Chamber and committees

Yes, I want to know about the impact of omicron on teaching and on staff absences.

That is great. That is really helpful, Douglas.

Are you finding quite a bit of variation across the country? Are there different pressures in different places at different times? Are people stepping in to offer additional support outside their own areas? How is that fitting together? How is that working?

Are you now at a point where you are able to do some planning, based on how the pandemic is impacting pupils’ learning, or are you not really at that stage yet, because you are still at the firefighting stage?

That is really helpful; thank you very much, Lucy.

Good morning. It is good to see the witnesses here this morning. It was good to hear Shelley Buckley and Joanne Smith talking about neurodiversity and the long wait for help with quite basic things such as issues around sleep, positive parenting and communications with schools. Joanne Smith talked about long gaps and the disillusionment when young people are told that they do not meet the criteria for support. That certainly chimes with me. I should say that I am a parent to neurodiverse children and that I am a councillor in South Lanarkshire Council.

In South Lanarkshire, we have the autism resources co-ordination hub, or ARCH, which does amazing and quite groundbreaking work on holistic support and integrating the council, the third sector, the health service and parents and carers. One of the top things that parents ask for is advocacy support. Should that be a top priority for the Scottish Government? I direct that question to Mairi Stark first.

Given that almost a quarter of girls in care get pregnant and that care leavers are at much higher risk of having their babies removed, what steps can we take to tackle stigma and to help care-experience young people to plan for the future and make confident decisions?

I was thinking of either Lucy or Jackie Brock.

I realise that you are probably talking about carers and families getting the support that they need from health and social care workers to do that well. On a wider and more general level, what training needs exist in the health and social care workforce in relation to sexual and reproductive health?

Yes.

I, too, congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate. I believe that to live in Scotland is to live in history. History is the story of us, had we been born a wee bit earlier. Teaching Scottish history in schools helps us to understand Scotland’s place in the world, showing how past decisions still influence and shape our choices today.

To illustrate Scotland’s living history, there is no better place to start than my constituency of Uddingston and Bellshill, which was the birthplace of the Scottish trade unionist and supporter of home rule James Keir Hardie. That proud legacy has shaped my politics and still links my community to those fiercely progressive views today, more than 100 years after his death.

Scotland has forged a formidable history, with an influence and legacy that reaches well beyond our shores, from noble clansmen and powerful monarchs to enlightenment philosophers and world-famous engineers and scientists. We are a nation that survived and thrived on the kindness and hospitality of our neighbours and kinfolk, yet we are also a nation that experienced the shocking abuse of traditional hospitality that led to the dreadful massacre at Glencoe in 1692.

Our history is at once global and indigenous, with a mix of kinship and conflict. History in schools allows our young people to explore the associations between the local, the national and the global. Our lives and our histories are also shaped by a sense of place, and I applaud history teachers who have taken learning from the classroom into the local community by forging innovative links with local organisations, including museums and historical societies. It takes partnership to deliver a truly inclusive curriculum, and forging and strengthening those partnerships lifts history teaching beyond textbooks. It has the potential to elicit new and important information about who we are and where we come from.

I also commend the efforts of organisations in my constituency that are working to that end, including Hamilton Mausoleum Trust, the Low Parks museum, Bothwell castle and the Lanarkshire Family History Society. Another good example is the wonderful online multimedia archive Colourful Heritage. Its work with local schools has uncovered the heritage stories of Muslim and south Asian immigrants to Scotland. It also includes a fascinating account of the provenance and set-up of the New Stevenston mosque in my constituency, which work was led by long-time resident of Holytown Ghulam Saqlain Siddiquie.

Earlier, I said that to live in Scotland is to live in history. For me, and as others have mentioned, that includes ensuring teaching of our nation’s darkest historical moments, particularly our significant involvement in the abhorrent transatlantic slave trade, as well as Scotland’s part in the often brutal legacy of the British empire. It is clear that without such knowledge we cannot fully understand our country’s place in the world and why we live the way we do today.

History will always be a source of debate over whose stories to tell, which is how it should be. However, schools and local historians need to be in it together, working towards an understanding of not only history at large but diverse traditions and communities that have never been properly recognised and remembered.

Learning through history, specifically local history, has immense potential to help to meet the aims of Scotland’s curriculum for excellence. As we strive to develop the four fundamental curriculum capacities that we want to see in our children—successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors—the key is exercising flexibility to keep learning meaningful, accessible and enjoyable.

Let us bring the gripping narratives of Scotland’s past alive to makes sense of our world today and inspire the next generation of Scots to become the responsible and ethical leaders of tomorrow, locally, nationally and globally.