Hansard

In my opening speech, I mentioned the value of learning about our natural environment in our natural environment and the knowledge and skills that are accumulated through that. I want to build on that and return to a point that I made to the minister, when she made a statement on the bill in September, I believe. My point was about the need for our qualifications system to catch up. Today, the Parliament will make a clear statement about the value that we place on outdoor education—not just on residential outdoor education but on all outdoor education—and I do not think that our qualifications system has yet caught up with that. There is much more that it can and should do. For example, on specific qualifications, England has recently established GCSE and A-level qualifications in natural history, but we do not yet have an equivalent in Scotland.

We have discussed the meta skills that are developed through outdoor education, such as team working and communications skills, but our qualifications system does not yet fully recognise those. I encourage the Government to say that the bill must be the start of that process and that one of the next steps is about reforming the qualifications system to ensure that the full range of subjects is available—I encourage the creation of a natural history qualification—and that we find a way, whether through Professor Hayward’s recommendations or some other means, to formally recognise the kind of meta skills that the residential outdoor education experience can develop; it can have a transformational impact on a young person’s skills in areas such as teamwork and communication.

The Parliament has an extensive history—for the entirety of its existence, really—of legislating for rights and entitlements that we then struggle to fulfil. The Finance and Public Administration Committee has raised the issue more widely repeatedly in this parliamentary session. Much of the debate around the specifics of the bill has come back to ensuring that the residential outdoor education experience would be available for young people with additional support needs. They are one particular group of people in our society who are not having their rights consistently fulfilled and respected by our education system, so there is a challenge for us in that regard, which relates very much to the points that John Mason made about cost.

Helpful amendments were made at stage 2 and earlier today, to ensure that the cost of the bill is shared equally. We have achieved a balance between making reasonable requests of parents who can afford to make a contribution and the importance of avoiding a situation where families whose children have particularly complex additional support needs or families on lower incomes are forced to pay more than would be fair or than they would be capable of.

I cannot claim credit in any way, shape or form for having come to the solutions, so I congratulate colleagues, particularly Liz Smith, the minister and John Mason, for having made the relevant amendments to the bill. There is still a need for us to have a wider conversation about local government funding. If we want our young people to have the best start in life, we need to fund it like we mean it. It would be too much to hope that the last budget before the election will be the one that achieves a consensus, but, particularly in relation to this bill, there is still a huge amount of work to do in bringing the existing outdoor residential education estate up to the standards that we and those who work in it expect. The capital implications of that will still be really significant, and that is something that members in the next session of the Parliament will have to bear in mind.

Today, we are making a commitment that will have on-going costs associated with it, and it will be incumbent on all parties who vote for the bill to engage constructively when it comes to the budget, to ensure that on-going capital allocations are made where required.

It is worth reflecting briefly on the process of the bill and the frustration felt cross party at stage 1 about how the Government interacted with it, but we have moved on significantly from that, and I thank the Government for its engagement at stages 2 and 3. If we had much more of that in the final weeks of the Parliament, there would be far less pressure on our extremely strained legislative timetable. That kind of collegiate working should make it possible for us to get through the remaining bills of the session.

However, this will be a huge moment for Scotland’s young people, and I again congratulate Liz Smith, because, when we pass it today, their bill will unlock life-changing opportunities for so many children. It will be a proud moment for our Parliament, and we in the Green group will be proud to vote for it at decision time.