Elizabeth Smith: Scottish Conservatives will take the lead to deliver radical change in educational provision

This morning Scottish Conservatives hosted a press conference in Edinburgh to set out plans for radical change in education and to break the state monopoly of educational provision.

Speaking at the conference, Liz Smith MSP, Shadow Minister for Children, Schools & Skills, said:

Education in Scotland was once renowned for its quality. I believe it can be again, but not if we continue to pretend that all is well with the current structure of school management and we continue to resist the need for change.

The facts speak for themselves:

Since 1999, Scottish Governments have doubled spending on our schools yet the overall standards of attainment have been flat-lining and, in some cases, actually declining.

• A staggering 13,000 pupils leave school each year are unable to read or write properly

• Only 30% of pupils in S2 are reaching the required standard in maths despite that figure being 85% in P3

• Scottish pupils are now ranked below the global average in maths and science

• And only two weeks ago, the Scottish Government's latest statistics revealed that two thirds of S2 pupils are struggling with literacy.

This situation is just not acceptable. It is not acceptable to parents, to teachers or to pupils, all of whom know we should be doing very much better. And it is not acceptable to the Scottish Conservative Party which is why we believe it is time for radical change.

Many communities across Scotland are fortunate to have an excellent state school on their doorstep but far too many do not. In too many areas, particularly in some of our most disadvantaged communities, schools are under-performing because the present system provides them with too little incentive for improvement.

Ladies and Gentlemen, all communities in Scotland should have access to a good state school.

Social and economic background should be no barrier, nor should an arbitrary catchment area or parental income levels.

But nothing will change if the SNP, Labour and Lib Dem coalition of the left continue to be obsessed with a one-size-fits-all policy for our local authorities.

These parties' long standing love affair with comprehensive education confuses the principles of equality of opportunity with uniformity and it stifles any moves towards a more flexible and efficient system which is better suited to the needs of individual schools, and which allows maximum parental choice. It has also created false tensions between the pursuit of social justice and the pursuit of excellence and, as such, politicians have become the controlling factor in our schools when it should be head teachers and parents.

The Scottish Conservatives believe the evidence clearly shows too many school-children in Scotland are not getting the education they deserve. We need radical change.

If we want standards to go up, we must follow Sweden's example and break the current monopoly the state has over the provision of education, give teachers more control and give parents more choice. We need to take power away from the politicians and start trusting teachers and head-teachers.

This can be achieved by allowing the provision of new, independently run free schools which can compete with the existing local authority schools. These schools would remain state funded and would not be allowed to charge fees or to become selective. They would remain subject to the same, very rigorous HMIe and Care Commission inspection processes which exist just now for all schools. In some cases, they could be run by educational charities, not for profit trusts or by other philanthropic bodies.

There would also be scope for local authorities to transfer a school or a cluster of schools to an educational trust; something on the lines of what has been suggested by, interestingly enough, an SNP councillor in East Lothian.

For the Scottish Conservatives, the message is clear; if more parents want the right to choose from different types of schools they should have it and they should be able to take their child out of a poorly performing school and transfer him/her to another school where standards are better. No longer should they be dictated to by one size fits all and arbitrary post codes which are so unreflective of demand.

And recently, we have seen an increase in the number of parents wanting to exercise the right to choose their child's school. In the context of the Scottish Government's class size policy, which has been a spectacular failure precisely because of the obsession with a one-size-fits-all agenda, a growing number of parents have felt the need to go to court to exercise their right to choose different types of school and in the overwhelming majority of cases that right has been upheld. They should not be put in that situation.

Before Christmas, I wrote to the Convenor of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee to suggest that part of the Committee's 2010 work programme should be an examination of the school structure in Scotland and how we can address the current failings.

On 3rd February that request was unanimously agreed to and I am pleased that the Cabinet Secretary is also acceding to Scottish Conservative requests to debate this whole issue. And so he should be given the comments in his book "Grasping the Thistle" in which he says very firmly that "choice and diversity are the hallmarks of a mature and confident society" and more recently, in the Scottish Parliament, when he said he was open to new ideas about trust schools.

Yet these pronouncements have been met only by silence from Alex Salmond and the rest of the Scottish Cabinet - hardly a sign that they are about to receive a ringing endorsement.

But as a party, we are determined to take the lead.

The polls in Scotland are consistently showing that the SNP is failing to deliver on public services.

Annabel Goldie, on the other hand, has consistently argued the need for reform so that our public services can respond more effectively to the needs of the people of Scotland and in education that means responding to the needs of parents and pupils.

For us, we believe there are lessons to be learnt from our European partners and in particular Sweden. In Sweden, parents have the freedom to choose between different providers within the state sector rather than be told what they must do; the aim is to provide a good education for everyone, not just some; and in terms of raising attainment levels, it is about driving up standards rather than being content with the lowest common denominator.

In Sweden, it took 8 years to convince a sceptical public that the new freedoms within the state sector could work. But they did, and now no-one, including those on the left of the political spectrum, want to go back to the old system, such is the conviction that what they have now is so much better in terms of raising overall standards, and that is true not only for the new schools but also for the existing state schools. Indeed, many teachers in Sweden liked the new system because it gave them so much more flexibility and scope to concentrate on raising standards in the classroom rather than filling in unnecessary paperwork - the same flexibility which is supposed to be at the core of the new Curriculum for Excellence.

With the introduction of new providers in Sweden, 10% of pupils attend the free state schools and in upper secondary it is nearly 20%. When it comes to the merit value of schools in Sweden, the average attainment level was 206 points but in the free schools it was 226 points.

However, what is important is that as well as standards rising in the free schools so too did standards in the existing schools and for me, that is worth emphasising again as a key point; something that was highlighted by the Swedish National Board of Education which said that standards improved across the board because the existing schools needed to compete with the new free schools if they were not to lose pupils.

This is a model which the Scottish Conservatives believe can work well in Scotland because it strikes the right balance between supporting the many good schools across Scotland where parents are very satisfied with the education their children are receiving and improving those schools which are consistently under-performing and where parents are not satisfied.

I understand the Cabinet Secretary will be winging his way to Sweden this very weekend to see just how successful this system is, and good for him, although the Cabinet Secretary would also do well to jump on a train to Jordanhill to remind himself of just how well that school has done with similar freedom.

Ladies and Gentlemen, how much more evidence and how many more children need to be let down before the SNP, Labour and the Liberals realise that Scottish education needs to be brought up to date so that we can keep pace with other developed countries?

Doing nothing is not an option.

The evidence that radical change is required is compelling as is the demand from parents and teachers that we need to deliver higher standards across the board. We need to ensure that reform extends parental choice, devolves more power to head-teachers and provides far more freedom within the state sector.

If we don't, the educational futures of too many young people are at stake.

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