Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken offers Jo Swinson chance to see city schools

Last week, on BBC’s Question Time, Ms Swinson said that due to a lack of investment and the low aspirations of some of our young people, 20 times more school leavers go to university in the area she represents than certain parts of Glasgow.

To be clear, poverty and inequality are the greatest challenges any leader of Glasgow will face for the foreseeable future. This city still has an educational attainment gap albeit one which continues to narrow. And the disparity between parts of Glasgow and other council areas just a few miles from the city centre can be glaring.

But for Ms Swinson to throw about isolated figures and use the destinations of our school leavers to claim nothing is being done about inequality is seriously misleading. Whether this was her intention or not, it’s shabby from someone of her status and ambition.

More importantly though, it is lazy and grossly oversimplified to believe so complex an issue as social equality can be measured with such a narrow, outdated and stereotypical view of educational success.

Read more: Jo Swinson, LibDem MP slammed for misleading figures on Glasgow schools attainment gap

For more than a decade, ensuring Glasgow’s young people get the best start in life through early intervention and closing the poverty-related attainment gap has been embedded throughout our education work. This is the Glasgow way.

In the past it is true that too many of our young people did leave school without the skills or qualifications needed to create good futures for themselves and their families. Glasgow’s focus now is on giving pupils the widest range of opportunities, recognising that skills are as important as qualifications.

Yes, we are absolutely clear that we provide a rounded education, that pupils become young adults with a broad range of learning and experience. They learn art, literature, and sciences but also the critical thinking and analysis which will stand them in good stead in the modern world. We’re not about churning out workers but giving young people the power to make choices and determine their own future.

Ms Swinson’s rehashing of university-as-success brings home again just how entrenched and perpetuated the stereotypes about school leaver destinations are. Again, this is hardly fair on those going into the world and immediately judged on their school or area. Her ill-informed views do a disservice to the incredible work within our schools, the hard work of our teachers and the successes of our pupils.

More than a quarter of all of the children from Scotland’s most deprived areas attend a Glasgow school. We operate or are partners in more than 230 early years and childcare settings. And nearly 70% of Glasgow’s school leavers go onto further or higher education, up from less than 60% 10 years ago.

To quote HM Chief Inspector of Education Gayle Gorman, the most recent report into our schools is “a real tribute to the teachers and support staff for their outstanding commitment to improving learning, raising attainment and reducing the impact of poverty on learners”.

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Backed by tens of millions of pounds from the Scottish Government, we’ve increased the number of funded early learning and childcare hours to 900 hours for the vast majority of families with 3 and 4 year olds in the city. This means more children receive high quality childcare city-wide before they've even set foot in school and parents and carers will enjoy more choice and flexibility across the private, public and voluntary sectors.

As she bids to become leader of the LibDems, a party whose five years in government simply piled on austerity and deprivation, Ms Swinson may not be in town so often. Our education director and I are of course happy to make ourselves available to provide her with the facts and information she needs to accurately tell the story of Glasgow’s schools.