Mae'r next item of business is a debate on motion 12389, in the name of Liam Kerr, on ending violence in Scottish schools. I would invite members wishing to participate in the debate to press the request to speak buttons. I call on Liam Kerr to speak to move the motion. Mr Kerr, around seven minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I was assaulted when five months pregnant resulted in a bleed and a hospital visit. I had a mild concussion last session due to being struck with an object.  Just three of the many, many terrifying quotes in the recent Aberdeenie IS report, violent and aggressive behaviour, a report which contained reports of one-third of teachers being attacked in class, two-thirds having experienced assaults in the last five years, over 40 per cent seeing a violent pupil every single day. It is a harrowing and sobering read, yet a similar survey from November last year shows low-level disruptive behaviour, disengagement and serious disruptive behaviours happening and increasing all across the country. Indeed, there is plenty of qualitative data out there with just some from last year showing three teachers hospitalised after an attack by an ex-pupil, a primary school teacher left with a life-changing disability and in severe pain daily unable to hold her baby daughter after being attacked in the classroom, teachers reporting being spat at, head-butted, punched, kicked, having furniture, including chairs, thrown at them. As quantitative data showing nearly four in ten teachers reporting experiencing violence or physical abuse from pupils in the previous 12 months, more than 27,000 teachers and school staff signed off with stress or poor mental health in the last five years, and the proportion of secondary school support staff having experienced violence between pupils rising from less than one in five to almost one in two. Such that huge numbers of teachers in survey after survey report that they are seriously considering leaving the profession, it is truly terrifying and I think it lies at the root of so many of the issues facing our education system today. But I get the sense from my conversations with so many stakeholders that people see little practical action being taken on a rapidly losing faith in the Government's willingness or indeed ability to solve it and I cite as my authority for that the fact that after last summer's Conservative motion demanding action on violence in schools the Government called several behaviour summits which have yet to report and people need to know that the education committee requested to have representatives at these summits but the request was refused. Shortly after Willie Rennie, Pam Duncan Glancy and I jointly wrote to the Government and pleaded to be included. We explained, let's put the politics aside and help by bringing our own experiences and the testimony of our constituents to the table. Our request was refused and we learned in committee last week that one group who really understand the behaviour as communication point and thus can really add value the Royal College of Speech and Language therapists have not been engaged on these behaviour summits either and that sense of drift was reinforced in November. During the ministerial statement it was suggested that the problem lies with teachers insofar as they weren't sufficiently well trained to deal with this and it set out plans to make an action plan months pass with nothing meaningful happening until on the 20th of February that EIS published its report. The accompanying press release talked of teachers reporting broken bones and PTSD. Presiding Officer, I'd have moved heaven and earth to get my hands on that. Indeed I did. I have it here but six days later the cabinet secretary confessed on live TV that she had yet to read it. The following day the First Minister confirmed that he hadn't got round to it either of course. The member raised a number of issues that I hope to come to in my remarks but I think it is worth putting on the record Presiding Officer that the EIS and Aberdeen had not sent me a copy of that report on the day of that report. Now we were able to obtain a copy from Aberdeen City Council but it is important that I engage the local authority on this issue that's why of course that Friday of that week I travelled to Aberdeen to engage the local authority on the substances from that report but I hope the member recognises that point. I do recognise the point but I also recognise that I managed to get a hold of the report and I think actually what really concerned people cabinet secretary was the statement that was made that I don't oversee education locally that's a matter for the local authority. The appropriate response here is a matter for Aberdeen City Council and that this report was merely a local snapshot. We know that none of that is the right response and I suspect on reflection the cabinet secretary agrees. This is absolutely a Scottish government issue and there are no shortage of solutions they're actually set out in the EIS stand up for quality education campaign the Aberdeen report I've referred to the NASUWT's better deal for Scotland's teachers representations that we are all getting from Scotland's teachers and educationalists like Professor Lindsay Patterson we've had representations from YouthLink Scotland the GTC. Presiding Officer members throughout this afternoon will articulate these and no doubt their own but my overall thoughts are this government must take responsibility this is a devolved matter and the responsibility lies four square at this government's door. There must be proper national data by this government and that stems from trusted consistent reporting by teachers who've been given faith in the system something picked up in the Labour amendment which we'll vote for. There must be a proper strategy in place in Aberdeen alone the majority of teachers believe their school lacks effective strategies to address violence and that strategy starts with real boundaries and proper consequences including the possibility of exclusion. We must empower head teachers and the government has to finally honour its promises made 17 years ago on reducing class sizes and this government must look beyond its siloed thinking in education I know my colleagues will talk more about this this afternoon but often behaviour is a function of issues generated and experienced outside and unrelated to the school or the environment in which they are schooled. Presiding Officer the time for talking is over actually it was over years ago the time for real action is right now no more behind closed doors discussion groups that never seem to report no more sloppy shouldering to cashstrap local authorities and putting the blame on to teachers no more ignoring powerful reports because for every moment that nothing is done our kids and our teachers are being mentally and physically assaulted and our parents despair that they send their children to school uncertain of their safety and what's happening in their classroom whilst they're trying to learn. Parliament vote for my motion which I hear by move in my name today and for the sake of all in our schools let's get on with it. Thank you Mr Kerr. I now call on Jenny Gilruth cabinet secretary to speak to and move amendment 12389.2 up to six minutes please cabinet secretary. Presiding Officer I am grateful to the Scottish Conservatives for bringing forward this afternoon's debate on ending violence in Scottish schools. The government will accept the Conservative motion today and it is in that spirit that I look forward to engaging with members throughout this afternoon's debate. I've accepted the text the Conservative motion because in many ways the parties represented across the chamber are not far apart on this issue. We are all striving for our schools and our classrooms to be free from violence and disruption, places in which our young people can learn and our teaching staff can work. Presiding Officer I am absolutely clear that our schools should be safe and consistent learning environments for all. No teacher or support assistant should face violence or abusive behaviour in their place of work. I also want to reiterate my position today in the strongest possible terms on the need for more accurate recording of all incidents of inappropriate, abusive or violent behaviour in our schools and I continue to encourage all schools to do so today. It very much remains my view that we must continue to strengthen the evidence base that Mr Kerr spoke to to inform improvements at school and local authority level even if that means the number of incidents rising. Let's reflect on some of the... I'm very grateful to Jenny Gouldith to give her on that point. Does she agree that there is a difference between the health and safety data with regard to safety at schools and the data that she's talking about, which is the, if I use the phrase, educationally environmental data? I think there is an important differentiation in relation to that data and I would agree to that point. I want to reflect on some of the key findings that we have at national level. Mr Kerr spoke to some of that data in his contribution, which stems from the behaviour in Scottish schools research that was published at the end of last year. It is worth pointing out, Presiding Officer, that the last time that data was collected was 2016, and therefore we did expect to see a change in relation to the behaviour patterns. The evidence demonstrates that most children and young people are well behaved in class and around the school. I think that it is important that we do not lose sight of that fact, but low-level disruptive behaviour, disengagement and some forms of serious disruptive behaviours have increased since 2016. That includes increases in behaviours such as violence and abuse between pupils and towards staff too. Of particular concern, I think, is that in some of our youngest children in primaries 1 to 3, for example, we are seeing more regular displays of violent behaviours for the first time. Colleagues will recall that, back in November, I set out a five-step plan to respond to the Bissar research, and I will provide an update to Parliament on that work today. First, I committed to a dedicated approach to responding to issues around misogyny, given that concerning findings within Bissar and research also provided by our teaching unions. Data that was produced by the NASUWT back in November showed that female teachers experienced double the level of verbal abuse when compared to their male counterparts. Furthermore, 51 per cent of EIS branches in a national EIS survey believe that boys were much more likely to exhibit violence and aggressive behaviours towards women teachers more so than their male teachers. As reflected in the Bissar research, I am very grateful and I absolutely share a concern on misogyny and its impact. In response to that, I was really interested by cabinet secretary's remarks at the weekend about that she would support a move away from restorative justice and back teachers who would be prepared to exclude the most violent and unruly pupils. Can she give us more details on that and when we might have some standardized guidance for teachers? It is important to say that restorative practices are part of a relational approach and that has been proven to have impact in relation to preventative action that teachers can take but, to Mr Kerr's point, we also need a modern approach to consequences. That is what the national action plan will set out. Within that context, I give Mr Kerr an undertaking that the wider work that Sagrabas is involved in through the national action plan will consider a review of the exclusions policy that is currently in place in our schools. As reflected in the Bissar research, concern has really been focused on the rise of online personalities, supporting forms of toxic masculinity that really seek to degrade women. That shift in popular culture normalising abuse, long thought consigned to the past, should also be viewed through a lens that understands