Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will make the funding for our commitment available, but Willie Rennie cannot gloss over the point that I made. He should be honest about his position. If he wants the Scottish Government to take away from local authorities the responsibility for employment and the terms and conditions of teachers, he should say so—although that would run counter to everything that he has said until now about opposing what he calls the Scottish Government’s centralisation and its taking powers away from local authorities. That is the reality.

Willie Rennie should also listen to what I am clearly saying. Through our budgets, we will make funding available for the commitment that we have made on teachers. Given the need for teachers in support of economic recovery, I expect that we will see permanent posts and jobs. However, if I was to stand here now and mandate that, Willie Rennie would accuse me—perhaps not today, but at another stage, because to do so today would not suit the question that he has asked—of taking powers away from local authorities and centralising things here in the Scottish Government.

We support the efforts of Police Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service to protect the safety and welfare of front-line responders and of the general public.

The issue of body-worn cameras for police officers is a policy and operational decision for the chief constable, acting under the oversight of the Scottish Police Authority. However, as part of our budget allocation for policing this year, we have provided one-off funding of £500,000 to support their use by armed officers.

We engage regularly with the Scottish Ambulance Service. If the matter is something that the Ambulance Service wishes to pursue in the future, we will fully engage with it on that.

I welcome Sharon Dowey to the chamber.

As I did in my response to earlier questions, I assure young people that the grades that will be given to them by their teachers will not be marked down or up because of their school’s past performance. I am being absolutely clear about that. If a learner has demonstrated that they deserve a certain grade, that is the grade that they will receive.

Teachers and lecturers will let young people know their provisional results by 25 June. As I said, a quality assurance process is under way. I have explained how that will work. It is important to emphasise again that the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland are not involved at that stage. Once provisional grades—which will be based on teachers’ judgements and not on algorithms—have been submitted to the SQA, they will not be changed because of the past performance of the school.

I will happily take away and consider the specific point about reviewing recruitment processes.

The funding will be available to councils. Obviously, we have given the commitment for the entire session of Parliament. We have also made a commitment for the first 100 days, and we will be in discussion with councils about funding for that.

It is important that councils have clarity in order that they can recruit. I repeat the point that I made in response to Willie Rennie’s question: we are in a situation right now in which teachers are required, so there should be employment opportunities for them. I expect the posts to be permanent in the main, but the councils are the employers and they need to be able to assess needs in their areas and take decisions based on that.

Sharon Dowey asked for further consideration of certain matters. I will certainly ensure that that is done, and I will revert to her as soon as possible.

We are committed to advancing equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. Everyone should be able to access the healthcare that they need when they need it as part of that overall commitment to equality.

As part of the remobilisation of the national health service, we are considering the impact of the pandemic on sexual health services and how we can improve those services further. That includes widening access to pre-exposure prophylaxis, for example. We are also working with NHS Scotland to improve gender identity services, including reducing waiting times. I think that everybody recognises that the waiting times are far too long, and that that causes additional trauma and anxiety.

We will shortly write to the national gender identity clinical network for Scotland to ask it to review and update the gender reassignment protocol.

Douglas Ross does not need anybody’s permission—and certainly not mine—to raise issues in the chamber. However, it is a responsibility of leadership to engage in issues responsibly, particularly when we are talking about the life chances of young people, and not to misrepresent or try to confuse issues in order to back up political points that, frankly, do not stack up in reality.

Whether they agree or disagree with the judgments and decisions that the Government is making, I do not think that people who are listening will have heard me say that everybody else is wrong and the Government is right. They will have heard me try to set out, calmly and rationally, the position as it is in order to take on some of the misrepresentation that we have heard from Douglas Ross, as well as readily concede that some of these issues divide opinion, and that we have had to make judgments based on what we think is right overall. In fact, many of the judgments that we are making are the same judgments, albeit in different education systems, that different Governments of different parties in other parts of the UK are arriving at as well.

These are not straightforward issues, but they are hugely important. This is not a case of me stepping in to do something. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and I engage on these issues each and every single day, listening to teachers, parents and—above all else—young people in arriving at the best overall judgments that we can. We do that responsibly on the basis of the situation as it is, and not on the basis of the misrepresented situation that Douglas Ross has put forward. We will continue to do that in the interests of young people all over Scotland.

