 Felly sydd yn ei wneud o gydig i gwneud â chyfrinidog y Llywodraeth Cymru. Edryduriaid unig yn ei gyfergylchedd Tenor iaith yn dod i chi weithio gyda chyfrinidog iaith, ac mae'n diwylliant ar gyfer 38 o'ch gennym yn ddiweddol Cymru, i ffrindio'r llwyffydd ydyn nhw, ac mae nhw yn gweithio galiadau mewn. Fodd rwy'n gymhwy FFV35 a wneud i lleiol yn ddefnyddio'r ffordd. ffarion fawr yn yr ysgol. Ffwrdd yr ysgoliaeth gyrraedd yn eu geniadweithio unrhyw ymerdd mewn gwirio, ac mae'n ddim eisiau gyddiad bryd archiffeiliadau i'r lleifat i'r ysgoliaeth. Sodiwrn yn ymddangos, mae'n ddweud gyrraedd i gyrnodd dan jynydd y gwrdd yn ysgoliaeth. Yn fy gyn leftover,ír ysgoliaeth gyrsfyrdd yn cyfrifol yn gwirio i'w roi hefyd a Nightgaredd ac mae'n rwynt yn arfaut gyda'r ddweud i gyrsaeth ymddangos gwrdd remakellwch. A i fi, i chi oeddwn i tîm o'r ysgawddau gyfunogol a'r cyfnwys cyflonig i'r Gymru, yn دwg ammellio bach yn ystod ar gweithio'r ysgawdd. Dwi wedi'n gallu ardull eich dalwyr hwnnw, cyffredinol ar gyffredinol gyffredinol. We have Sarah Capassee, grant-achten, who is the unit head of the Violence Against Women and Girls Burnhouse unit. We have Trevor Owen, who is a team leader in cohesive communities. We have Phil Allcock, who is a team leader in the health and wellbeing unit. And Sandra Aitkin, who is a team leader for child protection. The panel have indicated that they are happy to go straight into questions and so we shall begin. I would like to ask my deputy convener, Alexandra Stevens, to open with the first question. Our research found slightly differing understandings across the country of what constituted sexual harassment. I would like to ask the witnesses whether they feel more could be done to ensure that schools and teachers have a consistent and clear understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment. Who would like to respond? Phil Allcock. Hi there. Teachers across Scotland are guided by the benchmarks and experiences and outcomes which have been published by Education Scotland. They provide various stages of understanding that people should be at within their different stages of education. We also have guidance available on relationships, sexual health and parenthood, which is available to teachers which provides a framework on which they can teach our children and young people within schools. There is guidance out there, but Trevor can give you a bit more information on some of the wider guidance on that issue as well. I think that you make an interesting point about awareness and understanding of what sexual harassment constitutes more broadly. We have been given a lot of thought in the light of the MeToo campaign with people coming forward and talking about their experiences. Through our work on the equally safe strategy, we will be taking forward an awareness raising campaign around sexual harassment and sexism. One of the things that we will be looking to think about is how we are articulating what sexual harassment looks like and giving out a consistent message. We are currently working with Rate Crisis Scotland to develop a proposal that will be in part focused on youth and young people. I look forward to seeing that work progress and I am sure that you will have an interest in that. More broadly, through Equally Safe, we recognise that there is more work to be done in schools. I am just hearing myself, rather unnerving. I think about issues around education in schools and understanding of consent and healthy relationships. We are working closely with Rate Crisis Scotland on that and I am happy to see a bit more about that later on. I know that the committee is looking at sexual harassment, but broadening gender-based violence generally could be better understood. The Scottish Government has recently passed the act creating a new offence on coercion and control, for example. What we have heard through discussions with stakeholders and people with lived experience is that, perhaps at school leaver age, they do not identify with domestic abuse. I know that the remit is narrow for the committee, but it is worth making the point that coercion and control, for example, could be better understood generally across the board, not just for teachers and for students, for a number of individuals who work with children or young people. That might be something that we take forward in any forthcoming campaign to raise public awareness about, for example, control. You do not need to press any buttons. That is me that did that. I am so used to doing that when I am sitting in the chair in the chamber that I keep forgetting. I have put you all off, sorry, touched nothing. Nothing really to add over and above what my colleagues have said about some of their broader work happening in the Scottish Government, more broadly about violence against women and girls. Child protection is slightly different in terms of the child protection formal processes get triggered at the significant harm level. There is work more broadly around some of the definitions of what that constitutes. We are looking at refreshing the national guidance for child protection over the course of the next year or so. I think that there is scope to incorporate some of the lessons and the work that is happening more broadly as part of Equally Safe and some of the other things that my colleagues have outlined, but there is nothing else that I can really add at this point. I would say to everyone here if you wish to come in in the back of any of those questions, just let me know. For the panel, if you feel your best place to respond to any particular question, just indicate and I can call your name. I understand that Ruth has a question. We are interested to understand your roles a little bit more and also how these policies come about. I wonder if you would be able to tell us a little bit more about your respective roles in terms of advising and informing policy decisions. It would be great if, in your answer, you could make direct referral to your role in relation to sexual harassment in schools and policies in those areas. Okay. Trevor Luke is ready to be first up for that one. Okay. As the