that teaching in Scotland remains a female-dominated workplace. There is an inherent gendered aspect to behaviour shifts in the classroom, which I hope that we will all reflect on this week. I was pleased to launch the gender-based violence action framework in schools on Monday this week with the First Minister. That framework gives guidance to schools directly on preventing and responding to gender-based violence in our schools. I thank the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention on that point. Can the cabinet secretary explain why no gendered analysis was done of that framework? I thank the member for her intervention. I am happy to write to the member with more detail on that in relation to the framework that she cites. As far as I understood, given the number of stakeholders that we have had involved in that work, including zero tolerance and rape crisis, I would be surprised to see that we have not taken a gendered approach to that, but I am more than happy to speak to officials and to write to the member with more detail on that. I am very conscious of time, Presiding Officer. Mr Kerr touched on funding. I want to touch on that in relation to staff training. It is important to say that the reason the Government committed a limited amount of funding to supporting staff training was because that was one of the key factors that was flagged up by the business research. It was a call from Scotland's support staff, who are often less well-paid than our teachers and often the brunt of some of the most challenging behaviour in our schools. Secondly, to the member's points in relation to the Aberdeen EIS report, the Aberdeen EIS report directly references staff support and training, provides more support and training for staff, especially in managing aggressive behaviour. I listen to reports such as those that were produced by the EIS in Aberdeen and reflect that there is more that we can do in this space, given that it has been a direct ask from the provision, Presiding Officer. I am conscious of time, but in closing, it is important to say that progress is being made in relation to the national action plan. I hope to come back to this in my summing up, but this is not the end of the road. Responding to the challenges post Covid in Scotland schools is not just about behaviour, it is about strong parental engagement, it is about attendance, it is about lifting heads and raising ambition for our young people. I look forward to the contributions from members today with a shared aspiration from all of us to support our teachers and enable all of our young people to flourish in their education. I move the amendment in my name. I now call on Pam Duncan-Glancy to speak to and to move amendment 12389.1, up to five minutes please, Ms Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and my apologies for arriving a wee bit late to the debate. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I moved the amendment in my name. Two weeks ago, the EIS survey of nearly 800 of their members in Aberdeen found that almost half had reported daily violence and more than a third had been physically assaulted. Those incidents are a warning that something has gone badly wrong in education at the hands of a Government who once said that it was their priority. Back in December, the cabinet secretary came to this chamber on this issue, and during that exchange I believed that the Government finally recognised the scale of the challenge, and I hoped that that was a signal that they were ready to act. Colleagues, I have since come to realise that that hope was misplaced, because since then we have seen scant action. Teachers, school staff and pupils continue to be distressed. No guidance has been issued on consequences, data collection or support from senior management for staff affected. Despite questions from across the chamber, we have little detail of the national action plan that the Government promised other than that it is expected in spring, by which point we are nearing the end of another academic year and a whole year will have wasted since we first debated this issue in the chamber. Worst of all, in that time, the Government has cut education and local authority budgets, leaving teachers facing job losses, support staff without much needed additional resource and pupils without mentor programmes that help them to improve their life chances. The report last week should have been the final jolt into action needed, but the cabinet secretary not only said that she hadn't read it, but she also tried to pass the buck of responsibility to the council. The situation that we see in schools is not isolated to one area of Scotland. It is systemic, and I believe that the cabinet secretary knows that. That was a moment to show leadership, to wake up, to turn up and step up, give the generation of young people that are being failed the respect they deserve, but the Government, I am afraid, turned away. We have had three debates on this topic in this chamber, and not one of them has been brought forward by the Government. Yet again, the answers have been left to the Opposition. I accept the cabinet secretary's acknowledgement that the situation is difficult and that it will not be solved overnight. However, the hard reality is that if the cabinet secretary does nothing, it will not be solved at all. As a teacher who wrote in TES at the weekend said, there will be no teachers or staff left to get it right for every child. The stakes could not be higher. The future of our young people and of education is at risk, so, without the office of cabinet secretary or a civil service behind me, Scottish Labour has done the work of Government for them again. We met pupils, parents, staff, teachers and unions, we listened and we showed leadership. We have been clear that teachers must feel safe at work, that pupils must be able to go to school and feel safe to learn, and that parents can leave them at the gate without worrying about their safety. We would have a zero-tolerance approach to violence and poor behaviour and to the impossible situation that the Government has created in schools that lead to it. Just as behaviour has consequences, so too do Government cuts and action. Their failure to deliver the promised non-contact time and reduce class sizes, end the burden of excessive workload and implement Morgan have made things worse, so the Government should start there. However, it should also gather national anonymised data and create an inspection indicator for teacher wellbeing so that we can properly understand the scale of the problem. I wonder whether we are both on the education committee and she will understand as I do that behaviours communication. What would a zero-tolerance approach look to dysregulated autistic people lashing out and hurting somebody? How would a zero-tolerance approach deal with that? I thank the member for that intervention and he is quite right. We heard only this morning about the fact that behaviour is often almost always distressed behaviour is a communication. We would have a zero-tolerance approach to a Government that keeps cutting things that would support pupils to be supported in that environment. If you are in a situation where a child needs to move from a classroom and there is nowhere to put them, support staff are having to spend time with them under staircases and in cupboards and there is no class available for them to learn in or support staff available to support them, then how can we possibly provide the environment that young people in Scotland need? I think that the member knows that. It also means that we have to empower teachers to develop and set rules of engagement in their classrooms and, importantly, empower them to enforce them with clear guidance on consequences that we have heard, not as a punishment and this speaks to the point that I think has just been made, but so that pupils know what is expected of them, to set boundaries that create the conditions for pupils to learn best and so that they know that we want them to be safe and succeed in classrooms where nothing distracts from the opportunity to learn. It means that ensuring teachers and school staff can report incidents in the knowledge that senior leaders will support them with a right to a debrief and consider next steps. Crucially, and this is the point that the member was making, to pick up on issues that may have caused the behaviour in the first place, because in this cannot be overstated, all behaviour is a method of communication and distressed behaviour is a sign that things are not okay. We want to tolerate a system that is so stretched that the root causes of poor behaviour are never picked up and never addressed and on this point I too was taken aback when the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapist confirmed in committee that the Government hasn't engaged them on this matter. Getting to the bottom of this needs proper multi-agency work and a whole community approach, but the system has crumbled to such an extent support has faded away. There's now only one education psychologist to 600 pupils who need one. CAMHS's wait lists are so long that children's mental health is going unsupported. Only 0.2% of pupils with additional needs have access to a plan to address them. Support staff are providing help in corridors because there's nowhere to turn. Unions have solutions, teachers have solutions, Scottish Labour has solutions. I hope that the Government will now act if they do. I stand by ready to support them to do that. I really need to ask you to conclude. Thank you very much. I now call on Willie Rennie, up to four minutes please, Mr Rennie. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think that this is a human rights issue. It's often seen that if you are wanting action to deal with behaviour, distress, violence, however we call it, that somehow you're in favour of punishment and against understanding, and that's not where I am. I think that there's been a great move from, ministers heard me say this before, from when I was at school there was lots of punishment. Now there's a lot of understanding, but perhaps we understand a little bit too much. It's about getting the balance right. Therefore, I think that we need to provide a safe place in school for learning purposes, but we also need to understand the root causes, why there is distress, the variety of different reasons as to why that exhibits sometimes in violence and poor behaviour. It's often said that we need to get it right for every child, that's the slogan, that's the brand, but some pupils, some parents, some teachers think that we get it right for the subject child, but everyone else in the class doesn't, we don't get it right for them. That needs to be taken into account when we devise policies. Now there is an interconnection between additional support for learning, the absence behaviour, distress, violence, all the different factors. They are all interlinked and I've had two cases that Liam Kerr points out. The one that was most striking recently though was that a mother of a daughter in Edinburgh didn't have much money but decided because her daughter was going through hell at school that she would have to pay to put her into a private school. She couldn't afford it, but she had to do it for the sake of her child. If we're getting to the state where a state school can't provide a safe environment and families are having to put their children into private care to keep them safe then something's gone wrong. I think that we've made progress. I think that there is now an open debate. There's no shame in saying that for teachers to say that they've had enough and that they speak out. That's a good bit of progress. I think that acknowledging from the minister in last year's statement was also progress. It's now recognised that it's an issue that we can openly debate and discuss. I think that the statement that we can about exclusions and the subsequent remarks today about consequences again are stepping in the right direction. It's sending signals