Official Report 941KB pdf
Welcome back. Our next item of business is an evidence session on the various portfolios of the cabinet secretary and ministers, who are with their officials.
The committee will take evidence from: Jenny Gilruth, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills; Natalie Don-Innes, Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise; and Ben Macpherson, Minister for Higher and Further Education. From the Scottish Government, I welcome: Clare Hicks, director of education reform; Adam Reid, deputy director for skills; Alison Taylor, interim director for learning; and Andrew Watson, director for children and families.
I welcome all the ministers and officials, and I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.
Good morning. The year 2025 is proving to be a landmark one in Scottish education. Children in our primary and secondary schools are achieving record levels in literacy and numeracy. Crucially, the poverty-related gap in attainment in literacy and numeracy between children from the most and the least deprived communities is at a record low level.
Attendance of children and young people has increased, with the attendance rate reaching 91 per cent in 2024-25. Thanks to our additional investment in this year’s budget, we have seen an increase in the number of teachers in Scotland’s classrooms, an improvement in the pupil-to-teacher ratio and a reduction in average class size. The evidence demonstrates that our focus on the ABCs—attendance, attainment, behaviour and curriculum—is working. It also demonstrates the commitment to equity in our schools, thanks to the transformational impact of the Scottish attainment challenge over the past decade.
Progress continues to be made on widening access to higher education. The latest Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data in 2025 shows continuing positive trends, such as the number of 18-year-olds accepted from the most deprived areas having increased to 2,200 since the 2024 cycle. That is a record high, with young people choosing to study in Scotland, supported by Scotland’s continued commitment to free tuition. There was also a positive picture for entrants to further and higher education who are care experienced or have a disability.
How we support children in their earliest years and ensure that no child is left behind is key to enabling more children and young people to succeed at school and beyond. The number of children in care is now at the lowest level since 2006. Every three and four-year-old and more than 230,000 children in primaries 1 to 5 are entitled to a free school meal, and we have expanded entitlement in primary 6 and 7 and into secondary 1 to 3. This year, we have awarded £3 million to 490 breakfast clubs, which has helped to establish 142 new clubs, created almost 9,000 places and supported up to 20,000 children.
However, I fully acknowledge that more work can always be done and that challenges remain. The proportion of eligible two-year-olds who are registered for early learning and childcare has fallen nationally, which is disappointing. Our investment in an Improvement Service project in five local authority areas seeks to address barriers and apply what works across Scotland.
Attendance is improving, but still too many children are persistently absent from school, which is why Education Scotland continues to run its improving attendance quality improvement programme, and I have tasked the interim chief inspector of education with ensuring that persistent absence is addressed in every school inspection.
New data shows that 43 per cent of our children and young people have additional support needs. Addressing that is a priority, and I set out more on that in my statement to the Parliament last week. I also recognise the financial challenges that colleges and universities face, and my officials continue to work closely with the sector to support them where we can.
I anticipate that the budget process will be challenging for the Scottish Government as a whole. In that context, there is strong delivery on our work to give children the best start in life. It is supported by this year’s £4.3 billion investment in education and skills, which is a £123 million uplift on the previous year. That should be celebrated but also protected.
My ministers and I welcome the opportunity to discuss those achievements and challenges with you this morning.
Thank you very much. As you will understand, we will go through themes so that we do not jump about between too many different topics. First, we will continue on from our two previous evidence sessions by looking at the national review of group-based child sexual abuse. I know that you are making a statement on the issue in the chamber this afternoon, but were you able to catch any of Professor Alexis Jay’s evidence?
Yes, I caught some of Professor Alexis Jay’s evidence when I was sitting in my office this morning, and I think that it was quite helpful.
It was certainly helpful for the committee. Professor Jay said that what has now been set up and proposed is workable, but she is keen to take a few months to see whether it is the optimal way forward. Is it the optimal way forward to get answers for victims?
I heard your question on that point, convener, and I heard Professor Alexis Jay say in response that she is supportive of the approach that we have put out in principle. It is important that the committee and Parliament recognise that she will have a role in relation to supporting the methodology and providing expertise to the national review. That is hugely important, to my mind. She also said that we will know, within the course of the next few months, the impacts of that work. I want to be careful, convener, because I will be giving a statement to Parliament later today on the issues, but I am very pleased that we have her expertise involved in the work.
I should also say—I think that Professor Alexis Jay touched on some of this work as well, although I did not listen to her full evidence session—that the inspectorates are all independent of Government. They have statutory responsibilities. Importantly, they also have statutory powers to investigate, which ministers do not have, so the evidence base that the inspectorates will be key in delivering will provide us with further information on the scale and the challenge in relation to child sexual abuse across the country.
