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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 16 June 2025
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Displaying 1570 contributions

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Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

They are, but 27 per cent of pupils in East Lothian are designated as having additional support needs because of behavioural difficulties, and we know that violence in classrooms is on the increase and has been for a number of years. I appreciate that the majority of pupils go to school and behave well, and are brought up well—I understand that. However, in this case, we are looking at ASL, and there is clearly a category of people who are struggling.

That leads to outcomes, the work on which by Audit Scotland I am intrigued by. We know that pupils with additional support needs have lower attendance rates and higher exclusion rates, and there is a 20 per cent gap in curriculum for excellence level outcomes, as well as lower positive destination rates. Those pupils are performing poorly on a number of metrics, and that cannot be acceptable, can it?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

Is that not an interesting point? I am looking at the table that Mr Beattie provided, which relates to just one council. I appreciate that every council will have different pressure points, but young people who have a social, emotional or behavioural difficulty make up the largest group in the ASL category. One can only assume that the steady rise in that percentage in the past five to 10 years—it is probably a long-term trend—has taken place because, when there is a decline in discipline outside the school environment, in the home environment in particular, that behaviour translates into the school environment.

Pupils who are experiencing wider societal or emotional difficulties in the home environment or in social environments are bringing that into the classroom. There is only so much that a teacher can do in that respect. If public agencies or touch points of public services are letting those families down, are we not fighting a losing battle in the education environment? That is the point that I am trying to make.

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

Members of the Scottish Parliament often do school visits. Sometimes, we get asked to host a class for an hour or two, which, I find, is usually to give the teacher a break. When we observe classrooms across our various regions and constituencies, it is interesting that a proportion of pupils in them are clearly disruptive. When teachers have to deal with that, it is to the detriment of the learning of those pupils who want to get on or are particularly gifted in certain subject areas. That can be observed even in passing on short visits to classrooms, and I presume that that is a mainstream issue.

How much work has the Government done to look at the negative effect that the presumption of mainstreaming is having on exceptional pupils or pupils who are categorised as being “more able”?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

Good—thank you, convener.

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

Good morning. My first question is for the director general. Given the content of the Audit Scotland briefing, do you believe that the Scottish Government is currently getting it right for every child?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

Additional Support for Learning

Meeting date: 7 May 2025

Jamie Greene

Has the Scottish Government done any analysis of what percentage of young people exit the education system and go into the criminal justice system, and what percentage of those would have been identified as having additional support for learning needs while in secondary education?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”

Meeting date: 23 April 2025

Jamie Greene

Everyone wants to know what progress has been made on the issue, whether the public money that has been invested in meeting the policy objective relates to the target, and whether the target is appropriate and necessary relative to the scale of the problem. That is what I am getting at in all of this.

Let us move on to the issue of how we deliver the reduction in mileage, or just usage in general, and the role that other forms of government, particularly local government, can play in that. Has there been any conflict in that regard? Earlier, I got a sense that there might have been some conflict in terms of the Government’s overall national ambition versus the delivery on the ground, much of which is under the control of councils, which have to use their budgets to deliver.

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”

Meeting date: 23 April 2025

Jamie Greene

That is helpful. However, the crux of my question is that Glasgow and Edinburgh have already introduced low-emission zones—I appreciate that they were controversial, and I hope that they are serving their intended purpose—but other measures were afforded to local authorities in the 2019 act. Some of us sat around the table and progressed that legislation—or, indeed, opposed bits of it—so I know that things such as the workplace parking levy and the ability to create boundaries around towns for congestion or pay-as-you-go charges were not introduced. It seems to me that the only measures that local authorities want to be introduced are enhancement of the low-emission zones or another form of pay-as-you-go scheme. What has happened over the past six years that has prevented local authorities from doing that? Why are they going back to the Government and asking for more powers?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”

Meeting date: 23 April 2025

Jamie Greene

I have a wider question. Why are the councils that want more powers to implement more car reduction measures not using the measures that were afforded to them in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019?

Public Audit Committee [Draft]

“Sustainable transport: Reducing car use”

Meeting date: 23 April 2025

Jamie Greene

I will let you take a break from answering questions, cabinet secretary, as I know that you are finding it tough to speak because you are not well. I will direct my next questions to Transport Scotland.

While I am talking about the target, I want to pick up on some of the statistics, as data is obviously important. In her opening statement, the cabinet secretary talked about 2022 data. The first question is, why is there no data for 2023 or 2024? Is that in production? Also, did the cabinet secretary say that car use or domestic transport accounted for 39 per cent of all transport emissions, and was it cars or domestic transport that accounted for 12.4 per cent of all emissions? Colin Beattie picked up on that point earlier, and I want to be clear on what the numbers are.