Chamber and committees

Brilliant. Thanks so much. Ramiza, are you all right there?

Thanks very much.

I will come back to that point—I had international comparators.

I will stick with education. Rob, you mentioned the word “survive”. I am passionate about education, and everyone should thrive through education. However, we know about the impact of poverty. Resources can be put into front-line education—a child has a place, a classroom, a teacher in front of them, their books and so on. However, we know that children might be living in unsafe housing, in precarious personal circumstances and all of that—I am alluding to the poverty-related attainment gap. What is your opinion of the minimum core in education? Should resources be targeted at housing and health? We know that these things are all interconnected and I am not expecting a black-and-white answer, but it would be good to hear your opinion.

Is the example of free school meals a good one? A child could be sitting in a classroom with the best teacher in the world and everything in front of them, but if they are hungry, have not had their breakfast and are not going to eat, their priority will be their hunger. That will prevent them from thriving in education and learning, so the investment and the money need to go into feeding and housing children, for instance, or maternal healthcare. It is a complex picture. With the right to education, the sand goes into all sorts of different areas.

I do not mind if Zainab wants to come in.

That is a fair point, but that is not what I meant. I was just using it as an illustrative example. I would like families to have access to good, nutritious food.

I realise that time might be a little tight, deputy convener, but if I can just—

Good morning, everyone. I am usually on the Education, Children and Young People Committee, but I have come over to this committee today. I would like drill down into how the minimum core obligations apply in education. We accept that everyone has the right to education—that they have a place. In Scotland, the curriculum is based loosely on Bloom’s taxonomy, but sitting beside that is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Where do the minimum core obligations fit in with that? We can think of them as a pyramid that is sitting on sand. Are the core obligations the sand underneath that hierarchy of needs, or are they part of it? That is my opening gambit. Luis, you look as though you are itching to get in with a response.

I will move on to the international situation, which I am curious about. You just reminded us about the right to free primary education. We know that there are countries that do not provide that. The other word that I picked out was “retrogressive”. I would like to hear a little more about that and measures such as limiting the education of women and girls. What role can the commission, other Governments and any of us play? What can we do about that? That is happening now: rights that are already there are being taken away. It is highly concerning.

You have used flooding as an example of circumstances in which the right of women and girls to education could be withdrawn. I do not see that as a suitable measure in response to an emergency such as the building collapsing. It would be a matter of ideology, and that is not covered, is it?

In 2018, during a workshop on gender equality at the European Organization for Nuclear Research—known as the CERN research institute—in Geneva, Switzerland, theoretical physicist Alessandro Strumia began his presentation. On one of his slides was a very short, but very powerful, quote, which read:

“physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation”.

According to reports, Professor Strumia went on to present evidence in the form of graphs and tables, and he concluded that, as the most-cited academic papers were disproportionately written by men, men were simply better at physics. I imagine that, for a predominantly female audience that was full of young prospective scientists, it was not quite the motivational speech that they were anticipating, and, for women already working in the field, it would likely have felt sadly familiar.

The professor’s claims were quickly dismantled and denounced as “unacceptable”, and he was suspended by CERN. The following day, Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel prize for physics for her pioneering work with high-intensity lasers. Astrophysicist Andrea Ghez would receive the same honour just two years later for providing the first conclusive experimental evidence that a supermassive black hole with the mass of 4 million suns sits at the centre of our galaxy.

Incredibly, those are two of only four women who have ever won that prize in its 121-year history, so, clearly, the question is not one of ability. Rather, that statistic is emblematic of a centuries-long struggle for recognition and the obstacles that women and girls face at every point in their careers, which contribute to their underrepresentation across the scientific disciplines.

In acknowledgment of that uneven landscape, the United Nations international day of women and girls in science, on 11 February, provides a welcome opportunity to celebrate the essential contributions that they have made and will continue to make, enabling us to better understand the world we live in.

I am incredibly fortunate to have internationally renowned higher and further education institutions in my constituency, and I am grateful to colleagues across the chamber who have mentioned the University of Glasgow, for instance. I recognise the commitment that those institutions have demonstrated to promoting gender equality in science, as supported by the Scottish Funding Council, and the development of tailored gender action plans.