 Thank you for coming, everyone. I welcome everyone to the fifth meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2017. Will you please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? We have received apologies from Fulton, McGregor MSP and Claire Adamson MSP, for attending a substitute. Apologies have also been received from Richard Lochhead, because he is attending another committee meeting this morning. Before we start the first agenda item, I would like to put in record the committee's dwi'n gwybod i fy hwn oaf, gwybod i chi fel Gwylliannau Sinclau sy'n rhoi yn spr fascinating cyfraeg i gyddweithio gyddaeth ac mae oedd yn gwybod i gyrwch ar gyfer y parlwm ddod a'i gwybod i ddwych hwn oedd yn gwêwr i gydweithio'r ddwylliannau ac mae oedd yn gweld i gyddweithio gyddweithio'r ddyn nhw ac mae gyrwch gyda 有 gynhyrch i Gwynnau Davidson a'r ddwylliannau. Yr 1st adre 그냥 wedi'n dechrau, fewn i ddweithio ar gael, ym 8 gyrwch â'r ddwneud ond os yw gwirionedd ac arddangos ar gyfer athig o amlwladol. Gvoreth yna sydd amlan y clywed Adamson haf y ddau'rheddyd y�, gan hynny, mae Gŵith Cymru gynnigolwyr y ddweud hwn yn ofyn hiad o maen nhw ymlaen i pob cyfаныadol i maen nhw'n rhaid i ddweud rhan o oedlai i bryd. Mae Gŵith Cymru gan rhaid i ddweud rhaid i ddweud eu cyfrant iawn, os gweld i ddweud cael bod rhaid i gynnigolwyr eu ddweud of the Scottish Schools Education Research Centre, SSERC. Thank you very much, Clare. That takes us on to the two pieces of subordinate legislation to consider today for the benefit of people watching. I hope that that is not you minister. I should explain that each instrument has two agenda items. Firstly, where the committee will take evidence and have the opportunity to ask questions of the minister and his officials. Secondly, a debate on a motion that seeks the committee's recommendation that the instrument is approved. We will start with consideration of the schools consultation Scotland Act 2010, modification regulations 2017. I welcome to the meeting Mark McDonald, MSP minister for childcare in early years, Geoff Maguire, policy manager and Lorraine Stirling, principal legal officer of the Scottish Government. I understand the minister wishes to make an opening statement. Yes, convener. Thank you for the opportunity this morning to address the committee in connection with a proposed further suspension of specific consultation requirements for local communities under the Schools Consultation Scotland Act 2010. As you know, we are committed to nearly doubling the current early learning and childcare entitlement to 1,140 hours per year by 2020. The expansion will require a substantial increase in workforce and infrastructure. The draft Scottish budget for 2017-18 proposes allocating £61 million to support the first phase of this expansion. Additionally, the expansion will also require new and innovative models of delivering ELC, a rethinking and reconfiguring of provision at local level, which we are currently exploring through our blueprint consultation and delivery model trials. The Schools Consultation Act 2010 requires education authorities to comply with a number of statutory requirements before they proceed to implement a new proposal in relation to an education authority-managed school or early-year centre. The process takes six to nine months on average. Proposals to establish a new nursery school or nursery class in a school and to relocate existing nursery schools or nursery classes are classed as relevant proposals for the purposes of the 2010 act. The Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 introduced a requirement on education authorities to ensure that 600 hours of ELC per year is made available for eligible preschool children, which came into effect on 1 August 2014. In order for authorities to be able to comply with this requirement, the consultation requirements in the 2010 act were suspended until 31 March 2017 regarding the establishment of all new nursery schools and classes. We have listened to the clear messages from local authorities on their representative bodies ADES, COSLA and SLGP, that a further suspension of such consultation requirements is needed to enable the expansion to 1 140 hours by August 2020. Lobbying from local government has centred around the timescales required for such a major expansion of ELC under the 1 140 hours programme plan. Fully developed and robust local service delivery plans won't be completed until later this year, with construction under those plans therefore not able to commence until the first half of 2018 at earliest. It would only be from that point on that authorities could begin specific consultation requirements under the 2010 act on what they proposed to build and or relocate and where, thereby delaying the onset of construction by another six to nine months. This could create a risk that sufficient new infrastructure will not be completed in time for 2020, given the numbers of new infrastructure projects required and the lead-in times required for construction. It is important to emphasise that all new ELC infrastructure projects will still be subject to national and local planning procedures and laws, which will ensure that there are still statutory requirements on local authorities to plan all new ELC infrastructure in a sensitive manner, which takes account of local circumstances and community views. This requirement is covered by the Town and County Planning Act 1997 and the Scottish Planning Policy, which underpins local development plans. Furthermore, local authorities are also subject to the requirement in section 1-2B of the Education Scotland Act 1980 to consult parents of preschool children every two years about how they should provide for such children. The draft regulations in front of you have therefore been drafted to modify schedule 1 of the 2010 act to meet the proposal that education authorities should not be required to comply with the specific consultation requirements in the 2010 act if they want to establish new nursery schools or new nursery classes in schools and or relocate existing nursery schools and nursery classes in schools as part of their expansion planning for 1140 hours. The exemption will not apply to establishment or relocation proposals relating to primary or secondary schools nor to propose nursery school or nursery class closures, which will of course still have to comply with 2010 act consultation requirements in full. Those regulations propose modifying schedule 1 of the 2010 act from 31 March 2017 when the current order expires. I therefore move that the draft modification regulations are approved by the Education and Skills Committee this morning ahead of formal parliamentary approval next month. Thank you, minister. Can I just clarify there that are there plans to reintroduce the duty to consult on the creation of relocation of nursery schools and classes at a later date? There is the option available to us once the suspension is no longer required to seek a further modification at a later date. We have not taken a firm decision in relation to that at present, but the option remains open to us. As I have stated, there are a number of means by which consultation can take place in relation to early learning facilities under the various acts that I have listed in my opening statement. Before I open that up to other members, just one last question. Why are those changes not time limited? The changes are not time limited because we have concluded that at the moment what we would want to do is to keep an open mind in relation to what may be required further down the line so that we do not face a similar situation that we faced with the 31 March 2017 expiration of having to come back to committee and seek further suspension. That is the reasoning behind our decision in relation to that. Thank you very much, minister. A number of points are for clarification. Originally, why would the Scottish Government have put in a proposal to suspend the 31 March 2017 if it had not thought that it was achievable? It was not necessary to go beyond that. At that point, did you simply go for a suspension now? You are getting rid of the provision altogether. That was based on the policy approach at the time, which was around 100-hour entitlement. That predated our decision to expand to 1,140 hours. The current proposal, the policy that we are pursuing, was not the policy that we were pursuing at the time that we put forward those modifications initially. With respect, it might argue that you are pursuing a policy where you have not thought through the consequences. You have started within hours and you have started within the end time and then you have worked your way backwards. That may be a matter of some concern that you are now seeing in order to fulfil that proposal. We have to get rid of the other consultation process. If I could just clarify in relation to that. Can you consider the option of simply saying that this form of consultation has identified in the 2010 act does not enhance anything? You suggested that there are still other provisions there that protect the community, protect local interests. Why would you not then just simply get rid of that proposal to consult across the board? The proposal that we are taking forward in relation to early learning centres is very different from the approach that would be taken in relation to primary and secondary schools, because that is specifically informed by a policy approach being taken in relation to the expansion of hours at early learning centres. Whereas in relation to schools, that is not a proposal that we are taking forward. In terms of the consultation opportunities that I highlighted, the two-year consultation with parents around early learning and childcare is specific to that early learning and childcare. I just want to clarify in relation to the first point that you made when you said that we had not thought through what we were doing. In terms of the 600 hours, the proposal in relation to 31 March 2017 related specifically to our expansion to 600 hours, which has taken place. All children in Scotland are now entitled to receive 600 hours, and the proposals that were put through in relation to that at local level have been enacted. What we are looking at here is in relation to our policy in relation to expansion to 1,140 hours, which is a policy that we introduced post the last election following our manifesto success at the election campaign. We could not have in 2014 made provision for a policy that we had not put forward to the people until the 2016 election. It would not have been possible for us. Would it not be realistic to expect that your commitment in terms of delivery would be matched by the reality of being able to deliver that at only the point of making, and whether what you have established is that this consultation does not add anything would seem to be suggested. It is not providing protection because you can remove it. Why would you not then look at that in terms of primary and secondary schools as well? We have no plans to do that in relation to primary and secondary schools. I do not think that it is the case that it does not add anything. What we have done is listened to the views being fed back by local authorities in relation to concerns that they have around the truncated timescale that they would be forced to operate where they have to extend consultation requirements. That is the decision that we have taken on the basis of that. It is not a question of the value of consultation being devalued. It is a constraint that is defined by a timetable that is established by the Government itself. Can I ask one last question? This is something that is probably quite common in Glasgow. Forgive me if it is not common in other places. Very often now, more often than not, nursery classes are located inside primary schools. What would happen in a circumstance where there is a... I think that we would all be encouraging the idea of a campus approach very often with additional support needs schools, a nursery and a primary on the one location. How does that... If local authority was developing part of its provision and accept that there should be all this flexibility in that kind of campus, what would happen round the consultation there? Perhaps I could pass to Jeff in relation to that. Thank you minister. There are a number of areas where local authorities would need to seek clarification on their own legal teams because it would depend sometimes on the management, the future management arrangements of the new centre. The way that we have drafted those modifications is that we are trying to support local authorities to think flexibly and imaginatively about how they configure or reconfigure their early learning and childcare estate going forward towards 1140 hours. In some cases, if it is a relocation and the management stays in place, it would be exempt from consultation, but if there are closures involved, then the consultation would have to apply. It depends on a number of factors including the management arrangements for the centre going forward. What would you advise beta local authority was wanting to expand its childcare provision by establishing a campus that includes a primary school and a nursery class? Would you have to consult or not? As Jeff has highlighted, it will be for local authorities to determine based on the advice that they receive from their own legal officers. What would you advise beta given that you have decided that the order needs to go through? I do not think that it is for me to issue advice to individual local authorities about the approach that they take at a local level. What I am doing is reacting to the correspondence and conversations that we have had with local authorities about what they see as a requirement for them. I think that if local authorities were coming to us and saying, if you remove the suspension, it will create great difficulty for us, then we would have obviously thought very carefully about that. What they have come to us and said is that we need you to continue the suspension beyond 31 March 2017 in order to enable us to undertake the changes that you wish to see. We are reacting to what local authorities have been telling us. Can I just do this point, minister? I think that Johann Lamont has made a very relevant point, because part of the consultation inevitably will be the concerns of parents who... I think that the transition between nursery and primary 1 and primary 2 is essential for many parents when they are making considerations about what they want. You made the point that you thought that that would disaply to primary and secondary education. I am not sure that it can, because what happens when the consultation provides quite a lot of evidence that is clear from nursery provision that actually has an effect, either through the campus setup that Johann Lamont has described, or simply by making the point about the provision within a local authority. Have you thought that through? I am not sure that I am quite following where you are going. The consultation will inevitably raise parental feedback, as well as local or possibly teacher feedback, about what I think is a very important issue in Scottish education that tries to have a seamless transition between different stages, and that the provision of nursery has a direct impact on what happens in the first stages of primary. Therefore, it is almost certain to raise consultation issues about the overall provision. I am just not clear from your answers to Johann Lamont and what you are saying just now as to whether that has all been thought through. It has. Currently, we obviously suspended the regulations, well, this is the requirement in the 2014 act, in order to enable the expansion to 600 hours. As part of the expansion to 1,140 hours, we would be expecting and have seen already that local authorities are undertaking consultation across their local authority area with parents in looking at what their likely requirements are going to be. That is happening in terms of what parents want to see. In terms of when detailed proposals emerge from local authorities, what we are saying is that instead of building in an additional six to nine month consultation period around those detailed proposals, they should be, if they are going to involve, for example, constructions, then they would have to go through normal planning processes or extensions to buildings. However, what we do not want to see is every single one of those proposals having to be delayed by a potential further six to nine months, which would then impact on local