SPENDING per secondary pupil is £1140 a year lower than when the SNP came to power, according to new figures from Holyrood’s independent information centre.
Seizing on the numbers at First Minister’s Questions, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale told Nicola Sturgeon: “The real problem in our education system is our schools are skint.”
The figures from parliament researchers showed school spending had dropped by a total of £1.23billion between 2010/11 and 2016/17 adjusting for inflation.
Although the data said funding for primary pupils stayed constant at £4826 per head, real terms funding per secondary pupil fell 14.2 per cent from £8,033 to £6,892.
Ms Dugdale told the First Minister: “Her own government's figures show this year's spending on education is going down again in real terms.
"I'll tell her just how real it is. The SNP has cut spending by hundreds of pounds of every single pupil and it has cut spending on each secondary school pupil by over £1,000.
“It is not Tory reforms that our schools need. It is cold, hard cash. Why can the First Minister not see that the real problem in our education system is that our schools are skint?”
She said "teacher numbers are down, support staff numbers are down, class sizes are going up", adding: "This week teachers are going on their summer break, isn't it the case that what they really need is a break from this Government?"
Ms Sturgeon said overall spending was up in real terms, and cited figures showing councils intended to spend £144m more this year than, a real terms increase of 1.3 per cent.
However the First Minister said the £144m included £120m to close the attainment gap between students from rich and poor households.
Labour pointed out the £120m was supposed to be “additional” and without it education spending suffered a real terms cut.
Ms Sturgeon said: “This Government is taking tough action to reform our education system, to get more powers into the hands of headteachers and teachers and, crucially, to get more resources into their hands.”
Ms Sturgeon also singled out Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council, noting it had frozen council tax then cut classroom assistants.
She said: “This Government will continue to invest in education, reform education and deliver the changes that our education system needs.
"We will do that in spite of Labour councils across the country, not because of them."
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson demanded Ms Sturgeon apologise for failing to clarify the previous week, despite being asked three times, that the government had asked Europe for an extension to make EU farm subsidy payments.
Long-running problems with a £178 million SNP Government IT system means only 82 per cent of payments had been made by Thursday morning, with Friday midnight the deadline.
Ministers are likely to be fined for the second year in a row for missing a 95 per cent target.
Ms Davidson said Ms Sturgeon’s failure to tell the full truth showed her “first response to failure is to try to hide it”.
The First Minister insisted she had been open about discussing contingency measures with the European Commission.
She said Ms Davidson owed people an apology for allowing her new MPs to “sit back” while Scotland missed out on extra funding on the back of the £1bn Tory deal with the DUP.
She also attacked Scottish Secretary David Mundell, saying it was obvious that he “did not lift a finger” to get more money.
“Shame on the Scottish Conservatives and shame on the Secretary of State for Scotland.”
Later, in response to a plea from Green MSP Patrick Harvie to consider using Holyrood’s new welfare powers to top up child benefit, she said: “The door is not closed to anything.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here