い Morning, and welcome to the 16th meeting of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. I'm going to make the usual request that any mobile devices are switched on to Airplane Mode. We have an apology this morning from our colleague Alec Cole-Hamilton. Agenda item 1 this morning is a decision on taking consideration of forthcoming legislation in private future meetings. Are committee content to do that? wurdell. Felly, wrth cemin demandech joined the agenda today, it is a continuation of our bullying harassment of children and young people in schools in Scotland inquiry. We have quite a big panel this morning and we are very happy that you could all come along and contribute because we want to ensure that the recommendations that we make to government are very well informed. The way that we do that is to talk to as many organisations and especially young people's organisations as we possibly can. Later this morning, we will have stŷr, uchydiggylwn o'i ddau achwhallol a wedi'i ddau i fod yn gweithio i'r ddau a'r llwyddau a chael y llyfr yn gyffredinol ciwyddiadau. Rwy'n credu bod y Cysylltu Aelodion yng Nghymru yn y fawr, ac mae hwyl i'r rhai o gyrysiau ac mae ei ddim yn ddiddordeb wlad mewn fawr fod yma i'r morth cwrs. A bod hyn ymddw i'r i y такихial richrachס, ond mae'n garbith avocadoíau hyfforddiol Lehman eich bhwyffydd ar ddweud yn rhan o gyfrifydigwydd daith. Rwy'n gweithio nad yw'r rhai gyff 먹h thataith, ond maen nhw ei fydd i fynd i'ch ar-igwel pumped felly mae'n enghraedd eich pobdd mewn sowon bawb ac gemhredu yr hyfforddwe eyebrow rhan o gyfrifydigwyd ay'r cynorth. Vobau ynoelyniu ei examsu i bobl dyma i mi ar mwy cywir allwch chi ben sydd ahudихios nag ei cynnwys gan hyfforddiol ichan o'r cyfrifydigwydd ac restulwn Adriaen Byddai'n gwneud i chi i chi i gael i chi, yn ddosod, a'i gael i chi i chi i chi i chi, ac ddim yn gwneud i'ch gael i'ch gael i chi, yn ei gael i chi gael i chi, yn ddosod. I'm Christina McKelvie, and I'm the convener of the committee in the MSP for Hamilton, Lark Colinstone House. Good morning. I'm Joe Amle Belford. I'm one of the low-vient MSPs, and I wonder quite often why I'm here. Hi there. I'm Derek Allan, the director or head teacher of Cercodi High School in Fife, and we've been invited on a recent track record in creating an inclusive and welcoming school ethos. I'm Cameron Bowie. I'm a fifth year student at Cercodi High School, and I'm also the chairperson for the LGBT club at that school. I'm Gail Ross. I'm the member of the Scottish Parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. I'm Annie Wells. I'm the member of the Parliament for Glasgow region. I'm Nimie Geekin. I'm a student in one of the members of the stamp project in Lanarkshire. I'm Mary Fee. I'm a member of the Parliament from West Scotland. I'm Hannah Brisbane. I'm a girl-grading advocate, and we're here today to talk about sexual harassment in schools. I'm Susie McGinnis. I'm also from Girl-Grading Scotland with Hannah. David Torrance, MSP, Cercodi constituency. Can I declare an interest, convener, as a member of the Scout Association? Ann Whiteford, from Scout Scotland. I have a national role in charge of development for Scout Scotland. Thank you very much. You can see that we've got quite a diversity around the table from schools who have used their leadership to change the culture and the ethos of the school, to young people's organisations uniformed and non-uniformed, and to the stamp project that I know very well in Lanarkshire and the work that they do. I suppose, for us, we are coming quite close to the end of this inquiry. We've heard a number of pieces of evidence about the organisations within schools, whether it's at government level, local authority level, we've heard about the input that teachers have, that young people have, especially around maybe some of their committee work that they do when they become spokespeople in their school, the spokespeople from organisations and the work that they do as well. As you can see, it's a whole community approach. It's not just about 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock. It's the whole day and it's the contribution that all of these organisations make. I suppose that my first question is that we've got excellent written evidence from most of you this morning, and we're very grateful for that and some very clear statistical information in that. I know that the Girlguiding Association has been doing some clear work and you've got bang-up-to-date statistics. Maybe I'll come to you first, Susanna and Hannah, and ask you to tell us a wee bit about the campaign that you've been involved in and the things that you think maybe the committee should be looking at and the recommendations that we should make to government. Every year, as you say, we do a survey as Girlguiding UK. One of our roles as advocates is to design the questions for that survey and to decide what we want it to focus on. In the 2015 survey that goes out across the UK to all girls from 17 to 21, whether they're in Girlguiding or not, one of the main issues that came back in 2015 was the levels of sexual harassment in schools. One of the biggest statistics was that 59 per cent of girls had experienced some sexual harassment in schools. In response to that, we, as Girlguiding UK, came back up with the campaign to basically end that, because we don't think it's acceptable. From that Girlguiding Scotland, we've taken our own approach in Scotland, and that's why we've been invited today. I don't know if you want to add. Yeah, so sort of what we're hoping for is for it to be improved through better PSA in schools, which is compulsory in high quality for schools to have a duty to prevent and tackle sexual harassment and to keep a record of that and be held accountable, and for there to be national guidance in place for schools so that they know how they can take a zero tolerance approach to that and how to be effective in tackling it in their schools. I see from your evidence that you just told us that 59 per cent of girls age 13 to 21 felt that they had to face some form of sexual harassment in school or in college. Obviously, a big part of what we need to look at now is how that's tackled and how it's handled, especially as it's not in the school day, it's wider than that. One of the recommendations that you have in your paper is about online and how we handle online bullying. We had some evidence yesterday from a young person from Aberdeen who's working along with my colleague Gillian Martin and some of the work that they're doing in their school. I'm going to come to schools in a wee second to talk about that. However, if you get any more insight that you think that we should know about how to tackle that, how you would maybe give guidance to young women and particularly the young women you're working with and how to cope with that, and what the reaction has been when they've taken that forward to maybe a teacher or a head teacher? I think that what we'd like to see is much more guidance teachers in schools to feel much more equipped to deal with sexual harassment that's happening online, because obviously something that we've seen a lot and young people have spoken about a lot is things being put on Snapchat and that going around schools, really young girls having nudes taken and leaked, and it's something that's quite shocking to a lot of adults, but it's something that's very widespread in schools and it goes under the radar because it's something that's not happening in a classroom, so teachers aren't sure if they're allowed to deal with it, what steps they should be taking, whether the police should be involved with that, and obviously that's a really upsetting thing for girls to be dealing with in school, and we'd like to see teachers knowing how to deal with that, because I know from my experience and our friend Katie who can't be here today but she was in yesterday talking about this, we know of instances where there's been girls who've been filmed being assaulted, and non-consensual footage of rape going around schools and that not being reported or dealt with, because it's a frightening thing. It's so large that teachers don't know who to go to and they don't know how to deal with that, so often it does just go unreported and when it does get reported it can often make it worse, because it's not being dealt with appropriately, because they don't know the steps they can take, so we'd like guidance teachers in schools to know the steps that they should be taking and know how to report things so that it is going to the police and that young men are seeing the consequences of those actions, because if they don't see the consequences then we're creating a culture where this is an acceptable thing to be happening in schools, and it's not, it's very clearly not. Yeah, thanks, thanks for that. Derry Callant, you've heard a sort of a plea for the, and that's one aspect about how girls feel at school, and I know that you have attempted to deal with a number of aspects in your school, whether it's LGBTI issues or it's teenage pregnancy or indeed some of the bullying harassment that happens. Can you maybe give us an insight into how your school took that on board, took responsibility for it and have changed that culture? We'll do certainly happy to do that. I'm just interested in Susanna's comments there, although I find that really frightening that guidance teachers wouldn't know that it's a clear child protection issue that would be handled and that there are very, very clear guidance for all teachers about how to progress these things and report them appropriately. In Kirkcaldy High School yesterday, we actually had the police in with NHS five colleagues, talked to young people about sexting and keeping safe online. One of the things that we've done effectively in that area is have a peer mentoring role for senior pupils with younger ones, because often it's very young children who are sharing inappropriate images of themselves for making themselves vulnerable, but what you're describing online footage of assault like that is dreadful, and I'd hate to think that any school in Fife wouldn't be well equipped to handle that, I'm sure they would. Realising is that that's girls age 12, 13 that that's happening to, and I think that's more of a case for PSE and education about consent and about online abuse needs to be much, much earlier. It needs to be the end of primary school in my eyes, and by primary six I was sitting in classrooms where boys were taking it in turns to see who could shout rape the loudest, so I think teachers need to realise that it needs to be much, much earlier to combat that. A lot of our stats actually come from the age group of seven to 12, so it's always quite surprising to a lot of people because they think it happens a lot later, but it's actually happened a lot earlier there. To go back to your religion point, convener, for us, the key thing is that prevention is far better than cure, and bullying policies in school are very important, of course, as frameworks, but you would always want to get to the point where it's minimised through the school culture being of the kind whereby it's not acceptable, it's not thought cool to be cruel, if you like, and building up a culture and ethos that is inclusive. I was particularly struck just before I became a headteacher when I did a study tour of Canada as part of an education Scotland trip, and there was a very big one character education in Ontario. They had a very specific curricular insert where they looked at different values of honesty and trust and fairness and respect, and that these are the kind of messages I took back when I took over at Kirkcaldy High School as head or became head, I should say. I took over since another grand way of saying it, but we've built a kind of values-based culture and the three core values are respect for self, respect for others and respect for learning, and we're trying to make that the drumbeat of the school, if you like. There's lots of posters, there's lots of discussion of these issues within the first few weeks of secondary school and several subject areas that become the theme of the lessons. I'd court that as I think giving pupils a strong voice and allowing them to call out and be equipped to challenge those who are not treating others fairly or bullying others. One of those things, of course, is based on this culture of equality, and in particular taking an issue such as LGBT issues and making that a kind of, almost a bit of a crusade, to be honest for the school, to give it something to coalesce around and make it as head to take some of the sting out of the word gay, for example, at assemblies by using it by talking about our group. It's a core group of young people, and there are about 24 or so, I think, who've worked together to deliver assemblies, to inform the management team of the school about what would be a useful way of building an ever-more equal culture, of becoming involved in local LGBT events, such as Fife Pride, which is coming up in Kirkcaldy shortly, and a kind of body and arrangement for younger kids who may be either identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, possibly as they come through the school or keen to support that whole agenda as an ally. So I kind of appear, you know, just to make it, as I said, the rules are fine, but some business guru, I remember, once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. It's about how the school feels as much as what happens when somebody reports an incident to bullying. I think it's also important to separate out prejudice-based bullying from incidents and things that happen through peer groups falling out. That's important, but clearly sexual harassment is a prejudice-based bullying, but sometimes kids get mixed up in parents too when groups fall out and the one that's not doing so well out of the fall-out feels bullied. The feelings will be real, but I think we must separate out against prejudice-based stuff, if that's helpful at the moment. I don't have camera, but we want to say about the LGBT group, or if that's the right time. Yeah, camera, if you want to come in. Well, yeah, about the LGBT group, it's a good support network for kids who are feeling like they're being victimised due to their sexuality or gender identity. The LGBT club really supports them and how they feel and how they identify, which also are assemblies that we give to the school, is really gave people the knowledge so people don't go by wrong stereotypes and judge people, is really made people educated on different gender identities and sexualities, so people don't mindlessly insult because they're not educated on the situation that the child who identifies otherwise is. It's the whole general vibes of the school. The school is a very accepting place, with Mr Allen at assemblies using words like gay, lesbian, transgender, just not taking away the stigma of it. It's making it very accepted and it's becoming the norm so far that it's now, I would say, it's uncool for anyone in our school to bully someone else because everyone else would look at them and be like, why are you doing that? It's not a cool thing, it's not a fun thing to be doing. It's now generally accepted, so it's accepted to such a point where people aren't even thinking about doing it. You may have a few isolated cases, but that's probably because of some other reason that they're bullying, but it's a fact of that with the LGBT group and Mr Allen's support through the assemblies and education through SE classes, we've really made the school an accepting and really safe place for LGBT youth. I think that safe place is one of the things we've heard a lot of is making it safe and thanks for your contribution Cameron, it's really, really helpful. I want to come to the Scouts because I know, because David has talked about you a lot and the work that the Scouts Association has undertaken in order to tackle some of the real issues that young men are facing and maybe, you know, I'll just let you tell us, go. Okay, thanks very much indeed. So yes, in Scouts we do have a zero tolerance of bullying and I think, like you've said in the school, part of how we deal with that is