authority timetables. You are absolutely confident that the proposal here ties in with existing legislation, are you? Yes. I understand the drive for this, but can you just confirm that this is going to permanently change the right consultation for parents? Can you just confirm that? Secondly, can you just state why it would be so detrimental to have to come back to the committee for a further extension if there was a time limit on this measure? To be clear, firstly, the right to consultation in relation to this has already been suspended, so it currently is not there. What we are dealing with is that you are right, not permanently, it would expire on the 31st of March this year, but what we are dealing with here is responses from local authorities stating to us that they require a further suspension in relation to that. As I have already stated in my opening statement, in relation specifically to early learning centres, there are a number of other methods of consultation which exist, which will drive forward local authority planning in relation to early learning centres. I would expect that local authorities will and I know local authorities have been consulting with parents. What that does is it removes a six to nine month statutory requirement around that so that local authorities can be more flexible in terms of their approach. If you needed more time, why would that be a problem to come back to the committee and seek a further extension if there was a time limit to this measure? You mean if I was to say that we will only apply this until 2020? We have weighed it up and gone on balance and thought that we might want to ensure that, as I have just been told, we should have planned for an open-ended approach to this in relation to the 31st March 2017 cut-off because we did not plan far enough ahead. What we are doing with that is leaving it open to us to be able to have that further planning beyond 2020. I have said to the committee that if I am of the opinion that we need to come back and make a modification to the 2010 act to reinsert those requirements, I will do so. Thank you very much. We will now move on to item 4, which is a formal debate on motion S5M-03791 in the name of the minister. I remind everyone that officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debates and I ask the minister to move the motion. I have now put anybody to get any questions right. I will now put the question to the committee that motion S5M-03791 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Agreed? Thank you. The committee must report to the Parliament on this instrument. Are members content for me as convener to sign off a report? Thank you. I thank Mr McGuire and Mr Stirling for their attendance. I will now suspend for a moment and allow the officials to change over. Continuing Care Scotland Amendment Order 2017. I welcome to the meeting alongside the minister, Caroline Unay, corporate parenting and formal care team leader and Liz Blair, senior principal, legal officer of the Scottish Government. Again, I understand the minister wishes to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener, for the opportunity to introduce this draft instrument before committee today. The continuing care amendment order amends article 2 of the continuing care to the effect that, from 1 April 2017, the higher age limit for eligible persons specified for the purposes of the section 26A2B of the Children's Scotland Act 1995 has increased from 18 to 19 years of age. That means that, from 1 April an eligible person for the purposes of the duty on local authorities to provide continuing care under section 26A of the 1995 act is a person who is at least 16 years of age and who has not yet reached the age of 19. By virtue of article 3 of the 2015 order, the local authorities duty to provide continuing care lasts from the date on which an eligible person ceases to be looked after until the date of their 21st birthday. In summary, part 11 of the 2014 act on continuing care and the accompanying secondary legislation stresses the importance of encouraging and enabling young people to remain in their care setting until they are able to demonstrate their readiness and willingness to move on to interdependent living. Interdependence more accurately reflects the day-to-day realities of an extended range of health interpersonal relationships, social support and networks. Continuing care undoubtedly normalises the experience of care, experiencing young people in kinship, foster and residential care by allowing strong and positive relationships between young people and carers to be maintained and reducing the risk of multiple simultaneous disruptions occurring in their lives as they approach adulthood. The draft order is essentially a procedural amendment to increase the higher age limit for eligible persons from 18 to 19 years of age as part of an agreed annual roll-out strategy increasing the higher age range in step with the first eligible cohort of 16-year-olds until eventually the entitlement will cover all young people who cease to be looked after on or after their 16th birthday to remain in continuing care between and up to their 21st birthday. The draft order will revoke the continuing care Scotland order 2016. Thank you. I have got no questions. Does anybody else have any questions for the minister? In that case, we now move on to item 6, which is the formal debate on motion S5M-03892 in the name of the minister. Again, I will remind everyone that officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debates and I ask the minister to move the motion. Moved. I will now put the question to the committee that motion S5M-03892 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. As with previous instrument, the committee must report to Parliament. Our member's content for me is convener Mark McDonald. I now thank Minister Mark McDonald and his officials for attendance. I will now suspend for a moment to allow the witnesses to change over. I now move on to agenda item 7, which is a roundtable discussion on the content and delivery of personal and social education. Before we start, I want to put on record my thanks to everyone who has contributed already to the committee's work on PSE. We have received hundreds of comments and submissions by e-mail and social media. The members of the committee have also had discussions with young people and teachers on this topic. The level of response has been notable and I thank in particular classes of students in schools, including Bearsden Academy, who have spent time in class workshopping what PSE should be about and have sent us pictures of the fruits of their labors. One of our witnesses, Janet Westwater, is from Bearsden Academy. She's the one with a big grin. Janet, please pass on. Roundtables are intended to promote more of a conversational style of evidence, gathering as the committee is scoping the issues relating to PSE at this stage. That said, I remind everyone to indicate to me or the clerks if they would like to speak, and then I will call you. I suggest that we go round the table and briefly introduce ourselves. I'm James Dornan, MSP, and I'm the convener of the committee. Joan Lamont, MSP deputy convener. Ross Greer, MSP for the West of Scotland. Janet Westwater, principal teacher guidance at Bearsden Academy. Claire Clark, communications director of Sexpression UK. Ross Thompson, member of the Scottish Parliament for the North East of Scotland. Colin Beattie, MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh. Daniel Johnson, MSP for Edinburgh Southern. Hilary Kidd, development manager of Young Scots. Adam Macaulay, member of Scots with Ballot, and also a student teacher as well. Jack Douglas, LGBT plus officer in the US Scotland. I'm Tavis Scott, MSP for Shetland, school. Too right. I'm Gillian Martin, MSP for Aberdeenshire East. I also have teens at school and college since Tavis just started that off. I'd also like to declare that my husband is a PSA teacher and guidance teacher in Tullith academy. Jordan Daley, co-founder of the Time for Inclusive Education or TAI campaign. Joanna Barrett, policy manager at the NSPCC in Scotland. Liz Smith, I'm a Conservative MSP from Mid Scotland and Fife. Claire Adams, MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw and I have a team. OK, thank you very much. I suggest that we start the discussion on the content of PSA in a little later. We can perhaps focus on more on how this content is delivered. The submissions indicate that there's a desire for a great breadth of subjects to be taught in PSA from financial planning to issues around mental health to sex education. It would be helpful to know from our guest today how you think schools should go about identifying what to prioritise when teaching PSA and I'm quite happy to let somebody catch my eye if they wish to start the proceedings. It's going to be a short meeting. OK, right? Moving on to sex and relationships education then. Do we have the balance right in terms of talking about healthy relationships and what they look like being inclusive for all different types of relationships and the biological mechanics of sex? Jordan. I think that one of the primary issues when it comes to relationships education and schools isn't necessarily inclusive and that's despite having frameworks and guidance in place, such as the relationships, sexual health and parent-hood education, which was updated in 2014 to be LGBT inclusive, but behind having that guidance. Those issues as to how we get that guidance into schools so what's effectively happened up until now is that the Scottish Government has issued this guidance. Recommended that it be taught or discussed or that teachers pick up on it but never actually followed up to see if it is being picked up on and never actually put a requirement there for it to be picked up on so our research found that on our SHP the majority of teachers who'd either never heard of guidance and it was only 7% of teachers had actually been actively teaching it and of course as many of you will know the issues around LGBT inclusivity within schools are very pressing there are LGBT young people right across the country who are feeling excluded and marginalised and I was one of them only a few years ago I went to a school in North Lanarkshire and actually done PSE and PSE for me was like many of my fellow pupils one of those waste of time subjects to be frank it was a subject where we knew that we would go and a video would be stuck on or we would have a workbook to fill out about drugs and alcohol and for my entire way through school that was primarily what we focused on was drugs and alcohol awareness there was nothing there about relationships at all actually very little sex education and that could be partly because I went to a faith school I can only speak to my experiences but there was absolutely nothing on LGBT inclusivity and indeed 86% of LGBT people who took part in our research in 2016 reported that LGBT issues were never discussed or taught in their schools and only 5% actually felt that their teachers would have been adequately equipped to discuss issues and that picture is quite consistent across all research and data that is available is that LGBT inclusivity within school is definitely an issue and I'm aware that there was a lot of submissions that verified that as well so for us it comes down to an issue of consistency how do we get that guidance and those frameworks which I personally think does have to be updated anyway RSHP could be doing with being a little bit bulkier we would argue that it's about putting that out with a requirement of uptake I know that there's also quite a steady debate around whether or not PSC should be statutory within the curriculum I think that there are ways that we can move around that and still allow flexibility for teachers within their schools but for us that is the clear the clear problem is that there is no consistency on schools and that does come down to the fact that this guidance is put out as a recommendation and we need to kind of move beyond that language Okay thank you very much for that Claire, you wanted to come in So I am from Sexpression UK and we teach sex education to schools and in the community I have personal experience of the Aberdeen area which is where my branch is and I found that teachers don't actually know how to teach anything about relationships because they're not told what to teach they're not getting any guidance on what to teach so they actually have us come in and we're covering issues like body image healthy relationships and consent and consent seems to be like a massive thing that is not coming across these young people and that is demonstrated by the fact that we're having to do consent classes at university so we're clearly missing a gap where like when these people go out leave school and they've got no information about consent and then we're having to cover up at university as well It's an old man talking Assuming he's saying consent classes So consent classes are we can run workshops with groups of young people talking about what they think is sexual consent so not just verbal consent or like movements in body image so it's more like understanding body language understanding other people and the consent around sex and relationships I would say that within East Dunbartonshire there's a sexual health programme laid out from S1 to S6 and there is flexibility within that and we teach consent within the S4 and I think that's something that came through within the submissions to the committee was the number of LGBT classes that pupils obviously seem to want we've got a really good relationship with LGBT within East Dunbartonshire our S2 pupils get contact but we've also got an equalities group currently running and we're heading towards purple Friday there so it's a big issue for us but I do think you're right yes for more materials to be coming through on LGBT but also mindful of we're really lucky in our school that our principal teachers of guidance teach their caseload so we teach our caseload from S1 all the way through to S6 but that is not necessarily the case all the way through Scotland to have principal teachers of guidance who have contact with their children one to two periods a week is a positive I think because they're building that relationship and teaching something like consent or sexual health or LGBT issues is a complex thing and you need to be skilled within that and I think principal teachers of guidance are best placed to be teaching that just now okay thank you just to go on to those points about consent that Claire brought up there was really interesting study done by Terence Higgins Trust in 2016 and it confirmed that only I think it was only 75% of young people said that they have not learnt about consent in PSC lessons which is just an absolutely shocking figure and it shows that it was a UK-wide study right now but it shows how much of an issue that the lack of consent and how it's taught about in pre-16 education is a huge issue but also just to touch on the LGBT side of it as well section 28 was abolished I think about 17 years ago but its effects in education is still very much there it's still there about 50% of young people in the study that I just mentioned rated their PSC education as either poor or terrible and the worst results were amongst people that were trans and as someone who is trans myself I had a very different experience to what Jordan had I wasn't in or at just school but we did have relationship and sexual health education but it was done in an entirely heteronormative and cis gendered way so it just wasn't relevant to me in any way whatsoever so really from NUS Scotland's point of view this has to change and it has to come in some form of statutory so it's high quality level across Scotland not just in certain parts okay thank you Jack hello interestingly young Scott was commissioned by the Scottish government's creating a healthcare Scotland joint improvement team now this was to provide to involve young people in the national conversation of the future of health and social care and as part of that we supported a youth investigation team comprising of young people aged between three who did research that was presented to the cabinet secretary for health and wellbeing and one of the key themes despite the fact that this was about that issue was education and the recommendation interestingly was to change the delivery structure and content of the PSE and PE curriculums in Scottish secondary skills to ensure all young people are equipped with the