I also heard from Professor Alexis Jay’s evidence that, at the current time, we do not have a sufficient evidence base. I think that she also said that that is not unique to Scotland. However, it is imperative that that evidence base is built upon, and the Government is taking forward that work. I look forward to saying a bit more on that this afternoon, but for committee members’ reassurance—and I think that you acknowledged this, convener—I have organised for Professor Alexis Jay and Police Scotland to give a private briefing to MSPs, which I think is hugely important, in January.
That is certainly welcomed by me and, I am sure, by other committee members.
I accept that you are leading on this work as the Government minister but, outside Government and elected representatives, who will be the main person that people can look to to get them the answers? There still seems to be a bit of confusion as to who is actually leading. If a victim is sitting at home today wondering who is the individual who will secure the answers to the questions that they have been harbouring for many years and the worries that they have from not receiving answers despite trying, who can they look to as an individual to get them the answers?
First, in relation to victims—again, I will say more about this later in my statement to Parliament—we all need to be mindful that, when we talk about these subjects in the chamber, in the committee or in the media, it is traumatising to victims, so we need to be mindful of our language. I will put that on the record again today. I am sure that, like me, members have been inundated with emails from the public—perhaps victims—in relation to their experiences. I am therefore very mindful of treating the issue with the sensitivity that it deserves.
On who will be leading the work, as I announced to Parliament two weeks ago today, the four inspectorates have a role to play, and they will carry out their work. I will say more about that in my statement to Parliament. Alexis Jay is chairing the national strategic group, which is hugely important in that regard.
What Alexis Jay said to the committee this morning and what she said to me when I met her recently is that we do not yet have the evidence base to arrive at a decision as to whether further inquiries are needed. When we have that evidence base, the Government will need to take a decision, and it may be that a figurehead is appointed. I think that you asked Alexis Jay whether that would be something that she would lead on. I do not want to prejudge the outcome of the evidence gathering that is necessary to establish whether further inquiries are necessary.
In relation to victims, I thought that it was quite helpful that, last Monday, the Scottish child abuse inquiry made it very clear that, should it be within the terms of reference of its inquiry, people who have been victims of grooming can come forward and should contact the inquiry in relation to historical cases, which that inquiry is looking at additionally.
I want to say a bit more on engagement with victims, and I will set some of this out in my statement. I heard some of the commentary that Alexis Jay provided in relation to the truth project work that was led down south. Last week, along with the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise, I spoke to Tam Baillie about some of that work and listened to some of that expertise. We would want to be able to set out a fuller update to Parliament in that space.
I will say more on that today, but I am mindful of the important points that the convener makes about victims, who will be watching very closely and who have been let down by systems. It is hugely important that what we put in place has their faith and their trust, and that we can deliver on their expectations in that regard. I will always be resolutely focused on that as cabinet secretary.
I would encourage committee members, if they have contact from victims, to please share information if they are able to. We, as ministers, have made it very clear in our engagement with the strategic group that we want to engage directly. This is a priority for the Government, not just for me as cabinet secretary.
I am not trying to jump ahead to see whether we have an actual inquiry; Mr Mason was asking about judge-led inquiries and suchlike. The question is more about this interim period.
You are right to say that all those other bodies, which are independent of Government, are going to feed in, and that Alexis Jay is going to chair part of it. Are you then the person to go to? Is there no one leading the work outside of the Government as an independent person, because you think that that would need to happen if there was ultimately an inquiry? There is no one leading the work at the moment other than you as the cabinet secretary—is that correct?
I am not necessarily sure that I would say that that was correct.
As I understand it, Alexis Jay met last week with His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary and the Care Inspectorate, and Ms Don-Innes and I had a helpful meeting with officials on the matter this morning. The work is under way. Those inspectorates have their own independent leadership teams that lead on their work, so leadership is being provided by the inspectorate teams, and Alexis Jay chairs the national strategic group.
I have responsibility for child protection, but the work to act on child sexual abuse is a cross-Government endeavour, as you have just heard from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs. This is not only about one area of Government; we all have responsibilities in that regard. To reassure the committee, there have been cabinet discussions on the topic. The First Minister is taking a leading role on the topic, which is currently of the utmost importance to the Government.
I hear your point in relation to leadership, and when I set out my statement to the Parliament today, I hope that I will be able to provide further clarity on that. I think that your points about victims have been well made.
