Green MSP Ross Greer has challenged Education Secretary John Swinney to justify his Government’s long-running subsidy of around £1.2 million to the fee-paying St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh, at a time when many councils are axing free music tuition in schools due to budget cuts passed down by the Scottish Government.
Scottish Green MSPs today (4 Dec) welcomed the opinion of the EU Court of Justice Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona, who says that the Article 50 process triggering Brexit can be cancelled by the UK without needing permission from other EU member states.
The case was brought by Scottish Green MSPs Andy Wightman and Ross Greer, along with politicians from the SNP and Labour.
Following today's evidence session with government statisticians at Holyrood's Education committee, Scottish Greens education spokesperson Ross Greer has blasted changes to the data published on school staff.
Mr Greer says the merging and dropping of categories is a ‘smokescreen obscuring the very real staffing crisis affecting young people with additional support needs.’
Scottish Greens education spokesperson Ross Greer MSP today (14 Nov) stepped up his call for action from government after the country's biggest teaching union raised the prospect that music teachers could soon disappear from schools for good.
At today's meeting of Holyrood's Education Committee, Mr Greer highlighted that local councils facing funding pressures are cutting staff, as well as charging for tuition, pricing many children out of learning an instrument.
Today (8 November) the Scottish Greens, the first party to back the TIE campaign for LGBTI inclusive education in Scotland, welcomed the Government’s announcement that it would accept in full the recommendations of the LGBTI Inclusive Education Working Group’s report.
Ross Greer MSP, Scottish Green Spokesperson for Education, said:
A Green MSP is demanding government action to stop musical instrument tuition becoming an exclusive activity after Holyrood’s education committee heard from a young person how skyrocketing charges are creating ‘Victorian’ levels of inequality in music.
Linlithgow Academy pupil and MSYP Alice Ferguson explained how her school band had lost members because pupils now have to pay £382 a year, Alice said, “It is only the privileged that are getting to do music now - it’s like Victorian times, where only the elite get these opportunities. This increases inequality”.
The Scottish Greens are urging Scottish Ministers to take action after statistics published today (30 Oct) show that bursary support for students is down 27.3% since 2008/9.
This Saturday I will be marching with teachers calling for a fair pay deal. Over the last 10 years, teachers have seen a 20% real terms cut to their pay as inflation has degraded the value of their wages. Now they have decided that enough is enough. They are demanding some of that lost value is returned to them.
SNP ministers are being invited to “copy the Scottish Greens’ homework” on closing the educational attainment gap as the government’s agenda continues to flounder.
Green education spokesperson Ross Greer MSP issued SNP ministers with a report card highlighting the government’s education policy failures, contrasting this with his party’s alternative priorities such as restoring teachers’ pay, increasing Additional Support Needs provision and employing poverty advisers in schools.
The campaign to save ancient woodland and public land on the shores of Loch Lomond from a controversial hotel and monorail development has received a major boost after over 20,000 objections were received in under a week via a website set up by Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer.
The submissions, to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority - the body that will decide whether to give planning permission – add to the 1,000 people who had already lodged an objection.