Cabinet Secretary for Education correspondence on the “Palestine and Israel – Understanding the Conflict” teaching resource: FOI release

Information requested

“All Cabinet Secretary for Education correspondence received and responses concerning:‘Palestine and Israel – Understanding the Conflict teaching resource’. The time-frame period for this being from Feb 18, 2025 – present”.

Response

To respond to your request, I enclose a copy of, and links to, the information you requested in email, URL and PDF form. Please see attachments included alongside this response letter.

In addition to the attachments included alongside this letter, the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee sought a response from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills to Petition PE2169 in relation to facilitating a review and upgrading of the teaching resource ‘Palestine and Israel, understanding the conflict’. This item falls into scope for your Freedom of Information request, therefore I am highlighting it in this response letter.

The received correspondence can be found at the following link: Facilitate a review and upgrade of the teaching resource ‘Palestine and Israel, understanding the conflict’ - Petitions

The response letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills can be found at the following link:

https://www.parliament.scot/-/media/files/committees/citizen-participation-and-public-petitions- committee/correspondence/2024/pe2169/pe2169_a.pdf

The correspondence labelled “Scotland needs a national teaching resource on the Israel-Palestine conflict” was sent to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and has been attached. Please note the response was issued from Scottish Government officials and this has also been attached.

You will note that there is some sections of the attachments that have been redacted. This is where an exemption under section s.38(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principes in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

Out with the official FOI response to provide further clarification please note in relation to the correspondence received labelled “Cab Sec Education-CPG Palestine” and “letter to Jenny Gilruth 27.02.25” that due to an error the response to this correspondence has yet to be sent but will be provided to the correspondent as soon as possible. Please also note in relation to the correspondence received labelled “Teaching Materials on Israel and Palestine” that the response has yet to be sent.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202500491723 - Information Released - Annex

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PDF

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1.9 MB