprivation is not destiny. We know from the OECD that there are education systems where disadvantaged students succeed and equity and excellence are not mutually exclusive and you can have one with the other. Central to raising attainment are talented teachers and school leaders. That is why we have made a commitment in our budget to make available £51 million to maintain teacher numbers across Scotland. Across Scotland we are blessed with great schools and the most talented, inspiring teachers available anywhere. Day on day they are having a transformational effect on the lives of children and young people in their care and we want to make sure that excellence is shared and spread. As part of our programme for government, we will make sure that every local authority has access to an attainment adviser. With the powers that we have, we are doing all that we can to limit the impacts of poverty, particularly on our children and young people. I will always argue for more powers, but I accept the need to find ways to do more with what we have. That is why we are focusing on the early years, where the impacts of poverty can be at their worst. We are taking the lead in pioneering work on early years and on preventive spend. Our early years collaborative, the family nurse partnership and the quality early learning and childcare are making a real difference to life chances. This Government is already delivering 16 hours a week of free childcare for all three and four-year-olds and from last October that entitlement was extended to 15 per cent of two-year-olds and will be further extended to 27 per cent of two-year-olds from August this year. That is more hours of early learning and childcare than any other part of the UK. Of course, we have set out an ambitious plan to increase childcare provision even further. Building on the solid foundation of early years, we will focus relentlessly on driving up attainment in our schools. Last year, we launched the raising attainment for all programme. That is already involved in more than 150 schools and has taken a very forensic focus on closing the attainment gap. However, we need to pick up the pace. In the last two months, we have launched three initiatives that will help us to do just that. The new literacy campaign for primaries 1 to 3 will benefit all children in primary 1 to 3 but with a specific focus on schools and parents in our most disadvantaged communities. It will provide support to make sure that gaps in learning do not develop or increase over time. We have launched free school meals for children in primary 1 to 3. That is now benefiting around 135,000 children, the length and breadth of the country, and it is saving families £330 a year. It is providing the healthy and nutritious lunches that support our children's learning. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way and I thank her also for the measures that she has just outlined, which will undoubtedly be helpful. Given that the statistics to which she referred in the opening part of her speech have been part of the educational scene for a very long time, will the Scottish Government tell us what it is that is a catalyst that has made you want to change now? That is a tad disingenuous from Ms Smith. She will be well aware of the actions that we have taken over the piece over the long term. I have already mentioned the raising attainment for all programme. There is also the schools improvement programme for Scotland and, like the raising attainment for all programme, that is about schools working together, sharing knowledge and practice, sharing research, and we know from research that collaboration across the school network is very important. There are other measures such as the access to education fund. I would contend that teacher numbers is very positive action in terms of investing in our children's education. Of course, the point that I made to Mr MacArthur, as well as having these very bespoke initiatives that we are building on a very strong universal offer—whether that is in terms of curriculum for excellence—is the work that we are doing in early years, girffect attainment advisers. There is a wealth of work that we have been doing over the piece. We know that the equity gap in attainment is not an issue that belongs to Scotland alone, but we are absolutely determined to pick up the pace. Last week, the First Minister launched her new Scottish attainment challenge. That has been backed by a fund of £100 million over four years, with £20 million committed for the coming year. To start with, we will be targeting those local authorities with the highest concentration of pupils living in deprived areas. I am pleased to inform the chamber that, initially, the fund will be concentrated on Glasgow, Dundee, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire and North Lanarkshire Council areas. We know that many of those authorities are already doing well, but we are confident that they can do more with further support. However, I fully recognise that there is a need across Scotland during the coming year. We will continue to work with other local authority areas such as East Ayrshire and Fife, which are geographically diverse, socially mixed, but where there are real pockets of severe deprivation and we will work with local authorities to dig deeper into addressing that local need. The attainment fund will be directed specifically to improve literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing in primary schools. If we can close the attainment gap when children are young, the benefits will continue into secondary schools and beyond. There will be a bespoke improvement plan and access to resources and expertise in each area. We will measure improvement rigorously and ensure that lessons are learned nationally about what works and, of course, about what does not work. I have asked Education Scotland, as part of its review of inspections, to consider with partners how we can measure outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. That will be part of a wider piece of work with key partners to establish a national improvement framework, providing a resource for teachers and allowing us to gauge progress across the country. We know from the evidence that some of our looked-after children face particular disadvantages. We know that those children and young people who are looked after at home have the poorest educational outcomes of all. We also know that mentoring, especially long-term mentoring, can make a significant difference to this group of young people. That is why, in addition to the £10 million investment to support the implementation of the children and young person act, I am pleased to confirm that the Scottish Government's commitment today to ensuring that all looked-after children and young people are offered the support of a mentoring relationship with a trusted adult who will remain alongside them for as long as that young person chooses. Of course, Johann Lamont. I will be aware of the concerns of kinship carers, not just about financial matters but access to educational, psychologists and support that a child who is actually in a clear home would get. I wonder if you would like to comment on the progress that you have made in ensuring that those kind of services for kinship care children are being made available. It is a fair point to make that in terms of increasing the attainment of children, particularly children who have more disadvantages that we need to also look beyond the classroom and into their home environment. A very important piece of work has been taken forward previously by Eileen Campbell and now Fiona McLeod to find a resolution to some of the issues that are faced by kinship carers in particular. I am happy to update Ms Lamont of that separately. A very important point that I wanted to make specifically about mentoring and looked after young people is that we will be actively taking forward a key recommendation of the Laxac mentoring hub to establish a national mentoring scheme for children aged between eight and fourteen years old who are looked after at home. Funding was allocated to the education portfolio as part of the autumn budget statement, and I can today announce that funding of half a million pounds from this year's first year will go into that scheme. The Minister for Children and Young People will announce further details of the scheme in due course. In our whole approach, we will continue to be led by the lessons from the very best of practice elsewhere. We must continue to look at what is happening internationally and, yes, to other parts of the UK. A attainment challenge will learn from the London challenge, but we will not adapt it wholesale. We will adapt the learning to a Scottish context and not just import the model. We are also learning from Ontario's special secretariat for literacy and numeracy, which has had a big impact also. Scottish education has always looked to the world, and so, too, have others looked to what Scotland is doing. In the past 12 months, Scotland has received over 20 overseas delegations from countries such as Australia, India, China, Norway, Finland and Holland. Next year, Scotland is hosting the international congress for school effectiveness and improvement, and the president of which has praised Scotland for continuously proving to be a showcase for better education for all. That exchange of ideas is the very fabric of our education system. It is indeed how we do things and taking the very best practice from elsewhere and adapting it to our circumstances and our context. That is why that is what is uniquely Scottish approach to education. We know that prosperity and fairness must always go hand in hand. I believe that there is nowhere else in the UK or indeed Europe that is prioritising educational attainment as we are. Our recent steps are providing a fresh impetus on closing the attainment gap, and in our education system we have a strong record of progress. We have all the elements in place, a unique curriculum fit for the future, and schools that are eager for success and a system that is supporting them. I am confident that our schools and our workforce can deliver on the attainment programme, and I am delighted to move the motion in my name. I now call Ian Gray to speak to a move amendment 12316.2, Mr Gray, about 10 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. We on this side of the chamber welcome this debate, and today that is much more than the usual opening platitude. It is eight years since this SNP Government came to power, and long past time they should have woken up to the need to act on the achievement gap. In fairness, the First Minister flagged it up as an issue that she cared about when she was elected leader by her party, but it is still taking about three months or so before the Government has brought any action forward to this Parliament still. More joy shall be in heaven over one sinner who has repented as the previous First Minister used to like to misquote. All this matters so much exactly for the reason that the cabinet secretary outlined that if there is any investment that we can make in our future collectively and as individuals, it is in education. If there is a path to the chance of a better life, it lies through education. If there is a silver bullet to slay the spectre of poverty, it is education. George Washington Carver called education the key to unlock the golden door to freedom, and he should know given his journey from slavery to scientist. Educational equality is an idea woven through the very history of this nation. From the book of discipline in 1561 to the school establishment acts of 1616 and 1633 passed by our predecessor Parliament, the acts that created and implemented the idea of a school in every parish. We like to tell ourselves that we gave universal education to the world and that we have the best schools anywhere. Sometimes we are too complacent. The OECD report of 2007 should have set alarm bells ringing then. It praised the strengths of Scottish schools, but then it said that children from poorer communities are more likely than others to underachieve. The gap associated with poverty and deprivation in local authority areas appears to be very wide. This is the not-so-secret shame of Scotland's schools, that who you are and how much your parents earn will define your educational attainment and your life chances more than anything else. The cabinet secretary herself pointed out that school leavers from the most deprived 20 per cent of areas currently do only half as well as school leavers from the least deprived areas. In truth, that has not been improving. Indeed, our PISA results show a decline in a relative international standing and no real change in the attainment gap. The number of young people not in education, employment or training remains stubbornly high at around 30,000. The Scottish Government's own survey showed numeracy levels falling at every level, and this year we will see the results on literacy. That will not improve until we do something specific about it. We cannot close the attainment gap by raising attainment for all. That is why the Government's attainment fund is very welcome, indeed. The trick now, of course, is to spend it in ways that make a real difference. It cannot be spread too thinly or it will not work. It has to be significantly targeted, and especially at primary and pre-primary intervention, because we know that this pernicious gap in achievement is already significant at the age of five. It has to include a major focus on literacy and numeracy. It has to support the families of children at the wrong end of this attainment gap, because school is not the only answer. It also has to raise the quality of teaching and leadership in those schools exactly where the barriers that pupils face are the greatest. It has to provide particular support for looked-after children. The announcement today has much of that, and that is to be welcomed. We are certainly willing to give the attainment fund a fair wind, but we simply believe that we need to do yet more and that we can. That is why we have proposed that when this Parliament gains powers over income tax, we choose explicitly to tax higher earners by reintroducing a 50p tax rate, and we direct some of that to redouble our efforts to end the stain of inequity on our society. Our proposal is £25 million every year, £125 million in the course of the next Parliament, devoted to attacking this attainment gap at its very sharpest, focused on those schools around 20, perhaps at the very front line. High schools, yes, but more importantly, their associated primaries, and all that on top of the four-year attainment fund. If we look for those schools, we will find that some of them will not be covered in the local authorities that the cabinet secretary has announced today. In this city, for example, two or three schools who need that kind of support because they are at the very sharp end of this gap. Let me be clear. I taught in schools like these. They are not failing. Many of them are overperforming, delivering improvements to young people's life chances above and beyond anything that we might reasonably expect. As an ex-teacher, I know that these are the schools that you look to first to see the best, most innovative, most inspiring teaching and teachers. However, the barriers faced by young people in these schools are so great that they need more additional support to overcome them. Their families need more support too, and