convener said, head up the keys of communities team in the Scottish Government. I lead from the equality unit our work to tackle violence against women and girls. That includes responsibility for coordination and implementation of the Equally Safe strategy, which will be familiar and the delivery plan that we published in November. In terms of ministerial link, I provide advice to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities, Angela Constance, on those issues for her interests. I also provide support to the joint strategic board that oversees the implementation of Equally Safe. I let the other panel members speak to their particular roles. Our particular focus—I am not looking to duplicate what others are doing very well across the organisation—is around prevention, early intervention and service provision, in addition to that overall strategic coordination. That is where I suppose we are coming from. With a very strong focus on primary prevention and shifting the underlying attitudes and structural inequalities that create the conditions for this type of gender-based violence to flourish. In relation to sexual harassment, we look at violence against women and girls as a continuum. We have more work to do to look specifically at sexual harassment. There is some really good developing work going on across the organisation, particularly in the context of workplaces, and we have been linking with our colleagues in fair work on that. I will perhaps talk about my colleagues as well as their specific roles. I work in the violence against women and girls justice unit. We have recently taken on and added part to that unit, looking at children and gender-based violence. I head up the unit. Our specific role is looking at victims predominantly in the justice system and applying a gender analysis to the process to see what can be done to improve the experience of victims who have experienced gender-based violence, most notably domestic abuse and sexual assault. I work closely with the Equalities Unit on the Equally Safe Strategy, and our unit helped to develop some of the actions under the justice strand or the justice response in Equally Safe. We provide advice to the cabinet secretary for justice predominantly on issues relating to really predominantly victims going through the justice system. In terms of sexual harassment in schools, specifically, we have equalities, and we have a wider interest in the co-ordination across the piece from someone who might be in a young school, right the way through to a university or past that, and looking at the trends in the statistics and seeing what they are suggesting to us. I think that what we have found recently, for example, is that young people are in a category where sexual offending is happening quite prolifically. There is an interest there from justice to look at what are the patterns and where are the age groups that we should be targeting our attention and, thereafter, where should we be co-ordinating that with other parts of the Government? We funded a toolkit to be produced for universities to look at what they could do to embed Equally Safe throughout the university. That would be referral pathways, prevention work campaigns, training for people who work within the university, a three-tiered response, so if somebody makes a disclosure, what do you do? That has been a really good bit of work and we are finding a lot of interest from universities about that and colleges. I believe that that work can link into the work that is happening in schools to create that consistent message across the piece so that the messages about sexual harassment and beyond are being reinforced throughout. I think that I will stop there. Hi, so I was, as the chair said at the start, I head up the health and wellbeing team within learning directorate. The team has quite broad responsibility, so we look after LGBTI, inclusive education, physical activity, school food, free school meals, relationships, sexual health and behaviour policy. We work closely with Education Scotland when we are developing guidance and resources for teachers because our aim is to make sure that schools across Scotland have the right resource and the right guidance available to them to make sure that they can help children and young people within their schools. We also do a lot of work with stakeholder groups to inform policy as it is developed. We have an overarching group that is chaired by the Deputy First Minister and Councillor Stephen McCabe from COSLA. That is the Scottish advisory group on relationships and behaviour in schools. That group looks at the wide aspect of behaviour guidance and approaches that are taken in schools and involves a lot of key stakeholders such as teaching organisations, teaching unions, Education Scotland as well as colleagues from local authorities and other key interest groups. A lot of the work of the group is to consider the way forward to help and support teachers and support our children and young people to make sure that they have the right resources to enable them to flourish in their learning environments. On the specific issue of sexual harassment, as I said previously, we have guidance on relationships, sexual health and parenthood. That was written in 2014. In my view, it is ready for a refresh. We are currently working with Education Scotland to look at that piece of guidance to see where it can be updated. There is also a project that we are involved with that NHS Greater Glasgow health board is leading on, which is delivering an online resource for relationships, sexual health and parenthood. There is a web link available where you can input to this work as it develops. It gives you a chance to inform this piece of work as it goes forward. I am more than happy to provide that link to the committee members following this meeting. Sexual harassment can also come into the anti-bullying area of policy. In November 2017, we published our revised anti-bullying guidance, respect for all, which provides a national approach for anyone who works with children and young people and gives them very clear guidance and a framework