knowledge and tools to live healthy lives one of the key reflections raised by young people within this around this issue was in a word this exactly PSHE so there's something around terminology there how we're describing the subject that PSHE does not properly address topics surrounding sex, gender and sexuality as they are seen as uncomfortable to talk about and I think that's something that's been reflected by everyone who's spoken so far taking a slight step back in terms of delivery and co-design so involving young people from the very beginning and that involves young people systematically co-creating, co-producing, co-designing co-delivering solutions and I think that's something that we feel quite strongly about in relation to all topics like this so engaging young people at the very beginning around delivery of something like this OK, Liz and then Aaron I mean some schools have done some fantastic work and have very strong committees on these issues that involve schools and parents and staff is there any evidence that when you have that kind of committee structure in a school that things are better or is there no evidence to support that? I think that there needs to be on-going support for schools when they're introducing these issues and I think that our our equalities group is currently quite new so we're working with LGBT to build this and I think that if you build a culture within your school that LGBT is the known it's part of what's going to be on the curriculum everybody's going to teach it everybody's going to know everybody's going to be comfortable everybody should be comfortable but more importantly the teachers need the support in delivering it as we've said I think that the support is the main thing OK It's really really clear across the whole of Scotland time and time again the Scottish Parliament get motions put forward on better sex education and I think it's very clear as well that not just the young people in Scotland don't feel equipped but they don't feel that their teachers are equipped and that is a very very big effect because if their teacher is not confident on what to teach about relationships or sex education then that is having a profound effect on how they are taking that on and that is very clear that's what's been expressed to us that not just they don't feel equipped but they don't feel that their teachers are confident to talk about it and also what's been expressed by a lot of young people that we've spoke to is that there's not much emphasis on the emotion of side to sex education it's pretty done by the book and that is it it's not just about the law or the kind of emotional aspect and it's still this embarrassment in stigma around sex education so there is a massive massive call time and time and time again we get motions on better sex education better sex education we don't feel equipped and I think that is quite worrying OK, thank you very much for that sorry you want to come in briefly and then Ross the last point I would say a couple of years ago we brought in the six year lesson on kind of the six year holiday this is something that's becoming a little bit more in schools where six years are going away on holiday they are away to wherever they're going and our six years responded really well to that and they said that was information that they wanted what does happen when they go away and I think by equipping our fifth and sixth years with a little bit more knowledge about the outwith the school bubble as it were I think that's a really positive and that's one thing that did come back in evaluations my grandson was going in that six year holiday so maybe after this we can have a wee chat Ross I feel I should start off by almost declaring an interest as a former pupil of Beersden academy but just before Janet's time but it's just within the first 10 minutes here we identified some really significant sex and relationship education not being inclusive of LGBT young people of things like consent being missing for the overwhelming majority of young people so I'd just like to drill down on that a little bit more what are the consequences of LGBT young people not being included in sex ed in school what are the consequences of most young people not learning about consent and universities having to offer it what happens? From the consent side of you we're not just saying we're not just talking about rape we're talking about how they respect for themselves so people that go to university if they're a fourth year student myself you go to university you're in this world or in this bubble you feel like you've just left school you can do what you want and they don't have any background to what they should be doing how to keep themselves safe and also they don't have any respect for themselves or others and I find that there was a missing gap of people not knowing where consent was people thinking that it was okay to go and grope someone a nightclub because they'd never been told that was wrong or more serious consequences so what we did was we brought in like you did for your sixth year holiday but we did it for the massive ski trip that happened at Aberdeen University and we spoke to everyone that was on that and did a scenario based consent class where we showed them videos about what they thought was consent and we mixed up the groups so there was a mix of girls and guys and they were both talking about what they both thought so there was a difference of opinions so it was a group learning situation so everyone was involved in it but from speaking to the people there they thought this should have been delivered earlier they shouldn't be in first and second year of university at 18, 19 and just finding out that this is wrong when they've been living alone for two years so if this is taught earlier on people have more respect for themselves and this isn't just to do with consent and right ways to do with your relationships and having knowing what's right in your relationship and knowing what you want from a relationship so that's also covered in consent so that people aren't pressured into feeling that they have to be in relationships so they have to do this they have to do that at university so that people don't like peer pressure for drugs and alcohol so I do feel that it's something that is missing and it's something that's required in under 16 year education Jordan, you were wanting to respond to this I'm going to break just down into it because I'm going to respond to Liz's question and then Ross, if that's all right because Liz asked the question about the having equalities in LGBT committees in school so in terms of quantitative data and numerical statistics the whole kind of phenomenon of having an LGBT committee or group of equality within the school is relatively recent in most of the schools that have them so as far as we're aware there hasn't actually been any data done on what the impact of the committees are however there is anecdotal data, there's qualitative data if you visit some of the schools that have these committees they are in the minority unfortunately but schools such as the Vale of Leven Academy and Dunbarton, Ross Hall Academy Barnham and High School we go into schools regularly in fact every week we're in different secondary schools and we do school assemblies and we work with some of the young people and we see the impact of these committees and it's more than just about having a safe space so to speak in the school where young LGBT people can go but it's about empowering the young LGBT people themselves to actively campaign within their school and so that increases their confidence that helps them to educate their own peers and to put too much emphasis just on having a committee because that's I think relying on one or two teachers and the young people to change the entire ethos of their school, this does need to come to a national level, the big problem is consistency this is a unique opportunity that we have to look into how is this being delivered during our school how is PSC being delivered how are teachers equipped to deal with the issues that they're presented with in an ever-changing society we do need to do more for a national approach and stop saying that it's the local authorities responsibility or it's the schools responsibility it's when it comes to things like equalities in human rights and the treatment LGBT young people, it is actually the responsibility of our government we have an equality act we have the UN rights of the child it's national responsibility to ensure that they are enforced and consistent within schools on Rossi's point as to what are the consequences of this kind of gap around LGBT disability within schools most of you will be aware of the statistics that we uncovered 90% of LGBT young people experienced homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in school 27% have attempted suicide as a result of bullying once and the further 15% have tried more than once we constantly hear about self-harm feelings of isolation when I was in first year of school I wanted to kill myself because of the way I felt in the lack of support that was available at my school so by not being included within your school environment by not being able to learn from people that you rely on learning from your teachers by not feeling as though you can ask your school for help, which I certainly couldn't some of the things that I used to hear for teachers in my school and bear in mind that I only left school three years ago was appalling actually and now I wish I understood the equality act when I was at school by feeling like you're so isolated in school there are individual implications and there are social implications and on the concept of sex education I hope my mum is not watching this live but I became sexually active when I was a senior in school and obviously as a gay man I was sexually active with another man and I had sex education in my school and at 17 years old when I first became sexually active I thought that HIV was curable I thought that HIV was like gonorrhea or chlamydia where you could treat it with pills so that 17 years old now sexually active had sex education in the Scottish school system and thought that HIV was curable had absolutely no idea and again that's only four years ago so that I think when it comes to sex education there is an obvious elephant in the room around faith schools and the position over what faith schools are prepared to teach within their schools I don't think it's acceptable to continue to allow for more opt-outs on moral grounds at the end of the day there are LGBT young people within faith schools they have the same right and in close of education as everyone else and that definitely does need to be discussed OK, thank you very much for that Erin, Jack, Hilary and then I need to bring in Tavish it's all round about this point, Tavish that's why I have echoed Jordan's point in regards to faith schools I personally went to a faith school and I certainly didn't feel informed or educated when I went to university so I just wanted to echo Jordan's point but also before I come back to Ross I think that it is important as well to recognise that some of the views that we get coming into the Scottish Parliament they are pretty negative towards PSE but there is also some really good things going on and I think it's important to recognise that some PSE sessions are really great and it's how you actually ensure that that is consistent across the full of Scotland because there's some young people that speak to us and say, I really like my PSE class my teacher's great, you know, it's really informative with those others like no, it's just a waste of time to go so I think, obviously, consistency is really, really important and coming back to Ross's point on the consequences I don't think it can be stressed enough that early intervention is so important to prevent consequences in the first place you talked about people going to university not every young person is going to university and that's a consequence in itself not every young person has that opportunity of if they're not getting that education at school and they might not ever get that education ever again and obviously education is one of the biggest powerful tools that we can ever use so I think getting a PSE system that is well-equipped from modern day society and that actually includes young people and engages young people that's why we believe that the Scottish Parliament that young people should actually be part of forming the PSE sessions to actually ensure that when they're engaged in it what they're learning is what the kind of feel that they need but I think early intervention is really, really, really important so the consequences don't arise I just want to respond to two points first is Ross's point about what are the direct consequences in this a report done by NUS Scotland a couple of years ago we looked into what we determined as lad culture and what we found as one in five students faced some form of sexual harassment in the first term and that could be anything from sexual comments to wolf whistling to I write sexual assault within a student's very first term at being college or university and that's a direct consequence of not discussing consent in PSE in pre-16 education I also want to say well done to the Thai campaign and the fantastic report they did in 2016 for me looking at that report the first one is that 90 per cent of LGBT people have experienced homophobia biphobia and transphobia at school and the other one is 87 per cent of teachers are homophobic, biphobic or transphobic language at school those are incredibly high percentages that like it's a significant majority there and almost like if you are at LGBT it's almost incredibly likely that some form of discrimination at your school so I would say that these are the direct consequences of the lack of inclusive PSE lessons in school to go back to the point about stigma what we find is stigma is drastically shaping PSE lessons for example we're still seeing anti-choice speakers and organisations come into schools and try and shame the idea of relationships or sex and as a result try and promote abstinence which often creates a hell of a lot more problems than solutions and what we also find is because it's mostly down to local authorities and head teachers how this is shaped we find that actually depending on what their viewpoints are on equality shapes this as well so it's not only it's harming lots and lots of students in this because it's not statutory okay thank you for that hi, I'm just picking up on a very specific point made by Jordan in his excellent comment and that was around consistency in the creating a health fair Scotland report by young people the young people interestingly noted that whilst a new curriculum should be mandatory for all pupils in Scotland like RE that was the comparison made by them not just in S3 and S4 they did specifically say that the curriculum should be flexible to tackle local issues because the issues facing a young person in Glasgow are not necessarily the same in Thurso for example and I think that's probably a key element of speaking about consistency thinking about the importance of that flexibility but still covering the key issues that are important to young people I'd like to bring in Tavish at this point and I know that Claire and others want to come in but Tavish I just should reassure Jordan that most MSPs are their mother watching this as well so don't at all worry about what you might say in committee I've just got two questions for this brilliant panel that have been assembled today quite a number of you have talked about who is teaching PSE and my straw poll of this was at a swimming gala on Sunday at home in Shetland where I've talked to lots of mums and dads of my age all worried about kids online bullying sexting that should they ban mobile phones from schools should we be doing something about the mobile phone companies who after all are just in it for money that's all a bit of a sideshow but what I really would be interested in is your take on who are the best folk to actually deliver relationship and sex education the suggestion that was made to me very well I thought on Sunday by quite a number of mums was we've got really good youth workers around schools why don't youth workers who are genuinely a little closer to young people do this work to be interested in the thoughts of this group of people we've got here today you're obviously not including the MSPs in that I'm certainly not including the MSPs in that okay Joanna, do you want to