Spending on pupils down £1,141
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TOM GORDON
“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 our schools need. It is cold, hard cash. Why can the First Minister not see the real problem in our education 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 £144 million more this year, a real terms increase of 1.3 per cent. But 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.”
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.”
Meanwhile, 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 £178m SNP Government IT system means only 82 per cent of payments had been made by yesterday morning, with midnight today 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 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.
Nicola Sturgeon makes her point during the final FMQs at Holyrood before summer recess.
George Osborne, now an honorary professor.