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Education and Gaelic Committee 23 June 2026 [Draft]

23 Jun 2026 · S7 · Education and Gaelic Committee

Item of business

Priorities

Moodie, Laura Green South Scotland Watch on SPTV

Thank you, convener, and apologies to everybody for my tardiness. I was struggling somewhat with the train system in the south of Scotland.I was interested to hear what Patricia Gibson said, because I am particularly keen to focus on child poverty, which absolutely underpins the attainment gap—it is impossible to learn when you are hungry. We need to think holistically, so I would be keen to take a cross-committee approach to the issue with the Social Justice, Housing and Local Government Committee. We have targets coming up that we need to meet. The targets are being reviewed, but a big part of the role of this committee will be to look at the impact that those targets are having. Realistically, I do not think that the Scottish Parliament can make significant progress on closing the attainment gap unless we also deal with poverty.I would be keen to look further into the experiences of people who have been in care and their interaction with the education system, particularly at the crucial transition stages. We need to ensure that care-experienced people are genuinely being supported by the Promise to move from secondary to tertiary education, especially, and onwards into adult life.Paragraph 135 of the legacy report from the previous session commented about the time that has passed since we considered specialist education in Scotland, particularly the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and similar cultural institutions, such as Glasgow School of Art. It is high time that we looked at those, because they make an outsized contribution to Scotland’s soft power in the rest of the UK and throughout the world. It would be fantastic to consider the impact of such institutions.Overall, however, I have always been clear that I come from a very rural region. I live in a rural village, and I am particularly concerned about the impacts of rurality on equality in education. A lack of access to specialised teaching in schools takes different forms throughout the country. Some schools are excellent and offer, as best they can, a diverse curriculum. Other schools really struggle. For example, in a rural secondary with only one modern languages teacher, if that teacher is ill for an extended period, the consequence can often be that the school simply does not teach modern languages, or that they are taught by non-specialists, which is far from ideal.A big piece of rurality is the issue of childcare. We have to find ways to create flexible, year-round childcare for everybody in this country, and that is simply not happening in rural areas. There are the practical implications of the cost of delivering childcare in rural communities, where there are fewer people per capita, but there are also the challenges of the job sectors in those areas, which often offer shift, out-of-hours, weekend or seasonal work. Many parents in my constituency, including my husband, chiefly work seasonally. His main jobs are over the summer, which is precisely when people need childcare the most, but there is very little provision available at that time. We need to look at childcare in the round and ensure that we hear voices from across Scotland. We need to consider provision, such as childminders and wraparound care, that goes beyond the local government-led, statutory nursery-based provision.

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Education and Gaelic Committee 23 June 2026 [Draft]

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