Unfulfilled pledges and broken promises for Scottish children

Published on Tuesday 1 December 2009 21:59

The SNP promised to maintain teacher numbers – instead they have dropped by 2,000.

&#149 Promised to reduce P1 to P3 class sizes to 18 – they gave up on the pledge and the last figures showed a slight increase.

&#149 Failed to bring in two hours of PE per week for schoolchildren, despite promising it in their manifesto.

&#149 Promised to match previous Scottish Executive's school building programme "brick for brick", but it took almost two years to commission a single school.

&#149 Have sold off school playing fields, despite promising not to.

&#149 Promised to introduce free school meals for all P1 to P3 children, but left it to the discretion of councils through the concordat.

&#149 New Curriculum For Excellence is highly controversial, with teachers unsure about examinations next year.

&#149 Promised to maintain nursery teacher numbers – but they have fallen.

&#149 Failed to introduce national payment for kinship carers.

&#149 Failed to pay off student debt as promised in the manifesto.

&#149 Plan to cut number of teacher training places in next budget.

&#149 Came under fire for not taking a lead on child protection after the Brandon Muir case.

&#149 Children's Hearings Bill withdrawn as it was incompetent.

&#149 When UK government provided 340 million for English parents of disabled children for respite care, the government failed to give 34m of Barnett consequentials to Scottish parents.

&#149 Ms Hyslop was named the weakest link in the cabinet over Christmas 2008 when it emerged she had lost more parliamentary votes than any of her colleagues.

Many key cultural challenges pending

FIONA HYSLOP'S IN-TRAY

&#149 Creative Scotland Bill – efforts to create a new superquango for the arts were defeated in Holyrood when Linda Fabiani was culture minister. Ms Hyslop's key task will be piloting this through and explaining how it will be financed.

&#149 Joint ministerial council – with responsibility for external affairs, she will have to try to build up more of a consensus from other devolved administrations to support SNP grievances against the UK government.

&#149 Literature funding – a review is due to be published in 2010.

&#149 Homecoming – although it is almost finished, she will have the job of explaining why it was a success or failure.

&#149 America – will be responsible for trying to rebuild Scotland's relationship with US in wake of anger over release of Lockerbie bomber. Will be a leading representative for Tartan week.

PROFILE

BEFORE entering politics, Fiona Hyslop worked in sales and marketing.

She joined the SNP in 1986 and was first elected to the party's national executive four years later. She stood for Westminster in 1992 and 1997 before being elected as an MSP for the Lothians region in 1999.

When John Swinney became SNP leader in 2000, she was the party's policy vice-convener, with the task of overhauling party policy. She was regarded at the time as being in Mr Swinney's inner team.

During the Nationalists' years in opposition at Holyrood, Ms Hyslop first served as the party's spokeswoman on housing and social justice, then, following the 2003 election, as its spokeswoman for education and lifelong learning.

When the SNP came to power in 2007, she was appointed education secretary.

Ms Hyslop, 45, is a mother of three.