on how to help children who are experiencing bullying. There is a very fine line between bullying and what can become an incident that might need to involve the police, so it gives a very clear guidance on how teachers, parents and even pupils themselves can be supported throughout the process. Sexual harassment covers quite a number of my different remits, so I have to work very closely with colleagues such as Trevor and other colleagues who are working on delivering digital solutions for children. A lot of the evidence that we are hearing is the prevalence of mobile phones and how that can impact on the experience that a young person is experiencing in school. I work in the protection policy team. As a consequence, we have a broad programme of improvement that we are working on at the moment, part of which looks at the structural underpinnings of the statutory child protection system. Things like significant case reviews and how the relevant bodies take cognisance of what has gone wrong if there has been a particularly difficult case or a tragic event and how learning gets put back into the system and the structural underpinnings of that system. We have a lot of broader policy work that we lead on in child protection. For example, we lead for the child internet safety national action plan for the Scottish Government. Part of that involves identifying from a child protection perspective the things that are priorities. We do that in consultation with young people's organisations, as well as relevant stakeholders such as Police Scotland, local authority, child protection committees and organisations that represent both children's interests and the voices of children. We also work across policy areas, such as Siro, Trevor's and Fils, to incorporate other policy strands that are relevant to internet safety. We have some actions that suggest that we need to work with education Scotland, for example, around the things that Phil had been talking about and making sure that other things are not strictly deemed child protection matters, so the broader education side of things are covered in our action plans. We also have responsibility for things such as we are looking at revising the child cruelty legislation to incorporate an offence of emotional harm against the child, which is not currently clearly outlined in Scottish legislation, so we have responsibility to be taken forward policy in that respect. We report directly to the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and other ministers in terms of the work that we are taking forward, and we work collegially with other areas of government to represent children's interests. For example, around the recent Domestic Abuse Act, our team were responsible for looking at the development of provision around children in that act. Over and above the provision was in there for adult victims of domestic abuse, so we have been working with women's aid, for example, in the power down work that has been done by them and the children's commissioner to make sure that that is represented from the Scottish Government's perspective in legislation and policy. Thank you all of you. We have heard a bit about joined up government there, but I know that Katie wants to probe that a bit further. If you could perhaps nominate one of you to answer Katie's question, perhaps in relation to what would be deemed as the lead department. I think that you have touched it on with the answer to Ruth's question. If you could expand on what measures are taken, either by officials or by ministers, to ensure that work to tackle sexual harassment in schools is taken forward across different ministerial portfolios, in this case across justice, education and equalities. It looks like Trevor's. It is a good question. One is asked of us a lot how does government join up on those issues. In one sense, there is the onus rests with the equality unit to support that, but the message that we try to get across is that tackling violence against women and girls and tackling sexual harassment is everybody's responsibility. It does not feel like too much of a challenge to get my colleagues sitting next to me on board. We work very collegially together and we will all step forward and work collaboratively. There is an increasing push within government to work collaboratively across portfolios rather than one part of the Government being in the lead and taking that responsibility. We would all have different parts to play, and I still oppose a collective responsibility to work together, but in terms of where overall co-ordination sits, that would sit within the equality unit, but not necessarily in a top-down way, more as a support of trying to bring together. Very much depends on the issue at times. The Equally Safe Delivery Plan contains a number of actions, 118 in total across four different priority areas. In looking at violence against women and girls across the continuum, domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault, commercial sexual exploitation and forms of so-called honour-based violence, recognising that a number of those actions will feed in across the continuum and are not necessarily explicitly isolated to one form is an important point that I would want to make. For example, the whole school's work that we are supporting in rape crisis Scotland and zero tolerance to take forward and their currently piloting in schools in Scotland would touch on all forms of gender-based violence, so it would include consideration of the issues that fellas have an interest in in relation to respect for all. It is an interesting one, and I know how it has posed different initiatives cut across a whole range of subjects, but we are keen, I think, and I had made reference specifically to the sexual harassment campaign. We are also keen to look at, for example, how we can encourage employers to adopt more robust procedures and policies in this area and ensure greater consistency across the sector, as well as work that we are taking forward with an organisation called Close the Gap, whom I am sure that you will be familiar with, about developing an equally safe