Hansard

I am pleased to contribute to this important debate about the crucially interrelated issues of prejudice-based bullying and personal and social education in our schools.

How we approach those topics will have a huge impact on the lives of children the length and breadth of Scotland. It will profoundly influence the crucial and formative years that our children spend at school, and it will shape the lessons and experiences that will be carried into adulthood. In that way, it will play a significant role in defining the type of adults and members of society that those children will become. The importance of those topics and the responsibility that lies with us to get this right cannot, therefore, be overstated.

As such, I strongly welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to refreshing the national approach to anti-bullying and to the national review of personal and social education. As a member of the Education and Skills Committee, I will focus my comments on PSE. As we have heard, the short investigation that was undertaken by the committee found that sex and relationships, inclusivity and diversity, mental health, and drugs and alcohol misuse are the essential issues that young people tell us must feature in PSE. The core values that must underpin teaching about those matters can be summed up as being respect, tolerance and consent.

The concept of consent is, of course, particularly associated with sex and relationships education. I agree that consent is a hugely important issue, and am very concerned that the Education and Skills Committee’s research found that it is not covered consistently in PSE at the moment. As a starting point, we must make absolutely sure that our children and young people fully understand and respect the notion of consent.

However, I hope that we can all agree that it should be only the starting point when it comes to discussing healthy and fulfilling sexual relationships. Consent—that is, the absence of resistance—can only be a baseline and an absolute minimum standard; it is not the ultimate goal or the extent of our aspirations when it comes to the relationships of our young people. As we all know, healthy emotional, social and physical relationships are based on far more than just consent; they are also based on enthusiastic and whole-hearted commitment, on participation and on mutual respect and confidence.

Although I completely recognise and support the need to improve education around consent, I also caution that we should not lose sight of the bigger picture, and that we should ensure that our young people know that they should be aiming for far more than just lack of resistance in their relationships with others.

In a similar vein, during yesterday’s statement on preventing sexual offending involving children and young people, I was pleased that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice agreed with me that the education that is received by children on the issue must focus not only on what is lawful and what is unlawful, but on what is healthy, safe and respectful. That is important because the review of personal and social education overlaps many other key strategies and actions that are currently under way, including anti-bullying work, the equally safe programme, the national action plan on internet safety for children and young people and—most recently—the newly announced expert group on preventing sexual offending involving children and young people.

In all those areas, it is crucial that we distinguish between basic minimum standards of what is legal or acceptable behaviour and behaviour and relationships that are unambiguously positive, healthy, respectful and safe, which we should promote as the ultimate goal for our younger people.

As well as consent, inclusivity is another key issue that was identified by the committee when it comes to sex and relationships education. Our young people must have the right to see themselves and their families being respectfully and honestly reflected in what they are taught in school.

That valuing of diversity applies to LGBTI-inclusive education—I reiterate my support for the TIE campaign—but it is also about recognising and respecting that families come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, including lone-parent families, families with divorced parents or married parents, step-families and blended families.

Lastly, although the committee’s report focused on PSE in the school context, it is important to acknowledge that we cannot give the full responsibility for it to schools and teachers: it is up to all of us to instil values of tolerance and respect in our children and young people.

The provision of good-quality and fit-for-purpose PSE is one part of the task, but it is also about what children and young people learn at home and in their communities, and about what is happening in families and in wider society.

It has been heartening to hear a pretty agreeable debate this afternoon, with lots of contributions from members who clearly care deeply about how our young people learn. I look forward to working with everyone to make quality PSE and anti-bullying work a success.