to have an inclusive culture and create a safe place for all young people and that's partly through self-management that young people take responsibility for themselves and others and do create, through our strong value base, that would be really our first approach to tackling bullying and any behaviour that's inappropriate and we do train all our adults so adult training would be another strand and certainly if there's any serious bullying happening we would go through our safeguarding procedures but in Scouting we are, we do see ourselves as being very inclusive both to boys and girls and young men and young women because Scouting is now co-educational right through the organisation and certainly the one that's probably most evident is our LGBTI and our participation in pride parades and just making that much more acceptable in Scouting, right through Scouting so we have quite a lot of our senior volunteers who are now openly gay which maybe 10 years ago would have been, you know, maybe not acceptable so there's a lot of role models around in Scouting for people who are in that community and just helping young people to be accepting of one another and for it to be okay to be part of that community and being Scouts which I think is for many people maybe a challenge to them but I think we are working doing a lot in terms of all our areas of inclusion but certainly within the LGBTI I think we're making really good progress but I think it's mostly from our really strong value base and saying, you know, we're all Scouts and we take care of one another, we respect one another sort of self-respect, respect of others or some of our key values and that's, it's really through our strong value base that we tackle. When you put that into place and you've got that really clear leadership and girl guidance the same in the school does that give you what Cameron just spoke about was that it's not cool to be bullying anybody or to be creating an environment where people feel unsafe? I think so, I think it because it is, we really work with young people in sort of self-management so you know even for our younger young people in both in the guy movement to the Scout movement they're in sixes in Cub Scouts and then they're in patrols in Scouts where there's a leadership capacity for young people so they're taking responsibility for the ethos. We have anti-bullying and we would encourage codes of behaviour which would be the adults working with young people if there were challenges to say okay how are we going to work as a group so it's adults working alongside the young people it's not a top-down approach it's really helping young people take you know responsibility and leadership for themselves and the group they work in to self-manage that and progress that as they get older so I think it is it's not I think top-down just creates a barrier I think you've really got to be in there working with young people engaging them to and working with where they are to help them create that culture and that that culture of acceptance. Niamh, thanks very much and Niamh on the work that Stamp does and I know you very well and the work that you do but maybe you could explain to the committee and our guests around the table the type of work that you're doing because one of the things that strikes me is the work that you do on consent in schools is very important across all types of bullying about what you give permission for and what you don't but it's also the work that you do in supporting young people who have maybe had a bad experience and then the guidance and support that you give them and how to tackle that. Yeah so basically the stamp project came from the Lancer Rape Crisis Centre and our kind of leader is Hannah Brown. She's a sexual violence prevention worker so she's seen quite a lot of what was going on leading or of what the young people she was working with they were seeing was the gender stereotypes portrayed in the media were what were causing sexual violence later on in life so what we were or what we're kind of do is like we're supposed to tackle these kind of gender stereotypes and what the rape crisis does as a whole is it doesn't see or sexual violence is not we wouldn't make that wouldn't be equal to bullying but it's what leads up to that so you've got like sexual harassment you get sexual coercion you've got like just like the idea of like non-consent kind of like it will build up in that you can see in like prejudice bullying so we do quite a lot with consent like seeing when you're talking about like kind of teacher training we've actually done some of that like there were some teachers that were really interested like yeah if you want to better what we're doing for the children we're in charge of so we kind of like we were doing lots of teaching about like maybe like concerns with LGBTI and then consent and like PSE or RE or those kind of classes where you're talking about it and what we found was that was really kind of the issue when it came to kind of like what was going on because we did and we also did a survey and it was kind of a general survey kind of what's going on in your school what would you like to see changes in and a lot of what we've seen was it did depend on the teacher like if you were to come with him with like a problem with maybe sexual harassment or if they were to see something like there was one and I can't remember if it was going to avoid but it was basically someone had put their hand in their thigh and then they kicked up a fuss about it because they were like why should they have done that like that wasn't okay and then because they kicked up the fuss it was technically their fault they were upset whoever had done it to them and it was technically their fault and it's that idea that that shouldn't have been how it was done so we wanted to work with that and then just kind of like change that around because it can just really depend teacher to teacher you can kind of get like old-fashioned teachers and it's like oh can I get some like big strong boys certainly move these boxes and it's just like the little things like that and it's really quite undermining so it's like definitely like there are implications in teacher training and the sexual harassment that people can progress because if you do nip it in the bud like if you stop and you kind of go no you can't you can't do that like there may be more likely not to yeah they're not like kind of like going on to the like sexual violence like what you were saying about kind of like young girls like making themselves kind of like vulnerable through sex and we would maybe see it as a case of there is that kind of idea that they are most girls will feel pressured into doing it it's not as if they're doing it to make themselves vulnerable they're already vulnerable and are being forced into the situation so there is that idea of like why it's like that will go on track oh why did you why did you send him those photos like that's why you posted them and it's like well that is like really quite dangerous parallels well what were you wearing when you were raped like there is that kind of idea and it's like really important that teachers and people in like positions of power do realise that that is kind of what's going on that's what young people think that's going on and they might not just be in the capacity to anything about it so it's really good to get like a kind of base level of like teaching and like guidelines of what's supposed to be going on and what should be taught in terms of consent what age group are you working with Eve and we kind of do 16 to 25 it's like a youth thing so um you can you can like we've got like social media and stuff like that so you can like follow it and interact with us like that but you can't actually be part of the stamp till you're 16 just because there's quite obviously there's quite a lot of like sexual violence and consent so it's just kind of good base but we kind of we do that and then also the rape crisis and I think they might go into schools a wee bit earlier than 16 but then we don't really do much about that that's kind of another thing but we work with like yeah it's like youngest fifth and sixth year's then yeah fifth and sixth year's is when you can join and then there's a couple of us like I'm going at my third year of uni so like there's a couple of us just kind of spread about and what kind of group work would you do with these groups and personally about I've actually never gone in to the groups with it but it is kind of an idea of and when we were or we were part of one of the groups that when someone came in and then it was like we're kind of looking at like it was like to do with kind of like music videos is quite a way to look at it and it was just kind of like the idea of like kind of these gender studies actually to have like women like glossed over and like half naked and that was their kind of thing and it's like well no because they're being like dehumanised kind of like that like and there is the kind of idea of that like wait no can I yeah I've got a better idea so like we kind of did quite a lot on like slut shaming and victim shaming and like victim blaming as kind of a big thing on kind of sexual violence and things like that because it is the idea that like or like if you don't you're approved and if you do you're a slut like there is no there's no one win situation there and it kind of comes from one of the things we found out when we did our survey was the one class and all the boys had to spit on a cup and then at the end of it that cup was the girl that had had sex with numerous guys and it was just it was like awful it was like things like that and are really quite I've completely lost my train of thought I'll come back to me a bit it's okay it's okay Neva I'll just catch up Mary you wanted to to come in with some questions yeah thank you convener I'm particularly struck by almost the complete contrast in what Hannah and Susanna spoke about and the level of harassment and bullying that young girls get and the culture in the school that Derek spoke about and I wonder before I come on to ask Hannah and Susanna a question if Derek could give us some information practically about how you change that culture because culture doesn't change overnight and it's not just about changing the culture of the way teachers view what they should be doing in schools but it's about changing whole school culture and we've had a number of different people from education and here given us evidence well we've been doing this inquiry and they've all talked about the guidance and refreshing guidance and training about tackling bullying and training about tackling harassment and I have as the convener does have a bit of a being mob on it about guidance that is sitting a shelf and gets dusty and once a year it's taken down and you say yeah refreshed let's move on so how long did it take you to change that culture and how easy was it for you to get all of your teaching staff on board that this was the culture you wanted to embed in the school and they all had to get on board with it yeah that's a difficult one to reflect on actually although I must say that once you've got a very strong and well-established and reasonable and very simple set of values it makes a difference because I think the the school's mission statement before had appeared in the prospectus and it was half a page that nobody could remember what was meant to be about I don't think you can judge any success unless you know what you're trying to achieve so those three core values were really important and I must say in terms of staffing I was lucky in that in that intervening period we've had a staff turnover which has seen about three quarters of the staff being new to the school that's probably the case now actually almost exactly that so I was able to appoint people who I understood and even interview questions you know you would always have something in that would test their their ability to be empathic and be able to work in an inclusive way so that's important recruitment's important and the teacher training was mentioned there by by Neve I think it's definitely improving all the probationers have built in units within their teacher education as well on equality matters it's important but I think by modelling the behaviour also and again that symbolic aspect of getting involved in slightly edgy stuff if you like in particular I think the the decision we we took on to try and tackle teenage pregnancy in school it created an openness of culture if we could do that kind of thing you know by having a there was a contraceptive clinic was established within our premises it kind of changed the the kind of feel of the place and it made the young people step up if you like and almost feel an equal party something yeah the teachers are in charge however it's a collaborative culture that everyone's looking out for everybody else in some ways I suppose and just to try and re-emphasise that every opportunity that one can it's important to take every opportunity every assembly almost every assembly to just do something or another that will symbolise that or explain it I'm with you that policies are great you know we need them we need guidelines we need we need rules but if people are doing anything grudginally it'll never be done properly for a start and it's it's that this kind of atmosphere if you like and some it's difficult for me to actually just define how it is achieved precisely other than through a consistency of approach that's modelled across the school and in particular recruiting young people to reinforce it through groups like Cameron's group or through our body programme there's a bounce back group that the the sixth year run which is to promote resilience of more vulnerable kids that are referred to them by the guidance team who the guidance team feel that there'd be a more natural relationship can be established so I think that is you know tying up those kind of networks is really important and Cameron can I just come to you briefly because how quickly did the pupils in the school feel comfortable and take on board the change in the ethos because if we look at the figures that the the guiding associations have given us about the number of young people that feel harassed, bullied, intimidated, whatever as a pupil in a school the culture changes I'm quite sure there would be a number of pupils that would just think yeah yeah it's just another policy we'll just move on nothing will change how long did it take for the pupils to really become comfortable with the change in the culture and know that they would be confident if they went to a teacher that their problem would be dealt with well I feel like it was over my five years in the school it started off when I came in it was it wasn't accepted to be lgbt plus it wasn't a thing where people would openly talk about it but by my fourth or fifth year I felt that I could be completely open as an individual it was a fact of it's not a set amount of time you couldn't say that it started one day and ended the next it was more a gradual build up with it was it was set into place it was a policy that got made and it was a fact that Mr Allen did not want any form of discrimination in the school so it was a fact that it was a point it was probably the first assembly that was run by the lgbt club it was that that made people think well that isn't just another rule that we have to follow it's a rule that is going to be put into place and seriously acted on because I could feel completely fine now going to Mr Allen if I ever had a problem well in first year I would maybe question talking to a guidance teacher or a teacher but now that Mr Allen has put into place assemblies there's a club in place there's set rules because we have if any teacher hears homophobic language we really strongly promote the storm wall if you hear it call it out and it allows a homophobic incidents well in hbt bullying incidents to be dealt with and it isn't just a thing where you deal with it once and then that shows that you're making good policy it's dealt with every time and it's dealt with the same series in every time and while I'm saying every time like