Does the Government have a view, or do you have a personal view on mandatory reporting?
Yes, I do.
Would you like to share it with the committee?
My view is that we should be supportive of mandatory reporting. That is the view of my minister, and I believe that it is also the view of the justice secretary. We have previously met and discussed the issue. I will say more on the topic later today, but I confirm for the committee—as I thought you might ask about it—that I am very supportive of mandatory reporting.
It is hugely important, and it speaks to one of the issues that Alexis Jay flushed out, which is the lack of data under current reporting processes. The issue with child sexual abuse is that, often, hidden and power dynamics are at play. Gathering data in that space is challenging, but the view that I share with Ms Don-Innes and Ms Constance is that mandatory reporting is important in order to gather a more robust data set. We do not have the data at the current time, which is exactly why the review is so important.
Why do we not have it? You sound very impassioned about the issue. You have been in post for some time.
I have.
Your party has been in Government for many years. Why do we not have mandatory reporting?
I think that you made that point to Alexis Jay, who spoke about some of the challenges and alluded to potential legislative change. I do not want to get ahead of the work, but she has set out that a sub-group of the national strategic group is tasked with specifically looking at the issue in more detail. I would like to come back to Parliament and provide more detail in relation to mandatory reporting, but I want to put ministers’ support for it on the record.
Do you accept that it could have been introduced before now?
There are challenges in that space. We must consider the historical position of lots of different organisations. Today, I am in front of you as education secretary, but I am mindful that the issue is not only about, for example, teachers reporting potential examples of abuse happening in schools; it also involves social work, and police have a role to play. We need to be mindful of the different parts of Government that mandatory reporting would affect.
Andrew Watson might want to say more about some of the background on mandatory reporting, but I put on the record that ministers support it in principle, which is important. Andrew, do you want to add anything further?
To add to the cabinet secretary’s points, a few important things on the implementation of mandatory reporting have to be considered, which Professor Jay alluded to in her evidence. She gave the particular example of the need to engage with trade unions. When looking at the options for mandatory reporting, we need to consider the scope, who is covered by any changes in legislative requirements and what existing duties are already in place for different professions, because many duties of care and reporting exist.
As the cabinet secretary said, legislative change is an issue, but there is also a need to engage with practitioners and the wide range of people who have an opinion on the issue and to think about implementation. It is not a straightforward, simple change; it is, in effect, quite a long process.
I have a final question on the subject. We asked Professor Jay and the justice secretary about their correspondence and sought a clarification on what was said in the chamber. On “The Sunday Show”, you were asked about the issue, and you said:
“There was an ask for clarification to be sought in relation to the strategic group minutes.”
Was the statement that you gave on television in relation to the strategic group minutes correct?
In relation to the strategic group minutes?
Yes. Regarding why the Official Report had not been updated, your response to Gary Robertson on “The Sunday Show” was:
“There was an ask for clarification to be sought in relation to the strategic group minutes.”
Professor Jay was very clear that that was a suggestion made by the Government.
I heard that.
The way I listened to it on Sunday was that you were saying that the ask potentially came from Professor Jay or someone else. Do you accept that there was not an ask for clarification to be sought in relation to the strategic group minutes, because it was a Scottish Government response to Professor Jay’s letter?
At that point, I was not privy to the internal dialogue on that between the chief social work adviser and Alexis Jay. I was making the point that a clarification—
That was on Sunday.
Yes, I am aware of that. However, I was not aware of the internal dialogue between the chief social worker and Alexis Jay, which I heard about in this morning’s evidence session.
As I understand it, there was not a debate from Alexis Jay in relation to the approach she sought, which, I believe, was to amend the minutes—I should say, convener, that I did not catch the entirety of the evidence session, so I would be happy to write to the committee with more detail on that point if that would be helpful. As I understood it at the time, Professor Alexis Jay’s preferred route was, following her engagement on that matter with the chief social work adviser, a clarification in the minutes.
11:45
It was her preferred route because she was offered only two routes: a response from the cabinet secretary or that more public route of a clarification in the minutes. Were you briefed to say on “The Sunday Show” that
“There was an ask for clarification to be sought in relation to the strategic group minutes”?
You actually said it twice, and I can give you both quotes. It was a very particular quote, and it stuck with me. Were you told that that was the line to take? We have all been given lines to take, so was that what you were told to put across?
That was what I understood to be the case at the time, convener. Again, I am happy to check my briefing for “The Sunday Show” and to write to the committee with more detail in that regard. What I said reflected my understanding, and I think that it is the position that the First Minister broadly set out to the Parliament last week in his engagement with Russell Findlay on exactly this topic.