accreditation programme for employers. Again, it is not solely about sexual harassment that it will touch on and it will be inclusive of issues around sexual harassment, which, as we know, is something that manifests itself in workforces and something that we need to really look at. Thank you very much, Trevor. You mentioned schools in education, and that is a theme that we have been looking at. I think that that regard would take a question from Aledda and a question from Esmi, and then, if the panel could respond to both questions that are related. Eleanor. I just wanted to ask that, given the Scottish Government's commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, which we have seen through things such as equally safe and the work that is being done on coercion and control, whether the Scottish Parliament ministers are considering the introduction of national guidance on sex and relationship education to be issued to all schools throughout Scotland? Esmi. My question following on from that would be, what information does the Scottish Government have surrounding the quality of the current sex and relationship education in Scottish schools? For example, does it have any documented feedback from the girls and young women and boys that have gone through that education? How good is it? Should there be national guidelines that should be adhered to, as well as reading to go? As I said at the start, Education Scotland has produced a suite of benchmarks for personal and social education, and they include specific levels in which we expect different age groups to be at in their understanding of sexual health and sexuality. For instance, in S1 and S3, a specific outcome that we look for learners to be aware of is, I know how to manage situations concerning my sexual health and wellbeing, and I am learning to understand what appropriate sexual behaviour is. I also know how to access services, information and support. Rather than prescribing to teachers what they should teach, the curriculum in Scotland is a framework. It is up to schools and teachers how to teach based on the needs of their kids in their classroom, but the benchmarks and the experience and outcomes give the teachers a guide on where at each level of learning a pupil should be. Obviously, we have the guidance that I alluded to earlier on the relationships and sexual health and parenthood guidance. With regard to an assessment on current provision, Education Scotland, on behalf of Scottish ministers, has just completed a review of personal and social education within Scotland. As part of that review, it visited 20 secondary schools, 20 primary schools, 10 early learning and care centres and five special schools. That had quite a broad remit, but in particular it looked at how the issue of sexual consent is taught within relationships, sexual health and parenthood education from early learning through all stages of education. The PSE review was not just an exercise in going out and speaking to the teachers, it also involved an element of speaking to the pupils themselves. To gather the thoughts of pupils on the education that they are experiencing. The visits have just been completed and Education Scotland is pulling together that report. It is expected to provide that to Scottish ministers in June when we will then take forward a further process of engagement and consultation on the report findings with COSLA, ADES and some local authority leads who lead on the delivery of personal and social education, but then also bring in some third sector organisations as well so that we can gather the thoughts of some third sector organisations on the report findings and what they would like to see for sexual health education going forward. Would anyone like to come in and ask me Elna again before we go on to it? Oh my goodness, this is obviously one that catches imagination. I will have asked me then Ruth and Elna. It is really good to hear that there has been that review done and I think that the committee will be really interested to find out the results of that in June. It is really good to hear that 20 schools across Scotland have been checked, but do you know if any of those schools are schools that are choosing not to issue PSE or very minimal and if that review might include any data about the correlation between high levels of education surrounding sexual health, sexual behaviour and relationships and violence against girls? Do you know if there will be any or that? Take the three questions, I am very aware of the time. Esmys has obviously been watching Parliament and knows to completely ignore the chair which has asked quick questions. In terms of the benchmarking and outcomes that you mentioned against each age group, I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about how those were set and who was involved in the decisions around what was deemed to be age-appropriate. I just want to check in regards to the guidelines and ensuring that schools are adhering to them and achieving the levels that are set. Is there a method in place for ensuring that what we have is effective and if it is not effective, is there something that we are doing about it? Is there something that plans in the works to make it effective? To take the first question, it is too early to say. To be honest with you, the review has really just been completed towards the end of a couple of weeks ago. I have not seen any of the reports that have been undertaken on the 55 individual schools, but they will be published as part of the process near the PSE review. With regard to benchmarks, they were established in 2016 or 2017. Education Scotland set them. I am not too sure who was involved in that process, but I can certainly check that with Education Scotland colleagues and get back to you on that. With regard to the effectiveness, Education Scotland also undertakes an inspection duty, so they are the education inspectors on behalf of Scottish ministers, so they will go into schools and look at how schools are delivering personal and social education, as well as other aspects of the curriculum and provide a detailed report, which