it happens not the time it very rarely happens but if it did happen and if it does happen it is dealt with seriously just like any other form of discrimination and I feel that the culture shift over time it's a fact of it wasn't it was a gradual build up to a good point and we're still building up we can build up to resilient even the minor cases of slight individuals who have some form of discrimination or prejudice because of an outside factor we're still going we're still trying to get to the best that we can possibly we can be continually improving our culture but the culture change I would say happened with the generalised acceptance and the acceptance of everyone made with a strong hand it wasn't a let's not bully anyone it was a let's not bully anyone this is why you shouldn't bully this is what happens if you bully this is what happened to you with the punishment if you bully and I feel like that's really made our culture a warm place for people to be in so the teachers almost led by example the teachers actually believe that the culture and ethos in the school and I take it there'll be a mutual respect between the teaching staff and all the pupils in the school yes I would agree with that strongly uh the pupil and teaching staff there is no uh the teaching staff are on some high tower that you can't talk to them they're down at your level and they would understand any problem that you came with them to and they would feel I I would just presume that they would feel completely comfortable going to Mr Allen as he would deal with any problem that anyone had if only we could package within your school and roll across across scotland can I come like Mary just before you move on do you want to come in with a quick supplementary and then I think Mr Allen wants to answer back and then we come back to you Mary um thank you convener and good morning a support network at the pupils of its school and the mentoring system how did you manage to engage pupils like that because from what examples that I have seen they are totally committed to the roles and enthusiastic about the roles um and also as many people know that Kirkcaldy had one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe how did you get the parents engaged because when I heard about that as the MSP you think here comes my mail bag what you're going to do I'm going to be and I have had not one complaint the whole time the whole um it was putting place in the school so how did you actually engage with the parents and get them on board for that as well because that's vitally important to have them feed into the system I think probably the key thing is to go through the young people themselves quite frankly because you know the best appearance and almost all the parents will listen to their listen to their kids too because the young people themselves in terms of the mentoring thing the whole mentoring programme we put in they crave for leadership opportunities they want to do to do good and it was also important to engage local agencies in the work the NHS for example there's Clude up and Dapol also were involved in building the training skills for the mentoring programme in terms of parents you're right David it was it was about communication it was about keeping it simple it was about explaining it fully being fully open from the start my first communication was about the statistic the statistical background explained what we intended to do invited parents into a special parent evening and you know fortunately got very little reaction unequally from our involvement in lgbt stuff I've had one piece of mail which was anonymous which was heavily critical names clearly from a person who found it very difficult and they had a bit of hate in their heart that was homophobic it's the only communication I've had about the connection with a visit from Sir Ian McKellen that we had from this part of the stonewall ambassador programme and that was the thing I was going to mention convener actually was the stonewall bystanders initiative that Cameron mentioned one of the things that works well with young people again in my experience and it's a long experience of 35 years in teaching it's given the chance to be involved in something that's kind of again kind of symbolic because all our young people I think everybody did in the end but what clearly wasn't compulsory but they've signed the no bystanders charter and so of all our teachers all in the same page kind of thing you know and we've got it up on the wall pretty prominently displayed within school in fact it's on a stair at the top of a stair so that people see it every now and again they become conscious of it I'll make sure it changes slightly in the way it's displayed just to keep people's attention on it by that kind of that kind of symbolic stuff does work with young people and I don't want to patronise young people but they do like to be involved in campaigns and things like that it matters to them wristbands you know that kind of thing it does in fact but like that myself just as that this is the five pride one camera you've got them as well David does that answer your question back to you Mary thank you I'll be as brief as I can thank you Hannah and Susanna I'm particularly struck by some of the statistics that are in the information that you've provided I would go as far as saying I'm actually quite horrified by some of the figures that you've provided for 55% of teachers to dismiss behaviour is just a bit of banter now clearly across Scotland across the UK so for teachers to dismiss bullying sexual harassment behaviour like this as a bit of banter there is clearly a very serious serious problem and I note from the the paper that you've provided you talk about compulsory sex and relationship education covering online abuse and given what we've just heard from Derek Cameron about the ethos in their school do you think trying to embed an ethos similar to that plus guidance would tackle the problem more efficiently yeah I think it is about education and building this culture up together because at the moment the stories we're hearing and the stats we've provided are kind of telling us that they're still in schools as a culture of boys will be boys and just a bit banter like you said and quite often the stories we hear are it's easy for teachers to call these other quite clearly identifiable problems when there's slurs or other language used teachers can quite easily call that out but often when it's a boy yelling at a girl shows your boobs or something like that teachers will just look the other way because they're just hormonal boys they'll learn but actually sometimes they don't learn and we do need this education to kind of come in to play about consent and yeah I absolutely agree with that I think we can't really we're expecting a lot of girls if we're asking them to be standing up and reporting this kind of thing when they're in a culture of teachers ignoring and dismissing and actually often perpetuating a harassment I've I personally sat in classrooms with a guidance teacher who sat and watched as a boy walked around the classroom and undid girls brass through their shirts and as well as I had a teacher who put everybody's third year picture up on the board and gave us comments on what the girls looked like and that was really normal and I just think schools need to be much clearer with their staff and clamp down on that because there are things that were there was horrific language from teachers that I reported that my friends reported and those teachers still teach my friends and I have a young person in my guides who told me that the teacher who once instructed a boy not to not to be too scared of hitting her because she's a bit of a crazy bitch and that he had come in on the first day of school and asked my 13 year old friend so let's see which one of the which of the girls have developed over the summer which is horrifying and he should not be allowed to teach but that has been reported again and again and again at my school and the girls have been dismissed and that's normal that was what I experienced the entire way through school and it's what other girls our survey clearly shows other girls are seeing that and the stat that upset me and myself is that 25 percent of girls 11 to 16 were afraid to put their hand up in class for fear of harassment that's in class in front of a teacher you know if girls are expecting abuse in front of the professionals who are supposed to be keeping them safe they can't learn in that environment and that's not fair and we shouldn't be expecting them to go to school and deal with that when you reported incidences what was the reaction from the teaching staff or the guidance teacher that you went to just oh yeah we'll look at that we've spoken to him is going to be monitored we had a senior member of staff come and sit in on some of our lessons for about a week was that it continued and yeah disability slurs as well in that classroom and just wasn't dealt with thank you Jeremy thank you and thanks all very much for coming along I suppose I've got a couple questions and maybe to start with you Hannah just picking up a bit what Mary has already said I mean again it seems to me this is a criminal things that are happening that you're talking about as well as self protection issues which clearly going hand in hand and I find it unbelievable that teachers of any level in the school wouldn't understand that because there's someone who's not teacher that that seems clear to me why do you think that is is it they do understand but they're turning a blind eye or the general is a lack of clarity in regard to what a guidance teacher a teacher in a average secondary school in Scotland understands I think that the culture is just so strong that they don't they don't they don't see it sometimes I think teachers just have accepted that that's just the baseline of how young men behave in school when it shouldn't be and I think often female teachers are intimidated as well and feel like they need to feel that senior management in schools are going to back them up and that there is key like points that like this is unacceptable and that is going to be for the whole school and that you will be backed up if you report this because I think you know stories of female teachers being filmed and that being put online them being harassed by teenage boys as well and schools need to be supporting teachers to deal with that and they need to feel that they can report that and it will be dealt with I think as well with the online kind of realm of it sometimes teachers will just think well that's not my problem it's not happening behind the school gates and they find it quite easy to kind of turn a blind eye to that because they feel that that's not within their realm to deal with it a lot of the time when clearly it's still affecting these people's and these issues still need to be brought forward and taken seriously. I suppose that leads on to my second question to you and is clearly as a parliament as a committee we set policy which is then followed out by local authorities and by head teachers what and I appreciate you putting your evidence different things what you think should happen but what do you think the big culture change needs to be is it the support from a head teacher is it a change of view from a senior management what what do you if you could have a magic wand what would be the one thing do you think would start to make a difference? I think if we started with education and starting that early as well about a lot of what you guys have discussed with respect for others and yourselves and and a lot of the time as well one of the big issues we face is that girls don't know what they've experienced sexual harassment they know it's made them feel uncomfortable but they don't really know why and because we've got this culture of just ignore it just let boys be boys they they find it really difficult to deal with whereas if we actually say to girls no you can go and speak to someone about that and that's not acceptable I think that would start to maybe also help girls report this more because we know it is really underreported and as well also if we could put a strong obligation on teachers to actually if they see a problem not turn away and actually have to deal with this and go somewhere and if peoples know that there is that in place as well so that they can say no you have to deal with this I know that there's this legislation or policy in place and even parents if they know that as well if they know there's a problem going on in schools they can say that we can hold you to account over this I totally agree with that because I think what you're doing in your school sounds absolutely wonderful but I don't think that should be your responsibility as a head teacher to come up with all that I think that needs to be national guidance for all schools needs to be the same because in school like we knew that if somebody called our friend a racial slur that that would be reported that would be written down that would be recorded and dealt with appropriately and reported to the right people and not the same with sexual harassment and its discrimination in the same way that racism and homophobia are our discrimination and it should be it should have similar guidelines I think and I think girls need to know that they will be taken seriously and that this is that's an incident and it gets dealt with this way and they need to see how it will be dealt with because it's the uncertainty of will this teacher believe me will this teacher make it worse will this teacher ignore me you know because it's luck of the draw what you're going to get when you report that sort of thing whether they'll even understand that it was harassment so teachers need to be given very very clear guidelines on what qualifies as harassment what I do with that now how is that recorded I think okay thank you I mean thank you very much for coming along and sharing that and thank you for what you're doing I say that as a msp but also as a father of two daughters we are young coming forward but we need these issues definitely articulated so much more clearly now can this turn to you for one question and one thing we've heard quite a lot about is online bullying you know when I was at school to some extent bullying occurred but you got away at half past three you got back to your home you had the weekends away and my niece who happens to live in Scandinavia so she's not she's gone was badly bullied a few years ago and it happened online so you know she put on her facebook how would you as a head teacher from your experience because we we online is almost it's in your own bedroom isn't it I mean it affects in your own house how do you deal with that or to you as we've heard I appreciate what we don't but from maybe your wide experience of talking to the head teachers is it something that schools say well that's happening outwith school period it's not our responsibility no that's certainly not my experience it's more the case that that is outwith school hours but it's still something we might be able to do something about and if we can't then we'll help you and encourage you to get the police involved if it's a continual harassment campaign one of the biggest problems for teachers is they don't understand snapchat and things like that they don't use it in particular snapchat I think is probably the worst of them isn't it it's the one that disappears after 30 seconds or so it's difficult to get an evidence trail the traditional texting that kind of thing that's more straightforward for us to handle I've seen us having conferences of parents to try and resolve difficulties between groups of young people who've had it often due to that kind of social relationship breakdown and fallout we don't often get the sexual harassment issues on the come to our attention certainly through online things but I'm sure it happens but it's not something that our pupils report very often to guidance teachers it's a difficult thing we need to just double up the emphasis on avoiding situations like that and encouraging young people to block those people who are likely to do this kind of