Chamber and committees

I want to go back to the point about parity of esteem. I am interested in your views on whether, in the policy that is coming from the Parliament and the Government, the message is strong enough in support of college education.

I start by reminding members that I did not come third.

How can the Government give us a preferred date for a referendum, but not a date for closing the education attainment gap? What does the cabinet secretary think that that says about the Government’s priorities?

The Education, Children and Young People Committee heard that pupil equity funding is being used to plug gaps in the budget—little did we realise that that meant the policing budget, too. Will the cabinet secretary take this opportunity to say that that practice is wrong? It might be, in her view, a small amount of money, but every penny that goes into education should be focused on teaching and learning. Can she not even agree with that?

This is not education reform; it is more of the same with a different name. While standards continue to slip and our young people are let down, this Government does not do very much at all. Professor Walter Humes sums it up as

“boards ... populated by the usual suspects”,

including senior staff

“from the bodies which are to be replaced.”

He says:

“It sounds like insider dealing, with those who are part of the problem being tasked with producing solutions.”

He is right, is he not? The cabinet secretary and the First Minister are part of the problem, are they not?

The role of local authorities in the pandemic will certainly be considered, but Mr Fairlie’s argument is, in effect, that we should not legislate at this time, that we should wait for the public inquiry and that we should wait until we know the shape of any future threat before putting very definite things on the statute book.

The problem is that what we are considering is putting wide-ranging and very loose powers in the hands of the Government. These amendments—and amendment 120 in particular—set out balancing provisions. If you want wide-ranging non-specific powers for an unknown future pandemic, you will have to accept that there might be limitations in that respect. That is why the better approach would have been, as has been set out at length, to have draft legislation ready and agreed that could be continually reviewed and considered and then implemented quickly.

I do not have a great deal to add. This comes down to balance and who knows young people best. Even in a national response to a pandemic, there must be recognition that those on the ground who make the day-to-day decisions are often best placed to make those difficult balancing judgments. There is no one else to make them; there is no one else who can consider the individual circumstances of a young person to that level. The idea that the Government is best placed to take all those decisions on its own is one of the fundamental problems with the bill as drafted. In fact, that was not the experience during the pandemic. The provisions that I propose, or something similar, need to be in the bill.

I press amendment 113.

I say politely to the member that I think that the use of historical data at a school level in a way that impacts the grades of other young people is wrong. In addition, when grades were changed on the basis of an algorithm, and when ministers were aware of the information and chose not to act, those were mistakes—that is why changes were made later. Young people deserve a guarantee that such things will not happen again.

I go back to Mr Mason’s point in relation to some of the other amendments, which relate to areas such as the financial impact. Again, we hear that the Government would not, in a future pandemic, do this or that, but we do not know who the Government or the ministerial office holders are going to be at that point. Putting some of these things in the text of the bill, rather than relying on guidance or regulation, therefore offers much stronger protection to those who may be impacted.

I could go on for some time, but I know that members have travel plans.

I have to say that I am unsurprised that the Deputy First Minister is unable to support any of the amendments in the group, because they all speak to errors or a failure to provide support relating to his input to education during the pandemic. To be frank, with regard to the SQA, to hear that ministers were somehow not involved in some of those mistakes is a bit—

Amendment 112, with amendments 115, 117, 118, 134, 136, 140 and 145, seeks to remove what Graham Simpson’s amendments have left behind. That is my preference, as I think that those sections and provisions are not required at this time. In the interests of time, I will not rehearse the arguments that Murdo Fraser has made at stage 1 and again here today. More generally, the other amendments seek to raise the bar for using the provisions and introduce additional safeguards and reassurances.

We have already heard from the Deputy First Minister that we should be informed by the experience of the pandemic. A number of my amendments in this group speak to what went well during the pandemic in consultation with stakeholders. Consensus is one of the Deputy First Minister’s watchwords for how he likes to proceed, so I hope that those amendments will be taken in the spirit in which they are lodged and that, should there be drafting errors or things that are not quite to the Government’s taste, he will be willing to work with me to lodge at stage 3 revised amendments on which we can all agree.

There are other amendments in the group that speak to some of the Scottish Government’s mistakes. We must learn from some of the mistakes that were made in education, which was one of the most difficult of the areas caught up in the Covid-19 pandemic. Yesterday, I was back at my old school and speaking with young people. We continue to see the devastating impact that educational disruption has had on them, and as a parent, I continue to worry and wonder whether the Government and Parliament got everything right and found the right balance.

I do not doubt anyone’s sincerity in trying to find that balance, but there were certainly times when the Government overstepped the mark and continued to keep restrictions on young people in place far beyond the point at which they were necessary. We did not always get the right balance of the child’s best interests, the wider interests and the public health risk. With my amendments, which I will talk through briefly, I am keen to ensure that we do not make those mistakes again.

Amendments 118 and 130 seek to provide for a report from the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland that addresses children’s rights. The report would consider whether the proposed use of powers was “proportionate and necessary”. Of course, under the bill, that decision would ultimately be for ministers but, when we have such a significant source of expertise at our disposal, it would be worth hearing from the commissioner’s office, which does an excellent job of speaking up for young people. That would provide some reassurance.

I guess that it comes down to who we believe is the right person to take the final decision. These are difficult questions of balance. At times during the pandemic, when it came to decisions about schools, we opted for a national approach, although there was significant local variation. At later points in the pandemic, such variations were taken into account in various regulations and measures.

I just think that when we are talking about something as significant as the closure of education establishments, there is a balance to be struck. The public health aspect is not the only consideration for decision makers, and it would not be the only consideration for the Scottish Government, which I know would want to strike a balance. I think that there is a role for the local authority in deciding when that point has been reached. Placing on the Scottish Government a duty to seek the agreement of authorities—or something similar—would promote partnership working and the type of culture that will help in the response to a future pandemic.

As I have said, I am willing to look at the wording of amendment 120 or consider another amendment that would put that principle into the bill. In a system in which local authorities are responsible for delivering education, I do not see how we can have Government ministers telling authorities—on narrow, public health grounds—that we have reached a point at which their establishments must close.

During the pandemic, we did not have a total closure of schools; we ended up with hubs and other things. We do not know what the exact circumstances would be in the future, but given that we have 32 local authorities with 32 different sets of circumstances, they would have a right to a significant say in any decision to close the educational establishments for which they are responsible.