could lead to follow-up action, if necessary. Okay, regardless of guidelines and all sorts of things that we put in place, things happen. Jane Watt would like to probe some of that. Thank you, convener. We have already talked a lot this afternoon about support. Given the seriousness of the issue, and as it affects so many women and girls, do you think that further actions could be taken by Scottish Government to make sure that there are adequate and appropriate resources in schools to both support young women and that they can use to report any incidents that they might face? I think that perhaps Sarah and Sandra, would that be appropriate for you to come in on that and then maybe round up from Phil, who is the school's man? I certainly talk from a child protection perspective. I do not think that anyone would pretend that we have every piece of information out there that ought to be there in terms of supporting children and young people, so I expect that there is more that can be done. I think that in terms of child protection instances, and I want to be clear about the disaggregation of not to diminish anyone's experiences, it is less serious to want for better phrase than others, but there are key points by which a child protection concern gets raised. I think that schools have fairly well established routeways for a child protection incident, so where there is a significant level of harm or an actual physical incident, there are well established child protection co-ordinators in every school who would then escalate that to the relevant authorities, be it police or social work involvement, but in terms of those cases that perhaps fall below that threshold, there is already established, for example, the Scottish Government Fund child line for support and advice, but I think there is maybe a piece of work that could look at what other provision there might be for those that do not quite meet a formal child protection threshold, and I will pass on to other colleagues who are more well versed in what those are that are short of that statutory threshold. I am trying to think what I could contribute to that in terms of support in schools. That is not specifically, we have not looked at schools in terms of support, I suppose. I might maybe suggest in general any institutions where there are young people and that there needs to be something that is consistent across the peace in Scotland. The work that I have been involved in is more towards university level, and I suppose I could apply something similar, although, of course, in schools there may be child protection issues, as Sandra has raised. In terms of universities, what we are trying to do is get the universities to look at what they need to embed systemically throughout the institutions. I think that schools are the same, so that might be consistent referral pathways, consistent responses, so that if there is something that is disclosed or noticed that it is dealt with in a particular way that is consistent and informed, I do not think that I can add more than that. Is that perhaps filled back to the national guidelines that we were talking about earlier? Yes. There is an element of that, but also an element of providing additional resources available to teachers. A lot of the resources that we make available through the National Improvement Hub, which is hosted by Education Scotland, but also through GLO, which is a specific school's intranet type system, which allows teachers to post stuff on, to allow sharing of best practice and to share ideas and have a discussion on how to help children and young people. One of the organisations that we fund is Respect Me, and there are national organisations that work with schools and anyone who works with children on anti-bullying measures and training for teachers in that respect. We are supporting a partnership that is being led by Respect Me and a range of partners, including Rape Crisis Scotland, Zero Tolerance and Siop, which aims to raise awareness of gender-based issues from bullying to harassment and violence. It is one of the areas where we can work with our third sector partners to support and help children and young people in our schools who need it. Our role is to give them the framework and the guidance to enable them to do that. That is just some of the work that we are doing. I mean, I can provide more information to the committee after this session, if that would be— I wonder if I can move it a bit, but it sounds just in terms of following up from some of that. We are at a very early stage, and it again moves more into the category of offending rather than harassment, although there is an argument about the level of harassment that should be offending and so on. The Scottish Government has established an expert group that is looking at children who are offending against other children for want of a better phrase, online. There is clearly an online dynamic to a lot of the harassment. We were aware last year that the figures about children offending against other children had risen quite exponentially. This group is at a very early stage. It is not at the point where it is making or drawing any conclusions as yet, but part of that is looking at what needs to be in place in terms of supporting both those children who are victims of the online offending that is based around sexual offending and those children who are committing that type of offending. Part of the key of that is working with young people themselves who have either been involved in that behaviour or subject to that behaviour. There may be some very interesting lessons to draw from that, but it is still at a very early stage. It is certainly something that is under serious consideration within the Scottish Government. Would anyone like to follow up with a quick supplementary on any of that? I think that we will move on to another theme, which was, at the last committee meeting that we had, we took very, very good evidence. It was noted that things are never as simple as they first of all seem. Perhaps if you had some kind of sexual bullying, there may be other factors related to that. I know that Faria