thing to be smart about it how they use social media and there isn't there isn't quite enough evidence sorry emphasis on the the programme within the curriculum I think I think you're right it's a and it will change it changes all the time there'll be some new apple come out in the next few months there'll be another way another tool that might be used in the wrong way what we what we have done is use social media in a positive way in our school though in that for example a lgbt group in our school twitter feed in particular although I know twitter's very old fashioned for young people we try and use social media to try and blank out some of the some of the hate stuff that's going to be around there okay thank you thank you thank you pan I was hoping to come back to you anyway but I know that you wanted in so if you come in with the points that you want to make but the question maybe I had for you is we've heard from a girls organization and how they handle some of these things maybe get the comparing contrasts from a a boys organization yeah well scouting is quite educational right through so we deal we're working with boys and girls together so we I say we really build it into how we work and I think the point I was going to make was leadership I think is hugely important and I know when the scout association at a UK level took other equal opportunities policy I think that was mid to late 90s there was this is this is how scouting is now and actually we will if people do not agree with that then there's no place for them in scouting and I think you have to be brave enough to do that and you know we have a policy when we when leaders apply to when people apply to become members of movement and leaders um there's a paper trail and also they have an interview with the appointments committee and actually they can then check out their views on some of these aspects in terms of lgbti gender and scouting and if if depending on the answers they get we would say no to people so we do we do sort of control who we have as leaders because actually we strongly believe that scouting should be inclusive and if people don't agree with that then we wouldn't accept them as as leaders and I think I suppose maybe in terms of um we very much go I think particularly in the older age groups with the young people helped to set the agenda for the programme well all through they helped to set the agenda so we have resources on anti bullying we have resources to support people on cyber bullying but actually we would we wouldn't very much work with the young people where they are because they're the people who develop the programme that's of interest to them in conjunction with the leaders so we don't maybe have such a strong policy we are doing some research apparently at UK level and we're happy to share the results of that when when they come through but I think the main thing is we would work with young people and we train our leaders and we have a lot of resources so we would encourage people to develop a programme that deals with young people where they are and resource leaders to do that and deal with the issues and things that affect young people's lives yeah thanks very much Ann Neave I want to come back to you because um Susanna and Ahana had mentioned about what the point of reporting and one of the things that we've picked up as a key theme is about how data is collected how it's used and how it's then used to change behaviour one of the other things we've picked up on is is some young people just do not report now I know rape crisis have had a perennial problem from its whole being for all the years it's been in about under reporting and how to tackle under reporting and I know that in Lanarkshire last year there was maybe about three or four young people's cases and that shot up after stamp got involved in some of the local high schools so could maybe give us an insight into how maybe we could tackle under reporting and support young people in order to report and feel safe to report well obviously there's like quit there's lots of really a lot of reasons why people don't report these things especially um obviously like uh sexual violence is really a big thing for girls but obviously if it does it also does also happen to like guys and like non-conforming and things like that they feel that they don't update themselves don't have the platform they don't have this kind of behind them but they don't realise that like women don't really have much of it going on either like um one of the reasons people might not report is because they do feel like they are made to feel as if it was their fault like just the society and the culture that we're in right now it absolutely was not their fault but they are made to feel as if it was their fault through things like slut shame and victim blaming it's one of the main things and there's also maybe people don't really know how to do it like especially um my experience like um I went to a Catholic school and maybe obviously everything is very abstinence like everything is swept under the carpet it's not spoken about at all so if it does happen like the the fear was that you would be made to feel as if it was your fault like why on earth would you be doing that anyway and it's like well but that's not really the point the point is that it happened to you and people just don't feel as if they have the voice to do it so the kind of the idea of like save space and like respect in other people like you have like your body autonomy is yours like your body is yours like yours no one can take that away from you and it's the idea that you need to respect that and people need to respect you as well and they need to respect your voice and they need to respect that you feel uncomfortable about these things you need to they need to respect that like no you don't like that no you don't want to do that like there is a severe lack but that seems more of a society thing so like you can't just change society like as you were saying like overnight that's not how it happens but the idea of like save spaces and people being like taught on how to deal with it because obviously it's a very sensitive subject you can't just have anyone being like oh right okay this is what we're going to do you need like proper training and like obviously it's a very like it's a damaging psychological experience they've have experienced any kind of sexual harassment or any sexual abuse and also just in schools you're maybe feel as if you don't really have that kind of you don't have anything like that like it's special for myself we don't really have any like equalities groups or any LGBT groups like we and the people that I came from my school like my friends that we came from we were in stamp from the beginning and we get into it through the the GK Edinburgh ward and it was the guy that we were working with and it was like oh well I've heard about this woman that's doing this you guys fancy and it's like oh yeah I'll give it a wee shot like that's how we get into it was never it was never brought to us from like a kind of higher like higher power like it wasn't really brought in from like senior senior management which is what it's done in other schools like personally for ourselves we had to actually go out and find things to do it as opposed to the resources being there for us so like I think the idea of having those kind of resources there like you were saying like a bit guiding schools or not guiding schools like kind of guidance just being like kind of kipped away and like it's there but no one really talks about it no one really expects you to use it and that was the kind of feeling for us like I wouldn't even know who my guiding teacher was to be honest like I couldn't tell you and it is that way that there are things out there for you but you do need to go and find it's something that needs to be more available and you need to be like you need to be like this is okay for you to go and talk about this it's also okay if you don't want to talk about it but it is there for you like especially with rape crisis there's like I think there's maybe like 11 or 13 across Scotland but like especially for us like we've got one on Lanarkshire you've also got one in Glasgow you can drop in you can phone up like you can do these things and it's really important for you to know that those resources are there for you even if you do have to go find it yourself but what we would like to see is that you didn't have to go and find it the information was there readily given to you and you didn't feel embarrassed and hurt about it but like and feeling bad and like blame yourself for it but the reason you do blame yourself is this culture of like victim blaming and like such aiming and like oh what were you wearing like did you have too much to drink oh well like he's your boyfriend does it really matter does it really count and it's like yeah it does like it's all there for you and obviously LGBTI plus and he needs himself have their own like oppression of their own issues to deal with out with being like a sex straight woman and all that kind of stuff so there's also more needs to be put into that more needs to put into like male survivors of sexual violence there needs to be just kind of more about it it's just it's not talked about like there's a thing like especially for myself it just you didn't talk about it like especially with like because obviously like yeah so like when you're in kind of like a kind of catholic skill setting like obviously the idea is like no sex before marriage you abstain from it and then you don't do any of these things but obviously you do like you do go out and let you go meet people and let you kiss people at parties and you do all this so like the idea was that it was just ignored like you weren't supposed to be doing it so why should we give you anything for it but in the idea should be recognised that people are going out people are maybe going out and having like a drink at the weekends they've got boy friends you've got girl friends you've got whatever like that information needs to be then it shouldn't just be the idea that no it doesn't happen because we say it doesn't happen like it just needs to be kind of do you think nif that for some young people that that you came through school with it was easier to go and report out with the school absolutely i've been within the school i've been reported within my school i would have always i would have gone out and found something on my own than reporting my school since stamps been involved you think that's changed well i got involved in stamp when i was in sixth year so i didn't really i haven't been in the schools yet for quite some time but my brother is in he's still in school and he's maybe not kind of in ties but him and a couple of his pals and a couple of um people there above him were quite interested in making like an equality group so they could talk about like feminism they could talk about lgbt they could talk about like sexual violence and just like like an equalities committee like kind of what you would want to do and just like different issues they could be tackled and then they were told that if you get however many signatures we'll sort this up for you and it never really happened but what's really quite for some odd reason i get added into the facebook group for it so i get like the notifications for they will still like they kind of work away they don't have an official thing but they'll maybe post things like oh did you hear like like how awful is this like why why do we still not have this group for this um so there's like it but feel it looks as if not much has happened but there is kind of there's like a want for it there is a want for it there's also a need for it but like young people do want this like um one of the things we found in our survey was that people were like one of the questions was maybe um have you seen if like have you ever like seen or heard or experienced like sexism or sexual harassment in your school and maybe like well um and maybe not sure because i haven't seen it haven't heard it but i'm not denying that it's not going on like there is like there's a certain like there's a knowledge there's a knowing that stuff is going on about it and people do want to change it but obviously you're like a fourth year student like there is only so much you can do without the help of another teacher or without the help of like some sort of management position like within the school so it should be down to it should be the teacher realising that this is actually what their students want to do like this is what they're interested in this is what's affecting them right now we should put more effort into this as opposed to them like obviously it's great seeing their facebook goal but like that's all it is it's just like it's maybe like 20 30 of them doing this i suppose it could be like a school wide thing and it's not really there like see when you're talking about um all the stuff you've done like that seems completely alien to me like it sounds amazing it sounds brilliant but that's like i would never imagine that in a school setting like at all gill gill did you want to come in the convener thanks very much um i just i wanted to ask um first of all i mean obviously well maybe not obviously but when i was at school we didn't have all the social media and all that sort of stuff and all this picture and video sharing is you know really ramped up since you know we're sort of bullying that my generation phased at school and it's just awful hearing some of these stories it really is um in your experience of um when you gathered all your evidence is there any kind of gaping gaps that you can see between local authorities in scotland in particular or is it does it totally school dependent you can't break down our evidence because it's gathered from across the UK so we don't know the different sectors okay and i was i was reading um your evidence and certainly to go back to my experience of skill one of the the biggest um the worst times for me as a teenage girl going through puberty was pe and sport and um i don't know maybe dirick as well or carmen you might want to come in on that too i mean there've been various suggestions and and the evidence um from the the member from glasgo about the kailey dancing and instead of telling the boy stop me in the comments how about you just wear leggings and a long sleeve t-shirt i just i find it unbelievable i really do find it unbelievable um i mean obviously it's true but you know unbelievable and that kind of i really don't want to believe it sort of sense um but how do you get over that sort of i mean especially swimming lessons are particularly difficult in teenage years would you have separate lessons for males and females i mean obviously with your ethos it's probably a lot easier to do but in a lot of skills it's you know like you say that ethos is still very much prevalent how would you suggest tackling that sort of harassment um i think it's something we would look to look a lot more into because we have heard different um stories from people from girls who have had um co-ed classes and girls only classes but certainly um as a girl only girl led organisation it is something that we really value having a girl only space i mean um and our own units anyway know that girls feel a lot more confident when they don't maybe need to think about the pressures of boys being there um so from that point of view it's something we'd like to look at more yeah certainly we do a bit of both as well we've got some co-educational and some single sex groups for PE we also encourage or you know at least permit or whatever in terms of the the the kit for PE it's quite important that you know a modest kit is perfectly acceptable shell suit or whatever for if there are any girls um to wear um it's not an area i've got a great deal of you know knowledge of i don't know if Cameron would have any comments about about PE lessons come it's a source of difficulty for young people well in my experience of PE i took it as a subject so it was a lot of even taking it as a subject is a very split between male and female while there was more male so i was only predominantly an all male PE classes during my core PE there was quite split classes for some of the time personally in our school i didn't really see any form of sexual harassment i'm not saying it didn't happen but it seemed it wasn't a it wasn't a thing it wasn't people i'm losing the i'm losing the word but it wasn't people mocking other people or staring or making comments about if a girl's wearing shorts about a little bit too short it was a fact that everyone was comfortable wearing what they were wearing and nobody was looking at anyone or making comments it was people were there to do a sport it wasn't a fact of it was there for i couldn't see any sexual harassment in my personal experience just we are out almost out of time for this panel this morning we do have a second panel but i've got one quick question that's on the the girl guided survey and and hopefully maybe include it in the the scout surveys you're going forward is the impact on health outcomes for young people whether it's mental health or physical health and the impact that boolean would have on that or be the source of the the health issues i don't know Hannah or Susanna if in your work that you've done and i know you've done some work you're going out a few years ago on mental health and whether that's something that you would maybe take forward now yeah we think there's definitely a clear link between the bullying and the harassment the girls experience at school and mental health issues and it's something i think it was last year's survey focused a lot on as well and we've also brought out other resources to help build resilience to that as well we've got this new resource called think resilient which is a peer education scheme so we've got a peer education scheme and we've got various like packs that they can take out and do with units of girls from their tailored to different age groups so like the rainbows which are five to seven right they're up to like single sections for guys isn't it that it goes up to 10 to 14 so we've got one think resilient which is about mental health and yeah it's really good so like from early ages it's it's appropriate it's tailored to talking about like friendships and bouncing back from when things are difficult and like the effects it has on girls like we see in our stats that we've provided that the girls as you said don't feel comfortable speaking in class and that's also not just reporting these instances but also just contributing in classes and they maybe won't take certain subjects because they know perpetrators are going to be in those subjects more so it is having an effect on their overall education as well as their mental health as well yeah and so would you say because we focused a lot of our attention on education would you say your experiences that given the consequences of prejudice-based bullying and bullying in the class and the impact that can then have on on an individual's health that it would be a public health issue rather than just an education issue yeah because it stops it stops girls doing what they want to do yeah and especially in regards to PE like feeling uncomfortable I didn't think I was a sporty person in school because I hated PE so much and part of that was being in co-ed classes where I was afraid to be there because I was watching girls get assaulted and catcalled and horrible things happening and then when I was like oh why do I suddenly enjoy PE more now that I'm in a girls only class and it shouldn't be like that girls should be able to enjoy sport and enjoy PE whether there's boys there or not because there shouldn't be a culture of you know I would hope that would be like your school like what you were saying with even the consequences like we've said when you do report it a lot of the time girls like get the pressure put on them why have you said something that was just meant to be a joke and also even in a lot of the stories we've heard is that the schools try and protect the actual perpetrator who's been doing it because he's just young or whoever it is it's just young they don't know what they're saying they've not been educated but actually a lot of the times they have been educated everybody knows that it's not acceptable what they've done but it's protecting their future whereas the consequences obviously with mental health and other things affect girls for the rest of their lives as well into wider society too that's a good point we are going to have to finish there we could oh David go for it then you're making a face out of me you obviously see my face there I hope you can come here once again in the table today we have two of the largest youth organisations in Scotland I think the skill membership now is over 50 000 why is it because we've been talking about education in the bullying in schools that that culture has not been created within the organisations we have and maybe you could expand on is it the engagement to young people or is it the training that we give because these organizations are run by volunteers in the support network maybe you could both maybe expand a bit on how that has been so successful um I think it was just like say as you were saying like a lot of ours as peer led and like skates um it starts from the bottom we kind of take responsibility for setting our own agendas and our own leadership in I think as well and girl guiding a lot of stuff we do is based on giving girls confidence to do that as well which schools maybe they don't feel they have that support today at school I think I would agree I think it's and we are over 100 years old so we've been using the same methodology right throughout and and basically building up self-confidence and self-esteem in our members but I think like the school it's not it's not a one aspect approach I think you know it's about the programme we have it's about the values we have it's about the leadership and the training and it's all these things are a mesh and that's what creates the the the positive environment we hope for for all our our scouts and guides um and I think that's possible in other settings but I think it's not there's not one answer to it but it's about this mix but basically I think working valuing our young people and helping them to take responsibility for their environments um and giving them responsibility I think for us in scouting would certainly be key I think there's clear parallels between the work that both your organisations do and the work Derek that you do in your school so obviously they can transfer over and in that good practice to be shared I really do need to finish for this morning because we do have a second panel and I want my members to have a quick comfort break in order to prepare for the next panel so I'm going to thank you all and if you go away and you think I should have said this or I should have told them that please get in touch with the clerks we are currently compiling the report hopefully to be released in a few weeks time we have the cabinet secretary with us next week and we have a faith panel with us this morning so that should really round off very nicely all of our evidence but thank you so much for all of your contributions today and in the past and going forward and I'm going to suspend committee now for five minutes for a quick comfort break and allow us to have another panel put in place thank you so much good morning and welcome back to the equalities and human rights committee and we will continue on with our agenda item 2 this morning which is a continuation of our inquiry on school bullying and prejudice-based bullying in schools can I welcome to a committee this morning a new panel we are missing a panel member but we hopefully will will be tracking that person down and they'll join us eminently but to get us kicked off this morning can I make some introductions and welcome to a committee this morning Anthony Horan who is the director of the Catholic parliamentary office of the catholic bishops conference in scotland welcome Anthony Dr Reverend Dr Richard Fraser who's a convener of the church and society council of the church of scotland welcome Samina Dean who is a youth worker with Scotland against criminalising communities welcome Samina Brittany Rittel who is a youth worker and representative for the scotland council of jewish communities and charlie lynch who is the secretary of the secular try and say that with the secretary of the scotland secular society thank you very much for coming along this morning we we're hoping that imam will be joining us quite soon but we'll we'll continue on because we are very very tight for time and we want to hear from you this morning we've got some written evidence from you all and thank you so much for that always helps us to inform our deliberations and the questions that we want to ask but i think what i'll do to kick off with is to give each one of you a couple of minutes to explain who you are what you do and where you think it's relevant to the work that you do to the inquiry that we're undertaking anthony i wonder who just start with you because you're right facing me so yeah as the convener has said thank you convener i'm anthony horan director of the catholic parliamentary office of the catholic bishops conference of scotland and first of all just like to say that the bishops conference of scotland is pleased to participate in this with this committee in this inquiry and to contribute to the discussions around tackling prejudice-based bullying in schools and indeed beyond now my job as a director of the catholic parliamentary office is essentially to engage with with parliament and with government so we felt that that would be appropriate for me to attend here today given that that's my role i also have an overview of the catholic church and the various agencies of the church which includes the scottish catholic education service and you've already heard from barbara cooper the director of the scottish catholic education service at a evidence session in january so i have that sort of overview of the church and all the various agencies and i'm responsible for engaging with parliament so it was felt that it would be fitting for me to attend today and as i say we're very keen to assist the committee in whatever way we can and to of course try to eradicate and to to tackle bullying in all its forms okay thanks very much riven Fraser yes i'm Richard Fraser i'm a parish minister of the church of scotland just up the road at Greyfriars Kirk and i'm also convener of the church society council of the church of scotland we're very glad to be part of this i think that one of the commitments that we want to make as a church is that we're very committed to human flourishing and to enabling young people to reach their best and i think one of the things i would say personally is that you know any young person that comes into contact with the church i would hate to think that we would find a way of making them feel diminished or in any way intimidated by that experience and part of our role as church and society council is to help the church in its relationship with schools and its relationship with education to find ways in which we can be in the vanguard of promoting human flourishing enabling people to reach their best and not feel that in any sense their encounter with a faith community and in our case the church of scotland should in any way make them feel worse about themselves i think one of the things one of the observations i would make just at this stage is that having read some of the evidence that's come in from other groups it's quite clear that there's a common thread about an issue about young people being singled out because they fit into a category and that category might be a faith community or it might be a non-faith community and feeling in some way that they're put on the spot because of that and i think that's a that's an issue that's a common thread that runs through a lot of the submissions that i find it really an intriguing one there and i suppose one of the areas that i think we're interested in doing is being in the vanguard of trying to promote tolerance pluralism respectful dialogue and finding ways in which we can reshape the contribution that the church makes to that throughout scotland thank you very much semina hi i'm semina deen and i'm here due to a written submission by scotland against criminalising communities who have endorsed and supported my survey on islamophobia in edinburgh schools which is due to my own children experiencing islamophobia i wanted to know how widespread this was so i spoke with a hundred muslim children who go to edinburgh schools and i wanted their experiences on islamophobia thank you semina britney i'm britney urtell and i am the youth worker for the jewish community of scotland i predominantly working glasgo because that's where the largest concentration of jews are i have done some work in edinburgh as well a lot of what i do is going into schools and running jewish assemblies or lunch clubs sometimes these are also attended by non- jewish students so it is a chance to act as an ambassador for judaism as well i also work outside of the schools so i work with youth movements largely supporting ones that already exist there's a large number of jewish youth movements in the uk and a few of them make it up to scotland as well so i do work with the youth in and out of school okay thank you okay thank you convener um my name is charlie lynch i'm secretary of the scottish secular society um the other members of the panel may i imagine will know that secularism is rather old but our society is rather new um i would like to thank the convener and your colleagues for being willing to listen to the voices and evidence of those of nonfaith as well as those from a faith background and i look forward to contributing to discussions thank you very much i'm going to go go to some opening questions and i know jeremy you were uh wanted to come in with some questions you were listening there so well good morning and thank you all very much for coming along i mean i think it's been helpful to have some evidence from both the church of scotland and former catholic church and sadly also from the uh the submission um in regard to kind of faith bullying because we've talked a lot in the last number of weeks um about different categories and i think um we've heard that people who feel like they're in a minority whatever that minority is within a school often feel that they are victimised for that belief and we've seen you've given examples of people from different faith communities who feel that they have been bullied because of either a belief or a faith or an understanding and i support the question which i asked the previous group would be what do you think can be done by scotland's government to help the faith communities feel that they have as much protection as gender and sexuality and all the other protected areas because perhaps it's the one that's sometimes forgotten about in regard to the five i mean i don't know whether you want to go along the line or who wants to go first but it's a general question thanks jeremy yeah i i think the problem that we have and it was alluded to at the first session is there's a there's this culture of it's almost like uh there's this culture of disquiet this fear culture of fear of being open about in this in this case you're being open about your faith and of course there's other protected characteristics and other characteristics that people have that they might feel uncomfortable about speaking openly about and and of course i know the committee's taking evidence on that but in this case where i think there's a lot of people feel just very very fearful about just being even being open about their faith it's not that they're trying to impose their views on anyone just actually speaking openly about it and some of the evidence that i've got from from some of the young people in in schools in terms of anti-catholic bullying it's quite it's quite disappointing to see that they can't even just simply admit that that sort of be open that they have a catholic faith and they hold certain values so i just think there's a there's a real culture of fear and i think