those who teach them need more support as well. That is why we propose in these schools, doubling classroom assistance in the primary schools, freeing up teacher time that way, introducing specialist literacy and numeracy teachers in these schools for parents, as well as pupils. That is why we wish to see a new charter teacher scheme introduce to reward those who devote their skills, experience and career to changing lives in the classrooms at the very sharpest end of the attainment gap. The truth is that we will not resolve that in the four years of any attainment fund. We need an on-going, guaranteed and relentless effort, and we will not succeed if we do not target pretty ruthlessly, at least for part of our efforts. However, our proposals do not contradict the Scottish Government's ideas, they complement them and double the resources for them from a different and new source of funding to which we will have access soon. Frankly, there are some basics that the Scottish Government also needs to get right. This problem is not helped by the loss of over 4,000 teachers from our schools since 2007. It is not helped by schools closing and subjects disappearing because of teacher shortages. It is not helped by the disappearance of 140,000 students from our colleges or the ending of successful schemes like the schools of ambition for no good reason at all. The cabinet secretary needs to get these sorted, and she could start by telling the SQA to drop her ridiculous charging scheme for exam reviews, which is discriminating in favour of private school pupils against state school pupils and in favour of those with engaged parents against those who do not have them. It is just one more barrier in the attainment gap and she could fix it today. The big thing that the cabinet secretary can do today is to seize what is a golden opportunity, match our support for the Scottish Government's attainment fund with her support for our proposals to go further. Let's double the resources to which we commit ourselves, not for four years but for as long as it takes. Let's make this our national purpose in education, that your success, your life chances will depend on your ability and your hard work, not on where you were born or what your parents are. Let us put every hand on Carver's golden key to freedom, because that was the unique, far-sighted educational vision Scotland gave to the world, a school in every parish, every child with the power and freedom to read the Bible and any other book they wanted for themselves, a country which could produce a ploughman who yet read Greek and Latin and penned poetry which entrances the world to this very day. It is to that purpose and that end that I move the amendment in my name. Mary Scanlon, to speak to and move amendment 1, 2, 3, 1, 6.1, 6 minutes or thereby please. We are also pleased to be having another debate on attainment following the Scottish Government debate on this issue in October. It will surprise no one that we don't support the £50 tax rate that was moved by Labour. I have moved the amendment in my name, which affirms our willingness to work together with all parties on this issue, better support for pupils and those with additional support needs, the need for more science teachers and the need to address the uptake in science, technology, engineering, maths and, of course, much more. Like Iain Gray, I was also a teacher and economics lecturer in further and higher education for 20 years before coming here. I know well how many pupils failed at school, failed badly at school and absolutely flourished with a second chance in further and higher education. I want to see them getting that best chance at school rather than when they are 30, 40 and 50. We would also welcome the additional funding and the additional measure to focus on attainment, but that must be accompanied by the need for robust data, a rigorous strategy and targeted spending to achieve the desired outcomes and a more focused approach. I think that Liam McArthur alluded to that. It was interesting to see that the Scottish Government had to go to London to get advice on attainment, when, in fact, very similar advice and recommendations are available much closer to home. Both the Audit Scotland report on school education in June last year and Professor Sue Ellis from the Centre of Education and Social Policy at Strathclyde University, along with the London challenge, all focus on the need for data and data literacy, the need for a culture of accountability, improved leadership and better professional development and more. I have to say that the unsightly rami between the Scottish Government and COSLA will benefit no child in Scotland. If I could just take Murray Council, Murray has done its level best to recruit supply and permanent teachers. It has a higher rate for supply teachers. It is working with private housing providers for excellent accommodation for new teachers coming, and yet there are 11 experienced teachers who are spouses of RAF personnel at Lossymouth, but they cannot get through the bureaucracy of the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Those are teachers in primary and secondary schools who are perfectly capable of teaching in England, but, according to the GTC, they are not fit to teach in Scotland. More could be done to help Murray Council. Murray will not get any additional funding from the Scottish Government despite doing their best. John Scott raised excellent points on South Ayrshire, again a council that has maintained their teacher ratio below 13.2 per cent since 2001. It is unlikely that South Ayrshire, although it has kept to the letter in the spirit of the national agreement, will get any of the Government additional funding. Neither, as John Scott said, does the council recognise falling school roles? South Ayrshire could have a surplus of 10 to 15 teachers with no job at a cost to council taxpayers of half a million pounds, so they are being penalised for doing everything right over the years. From the Audit Scotland report, I quote, and this is why I am concerned about the 100 million funding. Will it do what we want it to do? There has been no independent evaluation of how much councils spend on education and what that delivers in terms of improved attainment and wider achievement of pupils. How can we, although welcoming the money, be sure that the 100 million plus funding will make any difference? The GTC could also review whether sufficient weight is given to literacy teaching in teacher training. I also find it incredible and unbelievable that Scotland currently offers no national literacy tests for primary and early secondary pupils. Two thirds of our councils buy expensive tests that offer little support to help schools and teachers to understand, interpret and interrogate or use those results. It is quite incredible. Again, from Strathclyde University, we should encourage schools to create positive cultures for data use and provide three national available tests, standardised where appropriate for literacy development. My worry is that 100 million could be assumed as a measure of success. We have thrown 100 million at it, but unless we measure what works, that is not going to have the outcome, we assume. I also, in my five seconds left, also in the Audit Scotland report, the councils with the highest spending on teacher and teacher numbers, the three highest ones in urban areas, are labour, and yet we have had this unsightly rami that labour is reducing teachers. In fact, the lowest in urban and rural Scotland is an SNP-controlled council, so we can perhaps leave the politics aside and concentrate on the children. My final point, Presiding Officer, we all need to ensure that teaching—I know the SNP does not like to hear about it—but teaching should be a career of choice where teachers are valued for their contribution and not shouted down by the SNP, as we have heard today. Presiding Officer, sadly, we now move to open debate. I call on George Adam to be followed by Cara Hylton, six minutes or thereby please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, welcome this debate. For me, it is one of the most important issues that we must address. For too long, it has been the case that people from certain backgrounds do not have the same level of educational attainment than others. Over the years, there have been many reasons for that, but it has welcomed the First Minister's remark that a child born today, in one of her deprived communities, by the time he or she leaves school, has the same chance of going to university as a child born in her more affluent communities. Surely that is something that we can all agree on, Presiding Officer. That is an investment in the future of Scotland's children and one that can provide a better future for many of our young people. The Scottish Government has achieved much during its time in Government, but we must recognise that attainment is an important area that we must all seek to improve. The First Minister and the cabinet secretary mentioned in her speech as well, which announced that the Scottish attainment challenge at school leavers from our most deprived 20 per cent of areas currently do only half as well as school leavers from wealthier areas. I agree with Nicola Sturgeon when she said that too many children still have their life chances influenced by where they live than by how talented they are or how hard they work. That can be seen in my constituency where there is an east-west divide, a position where one end of Paisley is the wealthier area and the other part of the area is one of the most deprived areas in Scotland. Dealing with the many challenges that that entails, we must continue to strive to ensure that our children do not become a societal victim because of the community that they are a part of. The education committee found during the post-16 reform bill that the University of the West of Scotland is one of the only universities who have managed to ensure that 20 per cent of their pupils come from the lowest wage backgrounds in studying at their institution. That is excellent, but it also gives them many on-going challenges and ensures that young people may still need to deal with the difficulties that other students do not have. It may be not in year 1 that they have the difficulty, it may be in year 2 or 3 that may lead to a situation where a young person drops out. However, the University of West of Scotland is working with other educational institutions and attainment in the west of Scotland on Focused West. Focused West works in 37 secondary schools located in 11 local authority areas, all of which have a progression rate higher of 22 per cent or less. The west of Scotland is home to 41 per cent of Scotland's population and has nearly 70 per cent of Scotland's most deprived areas. Since the inception of Focused West in 2008, it has worked with nearly 22,000 pupils and has contributed to an average increase in progression to higher education across its core schools. There is much good work going across our nation, but we must aspire to do much more. That is why I welcome the Scottish Government's new Scottish attainment challenge that will be backed by an attainment Scotland from more than £100 million over a four-year period to help pupils from our most disadvantaged communities. The Scottish attainment challenge, which will draw on the experience of the London challenges, as has been mentioned earlier, will help to transform school performance in the city of London and other international experiences that will be taken on board. Incidentally, I recently attended the UCU's national conference in London and it was heartening to hear so many English-based educationals using Scotland as a beaking of hope and a way forward for education in the rest of the UK because of the key Scottish Government policies such as free education, curriculum for excellence and getting it right for every child, early years framework and opportunities for all. It used all of them as examples of best practice and a way forward. However, we are all aware of the cost of education from Westminster for the rest of the UK. Research from Spice recently found that, since fees rose to £9,000 three years ago, they have cost students in the rest of the United Kingdom £14 billion. £14 billion, and currently Scottish students studying at Scottish University saved £1 billion over the same number of years. Not only that, but the on-going austerity plans of Westminster are causing despair throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK. While the Scottish Government is making progress in reducing the attainment gap, it can only go so far in mitigating the damage caused by Westminster policies. An additional 100,000 of Scotland's children will be living in poverty by 2020 because of UK welfare reforms. That is before the next round of cuts due in 2017 and 2018. It is unacceptable that, due to the decisions of the UK Government, children and families in Scotland are suffering, even with the on-going problems that are created by Westminster, the Scottish Government is challenging itself to achieve better attainment levels. The fund will be targeted initially at schools with the biggest concentration of households in deprived areas, targeting areas with additional teachers, materials for classrooms, resource development and new out-of-school activities. It will focus on improving literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing in primary schools with clear objectives to give all primary school age pupils, regardless of background, the best possible start in life. All parts of Scotland will not need the same uniformed ideas. That is addressed with the bespoke improvement plan. It is important to be appropriate to local circumstances and will be agreed for each school or cluster of schools. That will include an agreement to gather in a proportionate way the data that will be required to measure the impact of the interventions supported, ensuring that we are reaching the right people at the right time. This year's initial funding of £20 million is announced by the Deputy First Minister during the budget. We already know that there are many great things happening in our schools, but by providing greater access to funding, expertise and resource, schools will have more opportunity to offer the creative and innovative teaching that helps all our young people to succeed. In closing, I would like to say that it was interesting to read Save the Children said about the fund. We welcome the £100 million commitment to the Scottish attainment fund over the first £20 million tranche in 2015-16. The focus on the poorest children within those new commitments is particularly important for me. That is the most important part of the issue, and surely that is something that we can all agree on. I welcome the opportunity to take part in today's debate about education attainment and the recognition across political divide that we need to work to tackle education inequality that continues to undermine the life chances of thousands of children and young people in Scotland. Addressing the attainment gap in our schools is a top priority for the Scottish Labour Party, and I know that it is certainly a priority for my constituents in Dunfermlyn. It may have taken eight years, but I am pleased that those plans are now in the table and that this is right at the top of the political agenda where it belongs. Closing the gap has got to be the number one education priority, not just for the next 15 months