Chamber and committees

When is the international education strategy going to be published?

Will you give us a bit more detail about when the pilot project will start?

At the forefront. Okay.

I want to follow up on the evolution of the no compulsory redundancy policy, which we discussed in the chamber last week. When Mike Russell was Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, he said:

“This party believes there is no place for compulsory redundancies in Scotland’s colleges.”

Subsequently, colleges got closer to Government, but they have been excluded from the no compulsory redundancy policy. Will you explain the rationale for that?

One of the implications of the Withers review might be for research funding for universities. Has the minister had any thoughts about that? The Withers review does not cover that aspect specifically, because it is skills focused, but nevertheless it will have significant implications for it. Does the minister have any thinking to share about that, or is it still too early?

Has the funding for the national innovation strategy in relation to universities—so that they can deliver their part in it—been worked out yet? How are we getting on with that?

Could we come to Carrie next?

Sorry.

We started the session with a fair bit of anxiety that some people felt that we were going to throw out some of the significant improvements that have been made over the past years—and certainly since I was at school, which was a wee while ago. I have no doubt that the system is much better now. However, there is also no doubt, whether the numbers have gone up or down, that a significant number of concerns are being raised by parents, young people, teachers and staff about what happens in response to incidents.

In this part of the session, I want to focus on the solutions. Many of you have come up with some cracking solutions already. We have talked about libraries, green spaces, youth work, mental health support, educational psychologists and issues around resourcing in the Morgan review.

My concern about those solutions is that some of them are long term. That does not make them bad, but they do not help the teacher I spoke to last week who showed me the bruises on her legs and the hair that had been pulled out of her head. We need to consider whether we are missing something about how we respond to individual incidents when, as Anne Keenan has said, the problem is at crisis point.

I have heard repeatedly that teachers are fed up with having endless repetitive restorative discussions that go nowhere. I want to understand whether there is a failure with the application of the restorative approach or whether there has been a misunderstanding of that policy. Alternatively, is there something else that we need to do to address the situation?

We are not generalising or saying that something should apply in all cases. I am not for going back to the old ways of punishment of the past. I reject them and support the restorative approach. However, there is clearly a problem. I want to focus on how we deal with incidents when teachers feel helpless and to understand what we are not getting quite right. How can we help those members of staff to deal with the problem?

Thank you for coming at such short notice, minister. We understand that this is not a common circumstance and appreciate your time.

The legislative landscape is constantly changing, particularly because of Brexit. Are we confident that these regulations will not open the door and allow students from the rest of the UK to apply to have the same rights and opportunities in Scotland as those who are in the expanded group will be entitled to?