I was delighted to welcome p5/6 from St Mungo’s Primary School in Townhead to parliament on 26 May. Because of the pandemic, this was the first school group I have been able to welcome since getting elected a year ago. And it was a treat!

A talented P5 member of this lovely class was the winner of last year’s competition to design a Christmas card for me to send. The winning design demonstrated great design skills, awareness of the climate emergency, and excellent vocabulary! In 2021 I didn’t print cards, but in the interests of the environment, I sent out an ecard. Thank you to all the competition entrants. I hope you agree the winner was a worthy one!

The prize was a class visit to Holyrood, so my team and I welcomed 22 children, two teachers and two helpers to parliament.

The children had a chance to explore the chamber and sit in MSPs seats. We took them through the public areas into the garden lobby and up to my office where they were able to look out at Holyrood Park, the Salisbury Crags, and the parliament’s bee hives. They ate their packed lunches in a room in the oldest part of the site, Queensberry House.
They were incredibly well behaved and they were also curious and enthusiastic. Thanks to their teacher, Mrs Maguire, they seemed very knowledgeable about devolved and reserved powers, who the First Minister is, and the Jacobites, among other things! They left with fantastic handouts from the Parliament’s Education Service all about their day, and an MSP diary to fill in. They also each got a bookmark and a ‘Future MSP’ sticker.
I hope they also left with a sense of their right to be well represented, of the fact that this is their parliament, that it is accessible to them and transparent in the work it does on their behalf, and that there is nothing stopping them from following in my footsteps and aspiring to be elected to this place and serve their fellow citizens.

They certainly left us with a smile on our faces! I can’t wait to welcome them and other classes to Parliament in future.

#RepresentationMatters #DiversityMatters #workingforyou