Scottish Conservatives are hosting an Education conference on September 8 in Edinburgh. We have a fantastic programme of speakers for the Conference. Thomas Idergard, from the Swedish think-tank Timbro, is coming to discuss choice in education in Sweden. We also have Professor Lindsay Paterson from the University of Edinburgh, Fred Forrester who was Deputy General Secretary of EIS until 2000, and John McLaren who is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow. There will be speeches from Gavin Hastings and Douglas Keil, the business manager of the Scottish Police Federation. There will also be speeches from Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, and Liz Smith, the shadow minister for education.
We would like to use this conference to discuss any problems that currently exist in the education system. We would like to talk about ways of improving reading and writing in schools and we would like to talk about solutions to the problem of continually disruptive pupils. Finally we want to discuss improving the choices available to pupils and parents.
Since Devolution spending on Education in Scotland has doubled but standards have remained static. It’s time to Raise the Standard of Education in Scotland.
Scottish Government Facts:
• 10,000 pupils a year leave school unable to read or write properly.
• Every 10 minutes a member of staff is attacked in Scotland’s schools.
• Every 90 seconds a pupil is excluded from Scotland’s schools.
• 20,505 individual pupils were excluded in total from Scotland’s Schools last year.
• There are nearly one thousand fewer teachers than in 2008.
• £4.7 billion was spent on education in Scotland last year.
• Scottish pupils are ranked below the global average in Maths and Science.
• Over one million days are lost due to truancy.
The Scottish Conservatives will:
• Ensure pupils leave school with the best chance of getting a job, by giving every child the opportunity of gaining academic qualifications or learning a vocational skill.
• Set up Second Chance Centres so continually disruptive pupils are removed from mainstream education and taught in seperate classrooms until they show they can behave.
• Give head teachers, not politicians, the power over class sizes, teacher employment and discipline in their schools.
• Improve standards of testing in reading, writing and maths.
• Give Parents more choice over which school their child attends.
For more information, please click here.
