Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 December 2021
I am pleased to bring this important debate to the chamber today. On examination of the facts and the overwhelming weight of the data, Labour considers the area of school ventilation to be a serious policy failure by the Scottish Government to date, because of the number of Covid cases in schools and school closures, which are stubbornly difficult for the Government but physically dangerous for the population.
At its most visible, the debate could be said to be about children who sit shivering in our schools, unable to learn, or teachers who are freezing in their classrooms, unable to teach—but not just today or just this year. Too many children are sitting at home, because their classes or schools are closed due to outbreaks of the virus. That comes after lockdowns and missed education, the impact of which on young people the Government steadfastly refuses to research, quantify or understand.
Scotland’s Covid infection rates are highest among the under-15s, and seven-day case rates are at more than 400 per 100,000. The circulation of the virus among schoolchildren seeds the virus into other settings and, increasingly, across Scotland, cohorts are missing class time and schools are having to shut in order to manage the risks. Labour is absolutely clear that we must maintain education in schools. The damage that has been done so far to the prospects of our next generation is already far too great. To maintain school education, we must use every strategy possible to make our schools as safe as they possibly can be.
In the summer, after more than a year of disruption and several months of Scottish Labour making the case that better ventilation in classrooms was needed, the First Minister announced that there was to be a ventilation inspection programme, backed by £10 million of funding for remedial action. What happened next was not a ventilation programme but CO2 monitors being installed in some—but far from all—classrooms, with a non-existent methodology on how they should be used, resulting in wildly different thresholds being set, all to fill in massive spreadsheets that were sent back to rot on a desk in the Scottish Government’s offices. What followed was, by the minister’s own words, “very limited” action beyond moving some furniture out of the way of windows and chipping off some paint.
Last year, teachers were told to open the windows. This year, a wee alarm goes off in the corner of the classroom telling teachers to open the window. What happens if the window is already open when the alarm goes off, Lord only knows. I will give way to the cabinet secretary right now if she can tell us by what criteria classroom air quality was judged and the pass and failure rates of the 41,000 inspected classrooms.