We agree with a three-yearly, rather than five-yearly interval, because that would fall within the lifetime of a Government, usually. That would be one step forward. We would also like statutory duties to be placed on local authorities and other community planning organisations about the eradication of child poverty at a local level. Specifically, we would like the issue of child poverty to be included in local outcome improvement plans and children’s services plans, so that organisations do not just report on what they are doing, but develop plans to address the issue.
We would argue that the most important thing regarding the delivery plans is that the Government should speak to the people who are living in poverty. They know what it is, and often they could tell us how to get out of it, if we would only listen to them. There is a need to speak to lone parents, disabled people, parents of disabled children, black and minority ethnic groups and so on, because those people are more likely to be living in poverty. They know the stigma and discrimination that they face and they know some of the things that need to be done to address the problem. In the bringing together of the delivery plans, whether nationally or locally, there should be a requirement to speak to those groups, and their ideas should be incorporated in the plans wherever possible. Otherwise, there will be high-level stuff going on that will not connect to the people who are most likely to face poverty.
I do not think that attainment should necessarily be in the bill, but I strongly agree with Adam Tomkins that it is a huge issue. Disabled children are twice as likely as non-disabled children to leave school with no qualifications, regardless of the type of impairment that they have. There are disabled children with sensory impairments and physical impairments but no intellectual impairment whatsoever who are leaving school with no qualifications. That makes their chances nil in the current job market. Unless we change that, we will not change their future, and when they become parents they will be parents living in poverty, and their children will be living in poverty, so we have to change the cycle. It is certainly possible to address the attainment gap without addressing the needs of disabled children, but it will be much more difficult if we do it that way. We need to concentrate minds: if we are going to have an attainment challenge, it must take into account the needs of those who have been most left behind.
No more than a month ago, I took part in a workshop with Educational Institute of Scotland representatives. I was in one of the six workshops that were going on. Five workshops said that the key issue that was facing teachers and union reps was the lack of support for additional support for learning in the classroom, and the cuts that had been made to the support that disabled children receive in the classroom. As a result, classrooms have been becoming more disruptive, because it is harder to deal with non-disabled children if teachers are devoting their time to ensuring that disabled children are being kept up to speed. Cuts have consequences. We definitely see the attainment gap as one of the key issues that need to be addressed over the longer term.