Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to take part in the committee’s proceedings this morning. As the convener indicated, I will be doing so for the final time in this parliamentary session.
I know that I speak for many of us who, as parents, were delighted to see our children return to school in recent weeks. Children seeing their teachers and friends again offers a degree of routine and familiarity. For older pupils in secondary schools, for whom things are not quite back to normal yet, even returning to school for short periods of time each week allows them to reconnect with their peers.
It remains our intention that, as the final element of the phased return, all pupils will return to full-time in-school learning after the Easter break. The advisory sub-group on education and children’s issues met again yesterday and stressed the importance of strengthening other mitigations, such as ventilation and outdoor learning, as part of relaxing the strict 2m physical distancing requirements between pupils in secondary schools. We will publish associated guidance to enable school staff to prepare accordingly. In addition, we will need to continue to carefully monitor the data over the coming weeks, including learning from the experience in England. However, at present, the proportion of primary schools and early learning and childcare settings with incidents remains low. Where outbreaks have occurred, they have predominantly—[Inaudible.]—higher case rates in the local community.
I take considerable reassurance from our enhanced asymptomatic testing programme, which will be further expanded to include secondary 1 to secondary 3 pupils after the Easter break. The take-up of that testing offer has been encouraging. In the week ending 7 March, more than 56,000 staff and 12,000 pupils took tests. The number of positive asymptomatic cases identified has been low. Since the programme began five weeks ago, 0.1 per cent of cases have been positive after confirmatory polymerase chain reaction—PCR—testing. The programme is helping to break chains of transmission as early as possible, and I encourage all those who are eligible to make use of the offer to do so when they return to school.
Despite the progress that has been made, I do not underestimate the extent to which children and young people have experienced disruption to their daily lives as a result of the pandemic, nor do I underestimate the physical and mental health impacts of lockdown. From our work, including January’s equity audit, we know that those impacts might have fallen unequally across society. Therefore, I am pleased to tell the committee that we intend to provide an enhanced range of summer activities for children and young people in order to address the impacts that are associated with extended periods of isolation and reduced participation in normal activities. That offer will have children’s rights and needs at its heart and will seek to provide opportunities to connect and socialise while accessing a range of activities, combined with broader supports where they are needed. It will build on local offers that are already in progress, recognise the need for flexibility to deliver by using local assets and connect with wider offers from partners such as sportscotland and Creative Scotland.
In addition, I am delighted to announce £19.4 million of Scottish Government funding to support a six-year mentoring programme by MCR Pathways to help young people to reach their full potential. That programme will be delivered in partnership with local authorities that wish to participate and will be part of the Scottish Government’s young persons guarantee to provide long-term support where it is needed most. We will work closely with our colleagues in local government to shape the detail of the programmes.
Those investments are in addition to almost £400 million of funding that we have committed already for education recovery during this year and next. Over the next few months, we will continue to develop all aspects of our education recovery strategy with our partners and stakeholders. In parallel to the national qualifications 2021 group, key partners have collaborated to ensure that the hard work of learners is recognised and allows them to achieve the qualifications that they need to proceed to the next stage of their education or to enter employment. The alternative certification model that has been developed aims to strike the right balance between teacher judgment and local and national processes to ensure fairness and consistency, which we have put in place. To aid that, I have asked Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education to undertake a review of local authority approaches to quality assurance activity.
The HMIE review will not add to the workload and pressure on schools. Its focus will be on local authority quality assurance activity, which is a key aspect of this year’s approach to awarding national qualifications. The review, combined with Scottish Qualifications Authority processes, will support confidence that learners across the country are getting the grades that they deserve.
Just as the approach to certification has been co-produced, there is a role for all parts of the system to work together to ensure that it delivers for our young people. I am confident that everyone will work together to achieve that most important of outcomes.
I express my sincere thanks to Scotland’s children, parents, families, teachers, school leaders and support staff for everything that they have done during the past year. I am very grateful for all the support that has been provided to ensure that our children and young people continue to make progress in their learning and development.
I look forward to answering the committee’s questions.