Hansard

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

As colleagues have done, I thank Ruth Maguire for bringing the Play Scotland charter to Parliament for debate. I also thank Robin Harper for helping me to prepare for this debate. I welcome Robin back to the chamber and hope that he has as enjoyable a view from the public gallery as he had in his time down here on the floor of the chamber.

Over the past two decades in Scotland, we have seen some significant advancements in education. Importantly, many are based on an appreciation that the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic need to be supported by strategies that encourage all our children and young people to be confident, to have good social skills and to enhance their creativity.

However, at the same time we see a host of trends that work against the overall aims of the curriculum for excellence—especially the lack of esteem for the physical, creative and communication components. Unfortunately, art, music, drama, technical subjects and languages are always the first victims of budget cuts. That regressive trend, if it is allowed to continue, will deprive our youngest children during the very years when they need to learn and develop at their own natural speed, using their huge curiosity and motivation to experiment.

Restrictions that deprive children of the opportunity to play in the open air, to set their own targets and to develop their social skills and their ability to relate to others are counterproductive, and indeed they can be destructive.

In listening to other members reminisce about their time spent in playing, I realised that mine was not that long ago. Actually, I have a connection with one other member in the chamber, in that I played with Rona Mackay’s son; we were in the same cub group. I realise that that was a risky play to make—I am sure that I will suffer for it later—but it was exactly those sorts of outdoor play and social skills that we were learning through that.

Presiding Officer, this is not a fringe debate; it is one of vital importance to wellbeing and social cohesion in Scotland. We cannot separate play from the development of language skills, motor skills or the risk-assessment skills that all children need to keep themselves safe.

Many ambitious parents believe that they need to give their children an advantage by their beginning formal education as early as possible. In Sue Palmer’s book, “Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It”, she cites evidence from across Europe that a playful approach to language and learning is as effective and often more effective than an old-fashioned drill-and-learn regime. Indeed, by the age of 10, the language skills of children who have had the joys of a child-centred education are statistically the same as or are often ahead of those of children who have been subjected to the rigours of formal education. All the research, including the United Kingdom’s current effective provision of pre-school education project, points to the importance of talk that arises from children’s own interests; outdoor play, whether that is free or supervised; music and song; and not having until the age of five a playful introduction to phonics, well before plunging into pencil and paper work.

Finland and Sweden are often cited in debates in the chamber. Formal education does not start until the age of seven in those countries. They are at the top of the international league for literacy attainment, and there are the additional benefits of much lower achievement gaps between rich and poor and between the genders.

I congratulate Play Scotland and Ruth Maguire on bringing a debate on the play charter to the Parliament. Play Scotland is a great focal point for debate and discussion for professionals and practitioners of early years education in Scotland, and I hope that it will continue to push to ensure that we improve what happens for our young people.

Many organisations that work outside and alongside our schools and nurseries—the Scottish Wildlife Trust, forest schools, the John Muir Trust and eco-schools, for example—supplement in their own ways the work that is done by early years and pre-school teachers. The Government should do all that it can to ensure that we share the joy of nature and the outdoors with children throughout Scotland, and the play charter should give us all the push that is needed to ensure that that happens.