to head teachers but also to education leaders and local authorities and teachers that the education secretary will have their back if they make a professional judgment that the right thing to do in certain circumstances is to remove that child from the school. Not to nothing, to other support, but exclusion should not be excluded, it should be a consideration as part of it. What's next? I think that we need to look at the nurture programme. I think that the nurture programme, if it's implemented badly, results in an incentive for some people to behave badly. It should be more inclusive, it should be not seen as singling out individuals who behave badly and for them to receive special treatments. We need to look at that. Interestingly, last week about the additional support for learning evidence that we took is the design of the new school buildings that need to be taken into account. Sometimes the large open space buildings are not designed to deal with additional support for learning requirements. The guidance needs to be updated and I think that we've had an indication from the minister that that's going to happen. It needs to set out boundaries and clear consequences. If we can get all those factors in place to send that clear signal to teachers, that would be a step in the right direction. The one that we can't ignore is the one over resources. This is tough, especially in difficult financial times, but we need to make sure that we try to implement this reduced contact time. We give teachers more space to be given the resources, the additional speech and language therapists, the additional specialist support that allows them to upskill to be able to deal with the behaviours in their class. If we can do all those things, we might make some progress on that issue. We now move to the open debate about Bench speeches of up to four minutes and I call Brian Whittle to be followed by Ruth Maguire. I would like to try a bit of a different tact here and look at it through a wider lens, if you will. On Sunday I had the great privilege of being at the world championship coaches club where I got to speak with and listen to some of the best coaches in the world. We got on to the topic of the impact of sport on our society and the common issues that we face. I think that sometimes we look at this as we are the ones facing these problems. We were talking about the reduction in access to facilities, ever-increasing screen time that our kids have, the social media influences, all which we agree are impacting behaviour. One of the top coaches sent me the following email from a parent who encourages her daughter to participate and I want to read it out because it encapsulates far better than I, the part sport plays in our children's development. She says, people always ask, why do you pay so much money for your kids to do sports? When I have a confession to make, I don't pay for my kid to do sports. Personally, I couldn't care less about what sport she does. So if I'm not paying for sports, what am I paying for? I pay for the moments when my kid becomes so tired she wants to quit, but it doesn't. I pay for those days when my kid comes home from school and is too tired to go to her training, but it goes anyway. I pay for my kid to learn to be disciplined, focused and dedicated. I pay for my kid to learn to take care of her body and learn how to correctly fuel her body for success. I pay for my kid to learn to work with others and to be a good teammate, gracious in defeat and humble in success. I pay for my kid to learn to deal with disappointment when they don't get that placing or title that they'd hoped for, but it's still go back week after week giving it their best shot. I pay for my kid to learn to make and accomplish goals. I pay for my kid to respect not only themselves but others, officials, judges and coaches. I pay for my kid to learn that it takes hours and hours, years and years of hard work and practice to create a champion and that success does not happen overnight. I pay for my kid to be proud of small achievements and to work towards long-term goals. I pay for the opportunity that my child has and will have to make lifelong friendships and create lifelong memories to be proud of her achievements as I am.  I pay for those rides home where we make precious memories talking about practice, both good and bad. I pay so that my child can learn the importance of time management and balancing what's important like school and keeping grades up. I could go on, but in short, I don't pay for sports. I pay for the opportunities that sports presides my kid with to develop attributes that will serve her well throughout her life and give her the opportunity to bless the lives of others. From what I've seen so far, I think it's a great investment. When we consider solutions to escalating school violence, we have to stop talking about it as if it's an issue in isolation. Our education cluster led by my colleague Liam Kerr has been discussing how we tackle a combination of issues at school, behaviour, poor physical and mental health, attainment, hunger and malnutrition. Malnutrition, of course, can be a very different issue from hunger. All of those are linked. I've put forward an idea that we should be offering activity prior to the traditional start of the school day. It doesn't matter what that activity is, be it physical activity or music or art or drama or even software writing for video games, anything that captures pupils' imaginations. While they are participating, we tell them, by the way, there's breakfast over there. I ran that idea past the NASUTW union on Saturday at a fringe event, again hosted by my colleague Liam Kerr, and they agreed that it would be a significant intervention. Will it cost money? Of course it will cost money. Will it prevent many of the issues that we have to foot the bill for by not doing it? Absolutely. It's time to get out the silos and start thinking about the long-term strategic solutions, because without appropriating nutrition, activity and interests, I'm afraid that it won't matter what you're doing in the classroom. Those issues, like school violence, will prevail. It's the school environment, Deputy Presiding Officer, that needs to change, not the curriculum. It's important to note that the majority of Scotland's pupils are well behaved, but there has undoubtedly been a marked increase in disruptive behaviour. Absolutely no teacher, member of staff or pupil should have to suffer abuse in our schools. All children and young people have a right to learning environment where they are protected, cared for and in which their rights and needs are respected. I welcome the opportunity to discuss and listen here from colleagues how we achieve this. My contribution in the last debate on this topic focused on gender inequality and violence against women and girls in Scottish schools and supported Zero Tolerance Scotland in its ask that the Scottish Government should recognise and prioritise violence against women and girls in all discussions about behaviour and violence in schools. I know that I was not the only member to be horrified by the extent to which the fear of violence was preventing girls participating fully in education. It's right, therefore, that I welcome the Scottish Government publishing a dedicated approach for preventing and responding to gender-based violence in school. The framework encompasses testimony from young people and staff and sets out how school can use education with an emphasis on compassion to challenge societal views that normalise gender-based violence. Addressing gender inequality in education will tackle issues with violence, bullying, attendance and attainment and positively impact the experience of girls, teachers and boys in schools. That is a positive step towards that. Implementation of it will be key. The Education, Children and Young People Committee is in the midst of an inquiry into additional support for learning in Scotland. I think that some of the evidence that we've recently been taken can provide helpful points of reflection for this debate. I think that we all understand that behaviour is communication and that speech, language and communication are crucial for attachment relationships and learning. A young person developing good communication skills and their communication needs being met can act as a protective factor against mental health issues and is also something really important for attainment and behaviour. The committee heard from the Royal College of Speech and Language therapists that whilst there was an increased demand prior to the pandemic, a focus on waiting lists alone could be unhelpful and that a way forward in addressing unmet communication need in school could be around a whole system approach. We heard from an experienced teacher in the same session that there were challenges around participating in training, obtaining cover for classes, for example. She shared that speech therapists being embedded in schools or school communities and able to deliver not just training but to coach and model ways of working had felt helpful. It would seem logical that that approach of having specialists closer to the population could work for a number of interventions. The issue of time and resource is one that is consistently raised. We cannot expect teachers to be experts on everything to solve all society's ills and any training is going to be more valuable, more impactful, where there is space and time for reflective practice. An informal committee session with teachers only this week reiterated that point. Both in our conversations with pupils and teachers, the impact on reductions of additional support staff is something that makes supporting all children within schools more challenging. Addressing the issue of behaviour is not just for teachers, it is not just for schools. Creating that environment and conditions where children are protected, cared for and their rights are upheld and promoted is a job for all of us, Presiding Officer. I now call Claire Baker to be followed by Bill Kidd. Broken fingers, stitches, significant knee damage. These are some of the injuries reported by Fife teachers to their local EIS branch. Last year across Fife, over 3,600 instances of violence and aggression were reported in schools. These were physical incidents, violence, aggression and threat. We know many more of those types of incidents go unreported. Teachers are not reporting incidents of abuse as they do not believe anything will be done about it. The people we trust to educate our children and at the point where abuse has become part of their job and that is simply not acceptable. Violence in our schools of course is not just directed at teachers, nor does it stop at the school gate. We have all seen the coverage of horrific assaults on school pupils that have been shared on social media, including an attack in a classroom at Wade academy and a 12-year-old from Ladybank beating up on a bus on her way home from school. Among support staff, a GMB report found that one in six were suffering violence on a daily basis, being punched, kicked and spat on as they do their job. I am being contacted by constituents who are concerned about increasingly disrespectful, disruptive and violent behaviour across primary and secondary schools. I am hearing from families whose children have been victims of violence and from those who have witnessed incidents. Children are telling their parents about how their learning is interrupted on a daily basis. Pupils, parents and carers are concerned that schools are not a safe place to be. That is part of the national picture that the Scottish Government has a responsibility to address. Whether in Aberdeen or Aberfeldy, each one of those schools is part of an education system that has seen violence and disruptive behaviour increase. The range of contributing factors is broad, as is the required response, and it must be underpinned by proper resources. The Labour amendment draws attention to some of the wider context, including the lack of support for