come on and answer there's a range of people who need to be involved in this because this is not about your two hours or your one hour a week you can give the most consistent messages and the most equal messages in that class but then that's not reinforced potentially in school policies it's not it's maybe undermined by messages that children are getting in the media about women and body image and various other things so I don't think that it's fair necessarily just to focus on teachers and we know the teachers that we've spoken to are really struggling in these issues and CPD budgets are being cut they really feel that they are being left to deal with you know that they're the kind of last bastion of all the social issues under the sun and they're just not equipped to deal with it I mean I would like to make which doesn't necessarily answer that but it's just we've talked a lot about secondary we've declared to teenagers I'm going to declare three under five hence the bags under my eyes get three children under five and this is an issue that affects them and will affect them through primary school as well and we need to sow the seeds of respect for yourself and dignity for yourself and others at primary school and I don't necessarily know that that we've even started to look at that how to recognise abuse and what to do about it in a very safe and engaging and age-appropriate way but I just wanted to underline that this is not a teenage subject matter this is about the whole of childhood and the whole of the curriculum So expression in the UK is obviously we're all students teaching so we preach that we're a near pure organisation and we feel this is really really useful for kids because when they're not having the same teacher or having a dedicated person who they feel they can talk to because they're of a similar age they've had similar experiences because when I taught my first sex education lesson I was still 17 so I was teaching people that were maybe three or four years younger than me and I'd just gone through the school system so I think having somebody like a youth worker come in and do it where they can be specialised in doing it they know exactly what they're talking about and they've got the evidence behind them who's overworked who maybe their speciality isn't something like PSE they don't have enough time because I understand that it's a very demanding job my mum is a teacher herself and if you've got somebody that's an expert in this coming in to speak to the kids these kids are going to relate more to them rather than somebody they'll see or they're going to be able to ask some questions that might not be able to ask their teacher also what you said about your kids I recently taught in a primary 6 class and I noticed we're doing an LGBT lesson with them and I noticed they were using what I would call casual homophobic terms and they had no idea that this was wrong because they'd heard it in the playground or they'd never been told this was wrong so we're letting these kids get to the 10, 11 and not realising this is wrong it should be something that it's dealt with from an earlier stage rather than especially with sex education we're just leaving this to secondary school you're going to bombard them with so much information they've all got their exams going on they've got other things to worry about and they're not going to have any time they're going to say their PSE lessons are a waste of time when they could be doing other things another point that was raised was faith schools I myself also went to a faith school and I loved my school I'm not going to slack my school but we didn't get any sex education and it was delivered in the RE department and we were given a textbook and glossed over anything about contraception anything about anything that could be controversial and this isn't an appropriate way for anyone to learn so even if you are in a non-denominational school and given a textbook or a teacher is putting a condom in a banana no one's going to learn from that so we think our lessons at Sexpression UK are their activities they're getting people engaged in their activities they're allowed to talk, discuss, learn from each other and we feel that's a much more valuable experience for the pupils and they will probably learn more in the hour that we spend with them than they would if they were given a book There's a number of people who want to come in on that but I want to bring in Jolien, she's been waiting to speak for a wee while and see Even since I've caught your eye I've got even more questions I know I think this thing about how are teachers equipped is key to this and I suppose my questions for the people who are actually delivering PSE and obviously I can talk to my own source on this as well and I have talked to him but it does seem to be fairly patchy the quality so having of the two questions how is good practice shared is it shared what would you like to see happen in the sharing of that good practice and ideas and another thing that's come out to me as well is about not just in PSE but through the school curriculum having a normalisation of talking about sex through the types of literature that we're looking at in English the kind of art we study, the kind of history we study and just having it actually permeating through the entire school curriculum so that it's not just the guidance teacher that's the person that you can go to and you can talk to about these issues and give what you would think about that Comedian at first I think that's a really good point about who's teaching it first of all we know in Bezden it's the principal teacher guidance but we love to have visiting specialists and what we find is actually really difficult sometimes to get a good coverage of specialist based on time so within the constraints of a school timetable we have maybe two S1 PSE classes period one on a Monday morning followed by the next two PSE classes just before lunch on a Wednesday and then the other two at the end of a Friday if we're asking people to come in and we're saying right could we get you just to come in at nine o'clock and then a couple of days later it's really really difficult for charities agencies to give up their time in order to do that but we have found when that time is available and when those resources are available that is a really good is a valuable resource for us to have because not only are the teachers learning from being in that class and we're gaining extra information from them and it's like a mini CPD but also our pupils the impact on our pupils is much greater because then even if they come in deliver that we can then pursue the lessons further and it just takes one session we did a cascade with LGBT so we have taken LGBT materials and then used them across different year groups as well so that does work that model does work and I would say within time constraints I am a principal teacher of guidance I teach PSE but I also teach drama I have a 10 period teaching commitment within drama as well so I think we need to be mindful that within guidance in my school we've got model studies we've got history, we've got drama English we've got quite a number of subject specialists as well coming through but what we've found is that based on we teach an anti-bullying unit through drama and our PSE through cascading that our PSE is covered through S1 through drama and that's quite good in the classroom as well so I would definitely say that if we can get more time more money for agencies to help us deliver that that would be very good OK thank you Then Hillary and then Jordan I think specialists are a really, really key part on delivering specific things in PSE and I think it is that young people maybe feel that they can express their views better to them because they're not seeing that person every single day but one thing I would say is that I know again in my own personal experience that a specialist would come in it would be great but then there was no follow-up there was no resources for the teacher after that or what happens next OK we've just learned about this thing and then what happens then and in regards to Gillian's point I think that's really, really important because the now with the Scottish Youth Parliament our campaign is mental health and that's something we are really trying to push people around us to be able to endorse that mental health should be a core part of the curriculum for excellence not just in PSE but in modern studies in English and PE and I think there's a lot of things that should be cross-curricular rather than just focused on PSE talking about loads of different things in every subject and giving the empowerment of teachers across every subject not just in guidance to try and help shape a lot of the issues because there's so many issues and I don't think that it can be covered in PSE To be fair we are here to discuss PSE right because you have been doing a lot of work in mental health how do you see PSE being used better to help promote good work in regards to mental health I think that there is a long, long way to go in regards to mental health and our campaign really does highlight that about 73 per cent of young people don't know where their local support services are but again I do think that that comes back to a lot of teachers what language they should use in terms of triggers so in order to have a great curriculum that promotes mental health teachers also need to feel that they are confident to speak about it first for them, for their point of view as well but I think mental health is something that we are definitely pushing for in the curriculum for excellence and it's something that a lot of young people are feeling and something that they've been saying and I know this is not about attainment but a lot of people have been saying that mental health is really affecting their attainment like how can they possibly be expected to meet these standards when their emotional wellbeing is not being met at school That's a fair point Hilary, do you want to come in and if Emily wants to link up the whole discussion that we've been having so far with the mental health because there's clearly links for lots of kids in there that'd be helpful for them as well I think we're in quite an interesting place within Young Scott where we sit at the moment with 650,000 card holders as well as 2 million page requests in our digital content Now the digital platform provides universal bespoke and targeted information on a wide range of topics and that's from personal wellbeing through to physical and mental health in relation to that from hygiene friendships, relationships and so on and we do work with other partners so Choices for Life and that includes information for teachers and how to teach drugs and alcohol related issues and we also work with other stakeholders to ensure that there's a single destination for information for young people so we have a role to promote that further amongst teachers and pupils but we also do it through social platforms recognising where young people are really consuming content so Snapchat, Instagram Facebook, Twitter really engaging exactly as Tavish Scott had said we obviously would welcome the opportunity to work with PSE teachers and others across Scotland to really improve that and engage with them so I think that's definitely a further stage for Young Scott to support that more Thank you, John Again I'm going to try and very quickly go through a couple of points that have been brought up so Gillian's point about who should deliver it and the right balance between teachers and external organisations so in our strategy paper we speak at length about the role that external groups can play and what we do when we go into schools is we deliver assemblies for entire year groups and we generally go into a school for the full day and get every single pupil and that's it done for the day and of course we follow up on that but fundamentally it is about teacher training because it can't be left to external organisations because like Erin's already said we first of all are not in a position where we can't, like a teacher, have a constant relationship with a pupil but we also can't continually go back into the same school throughout the year so it is about teacher training it's about making sure that there is a consistent level of teacher training although there's an argument that is made that we can't make things mandatory in the curriculum but we can make teacher training mandatory we can do it through ITE we can have career-long professional and get teacher training and when it comes to teacher training if we can get the teachers trained and we would initially argue that guidance teachers and promoted posts should be targeted first with an eventual view of all teachers but if we can get teacher training right then at least you have a solid base of teachers who are trained and who are equipped with the right kind of guidance to actually discuss this and then they themselves or the schools can get in other organisations how that teacher training is delivered when it comes to the LGBT we're arguing that it needs to be free of charge there's no point charging a school £500-700 to get their teachers trained we can't be charging schools £100 or £200 a teacher to get trained because like it's already been mentioned CPD budgets are being cut schools will not prioritise this if they have to pay hundreds of pounds to get their teachers trained so we are exploring how this can be done at a national level ring fence funding or how can we fill in the blank that training organisations would have the deficit per se if they were to provide their training free of charge we do teacher training for primary teachers, secondary teachers and the additional support needs sector which is also another key point and I'll probably just email the committee after that to discuss that but it is about teacher training it is about making sure that that's free of charge if we can get teacher training right if we can get guidance right then we'll have a good base which external organisations can then come in and fill okay, right, thanks for that Jack, and then Claire just to go on from about the content or the teacher training with us I would say it really needs to be advanced it doesn't only need to be inclusive but it has to be advanced as well if it's not advanced then it's impossible to be inclusive so for example if I use the example between gender or sex it's often, when it is taught in schools it's often taught in a binary manner both in sex and in gender and what we find is that often fails, not only does it fail binary, non-binary trans people but also fails intersex people as well who don't fit into that terminology of male or female and that needs to be fixed and some would say that that's a very complicated subject for young people but I would disagree with that statement altogether I would say it's down to the people who are teaching it and maybe that they don't feel confident in teaching it maybe they don't feel that they feel worried that they're going to either offend or harm by teaching it or say something wrong accidentally or it's down to their viewpoints and to come on to talk a little bit about external organisations coming in I would just say that we need to be really careful of that and really careful about the content of external organisations coming into schools as well just to make sure that it is not a stigmaed environment it's a safe environment that people can feel proud about their relationships and proud about their sexuality and gender and that is really important for an inclusive PSE less in education in general Thank you, Clare Obviously going into schools and teaching sex education I speak to a lot of teachers and they've got a kind of fear over speaking about certain issues and the LGBT issues because they're scared, they offend and they don't have a background information about it I thought that this fear was just for established teachers but actually when I was last year I did a course, a six-week course in teaching and I was speaking to people who are going to be graduating as teachers in a year or two time and they still had this fear and they have grown up in an environment where they have had Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter because they're 20, 21-year-olds but they still don't know what they should be saying to pupils they also don't know when it comes to things like safe sex and contraception because obviously there's parents involved in that as well and you don't know what background people have so I think if