until the 2016 elections, but for the next Scottish Government too. It should anger us all that in 21st century Scotland family income continues to have more influence over children's learning and outcomes than children's talents or skills. Thousands of our children right across Scotland caught up in a cycle of disadvantage from which there is little prospect of escape and which carries on throughout life. Education should be a open and up opportunities and ensuring that every single child reaches their potential, but we all know that no child will ever reach their full potential when they turn up at school hungry, when they are living in damp overcrowded accommodation or when they have a chaotic family life. According to Save the Children, children living in poverty are twice as likely as other children to start school already behind in their learning and development. One in five children living in poverty are leaving primary school not reading well. One in two are underperforming in writing in the early secondary years. Save the children have found that the attainment gap between the richest and the poorest young people when they leave school is equivalent to around three A grades at a higher level, which is pretty staggering. Inequalities in education have got a direct influence of future incomes too, with more than one in five school leavers from deprived areas going straight into unemployment, double the national average, so we need decisive and radical action if we are going to break the cycle. The new attainment Scotland fund and the attainment challenge is a welcome step forward, and as so is the focus on the poorest children, although it is disappointing that there is no money being announced for five. It is absolutely vital that we focus on supporting children based on what we know works, and so I welcome to the recognition that we need to learn from success elsewhere, such as the London challenge fund programme, which was delivered by Labour when we were in government. However, we want to go further too, and that is why Labour's amendment today highlights our proposal to use additional revenues from a new 50-pence tax rate for the better off to invest a further £25 million every year into tackling the attainment gap in our schools even further, targeting even more support the way that is needed most, investing in even more teaching assistance in a literacy project to support both pupils and parents, including special literacy support programmes for looked-after children. The attainment debate must never be viewed in isolation, so I recognise the recognition across the chamber that plans to close the gap must go hand in hand with plans to tackle poverty and to support families. I would like to see more initiatives such as family centres developed in our most deprived backer areas, because we cannot ignore the fact that while the education system does work well for many children, for children for the poorest backgrounds, it simply does not work well enough, and poverty continues to be a barrier in accessing the widest opportunities in learning and in life. Not having enough money makes it harder for mums and dads to provide the experiences that children need to flourish both in and out of school and constantly struggling can make parenting difficult and stressful. The reality is that we can only change that if we have a radical solution that addresses the persistent poverty and inequality that too many children in Scotland and across the Ukraine are brought up with. Breaking the link between poverty and attainment is key, and that has got to be the driver behind our policies. In Fife, which has got the third highest number of children living in poverty in Scotland, the Labour-led council has embraced a radical approach to closing the gap, which is based on early and targeted intervention to support the children and families most in need and break the cycle of disadvantage. Intervening early to secure attachment between children and their parents through embracing a family-nurture approach that meets the needs of children and families from pre-birth to preschool and onwards into the classroom and beyond. By providing extensive parenting support programmes and working especially with new mums and dads to build their confidence, self-esteem and their skills, ensuring that families have extra support and know where to turn through, that they can access intervention in a non-stigmatised way, getting as little or as much support as they need, such as help with drug and alcohol issues, an approach that is based on developing nurture schools that are as inclusive as possible for all children, with teachers, early years workers, psychologists, social workers, health workers, all agencies working together to ensure that every child is supported at all stages of their education, focusing not just on literacy and numeracy in the school, but on what happens beyond the school gate, on the home learning environment and on all aspects of wellbeing. Fife has embraced the workshop for literacy approach, and I visited a number of schools in my constituency to see it work in practice. The approach uses high-quality story books that are not only read to children but used as a theme for learning, with reading, writing, listening, drawing, drama and talking activities based around each story.  It is amazing how many learning opportunities can evolve from one single book. That approach is really delivering results in classrooms. One of the most important ways that we can address educational inequality is by ensuring that every single child is reading well. I welcome the statement from Angela Constance that this is going to be a top priority. I would like to comment here to the read-on-get-on initiative, which is aimed at ensuring that every child in Scotland is reading well by age 11. I hope that this is a campaign that we can all get behind too. All children have a right to the best education. It is simply unacceptable that some children are born into a life of disadvantage from which it is difficult to escape. It is time to break the cycle, and that is only going to happen if resorts are prioritised and targeted, if we reach out to the children who are currently left behind and ensure that they catch up before they leave primary school. Scotland will only be the best place to grow up, but every single child has the support that they need to be the best that they can be when no child is left behind. I am pleased that, across the chamber, we are united in our aspirations to close the gap, and I hope that we can work together to make this happen. Ensuring that all of Scotland's children reach their educational potential is an ambition that I am sure is shared by everyone in the chamber. It is an issue of fundamental importance to pupils and parents across the country. As convener of the Education and Culture Committee, I want to inform members of some of the work that the committee has been undertaking on educational attainment. We are committing a significant part of our work programme this year to examining the progress that has been made in reducing the attainment gap in Scotland. The committee's inquiry on attainment will begin by holding a series of evidence sessions to explore specific issues around attainment in more depth. Firstly, we will examine the wood report and the implications for schools, teachers and pupils of the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce. That will be followed by an evidence session examining how parents and guardians can work with schools to raise all pupils' attainment. Especially those whose attainment is lowest. Finally, the committee will gather evidence on the role of the third sector and the private sector in removing barriers to educational attainment. The committee's focus on attainment builds on our previous work examining the attainment of Scotland's looked after children. Improving the life chances of Scotland's most vulnerable children must continue to be a key focus of this Parliament. In April, the Children and Young People Act will come into effect, and I certainly hope that it will help to deliver the best possible start in life for children in Scotland. The bill that you mentioned is now in act. The financial review for kinship carers has not yet been completed, and there is a particular group that needs to be supported because there is a prevalence of low attainment for that group. I think that it is cheered across the chamber. Do you believe that there needs to do something about this financial review? I agree with Ms Lamont that we share that particular ideal to make sure that kinship carers get the best out of compost. It was the SNP when we came into government in 2007, when it first turned the proper attention of Parliament to that issue. I noticed that the cabinet secretary mentioned the work that is on-going on this very fact by the minister who is sitting next to the cabinet secretary. Clearly, if Enfuil McLeod publishes that work, I am sure that the member will be very interested in that. Members have engaged constructively with the committee's work in that area, and I am delighted by that. I hope that that will continue to be the case as we gather evidence to inform our examination of educational attainment. At this point, I very much welcome the announcement on mentoring for looked after children at home, particularly given the work of the education committee and its earlier report on that very issue. However, it is worth highlighting that there is plenty to applaud in Scotland's education system. National exam results are at an all-time high, and we continue to benefit from a world-class higher education sector. School leaver destinations are also the best on record, with 90 per cent of school leavers going into work, training or education. However, of course, we must never stop striving for better. The difference in educational attainment for children from deprived backgrounds compared with children from better off families is not acceptable, and we must do all that we can to address it. Therefore, I am greatly encouraged by the First Minister's determination to build on the progress that we have made so far and to do more to raise attainment for Scotland's most disadvantaged children. I very much welcome the new £100 million attainment Scotland fund, which, over the next few years, will go a long way to giving children from Scotland's most disadvantaged communities the support that they need to fill their potential. Last year's report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted some of the challenges that Scotland faces in closing the attainment gap, and it is not new. It has been going on for decades. The report suggested that just 28 per cent of children from poorer backgrounds perform well in numeracy, compared to 56 per cent of those from better off backgrounds. Children from deprived households are also more likely to leave school earlier and with poorer qualifications. Research suggests that parental involvement programmes can have a significant impact on attainment, with the 2011 growing up in Scotland study concluding that improving parent-child learning opportunities in the home may be beneficial. The Education and Culture Committee is currently running an online survey to gather the views of parents about how schools work with them to support their children's learning. It is aimed at people who currently have children in school, and I urge members to encourage their constituents to submit their views to the survey before it closes on 7 March. Another significant finding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation paper is the importance of closing the attainment gap in literacy. Reading is particularly beneficial for enhancing vocabulary and supporting achievement in other areas. The 2009 PISA survey shows that increasing reading engagement has the potential to reduce approximately 30 per cent of the attainment gap associated with poverty. Again, I welcome the First Minister's announcement that a new literacy and numeracy campaign will be launched for children in primary 1 to primary 3. The Read, Write and Count initiative will ensure that every child will have access to a library of books and deliver locally run sessions to support parents to better link education at school and in the home. Studies illustrate that the link between poverty and poor literacy attainment can be challenged and it can be changed. Dr Sue Ellis of Strathclyde University, who others have already mentioned, one of the authors of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on attainments has said that, "...an important issue is how well we equip our teachers with the knowledge of how to teach literacy." In 2013, I wrote to universities across Scotland to ask about the number of contact that was allocated to literacy teaching in Scottish primary initial teacher education courses. I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed. The response revealed significant variation with some courses allocating just 20 hours in a four-year degree and others allocating four times as much. I would very much be grateful if the minister would comment on what can be done to ensure that teacher training courses adequately equip teachers with the necessary knowledge to teach literacy to as high a standard as possible. I would like to conclude by looking briefly at how poverty impacts on educational attainment. Evidence from the OECD suggests that, in Scotland, the socioeconomic background of a child's parents has a greater influence on educational outcomes than the school attended. Social and economic inequalities mean that some parents struggle to provide a supportive learning environment for their children at home. In Scotland, one in five children grew up in the poverty and the reality is that decisions at Westminster on welfare and social policy make addressing the attainment gap even more challenging. I share the First Minister's view that a good education is the greatest gift that we can give Scotland's young people. Therefore, there is no doubt that a quality education offers the best route for young people to escape the poverty trap. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I, too, welcome today's debate. It provides a further opportunity to reflect on where progress has been made over the lifetime of this Parliament under successive Administrations. More importantly, I recognise the scale of the task that we all accept still lies ahead of us. The investment of £20 million of the coming year to support efforts to improve educational outcomes for children in Scotland's most deprived communities is most certainly welcome. The promise of funding thereafter is also one that I know that those active in the field are welcome to. An attainment fund of £100 million, of course, is a suspiciously round figure. It bears all the tell-tale hallmarks of an initiative aimed at catching the eye ahead of an election, but that in and of itself is no reason to diminish the welcome that it receives. Where we need to be careful, however, is ensuring that we do not lose sight of what it is that we should be seeking to achieve and some of the difficult and complex choices that are inherent in that. In that regard, it may be best to avoid a Dutch auction about whose attainment fund is greater. If we all accept that it is unlikely that we will ever have enough money to do everything that we would wish to do, it then becomes a question of how best to target the resources that we have to make the greatest impact where there is greatest need. Is that aspect of the debate, Presiding Officer? I wish to focus on for the remainder of my remarks. First, let me echo some of what others have said about the problem that we face—the disparity between the outcomes, both educational but also more widely of those from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent peers—is marked. That inequality scars lives by preventing the potential of each and every individual being realised. It is also a drag on our economy and invariably a cost to society. Save the children make clear that the foundations for the attainment gap are established in the earliest years, often even before a child is born. The longer that goes unchecked, the more deeply entrenched the disparities become and the more difficult and costly it is to turn the situation around. That is why Scottish Liberal Democrats have played such a high priority on targeting resources on the early years and on those most in need. It is an approach reflected in our consistent argument in favour of extending free early learning and childcare to two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds. While ministers initially were content to focus on universal provision for three and four-year-olds, ultimately, thankfully, they accepted the case made by my party and a range of children's charities that additional targeted support was needed before the age of three. They were right to do so. All the evidence shows that educational investment before the age of three delivers the greatest return. For every pound spent for a child is three, 11 pounds is saved later in life. As well as helping to close in the attainment gap, there is an opportunity to invest in the economy and the social wellbeing of our country. I applaud last year's decision by ministers to accept the case for expanding the provision, but the fact remains that, whereas 40 per cent of two-year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds south of the borders now receive the support, the equivalent figure in Scotland is still short of 30 per cent. I urge the cabinet secretary and her colleagues, therefore, to go further and to match the levels that are delivered by the coalition Government and the rest of the UK. That would give a further 8,000 two-year-olds in Scotland the opportunity that they need to get on in life. Having accepted the principle of the argument, it is time for Scottish ministers, I think, to show greater ambition to make a real difference in tackling the attainment gap. Turning to the proposed attainment fund, again, let me stress that I welcome any additional resources. I have no doubt at all that the £20 million can deliver genuine improvements, but if the intention is to focus on areas of poverty rather than individuals in poverty, I fear that there is a real risk that many of those in most desperate need stand a little chance of receiving it. Last year, Scottish ministers talked of using SIMD20 as the basis for targeting efforts to widen access in higher education. In the end, they had to accept that this ignored the interests of those from poorer households who happen to live in better off areas. The lessons that appear have not been learned, and the situation is made potentially worse by the fact that those who find themselves excluded from the fund through an accident of geography are already likely to face higher costs from living in or adjacent to more affluent areas. It is a possible double whammy. A more effective way of targeting the resources and reducing the postcode lottery would be to adopt the approach underlying the pupil premium introduced south of the border with the funding that attaches to the pupil rather than to the school or to a neighbourhood. I saved the children's point out and I quote, targeted initiatives that support pupils living in poverty to catch up quickly if they start school already behind can be hugely effective using a range of measures, including one-to-one teaching and parental involvement. However, acknowledging that poverty is not confined solely to poor neighbourhoods is essential if we are to tackle inequality and close the attainment gap in a way that is fair and equitable. We should also acknowledge to, as the cabinet secretary fairly did, that, while there is a link between poverty and attainment, nothing of that is inevitable. Save the children recently told Parliament that some schools and local authorities are achieving great things for the poorest children in their areas, ensuring that their ability to do well in the classroom is not hindered by growing up in a low-income household. There are many other points that I could have raised ahead of time, but let me briefly conclude by highlighting one initiative that dovetails well with the Read, Write, Count campaign, referred to in the Government's motion. As Cara Hylton said, save the children's read-on get-on initiative aims to ensure that all those entering schools this year are confident readers by the time they leave primary. My involvement in the campaign is to me to take part in reading sessions in the Hope and Chapmansey primary schools in my Auckland constituency, with others to follow. I just say that Mr Gumn in the Dancing Bear and the Green Eggs in Ham make a pleasant change from trolling through my papers for the education committee, as I am sure the convener will empathise. Presiding Officer, we can be proud of much of what our schools achieved, but as Stuart Maxwell and Ian Gray were right in pointing out, the evidence shows that our record in closing the attainment gap remains poor. Success in future will depend on our willingness to learn from what has worked wherever that may be and to ruthlessly focus on targeting resources where they are most needed and early as possible. For now, I welcome this debate and the consensus that obviously exists to tackle the stubborn and complex problem. I call on Chick Brody to be followed by Joanne Lamont. Attainment, accomplishment, feat, fulfilment, realisation, ability, capability, competence, proficiency, skill and talent. There is not one of us who would disavow that all of these have been features of our pupil development and the basis of our collective aspirations for those pupils over the past not just a few years. It has been a nation's historical aspiration. We diminish ourselves, Presiding Officer, and diminish our educationalists, our teachers and our pupils by focusing our debate on issues such as those debates on targets, targets that are there for one moment in time, and whether those targets have been met instead of establishing whether there has been a basis for continuous improvement, a betterment of educational outcomes and attainments, and to have that as the basis of a mature discussion on the way forward rather than have meaningless propositions about numbers that are set as being right at that one moment in time. Debate should be about continuous improvement, which I believe that we have achieved yet accept that we still have many challenges to face. That continuous improvement is enshrined in the raising attainment for all programme that was launched last year. It talked about improved educational outcomes, not targets, educational outcomes for learners over an agreed period and embracing all of the tenets that I mentioned at the start of my speech. We, despite the cuts in the overall budgets that we face and the challenges of the economy, and demography are making improvement through performance, and more young people are gaining work or are in further education and seeking training opportunities. There are challenges, some out with our control, but let us not blind ourselves with targets that may change over a limited period of time. I heard Mrs Scanlon mention South Ayrshire Council. I have to say I am a bit closer to that than perhaps she is. Of course, the proof of the pudding in her version regarding her teacher numbers will be whether or not South Ayrshire Council vote to accept the monies offered by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance. I suspect that it will vote to accept it. Of course, because the point about over a period of time that, with the growth rate or lowering of the growth rate in child population in South Ayrshire, we may have a situation with our sufficient teachers. That provides us with the opportunity of further improving the outcomes and extending leadership where it should be in the classroom. There has been across the board a general improvement in school education, as I said, in recent years. No, I am sorry, I am crying out. As I said in recent years, curriculum for excellence is being embraced and outcomes have improved. School exam results, for example, are the example of that improvement. I welcome the Government's acceptance that more has to be done to address the attaining gap in the establishment of the Scottish attainment challenge. The £100 million that we have talked about is there to tackle the objectives that have been set. Of course, the biggest challenge is to tackle the link between poverty and underachieving. It is quite right that we should seek information to extend our knowledge in that particular area. I will come back to that in a minute with a bit further afield. I was raised in a prefab in Dundee, and I would never have achieved it. Some may say that I have not achieved anything, but what little I have achieved is due largely to the dedication of my parents and teachers. Yes, we lived in what was at that time poverty not as bad as some are facing today. While we continue all of us to work and eradicate the penal inequalities of income in our society, let us evangelise with more parental support and involvement of parents so that we can close that inequality in the attainment gap. We can start by I suggest removing the charitable status of public schools as an intent. Let us not imagine that our system is perfect and that money or funding is the only solution to deficiencies in the system. It is not. By looking, as I have done, I have talked to people in schools in Asia—some parts of Asia, for example—and talked to them about attainment. Increased attainment is blessed by many features where, from day one, there is little or no inequality, where pupils are encouraged, children are encouraged to become inquirers, developing natural curiosity, inquiring and researching, showing independence and learning. They are encouraged to think critically and creatively, to communicate confidently, to act with integrity and honesty, and so it goes on. However, again, the pain buttress against any inequality is the fact that there is no large disparity in the incomes of the parents of these families. I believe, Presiding Officer, that those situations and others like them should embrace anything that helps to improve the situation. Those are set personal attainments to sit alongside their basic curriculum needs. In the interests of our deserving teachers and keen pupils, let us recognise together the factors that hinder the closing of the attainment gap, poverty being the key one. Let us work together to overcome those in the interests of the political and economic future of Scotland. I think that we all recognise the importance of this debate, and it is essential to focus on the purpose of addressing the gap in attainment. First of all, it is simply an issue of equality and fairness. It offends me as a mother, as someone who taught for 20 years and as a citizen that somebody's life chances are inhibited by the time they are three years of age and that we do not do more to address that. We also understand education's role in achieving potential, overcoming barriers whether those are physical, financial or emotional, and people should have the opportunity to learn in order for them to address the barriers that they face. However, we also understand that it is critical to the economy to have an educated population and that every child who does not attain is a wasted talent, a talent that could be used to harness to create a stronger economy. We have the opportunity through closing the attainment gap also to strengthen the economy and harness that energy. Of course, we should care, but caring is not enough.  In this debate, I believe that we need across the chamber to test to destruction our presumptions and assumptions about why such a gap exists and what the solutions are. There is here a recognition of the importance of universal provision and targeted provision, which too often on SNP benches are posed as opposites to each other when, in fact, they are complementary. I hear the argument about geography against individual. I would simply say that the reality in many schools is that there are many children together who are poor, who are challenged. Even a child who is completely supported at home is working in a system where resources are very much under pressure. However, I think that it is an important debate to be had about getting that balance right. Of course, we recognise extra funding and welcome it, but there is a deeper question about what choices we make. All young people in Scotland deserve the best start and the very best quality of universal provision, but we also need to understand and address what acts as blocks in the road, what are the things that deny young people the opportunities to the deep safe. We also have to confront whether our spending choices amplify the gap rather than diminish it. As one simple example, to fund our ambitions in higher education at the expense of further education is to amplify that gap rather than to close it. In focusing on the educational attainment gap, I urge the cabinet secretary, yes, of course, to ask the right questions, but also please have the courage to respond where the answers take you. Does it mean that we need to talk about increasing taxation, as we have said? Does it mean that we need to change our priorities? Or do we need to reflect on the consequence of cuts to local government, which have closed the very projects that have supported young people in the past, supported young people in poverty in order that they can access education? We also know that educational attainment is not just about schools, it is about childcare, it is about early years, it is about the provision of libraries, it is about the opportunities for young people to learn outside the school setting, it is about health and wellbeing, and there were excellent projects run during the time of the social inclusion partnerships that the cabinet secretary may want to look at. All of those things are important, and we should not be overwhelmed as a consequence of the fact that we end up doing nothing. We should take what steps we can. Now, a good educational practice— That was a very interesting speech. Can I ask the member, when she talks about the issue of universality, would she agree that that does not necessarily mean uniformity in provision? Absolutely, because I think that it is really important that education follows the needs of the child and the community. I am a great advocate, for example, of Gaelic education, and I think that there are examples in different communities where need is different. We have to find ways of delivering real change. It is not just school, but it is also school. We do recognise that schools are critical. I would recommend looking again at what Strathclyde did in terms of areas of priority treatment. Indeed, a project like my own in Casimilch High School is working on those very issues many years ago. We do not always have to reinvent the wheel, there is