Chamber and committees

Will you set out what you would like the committee to focus on?

Thank you. Laura Moodie, who is a member of the committee, sends her apologies; she will be attending later.

It has been helpful to hear members set out a few of their priorities. I can see that there is an overarching desire to look for the best outcomes that we can achieve for the young people in our education system, and I think that we can start from that point and work from there.

I should declare that I have children with additional support needs, and that is one of my areas of interest. That issue is absolutely linked into the issue of behaviour in schools. When you talk to teachers and other people in public service, you can see that something has changed in relation to that issue in the post-Covid period. It would be good to look at behaviour in schools and to have streams within that to focus on the poverty-related attainment gap and additional support for learning.

A few members touched on how the curriculum for excellence is working and the positive destinations that we want our children to achieve. On the issues of behaviour in schools and ASN, if we looked at establishing clearer pathways for our children and young people into positive destinations, that could help to loosen up the bottleneck that leads to children being frustrated because they are not able to move on. Getting into the bones of those issues would help us to unpick the reasons for what is happening and allow us to think about what we can do to support our young people and teachers. Foundation apprenticeships are fantastic, but we need to consider widening them and looking at how they are working and whether we need to do more of that sort of thing.

I was particularly interested to hear what members said about youth work. Extracurricular activity is exceptionally important, and there is a lot of scope for work in that area that enables children to come together not only to socialise but to engage in subjects that interest them.

10:30

George Adam mentioned sport, including football. There is also music, art, drama and culture—all things that our young people have quite limited access to. I know what it is like when one of my children tells me that they have an interest in a new sport: I have to go out and buy all the gear that they need, and there will be a deposit and fees to pay. Before you know it, it has cost a couple of hundred pounds, and then they get fed up of it after six weeks. I am in a privileged position because I can help my children to do that but, a good few years ago, I was not in that position. There must be so many families and young people who are unable to access extracurricular activities that they have an interest in.

It is all interconnected, and it is quite a wide ecosystem, as we know. The committee is able to look at an overarching theme, which might be behaviour in schools or attainment. We have some incredible schools that are doing fantastic work with project-based learning. The issue is that the rankings under the programme for international student assessment—the PISA rankings—do not necessarily show that good work and the positive destinations that those young people go on to, so it would be helpful to look at that.

We spoke about the attainment of our young people, but we need to consider how that is ranked. Mention was made of Scotland’s attainment not being what it used to be, but I would like to understand more about how the ranking is implemented and what it is based on. Perhaps the processes for measuring attainment and how our young people are learning have been a bit disjointed, so I would really like to get into that aspect.

Support for teachers is a massive issue. Our teachers need more support in schools to help children with behaviour issues and additional support for learning needs. On flexible childcare, I come from a rural area, and I completely understand what was said about that. In looking at the national picture of childcare and the roll-out of childcare provision, we need to consider what that will look like for us and what part the committee can play to ensure that the provision is rolled out in the best possible way, so that people who are accessing it are happy with what it looks like but also so that the people who will deliver the service are fully equipped to do that. That will be a massive task, as Patricia Gibson said.

Those are just a few of my thoughts on the things that I would like the committee to look into. Cross-committee working will be really important in this parliamentary session, and I would like to do more of that. I have an interest in the proposed learning disability, autism and neurodivergence bill, which would absolutely impact on our education system. That relates to how our young people are supported through health challenges, and there will definitely be crossover with the work of other committees, so I would like our committee to work with others on that.

Would anyone like to add anything?

Thank you for that, Patricia.

I welcome Laura Moodie to the committee. Do you have any interests to declare?

Thank you—that is helpful.

Our final item is to discuss our priorities for the parliamentary session. I will go around the room and ask everybody to discuss what they would like to be on our work programme. There are no decisions to be made today, so this is just to give an indication of where our interests are. I will start with Katherine Sangster.

On the point about languages, this is the Education and Gaelic Committee, obviously. Also, on the point about Scottish history and culture, we should definitely be looking at that.

In addition, we are talking about minority languages in Scotland. I should declare that I use British Sign Language to communicate with my dad, who is deaf. During my previous convenership of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, we carried out post-legislative scrutiny of the British Sign Language Act 2022 and how it is delivering for people.

Our deaf children and BSL users have some of the biggest attainment gaps, so I would like to see BSL included as part of the work on ASN and attainment. Many people say to me, “I wish I could learn BSL.” How do we ensure that that becomes part of the learning experience for our young people, while also opening up the world for deaf children and helping to improve attainment?

Do members have any further points? No.

That was a lot—we heard some fantastic ideas. As I said, I can see ways in which we can join up many of these thoughts and develop a thread running through our work. We will discuss that further at our business planning day in August.

Thank you for your comments—they have been really useful. As I said, we will have detailed discussions at the business planning day, with a view to formally agreeing our initial work programme in September.

Do we agree to holding a business planning day and to delegate sign-off of the programme to me?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank the member for that intervention because it gives me the opportunity to say that I have already opened conversations and will discuss what next steps the campaign is asking for. The SNP manifesto said that there would be support for the campaign, and I look forward to working cross-party to see whether we can help to get that work delivered.

The north-east needs a stronger and more bespoke economic focus. We have Highlands and Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise working nationally.

I welcome the cabinet secretary to his new post. It is great to see him in the Parliament.

When we talk about the economy, it can sometimes feel like we are talking about something that is quite abstract—something that is separate from people’s everyday lives. It sounds technical and distant, full of forecasts and figures and a language that does not always mean that much to the people who live with the dire consequences of disastrous economic decisions. The word “economy” has its roots in the management of resources, and that is a useful reminder. Having an economy should never be just about producing more wealth somewhere for someone; it should be about how we use Scotland’s resources, develop our skills, support our industries and ensure that our communities benefit from it all. That is the question that I come back to: who is this growth for?

When I think about economic growth in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, I do not think first about a graph or a statistic; I think about the young folk in Buckie who wonder whether there will be a good job for them if they stay in their home town. I think about the folk across the constituency who are deciding what skills they want to build at North East Scotland College, whether that takes them into fishing, engineering, offshore renewables, construction, care, education or local business and enterprise. I think about the folk who want to raise their families in the towns that they grew up in, because they can see opportunity, stability, a decent standard of living and a future for those who come after them. That is what economic growth has to mean in real life.

In my constituency, I see that potential everywhere. Fraserburgh harbour has a master plan that looks to future proof one of Scotland’s key fishing ports. Peterhead port, with links to fishing, energy and trade, is already a massive asset for Scotland. In Buckie, Macduff, Fraserburgh, Peterhead and right along the coastline, our harbours, ports and communities all have a part to play in Scotland’s economic future, and we must protect it.

If we want that growth to be meaningful, we need to connect the dots. We cannot look at economic cases and business plans in silos, which is why, for example, the Campaign for North East Rail’s economic case really matters. Peterhead and Fraserburgh are two of Scotland’s largest towns without a rail link—that is not only a transport issue but an economic issue. It affects access to education, work, freight, business confidence and how quickly and cleanly produce from one of Europe’s most important fishing ports can reach the market. Addressing that is what sustainable and inclusive growth should look like: not only growth that appears in national figures but growth that reaches the communities, workers and businesses that helped to create it.