it was something that was mandatory people would feel more confident talking about it because then they would have a background to fall back on saying that's actually part of our curriculum and that's what we have to speak about and there'd be less of a kind of fear and stigma over teachers talking about this Okay, that's a very good point but Joanna and then Joanna I think there's a job to do I would be really keen to see the committee do it and actually just finding out what is going on in terms of PSE because we all have knowledge of our own bit of it we've done some research, we have anecdotal knowledge but overall we don't know what consistency is we don't know how teachers feel, we don't know who delivers it fundamental we don't know what children and young people want to talk about and that's where we should start for us it should be an open and discursive curriculum because it should provide space for children and young people to talk about and raise queries about whatever kind of queries they have and another evidence and some of the evidence somebody raised the question about how evidence is what we do and I think that's a fantastic question how do we know that what we are delivering is actually having an impact on children and young people's knowledge, behaviours and outcomes so there is a role for ramping this up nationally I mean in the UK the NSPCC is really championed mandatory PSHE in England and elsewhere and as Jordan's mentioned there's a bit of eye but our curriculum none of it's mandatory and I'm personally getting to the point where is that a good enough answer because our first question as people in public service who are thinking about children's rights is what is in the best interests of children and I think that that should be where we're coming from rather than what's mandatory and what's not because the evidence today has shown that we are doing children and young people a disservice in hiding away, shying away not talking about different issues we're seeing certainly from Childline we're seeing loads of calls 60,000 last year about peer-on-peer abuse and really concerned about interpersonal relationships largely from teenagers and there's been an inquiry at Westminster about sexual harassment and bullying in schools in England which found huge levels of sexual harassment and bullying there are things going on in young people's relationships that we need to better equip them for okay thank you very much for that thanks very much I suppose I should declare an interest in the past as a school teacher but I stopped teaching in 99 and in 2000 this Parliament tried to get rid of section 2A and the world fell in our heads so that's the context in which how much progress we've made but should make us optimistic so the young people I was teaching in 99 would not have the language that you have even to be able to use that progress and thank the young people who have had the courage through time to raise these issues and challenge people and it's not just about obviously the LGBT issues but attitudes to women 20 years ago we'd been massively different and I can't tell you how profoundly depressed I am that somebody gets a second year at university and hasn't worked out that it's not a good idea to group someone and that's a broader question I think that we need to deal with and I suppose my question is the extent to which on PSE and is there something deeper and be clear about what are the limits on PSE as well. I mean when I was still teaching we called it PSD which personal social development was actually I think a prefer in a school which was very radical on the question, the classes were half sizes so you only had groups of 10 and it was pupil-led so they can determine what they were talking about. I think of an interesting exercise to do a bit of an audit on what PSE looks like now in the context of cup budgets and other pressures and I suppose the other point I would make an agree very much with Gillian's point about a lot of this I think a lot of it's about relationships so when I was still an English teacher a lot of the literature you were working on that's exactly what it's about, it's about life so how confident is the school teacher to be able to draw out those kinds of lessons from what's in there so I think that again is not just about narrowing that focus but saying this is about something broader but I suppose the last point I'd be interested in this from our witnesses here today it seems to me there's a balance between allowing a conversation and opening up a conversation and encouraging young people to discuss their feelings however there is a question where the school ethos identifies things that are unacceptable because some of it's not just an ignorance and a lack of awareness but some do is actively willing to be homophobic anti-women or racist and the school ethos has to understand that's not there's certain things that are unacceptable and I wonder where you think that balance lies in terms of the role of a school it's not just about educating about things that are wrong but actually creating a context for that as well Erin, you wanted to come in would you like to I think probably on a more positive note because it seems to be quite obviously negative but I'm changing to be a teacher right now so I'm going through the system and I think something that I do find quite worrying is that I've left school so I've only come out of school two years and I'm trying to be a teacher and the point that I'm at right now is that I've not felt equipped in terms of a lot of things like sex education and some basic stuff even financial skills and things like that take all this into consideration in a teacher training programme but I think one positive thing I would say is that going through the programme right now I can see that there has been quite a positive shift we are learning about how to in close of education we're talking about mental health more and I think that is a really good thing that a lot of the student teachers who are going through the programme right now are getting that sort of education but I think it's balancing the teachers who have been there for years to people like myself who are coming through and balancing that old and new is something that's not quite there yet but I think in terms of what PSE should look like I think it should be a discussion like you were saying I don't think young people I think young people feel like they're being lectured more than actually can I ask this question to you this is an opportunity as young people to ask the issues that we are really is burning in our heads in more a kind of open forum of what are we discussing rather than lectured so that's also something that's came to the Scottish Parliament that PSE should be a discussion rather than just a lecture of a subject I was wondering if you agreed with the observation however that school teachers themselves can be the victims of these circumstances either as a woman can be quite intimidated if the language in the school is unacceptable or as a colleague who was gay now we are talking many years ago but the focus for him and the amount of bullying he's suffered and the lack of support he's got I think was quite significant as a professional I don't know if that's an issue I wondered more generally what your view of EIS has given us evidence that basically their view is that it shouldn't be prescriptive and that we should be empowering staff to develop the curriculum and I think these are people who are obviously committed to proper support for young people I wonder what your view is of that Janet, do you want to run over? I want to tell you a little bit about our model a bit as then so our first years have two periods of PSE a week one is PSE, one is transition because we're still mindful that transition from primary to secondary is still taking a little bit of getting used to so those transition lessons and lessons about the community and their environment around them still go on there until about October and November time where we kind of merge then into two periods of PSE and they look at the S1 profile we are launching and have launched my merit for the use of the achievement profile online and they are logging achievements and kind of celebrating success through PSE which is I think a really positive thing that relationship starts early on and you're celebrating success with your young people about the learning that's going on in other classrooms and drawing that cross-curricular in therefore knowing what everybody else is doing within their classrooms and you can feed into that within that time frame two, one period S3, one period, S4 and then S5 and S6 also get a dedicated period of PSE with us and that is solely looking just now UCAS college but also dipping into mental health which is something that they've brought to us sexual health for example a sexual holiday and any other kind of issues we've got SASS coming in we work with teenage cancer trust and they come in and speak to us as well we had Anthony Nolan in last week and if you follow our Twitter feed you'll see and Twitter is something that we are introducing from more of a pupil voice kind of angle as you'll see on the evidence we did in S1 and 2 a snapshot of what do you think PSE should be about and they all came back and they were all really positive about having that discussion and this is what pupils want they want to be actively involved, speaking to a fifth year class justice so next year you'll be doing your UCAS we will guide you, we use that one period a week to guide them between kind of August 2 November December when they're filling out their UCAS and they're filling out their college applications when they're thinking about their positive destinations and we use that to you know good effect but also what else do you want to go out into the big wide world and look at buying a house finance mortgage setting up a proper bank account not just my squirtle or whatever they've still got and they say that these are all issues of the day that they're not getting anywhere else and they want it from PSE so that's something that we are able to look at within my school and I would hope that other schools would be able to do that as well and actually ask their students and tweet about what is current and what they are doing in PSE and their learning because I think that's a great conversation to have and I would also say that with the Shinari indicators coming through from primary we're seeing that yes they are using the Shinari indicators and we're asking them as soon as they come in we are kind of having that first year interview with them how are you feeling if they score it a one to five and we'll do that again at the end of their first year so we can kind of gauge that if there is somebody that's struggling if there is somebody who's not quite transition properly into secondary then we can pick up with that we weren't lucky enough to be able to keep our school councillor but we wish we were I think maybe in Ross's time we had a school councillor but unfortunately that service was cut and that's something that we are feeling with more and more mental health issues coming through and our young people and self-harm becoming a little bit more kind of prevalent within our society is stress and anxiety a lot of anxiety caused by exams, pressures that a councillor would have been great to still have within our school okay thank you Claire that Janet had made is that kids nowadays aren't just taking all their information in from schools and we would think that things like PSE isn't just getting taught by teachers it should be getting taught by parents there should be somewhere that the kids can go online like a Facebook page or even information on Google it is really hard I've just recently been doing some research into sex education and some impacts on sexual health and I was trying to find out where people are getting their information from there's nothing there's no proper informed information online for kids to get it and I think if you asked a lot of the children where they got most of their education about sex education they would say online or like pornography or things like that and that's where kids are having to go now because of that and another thing is you mentioned life skills I think life skills is something that's completely missing from the curriculum I left school three years ago for my mum every time but things like a bank account people getting it I know people that have got into massive amounts of student loans debt because they just keep on extending their overdraft because they don't know how to manage finances and that's something that we're going to have kids who have had their fortune or fortunate enough to go to university but are going to end up in a lot of debt because they've not managed to work out their finances they're maybe not going to be able to afford a house because they've got themselves like I don't even still don't know what a credit score is and I'm a fourth year medical student like these things should be taught at an early level so that people don't feel like they're just left and abandoned when they've left university and they've got nowhere to go Joanna I think what Joanne spoke out was that the very definition of a whole schools approach and that's often what's advocated but not necessarily knowing what we mean but it's exactly that it's all very well and good what's delivered in the class but how do we respond to incidents outside the class because we have zero tolerance and language and that these are expectations that everybody in the school environment should expect not just pupils but teachers and support staff and everybody else and I do think in responding to incidents I wonder if teachers are confident in terms of child protection boundaries particularly in the online space where there's been sharing of images I think there's maybe an area to explore in terms of teacher's confidence in how much to contain of PSE we're definitely in favour of it and I think there's a difference between making it prescriptive but making it mandatory because mandatory gives it parity of esteem with all the other subjects that we're talking about and it currently doesn't have that and just to be a bit in the online space because that's where we're really interested and really worried because we know that the online space is increasingly where children and young people are spending loads of our time and we are really concerned about getting their sex education from pornography we did some research and it was like by the age of 14, 90 odd percent had seen pornography and about half of boys felt that that was an accurate representation of sex and girls were articulating that they were very worried that boys impressions of women and attitudes towards women were negatively impacted by exposure to pornography so there's real areas we need to look at and make sure that we are equipped with children's resilience I mean I wouldn't advocate removing phones or being paternalistic and don't ever send or whatever it has to be that open and discursive and equipping children and young people with the knowledge and the skills and the resilience to navigate that so what is a coercive relationship what is pornography what does it actually mean what are healthy relationships there's things that PSE gives a good opportunity to explore we've talked a lot about what the issues are and how do we resolve them how do you make PSE work better than you think it is just now but we've got Jack, do you want to go next? Just to respond to Joanne's question earlier about who should really create the content of the curriculum or PSE lessons across Scotland is yes it should be done by teachers but it should also be done in partnership with people who are currently either in school or just currently left school and more specifically groups such as women, such as LGBT plus people but we also haven't talked about race, we haven't talked about disabilities today which is also really important when we're talking about relationship education or inclusive education in general so you know these are factors and these are communities of people that we all need to be concerned about going forward when we're actually talking about this so to find solutions like what needs to be done this curriculum or the content of PSE in the future needs to be a partnership approach between communities as well as teachers Thank you for that Erinon, Jordan and then how are they? I would echo that it does need to be a partnership approach and again obviously highlighting