SNP literacy figures are “an absolute disgrace” – Gray

By Scottish Labour Education spokesperson Iain Gray MSP

The official Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy 2016 (Literacy) published yesterday has revealed slipping standards in reading and writing in our schools. 

These figures are the education legacy of ten years of SNP government and they are an absolute disgrace.  Standards in both reading and writing have fallen since 2012 and the gap between the richest pupils and the rest has not closed.

No child should have their life chances determined by their background – yet that is exactly what is happening under a Nationalist government obsessed with the constitution.

For John Swinney to suggest that the answer is centralising school budgets is ridiculous.  The answer is to stop the SNP’s cuts to schools.

The SNP has starved our schools of £1billion in recent years, and a generation of children has paid the price.

There are 4,000 fewer teachers, 1,000 fewer school support staff and 700 teacher vacancies that will take three years to fill under the SNP.

Class sizes are among the biggest in the developed world.

Labour is the only party standing up against SNP cuts that put the life chances of our young people at risk.

A vote for Labour on June 8 will tell Nicola Sturgeon to get on with the job of running our schools – and to stop trying to divide us with an unwanted second independence referendum.