really good work already happening, but it is we recognise how critical schools are in creating the opportunity to address the needs that young people have in nursery, in primary. I would make a plea for secondary school education, because that is very often where young people fall off the radar altogether. We have to understand the pressure on schools, not just on teachers, but the support that they are given. Classroom assistance, admin support, specialist in learning support and behaviour support, attendance officers. The job that I did, which I always describe as the education equivalent of giving a hug, that supports and allows teachers to focus on learning. Critically, that support can make a child want to come to school, can help them with the issues that they are facing, whether it is bereavement or problems at home or problems in school. It helps them to settle and learn. It is my concern. Those are the very things that go first when budgets are cut. Simple little projects that can make a difference. I would say to the cabinet secretary, please look at what is happening to the supports, to classroom assistance, to personal assistance. Are young people denied the opportunity to flourish in mainstream education because those are things that are disappearing? One last point in conclusion, one last plea. The attainment gap can be closed at the early stage in life, but it can also be addressed through second chance education. I understand why we are focusing on 16 to 19-year-olds, but in further education, literacy programmes for adults, part-time opportunities to learn for those distance from education and work, re-skilling them, that second chance for an adult allows that adult as a parent to ensure that their children are given a better start. That is a virtuous circle that we should be supporting, both funding in early years but also critically at the further education stage to achieve what we all desire is that all youngsters achieve the full potential. Thank you very much. Colin Beithie, to be followed by Jane Baxter. Presiding Officer, the evidence that we have is clear that attainment levels can provide a route out of poverty and deprivation for many Scots at an early age. I am sure that the chamber is in no doubt that education is a key factor in determining where a life can be led to. When our young school leavers do not have the opportunity to progress to an initial positive educational destination, then not only are they being denied the right to better themselves, but the subsequent knock-on benefit to our communities will never be felt. Most of us here today will have welcomed the First Minister's recent announcement of 100 million pounds of investment into the Scottish attainment challenge, money that will be used to reduce inequality in educational attainment. Scottish education has been improving in recent years, and in my constituency I have seen the number of school leavers going to positive destination rise by over 7 per cent in Midlothian and almost 8 per cent in East Lothian between 2007 and 2013. However, we cannot rest on our laurels despite the increases that we have worked to do to make sure that no one misses out on fulfilling their potential. Statistics consistently show that attainment levels are directly linked to deprivation levels. A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation spelt some of those facts out. By age 5, the Foundation reported, there are gaps of 10 months in problem-solving development and 13 months in vocabulary between children from high-income households and those from low-income households. That indicates quite clearly just how early the attainment gap begins. The report goes further. By ages 12 to 14, pupils from better-off areas are more than twice as likely to do well in numeracy as those from the most deprived areas. The report also notes that children from poorer areas tend to leave school earlier and that low attainment is strongly linked to poor post-school destinations, potentially having a major long-term effect on future educational and job prospects. School leavers with the most deprived backgrounds are only one-third as likely to go into higher education, while in employment terms, by the age of 22 to 23, low attainers are three times more likely to be unemployed, twice as likely to be working part-time in low-status jobs or earning substantially less than high attainers. The difference is even more pronounced for women, with a difference in earnings of £44.94 per week for women compared to £23.45 per week for men. One of the key points that Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports makes is that the socio-economic background of parents is more influential to children's attainment than their school. The clear implication here is that if we can improve the destinations of pupils through increased attainment levels, we can improve the backgrounds for future pupils and thus break the constant rotation of low attainment. The figures at least in my constituency may be improving, but complacency will only enhance and reinforce this vicious cycle. In welcoming the £100 million investment that the Government intends to use to minimise the attainment gap, I note that various reports have examined what can be done with such investment in order that Scotland's report on school education published last June was clear in its methodology and conclusions. The report examined how effective and efficient local councils were with their resources, as well as how much they spent on education and where that money was spent. It was noted that the majority of council funding went on staff costs, and the report is careful to point out that councils need to be aware of the risk of increased workload for staff, and we must be vigilant to ensure that teachers have the resources and support that they need. Without them, we can never hope to reduce the attainment gap. The report further noted that, while levels of deprivation have a large influence on attainment, some schools achieve better results than their levels of deprivation would suggest. That implies that deprivation levels cannot be the sole reason for the gap between the highest and lowest-performing schools. Therefore, it is crucial that we apply measures that take place across the board and that all schools can benefit from, and not, as Jim Murphy would like, merely focusing on the worst 20 performing schools. Why should the next 20 schools not benefit or have 20 beyond that? The Scottish Government's programme on raising attainment for all launched last spring has seen a raft of measures that will hopefully influence where the investment will be spent. The introduction of insight, an online benchmarking tool, should provide local authorities with the ability to compare their performance to other councils and then share good practice, one of the key recommendations of the Audit Scotland report. There are also plans to examine and learn lessons from other successful schemes, and one of those successful schemes is the London challenge, without a doubt, contributed significantly to the improvements that we have seen in London's education system. According to a report in the Guardian, in 1997, only 16 per cent of students gained five GCSEs at grades A to C, and that was in an area of the country, which arguably has the most money and investment. Just two years after its launch, the London challenge improved the performance of London schools to above the national average, and by 2010, Ofsted declared that London had a higher proportion of good and outstanding schools than any other area in England. We can easily learn these lessons from the London challenge and implement them in Scotland. One of the most successful steps in the challenge was the appointment of a team of highly experienced advisers to support schools and local authorities. Those advisers acted as the first point of contact for improving monitoring and seeking financial or other forms of help. In the light of the success story, I hope that we would all agree that the announcement that the Government's plan to appoint attainment advisers in each local authority area is a sensible move that will pay substantial dividends. In conclusion, there is no easier quick fix for reducing the attainment gap, but we can see what challenges have been met elsewhere and learn from those lessons. The Scottish Government is having to fight hard against continuous and unprecedented austerity measures, measures that I need not remind the chamber are failing dismally to improve the lives of ordinary people, the length and breadth of the country. Since the SNP came to office, we have seen improvements in the attainment gap as evidence with the increase in the number of school leavers going on to positive destinations. There is more work to do undoubtedly, but if we listen to advice from experts and those with experience, we will be able to invest in funding where it will have the most impact. I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate today, and in particular to support Labour's amendment, which highlights the impact of inequality on education attainment and the need for investment in front-line resources in those schools that are dealing with the highest levels of deprivation. Addressing the attainment gap in schools is a top priority for the Scottish Labour Party. We are developing a strategy with the focus on reducing this gap before children start school through increased and improved preschool provisions, removing barriers to young people's opportunities and learning at school and supporting families directly through initiatives such as family centres in the most deprived areas. I welcome the Scottish Government's proposals to address the attainment gap, albeit after eight years in power, and I will closely monitor the outcomes of that approach. It is clear that local councils play a vital role in addressing inequality in educational attainment, not only by providing the building blocks of schools, staff and equipment, but also by providing leadership in setting policy priorities and making the spending choices that turn them into reality. That reality can mean supporting families at home and in communities investing in early years education and childcare, in providing safe and sustainable environments for play and sport, leadership in forging and supporting links between schools, colleges and local employers, and in supporting lifelong learning and help with literacy and numeracy. I am proud to highlight the work of one authority in my region, Fife, where a great deal of work is going on to improve outcomes in a number of areas for the children, young people and families. Fife has the third highest number of children living in poverty in Scotland. That is, however, a fact that can be masked by other factors, depending on how you present the figures. Factors such as the significantly higher wealth in north-east Fife. It is well documented that communities that exist right next to each other can be nevertheless report vastly unequal life chances, economic realities and even life chances to each other. So, if we are serious about tackling unequal educational attainment levels, then we must keep the most disadvantaged individuals and communities at the centre of our thinking. We must also look at particular support for schools where a very small number of pupils have achieved five good hires, amongst other factors. In some areas, we do need to do as much as possible to bring about change, so that young people have the best possible chance of a positive future. That is why I am proud that Fife is currently building a new high school for the Levenmouth area, one of the most disadvantaged areas in Fife and Scotland. The new school will bring together pupils from the existing Buckhaven High School and Kirkland High School. This new school will have about the same numbers of pupils living in SIMD-1 and SIMD-2 areas as Clackmannanshire does as a whole. To be clear, that one school in Levenmouth will have more pupils who live in deprivation than the entire number of pupils who live in deprivation in the whole of Clackmannanshire. As the catchment area of the new school includes significant areas of deprivation, with very significant numbers of disadvantaged pupils, its sheer scale, a roll of about 1,800 pupils, means that those would not be identified through a focus on average statistics based on local authority areas. That is why it is so important to understand local circumstances. The rationale for this development is to provide a single, purpose-built facility for the community with a clearly established sense of identity and ambition. It will provide single-site educational and training facilities and provide links into local employers, allowing a clear focus on employability and life skills. That is precisely the sort of approach that is needed to successfully reduce inequality in life outcomes, including attainment and achievement, and that starts at the earliest opportunity. A family and nurture approach is increasingly being used across Fife to improve life chances for vulnerable families by providing effective support with child development and attachment. The approach is based on learning from and developing what works. Although, in its early stages, it is already showing early indications of success, engagement with and provision of support to vulnerable families has increased. There is also evidence of improving outcomes, for example improvements in readiness for primary school. There is evidence that Fife is beginning to break the cycle of disadvantage and literacy skills. As literacy attainment for S4P was rose in all social contexts, the increase was significantly greater in Fife's most deprived areas and achievement that is attracting national attention. However, it remains unacceptable that any child should leave a Scottish school in the 21st century without being able to read and write properly, and that is why Scottish Labour will introduce a new literacy programme that will also see support offered to parents so that they can learn with their children. Fife is working to ensure that all school leavers progress to a positive destination, equipped with key skills, evidence through attainment and wider achievement. An important part of that is the learning environment, which must engage all children and young people and equip them for positive life outcomes regardless of their social context. Fife Council has delivered outstanding new education facilities done film in high school, ochmuty high school, kinegi primary school and burnt island primary school. There are new high schools under way in Cacoddy and Strother and, as I mentioned, Levenmouth. Those new facilities will ensure that Fife is better able to equip young people with employment skills needed in the modern economy. We now need the Scottish Government to support to ensure that the teaching within them is the best it can be. Deputy Presiding Officer, I hope that I have shown that an awareness of the factors which contribute to inequality in education attainment, combined with the willingness to target resources where their most needed is a sure way to close the gap. Scottish Labour's vision is to create communities where fairness and fulfilment can be achieved for all children and young people. I now call Kevin Stewart to be followed by Richard Lyle. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome the £100 million attainment Scotland fund. While we are making progress in reducing the attainment gap, we must recognise that we can only go so far in mitigating the damage caused by UK Government policies. The priorities of Westminster seem to be continuing the policies of austerity, continuing to allow tax avoidance and continuing to spend £100 billion on a new generation of weapons of mass destruction. I believe that our priorities should be to eliminate austerity, invest in our public services and to create a fairer, more equal society. We know that an additional 100,000 Scottish children will be living in poverty by 2020 because of UK welfare reforms. That is before the next round of cuts that are due in 2017-18 are taken into account. In my opinion, it is galling that, due to the decisions of the UK Government, children and families here are suffering greatly. That is why the Scottish Government's submission to the Smith Commission called for more powers and set out the need for Scotland to have full responsibility over welfare. The Scottish Government's child poverty strategy for Scotland expressed its commitment to focus on the needs to tackle the long-term drivers of poverty through early intervention and prevention, partnership and holistic services. My apologies to Mr Stewart. The Smith Commission did, however, agree that income tax should be devolved to the Parliament and will be when it is. Would he support our suggestion that a 50p tax rate be invoked and some of that be used to address the attainment gap? Kevin Stewart, I will give you some extra time. I would like to see the minimum wage in all welfare devolved here. I am glad that taxation is going to be devolved here. As I have said in this chamber previously, one of the things that I cannot understand is why the Labour Party voted to reduce that top rate of tax in the first place. Only full powers over welfare, minimum wage and social policy will allow us to tackle child poverty and allow Scotland to become a fairer country. Only full responsibility over tax and national insurance will allow us to create jobs and build a more prosperous Scotland that is necessary to support our ambition for a fairer society. In our speech that has already been said on the Scottish Achainment Challenge, the First Minister reiterated the target that she set out when she came to office. A child born today in one of our most deprived communities, while by the time he or she leaves school, has the same chance of going to university as a child born in one of our most affluent communities. That task would be much easier if we held all the levers of power required to tackle poverty and create fairness in our society. There has been much talk of various projects that have helped in increasing attainment. I commend the reading bus, which has been a project that has been about Aberdeen for some time, which has led to improvements in literacy. I urge the new cabinet secretary to come visit Aberdeen at a point and see what the reading bus has been doing in deprived communities throughout Aberdeen, because I think that lessons can be learned from that project. I applaud the efforts of bodies such as the North East of Scotland College and Robert Gordon University for collaborating in two plus two courses that allow students, many from poorer backgrounds, the opportunity and flexibility of experiencing further education before moving on to higher education and gaining their degree. I also applaud the University of Aberdeen-run scheme such as S6 at uni in Aemfer uni and for their involvement in Aspire North. Aberdeen also has a renowned summer school for access programme, which I benefited from a number of years ago. The programme allowed me and others aged 18 to 80, many from poorer backgrounds, to take part in an intensive programme over a short period of time to gain access to university. The way that the course was designed and installed camaraderie among students had inspirational lecturers and tutors and often led to moments of epiphany about what you could aspire to and achieve. Unfortunately, I did not finish my degree because I was flat broke and I returned to work, but many, many did and have moved on to much greater things. I would say to the Scottish Government that they should look at some of the comments that University Scotland has made, and they have asked for our support in encouraging the Scottish Funding Council to look beyond the limitations of SIMD as a focus and as a measure for widening access to university. I would urge the Scottish Government as well as the Scottish Funding Council to look beyond just the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation when allocating funding to boost attainment and widening access across the country. In Aberdeen, we have poverty amidst plenty and often poorer people do not live in the SIMD identified poorest data zones. We cannot, should not and must not forget this fact and must do all that we can to help ensure that all less well-off folk have the help that they need to aspire to greater things. Throughout the education sector in Scotland, we can see many examples of excellence and high achievement from our schools, to colleges and universities. As James Baxter has just said, we also see many new schools in Fife and Scotland being built by the SNP Government. We should take pride in our higher education sector, which still deserves to be called great. That said, however, the independent commission on school reform suggested that our lower schools are very good, but there is always room for improvement. Improvements can be delivered. Indeed, I know that this Government is one that listens and that is why the Government has set its sights on making these improvements so that our schools can without any doubt be called great. That is being done to improve the opportunities for every child in this country, to ensure that we meet that vision of Scotland being the best place to grow up. We all need Scotland schools to be the very best, because they provide the foundation for further progress in life, be that through attaining college, university or through employment, training and modern apprentice schemes. Our school system is, I would suggest, the root of this country's current and future success. A child born today, as has already been said, in one of our most deprived communities, should by the time he or she leaves school, have the same chance of going to university as a child born in one of our most affluent communities. Our children deserve the best, and we should all join to make sure that they get the best. Scotland is a nation that values education and has done throughout its rich history.  Above all, as this debate shows, passion. I understand that the Scottish Government has a long-term plan for success with introduction of the curriculum for excellence, a curriculum that tackles issues of bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork in order to feed teachers to concentrate on what they do best. The delivery of teaching and learning, and we must resist any attempts to change that. It is regularly known that the success of any country's education system is dependent upon the quality of its teachers and the education leadership. High-quality people in teaching achieve high-quality outcomes for children in education, and this Government, I am sure, has taken the steps to further enhance the excellence that exists in our teaching profession. It is my belief that Scotland must offer not just good but great education to all, and when we face difficulty in doing this, we must redouble our efforts to overcome the attainment gap. That does not mean that improving access to university or colleges is as important as it is, but it is also about ensuring that all Scotland's children and young people are engaged in education at all levels so that they have the skills needed to succeed in work and life. We must do all that we can to equip tomorrow's citizens. With that in mind, and it is worth the great interest that I read in the announcement of the new £100 million fund to improve education outcomes last week by the First Minister, which aims to drive forward improvements on education outcomes in Scotland's most disadvantaged communities. That fund over four years, as has already been said, will focus on improving literacy, new ministry, health and wellbeing in primary schools, with the clear objective of providing all our primary school pupils with regard to their background, the best start in life. The schools in those areas will benefit from great access to expertise and resources, including additional teachers' materials for the classroom and resources to develop new out-of-school activities. The fund will also allow bespoke improved plans, which are appropriate to local circumstances to be agreed for each school or groups of schools. Great things are also happening in our schools, but by providing great access to funding, expertise and resources, schools will have more opportunity to offer the creative and innovative teaching that helps young people in Scotland succeed. The new fund, along with the Government's policies and programmes that include, as has already said, curriculum for excellence, teaching Scotland's future, getting it right for every child, early years framework and opportunities for all, clearly sets out what needs to be done to support every child and young person in their journey from early years through school and post-16 learning, which include college and university. I use the word journey quite deliberately, because all our young people, it is just that. I know that young people find themselves going through school and then coming to choose whether they should go to college, to university or indeed to employment or training. In my own region, North Lancer, for example, the activity agreement or 16 plus learning hub provides the opportunity for access to training, employment opportunities or support in becoming a modern apprentice, something that this Government has a record on delivering on. The hub supports our young people meeting their needs, providing personal programme of learning, activity through a person-centred learning and development approach. That shows that here in Scotland we adapt and we work with young people, and I believe that it shows that we are committed to recognising learning as a journey from school to further education, employment or training. While this Government is doing all that it can to arrange attainment, as has already been said, it is hindered by the policy of Westminster, additional 100,000 Scottish children learning poverty by 2020. That is unacceptable. Despite this Government's best efforts to alleviate the pressures on families, that is a result of the decisions of UK Government children and families that are suffering, and it should change. Addressing the attainment gap in our schools has to be one of our top priorities, and we welcome the Scottish Government's recently announced plans to tackle it after eight years in government. Educational inequality is a symptom of a deeper problem of poverty that we need to address, and so the focused nature of any programme is vital. Living in common old and the variation in educational attainment across the town is massive. In the council ward of common old north, the child poverty level is 8 per cent far too high, but when you cross over the footbridge across the M80 and the common old south, a two-minute walk, child poverty then jumps to a staggering 23 per cent. As I have said, that difference in child poverty then impacts on the educational attainment of young people, which can stop them breaking out of that vicious cycle of poor health and low pay. The measures that we agree to tackle attainment have to be focused on most deprived communities as a result. With that in mind, Scottish Labour would use the additional revenues from a new 50p tax rate, redistributing resources from those who can afford it to those who need it most—something that SNP members seem to be avoiding talking about at all costs. That additional £25 million per year over and above the Government's proposals would supplement that programme. We would double the number of teaching assistants in every primary school that is associated with the 20 secondary schools that are facing the greatest challenges of deprivation. We would introduce a new literacy programme for schools and recruit and train literacy specialists to support pupils in the associated primary schools and first and second year pupils in each of those 20 secondary schools. We would also support parents so that they can learn with their children, and we will introduce a special literacy support programme for looked-after children. We would ask Education Scotland to carry out an annual review on progress in tackling educational inequality in Scotland's schools through the school's inspectorate programme. That would include a specific report on looked-after children, and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Life Learning would also report to the Parliament on the progress that is made annually on reducing the attainment gap to allow the progress to be monitored and scrutinised. There are also other issues related to poverty and inequality that are impacting on educational attainment, such as the increase in the use of private tutors and the use of the place and request system in our schools. There has been a 300 per cent increase in the use of private tutors in the last year alone, and wealthier families have the ability to give their child an extra boost compared to children and families who cannot afford that private tuition. That can be used when a child is struggling in a particular subject or help in the run-up to exams, and in itself is not a bad thing. However, where is the support for the pupil from the poor background when they are struggling with a particular subject or need that support during exam time? We have supported provision of high-quality wraparound care for primary school pupils, such as the provision of breakfast clubs and homework clubs, to give pupils a productive start and end to their day, while supporting the needs of working parents. That would give all pupils, regardless of their family income, that extra support in their learning. Supported study sessions are often run in schools at evenings and exam times to support pupils, but that is offered by committed, motivated teachers who offer up their own time to support the pupils that they care about. That is an excellent way of supporting pupils at exam time, but it is patchy across the country and across subjects. There is an issue of transport costs for pupils who would normally get the school bus home, but they cannot afford alternative means. The other issue that I wanted to talk about was the placing request system, which creates a two-tier system of education in its causing problems for education authorities and managing school staff in the school estate. As soon as a school starts to get a perception or perhaps unfairly a reputation of slipping or failing or another school in the area, perhaps it starts to get a reputation for excellence, parents who have the means will start to pay for transport for their children to move out of their catchment area to an alternative school. I have seen that happening in my authority in North Lanarkshire Council, and what we are left with is a situation in some schools where only the children from the poorest families in the area attend and the impact on that attainment is clear. Liz Smith, I thank the member for giving way. That is an interesting point that he makes. Would he accept that there is a real need to ensure that those schools who are perhaps not doing quite so well are driven up in standards, and would the Labour Party consider the offer of additional payments to staff who would teach in those schools? We have spoken about reintroducing the chartered teacher scheme to give teachers and those schools that incentive. I do not like to use the word failing schools, but those schools that are facing the extreme challenges of deprivation that we are seeing placing requests, reducing the school role and reinforcing that cycle of low attainment. I am glad that the Government is making education on attainment a priority after eight years in government. I hope that it will look at the areas where our proposals can improve those plans by redistributing wealth and increasing the resources that are available. I look forward to working with the Government on some of the other issues that I have mentioned to tackle educational inequality. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank the Scottish Government for putting forward the motion on attainment in schools for the purpose of particularly young kids. It is an absolutely excellent subject to debate. I also thank the Cabinet Secretary for the Recognition that education can be a postcode lottery and that the way forward to attain equality and delivery of education must be through strong leadership, high-quality learning and teaching to enable all our children to reach their full potential. I do not want to touch on the Labour Party's amendment and Ian Gray's contribution, which mentioned the importance of early years learning and the importance of tackling the attainment gap, particularly in our most deprived communities. As the Conservative amendment mentioned, it seems that we have cross-party support on that particular issue. However, I take issue with the Labour and Conservatives on a number of issues. I ask the Labour Party if he wishes to tackle the attainment gap. Why did you vote against the additional £20 million put forward by John Swinney in the budget? Frankly, if we voted against the budget because it failed our health service, it failed our colleges and it failed local government, the argument that says, therefore, we voted against everything in it is juvenile. Will Mr Gray mention juvenile? He is talking about his own party. He mentioned the fact that he wanted to give extra money, but he voted against £20 million. That is pretty juvenile, as well. If someone says, Labour says, no. I also remind the Labour Party—I think that we have got to remind about this—that we have constantly gone about the deprived areas, and that is absolutely correct, and we need to target moneys into those areas. Let's not forget—I think that the Labour Party tries to forget, especially in the Glasgow area where I represent and come from—most of the deprived areas that you talk about with low attainment, unfortunately, have been ruled by Labour for decades, and Glasgow City Council also pleads that you do not need to lecture people on poverty. You have learned nothing about it for the decades that you have controlled parts of Glasgow, and I think that you should really hang your head in shame in that particular one. I want to just touch on the Conservatives—not just the amendment, but the contribution—and I take on board the genuine what Mary Scarlin has said and Liz Smith. However, you have to look at the situation in those areas that you are targeting for poverty. You are talking about benefit changes, you are talking about austerity. How do you think that is going to help those people to get out of the poverty that they are in? I ask you to think about that one in particular. Presiding Officer, I want to use what time I have remaining or left to give an example in my constituency of a school and an early-year centre, which has very high attainment—both of them—but is being threatened by the actions of Glasgow City Council, Hillhead primary and the early-year centre. A school that was created from the closure of four primary schools is now one of the largest primary schools in Glasgow, so large in fact that it cannot cope. It is so overcrowded that classroom space, ICT, art and drama, toilet provision and even are all compromised. There was consultation. I went along to those consultations. I was absolutely amazed. Some of the nursery schools were left out of the consultation. The number did not even add up. Some of the parents who went along to these all the consumers is an absolute sham. I went through the motions and the consultation was there. What we have now is a divided community. Unfortunately, we have the early-year centre, the share of campus, the early-year centre, and we have Hillhead primary, two excellent facilities with very high attainments. One of the ideas of Glasgow City Council was to take the kids from the final years of the primary and send them to Hillhead high school and create extra space in the grounds of Hillhead high school. The headmaster there and others there are pretty overcrowded as well, so they did not actually look at that. Thankfully, we managed to get a call in Glasgow City Council and the Greens and the SNP councillors spoke against this particular issue and said that we had to look at the whole issue again, but no, it fell Labour Party. The majority won again. Now we have a situation where the actual people get in, the people numbers have been capped, the catchment area has been changed, someone who stays across the road used to fit the catchment area can't go to the school anymore. It is a sticking plaster that should have been put over something that should have been looked at long ago. It will come back year after year after year for that whole area. I had a look at some of the stuff and I have written to the cabinet secretary as have the schools and the parents also. Under Scottish Government guidance, it states that a school with 22 class bases should have a minimum of four GP rooms. Hillhead primary has one. The ICT is poor, there is no ICT suite and now we see the same happening on the south side of Glasgow in an area in Mary Lee and the surrounding areas also. What I want to do is, by highlighting this, I said to the parents, I would certainly highlight it, I wanted to ask the cabinet secretary if possible, if she would meet me to discuss these issues. It is very, very important, it is not going to go away with the sticking plaster and it is very sad to get to excellent facilities, excellent attainment, who now, while the share of campus, now don't speak. I think that that is really sad and I do blame Glasgow City Council for the lack of foresight in what has happened to create the biggest school in Glasgow, but the problems that it has also created. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Thank you. I now call John Mason to be followed by Siobhan McMahon. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is always good to start off, I think, on a positive note, although I realise that these debates focus more often on what is wrong and needs improving rather than on what is going well. Clearly, our education system is the envy of many countries around the world, and that is one of the reasons for immigration to Scotland, because many people from poorer countries want a better life for their children, and they will go to Great Lens to bring their kids here so that they can benefit from our education system. Is that hunger for education from whole families, parents for their children, children for themselves, that sometimes seems to be missing in some of our homegrown families? In fact, I think that we have probably all heard about teachers talking about how, when children have come to their schools from asylum-seeking families, refugee families, immigrant families, that can be a real boost to the whole school, and that enthusiasm for education can rub off on some of the Scots kids, too. On that theme of having whole families involved, I have to say that I was very pleased to see in the Government motion mention of parental engagement, and I have to say I was somewhat disappointed that, in the Conservative amendment, there is no mention of parents or families whatsoever. Of course, the amount of money and the number of teachers have to be key factors in raising attainment and narrowing the attainment gap, and that is especially the case when a youngster has a more difficult background and we are looking to the school to make up some of the shortfall. I just find it very difficult to accept the cosla argument that there is no link between teacher numbers or pupil-teacher ratio and attainment. I totally accept that teacher numbers are not the only factor, but surely they are a factor. I go into both primary and secondary schools, and especially if there are two primary sevens together, which means 50 or 60 youngsters, it is a real challenge to engage with them all at the one time. Nurture groups seem to be in a real success in some of the schools for bringing on kids who have extra challenges and hopefully having them catch up with the main class. Fundamental to such a nurture group, as I understand it, is that there is a small number of pupils with pretty intensive support from a teacher, so again it seems clear that a better pupil-teacher ratio has to bring benefits, even if it is not the whole answer. I thought the inclusion briefing for today's debate was very helpful, with its emphasis on child-parent relationships, child-school relationships and parent-school relationships. For example, they say that their work includes proactive work with parents to set boundaries and manage difficult behaviour at home, work with parents to access help for health, housing, finance and other problems, which undermine their own capacity to help the young people, and work with parents on their attitudes to education and responsibilities, giving them the confidence to engage with education. However, the inclusion approach is fairly intensive and is quite expensive and could not be used on a terribly wide scale. Speaking to the headteacher of one of my local secondaries, they said that it is often like having two separate schools within the one building. Partly the split is based on deprivation and the area that pupils are coming from, but very important is the split between youngsters who have parental support and those who do not. That does not always simply reflect the level of deprivation. Seeing one or both parents going to work every day has a huge impact on young people and their expectations and aspirations. Confidence or lack of it can be a factor here, too. For example, where parents have not had a good experience at secondary school and that gets passed on to the next generation. Moving on to some of the practical issues relating to schools, I think that there has been too much emphasis perhaps in the past on the academic. To some extent, we have moved away from that, which is good, and the emphasis on modern apprenticeships is excellent. Would you not agree also, however, that there has been not enough emphasis on the academic abilities of some of our poorer children and that they have been denied opportunities? For example, schools sit up situations in which they cannot sit five hires in particular schools. Surely that is another disadvantage. We should not presume that every child who comes from a deprived background is more prone to going to a vocational course. It is a question of having the right approach, the right support and the right opportunities for every child, so I totally agree with that. At the same time, I would say that we do not want a country with 100 per cent university graduates. I do not believe that that would be good for the country or for all of our individuals. In practice, it is clear that many top earners are in fact not graduates and also many graduates are not finding jobs to match their degrees and therefore are not earning what they had hoped. We need a whole range of schools to make our society work and how those schools are acquired may well vary considerably. I also wonder if schools are pointing youngsters in the right direction as far as careers are concerned. We had a high school in Parliament recently from the east end of Glasgow and I asked first of all how many girls are planning to go into engineering and the answer was none. I then asked how many boys were planning to go into engineering and the answer again was none. It is all very well for young people being interested in politics and taking degrees in that subject but then they find that there is a lack of job and I do wonder if that is the kind of attainment that we are aiming for. The Conservative amendment talks of more trained science teachers but I think that part of the answer has to be more and better exposure between young people and the workplace. That can either be by experience in the workplace or with business people and engineers and so on going into the schools. It is good that we have modern school buildings, ICT equipment and all the rest of it but I remain convinced that that is the school teacher or the college teacher who is key to the whole agenda. We all know of or have heard of a teacher who has gone beyond the call of duty and invested time and interest in one young person and that has turned their life around. So whatever we do please let us keep investing in teachers. I welcome the opportunity to take part in this afternoon's debate and I also welcome the investment by the Scottish Government over the next four years for the attainment Scotland fund. I have no doubt that the Government is sincere in their pursuit to reduce the attainment gap in Scotland. I welcome the initiatives that the current and former Cabinet Secretary have announced regarding this and I hope that they can all work together in this chamber to make sure that real progress is made in this area. In order to do this I believe that we have to be more realistic about what we will achieve and how we can do this. For instance, I cannot see how the current strategy can truly benefit every child or young person in Scotland. As I have said before, this is an ambition that the Cabinet Secretary and I share. However, as she will recall, we have disagreed on this subject before because I think that we have to focus more on individual need rather than on a collective approach. The cabinet secretary will recall that I made the point to her in the many debates that we had on the current modern apprenticeship programme but she may also be aware that I made similar points during the passage of the Children and Young Persons Bill. It is a point that I maintain and I will expand on now. Children with additional needs, particularly those with a learning and or physical disability, sometimes require a different approach than other children and young people need. Simply providing a space for a child to learn, such as a learning hub, may be beneficial for children who require a space away from home to do their homework, but it will not help a child who requires additional one-on-one support in order to complete the same tasks. I know that members in the chamber will recognise that. However, we have to do more than simply recognise it because, at the moment, it is those children that are getting left behind and, as a result, see their life chances diminishing in front of them. As included in the briefing for today's debate, our vision is that young people in their families are supported with targeted and personalized wraparound support as part of a core school provision and that those children who