Jenny Gilruth spoke at an education event at the SNP conference
Public sector reform will help address how Scottish education is funded and help improve pupil behaviour, the Deputy First Minister has claimed.
Jenny Gilruth told a fringe event at the SNP conference for teachers that schools are burdened by responding to austerity and need additional funding.
She added that more uniformity across local authorities will also help implement plans for education improvements.
Ms Gilruth said: “Our schools are now responding to the normalisation of poverty.
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“Whether it's clothing banks, whether it's food banks, whether it's income maximisation officers that they're paying for through their pupil equity fund, our schools are responding to austerity.
“That means there's less money for learning and teaching.
“We need to look at how we fund our schools post-pandemic, but we really need to look at how every pound of public money is protected within the education sphere through public service reform.”
First Minister John Swinney has already set out plans to restructure both local government and health boards, with plans that could see the country’s current 32 councils replaced by between six and 10 strategic regional authorities, and up to 160 smaller community authorities.
Ms Gilruth, who appeared in lieu of education secretary Mairi McAllan, who is ill, added that government needs to “think again” about young people’s experiences of poverty.
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She added: “Teachers are trying to work within a tight budgetary environment, and we haven't yet looked again at how we fund our schools.
“And that's why I think public service reform is an opportunity for education, for the trade unions actually to marshal around how we protect that budget.”
Ms Gilruth added that Scotland must “grasp the thistle on public sector reform” and “use it as an opportunity to drive the improvement we need in our schools”.
Mike Corbett, Scotland organiser for the NASUWT teaching union, also spoke at the Aberdeen conference event entitled “Getting it right for every teacher”.
Mr Corbett praised the national action plan on relationships and behaviour but “too many local authorities, too many schools, have just left that guidance on the shelf.”
He said it was a “constant frustration” that a plan was negotiated and drafted but is being applied in a patchwork manner.
The government’s Equally Safe policy includes a provision that schools have a duty to record all incidences of gender based violence but not all schools do so.
The union leader said education secretary Mairi McAllan has, in the past week, written to directors of education to put pressure on them to ensure information is gathered.
Mr Corbett pointed to waiting lists of up to six years for young people to gain a diagnosis, calling this a “systemic failure of our children in education”.
One audience member, who identified herself as a local councillor in Aberdeenshire, said she is dealing with cases in local schools where young girls and one boy have been sexually assaulted in school.
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In her council area there are more than 100 schools “all doing something different” to tackle violence in schools.
Ms Gilruth, a former education secretary, said: “Inconsistency speaks to the need for reform, can it be right to write to 32 directors of education every time they're not all doing the same thing?
“That's not a way to run an education system.”
Mr Corbett also called on the government to commission independent research on why behavioural issues have become more prevalent post-covid.
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He further said the Scottish Government should consider the English model of building new specialist establishments for pupils with additional support needs (ASN).