the point that if young people are expressing that they just see PSE as a waste of time then they're not engaged in it if young people are actually having involvement in what is being taught then they're going to turn up, they're going to want to be there and I think the point that was raised about the social media element links very highly into mental health in terms of especially for young women who maybe assume that is what women are supposed to look like or behave or and I think that is really worrying that's something that has also came through the youth parliament that social media is where a lot of people are also being bullied as well as an information source where people go to get information because they feel they're not getting it in school it's also a big point in our campaign that schools should be talking about the impacts of mental health on social media a lot of the bullying is from social media and that is something that is pretty quite difficult for teachers to deal with in school because a lot of these issues are coming into school like the bullying in school is mostly from social media now so it's like raising awareness of the impacts of bullying on someone's mental health rather than just this is bullying is bad don't do it it's not a very good solution and that's why we are so pushing for mental health awareness and bringing in that modern day rise of mental health and how that can actually really really impact a young person's performance at school or their mental health OK, thank you Jordan? Yeah, just briefly on Joanne's point about where do we find the balance between identifying what is simply maybe societal prejudice and what is actually out and out prejudice I think that it's about ensuring that schools are enforcing the Equality Act Workplaces are generally good on the Equality Act but my workplace for example has clear policies in terms of what should be said, what shouldn't be said what's illegal to say, what's a hate crime whereas a lot of the schools that we are getting into they say that their rights respect in schools but the kids themselves do not even know that homophobic language or homophobic speech is classified as a hate crime we have to tell them that during assemblies so I think there's definitely an argument which is perhaps separate to the PSC discussion about strengthening the actual enforcement of the Equality Act in schools in a similar way that we do but on your point James about how we move forward our model is effectively that no one thing will work to tackle this so simply just having good guidance which is statutory or simply having mandatory PSC is not going to work on its own simply having teacher training won't work on its own it needs to come in for a multi-pronged level so what we are advocating for is what we are exploring right now in terms of how do we deal with LGBT issues what can we do perhaps from a legislative level first of all what can we do to set a standard for schools what statutory duties can we put on local authorities you get the health and nutrition act of 2007 which says that all schools must be health promoting schools the argument that we are making is that when it comes to equality and human rights can we perhaps go down that same avenue and that there should be statutory duties to say that all schools should be LGBTI inclusive or all schools should be facing young people so first of all you need your national and systemic foundation which we would argue would be achieved through a legislative level an actor a bill but then you need a good cost free and effective system of teacher training what we are exploring with the other LGBTI organisations is is there a single national programme that we can come up with and that all of the organisations can run from a school teaching training teachers on one thing and Stonewall are doing another and LGBTI are doing another so we among ourselves are trying to find some form of consistency that could be delivered free of charge that we can actually go on to schools and do but what are we actually training teachers on we need inclusive guidance there first of all we need to be able to have guidance and policies and frameworks which are not just giving to teachers and says here you go read this 300 page booklet and deliver it in a school and we are going to train you on how to do that within school and then again recording a billion which is not necessarily relevant to PSE but a very important thing is about monitoring the education Scotland schools inspections process currently does have an equality indicator but what that effectively means and we've spoke to some head teachers at some schools in Glasgow who have actually seen this happen is that because it's just a generic equality approach if a school is really really really good and very clear that racism is zero tolerance and really good on let's say inclusivity for pupils with a disability or additional supports then they will pass that equality inspection but there could be nothing on LGBT so what we are asking for is for an LGBT specific indicator on the schools inspections process so effectively the three most important things are inclusion training and monitoring your inclusive guidance your teacher training and your effective monitoring that is being delivered within schools we are obviously happy to leave all our strategy papers with you but I think that it's important to understand that when it comes to something like this it's not a single there's obviously a lot that has to change okay thanks very much for that job until I thank you just to again provide the views of young people directly in relation to the points that Joanne has made with again within the creating a healthier Scotland report one of the key recommendations from young people themselves was to introduce a zero tolerance system where young people are equipped with the knowledge they need to understand mental health wellbeing and the negative effects that stigma can have and that's both teachers and students within schools one of the other worthwhile things to mention that the young people raised was to stop removing young carers, young parents or children dealing with racist at home from classes and I think that's something quite relevant something we haven't discussed at all but the importance of ensuring that these groups are part of normal school hours and that includes PSE in terms of going forward I would just reiterate young Scots view of the importance of ensuring that young people have the opportunity to influence the design and delivery of PSE and again I'd reiterate the information as an organisation and the importance for us to engage more with schools directly to deliver that. I'd like to bring in Claire Arleson and then Daniel Johnson in making responses to both points. Thank you very much, there's so many areas that's been covered today, it's difficult to try and bring it all together but in terms of I think it was Ross that said what's the consequences of not doing this I think to reverse that is if we would know we were getting this right if we were measuring the outcomes and I think that's really really important I think it was well I know my son's left school but when he was in about third year he came home with a letter about a very serious STD outbreak in the area which the health service were doing an intervention on with the schools because it was so serious but at that time he'd had no sex education at all from the school itself and that seemed the kind of complete dichotomy that we have here about the consequences for individual and societal consequences and cost of health service and all these things that can happen but I really think that the outcomes part of it is really important looking at financial outcomes for young people the health outcomes, mental health outcomes for young people if we were getting this right should be seen to be improved and I think that monitoring that in some ways is really important Daniel Just a few comments first of all very specifically Erin it's great having a student teacher with us around the table and you hinted that there's been thought in terms of the teacher training I'd just be interested to know what the content of your course and your thoughts on what could be improved and more generally there's lots more I could talk about but I was also very struck by what Joanna said about it has to start much earlier than secondary school I think it probably even needs to start before school and certainly I'm conscious with my own we once who are preschool talking about equal marriage for example is really important so I'm just sort of interested I think that in order for this to be effective it needs to be reached out beyond school and certainly we've talked about agencies but it needs to draw in and be supported by parents and just kind of how we do that I think is not easy but I think it's really important and I'd be very interested in reflections on that Erin Just back to Daniel's point I think obviously as well maybe the generation that I am is becoming a wee bit more confident within themself like the people who are in our class are quite confident in who they are or talking about mental health but when you talk about what we've learned we've went through case studies and our tutors are quite good at actually obviously bringing us up to speed of modern day Scotland and that young people have a whole range of different issues and I think that's really really important but I think it is because there is good steps being took that our generation is actually recognising that when we want to go into the teacher profession we want to change it and I think is where that's drawn on our own experiences of having previous maybe prejudice in our school but I think that links back to Joanne's point on terms of what if you are gay and you feel like I think it's important that young people have role models but I don't think sometimes maybe teachers can actually still feel confident they can actually be confident that they're a gay teacher or they're a teacher that's had a mental health problem that they actually might feel that they are they don't have a place to go if they're going to face billion from their work environment or indeed the pupils and I think something that we need to also emphasise is the support for teachers as well for speaking about PSE it's great to put all these things in the curriculum but teachers do hear a lot of deep stuff from young people and I don't think that sometimes they feel what do I do with this? Is that not then where the adequate training should be in place for them to you know sort it when they get in there but I do think that definitely they're now going through the student teaching programme I think it is really really good the programme that I'm on it's a lot of inclusion even the policy that we're looking at is really inclusive and if I'm not on a voluntary placement I could see the difference from the training that I'm getting to the training that teachers who've been in it for years are getting Can I ask just on that one then do you see a difference between the older generation of teachers and the younger generation of teachers in the way that they're capable of dealing with these sort of issues? We were speaking to a primary 7 teacher who identified that he was gay and his class were completely fine with it, but then we went into another school where they asked us to do an LGBT lesson because the kids didn't understand it and he felt he was getting bullied himself so I think it depends on your school how much background training the teachers have had handling this and how much background information the kids already know I think it is really important like Daniel said that it's before school that we need to iron out these issues and make sure that everyone is included whether depending on your sexuality your gender, your race if you're disabled then everyone should be included but that's before school that's kind of a parent-led thing 24-year-olds and it's fantastic to be able to see them they can marry a man or a woman it's fantastic and they have never known anything else and that is fantastic we've got a guide in terms of preventing sexual abuse which is called the underwear rule and we've trained nurseries on this and it's basically preventing sexual abuse but you don't need to mention the word sex and it's just saying what's under your pants is private it belongs to you, no means no and who are safe adults to speak to if you're worried about something so it's really age-appropriate but I think there are mechanisms that's just one example that we've done in the secondary legislation about the extension of early years in childcare it's actually not an area we've looked at but what's the PSE content of nursery curriculum at? I mean I don't know that but that's something as children more and more children are at nursery for longer then what kind of messages have we given in terms of this kind of sphere would be interesting to look at I agree with Daniel that it has to start before school however the reality is that there are still a lot of parents in this country who will not discuss any of these issues with their kids my mum certainly wouldn't have sat down and been in depth talking about sex with me and sadly unfortunately there are still parents who will be passing on their own prejudices to their children so I think the position that we have is that the reality is that there are kids who won't get any of this kind of education at home of schools of all of us to make sure that they get that somewhere on the point about primary schools so what we've actually found with primary schools obviously we do primary teacher training and it's actually delivered by a primary teacher who specialises in LGBT so that is quite good but we've actually found that when it comes to primary schools it's often really the simple little things which can be done it's less complex than it is at a secondary level right now in schools we've already got a lot of prejudice breeding on secondary schools so there's little things that we do like we'll fund inclusive and LGBT friendly books into primary schools and Scott Mout who does our teacher training he talks quite a lot about how to actually break down the whole concepts of equality and prejudice for primary school children so it's effectively the same principles but it's about putting an age-appropriate language in books are a really really good way to do that and we're having to fund it when we rely on trade union donations I think says quite a lot about where funding is going into schools and also just in case I don't get to come back and I just want to point out that we actually have John Naples Campbell who delivers our secondary teacher training he has developed and delivers LGBT inclusive PSE lessons for S1AS4 so we've got PSE lessons there if you want me to send them over to the clerks it's very helpful and I'm really impressed that Jordan thinks that I'm strong enough to keep them out of the conversation I just don't know how much time we have left Ross Thompson Thank you very much convener just given the discussion we've had a couple of reflections going back to Jack's point about bullying and the figures obtained by Ty in that high percentage of pupils across Scotland who experience homophobic bullying in their school and actually what Claire was saying about the casual use of language as well I just kind of want to delve into that a bit deeper I mean just as an example I came out when I was in university I didn't do it when I was at school and I suppose it was more inclusive environment or felt like it and I know that during my primary school years and my secondary school years I got bullied horrendously because of the homophobic language and homophobic bullying and there was others who got exactly the same and they weren't even gay but they got it and so that kind of bullying does cut across different young people it's not just people who are gay they experience it and it's staff as well even though they're not they still get that kind of level of abuse so it was looking at how do we measure that and quantify that and working and gathering that data but I know speaking to teachers in schools in my own area, Aberdeen I know that although they have forms to complete it's not an actual requirement to note down what a homophobic bullying incident is and when I pressed them a bit more on that they said well they would struggle sometimes to identify it which I found quite hard but they said they would struggle to identify it because is it something that's being said in the playground is it lads who are having fun they thought it was really difficult to judge and how do you quantify it so in terms of drilling down the point of how we record those incidents I would be really interested in what people thought we could do so the government has better data on that so things are evidence led and so my other question is listen to the discussion and I may be sensing a simple question what good PSE looks like what PSE class should look like because the discussions we had at Dalkeith where a whole range of issues came up round about sexual health LGBT equality but also round about as has been mentioned the financial side of things what you do when you get a credit card a debit account but also citizenship came up understanding elections and democracy they felt in that particular school that they hadn't covered that enough given that 16, 17 year olds have the right to go out and vote that not a lot of them are aware they could go and register to vote so in terms of what is within PSE class and the time that is dedicated to each thing is to get a better understanding for me what a good PSE class should look like how that should be run and how that comes about I'd be really simple For me what a good PSE class would look like it would be something that completely breaks down and totally explains the differences between first of all sex and gender first of all and realising the spectrum first and foremost like making sure that people not just teachers not just pupils but just general society knows that as well and to relate that back to Daniel's previous question about what can we do before school to try and influence that we are terribly bad as a society from the very get go that someone gets pregnant asking if it's a boy or a girl before they've even got to the age of being able to determine that for themselves we're already assigning colours when they're a toddler we're already saying we're already assuming that if they have a friend of the opposite gender then we assume that it's a boyfriend or a girlfriend and we like to try and influence that behaviour and what that does is it definitely influences the bullying that we see later in life at primary and secondary school because we have that idea about is to be cisgendered or to be heteronormative so we've got to think about how do we challenge those values how do we challenge those norms and I think looking at that and doing that inside PSE lessons and out with PSE lessons that is the way that we'll definitely try and change that and definitely try and we will clamp down on the huge amount of bullying that we still see in secondary schools as I said at the start it's been 17 years since section 28 but it's still here in a way, it's still in our schools so we need to be looking at how do we use PSE to truly make sure that section 28 is dead I would just say from PSE what I would think from PSE is you want to give them the information but I think school for me was not just giving people the information but giving them the tools to find out some information themselves so giving them signposts to using organisations like Young Scot or even like Durex have brought out a new that's our sponsor so it's the only reason I know this it's like the guidance for teach no no no it's not that's no but I was like they've got this thing that's for teachers and it would give teachers a place to go where they can find out information and it's kept to date with the British Institute of Sexual Health but it keeps them up even to find out information themselves and needs a place to go I think that's a really important thing that we need to be brought about is giving them a place to go if they can't get us information in school and they can't get it from their parents where can they get it lesson looks like everybody in an inclusive environment happy achieving safe and learning I think if the teachers are giving the right tools and the right information and then they're able to facilitate a discussion I think it's a lot of the information that I read it was oh it's a PowerPoint oh it's a chat but it's giving them the tools in order to facilitate discussion because we've got to remember that in Scotland we've got amazing young people who are going to be successful learners and confident individuals and it's about making sure that we're bringing those principles into the classroom and making them confident and being able to come here and say yes I had a great PSE experience when I was in school and I wish that you were sitting here saying that and then again signposting just a couple of links but to local organisations for example in our area we signpost to the Sandyford and then national organisations like yourself and as long as we've got that information then we'll cascade it out but discussions key okay thank you very much I'm going to move on to Colin first and then we can comment on both I'd like to go back to a comment you made at the very start of this I've been reading through all these submissions and I've jotted down in the back on an envelope here more than 30 subjects which people think should be included in PSE all of which when you look in isolation have merit now Hilary mentioned the possibility that some of the subjects might be more appropriately determined at local level depending on what the local priority was but how do we go about determining what the core priorities are how do we determine what should be there for everybody and leaving flexibility still at a local level to add other pieces in I wonder if there's a review on that Jordan, you were one back in so maybe you went it's interesting because this is something that I think to be honest that a lot of people misunderstand about our campaign a lot of people assume that what we are trying to do is tell every single skill to teach LGBT issues and it's not what we're trying to do is lift schools up to a particular standard and ensure that there is a requirement on schools to engage with inclusive education in order to tackle prejudice-based bullying and how the schools do that is up to them we would argue that there does need to be some core principles laid out so for example I think that to be honest how you would go about that we went about it by data, research, discussion, visiting schools we spent the first year of our campaign speaking to teachers, speaking to young people and it wasn't long until we realised that there were a lot of things that were consistently coming up and what we'd done was we sat down with that information, we sat with young people we sat with teachers and we said what would you want to see through a teacher training course what would you want to see discussed in your school and all the same things were coming back to us Jack has already mentioned the gender spectrum sexual fluidity, identity where they can get support LGBT history is another big thing so there are things that young people want to be taught how you would do that in terms of looking at PSE nationally, I would again say that I think that what you guys have been doing with the public submissions has definitely put you at a good head start there are things within those submissions which are clearly dominating so LGBT mental health there was a lot about finance and tax start with the things that have dominated and look at but also as well look at legislation, look at the equality act look at the data that we have that tells us that LGBT young people face disproportionately higher rates of bullying and then think we have all these issues what can we do to ensure that there is a core curricular aspect of PSE so the way that we approach it is that we would suggest that there are certain things which every single school should be looking at when it comes to LGBT issues there are certain fundamental things which are too important to young people's identity and wellbeing to be discarded such as that it is all right to be LGBT and that if you are LGBT here is where you can access support let's have a class discussion about this homophobia is wrong it's actually homophobic and it's not okay so there are certain fundamental things which need to be looked at but then we are also quite big on that within the curriculum for excellence there should be room for teachers to pick up on issues and develop it based on what they think that their pupils need to hear so one of the things that we actually have is this document which again I'll leave it's called moments that we kind of believe in is what we would call curriculum mapping it's about using the curriculum for excellence taking the expectations and outcomes taking the indicators and the benchmarks and thinking okay so I'm just for example this is effectively just an LGBT history timeline but what we've done is we've linked key moments from LGBT history into curricular core subjects within the curriculum so for example 1945 liberation of Nazi concentration camps those in term for homosexuality are not free that's relevant to social studies and religious moral education so for my social studies teacher I can look at this document and think here is a kind of starting point as to where I can discuss this I'm talking about the holocaust so let's maybe look at the pink triangle so it's about guiding teachers in the right direction that's what we would effectively call when it comes to LGBT history your core part of your curriculum what you do with all these little moments is completely up to you how you develop upon them is completely up to you but it is about having a core aspect there and then trusting that teachers by having the right training will be able to be flexible enough to actually develop upon that so I hope that answered the question yes thank you very much and you got an advert in for you in the magazine as well Erin 100% agree with you on what you just said there but in terms of I think it was Colin what you said on how it is structured I think one of the big core things for the Scottish Parliament is that there is members of the Scottish Parliament in every local authority and we have sit-ins three times a year so we have a strong mandate and a strong platform of to get young people's voices and I think that has to be used it's a really really useful tool in a platform that is bringing we're all bringing all our local issues so as MSPPs we're all bringing our local issues to a national platform and that's why I think it's really good that we're having this conversation today because it's so clear nationally that there is a lot of reform that is needed in PSE but nationally it should be the priorities so things from the submission or using organisations at Young Scotai campaign Scottish Youth Parliament prioritising national ones but then obviously allowing local to dip into local issues but I think the main point for the Scottish Youth Parliament today is that the biggest tool is young people they have to be engaged they aren't inclusive and engage of whatever on paper but if that's not actually being put into action then it's pretty clear from the Scottish Youth Parliament that the young people are not being engaged young people have to be included in the making of their sessions it's not going to be effective whether that looks great on paper or not so the core element for us is that young people's voices have to be included in the making of their own sessions so Young Scot provide information nationally and locally just in response to that and that is engaging with local organisations and community learning and development which Tavish mentioned earlier on in relation to youth workers to provide again linking to what Erin is saying the views of young people around a typical PSE class young people have stated themselves that PSEs should be a more discursive class where experiences and opinions are rather than defined and influenced solely by the teacher and I think that that's quite an interesting perspective on that one from young people's views OK, thank you I'm going to bring in Ross Ross has a couple of points to make and that might open another limit to the question briefly the nature of the conversation a few of these have been raised already but the issue of when to start these particular topics such as relationships and gender people are almost afraid to start that conversation too many people are afraid to advocate that young children should be learning about sex and relationships which seems like a nonsense Jordan has mentioned feelings in S1 being aware of your sexuality and the issues that that can cause we are very aware of the number of 5, 6, 7-year-olds who are presenting as trans these days and that issue is not coming up enough I'd just like to put that out there beyond this idea that we need to start this younger specifically when should we start educating young people and children about these issues at what age should children be learning that gender is a spectrum as has been said, that gender and sex are different because it's very easy to do that I mean Jack's mentioned it already I've run a workshop with teenagers using the genderbred person you can use the genderbred person with a 5-year-old just as easily as you can use it with a 12-year-old so I'd like to put that question out specifically when do we start on these areas and the other area that I'd like to raise and Ross brought it up a bit already is this kind of civic education rights based education tens of thousands of 16-17-year-olds will vote this year but for many of them the only way that they'll know what their local council actually does is if they chose modern studies or politics as a subject at school and in many schools that's not even an option so there has to be a recognition running a campaign for political education for years but now that we've got votes at 16 this really should seem as essential and the issue of rights transitions into a whole range of other areas workers rights for example most young people will leave school not knowing what the minimum wage is they won't know what exploitation is and probably many will be exploited at work because of that they won't know what a trade union can do for them I only learnt about trade unions in modern studies and what I essentially learnt was they got beat in the 80s that's really not the case so it's interesting to hear people's thoughts around that because in some schools they do it really well the STUC does brilliant workshops on how unions can help people they can defend young workers rights but I'd be interested in people's thoughts on that as well okay who wants to start this is just drawn more from my personal experience than from said expression UK but at school we didn't get any kind of politics education and such and I did I took modern studies up to standard grade level no they don't even exist anymore but I actually find that recently more people at young ages have been involved I know three of my friends are part of political parties and advocate it and it's actually getting one person involved and it kind of trickles down in the school because then you want to find out and I say oh what does she do there and that's how I find out but at age 21 I think I've taken part in six elections and I didn't have a clue I stand outside polling stations and I'm like I don't know who I'm going to vote for because I don't want to do what probably the other generations have done you just vote what your parents have voted but I don't actually know what I didn't know what each party stood for or anything before that so actually I had to go online I had to look for it myself whereas even taking things at modern studies you don't actually find these things out and I think social media should be used at this point to be like oh well this is what you're going to do this is what its impacts are going to be this is what you're actually voting for because I think my first election was a European election and I didn't really know what I was voting for but I was like oh I'm now legally allowed to vote I'm going to vote but if you had written down somewhere that people could go and find out or even like a Facebook page where you could see what you were going to vote for and what its impacts were going to be and I'd say most young people do have social media or do have access to the internet and can find things out so if it's written there in simple forms this is what you're voting for these are what the policies are but in terms that maybe 16-17 year olds will understand and be relevant to 16-17 year olds that they're going to be more encouraged to vote and they're going to be more encouraged to get involved in things like politics and know what they're