pupils with additional support needs. Figures from last year found that the number of pupils in school with ASN represents well over a third of the pupil population, and that has almost doubled in the past decade. However, during that time, there has not been an increase in related support provision. There have been budgetary cuts and a lack of on-going support, not just for those with ASN, but for the school staff working with them. The Government amendment wants us to recognise the action being taken, but plan after plan does not mean that the support needed is being delivered. Acknowledging the scale of the problem is only the first step, and while the summits are a positive move, they did take too long to happen, and it must be demonstrated that they are more than talking shops. The publication this week of the framework on gender-based violence is welcome, but it highlights the importance of addressing underlying causes, as well as demonstrating that instances of violence and abuse are not tolerated and should not be seen as part of school life. Local councils are seeking to take steps where they can, but they are doing so within budgetary constraints. In Fife, we have seen some positive action in increasing pupil support assistance time, and through personnel and social education on behaviours. The piloting of a model basing a social worker in secondary schools to work with young people who need extra support, and plans to recruit more guidance staff or other examples of local action. Peer work in schools is important. Although the publication of the framework on gender-based violence is welcome, we should recognise that the mentors in the violence prevention programme has been working with young people to help them to challenge attitudes and behaviours safely in their schools and other parts of their lives. It is a programme that I know that many young people have found valuable, and in a recent meeting that I had with Fife, Rape and Sexual Assault Centre Cercody, they were very positive about the impact of it. The steps that can be taken by local authorities and by schools need to be set within a national action plan. We need to see the creation of clear national guidance that sets out that violent and abusive behaviour is simply not acceptable. It will not be tolerated and that schools will be supported in dealing with those behaviours. We need to ensure that our schools are in a safe place for learners and teachers to be and to thrive. Today is one of the rare days in the Parliament when we all agree on the fact that no pupil, teacher or member of school staff should have to suffer abuse in our schools. Indeed, I also find myself in broad agreement with the elements of the Conservative motion. However, I also think that it is important to put on the record that the majority of school children are well behaved, diligent and hardworking. Only last week we debated the recommendations of the independent review of qualifications and assessment report, and the debate highlighted the fact that the hard work and dedication of pupils and teachers is producing positive results for Scotland's school leavers, with another record high moving on to positive destinations. In 2022-23, more than 95 per cent of school leavers were classed as moving to positive destinations, including higher education, further education, employment training, personal skills development and voluntary work. That is the highest figure since records began in 2009-2010. I believe that achievement is important to acknowledge in today's debate not to distract, though, from the importance of the impact of violence in schools, but simply for balance and perspective. The impact of any violence in schools and learners and teachers can, as the motion notes, have a huge impact on all those affected. I also agree with the motion that we as parliamentarians and in the Government must all work together to tackle that issue. It is something that I believe we are doing because it is something that I believe we all take seriously. As we have already heard in response to the behavioural issues in Scotland's schools research, the Government has established a five-point plan to address the issue. First on the list is a national plan for action, developed in partnership with key stakeholders and informed by head teachers from across Scotland's schools. While I welcome that point and the others within the Government's approach, last week's debate also highlighted the fact that it is Scotland's children and young people who hold the biggest stake in our education system, and, as such, they should be heard just as strongly across our reform programme. It is my understanding that the recent behaviour in Scottish schools report did not consult widely enough with children and young people, something that needs to be more in sync with the Government's overall approach to put the right of the child at the centre of its decision making. As the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recently recommended, we should adopt a child-right-based approach to addressing violence in other disturbances in schools, including by prohibiting the presence of police in school and providing regular training for teachers on relevant guidance for addressing such disturbances in a child-sensitive manner. What does that mean in practice? Will it mean placing children's participation in best interests at the heart of policy and practice? Children and young people, both those who are harmed by and responsible for violence, must be involved in the solutions to youth violence, both at local and national level. At this point, I would like to invite the Cabinet Secretary to expand on what steps the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that the voice of Scotland's children is being heard in order to commit to exploring ways to ensure future participation for everyone in our schools. I declare a little interest in this because there is a former councillor of Murray Council, because in part I want to come from that perspective today. I want to start by acknowledging the facts that, and I agree with the Cabinet Secretary on this, many pupils in our schools are very well behaved and that is stated in the behaviour in Scottish schools 2023 report. Whilst I cannot and most of us here today are not ignoring the worrying rises in disruption across all surveyed areas in that report, we must remember that we have many exceptional young people across Scotland, and I'm glad my colleague spoke about sport as well, and the young people that are doing so well in that. As others have said, the report highlights that both low-level and more serious disruptive behaviours are increasing in Scottish schools, including physical and violent aggression. That view is shared by those I have spoken to in recent days in Murray and in Argyll and Bute. While the Cabinet Secretary held a number of summits on behaviours in schools, the summary of these summits, which was sent as a guidance note to councils in January, do not fully correspond with the discussions I hear on the ground across the Highlands and Islands, and it does not correspond with the worrying EIS survey from Aberdeen. Let me be absolutely clear about what I'm hearing now and what I encountered when I was chair of the Children and Young People Services Committee on Murray Council. Teachers are feeling traumatised, many fear for their safety, and many are scared to go to work. Whilst I accept Willys Rennie's point about the complexities of additional support needs and social and emotional behavioural needs, that doesn't take away from what teachers are experiencing on the ground every single day. The sharp rise in disruptive behaviours since 2016 is deeply troubling, and things are getting so bad that a contact was telling me earlier this week that they are triggering more and more emergency meetings of leadership groups over the issue. Turning briefly to Aberdeen EIS report, as Mr Kerr said, it does bother me that the Cabinet Secretary implied it would be for Aberdeen City Council to respond and not the SNP Government. I can imagine the collective dismay. The recommendations in the Aberdeen EIS report, which I think is really important, are all for that local authority. It is important that the national action plan sets out the responsibilities for government—absolutely—but equally those for local authorities. It is not to not engage with the substantive points from that report, but it is important to say that local authorities have a role in that, which I hope is understood by the member. I'll give you a time back, Tim. I accept that point. I do accept that government and local authority—and for that matter, community—potentially need to work together on this, but there was an implication in the interview that this was based to Aberdeen City Council, and I can imagine the collective dismay of teachers and education staff across the whole of the north-east—in fact, the whole of Scotland—at a remark like that. It's not a great remark to have. Whilst education delivery sits with local authorities, be in no doubt—and this is the cabinet secretary's point—that the implications from the Scottish government's policy decisions and budgets are exacerbating the ongoing situation. Cosler has said themselves that council leaders want to protect education, improve attainment and achievement of children, and retain and recruit teachers and support staff that are required to achieve this, and I'm sure we can all get behind that. Again, it is the decisions we make here that are putting those aims at risk. It is neither right nor fair that the government is passing the buck to local authorities. At the very least—and this is the cabinet secretary's point—it is a shared responsibility. Exclusions are increasing across Scotland, and that's not something we really want to see, and the number of teachers that are considering leaving the profession is increasing. No employee should feel scared in their workplace or be a victim of intimidation or physical abuse. Deputy Presiding Officer, the cabinet secretary needs to address those concerns. The Government needs to take responsibility and address those issues by working with local authorities and local communities and bring meaningful solutions now, not tomorrow. I thank Liam Kerr for bringing this to the chamber for debate. I'm going to use my time to focus on gender-based violence in particular.  