has a particular interest in that. Just to move the conversation along to intersectionality, does the panel think that more could be done to equip schools with the tools that they need to prevent the effects of sexual harassment alongside other forms of abuse and discrimination that are experienced by marginalised groups in the school environment? My team leads on work to promote inclusive education for all protected characteristics within schools. We are working very closely with the TIE campaign, the Stonewall Scotland LGBT youth, on work on how we get that promotion of LGBTI, inclusive education within schools. We are still going through the process, but we are looking at how teachers can be supported through career professional development training courses, but also how we can help teachers before they become teachers at the initial teacher education stage. We are looking at how elements of the curriculum can be strengthened as well to provide teachers with more resources to have the confidence and to be comfortable in dealing teaching and LGBTI issues to children and young people in Scotland. The work of the group is still going on, and we are hoping that that will report before the end of this year. It will tie in to the outcomes of the PSC review. The PSC review will identify what is happening in Scottish schools at present and will set out a way forward that we can then present to ministers and to other members of the Parliament for consultation and input. There are a number of different elements of work that are going on, which will all hopefully come together at the end. That is certainly my intention, which will certainly go some way to meet the aims of this committee. I know that Hannah has a related question. What plans are there to continue or expand support to third sexual organisations that provide vital support and services to young people, particularly those who experience sexual harassment, as well as racial harassment or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation or related issues? I think that I will cover a couple of points. Helpfully, I also have the hate crime lead, so I can touch on that at your second point. The role that the third sector front-line specialist services play in supporting people who have experienced gender-based violence is a really important one. We have invested a significant amount of resources in supporting local women's AIDS and rape crisis centres for many years. At present, we have a dedicated rape crisis fund that invests £2.1 million over this current three-year period to support the operation of a number of local rape crisis centres across the country. There has been quite a bit of debate and discussion recently about the capacity of those services to meet the current demand. Particularly as I heart back to the events of last year and the Me Too campaign, in some sense it has really helped to raise awareness around this issue about helping people to understand better that such behaviour is completely unacceptable. Those services have been under some pressure, so we are in discussion at the moment with those services about how we can better support them to meet the demand that is out there to access their services. You have touched on a slightly different issue as well, and it is about supporting people to report racial-based crimes and discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation. We are currently taking forward a separate piece of work to look at reporting of hate crime. That is recognised as a real challenge in raising awareness around the issue of hate crime and addressing issues around under-reporting. We are engaging with Police Scotland and third sector organisations to strengthen pathways for people who experience hate incidents, as we might call them, and to think about the wider infrastructure out there. There are a number of third sector organisations that provide that support, but there is work to be done to strengthen that and deepen that. There has been a lot of debate and discussion around hate crime legislation. You might be aware that ministers commissioned Lord Bracadale, a retired judge, to take forward an independent review into hate crime legislation, and that will be reporting shortly. That looks across the different characteristics but considers issues around gender as well. That is something that the committee, depending on what stage you are at, will be interested to think about what comes out of that. I know that Farriah wants to come back in, if you would please. I think that Katie has a supplementary advice. I just wanted to ask Phil. We found through our focus groups that in cities, particularly such as Glasgow, much of the sexual harassment and gender-based violence had racial undertones. Is there any research or work being done around that, just to consider how that would affect young girls in schools similarly, but maybe differently? I am not aware of any—I am sorry. I am going to bring Katie in, but that is fairly specific. Is yours related, Katie? Yes, it is related to the third sector. Phil, you mentioned or touched upon this earlier. Back off Hannah's question, it is how do you share best practice with the third sector and charities that are delivering those services? If you could give us an example of how you share best practice, that would be great. I think that we will go back to Phil to respond directly to Farriah's point. Perhaps all of you would have something to say on Katie's point briefly. I am not aware of any research that has been specifically undertaken on that issue. Colleagues in Trevor's unit have commissioned specific guidance for to be developed or written by the Coalition for Racial Equality. That is focusing—give a specific resource for teachers on how they can address incidents of racial and potentially xenophobic bullying within schools. That resource is still being developed at the moment, but we are hoping that that will be available for schools in time for the new school term in August. That is the specific research on that. I am not aware of any, but that is certainly something that we could consider. With regard to sharing