 Dweud, dweud. Welcome to the 32nd meeting of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee for 2018. Can we please ensure that all electronic devices are on silent mode? Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take item 3 in private. Item 3 is a discussion on our approach to stage 2 of the Age of Criminal Responsibility, Scotland, Bill. Can I ask committee members for any comments? I raised, last week in the public session, my concerns about our evidence taking in relation to this bill and asked for us to look at it again. On reflection and after discussion with other committee members, I am content to take this item in private today. Agenda item 2 is an oral evidence session with the Young Women Lead Committee of the YWCA Scotland Young Women's Movement. Young Women Lead is a programme for young women aged 30 and under living in Scotland. The programme is aimed at increasing parliamentary knowledge, engagement and leadership. In June, the first Young Women Lead Committee published a report on sexual harassment in schools, and we have some of the committee members here today. We would like to welcome Dr Patricia Kupiak, director of the YWCA Scotland Young Women's Movement and Audrey Optike Barnes, a committee member from Young Women Lead. Can I invite Dr Kupiak to make opening remarks of up to five minutes, please? Thank you for having us here, representing Young Women Lead programme. Young Women Lead was created from a need to address the underrepresentation of young women in politics and from young women telling us that they lack confidence to access political spaces. Working with the Scottish Parliament, YWCA Scotland, the Young Women's Movement, designed and delivered a leadership programme for young women under the age of 30. In the pilot year, last year, we had 30 participants from diverse communities who came together in the Parliament to run their own committee inquiry. In committee meetings, chaired by the beauty presiding officer Linda Fabiani, participants took evidence and questioned Scottish Government officials. They carried out engagement work across Scotland in new and innovative ways before producing a report with recommendations to the Scottish Government. Their chosen topic of inquiry was sexual harassment in schools and it looked at their local communities and lived experiences. With a desire to eliminate harassment in schools, the Young Women recognised that this behaviour is often intersectional and incorporates racism, disabilism and homophobia. Over the course of their inquiry, they came up with innovative ways and ideas to eliminate bullying, harassment and discrimination in Scottish schools, ranging from providing safe spaces to additional training for teachers and ensuring an inclusive approach, recognising different needs of different groups. The final report was presented to the Scottish Government in June and the Deputy First Minister committed to engage seriously on the contents of its report. We are really welcomed the opportunity to be here today and to see what action has been taken since June this year and what are the key actions that are going to be taken in the next six months to address sexual harassment in Scottish schools. Thank you very much. Can I start things off by just asking why you chose the topic of sexual harassment? In the beginning of our planning, we were allowed to choose the topic that we were going to research. Ultimately, we all came together into sexual harassment in schools because it was something that had impacted everyone present, not just within our school experience, but beyond how we behaved going into university or careers and holding us back with anxiety and recovery. We realised that if we studied that and came back with feedback for the current context with far more digital media interaction at schools, we might be able to save the next generation from having the same impact that we suffered in our lives. It might be something that would surprise people who don't have young women or girls in their lives just how rife that type of sexual harassment is. Can you maybe speak to some of the experiences or behaviours that affect the young women that you clearly said you'd all been impacted by? Content warning was issued because some of it did get quite challenging to listen to. Anything as simple as just pinging up the bra, to be honest, can have an impact on a girl feeling shy or that she needs to hide herself to the unconscious bias. That's coming through on preferences in classrooms straight through to sexual assault. A fair few of us had experienced that in decent contact where we weren't able to report it and it wasn't taken seriously enough because it hadn't been seen. You spoke about the engagement that the committee had undertaken. Can you talk a little bit more about that, who you spoke with and how you engaged with them? We started with a questionnaire and survey and we worked with parliamentary researchers finding out who would be the best to work with from that point. Lots of external organisations work on gender and human rights and bullying. From there we designed a full on campaign which was digital outreach with surveys asking for personal experiences, feedback and focus groups. We went out all across Scotland up to Orkney, the Western Isles, the Highlands, the Central Belt, the Borders, we covered it as much as we could and chatted with everyone about their experience in a safe space with advice. You mentioned that it's an upsetting topic anyway and I think that one of the upsetting aspects is how normalised it is. How did you support women and girls as they were sharing within your groups? Was it a challenging thing to do? Was it the first time for some people that they'd spoken openly about it? Absolutely. I think that there was a differentiation that needed to be made in the Central Belt, especially Edinburgh and Glasgow. We are far more aware of that conversation. Up in more rural, small communities, that conversation was entirely new. The safety of the participants and giving evidence had to be secured, but we had advice from parliamentary researchers and third party organisations. We worked quite hard to make sure that everyone was safe. Thank you. Were you surprised by the changes that girls made to their lifestyle and their actions to avoid that type of behaviour? Were those examples of them making different choices than preventing participating fully in things? Absolutely. It's where that intersectional approach comes into play, because we've seen such differences in different communities and how different communities and how different young girls reacted to sexual harassment and having the confidence to report it or to even speak about it with their friends or their families, varied across different communities. We've noticed from the information that we got that many girls were trying to make themselves smaller or they were scared to take up too much space after experiencing sexual harassment. They would try to be quiet in school. They wouldn't engage in as many activities outside of the school. There was definitely impact on their day-to-day lives but also on their performance at school and their relationship with their families and friends. Even from what Audrey described, I think that most of us experience bra pulling or bra straps pulling or pulling your skirt or things like that. That had a huge impact on their performance in schools. It wasn't just instances of sexual assault that were impacting on their lives. To further on that, even within our participant group, for some of us we'd all been working quite hard, quite accomplished young women who were really passionate about this but still hadn't had a space that was that safe to then all of a sudden be honest and recognise the way that we had been targeted. The behaviour in us has changed, knowing that we now have the power to go out and make a change for other girls. I think that your report and your reflections show the urgency of addressing this because I think that we can't have half our population missing out on fully participating because of these things. I was really interested in what you said about the recognition of what this is as sexual harassment. What changes would you like to see in the staff and teacher approach to even just recognising that these instances have to be reported as sexually or gender-based rather than just brushing them off as tends to happen? One of the main recommendations was to standardise reporting procedures. They are the same across different schools. One thing that reached struck me from reading the report and the responses that we got was one participant called it postcode lottery. If you are really lucky and in your school there are those reporting procedures and the teachers adhere to them than any sexual harassment that your report is going to be treated seriously. But if there isn't such procedure then you're just left with reporting it and nothing gets done. That for a victim or a survivor of sexual harassment is