Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 18 November 2020
I am grateful to Ross Greer and the Scottish Greens for lodging the motion, which we support. I put on the record my deep gratitude to pupils, staff and parents for all their efforts.
I declare an interest in the debate as the parent of a 14-year-old daughter. She is in S3 and she is enjoying being back at school, largely, I suspect, because she is getting to spend time with her friends.
Young people have missed out on so much during the pandemic, and they have not escaped the pain that has been caused by the virus—especially those who have been affected by close family bereavements. As the motion states, almost 30,000 pupils and more than 2,600 staff have been absent from school for Covid reasons. Those figures are one week old, but they are worrying.
Absence rates are affecting areas with higher levels of deprivation more, and the impacts are uneven across Scotland. I note from the Public Health Scotland report that was published today that the proportion of schools with pupils who have tested positive is highest in the NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde areas. We need to understand better the link between self-isolation cases and deprivation, because parents in such areas will be the least likely to be able to afford private tuition to top up their children’s education, and we are just going to see a further increase in the attainment gap.
As one teacher put it to me, schools are open full time, but they are not providing full-time education. We have to be honest about the experience of young people in schools. I can think of one young person who has not played her instrument in school since March, and others have not been able to fully participate in physical education. What more can we do to make sure that young people get the full education experience?
Ross Greer is absolutely right. Schools are struggling, and it is partly about resources. I hear what Clare Adamson says about the need for councils to interpret the guidance properly, but teachers and school staff are drowning in emails and instructions. This week, we have had headteachers saying in the media that they are up until 2 o’clock in the morning dealing with contact tracing issues. I have constituents telling me that they are going through closed-circuit television footage to work out who was standing next to who in break-out areas. We are giving school staff a very difficult task.
We also need to be honest about the fact that, as Iain Gray said, there has already been a lot of disruption. Some young people have had to isolate more than once. Last night, I read that a school in Glenrothes has 400 pupils self-isolating, which is half of the school roll, and a small number of them have Covid, as do a small number of teachers.
We should not easily dismiss the number of young people who are getting Covid, because we do not yet know enough about the virus to fully understand the long-term health impacts for young people.
I am pleased that other speakers have mentioned pregnancy. I have a constituent in Lanarkshire who should be working at home, and she is getting very different advice from colleagues in other parts of the country. I say to the cabinet secretary that we cannot have a postcode lottery on health and safety.
I have an interest as a Lanarkshire resident: we are going to level 4 on Friday. Eleven local authorities in total are, so I understand why the EIS is calling for blended or remote learning in those areas.
This morning, Professor Leitch told the COVID-19 Committee that it is impossible to know where people are catching Covid. I understand why he is saying that, but we also keep hearing that it is not coming from schools. It is fair to say that people are losing a bit of confidence. We need more transparency and we need to see more data. As colleagues have said, we need more resources and support for our teachers, our young people and our families.
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