Bill Butler SEAS Chair successfully moves our motion at conference

After a successful Fringe meeting on Saturday morning at 9:15 (!) where Iain Gray outlined the historical successes led by Labour in Scottish education.  Bill Butler moved our motion on early learning and child care. Overall the SEAS had a successful conference with an exhibition stall where our blog articles went like hot cakes, a well attended fringe meeting – perhaps we should hold al our meetings at 9:15 on a Saturday morning and our successful motion.  It was good to see so many SEAS members around the Caird Hall.  Richard Leonard made an excellent speech to Conference.

Bill’s speech to Conference

Bill Butler, Chairperson of Socialist Educational Association Scotland  moving our motion on early learning and care and calling the SNP to account on their underfunded, boatsful ambitions for Scotland’s early learning and care. When the inspector called from Audit Scotland, the report flagged up “significant risks” in the way the SNP were trying to operate their policy of increasing hours in the early years.

Their report included warnings like “no measure of success” a “lack of agreed evidence” for the benefit to children and parents and no attempt to look at other ways to reach their targets. The empty boasts of the SNP were highlighted by inspectors who surveyed the parents. They said the changes had a limited impact on their ability to get to work. Auditors do like their data and numbers, their report included a measure of value the SNP place on increasing hours in early learning. Our councils valued the cost needed to fund the SNP boasts at £1Billion while the SNP were only prepared to give £840 million. It seems we have the SNP exchange rate for the value of our youngest learners – for every £1 needed, we will only give you 84p. It looks like SNP cant even be accused of running a Poundland service at the early years as they underfund and cut, cut, cut. At the last General Election our manifesto was fully costed and funded. It’s a pity the SNP can’t and won’t follow suit.

Scottish Labour will invest in the quality of early learning and care. The Socialist Educational Association Scotland   would like to see our Early Learning and care be among the world’s best. We want to see an inclusive comprehensive wraparound model of education, care and health for our children, their parents and carers. It’s not just a quantity, a number of hours, high-quality services are vital.

We are committed to having an emphasis on purposeful play. The latest research on the developing brains of our children makes the connections between challenging and enjoyable learning leading to high-quality outcomes. We want to offer child-centred pathways through early learning that can involve deferred entry sand children starting formal schooling at a later age.

While the quality of learning is vital, the quality of teaching is crucial. Our aspiration for high quality learning and care at the early ages with be achieved by continued improvement in the quality of staff, by enhanced training opportunities and by investment in the pay of our   educators and teachers.   Our sense of society can be measured by the value we place on public sector workers whether in our National Health Service or our national education service in Scotland. Our education workforce, the support assistants, nursery nurses, auxiliary staff and our teachers have seen their wages decline in value. Ten years of the SNP have seen our teachers now become the 3^rd worst off across 20 OECD countries. The SNP undervalue and underfund early years services and undervalue and underpay our teachers and educators. Scottish Labour will review teachers’ pay, workload and career structure to re-establish the teaching profession as attractive and worthwhile career.

The impact of fully funded early learning and care will be greatest in those areas facing the challenge of poverty and deprivation. The SEAS supports greater focused investment with targeting additional staffing towards those communities facing greatest pressures. We do not accept poverty as an excuse for failure and we want to use learning and care to support children and families out of poverty.

That’s a real ambition backed by real investment. Our policy of wraparound services, with high quality, fostered by real investment. Such policies from Scottish Labour offer transformational change – not for the few not just a discounted 84%, but for all of Scotland’s children.