Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is accelerating action for a fairer Scotland for women and girls, working to ensure that women and girls have equal rights and opportunities and equitable access to resources and can live their lives free from abuse. That work includes delivering the women’s health plan, investing to tackle domestic violence against women and girls and survivors of abuse, supporting women to access fair work and helping to reduce the gender pay gap.

The Government will leave no stone unturned in our work towards equality. I know that many members will be attending events this international women’s day, which are taking place in local communities across the country. I wish everyone a successful day of celebration and action.

The concessionary bus travel scheme has been an unparalleled success. It has, crucially, given young people much greater mobility in our society and has enabled them to access a much wider range of employment and training opportunities around the country. That will have a profound effect in all communities in the country, and I know that the effect that it has had in the Paisley constituency will be precious to Mr Adam. From my dialogue with young people, I know about the positive impact of the policy instrument and the way in which it has increased opportunities and life chances for young people in Scotland.

Progress is being made. As I said in my answer to Mr Sarwar and as I repeat in my answer to Rachael Hamilton, figures that were published in February show a 4 per cent decrease in the total waiting list for diagnostic tests, so we are making progress. For example, there has been a 44 per cent decrease in imaging waiting times at NHS Fife and a 22 per cent decrease in neurology waiting times at NHS Forth Valley.

Progress is being made, and it will be helped by the investment that the Government is making in the national health service, which I point out that Rachael Hamilton did not support. It is all very well coming here and complaining about issues in the national health service, but Rachael Hamilton is not prepared to support that financial investment; in fact, she represents a position of wanting to reduce public expenditure by £1 billion to afford a tax cut. How that will get orthopaedic appointments undertaken is beyond me. The Government is investing, and we are making much progress to reduce waiting lists. I will be happy to update Rachael Hamilton on the progress that we make in the weeks to come.

That is a bold approach to First Minister’s question time, given that, when Mr Findlay set out his proposals yesterday, he conceded in a television interview that he was, in fact, not certain that those proposals would get anywhere near a Conservative manifesto. After that interview, I am not sure that Mr Findlay has quite as much confidence in the policy that he has put to me today.

I do not agree with the proposals. We have spent a great deal of time and effort on trying to encourage young people to maximise their engagement with education. That has resulted in more young people staying on at school and, as a consequence, more young people going into positive destinations when they leave school. [Interruption.]

I am all for encouraging young people to thrive and for taking opportunities to ensure that that is the case. That is why this Government has reformed the approach to apprenticeships. For example, while young people are school pupils, they can take up foundation apprenticeships as part of work-based learning in the senior phase. That can result in young people spending a day per week, during the senior phase, working with an employer. Since their introduction in 2016, 15,371 pupils have enrolled in a foundation apprenticeship and have benefited from the value of work-based learning, and 5,000 places are now available each year.

That is the pragmatic approach that this Government takes to make sure that we address the issue that Mr Findlay has raised with me. School does not suit everybody, so we are adapting the curriculum to make sure that it does suit young people through the use of foundation apprenticeships. That is one of the excellent reforms that this Government has introduced.

As I said in my earlier answer, I want young people to have the brightest possible future, which is why we have enabled schools to offer increased opportunities for young people to prepare for the world of work. Thirty-five per cent of 2023-24 school leavers gained a vocational or technical qualification at Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 5 or above, which is an increase of 7.3 per cent compared with the figure for 2013-14. That is the Government actually delivering practical steps to improve the work chances and life chances of young people in Scotland. This Government has reformed education to strengthen the opportunities for young people. As a consequence, young people are going on to positive destinations after leaving school at record levels in Scotland today.

Katy Clark puts an incredibly serious point to me. It comes back to the answer that I have just given, which is that there is a responsibility on all society to try to help boys and men to improve their conduct and actions. That will be the route to addressing the fundamental issue that Katy Clark puts to me, which will result in the protection of mothers and women who face danger. She has my absolute assurance, and I am very happy to work across the political spectrum to do all that we can to improve the cultural attitudes and approaches of men and boys in our society, because I believe that to be fundamental to addressing the serious issue that she puts to me.

Two recommendations were levelled at the Scottish Government in the cross-party group’s report. One was to increase the understanding of Islamophobia in the curriculum in our schools, and the other was to ensure that the public sector equality duty was enforced in schools. I assure Mr Choudhury that those priorities are being taken forward by the Scottish Government. It is vital that we do all that we can to ensure that we take steps on the issue. We will consider any decision that is made by the United Kingdom Government on the definition of Islamophobia and will consider any implications of that decision for our approach to adopting a definition.

The rise in anti-Muslim hate incidents is of serious concern. The Scottish Government unequivocally condemns all forms of Islamophobia and the impact that it has on individuals, families and communities. That is why we work co-operatively with a range of partners to tackle such pernicious behaviour. Our hate crime strategy and the associated delivery plan include strategic priorities for tackling hate crime and Islamophobia in Scotland. Importantly, the strategy was informed by those with lived experience of Islamophobia, which is central to understanding the challenges that we face.

The first thing that I will say is that I take deadly seriously the findings of the NASUWT survey that were published this week. That is why the education secretary has been working with local authorities and trade unions on a series of interventions in relation to behaviour at school.

It is important that, for completeness, we hear all the issues that are raised by the NASUWT survey. The NASUWT said:

“a greater focus on exploring correlation between behaviour issues and poverty is required.”

The general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland said:

“since the onset of austerity, we have seen rising incidents of violent, aggressive, dysregulated, distressed behaviour in classrooms and growing incidents of additional support needs.”

I acknowledge that, in the atmosphere and environment since Covid, there has been an increase in challenging behaviour in schools, but that is not unique to Scotland—every education system in the western world is reporting the same evidence. The Government will take action, working with our local authority and trade union partners, to try to address the issue, because that dysregulated behaviour in our schools is unacceptable.

What I will not do is what Russell Findlay does, which is to characterise all young people as behaving badly. [Interruption.]