Two in three had experienced sexual harassment in school in the last year, a third knew another girl who'd experienced rape or sexual assault, and one in five didn't feel safe in school. The most recent surveys from the NSWT and EIS show staff also experiencing levels of gender-based violence. That is by no means explained all of it, but one of the causes of violence against women and girls in schools is that generations of boys and young men have received some kind of sex and relationship education that did not focus on the principle of consent, and in many cases did not include education on consent at all. Last session's Education Committee inquiry into personal social education in schools was the very first piece of work that I proposed when I was first elected, and our report concluded that consent is clearly not covered consistently in PSE across Scotland. If we want to eradicate rape culture and gender-based violence from our schools, it's essential that every young person, but especially young boys and men, learn about the principle of consent. I'm glad that, in response to that report, the Government initiated its own review and commissioned refresh guidance for the delivery of relationships and sexual health education. That refresh guidance is almost ready. The current guidance that has been in use since 2014 makes only one minor reference to the importance of consent, whereas the first draft of the new guidance starts with a substantive section dedicated to the principle of consent to boundaries and healthy relationships. Age and stage appropriate education like that for boys and young men is essential to tackling gender-based violence in schools. A firm approach to violence in schools, especially gender-based and bigoted attacks, isn't mutually exclusive with recognising that children and young people who are responsible for those attacks are often in desperate need of help themselves. Too often, it's easy to use zero tolerance as a sound bite in the absence of policies that would address the cause of a pupil's violent behaviour. We know the link between adverse childhood experiences and social, emotional and behavioural issues, and we recognise that precarious housing, living with adults who are suffering from addiction issues, poverty and plenty of other situations in childhood are adverse experiences. I'm grateful for Ross Greer for giving me a way. Will he agree with me that it's not just what we teach, it's how we teach it and the environment in which we teach it that's crucial here? I'm grateful for that intervention. I couldn't agree more. A lot of evidence about that is coming out in the education committee's current inquiry into additional support needs provision in our schools. All members should look forward to that report. I think that it would be wrong, though, if we pretend that we can tackle the issue of violence in schools without tackling the wider challenges that so many children face. Stronger punishments may be appropriate, especially in circumstances where the safety of other pupils and staff is a major concern, but they are not the whole solution here. Far too often in this debate, children and young people are being talked about rather than given the opportunity to discuss their own experiences and their ideas for solutions. Whilst there is much in Liam Kerr's motion that I agree with, I'm glad that the Government amendment calls on us all to work with young people themselves. One area that I'm glad we're making progress in and that will have a positive knock-on effect here is in the provision of mental health support services in schools. We are by no means at a point where every child has equal access to it, but the last three, six-monthly reports have shown an increase of 10,000, 12,000, 14,500 children and young people accessing those expanded services. I think that what we all need to look into at a national level, though, is relative levels of access, because, although access is expanded nationally, it's not expanded evenly, and that is an issue for Parliament, not just for local authorities. There isn't a simple solution to violence in schools, and we'd be doing staff and pupils a disservice to pretend otherwise, but constructive suggestions have been made over recent months, and I hope that this afternoon's relative consensus can last long enough for us to see those suggestions delivered and to make our schools a safer environment for every student and every member of staff. I also believe that no pupil, teacher, member of school staff, or others in the school environment should suffer from physical or verbal abuse in every child and young person has the right to an uninterrupted school day free from violence and disruption. I commend colleagues for bringing this issue to the chamber, because the welfare of our young people, as well as their nurturing and education, couldn't be a more important issue. Like colleagues, I've received very concerning case work on this issue from parents, carers and staff working in schools. As colleagues have mentioned in the Education, Children and Young People Committee, we have taken evidence on this issue and are currently undertaking what I think is an important inquiry into support for those who require additional support needs and the many challenges that there are around making sure that those young people and those around them are appropriately supported. Given the extent of the challenge and the importance of it, I was pleased to see the five-point plan and to hear the reassurance from the Government that there will be targeted support for schools. Clearly, the cabinet secretary and our colleagues and our officials are very focused on this issue and working with teachers and unions and all stakeholders to make a meaningful difference. There is political unity as well. The publication this week of the framework, the whole school framework in preventing and responding to gender-based violence in response to one of those five points is very welcome. I am really pleased to see that there has been that expert input from Rape Crisis Scotland and Zero Tolerance, which I know from being based in my constituency, has been extremely concerned. Ross Greer mentioned the research and surveys that they undertook. Indeed, 64 per cent of girls and young women aged 13 to 21, according to their survey and research experience sexual harassment at school in the past year, gives an indication of the scale of the challenge. In that circumstance and building on the framework, I would be grateful if there is capacity in the short debate for the cabinet secretary to touch on how the framework will be supported in terms of its implementation. Can we, as MSPs, help the Government and local authorities and schools in our constituencies and regions with taking that forward? On that and the other five points, can we engage other stakeholders in a similar manner in which Zero Tolerance Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland have been engaged with their expertise? For example, as Brian Whittle rightly highlighted, the power of sport can make a difference here. I have seen that in my constituency, particularly with the Spartans Community Foundation, making a real impact in North Edinburgh in helping to not only support schools but, most particularly, the young people involved. I want to emphasise in conclusion that this is not, to state the obvious, an issue that is isolated to schools. We have talked in this chamber about challenges on public transport, and we have talked about wider issues of young people affected by the pandemic.  In that wide-ranging challenge of the behaviour of young people, perhaps at some point we need to have a debate on that issue more widely. Also, perhaps tomorrow, when there are young people sitting just behind me here, we could ask ourselves, are we set in the best example? I am very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am going to echo the last speaker's final words, because it is what young people see that starts them framing the society in which they live and what they deem to be acceptable. I think that there are a number of examples from across the chamber only this week that perhaps are highly skilled teachers and the adults who work with young people could draw attention to young people of perhaps behaviour that is better put in the past than want to be emulated. I thank the Scottish Conservatives for again bringing a debate on education and on such an important matter. Although the consensus in respect of the voting at the end of the day may not reflect the consensus as to the incredible importance of this matter, it is right that we try to seek cross-party support. It is right that we try to seek it in a proper way by allowing the doors to be opened and the contributions from members across the whole of this chamber irrespective of political party to find the right way. I thank the cabinet secretary for her opening contribution and I intervened on her with regard to data because of the importance of violence that occurs or the risk of violence within a school that relates to the employment context and the health and safety context for which there is very accurate data recording because it sits in the culture of employment to report that. The challenge comes from the violence that sits within the educational environment and the challenge that the adults who work around our young people have for the capacity to report, for the bravery to report and indeed the frequent as we've seen in a number of papers, the frequency that they come across a wall about not reporting and it's interesting a number of contributions today have pointed out the fact that as a society we are more engaged and more open to talking about this. I think a lot of adults and indeed young people in our schools would like to feel that change of culture so that they can put a complaint in, can raise it and I think it would be interesting to look at that. I'm particularly thankful to the GMB because they represent a significant number of those other adults in the classroom in particular the pupil support assistance for whom in their reports note one in five are subjected to daily violence that would be unacceptable in any other workplace. Three in five say the incidents of violence are not recorded and again that speaks to something that many have identified. Three in four did not receive feedback from an employer after reporting an incident and again if the support is not there afterwards both for adults but also for our young people why are they going to report it again in the future and only one in four said their employer took violence seriously enough and of all of the horrendous statistics that sticks out to me that they do not feel that they have the confidence to do it and I'd also like to thank GTS Scotland for their work on this because they watch how teachers go into education and oversee that but they also have a very important role in whether teachers retain the ability to teach and in the patterns of their fitness to teach case work they see the questions that we've heard today about additional support needs and the fact that resource needs to be there they see challenges with restraint and handling where there is lack of guidance and support and also a fear from teachers of being backed up in situations but they also report the challenge of the mental health of teachers now this is not just with regard to teachers as adults but I speak to the GTS figures because that is specifically about teachers and the fact that the inconsistent support or indeed absence of support carries huge challenges in the short time that we have left my one last point is with regard to my very last point was with regard to the whole school framework where you have articulated a reporting and data process for one element of this other government considering approaching the same for all of the reporting or we're going to end up with different reporting vehicles I now call on cabinet secretary Jennifer Ruth to close on behalf of the Scottish Government up to five minutes please cabinet secretary I'd like to begin by thanking members for their contributions to this afternoon's debate I think despite the content of the debate which could have been an extraordinarily challenging debate it's been a really worthwhile debate with contributions from across the chamber I have been listening intently to and I do want to reiterate that we are all working towards the same goal to ensure that our schools are safe and consistent learning environments for all and I very much remain committed to working on a cross-party basis to that extent now I think presiding officer we worked really well last week during the Scottish government debate on qualifications and so in a similar vein because I was listening to mr kair's points about the behaviour summits and I would propose presiding officer to convene a cross-party session with opposition spokespeople and my officials to ensure that the suggestions we have gathered today are reflected in our new national approach to behaviour in Scotland schools I think we do have to reflect presiding officer that things have changed in our schools and our approach to supporting teachers needs to change too this isn't just about our older school pupils though happy to do so thank you I was on a panel with the national deaf children society and they told me that deaf children are suffering as there's a lack of teachers for the deaf to help both the teachers and the deaf student to ensure they get the education that they deserve cabinet secretary do you agree with me that there's great importance for teachers for the deaf and what can you do to help our deaf students cabinet secretary there is