Chamber and committees

Thank you for that. Do you know whether discussions are taking place between the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on funding formulas in order to react to any potential increase? The City of Edinburgh Council receives the lowest funding per head of population from the Scottish Government, partly because the education budget is aligned with the numbers of pupils in the independent sector. Is that being taken into account in the projected additional needs and costs, or is that just a conversation to be had when the schools are over capacity?

Thank you for joining us today. I am a member for Edinburgh and Lothian and will ask specifically about Edinburgh, because 15 per cent of families in the capital send their children to independent schools. I have spoken to a number of schools and know that behaviour change is already happening, but I would like to know whether you have any up-to-date data. The latest census provided by SCIS showed that 9,310 Edinburgh pupils were in independent schools.

City of Edinburgh Council told me that there are 23,150 secondary pupils here in the capital. That is the highest level since the 1980s, with rolls up by 3 to 4 per cent this year. Some 16 schools will be over capacity by 2030. Given that situation in the state sector, where do you see capacity for additional pupils coming into it? What joined-up thinking is taking place about local authorities needing to find more places if more and more families are unable to cover the additional costs?

I want to ask about the impact on bursaries. Is there any anecdotal evidence of a reduction? Access to specialist training in Scotland often relies on bursaries—we only need to look at the Scottish rugby team, individuals who compete in the Commonwealth games or the Olympics, or individuals who study music. I just wondered whether any work has been done on that. We have all touched on the fact that we are in the early days of the policy, but there will be an impact on the nation—on sports stars being able to access training and so on.

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I welcome the amendments in Nicola Sturgeon’s name, which would strengthen children’s services plans.

Amendment 122, in the name of my colleague Sue Webber, is on preventing family separation. Currently, the bill makes no mention of the reunification of children, parents and families. Parents often have to fight hard to have their children returned to their care and, often, when there is reunification, very little support is offered to the families. Children have the right to be brought up, when it is safe to do so, with their parents and families, and we must ensure that lack of support is no barrier in that respect, if that is what a child or young person wants as their outcome.

Amendment 122 seeks to add a new aim to children’s services planning by making it clear that such services allow a child to continue or resume living with their parent, and that those services must be available to the extent that all children who need them can access them. I am interested to hear what the minister has to say about that, because work on reunification services is missing from the bill.

I have worked with Children’s Hospices Across Scotland on amendment 216, which deals with an important aspect of the bill. I pay tribute to CHAS and the work that it does across Scotland. The amendment seeks to ensure that families with children and young people with life-shortening conditions get the support that they need to transition into adult services. I put on record my concerns, which have already been outlined by Roz McCall, about aspects of the bill potentially being lost when IJBs have to decide what they will fund, and I make it clear that my amendment 216 specifically seeks to ensure that a consistent approach to the issue is taken across Scotland and that children and young people with life-shortening conditions get the support that they need for transition.

I know that it is the first year of the policy being in place, but have you had any feedback from schools in terms of understanding parents’ behavioural change? For example, are parents looking at choosing what years their children will be at an independent school and at whether they can get the exam results that they need and then be taken out earlier, for gap years and so on? Is such behavioural change being considered, given that the sustainability of the independent sector’s financial model could also be jeopardised by additional behavioural change?

Has there been any conversation with the Scottish Government about the potential for a different model for individuals in the future, especially with regard to the availability of specialist training? In some cases, training is not being done in parts of the country where the really talented individual sports stars of tomorrow are. I appreciate that it is early days, but what could that look like?

Thanks.

Good morning. I will be brief as I can be. I have three amendments in this group—amendments 207, 208 and 210, which are all interlinked. The amendments seek to ensure that opportunities to explore voluntary arrangements through family group decision making are properly and consistently accounted for. I welcome the minister’s acknowledgement of the need to see how family group decision making can be strengthened through the bill, which was a cross-party ask.

The amendments build on the recommendation in “The Promise” that family group decision making should become more common. The “Hearings for Children” report said that family group decision making

“should be routinely and consistently offered to children and families, in line with the National Standards produced by the National FGDM Steering Group, as an option to help find innovative and creative ways to solve their problems well in advance of any statutory involvement of the Children’s Hearings System and in line with the recommendations”

in “The Promise”.

The purpose of amendments 207 and 208 is to establish a clear and consistent check on whether family group decision making has been explored, to inform the reporter’s investigation and decision. That is not about the reporter offering the service to families directly. Amendment 208 would therefore not prevent or delay hearings. It is the right thing for the child that such an offer is made, and it would help to ensure that the issue is properly considered either before or alongside a hearing.

Amendment 210 is on reporting on family group decision making. It would establish a better understanding of how and when children and families are offered family group decision making across Scotland, to inform policy and resourcing decisions and to help to meet the Promise’s call. As an Edinburgh MSP, I know that the City of Edinburgh Council’s work on that approach is transforming lives and making a real difference, and I know that that is also the case in Glasgow. However, we have an opportunity to strengthen family group decision making as part of the bill.

I move amendment 207.

I have had meetings with Police Scotland representatives who are really frustrated that, for some adults who are in mental health crisis, taking them to an accident and emergency unit is the only option. We have to be careful about what we might create in classifying somewhere as a safe place without attaching any real outcome to that, apart from its being a holding area. It would not be appropriate to start filling A and E units with young people.

The minister outlined work that is going on. When is that likely to report and present different models and alternatives? It sounds as though we are not yet able to identify what would be classified as a safe place.

Thank you for that. I was looking at the Adam Smith Institute report on some of the projected data, which I think underestimates things. If we are seeing this kind of behavioural change in parents, the Treasury is not going to receive any money from this at all, and that has not been projected or taken into account.

I want to return to the issue of ASN, on which the Scottish Government is currently undertaking a welcome cross-party review. I know a lot of parents in Edinburgh who are making sacrifices in order to send their children to independent schools so that they get the support that they want and that, as Lorraine Davidson has outlined, they are on a good pathway to succeed in secondary school and in life. What data do you have—perhaps in an Edinburgh context, too—on the number of young people at independent schools across Scotland who have an additional support need? What percentage of those families are deciding that they are unable to continue with their children’s education in the independent sector? That has not been taken into account, and it is something that we should consider in the Government’s review if we are to ensure that those young people are given the best opportunity.