even worse, like the impact that it has on them mentally and psychologically. It's really serious. That's definitely one of the recommendations. Another recommendation that came from the group was to provide training for teachers and to have that one sort of key person that you can report sexual harassment to. From teachers, interestingly enough, because we had over 60 teachers participating in the survey as well, they said that the training should be across the board. So it shouldn't just be one teacher, it should be all teachers who have awareness of what sexual harassment is to make reporting easier for the victims so they don't feel like they have to go into a lot of detail that there is an understanding in the school of what constitutes sexual harassment. Obviously the sexual harassment has two parties involved so obviously we want to support the girls that have been the target but how do we re-educate the people that are perpetrating the sexual harassment in the first place? I think there will be a question of having more sort of standardised sexual education that actually looks at consent and sexual harassment in all of its forms and across the boards and Scottish schools. I think we have a really good opportunity to do something quite revolutionary in Scotland and to look at kind of intersectional approaches to reporting sexual harassment. In the same way that we are kind of revolutionary with domestic abuse bill, I think that there is a real opportunity to do something because otherwise we are failing our young people. Do you think that that is something that could be slotted into a PAC license or should it be something that is more across the curriculum as a whole? I think that it should be across the curriculum because it is going to affect people in all of the subjects that they take, in all of their extracurricular activities, if that is something that happens in school. I think that it should be across the board and that is also what is coming from teachers that participated in the survey that it needs to be all teachers who are educated on that topic, not just a teacher for sexual education specifically. Just looking for a general overview of how you felt taken part in, obviously you did so much work, so many engagements and spoke to so many people. I am going to ask you, was it worthwhile? I know what the answer is going to be, but how would you encourage this now to move on? Would you like to see it happening again and maybe focus on a different topic? How would you like to see it moving on in the future? On this particular topic, young women lead will continue and the next cohort has already started and I will be focusing on a new topic that they are to decide. It was incredibly worthwhile. I was a participant and now I am the programme coordinator. I feel invested and believe in every young woman that I have interacted with. Going back to the topic that we researched, sexual harassment in schools, I think that this is something that needs to be an on-going conversation. We live in a very much an evolving context in terms of technology, how we interact with each other, migration and demographic change. Even the definition itself is going to need to be under continuous review as we get more insight into how these things work. Alex Cole-Hamilton mentioned last week to Christina McKelvie that it needs to be co-creation. It needs to bring the young people in to be involved in defining what that is and giving their input. It was clearly a big subject that most young women really really wanted someone to start the conversation in, because around the same time Girlguides started a similar research topic, they were able to access different sources of information. The two together were greater than the sum of their parts. That is proof that it needs to be under continuous review. If every year we came back to this conversation, we would be headed in the right direction. I want to congratulate you on the work that you are doing on your report. It is a very general question for me to start off with. You might be aware that we have the Deputy First Minister in after yourselves today. Is there any questions that you would like us, as the committee, to ask him on your behalf? We have quite a few actually. The first question would be, the schools are not reporting sexual harassment that came out after the report and the survey because of reputation. How does the Deputy First Minister is planning to hold them to account and to standardise reporting procedures? What actions were taken in the last six months and what are the key actions that will be taken in the next six months? In June it will be a year since we first presented the findings of the report. We are keen to know what has been done since we presented it and what is going to happen in the next couple of months. On a personal level, are there any parts of the report that really struck him? Is that something that he wasn't aware of or things that he wished he had known sooner to take action on these? Also, what has been done to recognise additional factors in harassment? Going back to that intersectional approach, how are we going to address that to make sure that things are not brushed under the carpet? Has he seen the report? We know that he answered about the report in the chamber, but are there any sort of findings from the report that he thought were particularly important to address as soon as possible? I will take that as I am sure more committee members into the next session. If we have time for another question, I just wanted to... One of your main aims is getting women under 30 more involved in politics. What effect do you think sexual harassment in schools has on that? I think from the start, if anyone is being targeted for any aspect of who they are, including gender, from a young age, it conditions you to be quieter, to want to disappear so that you are not a visible target for this to continue happening. Biases are being pushed at you and you start thinking, well, subservient or just quiet muted. By the time you get to the age where you are thinking that you want to go to university or you want to stand for community council or you just want to raise my voice and take part, even vote, you start thinking that you are not informed enough, you are not wise enough. That is taking up space that you have not earned and you really question the validity of occupying space in this country, in this world. It plays into women getting involved in politics because it all starts young. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to the panel. It's great to hear that your evidence has been riveting so far. I'd like to talk about the spectrum that exists between sexual harassment and sexual exploitation. They are inexorably linked, particularly in the forums that we have discussed. More recently, we have seen the prevalence of online sexual exploitation of sexting, taking photos, having inappropriate images used as a tool of control over people. I just wanted to know whether you think that our schools are adequately addressing in sexual education the culture of healthy respect, what healthy romantic or non-romantic relationships look like and whether children in our schools know what to do if they are either victim of sexual harassment or sexual exploitation. From the report, it was clear that in terms of healthy relationship and consent, that was part of the curriculum that was lacking. There were young people telling us that they didn't feel it was addressed in an adequate fashion in their sexual sex education. They were looking to other sources online or speaking with their peer networks. It depends again on the community that they are in and the stuff that they are finding online. That was definitely one of the recommendations to look at consent and what constitutes a healthy relationship and the levels of respect that you should get from your partner at any age and the ways how to protect yourself. Both online and offline should be included in more depth in sex education in schools across Scotland. I referred to something that you did last week, co-creation, bringing young people in. It's very hard for teachers who are not digital natives living in that context and interacting with that technology to know the nuances of what's going on in these conversations. I remember in high school I didn't have Facebook and I'm so grateful because I could leave school at school. I could leave whatever was going on at school. Nowadays they can't and it's going on to Instagram, Twitter. Every social media platform that pops up is now another channel through which people can target. I have great conversations too but also very much target each other because that's what happens when you're young. One of the most insidious aspects of child sexual exploitation is that victims don't often recognise their victimhood. As such, they're less likely to be forthcoming to an adult about it. For example, sexual harassment, the pinging of the brass trap, for example, you would potentially