Liz Smith speech at Scottish Conservative Conference

Speaking at the Scottish Conservative Conference debate in Perth on education, Liz Smith MSP, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning, said (check against delivery):

Education is the most precious gift we can give to any generation; a good education should be the right of all children, whatever their background. It should be the responsibility of every parent and every teacher to help make that happen and it must be the responsibility of this party to put in place policies which will give them all the right support.

That should not be too much to ask. After all, Scottish education has a long and distinguished history of excellence. It was built upon the principles of hard work, common sense, of creativity and imagination and on the basis that no-one should be excluded from a good education. We led the world in so many areas of education and there is no reason why we cannot do so again – unless, of course, education is left in the hands of those who believe that only the state knows best and in the philosophy of "one-size-fits-all" which pays so little heed to the interests of different individuals.

This party is different. As Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education, I will have nothing to do with policies which pander to the lowest common denominator or which compromise the professional judgment and innovative thinking of our headteachers; nor will I stand back and allow the future of our colleges and universities to be put in jeopardy because of cynical short term electioneering. This party will tell it as it is.

So let me give you a very clear outline of our education policies for this election, but before I do so may I thank everyone; party members, councillors, MSP colleagues and lobby groups for their input on education policy. Your views have been invaluable in helping me develop the education section of the manifesto.

And let me begin with the earliest years which have such crucial importance for ensuring that a child can get off to the best start in life. Already this morning, we have heard my colleague Murdo Fraser announce that we will be introducing a universal health visitor system for all children from birth up to age 5. And why? Because, common sense tells us that there is a very strong link between good health and well-being and educational attainment and better employment prospects, but we also believe that it helps to create a better bond between the child and his or her family.

Too often, today, we find young parents desperate to succeed in bringing up a family but not always aware of the full challenges it brings or able to appreciate the complexities of their responsibilities. Professional health care in the earliest stages can be a huge help and it can also identify the earliest signs of difficulties.

That is also why we want to see more support for parenting skills, whether that is through making greater use of the outstanding work that is done in this area in some parts of the voluntary sector, or through the work undertaken by official NHS programmes or through personal and social development classes in schools.

And it is also why we also want to provide more nursery places for 2 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds, and why we want to introduce more flexibility for parents to decide how best to use their 12½ hours nursery school entitlements whether that relates to greater choice of nursery provision or to which hours can be selected.

And if the earliest years are most important, so too is primary school. The findings of international studies consistently conclude that children perform better in later life if they are well schooled in primary school in the basic skills. I make no apology whatsoever, for saying that there should be more focus on reading, writing and arithmetic, nor do I make any apology for saying that there should be more rigorous testing of these skills before a pupil leaves primary school.

Last month, some union representatives told me that they were concerned about the use of the word "testing" and warned me not to go down the road of the traditionalists who were so wedded to old fashioned methods; to which I said "Why not if they work? Just as they have done in local authorities like West Dunbartonshire, Clackmannanshire and East Ayrshire, all of which have proved that if you teach and test the 3Rs properly you will drive up standards for all children, including those from the more deprived communities.

Something else I was urged to do was to think more about skills. I don't have a problem with that because I believe it is absolutely right that we think very carefully about what skills are needed for the jobs of the 21st century; but doing more about skills must not be to the exclusion of subject knowledge, and so a word of warning to the educational zealots who come up with new fangled ideas; you cannot remove punctuation and good grammar from a paragraph because you think it allows children to more fully express themselves, you cannot understand chemistry if you don't know the periodic table or mathematics if you don't know about Pythagoras, you cannot hope to understand the world if you cannot identify countries on a map and you cannot eradicate Winston Churchill from the history of the 20th century.

It is common sense that the combination of a good grasp of the basic 3Rs and basic subject knowledge is the all important key which can unlock the door to a better future and which allows our young people to then use their skills to the best possible advantage and to be self-disciplined in their approach.

And let me say something about school discipline. I do not fall into the camp of the doom and gloom merchants who think that all children are badly behaved – although if our football managers can't behave properly, who can blame our young people? But we will work tirelessly to help headteachers provide the best possible environment for good discipline, which includes allowing them to have more powers to deal with the very small, yet very challenging number of youngsters who persistently cause trouble in the classroom. These pupils should not be in mainstream classes, able to harm the educational interests of their peers or the ability of their teachers to teach.

But good discipline is all about good self-discipline and that is so much more likely to come about when pupils are fully focused. Too often that is not the case – indeed I would suggest that the present structure of secondary schools mitigates against making the best possible use of all our pupils' talents; and talents they have, because, just like discipline issues, I do not subscribe to the theory that young people have more problems than generations before them. But what we must do is to create greater flexibility within the curriculum and to remove once and for all the obsession with comprehensive education for everyone beyond the age of 14. And let me be quite clear on this point, because comprehensive education beyond the age of 14 has failed this country.