best practice, a lot of the best practice is available through Education Scotland's national improvement hub, which is available to everyone in this room. There is also the glow network, which is available specifically for teachers. How we share best practice with third sector organisations, we publish a lot of our guidance on the Scottish Government website, which is freely available to anyone to access. We have national groups, such as the Scottish advisory group on relationships and behaviours in schools, in which we have third sector bodies represented on the table. We use those groups as a way of sharing best practice. There is also the annual Scottish learning festival, which Education Scotland holds, which is a two-day festival at the SECC in Glasgow. That has a vast number of different seminars, hubs and sharing best practice that has been undertaken across the country. That is free, and it is not only open to teachers, but it is open to anyone to attend as well. There are a number of different ways in which we try to share best practice. Obviously, it is key that we get that best practice out there. From an equalities and a cohesion point of view, Trevor, the third sector? Sure. I think particularly in our neck about the third sector, an absolutely critical partner. I will touch on a couple of important partnerships that we have. We provide funding to Scottish Women's Aid in the rape crisis in Scotland, and act as national bodies for those respective sectors. Part of their role is to disseminate good practice among their own member groups, which will be local women's aids and rape crisis centres. I also support and lobby government in relation to national policy, which is a really important space. It brings a tremendous amount of expertise that is informed by a whole range of factors to that. That includes the direct experience of individuals who have experienced those issues. I suppose that one other thing that we fund is of relevance, is the improvement service to co-ordinate what we call the national violence against women partnership network. We expect each local authority to have a violence against women partnership within their area. We support that nationally in terms of building capacity through the improvement service. We also publish guidance with COSLA. That is a really helpful way to disseminate good practice among the third sector, but also to ensure that third sector and statutory services, including local authorities, are working in partnership to address those issues. Phil touched on the important role of the third sector in talking about involving organisations such as Grape Crisis Scotland and Zero Tolerance in shaping and developing that work. There is a real appetite for that, and we are committed to continuing to support it. We have already discussed direction guidance, national, local, etc. and schools. The conversation has moved on a bit from there, and I know that Hailey has particular questions around that, so I would like to ask. I wanted to ask the committee whether there is currently enough national guidance given to schools and teachers that set out clearly what should be done to address sexual harassment, and specifically how to distinguish between incidents that are perceived as bullying and criminal behaviour. We have heard a little bit about equal respect for all and the child protection framework, but just about the distinction and what guidance is given to staff and schools. Respect for all, as you said, provides specific guidance for schools and teachers, but it also points teachers and schools to get in contact with respect to me, so that is the organisation that we fully fund. It will provide a national assistance to everyone who works with children and young people to provide specific clear advice on these issues, but also to provide training, not just for teachers, but also for parents. They have recently started offering training sessions for parents, which have been really well received and very popular. The question of enough national guidance is a very tricky one to answer. As I said at the start, the curriculum is a broad framework. We are not prescriptive, we do not tell schools what they can and what they cannot teach, which is a very different approach to England and Wales. It is really up to schools and local authorities to set what their kids will need to understand and what will be part of their learning package, but when it comes to guidance, if we get views from teachers and third sector organisations that the guidance that they have at the moment is not enough, that is something that we would look at in the future. I think that I meant more that the teachers and schools were able to distinguish between incidents rather than the young people themselves in addressing the incidents of sexual harassment. Again, I think that that would come down to the guidance that comes from my team, as well as the guidance that comes from Trevor's team as well. I am not aware of anything that specifically sets out what you should do in the instance of sexual harassment, but there is general guidance on what to do and when to involve Police Scotland. Most secondary schools have campus officers liaised with the school, so there would be child protection procedures in place within every school, and we would expect the teachers to follow those child protection procedures if there was an instance of sexual harassment so that they could ascertain whether it did cross over into criminal behaviour or whether it could be viewed as bullying behaviour. I agree. I think that in terms of the child protection national guidance and the training that is given to teachers that have that particular role and those officials within schools, I think that there is a clear understanding in that guidance about what constitutes something that should be escalated as a criminal matter and whether or not there is clear guidance in the child protection guidance about what constitutes harassment and how to deal with it. I would have to say that I do not think that there is in that particular suite of guidance. I am not as familiar with the guidance that