Meeting of the Parliament 04 December 2025
I, too, thank all the people who gave evidence to the committee and all the organisations that provided helpful briefings ahead of the debate. In seven minutes, I will not be able to touch upon all the work that they highlighted, but we were given a lot of helpful content about the work that our colleges and universities are undertaking to try to close the gap and give people the opportunity to get into education.
I highlight something on which I agree with Keir Starmer—I did not necessarily think that I would say that. It is something that he said at the Labour Party conference. I say to Mr Whitfield that I was not there. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister set the challenge of making vocational options as attractive to parents—we must remember them—and young people as higher education. We lack that in our debate in the Scottish Parliament.
As I have stated in almost every education debate, Conservative members want real reform to provide more opportunities for our young people. I refer to opportunities such as the ones that I saw on Friday when I visited Liberton high school with my Lothian colleague Sue Webber—I know that Daniel Johnson was there a few weeks previously. The school has partnered with the Tigers construction academy to offer young people in that part of the city a foundation apprenticeship in construction skills to give them a taste of the careers on offer in the construction industry. It was positive to hear from those young people that that helps not only by providing practical sessions but by focusing their learning in other subjects, including the theoretical importance of, for example, mathematics to work. It also plants in those young people’s heads the seed of a future career ladder and pathways beyond it into further and higher education.