British Sign Language (BSL) in the Education (Scotland) Bill campaign

Latest update: 20 December 2024 

Great news! Deaf children and young people in Scotland got an early Christmas present on 18 December when the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Jenny Gilruth MSP, confirmed that the Scottish Government will amend the Education (Scotland) Bill to recognise the needs of learners and users of BSL in Scotland’s schools. 

This follows the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee, who were scrutinising the bill, unanimously recommending that the bill needed to change in their Stage 1 report on the bill. 

A huge thank you if you were one of the 400 deaf children, young people and their families who joined our campaign and wrote to the Education Committee to urge them to ensure BSL was not overlooked. 

MSPs told us that you helped convince them that BSL needs to be added to the draft which is currently making its way through the Scottish Parliament. 

But our work isn’t over. We won’t stop campaigning until an amendment has been agreed that ensures BSL has its rightful place in the bill. When the bill comes to stage 2 – when amendments can be proposed – we’ll need even more people to write to the committee. We want every MSP on the Education Committee’s to vote to change the bill to include BSL. 

We don’t know when the BSL amendments will be discussed yet, but it’s likely to happen in January. Join our Campaigns Network to stay up to date with the latest developments and be first to know when it’s time to take action. 

Together, we are making a difference. 

About the campaign 

We’re working with other organisations to challenge the way the new Education (Scotland) Bill overlooks the needs of BSL users and learners. 

In the first phase of the campaign, we encouraged people to write to the Scottish Parliament Education Committee to ask them not to forget about BSL as they carried out their initial review of the bill. Nearly 400 people joined our online action. 

At the final review meeting one of the Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) on the committee asked Jenny Gilruth, the Minister in charge of the bill, about BSL being overlooked. She said she recognised the importance of BSL and would see what could be done. 

Watch a BSL version of the meeting  

Watch the meeting on the Scottish Parliament website  

In early December, the committee produced a report on its review of the bill. In the section covering equality issues, the report highlighted that while many groups had welcomed the proposal that the new Scottish education bodies created by the bill should think about the needs of users and learners of the Gaelic language, the National Deaf Children’s Society and other groups representing deaf people had pointed out that there were no similar provisions for BSL.

The committee therefore recommended the bill should be changed to treat BSL and Gaelic in the same way. 

Check out page 48 of the committee's full report to find out more: Education (Scotland) Bill - Stage 1 Report (PDF)

This report was then debated by the whole Scottish Parliament on 18 December. Read the briefing we sent out with other organisations in advance of the debate  

Several MSPs spoke in favour of the committee’s recommendation on BSL. Miles Briggs MSP, Conservative MSP for Lothian, said “BSL should have parity of esteem with Gaelic throughout the Bill. Only that approach will guarantee that the rights of deaf children and young people are upheld”.

SNP MSP Evelyn Tweed said, “Having access to information and exam materials in their preferred languages is a right that must be promoted and protected for deaf learners”.

During the closing speeches in the debate Roz McCall MSP echoed her Tory colleague Miles Briggs’s remarks, saying “For far too long, we have let down the deaf community. Too many students are left isolated without adequate teaching, and that must stop.” 

However, it still wasn’t clear what Jenny Gilruth, the Cabinet Secretary for Education, would say about BSL in her closing speech – or if she would mention it at all.

We were therefore delighted that she said in the final speech of the debate, “I want to put on the record that the Government will lodge amendments [on BSL]. It is hugely important that BSL is recognised, and I provided evidence on that issue to the committee earlier this year.”

This is brilliant news and was a much stronger commitment to changing the bill than we expected. View the full debate. 

We’ll be encouraging as many people as possible to write to the committee again, to ensure the Minister delivers on her promise when the bill comes back to the committee for amendment.