Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 18 November 2020
I support the motion and I associate myself with the remarks of Ross Greer and the Deputy First Minister, in particular, about the efforts of local authorities, teachers and pupils over recent months.
Yesterday, the First Minister made two things very clear. First, she is willing to impose severe restrictions on life in general, to reduce levels of infection. Secondly, she is determined to keep schools open, even in those circumstances. She was at pains to say that those were difficult decisions for her, but she has to understand that they are difficult decisions for the public to accept and understand, too.
No one wants to see young people’s education interrupted again as it was earlier this year. Indeed, the motion accepts the objective of keeping schools open. However, people see that many young people’s schooling is being disrupted by periods—sometimes consecutive—of self-isolation and the absence of teaching staff. They hear the Deputy First Minister say that there is little infection in schools and that a teacher has no more chance of becoming infected than anyone else in the community has, but they find that hard to believe.
Today’s evidence paper, to which the Deputy First Minister referred, is very much a step in the right direction, in sharing the evidence that underpins those assertions, but such sharing must happen more regularly and transparently and not just occasionally when a parliamentary debate demands it.