To be clear, are you saying that as recently as Sunday—just three days ago—the Government position, which it was asking ministers to articulate to the media and to the public, was that the clarification was sought of it rather than offered by it?
I will check my briefing on that exact point and on the exact wording, because I want to be accurate. Given what we are talking about, that is important. I am happy to write to the committee in more detail in that regard.
Thank you. We will move to questions from Ross Greer.
Cabinet secretary, I recognise that you have a recusal in relation to the Promise.
I do.
This question might be for you, or it might be for the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise. I am keen to understand how the new and on-going processes in relation to grooming gangs, data collection and wider efforts around institutional and organised child sexual abuse will overlap with the Government’s other existing commitments. In particular, I am seeking clarity on the commitment that the Government made in the “Keeping the Promise” implementation plan, which was published in early 2022, to review the legislative framework underpinning the care system. As far as The Promise Scotland is aware, that has not happened. Given the significant overlap here—I am sad to say that care-experienced children are disproportionately the victims and survivors of grooming gangs—will the Government offer an update on that review?
Very often, the core of the issue is that the system has failed those children because it is fragmented. My understanding was that the commitment to undertake that legislative review aimed to deal with that fragmentation and consolidate the legislation so that the system would be more coherent and cohesive.
I will defer to Natalie Don-Innes on the Promise, because, as you have pointed out, Mr Greer, I am recused from that topic.
I have been discussing that legislative review—not specifically in relation to that topic but more generally. It has come up in my discussions with The Promise Scotland and other stakeholders in relation to the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill, which I will call the Promise bill for short.
Work has been done with The Promise Scotland to review the legislative landscape, but a decision was made not to take that forward in the Promise bill. Again, I am speaking of review in a general sense rather than in relation to the specific legislation on child protection that Mr Greer referred to. Given the scale of the reviewing task, it was agreed that taking it forward in the Promise bill was perhaps not the best approach. However, that does not detract from the fact that work on that is still under way in other areas of Government.
I still very much want to take forward the review, which was a recommendation from The Promise Scotland. It would be very beneficial for child protection and for other areas. However, given the timings around the Promise bill and the complexity of decluttering the landscape, it was decided that the review would not be taken forward as part of that bill. However, as I say, I have been engaging with The Promise Scotland on the review, and we still very much plan to do it, because it is key to our delivery of the Promise.
I appreciate that. I recognise the capacity constraints that are involved in having quite a large, complex and important bill and then having this commitment on top of that, and I understand the sequencing point. Will you confirm that the intention is to take the first steps to begin the review of legislation underpinning the care system as soon as the bill is passed, which, all being well, will be before the end of this parliamentary session?
It would be good to get a handle on the timescale for that. I have picked up a lot of concern from those who are working in and around the child protection system and the wider care system who feel as though work on the bill has dropped off and that nobody is really sure where it is going.
Mr Greer has been very positive about the bill passing. The review is not being thought about in a way that is exclusive or detached from the bill. It is still going on aside from the bill. As I said, I have been discussing the matter with The Promise Scotland, which undertook some work around the legislative landscape. I now need to consider whether that work is a good basis for advancing that agenda or whether the Government will have to conduct its own review or enhance that work.
I assure Mr Greer that thinking around the review is under way and that it has not dropped off the agenda. He will be aware that I have engaged a lot with children and young people on the delivery of the Promise bill and that there has been a lot of focus on specific areas. I feel that the areas that we are delivering on in the bill are those that will make the most difference to children and young people right here, right now. However, please be assured that our longer-term view to tidy up the legislative landscape has not fallen off the radar—it is being discussed in conversations that I am having.
I will press for clarity on that. Will you make a decision before the end of this parliamentary session—that is, before dissolution—on how to take forward the review?
I would be happy to write to the committee on that exact point, because I do not have advice on that at this moment. I will need to consider that, and I will write to the committee to confirm that.
What is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that not only adequate but trauma-informed support is available to survivors of child sexual exploitation and abuse?
We are undertaking a range of things. Ms Don-Innes might want to say more in relation to the bairns’ hoose work, which she leads on. We are providing funding to the NSPCC and to Barnardo’s Scotland. I will say more about that in my statement to the Parliament later, so I need to be careful about anything I say here.
However, it is important that we look at third sector organisations that provide trauma-informed approaches, which we know work. That is why we have supported the bairns’ hoose programme, which takes funding from my portfolio, from justice and from health. That funding approach and the bairns’ hoose approach to supporting victims and survivors are reflective of our strategic approach to those issues across Government. Cross-funding requires all those areas of Government to be involved in providing that support and in supporting survivors. I am mindful of that when thinking about the support that might be available to survivors and victims through the national review.
The committee heard from Alexis Jay this morning about the work that has been undertaken in England on the truth project. As I said, I discussed the matter with Ms Don-Innes and Tam Baillie last week. Ministers are considering a number of areas in relation to trauma-informed responses. Again, I will say more about that to the Parliament later.
Ms Don-Innes might want to say more about her involvement in the bairns’ hoose programme, which probably encapsulates a lot of the Government’s work in relation to financial support.
Absolutely—the investment in bairns’ hoose is absolutely key to that. We have to recognise the profound impact that abuse can have on children. The bairns’ hoose programme embeds a whole-system trauma-informed response that minimises the risk of traumatisation and supports not only children’s recovery but their wellbeing.
I have visited the north Strathclyde bairns’ hoose programme. Although I have not witnessed it in action, I have seen the environment and how the needs and wants of children who have been involved have been considered and reflected in it. That is really important.
However, I appreciate that, at the moment, the provision of such support is not consistent across Scotland. There are still more children and young people who could benefit from the support of the bairns’ hoose programme, and ensuring that they can is a priority going forward. The bairns’ hoose programme is a really positive example of how we are tackling something using a cross-Government approach, and it will really benefit the children and young people who are able to access it.
Cabinet secretary, did you say that the funding for the bairns’ hoose programme comes from three portfolios—health, justice and education—because child protection falls across those three portfolios?
Child protection falls across Government, but yes. I am fairly certain that the bairns’ hoose programme receives £8 million from each of those portfolios. I will need to check that, convener, so I will write to the committee on that—although Andrew Watson might be able to correct me.
There is a bit of resource funding and a bit of capital funding, the amounts of which have varied over the year. The total for this financial year is about £10.5 million across the portfolios. As the cabinet secretary said, it is combined funding between the education, health and justice portfolios, and that reflects the different services and professions that feed into the bairns’ hoose structure.
The Scottish child abuse inquiry is looking at historical cases. The Minister for Higher and Further Education will be aware of on-going concerns about the unresolved mishandling of child abuse cases and safeguarding in the City of Edinburgh Council and in other local authorities. I have raised that issue in the chamber. What is the Scottish Government’s position on those cases? You will be aware of petition PE1979, on safeguarding and whistleblowing, which has been progressing through the Parliament for some time. It does not look like the Government has embraced that in considering some of the solutions.
I am aware of the petition. I am fairly certain that the Government has given a response to it.
If it has, I have not seen it.
Mr Briggs, are you referring to the petition that relates to whistleblowing?
Yes.
That petition has been on-going for a number of years and involves a number of different individuals. We are actively looking at the petitioners’ asks. We note that the Scottish child abuse inquiry has looked to undertake a much more extensive review of child protection policy, and the petition is linked to that. As I understand it, the inquiry will report on its recommendations in due course. I am mindful of that and of the whistleblowing petition. Andrew Watson might want to say more about officials’ engagement on that specific issue.
I have not been directly involved in the petition. Ms Don-Innes might wish to speak on that.
Mr Briggs will be aware that I met the petitioners to discuss the issue. That was some time ago, so I would be more than happy to seek an update on the most recent correspondence that has been received. This morning’s discussion on mandatory reporting links directly to the petition and, if I recall correctly, was something that was spoken about in my meeting with the petitioners.
Mr Briggs might also be aware of the Care Inspectorate report about Edinburgh. I have engaged directly with the City of Edinburgh Council on that. Although there were some positives in that report, there were also real questions to do with culture, as well as issues to do with the workforce not necessarily knowing who to direct problems to. Again, that reminded me of some of what came up in my meeting with the petitioners. I have written directly to the City of Edinburgh Council to ask exactly how it will remedy some of those issues. I believe that I requested a meeting with it, although I am not sure whether I have had any response. Again, I am more than happy to write to Mr Briggs on some of those points if that would be helpful.
Yes, it would be. If the Government is minded to move forward on mandatory reporting, there are other requests in the petition, including one to establish an independent national whistleblower’s office for education and children’s services. That would complement a piece of legislation on mandatory reporting, if that is how that issue needs to be dealt with. That might be something to follow up on.
That is certainly something that we can consider. We need to be mindful that the cabinet secretary will be making a statement later today and what we have said about mandatory reporting this morning. However, that could follow on from those discussions.
