FOR the EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, this year’s Trade Union Congress arrives at a critical time for our education system. A newly installed Labour Prime Minister at Westminster, coupled with a recently returned SNP Scottish government at Holyrood, will inevitably mean revised priorities for our schools, colleges and universities in the months ahead.

Like most public services, education has not had its challenges to seek in recent times. The lasting and continuing damage caused by austerity, coupled with the lingering legacy of the hugely difficult Covid years, have intensified the financial and consequential operational difficulties facing our education system.

It’s against this backdrop that the EIS brings to this year’s TUC Congress two hugely important motions, both highlighting the desperate need for stronger investment in education, by Westminster and all devolved governments, including Holyrood.

The first of these motions focuses on the overall funding of education, and on the vital role that education plays in shaping, sustaining and defending an inclusive, cohesive, democratic society, in which the rights of all citizens are equally respected and upheld. The motion was born from an acute awareness of the current existential threats to our hard-won rights posed by Reform, the far right and their billionaire backers.

A properly funded education system empowers young people to develop critical thinking skills — the ability to analyse information; distinguish between fact and opinion; identify bias, misinformation and disinformation; challenge the false narratives that underpin the growth of the far right; make informed contributions to public discourse and participate effectively in democracy.

The motion also highlights that early investment in services, education particularly, can prevent health, social and economic problems from emerging or escalating, reducing long-term social and economic harms and costs to individuals and society.

Preventative spend is a proven positive alternative to short-term policymaking, but the ever-more disturbing reality is that social cohesion in the UK is being undermined by the continued lack of strategic investment by governments in public services, including education. A rethink is urgently needed. Governments must do better, be bolder and put fairer taxes on mega-wealth – of which there is plenty in the UK.

We hope that congress will issue a call on the UK and devolved governments to adopt preventative spend strategies, including commitment to additional ring-fenced funding for education as a fundamental social good.

The second debate to which the EIS will contribute is on a related theme and part of a composite focused on enhancing support for young people with Additional Support Needs (ASN), referred to as SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) in England.

This is an area where substantial additional investment is needed to ensure that all young people receive the support that they need to participate and progress well in their education.

The number of young people in Scotland with ASN has risen massively in recent years – undoubtedly austerity has had an injurious hand in this. In 2007, around 5 per cent of young people in schools had an identified Additional Support Need. Today, after two decades of austerity politics and the onslaught upon working-class children and families, the figure stands at 43 per cent – not too far off half – of young people with an identified need for ASN support.

While the need for ASN support has risen at a staggering late, the investment in specialist staff and resources to deliver it has lagged far behind. The vast majority of young people with additional needs, rightly, attend mainstream schools together with their peers, with only a very small percentage educated in specialist settings.

But the chronic lack of investment in the requisite numbers of teachers and support staff, coupled with savage cuts to specialist provision, places a huge additional burden on already overworked teachers, and often impacts negatively on both the learning experience of young people with ASN and those without. What we have in our schools may be inclusion in name but not in reality.

The composite motion asks the TUC to call on the UK government and devolved administrations to put in place the requisite additional, ring-fenced resources to fully implement the relevant legal duties for all pupils with additional support needs, and thereby improve the quality of education provision and wellbeing for all pupils; and the working conditions, health, safety and wellbeing of teachers and support staff. Governments serious about social justice and inclusion- and they should be- must be prepared to fund it.

This too is a no-brainer.

Investment in education is investment in our young people; investment in the future of our communities; and investment in our whole society from which every single citizen benefits, one way or another. The EIS believes that congress can send an important message to government by supporting these important motions and standing up as workers together, for much stronger investment in publicly funded education across all parts of the UK.

Andrea Bradley is general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS).