 I remind members that social distancing measures are in place in the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. I asked members to take care and observe those measures, including when entering and exiting the chamber. Please only use the aisles and walkways to access your seat and when moving around the chamber. The next item of business is a debate on motion 204 in the name of Shirley-Anne Sunwell on education. I would invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons now as soon as they can, and for those who are joining us online to put an R in the chat function. I call on Shirley-Anne Sunwell to speak to and move the motion, cabinet secretary. You have 17 minutes. I move the motion in my name. My statement yesterday was an opportunity to lay out the Scottish Government's views and direction on qualifications and appeals, but I am pleased to have the opportunity to highlight today, again, the exceptional efforts that have gone in across our education sector to support learners during this pandemic, and to outline the steps that we will take to ensure the best possible outcomes for all of Scotland's children and young people over the coming years. Due to the supreme endeavours of many, the education of our children and young people has been sustained despite the very significant disruption of Covid-19. I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation for the extraordinary efforts for all those in the education workforce who have gone to great lengths to continue learning and teaching and to support the safety and wellbeing of our young people and their families. Parents and carers have contributed significantly to supporting the education of our children, often while balancing other commitments. Above all else, I want to especially thank the children and young people of Scotland for their resilience and hard work through this and to assure them that we are listening to their concerns and hopes around the way forward. Before I look forward, let me first take you back to 2015, when the First Minister underlined the Government's aspiration that all children in Scotland should have the best start in life and that there should be no better place in the world to be educated than here in Scotland. That remains the commitment of this Government. In taking that forward, we build on the achievements of recent years. Those start in the early years, where we are delivering transformational change through the expanded provision of early lending and childcare, and I will say more about that shortly. Across the system, our policies, including the initial £750 million Scottish attainment challenge, have resulted in Scotland investing more in education per person than elsewhere in the UK. Teacher numbers are currently the highest they have been since 2008, with the number of primary teachers the highest since 1980. Of outcomes, 93.3 per cent of school leavers for that year in 2019-20 were in education, employment or training three months after leaving school. That is up from 87.7 per cent in 2009-10. Let me thank the Deputy First Minister for his tireless work in building this platform and I look forward to taking that on to the next phase. However, we absolutely do still face challenges, and we know that there is much more to do. In the short term, we must continue to manage the risks of Covid as we, hopefully, move towards a greater sense of normality. I will continue to take expert advice and work with stakeholders to ensure the best possible educational experience for children and young people as we emerge from the pandemic. Mr Mundell, I thank the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention. I wondered what she was going to do in relation to the university and college sector, who are urgently looking for guidance that would allow them to safely reopen and restart small group face-to-face learning in September. This is an area that I tend to come a little bit further on into my speech, so if Oliver Mundell will forgive me, I will leave it until then. However, I know that the minister in closing will, with the specific responsibilities for universities and colleges, will be saying even more than I can in my opening remarks, so if he bears with me, we will absolutely be reassured at taking that very seriously. We know that the pandemic has had an impact on education globally. The issues being experienced in Scotland are ones that are common to countries across the world, and research shows us that Covid has had an adverse consequence on the health and well-being of some children as well as their attainment. Recognising those risks, the Scottish Government has already committed £400 million over 2020-21-22 to support education recovery. The Nuffield Foundation reported earlier this year that the funding that was committed in Scotland for catch-up was the most generous on a per pupil basis across all of the UK nations. That funding has enabled local authorities to recruit an additional 1,400 teachers and more than 200 support staff, and has led to around 70,000 devices and 1,400 connectivity packages being distributed to learners. It has ensured that no child has gone hungry thanks to free school meal alternatives during the period of remote learning and school holidays. In addition to that, we have introduced the £20 million pupil equity funding premium for 2021-22, increasing investment in PEF to £148 million this year. I am looking for a bit of clarity on local authorities, given that they provide money to the SQA on an annual basis. I am wondering what fee that they will no longer be required for this year, and should they be expecting some money back? I am certainly happy to get back to whoever on the details of the funding of the SQA on years going forward. I will come back to the SQA later on in my statement. If you let me make some progress, I will take the intervention from the member in due course. We know that the health and wellbeing of our children must take primacy and that that is the first step in supporting effective learning. In addition to the significant investment in support for the positive mental health and wellbeing of our young people, I outlined in the chamber yesterday, we are also rolling out a £20 million summer programme to help to restore the wellbeing of children and young people, particularly those who have been most impacted by Covid, to reconnect with each other, to play, be active and, importantly, to have fun. That support for wellbeing sits as part of a comprehensive programme of education recovery that continues to be guided by the principles of excellence and equity, underpinned by a high quality and empowered profession, and we owe it to this generation to be ruthless in our efforts to deliver that vision. As in the pre-pandemic period, we are prioritising additional support for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, and that is why we have committed to investing over £1 billion over the course of this Parliament to close the poverty-related attainment gap. I look forward to working with our partners to think about how best to use this investment to improve the life chances of children living in poverty, and I want to ensure that we are taking a joined-up approach across Government and across society, and I strongly believe that schools cannot do that alone. Of course, we know that teachers and support staff are essential to the quality of learning in our schools, and we were elected on a mandate to devolve even greater powers to teachers and to schools and to intensify the empowerment agenda. In the first 100 days of this new Government, we will fund councils to support the recruitment of a further 1,000 teachers and 500 classroom assistants as part of our commitment to 3,500 additional teachers in classroom assistants over the parliamentary term. I promised that your colleague I would take him next, so if Sarah Boyack forgives me, I will keep up to that promise, if nothing else. Maureen Wattfield, I am very grateful and I am sure that she will keep up all of her promises. Does the cabinet secretary agree with Site Scotland and their time to focus manifesto, which is called for additional investment for specialist school support for pupils with visual impairment? I read the site Scotland briefing with interest, and I take very seriously the points that they are making in that. Obviously, as we move forward with the progress on education, we absolutely need to ensure that no child is left behind, regardless of where they are educated, in what school and in what part of the country. I look forward to working with Site Scotland to see what can be done about that. If Sarah Boyack still wants to make an invention, I am happy to do that. I would be delighted, cabinet secretary, and I warmly welcome you to your new and important post. Planning ahead is critical for our council colleagues, so I was wondering if the cabinet secretary could give clarity on the location and funding for the proposed new city-centred Gallux school for Edinburgh in terms of funding and location, because the proposal in the SNP manifesto came out of the blue for Edinburgh councillors. Cabinet secretary, if I could reassure you that we have a bit of time to play with, so if you want to be generous with the interventions and others can follow suit, then we do have that time available. I am trying my best to be generous, Presiding Officer, I promise. This is something that I have paid great deal of attention to since coming into post. I appreciate that the council will be going through a consultation process. They have put together a package. It is very important now that that package is put to parents and to people across the city for them to have their say. That consultation is exceptionally important. The Government should not be involved within that process, and now I think that we look forward to hearing back from parents about what the council has had to say on the issues that are in the consultation and the recommendations that are within that. I will leave it there for the moment, but I am sure that something will come back once the consultation closes. We are also committed to ensuring that every school child in the country has access to technology. They need to support their education during this Parliament. Those are big ambitions, but we will start delivering them early. That means that, within those 100 days, we will make free lunches available to all primary 4 children in Scotland, as the next step towards extending them to all primary school children all year round. That will include primary 5 children in January 2022, and the provision of free school meal approaches to all eligible children and young people in primary and secondary through all the school holidays. We are providing over £49 million in funding to our local authorities to support the implementation of those approaches in 2021-22, a significant investment in the health and wellbeing of our children and young people. To help families and give pupils the best start in life, we will increase both the school clothing grant and the best start food grant, which helps families with children under 3 to buy healthy foods. We will take steps to remove charges for core curriculum activities and for music and arts education, including instrumental music tuition. We will also agree the first allocation of funding to councils for the refurbishment of play parks. Before we formally expand the Scottish child payment next year and prepare to double its value, we will provide interim support for eligible children, including £100 payment near the start of the summer holidays. I am proud to say that, during those first 100 days, we will also complete one of the major legacies of the last Parliament. From August, all three and four-year-olds and two-year-olds who need it most will be eligible for 1140 hours of free early learning and childcare each year. We know that high-quality early learning and childcare can make a huge difference to children's lives, particularly when they are growing up in the more disadvantaged circumstances, and it is a cornerstone of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Collectively, we can now focus on realising the transformational benefits that this expansion will bring, including improved educational and development outcomes for children, enhanced family wellbeing and greater employment and training opportunities for parents and carers. We do not intend to stop there. In this Parliament, we will expand childcare further, both by developing the provision of wraparound care and after-school clubs, and by working with children and young people to develop their own charter for school-age childcare in Scotland. Of course, in Scotland, we will prioritise fundamental children's rights. We will press on with the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to maximum extent possible and fight any legal challenge to stop children's rights. I hope that the programme outlines our determination to deliver improvements with pace and with urgency, but I also want to be clear with Parliament today that I am open to considering what further reform is necessary, with the clear purpose of doing all that we can to improve outcomes for children. That includes reducing the variability in outcomes for children and young people that they achieve across the country. I can hopefully reassure those who are working on the front line in our education establishments that that will not mean extra pressure or work for them at this critical time as we look to recovery. However, I want to look at options for reform that ensure that schools get the best possible support and challenge to enable them to improve further and to do what we all want to find the very best for our children in their care. To enable them to focus relentlessly on providing the highest quality of learning and teaching to our children must be critical to my work and to ensure that those working in education and outwith schools are fully focused on doing everything that they can to provide the highest quality of support. Today, I want to signal my intention to start this process by considering how to reform our two key national education agencies, the SQA and Education Scotland. That will include looking at their role, their remit, the purpose of their organisations, as well as considering their function and the Government's arrangements. That will be a key priority for me and will be informed by the findings of the OECD review, which, as I said yesterday to Parliament, will be published on 21 June. Daniel Johnson I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. I recognise that that process reform of the SQA is just at the beginning. Nonetheless, the issues of the SQA predate the current crisis are founded in its complete lack of willingness to perform its duties in a transparent way, ranging from the refusal to return transcripts to candidates through to the very opaque way that is approached, the alternative certification model. Does she agree with me that transparency has to be at the absolute root of reform of the SQA? I will expand that a little bit further for Daniel Johnson and say that transparency has to be key to the reform that we do within education as a whole. Not just about the SQA, but I think that that is a principle that we should all hold to. I have listened very carefully to the comments not just simply across this chamber, but from academics, from teachers, from young people about their wishes for reform. What I hope that I am signalling today is my intention to move along with a reform process and I look forward to working with stakeholders, teachers, parents and particularly young people to find out what the solutions to that are if we are joined in our willingness to reform those very important institutions. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way, and I apologise to Mr Mundell for having drawn her eye a few seconds before he got up. In the spirit of transparency, can I ask why the SQA has not given young people an opportunity to directly ask questions of them about this year's process, despite having given teachers and parents that opportunity some weeks ago? That ability for young people to have a voice is something that I have certainly heard loud and clear. It is very important that we will not, as a Government or indeed the SQA, not come to decisions that everyone will like. I am rapidly learning that in this portfolio already. The very least that we can do is ensure that we are open and that we are available to answer questions and to make our reasons for our decisions very clear. I think that the communication of that is exceptionally important. That is one of the reasons why there is a letter going out directly to learners about the support that is available to them. I am also looking very closely at what other communications can go out, whether that is from the Scottish Government or from the SQA, to ensure that we are accessible not just to young people but particularly to young people in this instance. So far, I have focused mainly on our work to improve outcomes for children and young people within early learning and childcare settings in schools. However, we have a determination absolutely to deliver beyond that. For example, since 2012, we have invested over £1 billion per year in Scotland's universities, meaning that a record 260,490 students enrolled in Scotland's universities in 2019-20. In addition, since 2007, the college sector resource budget has increased by over 30 per cent in cash terms. I know that the minister for higher education, further education, youth employment and training will say more about such issues in his closing remarks, but let me cover some of those briefly about the sectors. I am acutely aware of the challenges that our colleges and universities have faced in the pandemic, and I am appreciative of the very proactive and collaborative innovative ways in which they have responded. I remain exceptionally grateful to staff and students for their continued patience, understanding and support as we move towards greater normality. Looking ahead, we will continue to work collaboratively with the further and higher education sector as planning intensifies for the 2021-22, including the year, including through the recently-established Advanced Learning Covid Recovery group, and on the basis of expert advice provided through the new Covid-19 advisory subgroup on universities and colleges. Further and higher education institutions are key strategic assets in our economic and social recovery. In closing, let me make two final observations. I am conscious of Audit Scotland's recent observation and I quote, those involved in planning, delivering and supporting school education were working well together prior to the pandemic, and this strong foundation helped them to collaborate to deliver a rapid response to Covid-19 and exceptionally challenging circumstances. As we move further into the recovery phase of the pandemic and beyond, my firm intention is that that strong collaborative approach will continue. Working together, we will ensure that all pupils are given the support that they need to recover their learning and health and wellbeing. That includes maximising how we support and challenge improvement and reduce the variability in what children achieve in different parts of the country. Second, it is right that the voice of children and young people themselves is at the heart of that approach. I expect them to be engaged in every aspect of our policy considerations and know that they will bring the energy and insight born from lived experience to those discussions. I am deeply conscious of the privilege of holding this office and of the challenges that go with it, but I look forward to working with colleagues across the Parliament and beyond as we continue to deliver a high-quality education system that ensures that all children and young people can achieve their potential. As I indicated earlier, we have a bit of time to play with. I am also conscious that a number of members will be making their first speeches in the debate, but I encourage them to make and to take interventions to get that time back. I now call on Oliver Mundell to speak to and move amendment 204.2. Five years ago, delivering a statement to the Parliament on her Government's priorities following the 2016 election, the First Minister said, by the end of this session, through the action that we take to improve our most life-changing public services, education, health, social care and social security, we intend to ensure that many more people get the opportunities and the support that they need to fulfil their full potential. They were words around which the whole chamber could unite and an ambition that was shared by every member of this Parliament, no matter which side they sat on. Five years on, they remain largely that, just words. They have not been backed by action and have left the ambitions of far too many young people unfulfilled. The events of the past days and the failure of the SNP Government to restore confidence in this year's SQA assessment process shows just how out of touch ministers have become. They have dug in and chosen to defend the SQA rather than stand up for young people. It makes it even harder than it already was to believe anything that they say about ensuring excellence and equality in our education system. The failure to call out the SQA's incompetence and to admit our qualifications agency is fundamentally broken shows a complete disregard to young people and their teachers who have been so badly let down. Asking pupils to gamble their grades on appeal is wrong in the context of the chaos that we have seen. Admitting that there is some need for reform around the edges after all that we have seen and after the First Minister today told Parliament that the organisation had her full confidence is not very convincing. When it refuses to listen or learn, it is little wonder that the SNP Government has the undistinguished record of an administration under which educational standards have it best stagnated and in many cases slipped back. I am disappointed by the response on what I have said was a very expansive reform package. I can point to the fact that nine out of 10 headteachers have reported that they have seen an improvement in closing the gap in attainment and or health and wellbeing as a result of the attainment Scotland fund supported. There is progress that we are getting now. I am not sure that the young people who the system is there to serve would agree with that. The extent of the mismatch between the minister's rhetoric and the reality of the situation grows every day and we do not have another 100 days to waste. It is time for the real action that was promised and which this Government has been so slow to deliver. The First Minister's words from all those years ago will still unite this chamber in their ambition but they must now be backed by deeds. If they are, there will be scope for a constructive, if critical, where necessary dialogue with those Opposition benches. That is important because I believe that our best days can still lie ahead. Given how good my own education was at Moffat academy, in a small rural state school that does not apologise for being ambitious on behalf of its pupils, I know what is possible everywhere. We can and must do better as a country in the years to come. Our once world-leading education system can be exactly that again. We can get back on our feet after the pandemic and we can avoid a lost Covid generation. After all, despite 14 years of this SNP Government's educational underachievement, we still retain all the ingredients of success. I am motivated and skilled workforce, talented young people, dedicated parents and carers and a social commitment to the importance of education. Nothing I say today is a criticism of them. Quite the opposite, I want to publicly applaud their commitment and professionalism. As I said before in the chamber, the only thing that we are missing is a Government willing to do what is needed to properly support them. Instead, what we have is a Government often more interested in promoting its own political agenda than getting down to the hard work of advancing opportunities for future generations. Rather than recognising and supporting the time-honoured strengths of our system, this Government, as it does in so many areas, would rather do things differently, simply for the sake of it. It believes that, in the place of ambition, the lowest common denominator will do. It would rather blame others than acknowledge its own responsibilities and failings. Excellence has been discounted as too difficult to aim for and has been replaced by an attitude that being average or thereabout and maybe better than some other countries, if we cherry-pick the right statistics, will do. And likewise, equality is no longer about giving the maximum opportunity to all, but it has been reduced to ensuring that everyone is held back in equal measure. Our young people, their parents and carers, as well as educators deserve better than this. But, as I say, all is not lost, it is not too late. The key is actually very simple. We have to return our focus to what happens in the classroom, teaching and learning. We cannot have a successful education system without teaching and learning. Rather than talking in the fashionable buzzwords and jargon that have become the trademark of our education bodies, we need to focus instead on talking in the language that teachers and learners understand. It means, in a very real sense, going back to the basics. It means restoring teacher numbers as a matter of urgency, not the First Minister patting herself on the back after the SNP cut teacher numbers to the bone, then somehow taking credit for incremental increases in the years that follow. We have thousands of qualified teachers on temporary and short-term contracts and some recently qualified teachers who want to work but cannot find a job. Let's be more ambitious, let's make the funding available for all those roles that the Government has identified now, and let's train more teachers if we cannot fill them. Focusing on teaching and learning also means that admitting that curriculum reform has not produced the outcomes that we hope for. It means respecting the fact that all children need to learn the essential building blocks of knowledge to equip them through life, that the best way to obtain skills is through gaining knowledge. It means freeing teachers from the avalanche of paperwork and guidance that has engulfed them over recent years. Teachers do not need the 20,000 pages of guidance that accompany the implementation of the so-called curriculum for excellence. They need the time and space to do the jobs that they are trained, qualified and dedicated to doing. Of course, there is a more immediate concern brought on us by the unique circumstances of the global pandemic, and it is one that the Scottish Government must urgently face up to. Ministers need to recognise the lost learning that we have seen in the past year, not trying to claim, as the previous cabinet secretary did, that somehow time at home has been universally beneficial. Over the past year, most pupils in Scotland have lost out on an estimated 16 weeks of classroom lessons. While we pay tribute to the efforts of teachers and other school staff to provide the best possible online alternatives, the reality is that we have seen an unprecedented loss of learning that risks widening the attainment gap between more affluent and less well-off pupils. There is a clear case for a comprehensive package of action to help to recover that lost learning, and that should include allocating additional funding to schools to provide effective interventions for individual year groups and the opportunity for individual disadvantaged pupils to get small group tutoring. From what the First Minister has outlined as part of her 100 days plan, it would appear that there is nothing being drawn up to help to recover that lost learning. For younger children and their parents, a summer of play will be welcome, but for many older pupils whose education has been adversely impacted through no fault of their own, the opportunity for a summer of learning is what they really need. We urgently need to hear from the new cabinet secretary what her plans are beyond those already outlined, so that pupils have a genuine chance to catch up. If the answer is none, pupils' appearance across Scotland will be out, certainly. I am grateful to Oliver Mundell for taking another intervention from me. As I laid out in my speech, we have invested very heavily to local authorities. It is surely right that local authorities, the schools and the head teachers, who know their pupils best, decide what that package looks like rather than the dictate from here. That is one size at all. That would be the wrong way to go about. Surely we should empower schools and surely that is what the Conservatives should be supporting. I do not think that promoting the opportunity for individual tutoring after a pandemic that has affected many individuals in different ways is dictating something that would be unwelcome in most schools and for most young people. If the answer is none, parents across Scotland and pupils will be owed an explanation as to why no meaningful action has been taken to help to recover those 16 weeks of lost classroom learning. In closing, I want to return to what for me is the most important point. Further decline and stagnation is not inevitable. There is no reason to believe that all is lost, but after 14 years of SNP failure we do not have any more time to waste. Every young person deserves the gold standard education that Scotland was once famous for. Until the SNP owns its mistakes, rather than trying to excuse the mistakes that they have made, progress will be slow. At the moment, teachers, learners, parents and carers are being asked to pick up the slack. That is not good enough and it is time for the Government to act. Reversing the decision to allow grades to be downgraded on appeal and not reforming axing failing education bodies such as the SQA would send a strong message that this Government is in listening mode and ready to reset and rebuild trust. Inaction will simply confirm more of the same and reinforce the cosy arrangement at the heart of this SNP Government, which allows everyone off the hook. We will find out in pretty short order if the cabinet secretary is John Swinney 2.0 or if she is serious about making the hard choices needed to improve the life chances of our young people. For the sake of Scotland's pupils, parents, teachers and for the future of our country, we must all hope that it is the latter. Thank you very much, Mr Mundell. I now call Michael Marra to speak to and move amendment 204.3. Mr Marra, you have 10 minutes. I wish to start by putting on record my thanks to the minister for her very kind conversations earlier in her tenure. She has the sincere and hopeful good wishes of these benches and there is much to do. I am speaking to move the amendment in my name. It is vital that this debate and the work of our Parliament shapes the educational recovery from the pandemic. In the last 24 hours, the UK Government's adviser on educational recovery has resigned due to the posthee of the ambition of that Government, due to its failure to grasp the scale of the challenge. I hope that we can give some expression today to the truly epic scale of the challenge that we face in Scotland and we can begin to reveal some of its nature and can agree that we require and there should be a radical comeback plan required by this Government that is commensurate to what must be achieved. However, this debate will inevitably, at least in part, be informed by what came yesterday. The minister has already touched on it and the general dismay, which has greeted a process which fails every test that was separate other than its mere existence. After eight months, six promises and two missed deadlines, we have a vague outline of an appeals procedure which does nothing to address the core concerns of all involved. We should not have been here in the first place. We should not have had to drag a process out of our reluctant Government, a process that is demanded by natural justice and under the UNCRC and mandated by the urgent review that was undertaken into the last SQA debacle. Our amendment today asks for an urgent review of the SQA and I'm very glad to hear that that will be put in place. I have to say that it should be urgent. It is required quickly and, frankly, the role of the SQA in particular has become untenable, given repeated crises that have been faced and their role in the failure of our children, their generation and our future. I know that there are a catalogue of cases waiting on the minister's desk of young Scots failed by the processes put in place last year, let alone the many thousands suffering this year. They all deserve a future and the best chance of a better life. I'll address the core substance of the Green Party amendment later on in my closing speech. We are strongly mine to support it, but I want to hear the debate and see what the response of the minister is in the meantime. What is at stake here and where all our eyes should be fixed is that it's not just about blame, it's about making things right. That's why Labour is focused on the appeals process, on a recent guarantee and on a no detriment policy for entry to college and to university. Our amendment today, we believe, can help to put hope back in the hearts of young Scots who want a better future for themselves, their families and their communities. So our response today must be about remaking our future. The unique greatness of Scottish education is a founding myth of the nation as we conceive it, but it's no less powerful for being demonstrably untrue. The shape of our society economically, intellectually, emotionally and politically has been written by three great phases of expansion in education. Firstly, elite professional education, secondly mass secondary education and thirdly mass higher education. Each phase changed the character and path of the nation. The question that we should be asking ourselves is, do we have the imagination, the ambition and the moral drive to create a fourth great phase of universal education that could unlock the transformative potential of our population? Can we summon the collective will and a common endeavour to make universal digital education unlock Scotland's great potential? That fourth great wave of educational expansion would be universal digital skills enhancing lives across our country. It would transform how, where and for whom we deliver education. The why is urgent. We are living through ever accelerating change in the global environment. We must be prepared to change with it. Our values can endure, but they must be made relevant in a world moving at an astonishing pace. Technological change is the fastest it has ever been and the slowest it will ever be. Look at the returns delivered to investors in recent years from the rise of the digital giants and think of the return on investment that we would receive in Scotland if we truly invest in our new generation of digital talent. We have an economy detaching itself from physical routes and the frictionless productivity of software. We see, in the Logan review commissioned by this Government, begging this simple yet wicked question of how do we afford to put tech experts into our classrooms? How do we go about filling urgent skills gaps like the app development company in Dundee who could have delivered 300 highly paid jobs in the city in the last two years had software engineering skills being available? How can young Scots get these jobs? Education is the currency of the information age. No longer just a pathway to opportunity and success but a prerequisite. Wrapped around this challenge are two further deeply complex problems. They are a front of educational inequality that does much more than rightly offending our moral sensitivities. It holds back our country. Those from the poorest backgrounds remain so well served that they must be addressed and we know that progress in doing so has not been made to any real extent. It is shameful that our debate yesterday and today around SQA appeals will be of no relevance whatsoever to those growing number of Scots who leave school with nothing. The third challenge is that of the pandemic itself and the impact of lockdown. That has disproportionately fallen on those with the least and has made inequality all the greater. Many young people in this country have gone backwards in school performance in the last year. We need a comprehensive plan that lays out a response commensurate to the large and great scale of this task. Childcare in early years with home working breaking their business models. A loss of school time unprecedented since the advent of universal education. A college sector already financially precarious with students not completing courses, drops in applications and apprenticeship numbers dramatically down. Our universities in need of an urgent route map to less restrictive physical distancing to ensure applicants turn into students this autumn. I would say to the minister that the scale of this challenge is really considerable. I do not believe the rhetoric that we have heard so far and anything that I have seen published grasps the true scale across all of our institutions of dealing with the impact of the pandemic. But all of our efforts are required. Labour's amendment will help to stem some of the immediate problems that we face and, crucially, I hope, start to rebuild hope in the hearts of our young people that we believe are the promise of a better Scotland. Thank you, Mr Marra. I now call on Ross Greer to speak to a move amendment 204.4. Mr Greer, you have a generous six minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I move amendment in my name. The evidence that the committee has received from teachers should give the SQA serious cause for concern. That was the first conclusion of a report unanimously agreed by the Parliament's Education and Skills Committee in January of 2017. I sat on that committee throughout the inquiry and did so in the years since. I do not think that any of us could say with honesty that the performance of the SQA has improved in that time. Quite clearly, the opposite has been the case. The specific concern raised in that instance was the apparent breakdown in trust between teachers and the qualifications authority. The committee recommended that the SQA review its approach to engagement with teachers to enable candid communication from those with a critical view and to demonstrate how those views are taken into account and impact on the SQA's work in order to improve trust. It is obvious to all of us that, rather than seeing trust in the SQA improve in recent years, it has plummeted. I do not believe that it has ever been as low as it is now, not just with teachers but with pupils and the public as a whole. That was not the only cause for concern in the 2017 report, some of which I will come back to later. Underperformance by the exams authority certainly has not been limited to the period of the pandemic, as Daniel Johnson said. I will address the unique nature of recent challenges in a moment. The SQA's failings have been a constant feature of this Parliament's scrutiny work for years, indeed, since long before the 2017 report. Too often, we have seen an organisation that appears more concerned with protecting its own reputation and what it sees as the credibility of the system than with honestly explaining what is going on or with giving every individual learner a fair opportunity to succeed. Mr Mundell, I thank the member for giving way. I wonder if he found it as puzzling as me to hear the First Minister say today that she had full confidence in the SQA. Mr Greer? I thank Mr Mundell for that intervention. I would appreciate if, in closing remarks, the minister could reflect on that, because I feel that there is a tension between what we have just heard from the cabinet secretary, which is an acknowledgement of the need for reform, and what we heard an hour or so ago from the First Minister, which is that she has full confidence in the SQA as it is currently constituted and operating. Those two things do not go together, and I think that we deserve an explanation from the Government as to which is its position. To be clear, the past 15 months have been extraordinarily challenging for everyone, including those working at national agencies. I do not underestimate the difficulties that they have faced. It is with genuine regret that I bring an amendment today that expresses a lack of confidence in the SQA as an authority, not in any individual. Having scrutinised their work throughout the pandemic and for years before, I can come to no other view. We have now reached the inevitable conclusion of a process led by an organisation that does not trust teachers or pupils, which does not welcome constructive criticism despite the recommendations of this Parliament, which has systemic issues with transparency, as Mr Johnson mentioned a moment ago, and which still, quite clearly, does not believe that last year's grading algorithm was a mistake. That was confirmed in the priestly review. The SQA seemed to, in many ways, believe that they were the real victims of what happened last year, not the 75,000 young people whose marks were downgraded. The SQA and the Government insist that this year's process is based on teacher judgment, but that is fundamentally untrue. The reality of the alternative certification model is that exams in all but name have taken place with the burden of setting and marking those exams following on teachers without their being given the professional autonomy to fully exercise their own judgment. A teacher must grade their pupils based on rigid criteria set by the SQA, so a chemistry teacher conducts the pseudo-exams that are required of them. They mark a pupil's paper and find that they have achieved a C. However, the teacher, if allowed to exercise their professional judgment, knows that the pupil would have been more than capable of a B had they not suffered an immediate family bereavement or had themselves been ill with Covid. You could argue that that would bring a level of subjectivity not appropriate to the initial grading exercise, but, surely, the appropriate place to take that into account is during the appeals process with an exceptional individual circumstances provision. Those who have advocated for the rights of young people throughout that process have been clear that an exceptional circumstances provision is essential, so yesterday's announcement was bitterly disappointing. The Green amendment today gives Parliament the opportunity to endorse such a provision, because if the last year was not one of exceptional circumstances, I cannot imagine a year in which that provision would ever work. Earlier today, the First Minister seemed to argue that there is no exceptional circumstances provision because there is a contingency measure in place. I am afraid to say that that is verging on misleading, because here is what the SQA's own guide says when asked if that contingency is available to a pupil who has been, in their own words, extremely affected by disruption due to their learning and has achieved less than they were predicted as a result. Here is the SQA's answer to that in their own FAQ. No, this service is only for those who have not completed assessments. The learner can request an appeal, but this will only review the evidence that was used in deciding the provisional result. At this point, it illustrates a wider one with this year's appeals process. It is not really an appeals process at all, yes. The First Minister also said that the ability for teachers to have control over the types of assessments and when those assessments will take account of what has been happening during a pupil's year. It is not necessary to look at the appeals process because it is embedded within the actual alternative certification model. That is how we deal with it through the year and not through a potential stressful time of requiring a pupil to actually appeal. Mr Greer, I truly, truly wish that that was true, but if you look at the subject specific guidance, that is simply not the case. When you look at what is actually required in terms of evidence to be produced, it is clear that there are rigid requirements there. There is not the opportunity for teachers to exercise their professional judgment. There is variation between subjects. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary disagrees with me on that point, but I think that she should perhaps listen to Mark Priestley, who conducted the review of what happened last year and who has himself said that the changes that the SQA made to the assessment and evidence criteria this year led to the system in which we have assessments that are exams in all but name. That is the inevitable result of when you read below the headline finding the specific evidential requirements of the SQA do lead to exams in all but name. Young people? Yes, absolutely. I am very grateful. Is not it the case that these are children who have spent considerable periods of time outwith school on which no reliance on any work produced during that time can be evident? Indeed, the effect of the Covid has hit so many children as they have returned to school, making it too late for any earlier work to be drawn into the conclusion for the evidence. Mr Greer. I think that Mr Whitfield, for that point, thinks that it is absolutely key to put on record in this debate that many of the subjects specific sets of guidance produced by the SQA were only published in December, just before we entered the period of remote learning. The period from August to December, where pupils were in school, albeit disrupted, their teachers did not even know what the evidential requirements would be at that stage. Of course, telling pupils that these weren't exams wasn't the only example of gaslighting of them during this process. We've been told that it was co-produced by young people, but that simply isn't the case. In both the SQA and the Government know this. Here's what Cameron Garrett MSYP had to say this morning. As the only young person who sits on the SQA's national qualifications 2021 group and the only member representing young people, I have not had an equal input into discussions around the appeals process this year at NQ group meetings. Young people have been let down and ignored by this process. That was the verdict of Liam Fowley MSYP, who sits on the education recovery group. The appeals system announced today is simply not fit for purpose. It's another example of young people being an afterthought. We've been tirelessly representing young people's views and experiences for months only for it to be ignored by the SQA. Young people have been let down. The youth parliament, the children's commissioner and others are clear that this process does not uphold young people's rights. The SQA hasn't even given young people the opportunity to directly ask questions of them, despite, quite rightly, giving parents that opportunity. Finally, something can still be salvaged through the appeals process at least. If the Government and the SQA can accept now, rather than in August, that they've called this one wrong, they can immediately develop a process for appeals based on exceptional individual circumstances and adopt a no detriment policy to avoid young people having to take a perverse gamble if they decide to appeal. That is an opportunity for the Government to prove to young people and to teachers that, eventually, they have started to listen. In normal times, today's debate would have been an opportunity to look to the next five years of Scottish education, but instead it's difficult to see beyond the immediate crisis with this year's exams. The frustration and anger is palpable. The comments this morning from young people are utterly dismaying. I was going to quote Cameron Garrett, but Ross Greer has beat me to it. It's suffice to reiterate, though, that they say that young people have been let down and ignored by this process. However, we are talking about a problem entirely of the Scottish Government and the SQA's own making. All exams were cancelled six months ago. National Fives had been cancelled well before then, and everybody understood that working out a replacement model would be difficult. However, after what happened last summer, we expected that lessons had been learned, that young people would be included in the conversation and not pushed to the sidelines as if those decisions were about anyone else but them. The SQA understood the danger of drip feeding information and the benefits of full and frank conversations at an early stage, that fairness to learners should be at the heart of the new process. However, as it turns out, with the very same people sitting in the very same jobs, the very same mistakes were made, we got more top-down decision making and a culture of secrecy along with it. No minutes were taken of the meetings between John Swinney and the SQA either this year or last. The result isn't a credible alternative to exams. It's a cruel new obstacle filled with needless stress and anxiety. By contrast, teachers have shown what it means to be creative problem solvers during the pandemic. Everything had to change, and then it kept changing, but staff worked flat out to give everyone the best possible education. They worked tirelessly across levels and between schools. They pulled together plans for remote learning, blended learning, in-person learning and everything in between. They often did that with next-to-no notice, working well beyond the brutal overtime that had been normalised for teachers in Scotland. For group work, school assemblies, sports days, school concerts, buddy systems, transition days, face-to-face parents' evenings, creative solutions were found for impossible problems. Speaking to one teacher, the loss of indoor PE made way for outdoor orientering through a partnership project between class teachers, PE teachers and active schools. For another, instead of school singing, pupils learned sign language, pupils worked with them, adapting and enduring time and time again, and I'm proud of every single person involved in that effort. However, it's against those efforts that the SQA's alternative and yesterday's statement to Parliament was inadequate. I asked the cabinet secretary about extra support. I've done so three times now, and I'm yet to be assured that meaningful plans have been made, and fundamental questions still haven't been answered. On the materials that were leaked extensively on TikTok and Discord, the education secretary pointed to the fact that teachers and lecturers have flexibility to decide how and when to use materials, but which is it, Presiding Officer? Are the SQA materials compromised or not? Do they still serve a purpose and save teachers a job, or can they no longer be relied upon? If those papers have been compromised, one of the only real supports on offer to teachers has been undermined by the SQA's faulty process. However, it has been clear for quite some time that teachers have been tasked with developing the entire alternative model themselves. One secondary teacher told me that the stress of the job has been met equally with the stress of not having job certainty for August. That is why Scottish Liberal Democrats have campaigned for a teacher job guarantee come August. We need the talents of everyone available to help with the education recovery. Instead, qualified teachers are starting to look elsewhere to other countries or other jobs, simply because there isn't work on offer here. That's a shameful way to treat those who have guided schools through the past 14 months. Scottish Liberal Democrats have been constructive throughout the pandemic. We work with the Government where at all possible and secured an extra £80 million for education in the Scottish budget. However, enough is enough. The SQA and Education Scotland are simply not fit for purpose. In February, after years of campaigning, Scottish Liberal Democrats persuaded this Parliament of that fact. The shortcomings should have been addressed long ago. Because without fundamental reforms grounded in the teaching profession, then we are set for more of the same. That is how to protect against repeats of the exams chaos that pupils and teachers have endured. The eventment in my name, which wasn't selected, asked the Government to respond to those calls formally before the summer. I thank the cabinet secretary for accepting the case that Scottish Liberal Democrats have been making for years. There is now a rare opportunity to take forward urgent reforms that have the backing of teachers, pupils, parents and the Scottish Parliament. John Swinney refused to listen and, as a result, lost the trust, as well as any sense of how to get things back on track. More details about the remit and timeline of those reforms would therefore be very welcome before the summer recess. Thank you very much, Ms Wishart. I now call on Jackie Dunbar. The chamber wish to be aware is Ms Dunbar's first speech in this Parliament. It won't always be like this, but I can offer you and other first-time speakers a very generous six minutes, Ms Dunbar. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your new position? Cabinet Secretary, in hers, and I think that it's the minister's new position as well. Deputy Presiding Officer, as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, we must ensure that we build back better than before. That applies to our education as well. Our children and young people, as well as our local authorities' teaching and support staff, have risen above and beyond to the challenge of online learning and have been extremely resilient while dealing with the change in Covid restrictions. For that, I applaud each and every one of them. Education has been a priority for the Scottish Government, and I am glad to see that it will continue to be so, both in the first 100 days and throughout the entire term of this Government. Ensuring access to education is so important, and I welcome the commitment from the Scottish Government to begin work to ensure that all children have access to a device, whether that be a laptop or a tablet, to allow them to work and learn from home. That will go a long way in assisting those families who would simply not have been able to afford a device for their children. Ensuring that no child is disadvantaged or cannot do their homework just because of their household circumstances. I thank the Scottish Government for not only taking the stigma away from those families, but for also making the commitment to levelling the playing field for all our children across the country. First with the introduction of the baby box, then with the expansion to 1140 hours of early learning and childcare, and now through access to digital services. On this theme, it is incredibly important that all children go to school ready to learn, and that means not being hungry. I applaud the Scottish Government's plans to extend free breakfasts and lunches to primary 4 pupils with a view to expanding the provision to all our primary school pupils. That will mean that no pupil has to start their day hungry, again showing the Government's commitment to cut down the barriers to education and level the playing field for all our children across Scotland. Deputy Presiding Officer, given that this is my first speech, I feel that it is only right that I focus in on my constituency. Aberdeen Donside is a diverse area, which lies to the north of the Granite City, from Kingswells to Woodside, Dice to the Brigadon and Ahen in a Twain. It is the honour of my life to be elected the MSP for Aberdeen Donside, the area where I have lived and raised a family over the last 30 plus years. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the good folk of Aberdeen Donside for putting their faith in me, and I pledge to you all today to do my very best for you, my very best for our constituency and my very best for our country over the next five years. I would also like to pay tribute to Mark McDonald for all of his tremendous work during his time as the member of Aberdeen Donside. He most certainly did a fantastic job representing his constituents, and I would like to wish him all the best for the future. Deputy Presiding Officer, I am now the third SNP MSP to hold the seat, and I would also like to pay a personal tribute to the late Brian Adam, who first won the seat for the SNP back in 2003. I first met Brian not long after I joined the party in 1990. He was at the time the local councillor for the area that I live in. He then went on to be the regional MSP until he won the Donside seat in 2003. I am proud to say that I have followed him in his footsteps. I too am the councillor for that same area, and now I am also proud to be that MSP. My constituents have very long memories, and out on the campaign trail I was regularly asked how I plan to live up to his legacy, and my response was and is simple. Brian was my friend, Brian was my mentor, and Brian taught me everything that I know, and I will always aspire to live up to his high standards. To Brian's family, can I say thank you? Thank you for your continued support, your kind words and your well wishes. I am proud of the Scottish Government and the pledges that it has made, and the National Digital Academy will benefit so many people who, like me, for whatever the reason, did not finish their education. What an opportunity! How I wish I had that opportunity to go back and finish what I had started in school while my daughter was young. Enabling people to access education to a higher level at any age, no matter your caring responsibilities or your work commitment, and to be able to do it in your own time, at your own pace, will be transformational for so many people. I will finish on this, Deputy Presiding Officer. Education is our right, and should be easily accessible for all. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that a higher and further education remains free for all, and children and families are supported to improve educational outcomes. Advice for every child is huge. It takes away the stigma, and it goes a long way to ensure that no child is left behind and ensures that no child is left out due to their family's circumstances. Thank you, Ms Dunbar. You are also the MSP that denied me my majority in this Parliament 10 minutes after the declaration of the result in Orkney. Despite that, I will not hold it against you. I now call Pam Gosal, who will also be making her first speech in this Parliament. Ms Gosal will be followed by Cokab Stewart. Ms Gosal, you have again a generous six minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate you on your roles well. I stand here today as a British Asian woman from the Sikh community. People like me do not often get such positions, and I feel tremendous amount of responsibility on my shoulders. I am an Asian woman who went to a state school in Glasgow. I am a daughter of immigrants and now the first Indian woman in the Scottish Parliament. Nothing was ever handed to me and times were often very tough. I lost my father suddenly and then lost my elder sister to heart and lung transplant in my teenage years. They were both the strength and stay of my family, both gone. There was no time to grieve. I had to step up for my family, my mother, my siblings, and I had to become their strength. I stepped in to run the family business. I had to grow up fast and earn respect in a male-dominated sector and become the head of the family. That was not the norm in the Asian society 13 years ago, but I knew that I had to protect and provide for my family. Despite judgments from some of my suitability to such roles, I powered through. Running my father's business at such a young age without any experience in education, they said that I couldn't, I did. Becoming the provider and care for my mother and my siblings, they said that I couldn't, I did. Gaining qualifications in my adult life, they said that I couldn't, I did. Having a successful career, they said that I couldn't, I did. Today, your member of the Scottish Parliament said that I couldn't, I did. My parents and our tragic experiences are the reason why I am in politics today. I want to give back to society, show other young women, girls, just like me. If you work hard, never give up, you can fulfil your dreams and ambitions. I would like to thank everybody who voted for the Scottish Conservatives, who made history happen right here, not only by electing one of the first women of colour in the Scottish Parliament but also the first Indian woman in the Scottish Parliament. My ambition was to help others. Despite history having been made, you are only ever measured by the actions that you take while you are in office and the legacy that you leave and pass on. The achievement is not about winning the seat at the table, it is all about what you do at that table that matters. That is why I will do everything that I can to protect the union that is so dear to me. That is why I will do everything that I can to ensure that young people across Scotland have a fair crack at the whip and have that chance to get on. I will do everything that I can to work with businesses so that the education, training and skills are better aligned with business and economic needs. Let us talk about the union. I believe in the union because the union has brought so much for myself, my family, my friends and, like many others, social and economic benefits. Above all, it promoted the values of openness and inclusion. My parents were immigrants from the Punjab in India, arriving in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. My dad started out as a bus driver and my mum, a homemaker in England. He moved into Glasgow from England to be in a rare family. Both started their own businesses here. They wanted to provide better for their children. My parents got to move freely around England and Scotland. Our story shows that the United Kingdom will always be the best place in the world for people for different backgrounds, religions and cultures to call their home. That was the benefit of the United Kingdom, and that is why we need to unite, not to divide and say no to separation. I was made redundant from Glasgow City Council as a trading standards officer, and at that time I struggled to find a job in Scotland. I did not want to rely on the state, so I went to work in England. Thanks to the union, I stand here today with the experience and knowledge to help others. That was the benefit of the United Kingdom, and that is why we need to unite, not to divide and say no to separation. I am particularly proud to take up the role of shadow minister for further and higher education and use employment and training. Education is something very close to my heart. I know how difficult the pandemic has been for young people. My oldest son will graduate from Glasgow University this year after completing his intercalated degree. Without stepping foot in the university at all, this will be the situation replicated all around the country and across the world. Too often, young people are pressured to go to university as if it was some kind of marker for success for their future life. Some may want to get a job, some may want to learn on the trade and some may want to start their own business. Whatever path a young person takes, we should be there to help, encourage and support them. Further education was a vital lifeline for me. I left school with no qualifications. I had no guidance, but fortunately I got to choose a pathway that was right for me later on in my life. It was never too late to learn. I am a great advocate in lifelong learning, handing on my PhD, as I said last week. I want to see this now, here in this place, because I fear that it is not said enough. There is no wrong path when leaving school. I said earlier that we have judged by the actions as an MSP. I want to lead the charge in making sure that young people across Scotland have the support, mentoring and advice that they need to get on. I may be one of the first women of colour in the Scottish Parliament, however I certainly will not be the last. I will hold that door open for others and I will endeavour to make you all proud. I call Cocab Stewart to be followed by Martin Whitefield, and this is Ms Stewart's first speech in the chamber. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I welcome you to your new role. It is a privilege to be making my first speech as the member for Glasgow Kelvin. Having dedicated 30 years to educating our young people, I am honoured to be contributing to today's education debate. I congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for Education on her appointment. She brings a wealth of knowledge from her previous role as the Minister for Further and Higher Education. I would also like to thank the minister's predecessor, John Swinney. Having known the Deputy First Minister for many years, I have no doubt of the extraordinary lengths that he went to for our young people, and he is absolutely the right person to head up Scotland's Covid recovery. That leads me to thanking another inspiring servant of Scotland, Sandra White. Having represented the people of Glasgow and Kelvin for the past 22 years, there are few who have so resolutely and passionately championed their constituents. Sandra's parliamentary achievements include legislation such as the responsible parking bill and her efforts on the cross-party group on older people age and ageing, which resulted in the Scottish Government creating a ministership. Sandra always stood up for those who needed her, whether it was in Partick, Gaza or Catalonia, always seeking social justice and self-determination for all. While Sandra may have retired, I fear for Governments elsewhere that she may only just be starting. We all wish her a very long and happy retirement. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, my campaign team and election agent, Extraordinaire, Chancellor Kenny McLean. Eternal thanks to all the activists for their hard work and good humour, I will do my level best to speak up for all of the amazing, vibrant, diverse communities of Glasgow and Kelvin that I have been elected to represent. Indeed, Glasgow and Kelvin not only voted yes in 2014, but it has returned an SNP, MSP or MP in every election since 2011. There can be no denying where the majority of my constituents' constitutional beliefs lie, and I look forward to formally putting that question to them once again in a referendum. Amongst the darkness of the last 18 months of Covid came a generosity of spirit in Glasgow, as communities found ways to support each other and my heartfelt sympathies go to all those who have lost loved ones. I would like to record my thanks to all the key workers who continue to work throughout lockdown and the incredible network of volunteers across Kelvin who mobilised literally overnight, including the Annex healthy living centre, the language hub, the central good varra, the city mission, Kelvin stepped up and Glasgow stepped up. Whatever our political colours, I am sure that we are all respectful of the leadership that is shown by our First Minister who has steered us through the darkest of times, having to make the most difficult of decisions. I now turn to my previous profession with an education and will take a moment to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of all staff across all sectors and parents and carers. From early years, primary, secondary schools, universities and colleges, our educators and support staff had to rapidly upskill, adapting pedagogy to ensure quality learning opportunities in the most stressful of times, moving to online learning and teaching platforms, as well as staffing school hubs for children of key workers. I asked the minister to join me in recognising the dedication of our educational workforce while also managing their own health and that of their families. Remote learning exposed a digital divide and I welcome this Government's additional investment in providing 40,000 additional digital devices and a new digital learning academy. Our Scottish Government has committed within its first 100 days to continue tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. Prior to the pandemic, progress was being made and I welcome the first instalment of the additional £1 billion Scottish attainment fund to support and accelerate that progress. I have every faith that schools do and will continue to rise to this challenge, but they cannot do it alone as poverty needs to be addressed through social, economic and health policies as well. I asked the minister to ensure that those funds are also used to provide further recovery support to young people with additional support needs, including those that are neurodiverse. Actions, including the special fund of £20 million for a summer support programme, an increase of the school clothing grant, free breakfast and lunches for children up to primary four and then extending that to all primary children, all year round are solid steps towards tackling poverty and 20,000 hungry wanes will testify to that. All educational establishments have a duty to provide leadership that listens to the lived experience of our young people. From the brash over racism to the more subtle but equally harmful microtransgressions and indignities that have suffered, as we develop our young workforce, the education profession needs to ensure equal opportunities within recruitment, retention and promotional prospects for the underrepresented groups. I therefore call on the minister to offer assurances that the recruitment of the new 3,500 teachers and classroom assistants will be reflective of the communities that they represent and serve, the positive impact and benefits of which will be felt throughout society. I am delighted to be part of such a diverse Scottish Parliament, but this is just the start. I look forward to helping to deliver, but as the minister knows, I will not hesitate in pushing the Government further should I feel that they need a bit of encouragement. The bold and exciting education policy agenda of this Government will enable this and future generations to be hopeful and aspirational as we recover. I call Martin Whitfield to be followed by Fulton MacGregor and this is Mr Whitfield's first speech in the chamber. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and it's a great pleasure to speak in this debate on education, and it really is a pleasure to follow the most excellent first speech of Calcob Stuart. It was a selfless first speech that I think speaks highly of her love of her constituency, so it was a pleasure to listen to. As is right, it is the custom. I open with thanks to those voters in the south of Scotland who entrusted their list vote to Labour, but also to those Labour members who entrusted their vote in me for my place on that list. The south of Scotland is a magnificent area. It is home to beauty, history, culture and the people who care for one another. It is an area that is sadly too easily forgotten or overlooked by those in government, and I and my Labour colleagues, Carol Morkan and Colin Smyth, will ensure that that will not happen in this Parliament. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Claudia Beamish, who represented the south of Scotland from 2016 until this year's election. Claudia was a true force in this Parliament. In 2016, she moved the First Amendment to ban fracking, and only this year she reminded the Government that they did not go far enough to tackle fuel poverty, to tackle energy efficiency or create enough skilled green jobs. Her work on climate change and her passion for caring for people and the planet will be remembered, and I can assure her that I and my Labour colleagues will continue to demand the same and indeed more from the Government. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Ian Gray on his retirement as a constituency MSP for East Lothian. He was first elected to the Scottish Parliament for East Lothian in 2007 and re-elected in 2011 and again in 2016. In his time, he was Labour leader of Scotland, held four ministerial posts, was convener of the Public Audit Committee and he was also shadow cabinet secretary for finance and lastly education skills and science. I owe much to Ian and I believe that he fulfilled the adage of John F. Kennedy that one man can make a difference and every man should try. Ian more than tried. He made a difference to East Lothian, he made a difference to Scotland and he made a difference to people. But I need to turn to Covid. That subject that has touched everybody around the world, far too many people, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, partners have died and we will mourn this loss and we rightly thank those who helped, who worked in the critical jobs, who volunteered, who went the extra mile, who walked the extra step. We applauded them and we put up posters, but going forward we must not forget those individuals need our support in return, support in the form of safer employment, better wages, better houses, better physical and mental health support. But I would like to spend a few minutes in this, my first speech, to talk about those who will bear the memory of Covid, the longest, those that are youngest in our society. As a primary school teacher, I spoke to my class about how in the future they will be asked as adults to recall the events of now. They will be asked by future generations to talk about lockdown, to talk about homeschooling, to talk about social distancing, face masks and to talk about the loss. It will fall to them to give the human remembrance, the emotion, the empathy to the pictures, the news reports, books and probable films. And just as teachers today ask those who lived through the war to tell young people what it was like, this will fall to those that are today young, the ones who are told that the virus won't affect them as badly, the ones who are told to go back to school, the ones who are told to socially distance, the ones who are told to bubble in school but play with who you want outside. And when I have chatted to those ones, what they've said is what they really want is to be listened to. Listen to about what scares them. Can I bring virus home to the family? What's my future going to be? What are you leaving me? Listen to about their ideas. This is how we can get more state school children into university. This is how the climate emergency can be combated. This is how I feel about exams. Listen to so that they know that we understand their lives. As Stephen Covey, the American educationist said, the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply. As politicians, we frequently rush to be photographed with our young people. We meet them at climate rallies. We support their campaigns. But I believe our young have the right to be heard and considered. And we would do well in this place to remember that. As article 12 says, every child has the right to express their views on matters and how it affects them and for those views to be taken into consideration. For those views to be taken into consideration. Not just listen to. So today, to the young people, I repeat an assurance I have tried to adhere to all my adult life. I will listen. Not just as happened so frequently as a tick box exercise in consultation, as part of making the decision makers feel good that they spoke to some young people, but listen to so that their views are considered. As a step to doing something, as an integral part of the solution, as a foundation of an idea from today to make tomorrow better. And to Ben, who emailed me. Yes, I will hold those who have put you through exams by any other name to account. I know you live in a society where your grades are the most crucial thing on what your future holds. But let me quote a little bit of Ben's email. I apologise for how long and wordy this email has been. I find that I say quite a lot when I'm passionate about the topic, but I really hope you can understand where I'm coming from with this and that you are able to do something so that progress can be made into changing Scotland's education system for the better. A young person who knows the problem, but he does not seek recourse for himself, but for other young people. I'm reminded of Donald Joe when he said about this place, this is about more than our politics and our laws. This is about who we are and how we carry ourselves. For our young people, this is about more than politics and our laws. This is about the respect that we must have for our young people. Before I call the next speaker, colleagues will wish to be aware that we have a fair amount of time in hand, plenty of time for interventions. I call Fulton MacGregor to be followed by Brian Whittle. I take this opportunity to welcome you and your two new colleagues to your new role. As this is my first speech since the election, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my campaign team, activists and, of course, my family. I also want to thank my constituents for again putting their faith in me. I'll say to them that I'll never take for granted that faith and trust have put in me, and I'll always strive to be your voice here. That's why I'll be doing today what I left off doing last term and using much of my time today to raise issues that my constituents in Colbridge and Christon have brought to me. I welcome the motion that has been brought forward by the Scottish Government. There's no doubt, I think, that we're all agreed today that young people have borne the brunt of this pandemic and it's on their shoulders that the restrictions have weighed most heavily. The nearly 15 months in counting, we must remember, is a greater proportion of their lives than it is for us as adults. I'll tell a wee personal story about my youngest son, who roughly about half of his life he spent in restrictions. It seems pre-verbal before the pandemic struck. His understanding of the virus is something that I find quite fascinating. Every night, he'll speak to me before going to sleep to say, Daddy, I like the virus. I'll say, why do you like the virus? He says, because it now lets me go in Grandin Grandad's house, and that's his understanding of it. Obviously, his time goes on will work through these things, but I've heard other speakers, including the previous speaker there, just talk about the impact on our young people, and I can certainly see that. Of course, the other major issue is that it's exasperated the poverty-related attainment gap. During the recent election campaign, I was proud to stand on the manifesto commitments that we had that will help to address the gap and build on working the work that was done in the last term from the previous cabinet secretary. Of course, we've already spoken about free school meals for all primary pupils and free laptops to reduce the digital inequality and increase access. I look very much forward to those being rolled out in my constituency of co-bridge and crisis, where I think it will be very, very beneficial. The approach that we build back has to be more than an academic one. I don't like the talk or the words used of catching up or misgenerations. I do feel that it's derogatory. I'm sure that it's not meant that way, but I feel that it is derogatory to our young people and to our teachers who have quite bluntly worked their socks off. What I think that our young people need is emotional support to make sense of the year that they've been through, and I'm glad that that has also been reflected in the cabinet secretary's statement through things such as the summer programme, helping children and families to re-correct. I'd start with making investment in outdoor playparks, as an example. On that point, I think that outdoor education is going to be more crucial than ever if that was possible in the post-pandemic period. I think that there's real potential here for the Government and this Parliament to be innovative in how we do this. I was pleased just today to sign up to a cross-party group that's in the process of being formed on outdoor education, spearheaded by Liz Smith, who I think has been a fantastic advocate in this particular area. I've also been really pleased to hear about investment in more teaching staff, and I think that that's very welcome as we build back. It's important that we continue to recognise that teaching can be a challenging job, and sometimes teachers can be in danger. I raised that today because I had a conversation on my telephone surgery with a teacher from my constituency last night who reports that she's had violence directed at her both inside and outside of school, to the point that she's now considering quitting a very capable teacher by all accounts well-liked by her students. She feels that she has been supported by her school, but there's only so much that her management and the police can do. I know that Alex Rowley did raise this at FMQs last week, and I wanted to let the cabinet secretary know that I will be writing to her directly about the details of this case, and any further support that our office or advice that our office can provide will be much appreciated. In composure, I want to finish on an issue that has very much dominated my mailbox this week, and that is one of nursery graduations. My parents started to get in touch with me at the end of last week saying that they had been advised by the council that they would not be allowed to attend these significant milestone events, but what was striking about this was that the many early learning providers had already made arrangements for these to be outside, staggered groups, distance between parents in masks available, all sensible mitigations that have become used to to keep everyone safe. Those who have written to me are rightly baffled. How is this radically different from standing outside at young children's football, for example, with the school gates even, or attending hospitality and events? No-one is saying that those events should be unsafe, and there are different types of transition events. I think that there is a mix-up of those events. For example, visiting a new school or centre is likely more difficult to make safe, but an outdoor nursery graduation is surely manageable safely, and centres that are spoken to want to do that for their kids. Our kids have lost so much this year. We have all noticed that some of that could not be helped, but as we build back, we should ensure that we can do what we can to make sure that our children are truly at the heart of our recovery. I know that the guidance is loose, and some local authorities are allowing outside graduations with mitigations, and others are not. However, if there is something that the Government can do here at Assets that is considered by the Minister perhaps to reflect on this and summing up if he is able. That might seem like a small thing, but it is not to the hundreds of children and their families who have contacted me and other elected members—I know that Neil Gray, for example, has also had a lot of contact. It is an opportunity to show that we do not just want to talk about putting our children first, but we will take the steps to ensure that they are, even if we need to pause something somewhere else for adults in order to make sure that we are all safe. Kids having a memorable graduation can share with their parents and guardians as they move to the next stage of their lives, of their school lives, as one of those. I support the Government motion today. Thank you, Presiding Officer. May I join others in welcoming you to a new role? I also take this opportunity to congratulate all the members who are making their first speeches today, and I think that the quality of the speeches that we heard certainly bodes well for an interesting five years. I declare that, before I start my speech, I have a daughter who is a secondary school teacher. Just to be thorough, I also have a daughter who transitioned from primary seven into secondary school during the Covid lockdown. I am delighted to be back again in the chamber on debating education. As you know, Presiding Officer, it is a subject that I think links directly into many portfolios, especially into my previous health portfolio. I have often said that education is a solution to health and welfare issues. Without doubt, the past 15 months have been incredibly difficult for so many. None more so than our children, our teachers and parents, and those who are trying to navigate their way through higher education. There have been those who have gone above and beyond during the pandemic, and none more so than our teachers. However, I have to say that the support offered to teachers pre-pandemic, let alone during the pandemic, I think falls hopefully short of where it should be, and this is from a Government who declared at the start of the last term that education was their number one priority. We start this recovery from a position where there are 1,700 less teachers than when the SNP came to power, and many of them that are currently working are on temporary contracts. We have a situation in which schools are far from being back to a normal curriculum with essential wellbeing subjects such as sport, art, drama and music not available during normal school hours, let alone in extracurricular settings. We have an outdoor education system that, quite frankly, is on its knees saying that there is a real possibility that 40 per cent of the essential education centres will not reopen. That is important because the first priority in our education system must be the physical and mental wellbeing of our pupils. How can we expect them to catch back up with their missed education if they are struggling with anxiety and poor mental health? Those subjects that I have talked about are really key in delivering positive mental health. Here is the thing, Presiding Officer. No assessment done while experiencing mental health distress surely can have any value. Where is the SNP plan to help those increasing numbers of pupils suffering from poor mental health? We know that over 2,000 children are now waiting more than a year for treatment. How can pupils attain under those circumstances? I spoke to a teacher who is concerned that the unprecedented number of pupils presenting with poor mental health was so high that the fear was that they would miss a sign that could lead to a tragedy. This is a dreadful cloud for teachers to have to work under, so mental health provision must be a prerequisite to the educational recovery. I would ask the minister, Jamie Hepburn, to tell the chamber what work he is doing with the health portfolio to deliver on that. Others in this debate have talked about the continual issues with assessment programme and the inequality of that system. I listened to an education expert, Lindsey Paterson, on Radio Scotland this week, and he was scathing in his condemnation of the system that has been developed by the Scottish Government and the SQA. It is fundamentally unfair. Whether you like the system of exams or not, pupils at least recognise that we are all being evaluated under the same criteria irrespective of where they lived in the country. However, currently, there are those who will sit the assessments later than others, who will have seen the papers beforehand. There is no wonder that anxiety is so high. I do not think that the SNP has learned from last year. What I really want to discuss is the opportunity that we have here to reset Scotland's education system to deliver on the skills and opportunities that are based on future need. We have a net zero target set for 2045, so the importance of delivering on the economics of environment and climate change should be a priority here. We should have an educational system that has the green economy embedded in it, but an examination that we find is not the case. Scotland has some of the best wind resource in the world, for example, but not in the development of the technology, just investment in those turbines. Turbines that are imported, the servicing skill of those wind turbines is imported far too often as well. Why are we not leading the world in the development and manufacture of this kind of technology? Given the long and celebrated heritage that Scotland has in engineering, how can the Scottish Government justify importing so much of the green energy technology and skills needed to hit that net zero 2045 target? Why are our schools and colleges not properly resourced to allow that development of those skills? The SCDI report in 2021 is manifesto for green growth notes that the shortage in green skills presents the biggest challenge to green growth. Engineering apprenticeships in my region are readily available, but there is a shortage of take-up requiring companies to search overseas to fill apprenticeship places. Why do our pupils feel they cannot fulfil these important roles? In health, when my middle daughter applied to training midwifery, there were over 400 applications for 44 places. Applications outstripped places 10-fold, yet we have a shortage of midwives. The same can be said for nurses and physios and many other AHPs and OHPs. We have a shortage of doctors, yet we have mailbags telling us that straight A students are unable to secure a place in medical school because the Scottish Government has a cap on Scottish student places in medical schools. Mental health practitioners are in demand, yet the opportunities for our pupils to train in this field are limited. The same issue applies to the digital software and cyberspace, as was said by Mr Marra, with the lack of teachers in IT. We have a continual issue with a lack of females studying the same subject. In short, we are not resourcing our education system to deliver on future technologies and jobs. In the last term, the SNP, as I said, put education as their main priority and then promptly dropped their education bill from the programme. That would have been an opportunity to reset our education system for the future and develop the skills and resource to deliver on our children's ambitions. Instead, we have a teacher shortage, we have an underfunded FE sector, and we have a Scottish Government seemingly with the inability to join the dots up and link future job demands with our educational output. As we map our recovery programme, surely education has to mirror the job requirements of the future, and we have to make sure that the resources are there to match that. It is about time that education finally was made the priority of this Government. I thank my campaign team and the people of Midlothian, South Tweeddale and Lauderdale for returning me with an increased majority. I do not think that anyone needs to tell anyone in here the value of a good state education, least of all me. I was interested in your speech. I kind of lost heart when you got on to the union, but we will dispute that in a civilised fashion as the months go on. This is not a competition with Gonswell, but decades ago—I am not asking you to count them—I was the oldest child of five living in a council house. I was the first girl to stay on at school beyond 15. In those days, girls left at 15 get married at 18 and did not do any of those things. The first to attend university. A couple of degrees later, and two previous professions as a secondary teacher and then as a solicitor, I, like others in here, value state education from early years through to university. I want to see that for other people. Thankfully—I do not always commend the Government on everything, but I will commend them for 1140 hours of early years education. I think that university or school meals, which will be coming up in primary, is part of the educational process and no tuition fees. Those are all good interventions. It is a long time since I was a secondary teacher, and I would dare to say that I know what that job now entails, even with two sisters, a former primary teacher and a niece now as a deputy head. However, they have delivered, during the tough lockdown days, online tutoring, turned up at family homes with paperwork. They are now back in our schools, lateral flu testing, delivering further charges. Sometimes with their class, we need the whole school shut on occasion because of the invasive virus. They are on the front line. We rightly applauded our front line social and healthcare staff, and today, in this debate with our contributions, I know that we will all applaud all in our schools, the teachers, the support staff, all who work in each individual and individualistic school community. Parents, grandparents and carers, too, stoically became tutors, and our thanks to them. However, it hardly needs saying that there is no doubt that this whole epidemic and its fall-out has impacted on the wellbeing of Scotland's pupil staff and the wider community and, indeed, ourselves—perhaps more than we yet know. Indeed, I say to Oliver Mundell, who failed to take my intervention big mistake. He completely avoided the impact and cited the impact of Covid on public services over this one and a half years. I am not saying that Governments do not make mistakes, but at least he could have mentioned the impact. I want to go back and focus on the staff. Can I ask what support he has been given to staff, given the stresses that they have had and continue to cope with? What issues on this have the various professional bodies raised with the Cabinet Secretary? We are asking them to do a lot. We have to maintain their wellbeing. Turning to our children, for whom face masks others have mentioned this have become the norm, friends were strangers and sitting at a computer was the closest for a long time. They came to human interaction outwith their own household unit. Each pupil having a differing experience, whether they had full-time access to the internet, especially in the early days, whether they had space at home in which to work and concentrate, whether adults in the household, through no fault of their own, had time to dedicate to them. I note that funding has been provided to local authorities to assist with mental health or wellbeing fall-out for our pupils. I believe in local democracy, but can I ask if there will be an audit of how the councils have utilised the ring-fenced funding to measure the outcomes? Additionally, how has that funding been applied to vulnerable children and separately children with additional learning needs? I am going to digress slightly because I did not get my FMQ, but sadly in practically every walk of life there is at least one bad apple. On that note, cabinet secretary, I might be aware that children in my constituency with additional needs were subject to sustained abuse by their teacher. That was denied by the Scottish Borders Council years ago when it claimed that an independent inquiry had exonerated her. Only the subsequent and recent criminal prosecution with a conviction into allia of serious assault has pushed the council, with pressure from myself as the local MSP, to pursue yet another independent inquiry. Can I ask if there is a role for the cabinet secretary of her office to monitor that? You will appraise it why the parents and carers of the affected children are sceptical back to the script. Mr Whittle, of course, because you will take an intervention from me next, won't you? Brian Whittle? I would never dare not to, as you know, Ms Graham. On your tangential, I am very, very interested in that, because I have similar issues with that. I wonder whether your constituents have experienced the same as my constituents in the destruction of evidence or keeping evidence that the council has led to the issues that you discussed. I am very glad that Mr Whittle has said that there are others in the chamber who have issues within their own patches. We should get together and talk about this, because quite often parents are overwhelmed by authorities saying that there is nothing to see here, and it really should not mean that a politician has to step in. I mention myself not as a pat in the back because I am angry that the system let them down for years, and, as I said, criminal prosecution is the only thing that brought the council to some extent to boot, yet to happen. Can I move on to something else? I would have reservations about this, both on another tack. I know that there are suggestions south of the border that the school day be extended to allow pupils to so-called catch up. We would agree with Fulton MacGregor that it is a very unfortunate and helpful term. I would have reservations about this from the staffing implications for both the wellbeing of the staff and the pupils. Children in mind, you spend long enough in school as it is, and it is so much more than about the basics or academic learning and exams. It is about socialising, and dare I say, having it fun, probably not at the expense of the class teacher, I wouldn't encourage that. No, thank you. That was unrehearsed. Unrehearsed, Mr Mundell, wasn't it? I would add, if the school week or day is to be extended, I would have suggested, as I did in the last session, that we look at summer schooling, sports, music, gardening, simply playing, that it could do more for the health and wellbeing of our children than keeping them in the four walls of a classroom for extra hours. I please that the Cabinet Secretary mention summer activity programme. I would like to know more about that. I begin to commend Mr Whittle—this is not a team effort—but he constantly goes about the importance of activity for mental wellbeing and educational attainment, and he is absolutely right, and I support him in that. Incidentally, as I said, not only do those activities support learning, but outside it is more Covid transmission-resistant. It might also provide employment for outdoor activity businesses, which lost revenue during lockdown, and continuing and offering additional transport opportunities and revenue for local bus services that we have got things on late tonight. Is the Government looking at this as a possibility? Now, there are no easy solutions for recovery for Scotland's pupils from nursery through to tertiary learning, and I have skimmed across a very wide surface by a return to where I began. The most valuable asset in a school, or indeed a nursery, is the teaching staff, with the exception of the aforementioned bad apple, and those who support them. They have been asked to do so much over these months, and they have delivered. My last word in this debate is to extend, on behalf of my constituents, in Midlothian, South Tweedill and Lauderdale, my sincere thanks for all that they have done and continue to do in educating, in the very broadest sense, those in their charge. I call Claire Baker to be followed by Jim Fairlie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This has been a broad debate, and there are many areas of agreement, but I share the concerns that have been raised over this year's exam programme, but there are a few key issues that I would like to focus on this afternoon. First, I want to raise the issue of deferral of primary 1 for children who are four and a half years old. The cabinet secretary will know that the legislation was changed in the previous session of Parliament after sustained campaigning and evidence from give them time campaign. This is to be welcome, but I make a plea to the Government today to bring forward the implementation period. The timescale is currently 2023 for full introduction. This was to allow for pilots and costings for local government's delivery. However, there are strong arguments for the need to bring this forward, not least given the past year that we have had in education. Although much of the focus this afternoon has been on schools, early years education has also been significantly impacted. While nurseries and early years centres have worked hard to keep in touch with families and children and provide stimulus and engagement, young children have missed out so much on socialisation and learning opportunities. Those who are due to start school at four and a half are already disadvantaged by only having a year and a half of nursery provision rather than the full two years. The isolation of the past few months has strengthened the argument that parents should have the right to continue with a funded nursery place that they believe is in the interests of their child. Implementation of this must be brought forward. The argument about nursery provision matching the parent's right to choose to start formal education once the child is five has been one. This is now about when that right is introduced. I cannot understand why the five local authorities chosen to be pilots of the programme are the ones who already grant 100 per cent of their applications. Meanwhile, I have constituents across my region who have been denied a nursery place and are even being charged for a nursery place in a local authority provision. That seems ridiculous when the policy is on the brink of change and the principal has already been accepted. Edinburgh Council has recently announced that it will grant all requests. The Government needs to stop delaying the introduction of this policy and implement the change now so that the 2021 intake can take advantage of that change. In the last session of Parliament, I was one of the voices that called for an equality audit following concerns about the impact of the lockdown on school education. The first lockdown exacerbated educational inequality, which already existed. Children and young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds faced significant challenges in accessing online resources. Children in need of additional support struggled to get that support remotely or at home, and there was a postcode lottery in the type and frequency of teacher support and learning that was available. The equality audit was published in the last session and looked at the experience up until August 2020 and then did an analysis of certain schools up to November 2020. We have since then had a further period of school closures. We must see a focus on learning for all young people, an intensification of support that is available for learning, and that must be a long-term commitment. The impact of the months of remote learning is broad and we must ensure that the needs of all children and young people are met as education starts to rebuild and recover. We must not accept a lost generation because of the pandemic and investing in our young people's future is key to our recovery. The equality audit showed that learners and better-off families spent 30 per cent more time studying than those in poorer families. The digital divide, access to adequate space and parental support were all factors in the quality of learning. The audit also recognised the impact of intersexuality of poverty-related disadvantage with other disadvantages, such as additional support needs. We all recognise the efforts that were made by teachers, schools and other members who have spoken about that and I would be fully supportive of that, but we cannot deny the educational impact that the past year has had. The second school closures perhaps provided more structured learning as processes were more developed, but that still had a significant impact on the mental health and physical health of children and young people, on the disengagement of too many children and young people who need the structure and the discipline of the school day and the impact of the cancelling of exams. While the impact at the introduction of exam assessments at the last minute will have on children's future is still unknown, it is causing much worry and concern. The audit points towards policies and mitigations, some of which the Government is speaking about introducing, but I would like to see greater clarity on solutions. The report talks about youth work and the role of the third sector, about the need for smaller class sizes, about increased tutoring and one-to-one learning. We need radical solutions, and we need to be innovative to rebuild children's lives and their opportunities. In terms of the exam programme, I would like the Government to commit to a reset guarantee and can they provide any assurances that the impact of Covid-19 will be taken into consideration and assessments. That is an issue that other members have raised this afternoon and would look for clarity for that in the closing. I am concerned that some young people who I think otherwise would have achieved results through school attendance have been unable to perform at the assessments which allowed no-study leave, took part during the school day and often had multiple assessments in different subjects all in the one day. The progress on closing the attainment gap has so far been glacial, and the challenges that we face now, after the experience of the past year, make that even more difficult. It has also become standard in high schools in the last few years that the next academic year would start in June. That is to provide enough time to complete the curriculum before the following year's exams. My understanding is that that is not happening this year, so I would ask what does that mean for students who are sitting exams in 2022 and their ability to complete their coursework. I will close with some comments related to further and higher education and the importance of additional funding support for students. The steps to provide extra funding in relation to the extension of courses is a welcome step, but we must ensure that the approach is equitable across different circumstances and courses. A key source of funding for students and one that is essential for many is the employment that they can get during the summer holidays. We must also make sure that students who would normally work to support their studies are not prevented from continuing their courses as a result of the Covid impact and on their employment opportunities. I know that this is something that the Student Hardship Task Force has been looking at, and I would welcome information from the Government on any plans for tailored support solutions for students this year. I thank the campaign team, who absolutely worked their socks off to make sure that we held the constituency of Persia, South and Cynrosia for the SNP. The efforts of every one of them is and was immense and is greatly appreciated. Previously, the seat has been held very tightly and very ably by the titan of the independence movement, Rosanna Cunningham. Given the 25 years of continuous service that she has given to Persia as an MP and an MSP and to the country as a minister and a cabinet secretary, I think that we all owe her a huge debt of gratitude. In a personal note, I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to her for all her help, her counsel and her friendship, which continues to be invaluable. If you add John Swinney and Pete Wishart, that is an aside. It makes you wonder why they keep calling Perth a Tory toon because it has not been for a very, very long time. I would also like to thank someone else who, much to my shame, I forgot to thank in my election day acceptance speech, and that is my fabulous wife, Ann. She simply makes my ability to do what I need to do possible. I think that we all need a rock and save space in our life and, as undoubtedly, mine. Lastly, I would like to thank the constituents of Persia South and Cynrosia who put me in this place to represent them and the most beautiful, diverse dynamic area of Scotland that I have the pleasure to call my home for my entire life. The constituency is blessed with a food offering in a hospitality sector, which is really hard to beat. Farm shops such as Jamesfield Organic Centre, Lough Leven's Larder and Globeburn Farm Shop give access to the best of local produce, and I have to say that I am very proud to have been the founder of Perth Farmers Market, which helped to establish markets and farm shops such as those mentioned right across the country. The constituency is doubly blessed in having people who can take that produce at the farm gate and turn it into an artistry on a plate. I am immensely proud of my late brother Andy's restaurant in the Glendie Glace Hotel, where Stevie McLaughlin and Dale Dewsbury keep the flame burning very bright in restaurant Andrew Fairlie, still the only two Michelin star restaurant in Scotland. Yet the flip side of that is that we live in a society where there are still folk for whom even the simplest of meals is a struggle to secure. That is why there are charities like Broke Not Broken who have just received the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, the Climate Change Swap Shop and Let Them For All, and that is where they come into their own. But it has been under no illusion for all the brilliant work that these organisations carry out in our community. The need for them is in fact an affront to decency. It is a moral stain in our society that we still need food banks for the working poor and that we still have second-hand recycling shops for people who have found themselves with not so much as cutlery and plates to eat off, let alone a table to sit on, a bed to sleep in or a chair to sit on. So I humbly give my amends thanks to all of these organisations, while it is at the same time pledging to do everything in my power to make them utterly redundant and unneeded. Where our constituents send us here, they do so in the rightful expectation that we come here to this chamber with purpose, and surely that is one purpose that we can all get behind. Presiding Officer, I have taken advantage of the degree of latitude that you allow first-time speakers, but in reality the link between education, homelessness, poverty and poor life chances is real. If the education we give our children and young people does not work for them, their life chances are reduced. School for me was purgatory. I was neither engaged, enthused or given any vision of ambition or what I could achieve. No one tapped into the entrepreneurial thinking that I had, simply because I was not an academic. I had ideas, I had ambition, I had imagination but what I did not have was anyone listening to what those ideas were. My daughters then went to the same school as I did, and when they told me that they were going to be a health promoting school, I took the opportunity to get involved. A health promoting school tackles health holistically, the health of the child both physically and mentally, the health of the facilities, the health of the community in which the school resides, and it includes educators and embraces our community involvement. I got involved with the principal aim of reaching to the youngsters like me, the disengaged and those heading off in their own course. We developed a school garden and grew vegetables and sold it to the Home Economics Department who used that produce to teach cooking, but we then went further. They were taught to understand the value of what they produced by establishing a link to the school palace, selling tickets to a Grand Banquet, where the food was grown, cooked and sold for £30, a ticket by an engaged, vibrant group of young people, some of whom, like me, thought that school was purgatory. Some of them went on to join the hospitality industry, those who did not still develop life skills and critical thinking that stood them in good stead. However, they all learned something. We did that for five years and we improved the project year after year. I have an ambition that every child in my constituency will have learned how to make a pot of soup by the time they leave primary school. That is an idea that I nicked, and I have to be honest about that, for Mike Small from Five Diet. Anyone else who wants to do the same, who wants to get involved with me to help me to make that happen—Claire, we spoke about it before and Liz is not present, so we will catch her later—but Mike is not precious about it. He just wants her kids to get a proper education. I recently visited Cymru primary school, who have joined up with John Castles from the wild hearth bakery in Cymru, and they are growing heritage wheat, which they will harvest and mill, and John is going to teach them the science behind making bread. At Cymru primary school, they have already taught them to make soup. They do it every week and then they go out in the woods for an outdoor learning session with a flask of soup that they made themselves. Those kind of fabulous things are happening right across my constituency and right across Scotland. What I am describing here, in a tiny way, is curriculum for excellence in action. The headteacher of the Cymru primary school tells me that she loves it, because it gives her the freedom and the flexibility to teach her children holistically, based on the principle of delivering enthused, engaged, well-rounded young people who can think critically and practically for themselves, and they do. When I was there, the school eco group brought to my attention that the use of single-use plastic dinner trays are being used to serve them lunch, and they want it stopped. So I put on notice Tayside contracts, I will be in touch, but that is a whole different debate on another day. So to the cabinet secretary I say this, for all the pressure you are going to come under, and you will, for all the howls of protest that are going to come from those benches, and those benches, I would say to you, stick with it, be strong and be bold, because where this country leads right now, others will follow. Our education system is going through a transition, but so are everyone of us. We should all embrace the fact that we are learning new stuff every day, learning never stops. Education is not just about the three R's or academic qualifications. It is about teaching young people who they are, finding the ways that engage their critical thinking, their analysis and their ability to problem solve. It is giving them practical skills to go into society, equipped to take on whatever life is going to throw at them, and let's face it, the last year has thrown something significant at them. And when Scotland takes the decision, which it will, to become an independent country, vibrant thinking, entrepreneurial, ambitious young people will be the engine room of that success, and my purpose for being in this chamber is to help to make sure that that vision becomes a reality. Thank you, Mr Fairlie. That was, of course, your first speech in the chamber. Thank you, too, for taking advantage of the latitude. And I now call Gillian Mackay to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all education staff for their work during the pandemic and for transparency. I have many teachers within both my immediate family and extended family. From changing plans at the drop of a hat to trying to enthuse and engage primary ones through teams, the pressure at times for teachers has been overwhelming, but often they have been the normality in a time of chaos for children and young people, and that should not be underestimated. I'd like to pick up on Claire Baker's points about the Give Them Time campaign. I've had constituents contact me recently regarding deferral refusals despite support for that deferral from education professionals. The worst of that is that those constituents are aware that if they moved into Edinburgh Council the deferral would, in all likelihood, be granted, and it is time to end the postcode lottery for deferrals. As we recover from Covid-19 and attempt to make up some of the lost ground in education, Scotland's colleges will play a central role. For many, colleges are the best way to access and sit higher, which, given the disruption of the last two years of qualifications, more young people than ever before may rely on in the next academic year. They offer vocational courses that prepare people for areas key to the economic recovery or the delivery of policies for which there is broad agreement across the chamber, such as childcare and social care. Those are all reasons why it is so important that college staff are treated with dignity and respect, but for many lecturers and support staff that simply hasn't been the case. Not only throughout the pandemic but for years beforehand. College management, instead of recognising how important the role of a lecturer is, have repeatedly sought to undermine and downgrade them in a crude attempt to cut costs. They have sought to replace lecturers with instructor posts on lower wages, less time for preparation and marking and often without any requirement to have a teaching qualification. Those repeated attacks on the role of lecturers have directly undermined the hard-won progress made by the EIS feeling through negotiations and industrial action over the last decade. Unfortunately, reneging on previous agreements has become all too common a tactic for college management. On far too many occasions, an agreement has been reached between unions and management only for the trade unions to have them to have to take further action simply to get management to actually honour their own deal. Five of the last seven years have seen major industrial action as a result of this. It is no way to run Scottish colleges. One of the key challenges facing this Government is to how to break this cycle. In central Scotland, Fourth Valley College has been at the heart of the on-going dispute. Those are dedicated lecturers who support schools to deliver higher and advanced hires, as well as other vocational courses. At school, my advanced higher biology labs were at the college, as was my sister's higher psychology. We both went on to study those subjects at university and they have had a large impact on our lives. The college supports other local businesses by providing modules and courses for apprentices. When this week we have been discussing economic recovery post-pandemic, we have to recognise how essential those teaching staff are to that. A jobs guarantee for young people that provides progression and professional development within central Scotland will rely on our colleges and within Falkirk specifically, Fourth Valley College. 27 lecturing posts have already been downgraded to instructor assessor posts, which has been challenged by the lecture union. Lecturers have been forced to choose between the downgrading of their position and redundancy. Pre-pandemic, that would have been an outrage, but now forcing people to choose between having a wage and a fundamental change in their terms and conditions with no consultation is callous. This is a fire and rehire practice that SNP MPs at Westminster are rightly campaigning against. So where are the Scottish Government on this? Despite a national agreement on terms and conditions for lecturers having once been agreed, the dispute at Fourth Valley continues. Some progress has been made though and the strike action is currently suspended as the dispute is reviewed. Colleges are public bodies, funded by Government through the Scottish Funding Council. If this Government is serious about its own fair work agenda, why does this funding not come with stricter conditions on issues such as honouring agreements, reach through national bargaining and the prevention of fire and rehire practices? It is clear that governance reform is needed at individual college level and at the national level when it comes to negotiations. For too long, the Scottish Government has appeared content to stick its head in the sand, hoping disputes will resolve themselves. During the election campaign, we heard positive indications from the previous further education minister that the approach might change. For the sake of college staff, students and the economic recovery to which they are essential, I dearly hope that this is the case. I now call Stuart McMillan, who will join us remotely. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I would instead like to congratulate you on your role as Deputy Presiding Officer. I am pleased to speak in this debate. It is clear that there are a few issues to be considered. I am going to focus my comments on three of them. The first one is the present situation facing education, also the alternative certification model. The second is the first 100 days of this new Scottish Government. The third is the then longer term future of education and what this SNP Scottish Government intends to do. I listened to the cabinet secretary yesterday and also today, in addition to MSPs from across the chamber, who raised legitimate questions about the situation facing school students and the exam replacement this year. As a constituency MSP, I know how challenging the situation was last summer, when the results were published and the anger and frustration that then developed. I know that constituents believed that the situation was not acceptable, but I also know that the exam replacement that was brought together in a short space of time was a consequence of the pandemic. One thing that was certainly abundantly clear was the use of an algorithm that appeared to have a negative effect upon less well opportunities like mine. Just because a postcode is less salubrious, it should not mean that children in that area have another impediment to put in their way, as they attempt to learn. The confirmation from the cabinet secretary yesterday when she said that those grades will be based not on historical data or on the use of an algorithm but on what each individual learner has demonstrated that they know, understand and can do through the work on which they have been assessed in school or college. It indicates to me that this valuable lesson from last year has certainly been learned. Clearly, the creation of the National Qualifications 2021 group, established in October 2020, with representatives of teachers, learners and parents working alongside local authorities to the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Government, was the right thing to do. The partnership approach to design this year's arrangements is hugely important and I fully support a partnership approach. I am quite sure that if there was no partnership approach, politicians from across the chamber would be challenging the Scottish Government on a lack of partnership. We hear that all the time, but that challenge would have been correct and supported in the chamber and across the country. The second point that I want to touch upon is that of the first 100 days of this Parliament. I want to ensure that barriers are removed to allow our young people to chance to learn. That is why I was delighted to support the SNP manifesto, which had that the following is key parts of our educational ambitions. There are only some of the excellent initiatives in the manifesto. First of all, to fund councils to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistance by 500 as part of our commitment to 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistance over the parliamentary term. Secondly, the roll-out of the £20 million summer programme of help for pupils, helping children's socialised play and reconnect with children and their families who are able to access activities to help them to recover from the pandemic. I was pleased to see that Inverclyg council announced its holiday hubs on 26 May, which are being delivered by the council in partnership once again with the Scottish Government and also children in Scotland. The third point is that the pay for the first instalment of the expanded £1 billion Scottish attainment fund. Thirdly, the abolition of fees for music and arts education, including instrumental music tuition in schools, and also the new defunding or sustainment. As somebody who learned an instrument as a child, I know how important this activity is, as well as the long-term benefits of playing an instrument actually affords that individual. Abolishing those fees are actually an investment in the future. The fourth point is that the abolition of the core curriculum charges for all pupils enabling children to take the subjects that they want without families having to struggle to meet the costs of resources and materials for practical lessons. That will be transformational for many, many young people. The next point that I want to highlight is the beginning of the planning for provision of tablets and laptops to all school children. I know how important that will be for many communities in my constituency. I agree that the first allocation of funding to councils for the refurbishment of play parks. I would like to highlight however that equipment that is accessible for children with disabilities is just as important for this investment. If some of that equipment has already been installed in Inverclyde, it is first class and I welcome it. I really would like to see more of it, certainly in my constituency but also across the country. Final point in this section concerns children with facial appearance. I was pleased to hear that the cabinet secretary said earlier that the site Scotland briefing and I am sure a reconvened cross-party group provision on payment, which I have chaired for the last two sessions, would be delighted to invite you, cabinet secretary, to attend a meeting in due course to discuss issues about young people and educational and employment challenges. I know that Jamie Hepburn and his previous role did attend the cross-party group in the last session. The final point that I would like to touch upon is that concerning the review into the SQA and Education Scotland that was touched upon by the cabinet secretary earlier. I was pleased to hear what the cabinet secretary said yesterday and reply to my question about her review and fully acknowledge the two OECD reports on other work that is under way. Are a forum based on functioning governance is crucial and I would hope that any public involvement in such a review is robust. Every single MSP wants to improve her education system and quite rightly you should always be looking at improvements. However, I think that it was a bit rich to hear Oliver Mundell's comments about the past world-leading education system. Mr Mundell is a member of the cross-party group in Dyslexia, just like me. He has also heard that some of the same horror stories are how the so-called world-leading education system that he once back quoted earlier failed many, many people over many, many years. I do not believe a system that allowed children to be told that he will amount to nothing is world-leading. I do not believe a system that allowed children with dyslexia to be told that they were stupid is world-leading. I want an educational system that nurtures, not stigmatises, a system that encourages, not castigates. Continual improvement education just as in every other aspect of life is necessary in helping every young people on this journey is a challenge that we must step up to when over the course of the next five years and create sure we will. The last speaker in the open debate will be Sue Webber, and it is Sue Webber's first speech to our Parliament. I am incredibly pleased to be speaking in this education debate today. As a newly elected MSP for the Lothian region, I want to share and reaffirm my commitment to the area that I grew up in, attended school in and went to university too. I have lived and worked here most of my life. I care deeply for this area and I am so very proud to call this my home. I stood for election to be a strong voice for the local communities and those who know me know that I will keep that promise. Deputy Presiding Officer, when I receive correspondence from constituents raising serious concerns about the harrowing experiences that their families are going through, with legitimate concerns about their children's future, I have to make sure that those voices are heard. Just as all our futures hung in the balance during the election campaign, so too do the futures of school children across Scotland. That is because of the alternative certification model, which seems to be shaping up to be yet another exams fiasco for the SNP Government. A constituent of mine contacted me to share his first-hand experience of the debacle of this process and, frankly, it is alarming. Students were initially told that they would not sit exams this year. The SQA then released exam-style papers and schools sent out exam timetables with only four weeks' warning. Parents had no guidance on how to prepare their children academically or emotionally for this in such a short timeframe. Teachers were also under immense pressure to organise these exams as quickly as possible, leading to knock-on effects for other pupils, particularly impacting the pupils' mental health. Being faced with exams under those conditions is unreasonable, especially with the added confusion of being told that at all. They were not exams. The parents of my constituents said this to me. I have never in all of my children's school life been so stressed. I think that it was absolutely beyond any sense and completely unthinking to subject young people to that amount of strain that is still occurring. As parents, we felt utterly disorientated not knowing how to support our children or understand the importance that those tests had. Information was patchy, conflicting and very hard to come by. It has been and continues to be very anxiety-provoking experience for the whole family. Things have felt very disempowering for us because we cannot understand how to support our children and the consequences that those assessments will have. There have also been worrying stories of the content of the exams being freely available to students due to exams being repeated on different days. That was by cheatsheets, WhatsApp groups and other electronic platforms. That has put some children at a huge disadvantage if they were in the first cohort to sit the exams. I feel it a loss to understand how schools and teachers will be able to mark papers fairly and I feel the whole thing is a sham. Those were his words. He carries on. I feel exceptionally angry that grades and futures could be decided on this. He also told me that he had written to the SQA to raise his concerns, but the reply that I was given was firmly projected back at the schools. When I asked the schools, I sensed that they felt gagged to say what they really felt. I have also heard from a teacher in my region and it is the less well-off students that are suffering the most. Many of them are not turning up for the so-called exams out of fear of how they will perform after the shambolic past year of learning has put them at such a disadvantage. It was only recently that the SQA stressed that the national qualification 2021 group had published information on a new service aimed at young people who had suffered the severe disruption of their learning. I have genuine concerns that this will be too little and way too late, given what I have heard and continue to hear from professionals. I have written to the cabinet secretary for education and skills this week to seek answers to all those questions and I will eagerly look forward to her response. The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, which represents 6,500 high school teachers, said that it is not too late for Shirley-Anne Somerville to take action to stop the exams to battle. Unlike the EIS, it was refused a place on the Scottish Government's national qualification group. The SSTA said that 92 per cent of its members had found that the collection of evidence through assessments has created substantial stress and unnecessary pressure on the pupils, and that is what I am hearing from my constituents. Pupils should not be put under so much pressure, that they are unable to sleep, experience feelings of hopelessness and worry that their future, as at the end before it has even begun, should be ashamed. However, the alternative certification model is not the only problem, is it? Let us not forget the attainment gap remains wide open, and there are 1,700 fewer teachers in schools than when the SNP came to power. International PISA results show how Scottish education has gone backwards, and subject choice is narrowing. The SNP has failed to cut class sizes. Time and again, the First Minister has stated that her number one priority is education, and that is what she wants to be judged on. Although I am in no doubt that managing the education of a country during the pandemic has been an extremely difficult task, the pandemic must not be used as an excuse for the state of our education in Scotland. The health and wellbeing and education of our young people should have been one of the priorities throughout the pandemic, but it is quite clear that the young people have been failed by the Scottish Government, not just now, but for each of the 14 years that the SNP has been in power. I am going to change the tone here, and finally I would like to make a very personal comment. I am dedicating my speech today to my most fabulous friend, Kathleen. Deep breath for this bit. We met at university through a shared love of hockey, both on and off the pitch and, laterally, far more fun off the pitch due to injuries and the like. My very dear friend passed away in February. She was a force to be reckoned with, and an immense legal talent that has been taken from us far too soon, this is for you. Like you, many people have put their faith in me to stand up and be a strong voice for the people of the Lothian region, and I will not let you down. Thank you, Ms Weber. We will now move to closing speeches, and I would call Ross Greer to wind up for the greens at six minutes, please, Mr Greer. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome you to your new role. In closing, I would like to sincerely thank the education secretary for bringing this debate to Parliament. I am sure that she knew that it would not be an outbreak of consensus across the chamber, such as the nature of education debates. It will make me equally sure that we will see moments of that in the coming years. I would like to sincerely welcome the commitments that she has made today on the review and reform process for the SQA in Education Scotland. The latter has been rarely mentioned in this debate, but the 2017 education committee report that I mentioned in my opening remarks was similarly critical of Education Scotland's performance. I intend on ending this speech on a more positive note with my hopes for the coming reform process, but in the absence of an education committee, this is likely our final chance to explore in detail the issues with this year's SQA assessments. Before finishing, there are a number of additional points in relation to this process and the SQA more generally that I would wish to make. On the issue of transparency at the authority, as raised by Daniel Johnson, I want to raise the question of the SQA's international business activities. I have investigated these for some years, as has the journalist Gordon Blackstock. We consistently found that, where we could actually find available information, human rights checks were weak and an afterthought or functionally non-existent. Our work led the SQA to conduct a review and then withdraw from a number of countries with shocking human rights records, which I certainly welcome, but there is a wider question that the cabinet secretary asked to consider in her review. That is whether the exam's authority's aspiration to be self-financing through this business activity is appropriate or whether it diverts the efforts of senior staff to the detriment of the SQA's co-responsibilities. I genuinely have a fixed view on that and I welcome the opportunity to tease out those issues. In Martin Whitfield's excellent contribution, he explained precisely the difference between the tick box performance of consultation with young people and genuinely listening to and empowering them. Doing that right requires an understanding of power dynamics. As Cameron Gara MSYP has explained, his simply being present on the national qualifications group and in their meetings did not mean that young people were being heard. What really concerns me is that the SQA and others consider Cameron's experience to be a successful example of youth participation, despite the fact that he categorically told them that that was not the case. That demonstrates the need for the upcoming review to consider not just structural and remit and organisational changes but cultural changes in our education system. I thank Ross Kerr for the chance to say my views on that. I have listened very carefully to what he has said about his experiences on the NQ21 group. It is very different from what we have heard from Serg from the Scottish Youth Parliament representative there. I am determined to make sure that although we have not, in his view, listened to him so far, we need to make sure that we change that, and we need to make sure that we do that better in the future with every opportunity. I am determined to take that forward, and I look forward to working with him to do that and to see what we can do. Ross Greer. I thank the cabinet secretary for that intervention. I have similarly heard from Liam Fylew of the MSYP on Serg that his experience has been a much more participative one. I think that looking at those contrasting experiences is the right place to start off with. Where we are left now, three weeks before the end of term, is with a system based on demonstrated attainment in a year in which it has been more difficult than ever for young people to demonstrate that attainment. That was infuriatingly foreseeable. Here is a quote from the review conducted in the autumn by Mark Priestley and Marina Shapira. The SQA proposals appear to be premised on an assumption that the examinations in 2021 will proceed as planned. That is by no means a given. There seems to be little consideration of the need to create a robust evidence base in the event that exams are not possible. Months later, in January of this year, I asked the SQA whether it had a scenario plan for a period of school closures and the impact that that would have on their certification model. The only conclusion that I could draw based on the evidence that it provided and what the Priestley review had already told us was that it failed to take into account the impact that prolonged school closures would have on a system based on demonstrated attainment, i.e. evidence that pupils could largely only produce in school under those moderated conditions. That takes us to the point that Mr Witfield and I discussed earlier. The certification model is based on pupils' ability to produce evidence in a school year, where teachers spent the first four months not knowing what evidence the SQA would require of their students in their subject and the next three months, with everyone at home learning remotely and largely unable to produce that evidence. One area in which I agree with the Government is that historical exam data for a school should not be used to moderate pupils' grades. However, as the cabinet secretary reassured us yesterday that that would not be the case nationally, Education Scotland published a report confirming that most local authorities are already doing it, so I would appreciate if the Government could indicate what they and the SQA will be doing to engage with local authorities who are using historic exam data for internal moderation purposes. Unlike last year, reversing any egregious moderation once it takes place will not be a simple case of swapping one data set for another at national level. There are two final points I want to make in relation to the appeals process. The first is again a question that I would appreciate the Government addressing about why some students are still waiting on a decision from their 2020 appeals. To my understanding, that was sitting on the previous education secretary's desk and ultimately required a decision from him, so I presume that it is being passed on to the new cabinet secretary unresolved and we would appreciate an update. My final concern, you will be glad to hear, is with the SQA's capacity to process appeals in a timely manner. That was an issue of concern for the education committee last year, so I would appreciate if the Government could confirm what capacity the SQA has put in place to process this year's appeals on a timescale that will not disrupt the admission process for colleges or universities. I said that it was going to turn to more positive things, Presiding Officer, but I am almost out of time, so I will have to be very briefly positive, which is a presbyty and probably suits me. I think that the OECD report and the conclusions that I hope it comes out with are a unique opportunity for reform in Scottish education, particularly in our exams and assessment system. It is the one piece of the puzzle that did not fundamentally change when everything else did with the introduction of curriculum for excellence. I am excited, and I do not comment it with a fixed view, although I think that most members would know what direction of travel I would prefer. There is one additional point that I want to make, and it is about where we go next for young people with additional support needs. Co-cub stear's brilliant contribution made it clear that for all the young people across Scotland with additional needs that are not being met, that simply does not need to be the case. I look forward to working with members across the chamber to take forward what has come out of the Morgan review, what will come out of the review for co-ordinated support plans and to genuinely make sure that every young person's voice is heard in this process, and with that I am certainly out of time, so thank you. Thank you, Mr Greer. There was time given and new for the intervention. I would now call on Michael Marra to wind up for Labour. Up to eight minutes, please, Mr Marra. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to start by saying that Labour wishes to put on record our thanks to the full education workforce of teachers, support staff, lecturers and officials who have performed, we believe, a series of minor miracles in what are truly unprecedented circumstances, dealing with policy missteps and a critical absence of national leadership, but a frankly incredibly difficult situation. I am grateful thanks to you all. I think that the inept homeschoolers like myself have a renewed admiration for your skills and dedication. Reflecting on that in the speech of one teacher, Martin Whitfield, I thought that it was a very powerful invocation of the power of listening. I want to reflect a little bit on the power of listening today as I close this debate for Labour. I know that Jackie Dunbar and Cookab Stewart reflected on the service of teachers through the process and what we have been through. I met a group of teachers just this very morning. It is pretty clear that they are absolutely exhausted from what they have gone through over the past year and the support that they have given to all our children and young people. We need to make sure that, when we address what we do next, they are focused on a comeback rather than catch-up. We support them in building their mental health and resilience, and they have done so for our children. We need to afford them that opportunity, too. Beatrice Wishart, who came in remotely, agreed on the issues of service of teachers. She raised that very important point about the transparency of the meetings between ministers and the SQA. The new education minister has said that she values transparency. I think that, in her own meetings, it would be good to reflect on that, and we can anticipate that there will be no such unminative meetings taking place in the future. The minister, in her pledge to reform the SQA and to review their role, has pledged that transparency as well. I want to come to the green amendment that is in front of us. There are 100 practical challenges arising from the Scottish Government's alternative assessment model for appeals this year. Unfortunately, a lot of that can be summed up in what I think was some deeply confused language from the First Minister at FMQs today. She said that no historical data will be used in the process, but it will, as it will inform the SQA's engagement with schools during moderation. Ross Greer touched on some of the issues. She said that there is already a process that allows for exceptional personal circumstances, but that is limited to the collection of evidence and not the impact that those circumstances have had on performance. She said that the Government has listened to and engaged with young people, but the Children's Commissioner and the Scottish Youth Parliament are pretty clear that they do not believe that that is the case. Again, I think that Martin Whitfield's reflections on that and the difference between frankly saying that you are listening and actually listening are two very different things. So there is no doubt that there is a catalogue of concerns that exist around this year's process. I have continued to receive emails as the day has gone on today with issues about some teachers being asked to work for quotas, for grades, of different schools with different internal cut-off dates for evidence to be generated, schools conducting repeat assessments, and of extreme pressure on pupils to produce evidence that can be used. None of that is the fault of teachers, let's be clear, young people or schools, but the fault of the process and the Government that has put it in place. So I believe that actually the position that we have reached is that we have more questions now about this appeals process than frankly the glossy booklet produced by the SQA are answering. We need to see how this is going to work. What modelling has been done on the demand for appeals arise from 2 to 3 per cent up to perhaps 10 per cent would see an avalanche of work, and that is not the case about marking standardised assessments across the country. There are a thousand different practices, many, many different ways that that evidence has been collated and produced, so it is not, for those of us who have marked exam scripts, it is not the same as doing those things by road. It is an incredibly difficult and challenging issue and I think that some of those issues about capacity have been raised in the debate and will have to be dealt with. So it is clear that this appeals process will do nothing to address the inequity in the process of papers that are shared online. Some children sit in the same multiple exams and nothing to deal with mental health issues, so whoever touched on those issues in her contribution. I was struck by Jim Verly's discussion about the holistic vision of the child and the education that is required on that and mental health and consideration for that mental health will play an absolutely key role in that. That is why we think that there are still very serious considerations about this issue. If I can turn quickly to the issue of exceptional circumstances and I want to talk about Ellie. Ellie lost her mother very suddenly in March of this year. She was initially promised by this Government that no exams would be sat. There was no evidence available on her performance prior to her bereavement in March due to lockdown. She found herself in the absence of any other available process forced to undertake examinations having just lost her mother. So her lost education time has been exacerbated by grief and loss and her performance quite clearly has not been what it could have been. The appeals process as it stands does nothing for her, absolutely nothing, and there are so, so many like her. This process makes no allowance for exceptional circumstances in a time where all of our circumstances are exceptional. But I would say that Ellie is more exceptional than many. Ellie is watching this debate today and I would ask that we might listen to her. Policy folk like to speak about getting it right for every child. I think that we may want to consider whether that is actually happening. I would say that we should listen to some of these voices highlighted by the Children's Commissioner today. In verity, some friends are getting reset periods. We are not having resets at our schools so it will be so much harder to get the percentage we will need. Anya, young people in December unfortunately let their guard down due to the announcement of exam cancellations and were left panicking when March came and they were informed that they would need to sit formal assessments. Liam, why are we here now? Why didn't anyone listen? Powerful voices from the children who are going to be affected by this. I accept that the situation has not been caused by the cabinet secretary but it does sit with her now to try and deal with it. I believe that she has the will to do so, so I hope that she does. One way to do that would be to back the Green amendment today. I hope that the Government would vote accordingly. I want to make quick mention of some other issues. We on Labour believe that we need a transitions bill when we talk about the forthcoming agenda for education. We want to for a disabled people and their transitions between different points in school. I would like to have the opportunity to engage with the minister on those issues. We need the route map on social distancing in HEIs. It is quite clear that many members have raised those issues. On Labour's amendment, we have talked about a national tutoring scheme. Claire Baker spoke powerfully on the issue of inequality and Christine Grahame spoke about the need to track how spending that is being invested in the area is being allocated and the difference that that is making. We can do more of the right things and stop doing things that are not working. That is critical as we deal with the crisis of this scale. We are advocating a reset guarantee. I have spoken to the minister already about that but we do believe that it will make good on many of the impacts that were so eloquently explored by Fulton MacGregor and his contribution. The need to address that and a reset guarantee can give hope to many of the young people's voices that we want to be listening to. We need a no detriment policy that is put in place for access to FE and HE. Gillian Mackay spoke about those issues in relation to further education. I have raised those issues directly with the minister but we need to deal with that to make sure that we can get that access accordingly. Ross Graf, if you are just coming up to your time, I am being generous. I need to make a brief apology to Mr Marra because the Greens will be abstaining on the Labour amendment, not because we do not support it but because I have made a personal commitment to young people who will need to use an exceptional circumstances provision and there is an issue of preemption with this afternoon's amendments. Mr Marra and I tried to resolve that earlier on and fortunately it was not allowed, so I am just apologising on behalf of the Greens to the Labour benches. We do support their amendment but we... I think that we get the juice. Mr Marra, could we bring your remarks to a close please? Apology accepted. I commend Labour's amendment and the many great speeches that we have heard today in this debate. I think that there is no limit to Labour's ambition for young people in this country. We do have a specific crisis that is in front of us right now and that has to be dealt with. I think that a vote that we take in the next hour can help young people to deal with that. Thank you Mr Marra. I now call on Megan Gallacher to wind up for the Conservatives. Up to 10 minutes please Ms Gallacher. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer and I welcome you to your role. Before I go on to make some remarks to summarise the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all members who made their first speech in the chamber today. I was in the hot seat last week and can relate to the nerves and the excitement that they may have felt when entering the chamber this afternoon. Deputy Presiding Officer, if I may, I would like to mention some of the excellent contributions. Pam Gossel, the first Indian Sikh women elected to the Scottish Parliament. It is an honour to be able to call her not just my colleague but my friend. Pam's speech not only gives her young people hope but inspires those who have been told that when they can't do something, they can. There is no wrong path. Coco Stewart, who has also made history by making her maiden speech today. Although we may differ on the constitution, I look forward to debating and working with you over the next five years. Martyn Whitfield, who raised the impact of Covid and the impact that it will have on our young people, was the passion and delivery of his speech that really brings home the looming lost Covid generation if we do not act now. I was one of those young people before entering the world of politics and it is a breath of fresh air to hear that politicians will listen to the views of our young people. My friend Sue Webber, who has already made her mark in the Scottish Parliament with robust questioning and holding the Scottish Government to account, I know that she will do her friend Cath Proud as she does those that she represents as a councillor and now an MSP for the Lothian region, and also to Jackie Dunbar and Jim Fairlie for their excellent contributions. Deputy Presiding Officer, we need action, not words, from this SNP-led Scottish Government. When Nicola Sturgeon stood in this chamber and made the promise that education would be her Government's number one priority, many people believed her. Today, the cabinet secretary reiterated the Scottish Government's commitment back in 2015 to make sure that our young people will have the best start in life—something that we can all unite behind. However, we are now 14 years down the line and Scotland is either regressed or stayed stagnant when it comes to our education standards and performance. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary has inherited over a decade of failures, however it is simply not good enough to state that the Scottish Government will seek to make improvements when it comes to education. Although I am a new MSP, my colleagues have heard those promises before, and this Government has never delivered them. What we can all agree on is that our young people have been detrimentally impacted by the pandemic, and they have had to adapt to learning outside of the classroom. We commend the extraordinary work done by university, college, schools, nurseries and childcare staff over the last year to maintain education and childcare. However, that is not enough. As we move into the recovery phase, we need to assure young people that those who work in the education sector know how to deliver on the promises that are made in this Parliament, and those will be delivered. Although the pandemic has come with its own unique set of education-related challenges that the Scottish Government has had to navigate, there is no escaping the fact that our education system was in a shambolic state before lockdown began in March last year. Let us take a look at the Scottish Government's record over the past 14 years. There are now 1,700 fewer teachers than there were in 2007. That was the same year that the SNP formed its first administration. We have yet to see smaller classroom sizes for primary 1 to 3. That was a 2007 manifesto promise by the SNP, which is yet to be fully implemented and by the looks of things that have stopped trying. Our education standards have declined because of the SNP mismanagement. As my colleague pointed out earlier, the international PISA study shows that Scotland's education system has gone backwards. We are now no longer recognised as a world leader in education. What happened to the ambition of this Government is making sure that our young people received the best possible education. Then there is subject choice for our young people. Under the SNP, subject choice has narrowed, which means less opportunities when our young people leave school. Our young people cannot afford another five years of SNP mismanagement regarding education on top of the additional pressures that they already face because of the pandemic. Although I welcome the expansion announced by the cabinet secretary's statement in relation to 1140 hours, local authorities are still struggling to meet the initial 1148 roll-out plan. Local councils need that support, and I urge the cabinet secretary if she can to make a further statement on that today. I would like to declare an interest at that point in time as a councillor. I also ask the minister to address those issues in his closing speech. If he could outline how the Scottish Government intends to fix those historical education failures. The ministerial statement this week on the 2021 exam process did not provide any reassurance that the Scottish Government will turn this whole debacle around. As we have witnessed over recent days, many young people, parents, guardians and teachers have expressed concerns over the number of assessments that school pupils have undertaken over the past few weeks. That, despite the former cabinet secretary, John Swinney, announcing that there will be no exams this year, citing concerns around fairness. Despite that announcement over the past few weeks, we have witnessed exam papers being leaked online, pupils sitting tests with little to no warning, young people having to gamble on their grades, sitting assessments in exam conditions and the SQA guidance stating that the grades will be determined by assessment evidence. Due to the SQA and Scottish Government's handling of the 2021 exam process, many young people fear for their mental health. A pupil in my region of central Scotland who spoke to our local newspaper said that those exams are putting extreme pressure on us and are pushing many of us to breaking point. Another said that some of us are getting four or five assessments per day without any study leave, so it is enormous pressure. Those are real concerns from our young people and, by the sounds of it, they are sitting exams in all but name. My colleague Brian Whittle and Sue Webber mentioned the importance of dealing with mental health waiting times for young people during their contributions today. It is shocking that over 2,000 children are now waiting more than a year before getting the help and support that they need. Teachers are rightly concerned about those waiting times and I share the concerns that my colleagues have made today. It is clear that the Scottish Government has not learned from the mistakes that they have made last year in relation to the exam process. I agree with my colleague Oliver Mundell that the SQA should be scrapped to be replaced by a new body that is fair and robust to ensure that pupils obtain the grades that they deserve. Opposition parties could come together to restore our education system. We all know that the Scottish Government has a 100-day recovery plan but, with the failures that are mentioned by myself and colleagues and others around the chamber, it will take longer to rectify many of those issues. As I said earlier, we need actions not words. My colleagues also mentioned earlier that the Scottish Conservatives have plans to restore our education standards here in Scotland. We would work alongside the Scottish Government to see those implemented to help to improve standards and to ensure that our young people receive the education that they deserve. For example, we would invest £120 million to catch up on lost schooling due to the pandemic to make sure that no young person is left behind. We would launch an agitural tutoring programme to coincide with that investment to ensure that our young people realise their potential. We would commit £1 billion to close the attainment gap by creating a new system to identify deprivation in schools to provide that extra support to those who need it. We cannot allow that gap to remain and it is our shame that it still exists and that one in four children across Scotland are living in poverty. Our young people deserve a collaborative approach from all corners of the political divide to ensure that we change the current system. However, we will only support this Government if it focuses 100 per cent on that job. We do not want to see the repeats of last year when the Scottish Government delayed the publishing of the OECD report in favour of debating a bill on referenda. We do not want to see this Government after only 100 days of this parliamentary term start its new campaign to separate Scotland from the rest of our United Kingdom. If the Scottish Government commits to this today, it will have our support on dealing with issues pre- and post-pandemic. It is now up to the SNP to prove that it will prioritise our young people. As I have said throughout my contribution this afternoon, actions speak louder than words. Only time will tell if the SNP favours education over separation. I now call on the minister, Jamie Hepburn, to wind up for the Government up to 12 minutes, please, minister. First of all, I begin by congratulating you on your elevation to high status. I wish you well in your new role. First of all, it is always good to keep in with the Presiding Officer. There is a bit of groveling that will work, then there will be a limit beyond that. I think that you know me well enough to know the limit of the extent of my groveling, so that is it over and done with. I also congratulate those who made their first contribution today, Jackie De Marre, Pam Gosel, Coghab Stewart, Martin Whitfield, Jim Fairlie and Sue Webber. Jackie De Marre asked how she will live up to Brian Adam's legacy. I can say to her that her contribution today shows very clearly that she will do Brian proud, just as Coghab Stewart and Jim Fairlie will, Sandra White and Roseanna Cunningham, respectively. Coghab Stewart asked for me to put on the record the recognition. I have no hesitation in doing so, recognising the professionalism and dedication of Scotland's teachers over the period of the pandemic. I, of course, do so without hesitation whatsoever. Jim Fairlie set out a very interesting contribution based on his own experience of engaging with the education system to help to provide awareness of the world of work and entrepreneurship. I agree with him entirely that that is a very positive example of curriculum for excellence in action. As we can say to him, I assure him that that type of approach is at the heart of our developing the young workforce programme. Turning to some of the points that have been raised, and I want to start with this one because it relates very clearly to my area of portfolio interest. Oliver Mundell in intervening on the cabinet secretary raised the issue of universities and colleges, looking for clarity on the student experience in the coming year. Indeed, Mr Marra also raised that and requested to meet me. I will be very happy to do so. I understand that this is of importance to our academic institutions from my early engagement with university principals, which all members would expect me to have undertaken. That is a very clear message. What I would of course say, and I think all would expect this to be the case, is that ultimately the safety of those who study and work on our campuses across the country has to be of paramount importance. That is the way in which we will move forward. However, there is work under way for us to look at how we can return to something akin to normal on our university and colleges campuses in the coming academic year. The cabinet secretary laid out the work that is in place. We will continue to be guided by the scientific advice, including through our new Covid-19 advisory subgroup on universities and colleges. That will help us to keep any restrictions that we have in place under regular review. However, we also have an advanced learning Covid recovery group that we have just established, which brings together all the relevant players in sectors. It brings together colleges Scotland, universities Scotland, the various unions, the United Nations Union, UNITE, EIS and Unison. It brings together the voices of our academic institutions with students and the workforce for us to have a proper dialogue as to how we move forward. What I can say to members is that, considering the extent of the vaccine roll-out and the expected impact on transmission rates, I am hopeful that the student experience in the autumn will look more normal. Although, of course, there will still need to be some measures in place to help to prevent transmission. I also want to focus, not just on— Oliver Mundell. I thank the minister for taking an intervention. I wondered whether he can confirm whether guidance will be issued before this Parliament breaks up for the summer recess so that those plans can be properly scrutinised and so that universities have the time needed to plan for having students back on campus. Of course, there is guidance already in place. The work that we need to undertake is to make sure that it is under review, that it is consistent with where the public health circumstances are, and, of course, yes, I recognise the imperative—indeed, I laid out the imperative—to try and make things clear to our academic institutions as quickly as possible. That is my clear commitment. I will pick up on other comments that Oliver Mundell made and others. The idea that it was articulated by a number of members that we have falling standards in our school settings is something that I want to take care of. The latest figures available show that 93 per cent of pupils are in a positive destination within three months of leaving school. The latest figures show that, although students are leaving school with one pass or more at SCQF level 5 or better, they constitute 85.7 per cent of school leavers. That is up from 77.1 per cent a decade ago, and at SCQF level 6 or better, it is 63.9 per cent up from 50.4 per cent a decade ago, and indeed the attainment gap is narrowing. I take—not quite just now, Mr Mundell, because I am going to respond to something that your colleague Megan Gallacher set out. I think that her quote is quite precise. She said that we are no longer seen as a world leader in education. I totally and utterly disagree with that. In the roles that I have had in Government, I have had the great privilege to be able to go out to visit schools the length and breadth of the country, to visit colleges and universities across the country, to engage with apprentices undertaking their training, and I see excellence day in, day out. I think that we should completely disavow the idea that we are no longer a world leader in education in this country. I will give way to Daniel Johnson. Daniel Johnson. I am very grateful to the minister for giving way. I admire his confidence in Scottish education, and given that he is so confident, will he pledge that Scotland will be returned to the Timbs and Pearls world measurement standards for education if he has that confidence? I have already set out the clear range of achievement of young people in this country, and I think that it would be hope all of us, Mr Johnson, included, to reflect on the point that I have just made. I have just responded very clearly to the suggestion that we are no longer seen as a world leader in education, and I refute that. Similarly, I want to pick up on some other terminology that Mr Mundell laid out. I think that it was very damaging. I agree entirely with Fulton MacGregor on this point that he talks about a lost generation. I think that that does our young people an enormous disservice. If he does not want to hear that from me, then he should listen to Catherine McCulloch, who is the co-director of the children's parliament, who has asked that we stop talking about the lost generation and she sets out that this is so insulting to children and young people who have been at amazing this past 14 months. They need our respect and support, so I will be certainly operating to the standard that she has laid out and I hope that other members will, too. The various members raised their concerns about the awarding of school qualifications and the appeals process in place. I will only comment on that very briefly. I think that what I would re-emphasise was the point that the First Minister laid out earlier today. We do have to place where we are in the context of the pandemic. Jim Fulis, General Secretary of School Leaders Scotland, has said that the system that placed exams was never going to be perfect, but all the way along, no one—I think that he probably includes those other members who are criticising the system incidentally—has come up with a better way of doing it than the alternative certification model. I hear Mr Mundell saying that there have been some suggestions today, but I have to say that the point was that no one has come up with a better way of doing it than the alternative certification model. Let me pick up—I am afraid that I am running very short of time. I am sure that there will be plenty of opportunities to have other exchanges in the future. Let me turn very briefly to my own area of portfolio interest, because, understandably, the debate today—and I have spent some time focusing on that in my opening remarks because that is where the debate has been on the experience of our school students—but we should be considering our education and skills system in its wider context. Our furthering education institutions make an invaluable contribution to our society, to economic growth and, most important, of all, to improving the life chances of students across the country. We have seen disruption over the past year, but I want to pay credit to our academic institutions for the way they pivoted to on-learn learning, ensuring that staff and students were supported and above all, remain safe, and to re-set my clear commitment to working with the sector to ensure that we can move forward. On apprenticeships, we have seen disruption. My old sparring partner, Michael Marra, who I look forward to reacquainting some verbal sparring, mentioned the reduced number of apprentices in the past year. He is correct to observe the where at a reduced number. I think that it is important that we place it in the context of a global pandemic. I can reassure him that, by comparison to the first quarter of last year, where the number of apprenticeship starts compared to the same point of the year before, where 80 per cent down in the fourth quarter of last year we are achieving broadly the same number of starts as we were the year before. Of course, we will continue to have that focus on apprenticeships, given that they are such an important part of vocational learning. Indeed, that brings me on to the young person's guarantee, because apprenticeships are, of course, a part of that that has to run wider. We are working very closely with employers and young people to deliver the young person's guarantee, implementing the recommendations from Sandy. Begby, we are starting from strong foundations with developing young workforce, with our partnerships with local government, with the services that skills development in Scotland and, of course, our colleges and universities. However, we will take forward our commitments to utilise £70 million to invest in local partnerships, to provide training and employer recruitment incentives for young people, to deliver around 5,000 more short industry-focused courses in colleges and to establish a new graduate internship scheme, and to ensure that we have developing young workforce schools coordinators based in schools throughout Scotland. I think that time is up against me, and I could have said more about the national transition training fund, which is of fundamental importance as well, because we need to make sure that we are supporting people to remain in employment. However, let me conclude by recognising that our students, pupils, apprentices and staff have faced a difficult 14 months. In responding with the flexibility, ingenuity and resilience that we have all seen, they have shown the best of themselves and the best of the Scottish education and skills system. Let me again thank them for their efforts over the course of the pandemic. However, I want to do more than just thank them. I want to lay out a commitment to them, or a series of commitments. Just as Michael Marra set out he has no limit and ambition for Scotland's young people, neither to those benches nor should any of us elected in this place. High ambition is my primary commitment to all those in our education and skills system. I am also committed to working with them through the summer into next school and academic year to ensure that every pupil and student gets the world-class education and life-changing opportunities that they deserve. I am also committed to working with them to support those 16 to 24-year-olds leaving education through our persons guarantee. I am also committed to implementing the next stage of a national transition training fund to support those who fall out of work to get back into employment as quickly as possible. I and my ministerial colleagues look forward to continuing that effort. That concludes the debate on education. It is now time to move on to the next item of business. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business, and I remind members that, if the amendment in the name of Oliver Mundell is agreed, then the amendments in the name of Michael Marra and Ross Greer will fall, and if the amendment in the name of Michael Marra is agreed, then the amendment in the name of Ross Greer will fall. The first question is that amendment 204.2 in the name of Oliver Mundell, which seeks to amend motion 204 in the name of Shirley-Anne Somerville, on education, be agreed. Are we all agreed? No. The Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to a vote, and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.