Yes, I do. It is not a question of whether the system recognises that, but of how the system is recognising it.

I absolutely concede that there are differences of opinion on this, but let us be clear about it. Obviously, I do not know all the circumstances of Ellie’s position, but instead of somebody in such a position having to go through the process of submitting all their evidence by 25 June, which is the deadline, getting a grade and then—if it is not the grade that they think they deserve—having to appeal it, the system has built-in contingency arrangements that mean that they can have access to an extended deadline in September. That takes account of such circumstances by giving young people a longer time period to get that evidence together and to have their grade determined.

It is not a question of whether those kinds of circumstances should be taken into account—it is simply about the method that the system is using. There are differences of opinion, and we continue to listen. However, it would not be accurate for anyone to say that circumstances such as Ellie’s are being ignored in the system that we have.

I will come on to the appeals process in a second. Douglas Ross used the word “sleekit” earlier and, if I may say so, there was a bit of that in how he posed his question. He took young people’s perfectly legitimate comments about the appeals part of the system and almost suggested that they were backing up what he said about the earlier part of the system in his first question. Before I come on to appeals, let me conclude the explanation about the first part of the system, which is the main part of the system, because we want to get it right the first time for young people, so that they do not have to appeal.

Douglas Ross said that I ignored the points that he made. I did not ignore the points that he made; I simply refused to go along with his misrepresentation of what that means in practice. If a school’s results are reviewed because they appear, at face value, to be out of step with previous years, that is not the operation of an algorithm automatically downgrading pupils, as would have happened last year. Such a situation simply triggers a checking by teachers, and if the teachers’ judgment is that the original grades stand, that is the final decision. It is simply a quality assurance process at that stage, before results go to the SQA.

Fundamentally, it is the teacher judgment that stands. At that point, the SQA is not involved, and when the SQA does become involved, no algorithm or past performance influences a young person’s grade. It is very important that that is set out clearly, because this matters to young people across the country.

I understand and I absolutely recognise that there are different views on the appeals process. Where there is consensus, it is on the point that it is right to offer universally available appeals, which are free of charge this year. However, there are two issues that have divided opinion, and I understand that. Great care has been taken with them.

One issue is the no-detriment system versus the symmetrical system, which Douglas Ross was asking about. On balance, in common with other parts of the UK and in line with past experience, it has been decided to adopt the symmetrical process. That is fair, because it is based only on the attainment of young people.

The second issue is of course whether there should be a ground of appeal based on exceptional circumstances. The system tries to build that into an earlier stage, so that a young person who suffers a bereavement, for example, does not have to rely on appeal but has extended time to submit the evidence for their original grading. We have taken great care around all this and we will continue to do so. Douglas Ross should by all means raise all these issues—it is important that they are scrutinised—but he should not try to confuse the different issues to make a point that does not stand in reality.

Yes, I broadly support the terms of the UNICEF letter and I hope to see coming out of the G7 an agreement that there is a responsibility on the part of the G7 to help speed up vaccination, not just in the G7 countries but globally. I will continue to add Scotland’s voice to that as loudly as I can.

In summary, we need to seek to do two things. First, we need to make sure that the supplies of the vaccine that are available in the world are distributed as equitably as possible. We have to avoid the risk of false choices being put before us. The supplies, through the very good procurement that the UK has done, mean that we should not see this as a choice between, for example, vaccinating children and playing our part in helping global vaccination. The second thing that we need to do is support efforts to ramp up production of vaccines in as many parts of the world as possible.

It is absolutely the case that, although we are of course really focused on vaccinating our own population as quickly as possible—because that is our first contribution to ending the global pandemic—we will not end the pandemic until the whole world manages to exit from it. The best chance that we have of exiting from it is through mass vaccination. We therefore all have a part to play in that, and the richest countries in the world have a real moral obligation to lead that effort.

I think that the EY Scotland attractiveness survey 2021, which was published yesterday, should be welcomed by all parties in the chamber. We should bring ourselves to come together to welcome it because it shows that, in the face of a global pandemic, Scotland has remained the top UK inward investment destination outside London, as has been the case in eight of the past 10 years. We have also managed to grow our inward investment at a time when it has shrunk across the UK as a whole. Whatever our different political viewpoints and ambitions for the country, surely, in the face of this really tough time, we can all come together to welcome some thoroughly good news for the Scottish economy.