12:00
I will go off topic a bit, although I am sure that we will probably return to it in a minute. International students are growing in number at this time of year. This might be to do with Mr Macpherson—that is not to say that the students are all coming because of you but rather that my question might be to do with you—
Bill Kidd, would you mind if I first move on to the next subject? I want to try to keep us to topic.
My apologies.
I will take questions from you first on universities, if you like. However, as we have a lot to get through, I would like to stick to the themes. On colleges, we will start with sustainable funding, with questions from Miles Briggs.
Bill Kidd’s question might complement what I will ask later on.
I want to ask about college funding. Colleges Scotland has provided a briefing to the committee in which it calls for a reverse to years of underinvestment in the college sector. What is the Government’s position on future funding arrangements for our college sector and on a review of college credits?
First of all, you will appreciate that an amendment in your name to the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill that relates to your latter point was accepted at stage 2. I cite that as a point of reference for how we are moving forward on consideration of the credit system.
I have also had significant engagement with the college sector, including on those points. Perhaps of most interest to Mr Briggs will be for me to note that I visited Edinburgh College in Granton, where I attended an hour of the Scottish Funding Council’s board meeting; I also took the opportunity to meet the college principal and discuss those matters. That is in addition to my engagement on those points with Ayrshire College on its campus; at the College Development Network awards, at which I spoke with various stakeholders from the college sector; and during other engagements, such as with Glasgow Kelvin College, which was early after my appointment.
I appreciate the points about consideration of the credit system. Presuming that the bill will be passed early in the new year—I look forward to Mr Briggs voting for it, now that he has secured that amendment—we will proceed with that review.
The wider budget considerations have been very much in the public and parliamentary domain since my appointment on 23 September, with the SFC report coming out during the same week and the Audit Scotland report coming out the week after. As I said, I have had significant engagement with individual colleges—some of which I cited—as well as regular engagement with Colleges Scotland, as has the cabinet secretary, including in recent weeks. Concerns, considerations, ideas and proposals from the sector have been and are being given due consideration as we work through the budget considerations.
Cabinet secretary, would you like to say any more?
Yes, briefly. Last year, we provided an uplift to the colleges sector of 2.6 per cent. There was also extra funding in the budget of £3.5 million for offshore wind and social care skills.
However, I am very alive to the fact that there are real challenges in our colleges. I met Colleges Scotland last week, ahead of the budget. As you would expect, I have also been having discussions at ministerial level with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government so that she is well appraised of the challenges in the colleges sector. Its sustainability is perhaps one of the most challenging parts of the education system at the current time. Mr Macpherson is leading work on sustainability in the sector and might want to say more on that.
I am mindful that our colleges are suffering and that, as a Government, we need to reflect on how we can better support their sustainability. They provide pathways in our communities for young people and adult learners, who universities are often not able to reach. It is important that they continue to exist and that we support them to have a sustainable footing. The briefing from Colleges Scotland has been helpful in that regard, and we are thinking about creative ways in which we can provide more support to the sector through the budget.
I am all ears to any suggestions that Opposition members might have in that regard—we exist in a Parliament of minorities, of course. If Opposition members want to come forward with budget proposals to support the colleges sector, the finance secretary and I would be very amenable to sitting down with them and talking about those in more detail. My view is that we will have to radically consider how we can support the sector into the future, because it is facing a number of challenges.
On that point, I recently visited Dundee and Angus College, which outlined its future capital needs. As is the case for many colleges, a lot of those relate to dealing with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. I believe that legislation gives colleges opportunities to have capital borrowing powers, but they have not been utilised. Are ministers looking at that? The college sector’s mounting future capital infrastructure spending need is getting to a point where a different model is needed to help the sector to meet it. Where are ministers with that part of sustainable funding for the sector?
We are looking at all those issues. There is a sustainability challenge for the here and now, which we need to look at for the next financial year. We will have to consider that in relation to the budget. There are wider issues in relation to capital, which we have looked at and have provided supplementary support for in the past. I am very focused on the here and now and on working with the colleges sector on a longer-term vision, which is exactly the work that Mr Macpherson is leading on in relation to sustainability. I know the specific issues that Dundee and Angus College is facing in that regard, some of which are historic. We need to be mindful of what we can do in a one-year budget and what we might be able to do in the longer term. Those discussions are happening through my engagement with the finance secretary, with Mr Macpherson and with Colleges Scotland directly.
Adam Reid might want to say more about the capital work.
There was a 5 per cent increase in the capital maintenance budget for colleges, and the SFC is working towards a college infrastructure investment plan for next year.