Phil is referring to, but I think that in terms of those professionals discharged with a child protection function they would have a clear idea, but the broader teachers, as I say, I am not clear what guidance is there in terms of the general support across the piece. That certainly sounds really like something worth probing further. We are almost at the end of our session, but there is a catch-all question that is coming from Sarah. I would ask you all to be very honest and if we could have a fairly quick response from all of you, that would be useful. Given the breadth of the topics that were discussed, do you, officials, feel that there is any further support that the Scottish Government could provide to help schools to tackle the evident problem of sexual harassment, given that it affects the vast number of young women and girls in Scotland? When I said at the start that I want my team to review the current guidance that was drafted in 2014, it needs to be brought up to date. Times have changed. The technology that is available to young people is very different to what was available in 2014. It is the prevalence of mobile technologies in schools, which is driving a lot of that. We have general guidance available to schools to follow, but on the aspect of how we address sexual harassment, it needs to be brought into the guidance that we are going to review. I would say yes as well. Perhaps I will provide a bit of statistical background. The cabinet secretary commissioned a piece of research to look at why sexual offending was rising. There was a particular category of other sexual crime, so looking more in-depth at those figures, it gave us a stark insight into who was driving those figures up. It was young people, both as victims and perpetrators, so if I could provide some details on that. The victims of reported sexual offending were disproportionately female, especially younger women and children. What we could tell from the stats was that at least 44 per cent of the sexual crimes recorded in 2016-17 related to a victim under the age of 18. The vast majority of perpetrators of sexual crimes are men, although increasingly the proportion of perpetrators, especially in cyber, enabled other sexual crimes to be themselves under 18. From a Scottish Government perspective, that was a real insight into what behaviours are driving the sexual offending figures up. I suppose what I am trying to say is that we did not really know that before, because we had not done that exercise. Of course, the third sector may have been bringing it to our attention, but having the statistics to show that is really significant for the Scottish Government. That led to the expert group on preventing sexual offending in children and young people. That group is due to report next spring. That will be informative for the Scottish Government in terms of what next steps it takes. I imagine that quite a lot of that will be recommendations about how we can support schools further. I have quick comments from Sandra and then Trevor, please. Just to add my tumours' worth release, I agree wholeheartedly that, as we become more aware of the different threats and have a greater understanding of threats that we have already known about, the Government has a responsibility to take leadership around some of those areas and certainly indicate its intent around those areas. I do not think that we can ever pull the drawbridge up and say, that is it, job done. It is going to be a long time before that, if ever, if that is the case. There is always the need for us to continue to work with third sector partners, young people themselves, organisations and committees such as that, to look at what we are doing and develop new responses as the nature of the threats develops. Far from job done, I think that there is still a lot to do. Trevor? Absolutely, there is more to be done. Skills do not exist in a vacuum. They exist, obviously, within broader society and sexual harassment continues to be a significant issue in broader society. I think that our focus really needs to be how we change those attitudes and how we tackle those inequalities that create the conditions for sexual harassment in other forms of gender-based violence to flourish. We are really ambitious in this area but we recognise that it is a multi-generational task that we have got ahead of us. It feels like we have made a huge amount of progress in recent times, and we really want to continue. I think that we can always be doing more and better. I would like, on behalf of everyone here, to thank all of you on the panel. I think that your responses were excellent and very, very much appreciated. Thank you very, very much for taking part. I would like everyone to look at—it is item 1 in the agenda, but I forgot to do it earlier on. We need a decision from this committee as to whether to take item 3 in private, item 3 being your draft report and the committee having to consider that report. Can we have agreement to take that in private? You have to shout, but you cannot just not. Okay, thank you very much. We will take that in private. Before that, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the inquiry, and I would like Alexandra, as a deputy convener, to say a few words at this point. Yes, I just wanted to say that it sounds like there is a lot of good work being done between the panel and the third sector. Really, the question is, as Trevor alluded to earlier, how we come together to deliver consistent breast practice, because we have a collective responsibility. On behalf of the Young Women Lead Committee, I would like to take the opportunity to thank YWCA Scotland, the Scottish Parliament and, specifically, Linda Fabiani, for providing us with the space to discuss such an important issue and to promote women's participation in Scottish politics. Thank you very much, Alexandra. It is the intention that the report will be published on 31 May, and it will be available on the Young Women's Movement website. We will now move into private session to agree that final report, and I ask everyone who is not on the committee to please clear the room.