great importance I very much agree with the member's point for teachers of the deaf I worked with a number of them in my last role and taught a number of deaf pupils with support in my classroom so I very much recognise the point the member makes and I look forward to engaging with the stakeholder that he named in his contribution there in the coming weeks recognising of course they're running a campaign I think at the current time but it is important we have a holistic and an inclusive education system that the member recognises that in his contribution today I do want to talk Presiding Officer to some of the challenge within different gear groups across our school actually as the happy to do so Willie Rennie just while she's on the issue of support in terms of education Scotland with the new body that's going to be established can we make sure that they provide practical tangible support for teachers in class I think that that's really important to give them confidence does she agree cabinet secretary I very much agree with the sentiment of Mr Rennie's question I think education Scotland is an organisation or strong at providing guidance but sometimes we do need that practical assistance in our classrooms and we heard that I think from contributions today and I look forward to working with them to that end I reference some of our younger citizens Presiding Officer in my opening comments but I was on a visit this morning to Ayrshire College and I was hearing directly from staff in the college sector about changes within the current generation the Covid generation and what that means for their learning and teaching and actually in that college what it means is that they have completely transformed the way in which they support their young people they provide wraparound services that have actually bucked the trend on retention their curriculum is a motivating one with a focus on practical skills and they believe that's really imperative to driving motivation now colleagues will recall my decision to pause legislative reform last year that was a decision in part informed by changes in behaviour and relationships in our schools now government has to respond to that context to fully support Scotland's teachers who I think are responding to really significant changes in the current generation I want to come Presiding Officer to respond to some of the comments raised in today's debate and I'm conscious that time is tight this afternoon but Ruth Maguire spoke about the horrifying fear which impacts on many of our girls in Scotland's schools and prevents them from engaging within their education and she and others of course noted all behaviour is communication and I very much agree with that sentiment it was helpful I think to hear from clear baker examples from Fife and again we've heard examples from Aberdeen this afternoon it's important these local examples are understood at national level I think to inform our policy and she named it a number of events that have happened in the local area in recent times I won't do that today Presiding Officer I'm always conscious of naming specific incidents as I'm conscious that they involve our young people and our teachers and actually to Mr Kerr's point about the behaviour summits the reason why I did not open up these summits to other MSPs to attend was because I wanted to create a safe environment whereby our members as staff were able to come and share their experiences and I'm sure the education committee and the private sessions they've held have been able to get perhaps better information from those sessions when people don't feel it's in an open arena but I do look forward to engaging with the opposition more substantively in the coming weeks. Ms Baker also touched upon something in relation to reporting and she said that staff don't feel there's a point in reporting because they don't think anything's going to happen and I think there was something else buried in the business research that actually talks about a fear from staff reporting if they do report that there could be consequences for them and I think it's important that government understands that and that staff are encouraged to report and supported of course by their employer to do that to ensure we have more adequate and reliable data and actually if we reflect upon some of the data that we gathered in relation to bullying there is disparity across the country at the current time in relation to reporting practices which is why it's important we have a national action plan that will set out the national parameters in relation to violence and behaviour in our schools. Improving behaviour in schools isn't just about our schools as we have heard this afternoon. I thought one of the strongest contributions actually was from Brian Whittle in relation to the role of sport. Cabinet Secretary, you do need to conclude. I very much look forward to engaging with the opposition in relation to behaviour in schools. Thank you Cabinet Secretary. I now call on Ross McCall to close on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives up to six minutes please. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer. It's an honour to close the debate this afternoon on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives as part of yet another debate on violence in our schools. I reflect on the fact that it's taken another motion from this side of the chamber 10 months on from when our party's last business in May for this topic to be yet again raised in the chamber. Whilst I was putting together some of the words for this afternoon's debate I found myself reading the official report from that very debate and returning to a contribution from my colleague Megan Gallacher in which she posed the question, how did things get so bad? Unfortunately, since then things seem to have only gotten worse. We've had reports of three teachers hospitalised in an attack at Johnston High School, a school girl brutally attacked Wade Academy, a primary school teacher unable to hold their baby daughter after being attacked by a pupil in the classroom at a school in Edinburgh to name a few, and they're all very shocking. I understand the cabinet secretary and her points making that these are real people, but I actually want to add another one as an example to the beginning of my contribution today. Earlier this week it was brought to my attention that a pupil who attends a primary school in Fife left the premises through the day, went home, then returned to school later with a hammer and proceeded to use it in a threatening manner. The school's response quite rightly to the incident was to remove the other children from the playground for their own safety, and I applaud that and they worked exceptionally quickly, but they were actually powerless in being able to deal with the pupil with the offensive weapon.  It should surely be a fundamental right in the 21st century Scotland that no pupil, teacher or member of school staff should suffer physical or verbal abuse and that every child and young person has the right to an uninterrupted school day free from violence and disruption. It's been interesting to listen to the debates and I will highlight a couple of contributions, as I always do from members, that I think are particularly worth noting. I welcome the Cabinet Secretary's announcement there that she's hoping to do a cross-party session and I think that's excellent and I do appreciate that. I think what we also have to mention that there is an awful lot we agree on across the chamber. Ruth Maguire, Claire Baker, Pam Duncan-Gam, Glancy, Ross Greer and the Cabinet Secretary all welcoming the framework for gender-based violence and I could not agree on that more, but I also agree with Ruth Maguire that implementation of this is going to be so important. We've also had Bill Kidd, the Cabinet Secretary, Pam Duncan-Glancy, Willie Rennie and Tim Eagle all highlighting that the majority of our young people are very well behaved, and I totally agree with that, but I would also like to highlight that it is their progress that is being affected by violence in our classrooms. The Cabinet Secretary also mentioned that she would like to strengthen the evidence base. Again, I agree with that, but I would then ask the question what happens on the ground in the meantime when we are building that evidence base. A modern approach to consequences, I would certainly look forward to more detail on that. Training for staff. This is so important, but if you keep doing what you do, you keep getting what you've got. I was stressed that only doing the same and more training in the same vein will only give us the same results. I also want to highlight an excellent contribution from Brian Whittle when it comes to sport participation. I don't look like the greatest sports person in the world. I played in goal in hockey, but I enjoyed it immensely and I have an awful lot of positive memories and a lot of life lessons that were based on that. The final point that I want to raise is by my colleague Liam Kerr. The industry has the solutions, and it is a point that he has well made. EIS, the NASUWT, ThinkLink Scotland and teachers and educationalists such as Professor Lindsay Patterson are all coming forward with solutions. I thank the cabinet secretary for her comments today. Again, I want to highlight and use the opportunity to welcome the Scottish Government's announcement of a dedicated approach to prevent and respond to gender-based violence in schools. The cabinet secretary is quite right to say that we all want schools to create cultures in which all members of the school community know that gender-based violence is unacceptable and it will not be tolerated. I agree that this is an important issue, however the framework on the gender-based violence only looks at one segment of the problem and I don't think that it goes far enough. I do not understand how the Scottish Government can act so swiftly and efficiently when it comes to tackling gender-based inequality but fails to come close to addressing the broader issues of violence in our schools. Surely pupils coming to school with any sort of weapon, hammer or otherwise, must be dealt with in the most stringent of manners and consequences for these actions must apply to ensure that something like this never happens again. So in conclusion, I agree wholeheartedly that all members of this Parliament must work together in tackling the seriousness of this issue, diligently and without delay, as mentioned in the motion. It's simply not good enough that we're 10 months on from when this issue was first raised by members from these benches, requesting plans and guidelines to be put in place prior to the start of the academic year last August, because in reality there is no change on the ground, no change within our schools, no change for the well-being of our students, our teachers and all education staff and that's simply not good enough.


The standard American diet isn't a sad state, but sadder in some states than others. The CDC recently released a survey to chart our progress on fruit and vegetable consumption, and if you can even imagine we're eating even fewer fruits and vegetables than we were a decade ago. Not a single state met the goals they were hoping for, but one, and only one state did make an improvement, at least. Can you guess which one? Here's all 50. Note that the deepest darkest color represents 35% to 44.9%. So, not a single state even hit 50% for eating two fruit a day, with Oklahoma doing the worst. And for vegetables, not one state even had a third of their population eating three daily servings of vegetables, and less than one in five people in South Dakota. The CDC goal was to get all states up to 75% eating servings of fruits and 50% veggies by 2010, and not even close. And those eating both, forget about it. Though I am impressed with New Englanders and their fruit. Caucasians ate the least fruit, Hispanics the least vegetables, and the one state the only state to improve over the decade, Idaho, which just made it to blue.


