Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2026 [Draft]
::I am happy to support the points that Mr Johnson made. The guidance will be familiar to teaching staff and those who work in our schools. It is important to remind colleagues and stakeholders that, for many staff who work in our schools, the approaches that are being taken will not be new. The differentiation is that the guidance will become statutory through legislation.
I welcome the committee’s acknowledgement of the importance of trauma-informed training being grounded in clear national standards. Training is key to the successful implementation of the bill and the guidance, but, as the committee has acknowledged, restraint is not a practice that the vast majority of our school staff will need to use. Therefore, restraint training will be necessary for only a small number of our school staff. That is an important point, which we discussed at committee during stage 1.
On national data collection, the committee is absolutely right that the reporting system must support transparency, accountability and learning. However, as the committee has acknowledged, the creation of league tables of restraint data needs to be avoided at all costs. I therefore welcome the committee’s agreement with the Government’s position that the publication of school-level data would not be appropriate.
I commit to continuing to work constructively with the member in charge and, of course, with the committee to strengthen the bill at stages 2 and 3 and to ensure that its implementation leads to meaningful and positive change for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children, young people and their families.