Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2020
I will take that on board, and I am coming to some of the steps that we could take.
There is no doubt that outdoor centres support learners’ health and wellbeing, as well as their attainment. They provide learners with valuable opportunities to spend time outdoors and be physically active at the same time.
That is why the Scottish Government has supported the work of the Scottish Advisory Panel for Outdoor Education over a number of years. It is why we have promoted the role of residential centres to all our schools, as part of the broad and rich education that is offered by curriculum for excellence.
It is fair to say that no MSP, no minister, no education authority and, certainly, no outdoor education centre would wish to face the dilemmas that are posed by Covid-19. The Scottish Government has continued to work closely with representatives of outdoor education centres throughout the crisis to look at how we can navigate through the current difficulties. The positive contributions of outdoor learning and outdoor centres feature throughout our Covid-19 recovery guidance. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government provided additional funding to the advisory group to develop fresh guidance on the positive role of outdoor education centres; as others have noted, that guidance was published in August.
Our officials have also facilitated engagement between the sector, COSLA and the Association of Directors of Education, as it is the role of individual education authorities to decide the approach in their local area and to fund that approach appropriately. In addition, just last week, Education Scotland published a new professional learning resource on outdoor learning.
The question of funding goes to the heart of the debate. It has been raised in the media and in many of the speeches today. A range of funding sources has been made available to complement the funding that comes from local authorities and schools. Third sector organisations that run outdoor education were able to apply for support through our £25 million third sector resilience fund. We alerted outdoor education centres to the up to £5 million that is available in fully flexible, zero per cent interest loans, starting at £50,000, from Social Investment Scotland. The newly created £3 million youth work education recovery fund, which was announced in mid-September, contains an objective to support outdoor education. Funding through the Scottish attainment challenge and pupil equity funding, as others have mentioned, also continues to play its role in helping to fund outdoor education visits by schools across the country. A number of third sector outdoor centres might be eligible to apply for funding under the forthcoming community and third sector recovery programme, too. Finally, as others have mentioned, outdoor education centres have been able to access financial support through the UK Government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. Today’s debate reinforces, yet again, the case for that scheme to be extended.
The centres are campaigning to access additional dedicated support funding, which is an entirely reasonable campaign for them to mount. I do not need to tell anyone here about the very significant pressures on Scottish budgets, to which Bruce Crawford referred, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges. There are huge demands on the public purse at the moment. In the past 48 hours, my inbox has had messages from three different sectors looking for support packages, and we receive representations on a regular basis because of what people and organisations are going through due to the Covid-19 crisis.
Jamie Greene rose—
Andy Wightman (Lothian) (Green) rose—