go and tell a teacher that might be addressed. But if somebody thinks that they're in love with somebody, they might just tell their peers, what support are we giving children to be supportive peers to say that that relationship is not right? What does he actually want from you, considering that he's 10 years older? What kind of support are we giving to peers to support each other because they may not come forward to teachers? I think that goes back to standardised sex education as well, addressing some of these things. The people who participated in the research said that the first person that they would probably speak with for the majority of them would be their peer network. It wouldn't be a teacher, it wouldn't be a parent, it would be their friend. If their friend is not equipped with that knowledge and not knowing what the next steps are going to be, even knowing who is the teacher that you should be speaking with, or even knowing if those behaviours are controlling abusive behaviours, or if it's just something that's normal in a relationship, when you're going through being in a relationship for the first time in your life, then it's really difficult for that young person to address it, and we shouldn't expect them to have their responsibility to be able to address it. I think that's why one of the recommendations was to provide safe spaces for young people in their schools when they can come together with support of perhaps a guidance teacher or someone who received training on those issues to be able to speak openly with their peer networks and to be able to get that peer-to-peer support, because these are the first people that they're going to speak about any instances of sexual harassment that they're experiencing. Another point is making sure that the definition of sexual harassment, again, is standardised and it's very clear. So, young people are not questioning whether something that they're experiencing is actually harassment. They're not thinking that this is just a normal behaviour or that boys will be boys or whatever the phrases people use, that they actually have a really clear understanding that this behaviour is not acceptable. The final question, if I may. Audry Updike-Varnes, you reference the fact that you're not a native to the information superhighway, and none of us are, but our children are. As such, it's fair to say that, with the best will in the world, the policy strategy that exists to address child sexual exploitation or online sexual harassment are made up of people in their 40s and 50s who are still feeling their way through a lot of these social media platforms. Do you think that we should be doing more to enlist young people into the policy making processes? So, they say, ah, well, you know, there's this new kind of abuse or a new online platform which is on the dark web or hidden, which can get around parental safeguards. Do you think that we need to do more to involve children and young people in that process? Absolutely. Even just to have a, if you created a room where there was a workshop to talk about what do you do online and share it instead and tips, you're going to get insight. The conversation is going to go in a direction where you're going, oh, that was a channel I didn't know we were using now. Have those conversations, bring them into a forum and it can start as an enjoyable conversation and you'll understand things a bit more. Not necessarily explicitly looking for harmful interactions, but just to gain an understanding of that highway. Thank you. Thank you, convener, and good morning to both of you. It's good to have you here this morning. One of the recommendations from the work that you've done is that sex and relationship education should be standardised across the country. Do you think that that is truly achievable? Given that no two schools are the same, can you really achieve that standardisation across the country? I think that's what we should strive for because otherwise the experiences of young people in our country are going to be so different and their access to education and safe education is going to be so different that I think even though it is going to be challenging, I think that there should be a standardised, at least standardised reporting and standardised information that should be included in sex ed curriculum across Scotland and definitely standardised training for teachers as well. So they know how to recognise sexual harassment and finally standardised reporting. That was one thing that came coming up again and again and again from communities across Scotland that sometimes it would be from school to school, sometimes the distance between them would be half an hour, but the outcomes for the young people reporting sexual harassment would be completely different and then would impact their lives in completely different ways. So I think that if we don't have those standardised procedures then we risk failing young people in Scotland. Audrey, any further comments? No, I completely agree with Patricia's statements that it's fair enough to say that it's unachievable but it's worth trying. We can't. Your survey showed that 45 per cent of students and 48 per cent of teachers don't think that the curriculum adequately covers consent. Do you think that in some ways that is a benefit? Because clearly if there is currently a lack in the way training and awareness raising is done, it's easier to do a radical refresh or are there things from the training that's currently in place that could almost be pulled out and refreshed and used? The training for teachers, I wouldn't be so sure. I'm entirely sure what's the scope of training that's now being offered other than young people who participated in the report and also the teachers who contributed to the report saying that they don't feel at the moment it's enough and that we need to do more. I think that we can be quite radical with what we do. I think that we have a real opportunity to do something that's really going to affect change for young people in Scotland. You've also made a recommendation that raising awareness in education should start in primary schools. Do you think that that will be a harder task to roll out in primary schools? Where will you start to embed that kind of education? It will almost be easier as you take it forward. I think that the main challenge would probably be getting parents on board for earlier sex education, but I think that you're absolutely right on your second point. The earlier we start having those conversations, the more likely it is that the outcomes for young people will be improved. For this report, we looked at secondary schools and up, but we started recently working with rape crisis prevention units because they work with P7 students as well, and they've already been reporting instances of what we recognise as sexual harassment, so we know it's already happening to really young people, a much younger age group than we targeted for this particular report. I think it's important to start those conversations early because, as Audrey was saying before, once you're conditioned to kind of expect those kind of behaviours, and once you start making yourself smaller, that starts in primary school, that starts at a really early age, and it's much harder, I think, to reverse that rather than trying to target it as early as possible. I would even go so far as to say that that's what the teachers were referring to when they said that it wasn't enough, and that consent and tackling things that are not reactive almost, being proactive and starting young and having those conversations about what's a healthy communication, what's healthy relationships, what's a healthy interaction, it's being preventative and makes it so much more healthy in handling the education later on in life, doesn't need to be explicit sex ed, as you would conventionally think of it, but communication, interaction, culture, society. The point that you make about parents, I think, is an interesting one, because I'm unaware of the involvement that parent councils and parent forums have in the roll-out or the training and awareness raising of this. I certainly would think, and I would hope that you would agree, that involving parent councils and parent forums, perhaps even taking part in the training would be good. It may also help to start conversations that parents have with other parents about what they perhaps should be looking out for in their own children. I definitely agree. For a young person, they need to have that support at home as well, so that education doesn't finish. In the classroom, they need to have that support from their parents and their parents being educated and understanding different ways that sexual harassment can affect young people. Going back to the point of being natives and digital communications, parents having an understanding of those ever-changing platforms would be very helpful. That's one thing that we would definitely recommend. Thank you. My principal question has been covered already, but it was just a quick question following up on your response to Fulton and some of the other things. Do you think that the pace of progress has been quick enough, or would you have hoped that more of the recommendations would have been prioritised after six months? Other than that comment from the Deputy First Minister in June, we haven't heard anything else in terms of the progress addressing that particular topic. We know that there is new reporting recommendations on bullying that was rolled out in autumn, but we didn't really see specifically gendered or sexual harassment as an angle to it, but we know that the work is really recent, so it's something that remains to be seen how sexual harassment will become part of reporting for that particular scheme. From the young woman that we spoke with for the report and after the report was launched, they said that they didn't feel that reporting mechanisms in general were particularly effective and they didn't feel confident to report instances of sexual harassment, so we are hoping that there will be an action that will be taken in the next couple of months to really start addressing that issue. From speaking with other people, people are telling us that this is the same stuff that I experienced in schools 20, 30 years ago. People are surprised that some of the things that are coming up are exactly the same as their experience, so we really don't want to wait another 20, 30 years until the same or maybe progressively worse. You mentioned earlier about the definition of sexual harassment and in your report you had said that it should be clear to students and staff as to what constitutes sexual harassment, so in the definition of it, what should it include? I think that what we would recommend is to have a much wider conversation with survivors. I don't think that even as a group of 30 young women, many of whom had experience of sexual harassment would feel confident coming up with a definition that includes all of the different levels of sexual harassment. I think that it requires a much wider conversation and co-design and co-production with survivors and with young people who are currently experiencing sexual harassment in schools, but I think that definition should have all of the elements of sexual harassment, it should be really clear so the young person, when they look at it, they know straight away whether it's something that they have experienced, they don't question it, they don't feel scared to report it because they are unsure whether it's just a normal behaviour or if it's actually someone targeting them because of their gender. My recommendation would be to a much wider exercise to come up with that definition because we've been looking for it and we've noticed that there isn't one ideal definition that's why I think there needs to be a wider conversation around that topic. Just one more small bit. Do you think that there should be a specific definition for schools about what sexual harassment constitutes or is it a wider public definition of it or should there be one specifically for schools? I think that there should be a wider definition because then it means that when you leave school, when you go into your first workplace or any sort of other interactions that you have with other human beings, whether it's being in relationships, you actually know what a healthy relationship should be, what consent means, so I think there is a need to create that definition that is much wider and I think school context is not different from any context. There will be the same behaviour that you will see outside of school. Thank you. That's us at the end of our session. Thank you very much for your report and for your evidence. It's been really valuable and I'm sure that colleagues will put your questions to the Deputy First Minister in our next session. We're now going to suspend briefly for a comfort break. Welcome back everyone and can I welcome Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills to the committee to give evidence. We have John Swinney and his officials, Laura Meagle, head of support and wellbeing unit, Stuart Downs, interim policy manager at the Scottish Government and I understand that you'd like to make some opening remarks. I welcome this opportunity to update the committee on the Scottish Government's response to the recommendations of the young women lead committee's report on sexual harassment in schools. Let me start by reaffirming the Government's commitment to end violence against women and girls, including sexual harassment. It is one of the most devastating and fundamental violations of human rights and it needs to stop. Children and young people should feel nurtured, safe, respected and included in their learning environment and all staff should be proactive in promoting positive relationships and behaviour in the classroom, playground and wider learning community. No pupil should feel threatened or harassed at school. I acknowledge the seriousness of the issues that the young women lead committee has raised and am grateful to them for the insight that they have provided. I also express my appreciation to Linda Fabiani and to Christina McKelvie and members of the Equality and Human Rights Committee for the continued focus that this issue is attracting within the committee. I previously assured Linda Fabiani that this Government would engage seriously on the contents of the young women lead committee report. I am therefore pleased to set out today the work that the Government is undertaking to deliver the committee's recommendations. I recognise that we may not have time to discuss the Government's response to each of the report's 15 recommendations and I would be happy in light of questioning to write to the committee with any further information that the committee would wish to hear from the Government. I accept that the availability of clear guidance is vital if we are to effectively respond to incidents of sexual harassment in schools and intervene early to prevent the escalation of toxic behaviours. One of the immediate actions that we are undertaking is the establishment of a personal and social education lead officers network that will meet early in 2019 and the first aim of that network will be to take forward work to develop resources to support schools and pupils to tackle sexual harassment. We are also continuing our work to ensure that teachers have up-to-date resources that they need to teach relationships, sexual health and parenthood or RSHP education. A new web-based RHSP teaching resources has been developed by a partnership of health boards and local authorities. It is designed to fill gaps in teaching resources highlighted by teachers and pupils, including key messages on consent. It has currently been piloted and will be launched in 2019. We have also accepted recommendations from the LGBTI inclusive education working group and will be undertaking a review and update to the 2014 statutory guidelines on RSHP education. We will shortly be publishing our conclusions and recommendations from the personal and social education PSE review. The review's recommendations will help us to strengthen PSE delivery and the wider network of pastoral guidance available to pupils. Those interventions will strengthen the delivery of RSHP education which is an integral part of the health and wellbeing area of curriculum for excellence, enabling children and young people to experience positive behaviours and to develop an understanding of consent and an awareness of the law on sexual behaviour. As part of our prevention work, we are also funding Rape Crisis Scotland to extend the delivery of their sexual violence prevention programme to public secondary schools in every local authority in Scotland. The Government is taking a cross-cutting approach to end sexual harassment and violence against women and girls that draws together the contributions of various policy areas including health, justice and education. The actions that I am taking forward within my portfolio will ensure that our entire education system from early years to schools as well as further and higher education is a key contributor to this work with age and stage appropriate materials available throughout. The steps that I have outlined today are part of the wider getting at right for every child agenda. We want every child or young person and their family to be offered the right help if we are to end sexual harassment and violence against women and girls. I look forward to considering the committee's conclusions on the subject that will help to inform the forthcoming work that the Government is undertaking. Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I ask for an update on the recording of bullying incidents and whether that includes incidents of sexual harassment within it. In our earlier session with the young women's committee they mentioned that reporting wasn't happening due to fear of reputational damage from schools so maybe just some reflections on how schools can show leadership in tackling this. It's obviously never uncomfortable shining a light on things that we would rather not be happening but just some reflections on that as well. There are two aspects to the question that I would want to put on the record. The first is a cultural point that addresses the latter point that you made to me which is that I think it's important that there is a culture of open acknowledgement that these issues are taking place and I think that the young women's lead committee have done us a service by highlighting very directly some of these issues and very dramatically some of the content of these issues. That has to prevail in all educational settings so that it is clear that there are examples of this type of behaviour happening to therefore encourage a culture of open consideration and reporting. The second point is a practical point which is that the CMOS information system which applies to all schools in Scotland has been updated there have been software changes made to ensure that we can record instances of bullying within our school system and those examples can properly be charted and give us an insight into the extent of the prevalence of these instances and therefore formulate whether there are further actions that need to be taken to address that and whether there is an incidence problem in one school versus another school and from that we made deduce lessons to learn about the practices that may be taken forward in one school which are leading to a better ethos in culture than might be the case in another school. Thank you. Good morning Mr Swinney and thank you very much for coming along. You mentioned the PSE and the review that is on-going at the moment and we asked Audrey and Patricia earlier whether they thought that PSE could be the only place to have the consent and sexual discussion or whether that should go across the whole curriculum and they agreed that it should go across the curriculum rather than just be in one place. I wonder if you could comment on that and I wonder if you could also comment on the PSE review in particular and give us an update on how that's going any time scales and also we talked about consistency of reporting but also consistency of how that message is getting out as well. On the PSE review the PSE review has been undertaken three stages and three phases and the final phase of that I've just recently received the conclusions of that for me to consider I've held off publishing that and concluding that I wanted to come to the committee to hear the issues that have been raised and to give me a final opportunity to reflect on what is being presented to me given the questions that the committee puts to me as to whether the conclusions of the review are appropriate. That will influence my time scale for publication it's in a very advanced stage conceivably could be published before Christmas but I'll probably reflect on it before Christmas recess and publish it early in the new year we gave a commitment to publish by the end of the year given how close we are to recess I might just take that time to reflect on it in the light of the committee's deliberations on that point In relation to the question of whether PSE is the right place for this discussion to be had I think it's important to reflect on the fact that education forms part of the health and wellbeing curriculum area one of the eight curricular areas of curriculum for excellence When I became the education secretary I asked the chief inspector of education to give guidance to the education system which gave which I thought was required which gave greater promise to literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing among the eight curricular areas and essentially the inference of that was that while the eight curricular areas are essential to provide holistic education for young people there are three that are more holistic than others which are literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing so there's a centrality to personal and social education within health and wellbeing and a centrality of health and wellbeing so I think what I certainly think our current arrangements should provide for is the appropriate understanding and appreciation of the issues that arise out of personal social education should be available to all young people at every stage of their education from the early years right up to the senior phase and also as a matter of fact into aspects of our higher and further education system that brings me on to a part of that debate which is do I think all of the PSE elements are as appropriate and effective as they could be and I think I have to accept that that's not the case because the work that we're undertaken to review PSE the work that we're undertaken to provide the materials on relationships, sexual health and parenthood which are being developed currently being piloted and developed I think that acknowledges the fact that we believe there is work that has to be undertaken here to ensure that there is a wider appreciation of all of these issues within the education system that's important for a whole number of reasons it's important just because it's important it's important that everybody in life has an understanding of all of these issues and an appreciation of all of these issues but it's particularly appropriate and important given the experience we are currently having as a country with the significant increase in sexual crimes and the Solicitor General and this brings me on to about cross-portfolio working The Solicitor General has convened some work because of her deep concern about the escalation in it's not her concern about reporting it's her deep concern about the instances of sexual of allegations of a sexual nature which are resulting in increased reporting to the Crown to the police and then consideration by the Crown and the point that the Solicitor General is making to me is that the criminal justice system will obviously be able to tackle all of these particular reports but it would be better for the health and wellbeing of our society if we were educating young people not to get involved in this activity in the first place and that would be better all round for everybody so I accept when I look at the data which shows an increase in reporting of sexual crimes and instances of sexual crimes in our society I accept that there is a responsibility on the education system to play its part in trying to reduce that incidence by better education for young people so that analysis brings me to the conclusion that this is something that needs to be considered in the space of preventative intervention to ensure that we're equipped to handle these issues properly so I think that's the approach that we're bringing to this work that's being undertaken to make sure that we adequately equip young people with the children and young people with the knowledge of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate and that's good and it's important in itself but it's critical in trying to reduce the instances of a lead sexual crime within our society just a small supplementary on that very point we talk often about the gap almost between what children are being taught in school and then what they experience in their home lives how do we reach those parents that see these instances of what children are now going to be taught in school as sexual harassment as banter between different messages from school and from home I think that that's a deeper cultural question within our society which we have to confront I think a lot of what has happened as a consequence of the emergence of the focus on the me too movement I think has been a wake up call to society in general and I think the benefits of that I hope we see in our society where it is more visibly obvious and directly obvious as to what is an acceptable behaviour so I think that this is something that needs to be tackled in every aspect of society schools have got their part to play but so has the home got a part to play and of course one of the key elements of our framework for education in Scotland is good, strong parental engagement and family engagement in learning and I know that and that should be across all aspects of a young person's education and it's important that families understand what learning has been undertaken by young people within schools to be able to reinforce that within the home it applies the same issues apply about maths if a young person does maths at school and then goes home and gets told by their parents maths is terrible it has an effect if a young person gets a message about sexual harassment in schools and goes home and gets told that's just banter it has the same corrosive effect so I'd completely accept the point but it's about changing societal attitudes on these questions Annie Wells First Minister following on from Gail Ross's questions some people will say it's banter and some people say it's sexual harassment as part of the concluding part of the committee's report it says that consistency is key in reporting sexual harassment and they'd said that it should be clear to students and staff what the definition is of sexual harassment so I suppose what I'm asking is are we looking at a standardised definition of sexual harassment so that it is clear to parents and teachers and pupils themselves and girls what constitutes sexual harassment and is the Government working on that definition at the moment? I think this is a really difficult question I think it gets to the nub of many of the issues that are at stake in this whole debate because I've been thinking long and hard about this question and I think it does get to the nub of where we have to go in this debate and it's also influencing my thinking about the guidance and the PSU review contents Fundamentally there is a spectrum on this issue which starts with if I use Annie Wells's term light banter and ends up with a sexual offence the sexual offences part of that are defined in law in statute and the Crown will assess against those sexual offences but on that spectrum I find it quite difficult to work out where sexual harassment starts and stops because all of it is unacceptable so I I've found it quite I think we're in a situation today where our existing legal framework defines sexual offences and obviously the Government I think the Government's been pretty clear with Parliament that we will constantly keep under review the definition of sexual offences and indeed have legislated to strengthen provision of where we thought that was necessary but to put another definition in there I think runs the risk I'm not for a moment suggesting that Annie Wells is putting this to me runs the risk that some things almost become defined by society as acceptable and I don't and I think that would be undesirable so I'm not giving a definitive answer to Annie Wells's question because I struggle to work out what we would how we would define it what I do think we have to do is to love to educate young people to have confidence in saying that something is not acceptable and to be prepared to raise that concern it relates then directly back to the point that convener made to meet the outset of this session because without that then things will just muddle along as banter and I think that's unacceptable I'm a short one the previous panel had said that when they were looking at the definition they really wanted it and it should be a wider conversation and it should be victim led and would the Deputy First Minister consider going back to the committee and seeing what they would suggest as to who would be involved in that discussion to look at the victim led side of things as well I hope from the answer that I just gave to Annie Wells that I left it pretty open I'm open on this question I've expressed my view to the committee about my reluctance to go into that territory of definition for the reasons that I've given but I'm very happy to reflect further on this issue it's not one of which I've got a fixed view other than the fact that I don't consider any of this behaviour to be acceptable Thank you, Oliver Mandel Thank you, convener I just wondered whether the cabinet secretary would look if he comes to the position where he wouldn't look at a fixed definition whether he would look to draw up even if it's a non-exhaustive list but some very specific examples setting out things that would clearly be wrong particularly within a school or work setting going back to some of the examples that have been mentioned even today at committee it's into the territory of where we have to be satisfied that the work we do on the review of personal and social education its content and the guidance that we put in place on relationships, sexual health and parenthood meets the tests that Mr Mandel is putting to me this morning and the points that Annie Wells has raised with me so I think we have to be satisfied that we are appropriately and effectively demonstrating what is not acceptable and so that the educational materials the process of education has to do that effectively so I will be applying that consideration to the analysis that I undertake and the materials that will come to me as we consider these issues and that will be material to the piloting that's going on just now of the materials in this respect I was just going to very quickly follow up on the comments you made around the new web resource in your opening statement are you going out to groups to ask them what they think of that including the young women's leadership committee are they the sort of people who get asked do those resources meet your satisfaction is that the sort of consultation that's on going at the moment yes and again I'm very open to making sure that we hear the voice of young people in this respect I think one of the points that's come out of the research on the PSE review has been some feedback from young people which has pretty much said that this needs to be an awful lot better than it is so I take that very seriously which is why we're improving the materials that are available and it's important that we hear from young people at all stages about whether or not what they are hearing as part of this process actually is emphatic and informative for them rather than something that they particularly don't have a high opinion of so we must make sure that young people have confidence in the materials that have been taken forward Mary Fee Thank you, convener, and good morning to the cabinet secretary and his officials one of the recommendations that come out of the work that the young women's leadership committee has done is that sexual and relationship education should be standardised across all schools and the question that I put to the previous panel was given that no two schools are the same and the type of training and education that they want is something that has no option to admit areas or to teach them any differently across the schools Do you think that it's achievable to have a standard across every single school? I think it's possible to have a standard but I don't think it's possible to have an identical approach taken across all schools The approach that is taken through curriculum for excellence essentially sets out the outcomes of what we want young people to achieve as a consequence of their education so these are set out in the experiences and outcomes that are prepared by Education Scotland and of course there are experiences and outcomes that are very relevant to the health and wellbeing curricular area within the curriculum so we set out to schools those are the experiences and outcomes that we want young people to have we then also set out the benchmarks of how we visualise the achievement and understanding of young people as a consequence so that gets set out as a framework and then it's left to individual schools to determine how best and how appropriately they can address those issues so I suppose the answer that I would give to the question is that I certainly and it relates also to the point that I made to Gail Ross a moment ago every school has to deliver the health and wellbeing curricular area has to do justice to one of the three primary areas of the curriculum and within that personal social education is critical in that respect so that's the standard I would expect in individual schools but obviously I think it will vary from school to school as to how that is undertaken and obviously there's a question of the age appropriateness of the way in which that education is undertaken which will of course vary from age group to age group and if we accept that there is a core that must be taught in every school and there is an element of I suppose we could say flexibility in what is topped up already done what assessment do you think should be done of that additional part that is left to schools to decide whether they do or not Fundamentally that would be picked up in the approach to periodic inspection by Education Scotland where Her Majesty's Inspectorate are looking at what is the educational experience of young people within an individual school and obviously they are considering that against the expectations that I've just set out to my answer a moment ago to Mary Fee so that would ultimately be picked up there is also the opportunity for us to undertake as we did in the second phase of the PSE review a thematic inspection of a topic so we've undertaken a thematic inspection of PSE within Scottish schools undertaken by Her Majesty's Inspectorate and of course that's given us some evidence of areas of practice that need to improve which is then informing the third phase of the PSE review so those are the two options that I would say are available to ensure that's the case but I suppose there's also a third and this is something to which I'm constantly giving attention is to make sure that we consistently hear the voice of young people in their appreciation and understanding of particular issues in general in society I think one of the great strengths of the experience that we've had in the year of young people in 2018 is that we've more actively than normal sought out the views of young people and what we've learnt from that is that first of all we're very lucky to have the young people we've got because they are confident individuals with very strong sometimes uncomfortable opinions and secondly it's not that hard to hear their opinions if you actually try hard enough so for example traditional government consultations would be these fine people at my side prepare a consultation document I approve it, it gets sent out in a glossy format or perhaps online and people reply to it and you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that not many young people will engage in consultation but if you engage an organisation like Young Scott or you identify a group like the young women lead committee and ask them to engage about it my goodness, you get a completely different proposition and I think habitually governments learn a pretty blunt lesson in 2018 that A, policymaking is better if you get that expression of opinions from young people and B, it's not that hard to obtain it when you actually think about how you can go about doing that so perhaps fewer glossy publications and more discussions around the table where young people might elicit that information and obviously engagement with and getting buy-in from teachers pupils and from parents is vital to the success of this and again it was a question I asked in the previous panel to the young women lead representatives parent councils and parent forums hold a very important place in schools and when they work well they are sometimes key to driving success in schools so how involved would you like to see parent councils and forums in sex and relationship education would you like to see them involved in some of the training because quite often getting buy-in from a parent councils can lead to wider conversations with other parents which could help to drive that societal change but also I'll just finish my question and then I'd be happy to hear your answer getting pupils involved in it would be really important as well so would you like to see pupils involved in the style and some of the formatting of some of the materials that are rolled out in schools I take a fairly open view about all of these questions those are sensitive topics and on some of the material that's being piloted there's been a bit of media coverage which has highlighted particular elements of that which have caused some parental unease and members of Parliament have been writing to me on behalf of constituents about that unease and it's very important that we address those issues satisfactorily for parents to make sure that we are taking an age-appropriate approach to those questions so the nature of parental involvement I wouldn't limit it just to parent forums or parent councils parental engagement in education is for me a much deeper process than if we summarise it by membership of a parent council or attending a parent's evening it's a much deeper process of learning our schools are doing so much more to open up their doors to get parents in to be involved in the learning of young people and I heartily encourage that and welcome it and I think in this area of policy that would be helpful because I quite understand the unease that some parents have expressed to members of Parliament some of the teaching materials that we're looking at I completely understand the unease and I'm trying in my response to members of Parliament I've written quite a number of letters to members of Parliament addressing these concerns but if I turn it on its head as a parent do I want my child to be educated in the importance of understanding the question of consent I most certainly do definitely and I'd be hard pressed to find a parent who didn't want that either so I think we just have to have I'm engaged in open conversation about these points because I think if we do that we then will be able to address some of that parental unease activate parental support to reinforce these messages in the home perhaps help to change deeper cultural attitudes within our society on the points that Gail Ross raised with me and actually make sure that our the issues that the solicitor general is quite fairly putting in front of me saying look I need the education system to do you more to try to help reduce the rise in sexual offences in our society by better education then a combination of all of that I hope will make a discernible effect and also command parental conference into the bargain cabinet secretary I wonder sometimes I mentioned that some of us can feel uncomfortable with the topic and I think the relationship part of it is actually the important part and these things it's not necessarily about the details of sexual relationships for young people I noticed something online the other day where I think it was a nursery class as they were entering would pick how they wished to be greeted if they wanted a high five, a handshake or a hug actually that is teaching about consent and respect and bodily autonomy so these are the types of things that can assist and these are some of the fantastic bits of creativity that our education system and it goes back to my point to Mary Fee about us not sitting in St Andrew's house prescribing it must be done like this everyone must be asked if they wish a high five in the morning but you make a very substantial point convener that that actually is an illustration of how you educate a young person about exercising choice and so we've got great professionals out there who I'm very confident about the judgment they will make in this respect but it gives us an opportunity to have that an appropriate engagement with young people to identify how to proceed on these questions Thank you First Minister, good morning and to your officials as well I would like to talk about the continuum that exists between sexual harassment in the physical world and sexual exploitation and particularly in the online communities that our children and young people now inhabit a more intangible sexual harassment and is but still severe nevertheless it was my privilege to serve on the ministerial task force on child sexual exploitation before I was elected I just wondered if you could update the committee as to how the government's work in terms of the healthy respect agenda and an understanding of sexual exploitation is taking hold in our schools given that it's far less tangible and sometimes more insidious I think that this is a very good illustration of how we need to be constantly considering over and over again what is the content of the educational approaches that we are taking and it goes back again to reinforce my answer to Mary Fee because if we I would say in the space of probably no more than seven or eight years our entire digital interaction as a society has been fundamentally transformed so if I go back to the start of this administration in 2007 the degree of digital activity was pretty felt pretty 19th century by comparison but now it is absolutely all consuming in society and that's happened in a really short space in time and I think that it's a perfect illustration of how our education system has to evolve because if we were sitting here saying, well, we wrote the guidance in 2007 as to what you've got to teach in the classroom it would be pretty irrelevant to the classrooms that young people are now occupying in 2018 because of that space of change and all we know about what's coming ahead of us is that it's going to change faster than what we've experienced in the course of the last 10 years so it's important that we are equipping young people within the education system with an understanding of a whole range of different issues a large part of which will be the dangers that they will be potentially exposed to if they do not carefully and properly safeguard themselves in an online community and that has to be part of what we are educating young people about in the holistic education that we take forward so that they are aware of all of these sentiments so I would see that as being integral to the educational materials that we take forward integral to the teaching resource that is taken forward on RSHP and an integral to how we equip young people with the capacity to be able to handle these questions Thank you I said in my first question that sexual exploitation is particularly insidious and that's largely because in many cases victims of sexual exploitation don't recognise their victim hood and many as a result if you think about the continuum of sexual harassment if somebody pings your brass strap or grope or something that's a tangible physical violation that you would very likely raise with a teacher but if it's a relationship you're in that you don't recognise as being inappropriate and you think you're in love then it's a lot harder to understand that victim hood and seek help and in many cases it's young people themselves that act as the peer support