We think there is a great deal to be learnt from how other countries do things in their state education systems. We need to put an end to the idea that we can channel all our youngsters through a predominantly academically focused curriculum in S4 and S5 irrespective of their aspirations or their abilities. We need a system which respects and values the many different talents and aspirations of our young people and a system which is built around the choice between a more academically focused curriculum or one which is more focused on vocational or technical training. Now, I am hopeful that the Curriculum for Excellence and the impending reform of SQA examinations will bring about some of that much needed flexibility but there needs to be more imaginative thinking and that is why we believe that pupils should be free to leave school at an earlier age if they have been offered a formal apprenticeship or vocational or technical training.

And let me say something about our plans for the reform of our school system. Every community should have a good state funded school on their doorstep. There should be no postcode lottery or overly bureaucratic catchment constraints; no obsession with uniformity and no excuses for being content with mediocrity, but instead a system which better reflects the desire for greater choice within the system, the need to drive up standards in the schools which have not been performing so well and far more autonomy for headteachers in comparison with what they currently enjoy.

And we make these judgments based on the overwhelming evidence which tells us that, despite doubling the money spent on schools by successive governments since 1999, our attainment levels in too many areas are not as good as they should be. And why? Because the organisational structures of education in this country suffer far too much from the philosophy of one size fits all, from the directives which come from education departments of local authorities but which too often fail to recognise the very different needs of different pupils and of different schools. It cannot be right that a headteacher does not have the full freedom over the recruitment of his/her staff, full control over the direction of discipline policy or full discretion over when a school should be closed or not closed in situations of bad weather.

Let me give you an example. Not long ago, I went to visit an outdoor education centre at which the S2 pupils from two secondary schools and their classteachers were having their induction day. It was first class – and let me remind you that with Conservative Party policies and the help of Gavin Hastings it will be all pupils who have this opportunity – and at the end of the first session I asked the centre manager and the two class teachers if it would be acceptable for me to have a photograph taken with the pupils.

Within 2 minutes we had completed the photo for one class – for the other, a telephone call had to be made by the classteacher to the headteacher. The headteacher then had to phone the Senior Manager of outdoor services. He then had to phone the Director of Education who then had to phone back to the headteacher who, by this time was in a meeting, and so the call had to be taken by the deputy who eventually phoned back to the class teacher who said the answer was no. 37 minutes in all, and what an indictment of the system.

Ladies and Gentlemen, these strictures are why we need change and why, unlike the other parties in Scotland, we will argue that that change should be radical. We are prepared to tell it as it is – we know that a very large number of headteachers want far more autonomy and local authorities to have far less control over education. We agree with them. Along with their staff, they are the professionals on the front line, who best understand what needs to be done and who are best able to know what parents and pupils want. Because if there is one thing about which this party is absolutely clear it is that education will improve if it is demand led. If parents want greater choice about where they send their child to school they should have it, if parents or charitable trusts or philanthropists want new powers to set up new schools they should have it, if headteachers want greater power to set up new links with other schools or colleges or universities or local businesses they should have it. They should never have to wait to be told what to do by the local authority.

Finally, can I say something about our colleges and universities; institutions of which we have every right to be proud given their long and distinguished history. At lunchtime today I will be speaking at Scotland's Colleges Fringe event at which I will be very pleased to pay tribute to the outstanding work which our colleges have done in terms of developing the right skills for the 21st century, reflecting the business dynamics of their local area, widening access and providing more scope and indeed more flexibility for part time and mature students. Our colleges have come a very long way in recent years, but just like our universities, they are deeply anxious about the future.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if our further and higher education institutions are to retain their international competitiveness, the ability to raise academic standards across the board, have sufficient resources to support poorer students, and also successfully bridge the funding gap between north and south of the border and make up for the Scottish Government's public expenditure cuts we need more money in the system. Now, I would dearly love to be able to stand in front of any audience just as the SNP, Labour and the Liberals have done and say it will all be free. But to do so, would be a gross dereliction of our duty to students, to staff, and to college and university principals and their courts, because whatever arithmetic is used the very blunt fact remains that the state cannot afford to pay if we want to aspire to all the ambitions for our further and higher education sectors, and not just for the next few years but well into the future.

And if you don't believe us then listen to Universities Scotland, to Sir Andrew Cubie, Lord Sutherland, to the Council of Economic Advisers, to the CBI and to virtually every principal in the land – all experts in the their field who say it is inevitable that there will have to be a graduate contribution. In our opinion, at least 15% more money is required in the current system – indeed it could well be more like 20% and that is why we want to introduce a graduate contribution, payable once the graduate has started to earn a basic salary and payable at a rate that is affordable to them, and by introducing this system, we will be able to make available more bursary support than is currently the case.

And I would issue this challenge to Alex Salmond and Iain Gray; tell us the truth about where you will get the money to keep higher education free; how many students places or courses will you cut or which aspect of other government spending will be reduced? The voters have a right to know and so too do our colleges and universities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is already clear that education will feature prominently in this Holyrood election and so it should because so much is at stake. The voters have a choice; to take more of the same; to turn a blind eye to the long list of broken promises that have let our young people down so badly since 2007; to pretend that the state can solve all our educational ills and to risk the future of our colleges and our universities because of the short term need to buy votes; or they can vote for a party which is prepared to address the difficult challenges we face head on; which is prepared to be radical and which, with a large dose of common sense, is determined to make Scottish education world class once again.

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