Official Report 269KB pdf
Health Education (Guidelines) (PE427)
The final item on the agenda is to note a letter to the convener from Learning and Teaching Scotland. Copies have been circulated to members.
Is that the letter dated 4 December? The committee paper refers to a letter that is on its way. Was that it?
Yes.
It clearly went the long way round.
The letter in response to further representation from the committee is certainly much more helpful than the original response was. Indeed, it mentions the fact that some of the sex education resources, including some of those listed, would be inappropriate for use with young people at all stages of their education. That is certainly further than Learning and Teaching Scotland has gone before, although it qualifies that by saying that those materials are a resource for teachers. However, there is now an acknowledgement that was not made before, and the timetable has been moved forward so that the review will be initiated during the early part of 2003. I therefore suggest that we include this as an item in our legacy paper for a successor committee to return to when the review is complete.
That seems sensible.
Members will probably have seen copies of the letter that the Rev Iain Murdoch has written to Holyrood magazine expressing concern that the petition has been on-going for a long time and that the committee should have more power and the Executive less. Although I entirely agree with that at present, he has obviously not seen the letter from LTS, which goes some considerable distance further towards meeting him than has been the case until now. It is a great pity that it has taken us four or five exchanges of correspondence to get to this stage. It would have been nice if Professor Wilson had taken this view at the beginning and saved everybody a great deal of trouble, including Iain Murdoch and his co-petitioner, who have been very strong on the matter.
I welcome it too.
Thank you very much. I now close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 16:23.