Raising Attainment

As an amendment to motion S4M-12316 in the name of Angela Constance (Raising Attainment), leave out from "notes" to end and insert "believes that the greatest challenge facing Scottish education is the significant pupil attainment gap between different schools and different communities; is encouraged by some improvements in Scottish education in recent years, such as the increased number of school leavers in positive destinations, but is concerned that these improvements have been slow and have not resulted in equal improvements across all communities; welcomes the £100 million Attainment Scotland Fund, but believes that education policies should have a renewed focus on improving basic literacy and numeracy skills, as was highlighted by Audit Scotland in 2014, on increasing the number of trained science teachers in schools to help address the weak uptake of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and on greater support for pupils with additional support needs, including better tracking of pupil attainment to help support learning; urges the Scottish Government to invest in the expertise of Scotland's colleges, universities and employers to help pupils succeed, and hopes that it will engage constructively with all parties in the Parliament to help deliver for all of Scotland's pupils."