that it's exacerbated and again this was mentioned in the first session exacerbated by existence of social media which has become a platform for people to to put forward hateful views and to to to discriminate and so on and so forth and and that's that's something that i think we need to deal with i need to really really need to look at that culture that is existing because of the existence of social media but what it's further exacerbated by and i think that this is really important is the behaviour of adults on social media if adults can't behave and i'm talking about professional people as well and you see some of the things that some people say to one another on social media if adults can't behave how on earth can we we expect our children to behave so i just think that there's a just this deep culture of fear and i think it's very very difficult to for anyone to to come up with the the the right answer as to how to deal with it what certainly we in the church have been doing we do it at a national level and a local level is that we work with other church groups other christian denominations other faith groups in order to try and build up a culture of respect and tolerance among faith communities and and even beyond that i know that in my own parish that we have a youth group which reaches out to all children across the community we recently had a welcoming day for refugees who'd recently come into the community from Syria these kind of things are very very important at that local level and i think we need to keep encouraging them and i think also we shouldn't underestimate the amount of that kind of thing that's going on just now in our society in our communities and it's useful to bear that in mind but from a national perspective it's i don't think there's any easy answer but i think that what we need to try and do is we need to tackle this culture of fear which exists as i say because people can't even just simply be open about who they are and what values they stand for and that's a real concern especially for young people. Yep Riverfruiser. Okay thank you yes thank you for that question as well Jeremy. There's something i think that's really important that was echoed in the last consultation earlier this morning that is an issue about what might be described as religious and secular literacy amongst those who are educating our young people. If a teacher will say as we heard this morning well that's just boys will be boys that's you just got to put up with that and put on a pair of tights rather than just wearing shorts in the gym that's a kind of outrage isn't it i mean it's a kind of extraordinary lack of awareness and sensitivity in the part of those that we charge with the responsibility of nurturing our young people and i think in the same way sometimes what we've seen in the evidence is that young people whether they're secular whether they're from any kind of faith community can sometimes feel that they're singled out can sometimes feel that they're asked to be an expert in a in a subject that they really know very little about or or just because they happen to be born into that community doesn't mean to say that they're necessarily literate about the the aspects of that things about that faith community or that or that secular community so i think i think the issue of religious literacy is really important but one of the other religious and secular literacy i think people need to be taught that it is a legitimate thing in a pluralist multicultural society to learn about how the paths that people follow the different paths that people follow there's nothing wrong with that and i think that we need to learn that in the church in the churches and in faith communities that you know that we have to live to learn to live alongside each other so i think one of the other aspects that that i think is also important for us to do is to is to recognise our histories recognize the the way in which the journey that we've taken as a society from a from one place what scotland was like in say the 16th century at the time of the reformation to what it's like today as a multicultural multi-faith multicultural pluralist society and that means that within faith communities we need and especially within the church of scotland that has sometimes exercised quite a lot of power quite a lot of influence society we have to learn a different way of being present which is less about exercising power and control and more about exercising presence and support and that's a lesson i think we in the church of scotland need to learn but i think it's a lesson that will be of benefit to the whole of society if we can if we can learn that nodding away samina yes i mean i agree with the fact that we need more support definitely and i think that's something that young children they don't have that outlet they don't have that support system in place in schools unfortunately but to to your question i would like to say in terms of muslim children it's very difficult for us to hide our physical characteristics whether it be wearing the headscarf whether it be having a beard or even the start of growing a beard or even now that we're in ramadan a lot of the muslim children will be fasting so they won't be in the lunch hall or in the canteen or they'll be questioned oh why you're not having lunch today so it like there's these visible characteristics as a muslim that you're going to know that that okay this person is a muslim so you can't even hide your faith because it's visible and i think due to my study where i spoke with 100 muslim children one thing that struck me was the fact that 67 of them wouldn't even tell a teacher that they were experiencing islamophobic comments or islamophobic physical abuse and the reasons for that was because they felt that the teachers didn't have a proper understanding about their religion about islam and because the teachers didn't have that understanding they couldn't really understand how that child felt how that muslim child felt and how and because they couldn't understand the seriousness the fact that it was an attack on their identity and because that teacher couldn't understand that that they wouldn't help or they wouldn't do anything about it and the sad thing about my report is that which was worrying is that the children who did actually report to school teachers you know a lot of the schools did not even respond they didn't take any action and the schools that did the children themselves were not even happy with the outcome so they were left there felt like injustice had been done they've been attacked due to their faith due to their identity and it made them feel really really scared actually 21 of the 100 children that i spoke with said that they feared and i used the specific word feared they feared going to school on the basis that they were just a muslim and the reasons that they gave and i quote is because they were scared of abuse and getting attacked because what happens on the news what people might think of me because i wear hijab and i was scared if i might get attacked so this is this was coming this was quite prominent in how the muslim children were feeling and just to give you an idea over 55% of them have encountered verbal Islamophobia verbal Islamophobia and over 40% of them physical Islamophobia where they're having their hijabs ripped off they're being punched they've been kicked they've been called a terrorist they've been called you know suicide squad they've been asked if they have bombs and guns under their hijab and this is like it's and i don't think this is even though my study was based in Edinburgh i actually think that this is happening throughout of scotland actually throughout of uk looking at other studies yeah yeah thanks i mean it almost tells the truth about all of the evidence that we've heard about and the numbers are pretty similar you know 59% 65% 67% have young people fear reporting when they do report the fear it'll get worse when it is reported they don't get the response that should be the right response and when you heard from the kirkodi high school this one and the way they respond that's a gold standard and we would hope that we promote that but it is pretty clear that the systems so whatever the discrimination is across any protected it seems that the systems is where we're being being let down i don't know if britney you would give us some insight into from your perspective and you'll know the scottish government made a statement on Tuesday on hate crime you'll all know that but there was a specific recommendation in that about accepting the holocaust trust definition of anti-semitism and whether you have some truth to say to that i'm not sure if i have anything specifically to say about that announcement although i do think it is very good that there is a definition of anti-semitism i think that probably will help combat anti-semitism a lot of times it's hard to define exactly what is bad enough to be dealt with so having a very concrete clear definition will go a long way it's that literacy issue that that reverend phraser spoke about actually wrote down that that phrasing because i really liked that idea of religious and secular literacy that is something in the reports i submitted that was kind of a common theme in suggestions that in a lot of communities there will be people that have never met a jewish person in their life so how are they supposed to get a clear understanding of what Judaism is and if you're a religious education teacher how are you supposed to teach about that when you've probably never actually met someone who represents that faith so having the chance to educate teachers is one thing but going at it from the other end is also important we've acknowledged a lot of students won't feel comfortable speaking to the adults that can help them they don't think that a report will do anything um so in the last session an important word that came up was bystander when i talked with some p7 students yesterday none of them knew what a bystander was in working on creating a holocaust education curriculum for s5 and s6 students my colleague said he didn't think that s5 and s6 students would know what a bystander was i think if we can start to change that culture that will be important too if students don't feel comfortable going to adults the other approach we can take is to empower them to have a positive impact i think if we approach it from both ends that'll have the most effect but bystander training is probably one of the most important things you can do that way the people who are being targeted know how to handle it and their friends know how to handle it it creates a support system from their peers jolly your perspective can you repeat the question please convener yeah i mean i suppose to look at i mean we're getting clear evidence across the board that groups whether it's sexuality whether it's religion whether it's gender the five ones minority groups feel that they are being excluded and don't feel that we're able to report that to appropriate things and my question really was i i think there is no magic wand but what is one step towards helping that if i make change okay well as you will have read the just of our submission is that we're obviously very happy with religious observance as it's currently managed in non-denominational schools we have started to compile evidence from peoples and from their parents who are atheists who have had all kinds of problems with religious observance obviously since this has been established there is a right to opt out we are very concerned that frequently people aren't told about this properly schools try to discourage it in their governance because it is difficult for all kinds of reasons but this creates a situation of difficulty of conscience for those who are atheists and even those i would say those those are from those from minority faiths what could be done would be to make a better system in some way to we have in the past advocated opting in rather than opting out perhaps there could be changes to the culture of schools to make them more inclusive of minority faiths and people of no faith you think we're also aware that there is a lot of variance across the country some of the more alarming evidence in our submission i should add came from the western isles so there are clearly clear variations and problems answer question Jeremy thank you meri convener um I could we would like to um can I follow on the the question that Jeremy posed with um with charlie um because I'm quite struck that um guidelines are widely ignored when when pupils want to remove themselves from religious education um and pupils feel intimidated um and organisations that um on the face of it are there to encourage inclusion and encourage interaction actually have a religious base um how and I appreciate you say that that we have to stick more closely to what what we're being told but how can we actually ensure that the pupils feel confident and parents feel confident by going to school and saying I don't want my child taking part in any forum of religious education I see that's a very interesting important series of points most obviously meri what's coming up here is that children don't themselves have the right to opt out of things and I'm aware the humanist society is pursuing legal action at the moment about this about what age that takes place at I'm aware that educational psychologists have tests and means for this for um ascertaining of what point children can make these kinds of decisions and we would like that to be investigated in various ways so people don't feel that they are made to take part in things which they cannot in all conscience agree with as for parenting and for parents we would like schools to display clearly in their handbooks that opting out is an option we would like them to have proper and meaningful alternative arrangements for children who are opted out uh so that they are not made to feel other do they are not made to feel different uh they're not made to sit alone in a corridor for example this is the kind of thing that we hear about um and genuinely this whole uh series of problems is approached in a more compassionate and understanding fashion and I suppose you have to find a balance between um the rise and for example islamophobia the the very little understanding there is about Judaism um so you have to find a way to balance is religious education the only way that we can inform and educate pupils in schools about other religions so that we can break down the barriers and people have more understanding and is that the argument that you're given or do you think there's another way we can inform people about different faiths to break down those levels of discrimination well firstly what we have almost entirely talked about here is religious observance the Scottish secular society is very pro religious and moral education and we've actually think there should be more we would like there to be more of a philosophical element to it but in general we're very for it uh religious observance which is kind of uh activities such as uh the saying of prayers in a communal setting the singing of hymns and so on that is a different set of problems so where it's based on one particular faith yeah yeah okay okay yeah um i don't know um Samina um i don't know if you're able to comment um do you think there has been a significant increase in the um the intimidation and the bullying and harassment that the young um muslim children are experiencing and given the culture that we currently exist in have you seen a dramatic rise in it oh absolutely i mean even i could say like back in 2013 um of you know the general theme of being called a terrorist and a bomber was reported by 1400 children to childline that was back in 2013 we're now in 2017 and we're still facing the same thing but even more um and you know the fact that it's come to the level where you know young muslim girls are having the hijab pulled off of their head in school you know and children i'm a youth worker in in profession and when i was speaking to these 100 children there was two children in primary school who if they came to my youth group i would be feeling in the