– in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 February 2021.
Jamie Greene
Conservative
Last week, the Parliament asked the Government to urgently release the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report into Scottish education, which is currently sitting on ministers’ desks. This week’s worrying attainment figures perfectly illustrate why it is vital that Parliament has a chance to scrutinise those findings before dissolution. I simply ask the First Minister whether the report will be released any time soon.
Nicola Sturgeon
Scottish National Party
The OECD has not completed its work and has not completed its report. I understand that the OECD will be engaging over the coming period with stakeholders, and will be able to update them on any conclusions that it has reached so far. As I think I said in the chamber last week, the OECD is in charge of the process and timescale of that work. I am pretty sure that if the Government were to seek to intervene in that work, to truncate the timescales or to be seen to dictate to the OECD how it goes about its work, the Conservatives would be among the first to get to their feet to criticise us for doing so.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.