Hello everyone, today I'll be talking about my work on post-quantum multi-party competition in constant rounds and this is joint work with James Bartusik, Vipul Goel, Dakshita Kaurana and Julia Malavut and I would like to thank James for letting me use the slides. So let me start by giving some background. So we all know that security of our cryptographic schemes rely on the existence of computationally hard problems. For example, the RSE system relies on the difficulty of factoring product of large pranks. But with quantum computers the situation is quite different because these quantum computers can represent information in terms of qubits and can exploit quantum mechanics such as superposition and entanglement to process information much faster than what classical computers can do. And indeed some of you might have heard of Shor's quantum polynomial time factoring algorithm which can be used to break the RSE cryptosystem. So with that this initiates the study of post-quantum cryptography where we want to design classical protocols. So protocols which can be run on classical computers but are still secure even against quantum attacks. And this requires two ingredients. First, we need the existence of quantum hard problems. For example, lattice based crypto. And the second ingredient that we need are new kind of security proofs. So what do I mean by these new security proofs? Most classical security proofs against malicious adversaries require a technique called revinding. And this form of classical revinding doesn't directly work in the quantum setting due to a well-known no cloning theorem. With state stats given that given an arbitrary quantum state, you cannot make two copies of the same quantum state. And this is what this work will be about. How to create new kind of security proofs to realize general purpose multi-party computation against quantum adversaries in constant rounds. So let me give an overview of the known simulation techniques both in the classical and quantum literature. So the first well-known technique is revinding as we might know about. And this was the first classical technique that was used to construct classical malicious wave higher zero knowledge proofs. There is an adaptation of this technique in the quantum setting by John Watris. But this requires polynomially many rounds. Then we have the non-blackbox simulation technique by Barak from 2001. However, even in this kind of simulation, the simulator has to clone the adversaries state. So this kind of simulation is not quantum friendly. Then we have this recent paradigm called homomorphic trapdoor paradigm. And this was initiated in the work of Bitansi Khurana Pane from 2019, which is a non-blackbox simulation technique where you assume that the simulator knows the code of the adversary. And this was used to create constant round post quantum zero knowledge proofs recently. And in this work, we extend the same kind of proof techniques to build general purpose multi-party computation in constant rounds, which crucially doesn't clone the adversaries state in the simulation proof. So with that, let me give you some background on what the setting of MPC is. So we have a set of parties each with the private inputs. And the goal is that they want to compute a function C on the private inputs by interacting with each other. The adversary might curb some subset of these parties indicated in red. And the security guarantee that we want is that the adversary should not learn anything about the private inputs of honest parties, apart from what it can reduce based on the fine, the output of the functionality. And the type of adversary that is generally considered in the literature is polynomial time adversary with static corruptions, arbitrary malicious behavior with dishonest majority. And there is a long line of works targeting this setting. But in our work, we want security against quantum polynomial time adversaries. There has been some work in literature on how to get security in the two-party setting. However, in the multi-party setting, this has been largely unexplored, especially in the constant round setting. So our approach towards this problem is the following. So we observed that there are no classical protocols which are constant round MPC, assuming there is a trusted setup phase. And these works are based on gavel circuits and multi-key FH. And moreover, when you instantiate these classical secure protocols with post-quantum secure primitives such as SSP, OT, and NISIC, you get post-quantum secure MPC, but with a trusted setup. So what is this trusted setup? So the trusted setup is basically a common random string. And what one needs to do in the security group is that the simulator of the common random string programs it. And thereafter, the simulation is completely straight line. So we observed that the entire approach boils down to building a constant round fully simulatable coin flipping protocol, which is secure against quantum adversaries. And once you have that, you can use that simulator to program CRS. And thereafter, the simulation is entirely straight line. So now with that, let me start by giving an overview of multi-party fully simulatable coin tossing. So we have a bunch of parties, and the functionality is that they all want to output some random string R. And the natural protocol template for realizing this functionality is that each party can just locally sample a uniformly random string R and broadcast a commitment to it. Then in the second round, each party broadcasts the opening value of this commitment. In the third round, they prove that the opening value is consistent with their commitments using a zero-knowledge proof. And if all the proofs verify, each party outputs the XOR of all the open values. So now in the constant round multi-party setting, what we want is that the first phase where each party commits to its random value R i should be a multi-party constant round extractable commitment. Not just that, we also want that the third step should be a multi-party constant round zero-knowledge proof. So now let me give and let me note that this task of creating multi-party constant round extractable commitments is the major challenge that we face in our work. And this is challenging in the quantum setting. So let me give an brief overview of what extractable commitments are.  And let's say C is the commitment string. So we have the usual hiding property that C shouldn't reveal anything about the message of the committer during the commitment phase and binding that the committer C shouldn't be able to open his commitment to a different message in the opening phase. Along with that, we have this additional property called extractability, which demands that there exists an efficient extractor machine, E, which can interact with the committer, malicious committer during the commit phase and output the message that this is trying to commit to. Now, in the quantum setting, we have, as I mentioned, we have this no cloning barrier that we cannot clone the state of the adversary. And all classical extraction techniques rely on rebinding or some form of cloning. But we observed that there is this recent line of works which build non-cloning straight line extractors using non-backbox simulation ideas. And the crucial tool that these works use is fully homomorphic encryption and compute and compare obfuscation.  So let's start with what the fully homomorphic encryption ingredient is. So we have a client and the server. So Alice is the client. He has some private input X that he is wanting to commit to, that he wants to compute upon. So client can generate a public secret key pair, encrypt his private input using the public key and send it to the server. The server can take the ciphertext and do a homomorphic evaluation on the ciphertext to produce an evaluated ciphertext C star and return it back to the client. The client can then locally decrypt its evaluated ciphertext and the correctness property ensures that the output of the decryption is actually the evaluation of the function on the private input. So now let's look at what compute and compare obfuscation is. So this kind of obfuscation takes in a special kind of program called compute and compare program, which I've denoted by CC over here. And it has three parameters. So the first parameter is a function F, some hard coded function F. The second parameter is some log value. And the third parameter is some message M. And the functionality of this program is that it takes in an input X evaluates the function on this input X. And if the output is the log value, then it returns the message. Otherwise it returns an error. So this is what a compute and compare program is. The obfuscator lets us obfuscate these special kind of programs into and convert them into an obfuscated program, which looks like complete garbage. And this obfuscated program has the same functionality as the original program, but it is computationally indistinguishable from a program which always returns error message. So now let me describe what the homomorphic trapezoid paradigm is that is used in this work to build a non-revinding no cloning extraction technique. So we have a committer who is trying to commit to some message M and a receiver. So as a first step, the committer samples an FHE key pair, a trapdoor and a log value. And then it computes an encryption of the trapdoor. Then it prepares this special compute and compare program, where the hard coded function is the decryption circuit of the FHE. And there is this log value that it sampled earlier, and the output is just the secret key of the FHE along with the message. So if you manage to input a value which decrypts to the lock value, then you get the secret key and the message. This is what the compute and compare program will do. Now the committer obfuscates this program and calls and gets cc tilde and then sends a triplet consisting of the FHE public key, the encrypted trapdoor and the obfuscated program to the receiver. In the second round, the receiver tries to take a guess at what the trapdoor might do, which we'll call tt prime. And then the committer on receiving this guess checks whether the guess is correct. And if so, it returns the log value that it sampled earlier. Otherwise it just returns what. Now it's clear that this commitment scheme is actually hiding because the semantic security of the FHE scheme ensures that a malicious receiver cannot guess the trapdoor in the second round. And so the lock value from the obfuscated program will be completely hidden from its view. And therefore cc tilde will hide the message. Now let me talk about how an extractor which has access to the code of the adversary, which is the malicious committer, and still manage to extract the message m out of it. So as a first step, extractor runs the first round of the malicious committer on some initial state st reaches some intermediate state st prime and manages to get triplet out of the adversary. So this triplet consists of the FHE public key, the encrypted trapdoor and the obfuscated program just like before. Now in the second round, the extractor has to take a guess at what the encrypted trapdoor is. But he cannot do so just like an honest committer cannot guess it in the real world. The extractor cannot guess it. But what it can do is