well-being forms right now because of the islamic phobic abuse that they're facing right now and they're suffering in silence and it came to a point where i actually um having conversations with the community inspector asked for a link officer to go into one particular school just because of the well-being of this primary school boy so the level i mean you can the the testimonies actually show that some levels of these are criminal offences of what's been happening to these most of them children and is there any proper recording done when when incidents are reported um when i asked again the children's testimonies um the only one the only recorded test the recorded thing as a racial incident happened and that was because of what happened to my primary my my daughter who's in primary school and it was because when i spoke to the head teacher i told him i was conducting the survey and the responses that i've had from other schools has been absolutely absolutely like minimal and i'm really annoyed that it's not been taken seriously then he did turn around and say i'm actually going to record us as a racist incident but what's been happening is that the teachers who have taken action for example um the Muslim child um would get a sorry now for me yes the teacher has acted upon um by going to to speak to the that child the victim has received a sorry but the Muslim child themselves felt there was an injustice done they felt sorry was not enough because of the abuse that they had to face it was like sorry is not enough and they left even though the teacher had taken an action and that child got sorry it just wasn't enough that and so there's a sense that the children came back feeling like they had no closure they had no support they felt like it wasn't taken seriously and what i found throughout this whole report is that and which is which i think is going to happen more and more is that the 33 percent who said they were going to tell teachers is going to become zero percent because the 67 percent who said they wouldn't and they give me valid reasons why they wouldn't because they have done it before and nothing got done it's going to you know it's going to be filtered down to the 33 percent that said yeah we are going to do it because they know nothing's going to be done and i think teachers in schools and you know authorities they need to recognise a racist islamophobic incident a comment until that recognition doesn't happen i don't think islamophobic i think it's going to get worse okay um i'm just one more um brief question um ansony i wonder i'm not sure were you present for the earlier session um was for the second half of it yes because and thank you for the the submission um that we've received this morning and i know that you're aware that barba cooper has been here before and has given us evidence and while i appreciate that this session is more based on faith based um bullying um i can't let the opportunity go by without um doing almost a kind of compare and contrast um with the evidence that you gave us um which says that catholic schools adhere to the same anti bullying policies as their non-denominational counterparts as catholics we believe in the inherent dignity of each and every human being and catholic schools are committed to ensuring the all protected characteristics under the equality act share policies aimed at tackling bullying and the evidence that we heard this morning was that catholic schools sweep everything under the carpet and there are no equality groups no lgbti groups and and because they are faith based school schools and the faith does not believe in sex before marriage and does not support gay marriage we just don't talk about it and i'd be interested in your your comments on that yeah sorry yeah um well i heard that and i can't comment on individual cases but i did hear that comment and and some of the other things that were said in relation to catholic schools specifically and we do have a job to do in terms of taking on taking on board those concerns that the young people have and bad experiences that they might have had in catholic schools so undoubtedly we need to take that on board and i think barbra at the session on the 26th of january did say that she would do that and that she would take that take that forward and what we've done in fact since then is in on the 18th of may we had a training session for secondary school teachers and around 50 of them attended and there'll be another session at the end of the year for head teachers and really what we were looking at was all of the protected characteristics under the equality act 2010 to try and make sure that they're aware of their responsibility under the equality act generally and also in relation to those protected characteristics specifically and that's not leaving any of the protected characteristics out it's covering all of them and also we covered the public sector equality duty as well which is important we also looked at respect me in the very useful resource that that is online to help equip and all of this was really done just to help equip teachers to to make sure they were aware of any incidences of bullying and you know that it's not just one or two characteristics across a whole range of characteristics and to try and put processes in place in order to deal with that now this is an ongoing process of course we already have anti-bullying procedures in place and we feel we'd like to think that they were fairly robust but of course if we continue to get instances where young people are telling us that they've had a bad experience then of course we need to continue to continue to review that and I think Mary you had touched on a very important point earlier which I completely agree with is about recording and monitoring that is something that we do need to get better at I think because if we're going to improve the the school experience of our young people whatever the protected characteristic they come under we need to know where the issues are and because if we record and monitor appropriately across the board then we will we will know where the issues are and we will know how then better inform us in terms of how we go forward and tackle that and clearly the information we got this morning about Kirkcaldy High School and the ethos and the culture that they have developed in that school it is clearly a model that we would love to see rolled out across all of Scotland and they are welcoming and inclusive of everyone regardless of their beliefs and is that something that you think that the catholic to catholic schools would be able to develop a similar model to that well it certainly is as Reverend Fraser had stated at the outset similar to what he said we we in the catholic community believe in inherent dignity of every human being every human being is made in the image and likeness of God so they have inherent worth and value and there is no exceptions to that and they have to be abundantly clear about that every child should feel included and there should be no feelings of exclusion or feeling left out or whatever and in terms of the the Kirkcaldy example I think there's always things that we can learn from so if there's a way that we can improve the the school experience of young people who might be feeling left out discriminated against or whatever then I think we should always give consideration to good examples out there that we can that might help us to improve our practice in future yeah because certainly evidence we've had at previous sessions from young people that have attended catholic schools that there is a bit of work to be done in relation to sexual identity and sexual harassment and discrimination and I'm pleased to hear that you're going to be doing a bit of work so we look forward to you taking that forward yeah good can you Anthony can I just pick up on that point as well we've had some evidence from some young people who hold St Joseph's in Dumfriesup as a really good example of a school I don't know whether you know the details of that that school in particular but especially round about maybe sexual harassment sexual assault and orientation for young people and how they have handled that and we've only had some anecdotal evidence so we've not had a chance to go and visit the school or whatever but we I just wondered whether you had any more detail on that and and how that was taken forward and whether it was a leadership thing with the school or a leadership thing with the whole structure I'm afraid that convener I can't elaborate on that unfortunately that's a bit unfair no no it's all right sorry but I think one of the things just going back to to the question that Mary had raised as well I think I think there's an also a job to be done in terms of making sure people understand the catholic faith and catholic values and I think that's something that many most of the panel have spoken to in terms of their faith and I think we do need to make sure that people do understand what the catholic faith is and what it stands for and of course but that doesn't that would compromise we would never want that to compromise the safety and wellbeing of all of our children but I think it's an important point to remember how do you cope with where those tensions in between where your faith sits and maybe where where society is now how do you cope with those tensions because that must be really difficult and we've dealt a wee bit with intersectionality and how that affects young people growing up because you're not just a part of one group or one characteristic you generally got a number of them how how would you take forward you know policy or procedure or learning that supports the young person that sits in the middle of that intersectionality and the tension is maybe with the faith and with where they are as a person and individual well first and foremost as I said before we believe in the inherent dignity of each and every human person who's made in the image and likeness of god and that is something that no catholic person or christian should should forget I think we do need to to make sure that that point is emphasized but also we do appreciate that we have to to look after our young people and and we know that there are in mod particularly in contemporary society there are tensions with certain beliefs that the catholic faith holds holds dear and but I just think that I don't think we can we can forget that the church still believes that each and every person is of intrinsic worth and value so that would just be the fundamental starting point but of course within that yeah we we do need to to cater for all people to to make sure that no one's rights are impinged and fringed upon in an unnecessary way I suppose I would pose that same question to all the faith groups and none as well Reverend Fraser I think it's really interesting I mean in the light of what happened to the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party yesterday it's a really interesting issue that you're raising here about if you like people's theological position and the position of the culture and I think one of the things that you know we've in the church of Scotland been wrestling with these issues for for many years now and I think one of the things that we've recognised is that we have this term which we use as a constrained difference and that's the idea of trying to create an organization because we believe in inclusion because we believe that no one should feel excluded how can we live with diversity within our organization within our church because we have LGBT people, LGBTI people who are members of the church of Scotland we have ministers who are in same-sex relationships that kind of thing so how do we how do we deal with that how do we live with that knowing that some people are at different ends of a spectrum and I think part of how we deal with that or how we've tried to deal with that is about it's about taking an approach that involves openness to learning you know some years ago that there was a perspective about sexual identity that was pretty fixed in our society and within the understanding of the church and I think that people have maybe taken on board some of the evidence taken on board some of the science taken on board some of the kind of cultural shifts that have taken place in our society and recognised that we're actually in a different place now in terms of our understanding of human sexuality and human identity than perhaps we were 50 years ago and we've tried to inculcate that into our thinking and that's really important but just on the wider issue about you know I wanted just to kind of endorse what Charlie was saying about the importance of literacy the importance of understanding I think that's absolutely fundamental and I think one of the things that is really important that we're also trying to do in the church of Scotland through the work that we do in education is to find ways in which we can frame the stuff that we do both in terms of religious our contribution to religious and moral education and philosophical education but also in terms of religious observance frame that in such a way that what we're not offering is a dominant position or a position of expectation of belief on people but rather recognising that we can learn from each other that we can actually be enriched by learning more about Islam by learning more about secularism by learning more about Buddhism or about Judaism and that that's the we should not be afraid of diversity we need to be enriched by the diversity of our culture so I think I think all these things are really important but what what I would say is that both in terms of our understanding of human identity and sexual identity and in terms of our understanding of pluralism we're on a journey and what we've got to do I think is to put in place those measures and those policies that will support people in taking that journey towards tolerance towards respect and towards a deeper understanding of human identity. A number of the young people that we've spoken to in the course of this inquiry have suggested to us a way forward in all of this is to have decent relationship and friendship not so much training but awareness raising understanding how do you build a relationship, how do you deal with rejection, how do you deal with conflict and it seems to me that the wisdom of the young I think will be the common thread through our committee report because they seem to know what needs to be the underpin in the foundation that allows that flourishing that we all want for young people and I suppose you know what you're saying there about not having the dominant expectation and the dominant attitude to that is maybe the way to go now where I think that that will be very very stark because I think some of the evidence that we've heard over the past few months from especially organisations who support people who have been victims of racist incidents is that there's things coming back now that we thought we had got rid of many many years ago and I suppose for many minority you know or you know different groups that things go up and down as it goes and I suppose Siamina that brings me to you and the point that Reverend Fraser made is about how do you how do you support young people who are facing the abuse that they are facing but how do you then use those opportunities to educate other young people to have those healthy relationships and that you know attitude that it's about humankind and not about difference in that respect. One of the criticisms we've had about religious training in classrooms is that you can't just teach a child that this is how you observe Judaism, this is how you observe Christianity. You need to show the interconnections to that and the understanding of it and it's how do we do that. Give me a magic pill that I can put into my report that tells the Scottish Government how to do that. I wish there was a magic pill. It's a really difficult one because I think in terms of learning about each other's religions is like what you said when I spoke with the hundred children, 57 of them felt really you know happy and proud that Islam was being talked about during their school lessons because you