for somebody in that situation can you describe to the committee how we're supporting young people to be that critical friend at that time of need if that relationship isn't right for you what does he see when he's 10 years older is there work going on to help support young people to have those difficult conversations? I think that's what I see as a necessary outcome of the education that we undertake on relationships sexual health and parenthood if that education process does not create the capacity and the resilience within young people to be able to consider offering some of that advice to a peer group of young people then I don't think our education is meeting the needs of 21st century young people in Scotland and those considerations will be very much at the heart of the judgments that I make about the guidance and about the contents of the materials which obviously will be informed by the input of young people to Oliver Mundell a little while ago if young people look at these materials and say fine but not really relevant to where we are today then we've got to go back to the drawing board on those materials I think that if we engage young people properly in the formulation process we should avoid that danger but the type of judgments that Mr Cole-Hamilton puts to me are reasonable expectations for us to expect this process to generate within young people because fundamentally what our approach to the curriculum is trying to do is to create young people who are in command of the four capacities identified in curriculum for excellence but crucially as part of that we have strengthened their resilience and part of their resilience will be about knowing what consent means knowing what is appropriate behaviour and what is inappropriate behaviour and I think that Mr Cole-Hamilton raises a fair point about and I think that this is an endemic point about cyberactivity I think that people can understand in a physical sense what is acceptable and unacceptable in a cyber sense I think that people don't quite have the same views let me just give an example from an earlier discussion that I had this week in relation to cyber resilience within the country in general people will lock their front door in the house they won't think twice about locking their front door because that's what you do but they won't guarantee in all circumstances they'll lock down their computer or their iPhone or their iPad to give themselves the same protection in their digital space and their device that they've just delivered for their home by locking the front door because people are thinking about it differently so there is a cultural attitude within society where I think on in relation to cyberactivity we all have to think we've got to be much more vigilant in a cyber space and that's what, when we published the national action plan on internet safety for children and young people in April 2017 that was the type of sentiment we had in our minds to try to encourage within the home to support some of that education of young people final question if I may just before you do it I suppose I would just want to comment in no way as a criticism but I suppose we just would want the young women's committee to be clear that we hear them when they say that most young women don't report the milder sexual harassment things and actually that silence and shame is pretty strong I know you were just framing your question exploitation thank you for that clarification convener and I absolutely misspoke there that's quite right and thank you for putting that on the record my final question takes you back Deputy First Minister to your comment about the start of your administration in 2007 it being a very different world out there and I'm reflective of the fact that probably everyone round this table is an immigrant to the information superhighway that we are in whereas our children and young people are all natives and there are frontiers in this agenda which emerge almost on a weekly basis new social media platforms, new apps the rest of it and as policy makers are in the dark here we're making policy about platforms we don't even know exist in some cases how much are we enlisting young people and this goes back to the voice of the child at the decision making table and in co-production around awareness building this how much are we involving young people as experts in this alien land to us adults so that they can say to us will these new platforms emerge, this is a new fad in terms of what people are sharing are they at the table I think so but I think my experience of the year of young people makes me question whether they're at the table enough for these questions because I think the point that Mr Cole-Hamilton makes to me is a completely fair point that young people are closer to this they're closer to the understanding of it all they're also closer to the danger of it all and that's something that we have to take much greater account of in how we take forward this agenda so I think one of the points that I will reflect on out of the consideration of the young women lead committee and out of the committee's deliberations on this question is to satisfy myself that we are taking adequate steps to make sure that young people are sufficiently close to this agenda thank you OK, thanks, Fulton Good morning Deputy First Minister in the last evidence session just before you came in and asked the young women lead committee what they would like to ask herself and I think actually in your earlier responses you've covered much of her questions particularly around schools not reporting issues because of reputation in your earlier answer to the convener and also to Gail Ross but one of the questions that they ended with was there any part of the report that you weren't aware of previously was there any additional factors or issues brought forward by that report that sort of caught your attention I think the I suppose what I felt reading the report was that I I suppose I was more stunned by what they recount as their experience and I suppose I don't think that evidence base that is marshaled by the young women lead committee is particularly different to any evidence base that I have seen before but it's expressed incredibly powerfully so I suppose that part of it did stun me when I read that their account of their experience made me think that listening to that expression directly from young women is something that was very powerful in their account Excellent and just to finish off the young women lead committee asked about the action taken over the past six months and the six months that are coming I think in your earlier statement that you did speak about what's been done what would be your priorities in this area for the upcoming six months and further ahead Well we have as Mr MacGregor accounts we have undertaken a significant amount of activity in this area we've been undertaking the PSE review we set out the equally safe strategy which is very important in terms of I think tackling that wider societal question of the safety and the protection from sexual harassment for principally young women I think that in the earlier on this year we launched the measures to tackle gender-based violence in our colleges and universities in response to the very effective campaign brought forward in tragic circumstances by Fiona Drewy in tribute to her late daughter Emily and I was pleased that we were able to move so quickly on the implementation of those measures in collaboration with the colleges and universities to address the devastating issues that Mrs Drewy has raised with us and then obviously we have the measures that we've taken on the strength and guidance on prejudice-based bullying and the people going forward obviously once we publish the review of personal and social education which I will reflect on over the next few weeks we will then take forward the implementation work in that respect by the lead officers network and I want to also make sure within that we have an adequate and strong voice for young people in the process and from that we'll flow the development of resources to support schools to address the issue of sexual harassment and to support young people and I think also in relation to that we will be reviewing the guidance on sexual health and parenthood and that flows from the work that we agreed with the LGBTI working group which obviously I reported to Parliament in my statement some weeks ago and there is quite a substantial amount of agenda that comes out of the LGBTI working group which is in the similar policy space to some of the work the young women lead committee we're looking at so that we doftail all that together so that it's as effective as it can be okay well thank you very much for your evidence this morning cabinet secretary our next meeting will be on Thursday the 20th of December when we will take evidence on the budget from the minister for older people and equalities and I now close the public section of our meeting and ask the public gallery to clear