guess the trapdoor under the hood of FHE. So in the second round, the extractor will execute this last step of the malicious committer under the hood of FHE, which means that it will run the eval function on this fourth step using the encrypted trapdoor as input. And what it manages to get is an encrypted third round message. And this third round message is indeed the log value because under the hood of FHE the guess was correct. So it gets encryption of the actual log value along with an encryption of the final state of the adversary which is st double prime. Now the extractor can use this encrypted log value, feed it into this obfuscated cc tilde program and get out the secret key and the message because if you look at the obfuscated the computer and compare program evaluating the decryption circuit on this encrypted log indeed gets gives you the log value. So the output will be the secret key and the message. Now it has already got the message M. As a last step, the extractor uses the secret key to decrypt the encrypted final state in order to receive a plaintext version of the final state of the adversary and also outputs this final state along with the extractor message. Now this homomorphic traptor paradigm has been useful to construct constant run post quantum zero knowledge, thus improving upon the polynomial run quantum zero knowledge protocols of waters and in this work we basically explore whether this extraction technique can also be used in the multi-party setting where we want to do multi-party coin and the main challenge in our work was basically how can we ensure that the extractor can extract simultaneously from multiple parallel committers so an adversary which is corrupting multiple committers. How can the extractor manage to manage to extract from all of them simultaneously? So let me motivate the problem a bit more. So let's try to run the same technique as before on two committers. So the adversary here is corrupting two committers in parallel and let's say the extractor runs the same procedure as before, reaches an intermediate state sd prime and managed to get now two triplets of public key encrypted trapdoor and office kitted program. Now it can try to take a guess at what these trapdoors is in the second round by doing the same trick as before and trying to evaluate the last step of the adversary under the hood of FHG. But the challenge is that it has individual encryptions of tractors. So these are separate encryptions of tractor under separate public keys, but the extractor has got only one chance of doing the evaluation. So it has to do a single evaluation of the adversary on both these inputs, the encrypted trapdoor one encrypted trapdoor two and get out the log values, encrypted log values. But what should be this evaluation upon so in the last in the previous scheme, we saw that this was just the FHG evaluation. But now we have two inputs encrypted on the different public keys. So a natural way to resolve this is to use multi key FHG, which is like a generalized form of FHG in the multi client setting. So you have multiple clients, each with the individual public secret key pairs and their private inputs, they can encrypt their inputs under their own public keys and send the ciphertext to the server. The server can do a homomorphic evaluation on the ciphertext under a joint public key. And get out of evaluated ciphertext C star, which it can then send to clients. The clients can now locally run a partial decryption protocol on the these ciphertexts on the evaluated ciphertext to get out some some output. And this output should be interpreted as a partial output. And the key property is that these partial decryption outputs are actually additive secret shares of the actual output of the function on the private inputs of all parties. So this is what is known as the spooky property in this multi key FHG setting. And this is achieved by this work by Dodie Zakhar. And so our main idea is that we can run this homomorphic evaluation step on the adversary under using multi key FHG on the joint public key of both the committers. So and then get out encrypted third round messages. But the problem is not quite solved, because what we actually get is an encryption of the two log values and the final state under the joint public key. So this is still better than before, but not complete because to take advantage of the office catered programs and get the actual message out, what we actually want is an encryption of the individual locks under the individual public keys, not joint public keys. And so what the extractor has is an encryption of the two lock values under joint public keys, along with the office catered programs, and it needs to recover both the secret keys and the both the messages. So our idea is that as a first step, what we can do is convert these multi key cipher texts under the joint public key into a nested form where the locks are first encrypted under PK2 and then under PK1. And we'll see later how this can be done, but for now assume that this can be done efficiently. Once we have this, what we can use what we can do is take the second encryption. So we have locked two encrypted under PK2 and then under PK1 take this and evaluate CC2 tilde on this input homomorphically under the hood of public key one. So what we are indeed doing is we are feeding CC2 and encrypted lock, a nested encrypted lock to value under the hood of public key one. And what we will get as output is the secret key two, but because we did a homomorphic evaluation, this will also be under the hood of public key one. But now what we can do is take this secret key two, which is encrypted under PK1 and peel off the inner layer of encryption from this first nested cipher text. So what we can do is take the nested encryption of lock one and the secret key two, which is encrypted in a PK1 and peel off the inner layer by evaluating the decryption circuit of FHE2 under the hood of FHE1. Now what we get is an encryption of lock one under PK1, which can directly be evaluated on CC tilde one program to get out the actual secret key one and the actual message one. And this can be done symmetrically to extract secret key two and message two as well. So now let me complete by mentioning how we can convert from this joint public key encryption to a nested encryption. So we do this by relying on the AFS spooky property of the multi key FHE. So in this kind of FHE and an evaluated cipher text, so imagine an encryption of lock one under joint public key PK1, PK2 is of the following form. So we have a pair each encrypted individually and the PK1 and PK2 and the Z1 and Z2 are actually secret shares, additive secret shares of the actual log value. So this is the spooky additive function sharing property. So once we have this property, we can use it to convert the W and the joint encryption into a nested encryption in the following way. So we take the we take the first half of the pair. So first share encryption share and do two layers of homomorphic evaluation. So we first go under PK1 and then go under PK2 and XOR Z1 into Z2. And what we get as output is because even XOR Z2 is lock one, we get lock one encrypted under PK2 and then under PK1 because we went two layers down. As a side note, I would like to mention that since our adversary is quantum, so we need a multi key FHG scheme which works against with which works with supports evaluation of quantum circuits and not just classical circuits. And we do this by combining single key FHG schemes with support quantum circuits and multi key FHG schemes with support classical circuits. We combine these two techniques in order to construct multi key FHG scheme supporting evaluation of quantum circuits. And I would not go into details. You are encouraged to look into the paper for this. So now this completes a construction of constant on extractable commitments in constant rounds against quantum adversaries. And we note that this directly gives us constant on zero noise proofs as well in the multi party setting by relying on existing techniques in the literature. So now our coin flipping template is almost complete. So we replace the first round with a parallel extractable commitment and the third round with a parallel zero noise proof. However, there is a slight malability issue. So note that an adversary which is receiving a parallel extractable commitment from an honest player to some value R1 can create a parallel extractable commitment to some value R2 in such a way that R2 has some dependence on R1. For example, R2 can just be R1 plus 1. And this is bad because this can bias the outcome, the outcome of the protocol. So the final outcome R might not be uniformly random and we need to ensure that this that is the case in order for the security proof to go through. So to do that we rely on post quantum constant round non-malable commitments, which is also something that we construct in this paper. So we do that by relying on erasure channel based constant round non-malable commitments. So these are classical commitments from this work by Corona and Sahay. And the well-known tag amplification technique from the left of now. We combine these two techniques to construct post quantum constant round non-malable commitments in our paper. So with that, a final coin flipping protocol looks like before, but we have an additional step in the beginning where each party sends a non-malable commitment to the value Ri and the randomness that they plan to use in the parallel extractable commitment. So they send a non-malable commitment to both these things and this sort of ties the extractable commitment to the non-malable commitment, this Ri and Si, which helps a security proof program. So with that, our final result is that there exists a constant round MPC protocol in the plain model, which is secure against quantum polynomial time adversaries, assuming an LWE based circular security assumption, which is what we use in order to construct this quantum multi-key FHE with spooky property. And this in turn lets us create constant round Pal X extractable commitments, which is quantum secure and constant round Pal L zero noise proofs, which is also quantum secure. And the second assumption that we rely on is a mildly super polynomial hardness of LWE, by which we mean that there exists some constant C such that no QBT adversary has advantage better than lambda raised to iterated log of lambda C times in distinguishing LWE samples from uniform. And we use this assumption in order to build post-quantum constant round non-malable commitments. And with that, I conclude my talk. Thanks for listening.


This is so close to the top of the range and the cool part what we saw today in the options market They weren't just even coming for the 200s 205 weeklies They were coming for the 250s the 240s with like two weeks out of Exploration so it really does show you how important this base is so keep an eye on this thing guys if this thing can get Above this channel finally in the next couple of days. Hopefully tomorrow I think well, you know, it's gonna be all airspace and the way they're betting right the way they're betting in the options market They for some reason skip the 205s and the 210s and 250s They're literally going after the 220s 240s and the 250 calls so it's gonna be very very interesting to see