doing and be able to take part in what trade unions are I worked in the NHS for three years now and I've only just joined my union but I didn't know what it was until somebody sat down and spoke to me and I'd say I went to school and did my sixth year's at school but never got anything about that in the past I'll take Rossie's two points the first one, our argument is that it should be nursery level to be honest and it's all about, as has already been mentioned making sure that it's age appropriate so you wouldn't run into a nursery and obviously start talking about sex but you would go into a nursery and maybe point out especially also when obviously thankfully we've progressed on same-sex adoption there's going to be lots more same-sex parents turning up to the gates of the nursery and so it's about making sure that those, the other kids in the school are aware that actually there are different family types and again I'll come back to you I think one of the simplest ways to be doing that nursery, there are lots of nursery and also early level primary LGBT friendly books available so that's I would argue nursery the second point about political education and I'll just be really brief on this my modern studies modern studies was my favourite subject at school and I went on to do still I'm at uni doing sociology but my modern studies class we didn't really look a lot to be honest at Scotland, we looked more at America and China we focus quite a lot on British politics but what I would actually argue and I've said this quite a lot is that maybe what modern studies should start doing is a little bit of political theory and then also contemporary national politics so political theory it took me until university to figure out what capitalism, socialism, communism anarchism, what all of these political concepts were we probably should be talking about that with kids because it will help them understand the political how politics, not even just in Scotland is framed a little bit more between left, centre and right and also we should be talking to them about how the Scottish Parliament works, about how the Scottish Government works, about the systems, about voting systems because my parents don't even understand the voting system and a lot of kids don't so OK, thank you Joanne, what's coming in then? Just to say to Ross as an AIS member in the 80s we were actually quite successful in achieving things for the teaching profession and it wasn't all about strikes and a lot of the things we now regard as the norm within the workplace is because the trade unions were actually effective but anyway that's a personal thing I mean I think I suppose there's a couple of things I think there's a danger of everything that we think we want to change in society becomes the responsibility of the schools at one level trade unions have to be advocates for themselves women have to be advocates for themselves we have to but that's not to say that there is not a role for society in supporting women in challenging attitudes and all the rest of it and as a mother of now adult children I can remember I was never a young mother but when they were young having this battle about what toys they should be playing with and what colours were accepting all that so I recognise and I think that these are really really important questions but it's where is the matter for the school to be done and I suppose the question I'm quite interested in is round you talked about young people leading and directing what the curriculum would be round PSA if I were being the devil's advocate and from my own experience what do you do in a class where the conversation is by driven by those who are hostile to things that we believe is equality because I had that dilemma as a school teacher which is the balance between opening up the debate and then suddenly realising that people who were in charge of the debate were making worse the question because they had been given permission to say things that in normal circumstances wouldn't be allowed to say in my class so I wonder whether in your groups and organisations campaign groups like NUS and so on what is the balance between creating a space where young people can explore these ideas but then with the school's permission to step in or the organisation's position to step in and say no, you've gone too far because I think that's a you were able to say something about this but I think that's the biggest challenge for the profession, it's not to say that most young people are engaging with it we're not doing it in active way but if there's homophobic bullying for example in a school if it's young people who are doing it how do you create a space where you have that conversation without simply amplifying that and that perhaps being taken out of the classroom and beyond I think that it's really important to establish boundaries within the PSE class from the minute in S1 that they step in the door and the values that you put across within your class but also your school are very clear because I think there is a very fine line being a PSE teacher same as there would be in a drama classroom for example whenever you're exploring different social situations or different topics there is going to be different views based on children's home life on different children's experiences so it's about having a positive impact on that discussion but setting those boundaries from the start and what I've noticed from a lot of the organisations that have come into school they do set the class contract at the start that we are going to be respectful and we are going to be responsible individuals here as we start this discussion and I think that that is really clear place to start so as long as that's established in my experience that's had a positive impact to go to your question about the trade unions and the teaching about voting in schools I've had the delight of running a master class just there for S2 and S3 on trade unions through the modern studies department that's been a really interesting experience for me, team teaching with a modern studies teacher in the school and I would say that the information given through the trade unions is a whole pack on kind of workers' rights and things that's been really informative but I think we run specific master classes for pupils in S2 and S3 that they can opt into that they might not have chosen so to kind of create depth to our curriculum that's been a really positive thing I would feel as a PSE teacher I'm not quite sure what kind of year group that would come into but I think it's relevant as well we'll look forward to having you back to teach a little lesser I think Ross I've also suggested a few years to I think we'll look forward to welcoming you back to speak about your experience in the Scottish Parliament but also to teach now about the voting system so I think we'll be keeping an eye on that one Jack I will try and respond to three questions but do that but we are getting close to the end of the session so if everybody could make their answers as short as possible Just to start with Joanne's point about how do we make sure that this is an inclusive space it really has to be it has to be a safe space not just in terms of being safe to be there but in terms of being safe to ask difficult and maybe tricky questions as well but being done in a respectful manner is really really important and there seems to be a bit of debate right now about safe spaces versus being seen as special snowflakes but if you don't have a safe space you have a 90% percentage of LGBT people being bullied in schools so it's incredibly important because as soon as you don't have a safe space that's a barrier to education and if the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government wants to make sure that there's less as many barriers as possible for an education system that is truly fair that making sure that that is a safe space is incredibly important then to go on to Russ's point about how early do we need to start talking about the spectrum of gender I would agree with Jordan's point that it's a central place for that but I would also say that there's something that needs to be talked about in the healthcare system as well in terms of the NHS being aware and being quite assertive of the differences between sex and gender is really really important because I think that is a core part of where we start to see problems of being your assigned gender at birth rather than stating what sex it is can lead to very confusing and very oppressive situations in terms of transverse myself later down in life and then to quickly go on to Colin's point about we've talked about lots and lots of issues today but what do we prioritise and I got a little bit jealous of Jordan earlier because it's LGBT history month and we are and you got to quote some LGBT history month so I would like to quote some as well so Marshape Johnston disabled trans women of colour kickstarted the modern LGBT plus movement and my favourite quotes from us was there is no pride in some of us without liberation for us all and we need to be looking at all these issues not just some, we can't just think that some of these issues prioritise over others so someone who identifies as trans, disabled as queer as also a woman none of my identities are more important than others so we need to be talking about we need to be inclusive with education but we also need to be talking about it in an intersectional way where all identities are considered just as great as each other okay thank you very much erin so going back to Ross's point I think you probably answered your own question in terms of I think the earliest is better Daniel did make a good point earlier but again not everybody gets that sort of attitude in their home life and they prejudice do pass on so I think if we can develop it in nursery with the books and things like that what Jordan has talked about not just in inclusive education but also in mental health and things like that as well then that is a really, really good starting point but going back to Joanne's point I think is really important and I think as personal student teacher as well like looking at the profession and then seeing a teaching recruitment problem for me sometimes I get overwhelmed by how much teachers are expected to do and I think that is what I'm finding in my class a lot of people maybe want to be teachers but maybe teachers are expected to be everything now and I think that is a problem as well in terms of actually recruiting teachers into teaching because they're expected to be psychologists and teachers and doctors and everything and I think that is pretty overwhelming I find that really overwhelming and quite scary to go into the profession but I think as well when you're talking about Joanne how do you strike the balance between the discussion I think it's the ethos of the school that back to your first point that you made earlier that the headteacher of that school has to be set that consistent standard all the time and I think there has to be an ethos that children do know in their school and that it does have to be a safe environment but I do also understand the fact that if it is young people leds then there can be a lot of problems that arise but I think it is trying to just early intervention in education to prevent those prejudice arising and also that there is a clear ethos of what can be said and what cannot because sometimes people say things and I don't know that they're being prejudice or they don't know that they are offending someone so if there is a clear guide before if it is a young person leds session of what they can and what they can't do I think that would be really helpful Thank you Helen Sponsored by Joanne Boundaries as has been noted are essential when it comes to this and when we speak about co-design the co-element is probably most important so it's young people and professionals whether they're teachers or others working at an equal level so working together and for teachers within that the young people themselves immediately after the point that I had made that Joanne was responding to also suggested that other young people should be invited into that stigma free environment to share their personal experience if they feel comfortable to do so so suggesting peer mentors around different issues whether it's eating disorders or whatever to share that so that young people can learn from them but obviously that boundary thing is really crucial for that to ensure that it is that stigma free environment for young people I think that on Joanne's point again it comes back to balance so what we find I do agree with Jack's point about ensuring that PSE classes are a safe space in fact I think that all schools should effectively be a safe space regardless of what your identity is but what I do actually think is very controversial but I think that there's a way to talk about safe spaces without sounding patronising so we and we go into schools I guarantee you that if I stood up in front of 400 first years and says I just want to let you all know that this is a safe space that I would probably get either laughed at or probably not taken seriously so the way that you do that is by allowing the kids and pupils to be honest and trusting them without patronising them so an example of this is we'll ask the kids is there anyone in here who doesn't like LGBT people unfortunately last week in a school some of them put their hand up and said yeah but then Liam will ask is there anyone in here who uses homophobic, biphobic or transphobic language and describes some of the language and initially you see the kids looking about and then Liam will put his hand up and say well I'm going to put my hand up because I used it two years ago so the hands in the room go up and then you get into that conversation so I think that you can break down that fourth wall per se without actually being patronising of it and obviously this is not necessarily something that a Government can tell teachers how to do and this is what we mean about flexibility and trusting teachers teachers will know their own class they will know the kids and their class they will know more likely what kids can't be trusted to stand up and I think that when it comes to PSE we're talking to kids school pupils about very adult issues they definitely should be treated like adults they shouldn't be patronised and they should be included in that format and again every good school has a good anti-bullying policy but I know that that's not something that every school has when it comes to the LGBT so it's about again enforcing the equality act enforcing the school's anti-bullying policy and then what actually is prejudice and what's just social stigma so again it comes down to striking the balance I would say that the best people who would be doing that are teachers based on their understanding of the personalities of their pupils OK, thank you very much for that we're now nearing the end of our discussions can I ask if anyone has any points to consider our priorities for the committee that they've not had the chance to make to do so if not and if there's something you think of later on please feel free to email the committee with that point Erin Ewing I think it's important going back to the although there's so many issues I think it's about actually incorporating a lot of these issues into the full curriculum rather than just restricting it to a PSE and again obviously from the Scottish Parliament point of view we are really really emphasising mental health in that because a lot of young people are saying we need more mental health education in PSE but I actually think we need more mental health education in society as a whole not just a 30 minute lesson and to carry that throughout the full curriculum and I think that not just mental health but I think obviously I'm coming here today to emphasise about mental health education but I think for any issue that's been discussed today it's about not just restricting it to PSE because it is so much wider than that and I think a lot of these issues can be incorporated in every subject not just a 40-50 minute lesson Thank you very much for that Before we move to private session to consider the evidence I'd really like to thank our guest today that was an exceptional panel we've learned a lot from it we also have the cabinet secretary appearing before the committee in a fortnight and we'll certainly be raising some of those issues I've come up today with Mr Swinney so once again thank you very much and we're now moving into private session Thank you