face the greatest barriers to involvement in education are given the support that they need so that they can achieve their full potential. While we welcome additional funding for and focus on raising attainment, it is important that the implementation of that policy focuses not just on the school experience but on the whole approach that is taking to engaging children and young people in education. I believe that, in order to achieve that vision, a vision that I and many members in the chamber will share, we have to invest in more classroom assistance. Classroom assistance is crucial if we are to achieve any form of progress with regards to the attainment gap. Without that, our teachers simply do not have the time to dedicate to those who require the most support. Without supporting investment like that, we cannot say that we are truly getting it right for every child in Scotland. I know that the Scottish Government is focusing on the link between poverty and educational attainment, and I welcome that. However, what we should recognise is that children with a disability are more likely to come from a deprived background and therefore require more support. That is why it is so crucial that the support that we offer is tailored to our child's needs rather than taking a homogeneous approach. I do not believe that this is the best way of tackling the problems that children and young people are currently facing, nor do I believe that it is the best use of public money. Poverty is regrettably linked to educational attainment. I say that the children stated in their briefing that children living with poverty are twice as likely as other children to start school already behind in their learning and development. They too believe that we should have a more targeted approach and have a focus on those from our deprived background. Although I welcome that suggestion, I would offer a note of caution to the cabinet secretary as focusing on a deprived background does not mean focusing on someone's postcode. I say that because I am concerned that the Government's approach to getting more people from deprived backgrounds into university relies on a person's postcode and not simply their socio-economic status. That is a matter that I raised with the former cabinet secretary as the policy has unfairly discriminated against my constituent. It is also a policy that was brought to my attention during a meeting last week, when it was pointed out to me that if the UK Government were to adopt the same policy as the Scottish Government, Prince George would be entitled to additional support as his postcode is in a deprived area. I hope that this example illustrates the note of caution that I was assuring earlier. The Government and the Literacy Action Plan state that recent surveys have confirmed that literacy skills are linked to socio-economic status and level of deprivation, with those from more deprived areas achieving lower scores. In primary education, those from more deprived areas often fail to reach even basic standards of literacy. The action plan goes on to say that early intervention is a philosophy at the heart of our early years framework. During these critical years, it is parents who will have the greatest impact on the child's literacy skills. Where parents need additional support, Gyrffwick, alongside guidance and supporting adult learners will aim to ensure early and co-ordinated interventions by agencies who work together to meet the needs of children and their families. The Standing Literacy Commission was established in 2011, and I understand that it meets three times per year. I would be interested to know what role the commission has in meeting the objective set out in the Government's literacy action plan, what progress the commission has had in increasing literacy within our schools during this time and what the role the commission will play in helping to reduce the attainment gap. I would also be interested to know what examples of support parents and carers have been offered in order to achieve greater literacy skills. Finally, the Wood commission has highlighted a number of areas that the Government needs to focus on with regard to reducing the attainment gap. Can the cabinet secretary, in her closing speech, perhaps expand on the areas that she would like to see most focus on in the next year or so, and how that can be achieved? Thank you. Many thanks, and our final open debate speaker is Mark McDonald. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I welcome the funding announcement from the Scottish Government. I think that it is important that the approach towards attainment that is being proposed by the Scottish Government is taken forward. At the same time, however, we must reflect on the fact that, by the time a child arrives at the school gates, there are often factors that have influenced their life up to that point, which the school can do little to influence. There can be work done, obviously, to help that child to achieve above what might otherwise be expected, but we should also recognise that many schools and many teachers are fighting against a situation outside of the classroom rather than working with that child to make the best of their education. For example, wider influencing factors can revolve around, as we have spoken about, the situation in terms of poverty that can affect families, but also in terms of local opportunities and the circles in which that child has grown up. That is why parental involvement is a crucial issue that should be focused in on, but not just through the approach that was being suggested by some of the Labour benches. I thought that Johann Lamont's speech was excellent and made a lot of very constructive points. I heard on the Labour benches' talk of, for example, literacy and numeracy support for parents. I think that that is something where parents have those needs identified, and that is something that we should look at. In terms of parental involvement happening through, for example, a much wider promotion at a local level of the play strategy that the Scottish Government has put forward, parents engaging in interactive play with their children and putting their children into situations in which they socially interact with other children at a young age allow children to take a much greater interest than they are all around them, and become more open to learning experiences. You also develop a social confidence within children that, for many children who arrive at school with some of the challenging backgrounds that we have spoken about in the chamber today, social confidence is not always there when they go to school, and that can influence an impact on their ability to learn within a classroom environment. That, through using the play strategy as a vehicle, promoting that more widely will help. That is why facilities like the community projects of Middlefield, Printfield and Farsands and Fountain in my constituency are so important, because they are working in some of our most deprived communities and bringing young people, young children into environments where that kind of confidence, that kind of support can be provided to them. Indeed, I joined children from the Farsands nursery in my constituency at the Aberdeen University Botanic Gardens as part of the Wee Greenspaces project, which was designed to encourage children to explore the natural environment, taking children from an environment where they did not have a lot of green space or outdoor environment in their locale into an area where they could roam freely and enjoy the outdoors and enhance their enthusiasm for learning. Llywydd MacArthur made an interesting point about how you identify the needs for the funding. Obviously, as a constituency representative for the city of Aberdeen, I recognise that there is often an issue in Aberdeen where we have examples of poverty amidst plenty. Indeed, two of the schools in my constituency, Manor Park and Bramble Brace, sit within areas of deprivation and had at the time that they could use free school meal data to identify children who were in low socioeconomic status and had significant numbers of children who identified as qualifying for free school meals. However, there are a number of things that have been done. For example, the Manor Park school has benefited as a result of a new building, which provides a fantastic environment for learning. However, there are also schools such as Cardice in my constituency, which I visited recently. There is a school that is doing phenomenal work with children who are at the very margins of education, many of whom have backgrounds that many of us could not begin to fathom. The education system for them has not worked, but the work that is being done at Cardice school is absolutely supporting those children. The future of the school at present is unclear, because the council's inclusion review has been taking place. We do not yet know the direction of travel that that will take, but we hope that the ethos that exists in the school will be continued and replicated even if perhaps the physical structures that are becoming old and tired are not themselves. Finally, Siobhan McMahon brought up the issue around children with additional support needs. Obviously, that is an issue that is close to my heart and something that I have done a lot to raise in the chamber. It is absolutely important that we have the appropriate support available for children and that we have the appropriate diagnosis in place at the earliest possible opportunity. I was interested by Stuart Maxwell's point about literacy and looking at teacher training. I would re-issue my request to the Scottish Government to look at how additional support needs are factored into teacher training, particularly autism and dyslexia, which are often categorised as invisible support needs, often those that require a specific understanding of the conditions to be able to spot readily. That will assist not just in terms of the support in the classroom but also, crucially, can assist in enabling children to receive an appropriate diagnosis at an early stage, which allows that support to them to be provided. There are still too many children who are not diagnosed until quite far into their education and that can have a direct impact on the educational outcomes that that child achieved. I hope that that is something that the Scottish Government will consider taking forward. Six years ago, at the time when the Scottish Conservatives had a seminar on attainment and school reform, the SNP told us that there was no need for any major changes because of the curriculum for excellence. That was despite what Mike Russell had said in grasping the thistle, in which he seemed very much in favour of school reform in order to raise attainment. He also said in the Times Educational Supplement when he said that the Scandinavian free school model was well worth discussing. Curiously, he went off that idea and then he rejected outright the Swedish model of schooling in a parliamentary answer that he gave on 9 February 2012. Of course, the First Minister has now fine-tuned that. We have a very substantial hint that she does believe that some school reform is essential if we are to drive up attainment. Just at the time when we looked as though we might have an intriguing situation where Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister will be on the political right of the latter day, Mike Russell, we then get the message from the First Minister that she is not in favour of any of the ideological nonsense that we get down south. We are not in favour of any of the ideological nonsense down south because we believe firmly and first and foremost on going where the evidence is and talking where the evidence is. I had actually thought that Sweden had fallen out of favour with the Tories given that they are below Scotland in all three measures, whether it is in maths, reading or science. Liz Smith. I think that you better speak to your predecessor about that, but Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Gove are quite similar. As I understand Nicola Sturgeon from Scotland, well, if I understand Nicola Sturgeon from our article in Scotland on Sunday two weeks ago, she was saying that she is interested in what works, while so too was Michael Gove. And we believe very firmly on this side of the house that it should not matter a jot who owns or runs a school so long as it delivers high standards of education. So I think that the SNP is beginning to move and I think that it is this document which has started to make them think again because, as Ian Gray rightly said in his very good speech, although I did not agree with all of it, the facts in this Audit Scotland report are very stark indeed and they expose just how deep-seated the attainment gap actually is and the entrenched educational inequalities that exist within our current system. But there are other facts too. In the international educational measurements, like PISA, OECD or TIMS, Scotland has not been performing as well as other countries, even though there are some very good things happening in Scottish education. Keir Bloomer, when he was examining the case for school reform, produced hard evidence that showed that in the areas of reading science and mass, our international PISA performance was worse in 2012 than it was in 2000 and just before Christmas he warned again that there is not much sign of any meaningful recovery. But aside from those facts however, there are some other very interesting things that are happening. Sir Ian Wood's commission made plain the need to introduce much greater diversity into education. I am delighted that the education committee is looking at this, because if we are to ensure that all children have the opportunity to develop their own talent in the way that Johann Lamont set out in her excellent speech, we have to ensure that they can do that. His work examined in detail what needs to happen in the field of vocational training and it has been hugely influential and it has put added pressure on the Scottish Government as has the hot water in which it has got themselves because of the extensive college cuts, which happened at the very time when they told us that 16 to 19 education was their top priority. George Adam, Kevin Stewart and John Mason all spoke very sensibly about the need to ensure that this Parliament takes advantage of the collective wisdom of our colleges, universities and employers. We have to do that and again that is breeding more diversity in our system. However, there is one other major driving force and that is the message that is coming from local authorities. Time after time they are telling the Scottish Government that they simply have not got the cash to maintain the current structure of education spending. In the last two weeks we have seen a massive turf war between the finance secretary, John Swinney and COSLA about how the existing money should be spent. I think that that is anunedifying sight and party politics aside is also clear demonstration of why the current system is not working that well. In just a minute, the COSLA's structure is under huge pressure because of all sorts of different demands on our education system and that is shown by the fact that four or five local authorities look set to leave it and the unthinkable is starting to happen. A few councillors, even the Labour Party, I understand, are beginning to question whether or not local authorities are actually the right people to take charge of education at