know that was the religion but the others were felt really uncomfortable and they felt worried because we knowed in today's climate that you know Islam has been falsely linked with terrorism and that is wherever you go whether it be in the media or social media wherever it's blatantly there and this is what you know other young people are picking up and and due to that these you know abuses are happening to Muslim children. When I spoke to them about you know in especially secondary school in the curriculum they talk about terrorism, they talk about the Francis Booker ban, they talk about Saudi Arabia, how you know the the women can't drive you know those kind of things that are related to Islam although I wouldn't say terrorism is a really related to Islam but when those things were talked about especially terrorism 65 percent of them felt really scared and worried during that lesson and the reason why because they felt as soon as they left that classroom door as soon as they walked out that door what was going to happen to them what were the repercussions of sitting through that lesson and a lot of them felt that during the lesson everybody would just stare at them so they would become the centre of attention and that made them feel really worried and uncomfortable and so I think we really need to go back and actually say are the schools providing safe haven for religious minorities for religious people when they're actually talking about these things like you know the terrorist attacks that that atrocious terrorist attacks that have happened over 46 out of 100 were so scared of going to school the next day because of the repercussions of the backlash so you know we know that young children already face a lot of things as you know adolescents examined everything but then the extra worry on top of that and I think what was more worrying was again the physical characteristics of the girls who wear headscarfs they were more more concerned because they're visibly noticeable that something was going to happen to them and things were going to be said to them and they were right that was the case is there a magic pill for that I think there needs to be recognition and I think it's not been recognised by teachers it's not been recognised by headteachers or it's definitely not been logged and I think also you know like people like yourselves the Parliament the council unions teaching unions the wider society everybody needs to play a part in this because you know like my daughters have had islamophobic abuses at school which has led to me doing this study you know as a mum and the repercussions you know to pick up your daughter and she is crying and crying when she comes home because she's told that she belongs to ices you know and she's like but I have nothing to do with this this has got nothing to do with me and being born born here she sees herself as a Scottish person just like everybody else she yeah she's a muslim but she just doesn't understand why everybody is singling her out and the physiological effects that this is having on muslim children is astounding I came across muslim children who wanted to change their name so we had boys who wanted to change their name they have the brown appearance but they could be a different you know they could be indian or Sikh or something else but the fact they had a muslim name that meant that they were muslim so that meant that they were a target I had girls who were in s1 who want to who have made their own decision that they want to wear the headscarf when they're in s3 but because they're witnessing what's happening to a girl who's already wearing the headscarf how she's being isolated how she's not nobody really wants to be friends with her because she wears that headscarf they're worrying that in two years time is that what that's going to happen to me you know and it's these kind of worries and concerns the psychological pressures that these muslim children are facing needs to be addressed and there needs to be an outlet there needs to be a support like you said a support system and we don't have one in place at all okay okay pretty and charlie I don't know if you want to add to that um yeah um I I will mirror some of what samina said with um with the jewish students that when there's a topic that comes up in classes that is jewishly related they do feel kind of singled out or stared at by their peers so obviously if you're talking about world war two in the holocaust um that's a time when students will kind of feel like they're being singled out or sometimes they actually are um by teachers wanting to hear the perspective from the jewish kid in class which is kind of a problematic attempt right like it is great to try and hear the voices of other people but that's not really the right way to be doing it um or when I run a lunch club there are um usually slides in the school and sometimes the teacher will say okay you and you make sure you go because you're the jewish students um and it it's not really the greatest way to try and get students engaged to single them out like that is the hardest thing when you're at that age group to be perceived as different um there is one thing I want to highlight as a good practice though in terms of religious education one of the schools I go to they have actually weekly religious assemblies and students can go to whichever one they'd like but every now and then they also do an interfaith assembly so there will be a representative christianity representative islam and myself going as the jewish representative we're given a topic to speak on so the first one we did was the path to god and each one of us spoke about our religions perspective on that topic one after another um it's actually a great model because the students get to see very rapidly the religions have a lot in common we do have our differences but there is so much in common so that's going back to that idea of focusing on humankind not difference and I find that to be a great model um additionally when it comes to certain holidays so there's generally a christmas and an easter assembly at that same school when they have that big assembly there's a second one that is a joint jewish muslim assembly so the majority of students go to the christian one but the rest have another option and again we're doing something where we're talking about the similarities between our religions and uh kind of connecting those and I I do like that a lot as a model it's not the be all and end all fix but I do think that's something that could be adapted elsewhere yeah that's that's really helpful that thank you charlie where do you fit at the other side yeah where does no religion fit into this model that is the problem I think if there's time they can have as many representatives as they need they also do assemblies um that'll be just based on one faith so they've also had buddhist and seek and other people come in so if there are representatives I'm sure that school would love to have more um how might we cope with this type of diversity and catering for it in more rural areas of the country perhaps resources are more stretched there are not personnel on hand for this kind of diversity how do we come up with a model that is flexible enough to allow this in different types of scenarios and scales oh I would say that's a challenge for everyone again you know my job I'm concentrated between Glasgow and Edinburgh there's so many areas that one person can only do so much um I know my organisation that I'm representing today um created resources that are approved by the people they're representing right so you get a say in what's being presented again that requires some degree of funding and support and things like that for your organization but definitely getting a chance to create your own resources that you can disseminate is one way but yeah the human peace there's only so many of each you know group that can go do the work the normal processes committee is to come through the chair but I'm actually really enjoying this bit of interplay that's going on because it's the point really it's the point that if we talk to each other and we understand each other then we can make a difference um so I really enjoy enjoying that there we are almost out of time again which is really quite worrying gail I know that you wanted to come in with me a quick and Mary wanted to come back in I'll just make a quick point I've just returned from Bosnia we spent a couple of nights in Sarajevo and we went up to the Srebrenica memorial and the the remembrance of Scotland which is led by Lornaud the reverent Lornaud I have just produced an educational pack which they're putting around skills and I think it's very important in the sense that when I was when I was over there we got a obviously we chatted to loads of different people and in history you get taught about various things around the world I mean obviously the holocaust is a is a huge example of that genocide that was you know horrific but also the the Srebrenica genocide you know Bosnia and Muslims killed over 8,000 men and boys within five days it was absolutely I can't even go into it because it's still so fresh it's really upsetting and I just wondered if that's the sort of thing for you know Scottish Government to be supporting these outside organisations that have these educational packs that can do that and I also you know wanted to touch on what I will you've all said but but charlie brought up about teaching children about the different religions and none and that you know it's okay not to have a religion as well and you know ethics and morals you know as an aside all that too you don't you don't need to be religious to you know to be a good person and I think that you know there is a message that we can take away from history as well about you know just all about being humans and respect in each other and trying to stamp out hate and prejudice in society everywhere that we see it and I think that that's a responsibility on all of us so um yeah just really a statement statement Mary. A comment as well because I suppose if we take on board the pressures that are on the curriculum the pressures that are on teachers and in order to really develop an understanding of as gail said all faiths and no faiths because we have to teach it in every single school it can't just be in one school be concentrating on another faith every single school has to teach about every faith and no faith and how do we give that the importance that it needs to have within the curriculum because it can't be once every three weeks someone comes in and talks to us for 10 minutes and it can't be something that's outside the normal nine to four school day because then it would become an optional thing and you wouldn't get the buy-in of the staff and and the pupils so it needs to be in my view part of the main curriculum but we need we need to ensure it's given the importance and it can't be I don't think um and I'll pick the catholic schools and I'm not picking on them for any particular reason in this in this instance but a catholic teacher does a catholic teacher know enough about the muslim faith and the jewish faith and the church of Scotland and no faith to stand up in front of a school and say this is what these people believe and this is why they believe it and this is why we should support them in the same way a school from the christian faith couldn't do it I just I can oppose the question but I don't expect you all to answer she's never gave you any easy ones at all sorry sorry for every phrase I think you want to come in a couple of things there one is you know we talk from the christian faith about uh and Anthony's talked about this you know about the the inherent dignity of every human person made in the image of gods you know but what we share is humanity and when we encounter the human in another person regardless of their faith or none then we see something that we can identify with and so one of the things I think that I think is really important for us to think about as a society is that we can't leave this down entirely to schools to deal with this issue one of the or one of the things that we do in our in the parish just up the road where I'm minister is we've provided space for an organisation called Aminah which is a muslim women's support group we also have a lunch club that meets in one of our premises for the for elderly people in the islamic community and it's about friendship and it's about relationships and I think that there needs to be more resource I mean I know for example that Edinburgh interfaith association struggles financially to keep going but what fantastic what urgent and important work it's doing and it does seem to me that it's a tragedy in a way that these kind of organisations that are about building relationships building understanding building friendship are kind of withering because they don't get the kind of support that they need in the times that we're talking about I mean those stories just make your heart break you know and we need to be building those opportunities for people to learn from each other and to build those friendships that will make for a peaceable society in a peaceable world this absolutely crucial yep do you think government should take a more proactive role in promoting organisations like interfaith groups yes and support them in a more open manner I do I do absolutely Jeremy you wanted them to be a very quick supplementary word I think it's probably going to be close to statement because I think we are almost out there I mean I think it's I think I have found this really interesting to be and I think the issue I'm not quite sure how we do is I think it maybe picks up Mary's point and maybe also others in that there is now a lack of ignorance of what does a conservative muslim believe what does a conservative orthodox do believe because we live in now such a secular society the concept of what does even an evangelical christian believe today is so manipulated by the media or what does a traditional catholic believe and I suppose the question is taking Mary's point is how does a primary school teacher and stop bridge primary today represent that and I think that is something we need to have a bigger discussion with the education committee on what's going on and in that whether you're an orthodox to your traditional catholic whatever because we most people no longer go to church have no connection with the faith committees on regular basis we've lost that and it goes back to your issue of literacy and I suppose I would be interested maybe in a written statement at some point from your own is how do we get that literacy back into it so it doesn't just work in the cities but also works in rural Scotland and wherever so it's more statement sorry community okay I mean I think we've we've covered all of the ground I think we wanted to cover with you this morning the upshot of all of this is the consequences on young people if we don't deal with this and that's really where the thrust of our report will go is about the consequences and how can we prevent those consequences becoming unhealthy and that's that's the main point of all of this I think so can I thank you so much for your contributions this morning they have been incredibly enlightening they've given us another perspective to the whole dynamic that has helped us understand it more we are in the process of compiling this report we have a cabinet secretary with us next week which will be the last evidence session on this and we hope to have the report published quite quite soon after that but as you can imagine there is a lot information in there and I'm sure some very pointed recommendations but we'll we'll we'll go through that but again just to thank you all for your participation at committee this morning your written evidence and in the next week if there's anything you think we should have know about please could you could you let us know because making those links will be very helpful for us as well and all the work going forward over the next few years but I really appreciate your work thank you very much okay I'm now going to the suspend committee to go into private we're quite discussion thanks