I will add to those answers, as this will also be of interest to Mr Briggs. In recent weeks, I met the principal and, as far as I recall, the chair of Dundee and Angus College in relation to their specific capital concerns and issues. The Government has been receiving more information on that for some time, which forms part of our considerations.
In terms of wider sustainability and the years ahead, Miles Briggs might be aware of the tripartite group in which the Scottish Government liaises with the Scottish Funding Council, Colleges Scotland and representatives from the sector. Its most recent meeting was held yesterday, when we had a helpful and constructive discussion on various issues and ideas for the way forward. I look forward to progressing that work in the new year in ways that ensure that, together, we not just meet the challenges that our college sector faces but make use of the huge opportunities that exist for the economy, communities and work to tackle poverty, given the important role that colleges play as anchor institutions in all that.
We will now have questions from Paul O’Kane.
My intention was to ask questions on attainment in schools, convener.
Thank you—I will adjust my notes.
Ross Greer has a question on fair work in the college sector.
I am happy to stick with that topic. Minister, you will remember that much of the stage 2 proceedings on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill hinged on matters of legislative competence in relation to fair work, questions on Office for National Statistics classification and so on.
Having had time to consider the points that Pam Duncan-Glancy and I made, can you share anything at this stage about the Scottish Government’s expectations of the college sector in relation to fair work? I entirely understand the difficulties with universities being independent institutions that are largely publicly funded—in some cases, overwhelmingly so. Colleges are public bodies, and many of their staff feel that management in the college sector is not held to the same fair work standards as management everywhere else in the public sector. Will you lay out what exactly the Scottish Government expects of college management when it comes to fair work?
The SFC is involved in those considerations as well as the Scottish Government. I appreciate Mr Greer’s focus on those important issues, and I have appreciated my engagement with him on them in relation to the TET bill, not just around this table but in bilateral meetings, including in recent days.
More widely, the Government is determined to see and deliver more fair work where we can using our soft power, because, unfortunately, employment law is clearly fully reserved under the Scotland Act 1998. If we had such powers in the Scottish Parliament, we could make further impact in such areas. Recently, the Government has been determined to deliver good outcomes for our college staff, whom we deeply value. Lecturers’ pay was settled before my appointment. I am also pleased that, in recent weeks, two unions accepted the pay offer for college support staff, which was sufficient for settlement. That settlement is important, because we deeply value support staff’s role in institutions across the education sector, including in our colleges. All those things matter when it comes to fair work and fair pay.
As we approach stage 3 of the TET bill—and Mr Greer will recall that I gave him this undertaking in recent days—I want to be very clear in giving as much assurance as I can about the Government’s focus on enabling greater fair work in our college sector and about what we can do within the powers that we have.
I appreciate that. We had lengthy on-the-record debates at stage 2, and we will also have them ahead of stage 3, so I will not press you with questions on the particulars of the bill.
One long-running issue is the National Joint Negotiating Committee structure and the question of an independent chair. You have rightly observed that industrial relations seem to have improved. We have gone through almost a decade of having national industrial action every year. To put it one way, there were clearly profound interpersonal problems at the NJNC. One of the key recommendations from the “Lessons Learned” report was to establish an independent chair. Employers were happier with that recommendation than the unions were, as has been much discussed in the Parliament. It is not the only potential reform that could be made. Are you able to say anything at this point about the Government’s intentions to take forward in full—or as close to full as you can—that report’s recommendations on the NJNC, whether they be those for an independent chair or its other recommendations?
The cabinet secretary might want to say something further on that. I am grateful to Mr Greer for raising the point. That recommendation has not been pressed with me in my dialogues with unions since my appointment to my current role, but I would be happy to consider that and to write to the committee on it in the new year.
It is our union colleagues who do not want an independent chair, so I expect that they probably would not have been pressing the point.
I am sorry—I misinterpreted that.
Almost everybody else involved in the process agrees that an independent chair is probably the way forward at this stage. I recognise that you have not been in post for long and that you have had a bill that is unrelated to that question, so I am happy to follow up on that issue at a later point.
I have asked this question when Mr Macpherson has attended the committee previously. It is about the regional opportunities for colleges. In my constituency, there are opportunities for renewables. How can we focus funding on increasing such opportunities?
A related key question is about interactions with universities. How do we see the role of closer working between colleges and universities in looking at that broader approach? My questions are primarily on apprenticeships, how we can focus on regional opportunities and how those things will work moving ahead.
