Chamber and committees

In all my time in the Parliament, I have never heard a statement from a Government minister so disconnected from the reality that our constituents, especially young people, face. The minister should reflect on that and should potentially withdraw his statement, because it does not mention young people transitioning into adult services. How many young people are not starting treatment prior to transitioning to adult services? He has not mentioned that. How many families have been forced to seek diagnosis and treatment in the private sector, as Alex Cole-Hamilton said, because of failures of the minister’s Government?

I associate myself with the comments of Ben Macpherson. The way in which the council has handled the issue has been totally unacceptable. Parents and families are rightly angry that they have been left in the dark. We are now heading into the summer holidays, and children with severe medical complex needs, disabilities or life-limiting conditions should have the right to access holiday hub provision. There are often few opportunities for them to participate otherwise. What national guidance is the Government developing with councils on this issue? I did not hear that in the cabinet secretary’s answer. Does she recognise that the City of Edinburgh Council is finding it difficult as the lowest-funded council in Scotland?

Those changes will be improvements to the internal structures, and I hope that they work, which is why we have supported the amendments. However, I do not think that they provide the radical change that students and teachers across the country are looking to the Parliament to deliver. I have been disappointed by the fact that the Parliament has not been bolder and that the Government has been complacent in its work with parties for the bill.

As I have said, the bill at stage 3 is not the education bill that it should be and, therefore, we will not support it at decision time.

I thank the Parliament’s legislation team and, following these late sittings, the wider parliamentary staff, as well as Government officials and colleagues across parties for the constructive engagement that we have had on many elements of the bill. I also make special mention of our researchers, from all parties, because they have put in a power of work in attempting to improve the bill.

During stage 3 amendments yesterday, Pam Duncan-Glancy stated that the bill was a “job half done”. I agree. After all, this is the main education bill that has been introduced by the Government during this session of the Parliament.

We should not forget why we are here today. The 2020 exam scandal brought into sharp focus the failings of the SQA and the Scottish National Party ministers at that time. The changes that the bill was meant to take forward to respond to a range of reports and reviews, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s review of the curriculum for excellence and Professor Ken Muir’s report “Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education”, have not been achieved.

I joined the Education, Children and Young People Committee last October, just in time for the signing off of its stage 1 report on the bill. I am sorry to say that it feels as though the bill has been rushed through the Parliament in the last week of term and that it does not reflect what the cross-party report envisaged.

As my friend and colleague Liz Smith has stated, the bill is now the sixth attempt by the SNP Government to reform education in Scotland. It is clear that SNP ministers’ policies and half-baked reforms are not delivering for our young people. The stage 3 process has felt more like the Scottish Government trying not to take forward reform rather than providing a bill that could deliver the full recommendations of the reports of the cross-party committee and Ken Muir.

In addition, the pace at which the bill has moved through the Parliament, landing in the last week of the session, is problematic. Either ministers should have introduced the bill earlier or we should have delayed stage 3 until after the summer recess, so that important discussions—really important discussions—to develop a cross-party consensus could have taken place and the bill could, potentially, have received the confidence of all parties in the chamber, as happened last week in respect of the Deputy First Minister’s work on the Scottish Languages Bill.

Scottish Conservatives have, however, engaged positively and lodged a positive and significant set of amendments to try to shape a stronger bill that would deliver the outcomes that we all want. I note Ross Greer’s comments in the chamber yesterday in relation to the difficulty of legislating for culture change. I agree. However, the failure to take forward as part of the bill important reforms such as the independence of the chief inspector and child protection reforms will not provide the reset or the independence from ministers that the organisations need.

I fear that the Government has ended up in a weaker place and that the bill has ended up as a weaker response, which is not what we need to truly set up qualifications Scotland as a new organisation with the strong foundations that it needed. The question that we are all asking is: what measures in the bill will restore trust? Will the new organisation have a new culture? The jury is still very much out on whether that will be the case.

Scottish Conservatives were clear on our red lines over what we wanted to see in the bill, especially in relation to a new independent school inspector who would report directly to the Parliament. That has not been achieved. I regret that the bill has not been the opportunity that many of us had hoped for.

I approached the bill in the hope that we could genuinely work to restore confidence in our qualifications authority and the inspectorate. It was hoped that the bill would deliver a meaningful reform for Scotland’s education system, which is urgently needed. Instead, it is little more than a rebrand of the SQA.

Splitting the awarding and accreditation functions of the SQA is fundamental to creating a system that works, as the higher history scandal showed, with the SQA not being allowed to continue to mark its own homework. The SQA needed an overhaul, not a cosmetic makeover, and the bill’s proposed changes fall way short of what is required to ensure that the organisation can operate effectively and that it is properly accountable.

I believe that we could have built cross-party consensus on the bill if the minister had given us more time, and if the Parliament had had more time.

In light of the cabinet secretary’s comments, I will not move amendment 210.

Amendment 210 not moved.

Section 33A—Working with others

I have spoken to all Opposition parties about this. Would the cabinet secretary acknowledge that the bill has been rushed? We have had to sit two evenings in a row to rush the bill through before recess. In hindsight, would it not have been better to delay stage 3 until after the summer recess? She might then have attracted cross-party support for the major reform that she is putting forward, which, it is clear, not every party is willing to support.

[Inaudible.]

My card was not in the console—a schoolboy error.

Members: Oh!

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement and I express my concern for staff and students at Dundee university at this time.

When universities across Scotland are experiencing serious concerns about their future financial sustainability, I do not think that it is wise for us to say that we want just to draw a line under the mistakes that have been made at Dundee university. The cabinet secretary’s statement shows that, even after the steps that the Government has taken, there will be a potential £20 million black hole in the university’s finances over the next two years. If a bailout of £20 million is needed over the next two years, what will be the Government’s plan B to fund the gap?

Given Wendy Alexander’s allegations at the weekend, what police investigation might be undertaken into criminality at the university?

In the interests of brevity, I will try to speed up my comments during the rest of the afternoon.

I was pleased to lodge this suite of amendments following stage 2. Amendments 5, 1 and 76, in my name, would improve the bill.

Amendment 5 would require qualifications Scotland to prepare and publish guidance to support those with educational support needs in undertaking examinations. Amendment 5 would introduce the term “educational support needs” into the bill instead of “additional support needs”, because it is important that children, young people and adult learners with support needs for learning are all covered by these and other provisions in the bill.

Amendment 76 would ensure that that newly introduced term covers existing legislation for children and young people, along with other learners with additional support needs for learning. Amendment 76 is a definition of “educational support needs”. It deliberately uses a new term but defines it as having the same meaning as “additional support needs” under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and “support needs” under the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005. That is because it might be confusing to start using those terms to mean something broader in this bill when they are already well understood and have a meaning in their respective contexts.

Amendment 1 would therefore reflect the new terminology in existing provisions in relation to section 3, quality assuring the processes that additional establishments have to put in place to support the assessment of qualifications, particularly for those with additional support needs.

I move amendment 1.