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In order for our country to realise and make the most of economic growth and collective reward, while also creating opportunities, reducing poverty and allowing learners to progress in areas where we have significant comparative advantage, such as offshore wind—or aerospace, an area where I have seen real galvanisation at first hand in Ayrshire in the west of Scotland—we want to support skills development in areas where there is clear growth in opportunities and demand for skills. We want to do that with our partners in universities, colleges and employers.
That is why implementation of the TET bill will be helpful. It will bring everything under one funding body and create agility and a modernised approach that will allow for creativity and for funding to be utilised to best effect in the most efficient way. Discussion around regional priorities both within the education directorate with regard to funding and with educational institutions is absolutely pertinent, and we are constructively and collaboratively engaged in that. In the economy space, we are working with employers to make sure that we realise the significant potential for economic growth.
I will ask Adam Reid to say more on skills development.
Minister, you touched on opportunities to work more closely with universities, and I understand your point about colleges. However, in my discussions with colleges and universities, there have been questions about how such opportunities might work. Where does funding flow between the two institutions? What opportunities are there in innovation and outside funding? My question is also about those areas, the opportunities there and the work that we are doing specifically on those points.
There are already lots of examples of universities and colleges working together to deliver in skills development and other areas. That is clearly positive collaboration. We want to build on that and work with institutions and public bodies to enable it to happen.
On the regional side, in the programme for government we committed to strengthening regional skills planning arrangements. We would want a number of partners to be involved in that, including colleges and universities. As the minister alluded to, lots of regional skills delivery is happening. Again, colleges and universities being part of that is key.
Thank you. I am conscious of the time, convener, so I will leave it there.
Before we move on from the topic of colleges to universities—at which point, I will invite Bill Kidd to ask his questions—I will say that I visited Moray College. It is doing outstanding work, and some of its results are exceptional. However—this is my opinion; it has not been articulated to me by the team at the college—I sometimes think that the college is achieving that with one hand tied behind its back because of the decisions and directions that are coming from the upper echelons of the University of the Highlands and Islands. Minister, what are your views on the current set-up of UHI, particularly with regard to the top slice that it takes from all its other colleges to pay for its executive office function? I have mentioned that issue to your predecessor, and I have asked you and other ministers about it. When the principal of UHI attended the committee, she said something along the lines of, “This is an antiquated process, but it is still there.” Is it not time to get rid of that top-slicing process at UHI?
Thank you for raising the issue, which you previously raised on 1 October, when I last attended the committee. Beyond what I have done in the past few months, I am keen to engage with as many colleges and universities as I can in the new year. I have had helpful correspondence with UHI in the past few months since my appointment on 23 September. Unfortunately, because of parliamentary business and other commitments, I have not had the capacity to engage fully with all parties involved in this matter. However, I hope that you can take it in good faith that I want to do that in the new year. I will seek to engage with you personally as a member with an interest in the issue, and more widely with the committee, too, if that is helpful. I do not have anything to add beyond what I said on 1 October, which, in the interest of time, I do not think is worth stating again.
I have not discussed the matter with the committee, but I am interested in seeking to arrange to hear from all the chairs of the individual college boards. I do not mean the UHI board, which has its own chair, but the individual chairs who are at the grass roots and know what is happening in their colleges. I am keen for Highlands and Islands MSPs to meet all the chairs. If it is possible and diaries allow, would you be willing and happy to hear from the chairs what their experience is on the ground as colleges that are part of UHI?
I would be interested to hear those perspectives, if it is practical. I have sought to engage as widely as I could since I was appointed on 23 September, and it is important for all of us in politics to hear different perspectives and perceptions. I would certainly be interested in that.
I am grateful. We will probably stick with you now, minister, but we will move to questions about universities from Bill Kidd.
I have a question about international students, international student visas, immigration and opportunities for international students, because a lot of universities seem to be suffering somewhat from a decline in the number of international students. Could you tell us a bit about how the higher education sector is supporting international students to come here? To add a wee bit extra, how are we supporting students to come from Gaza to study in Scotland?
Thank you, Mr Kidd. There is quite a lot in that, so I ask the convener to bear with me as I go through it.
Before we talk about international students, it is important to emphasise for context, as I did in the chamber during the most recent committee debate, that official statistics released in March 2025 by the Higher Education Statistics Agency show an overall increase in the number of Scotland-based students at Scottish universities to 173,795, as well as a rise in full-time Scottish first-degree entrants.
We have hundreds of international students in Scotland, and they are very welcome. In recent months, we have sought to emphasise how welcome international students are in Scotland by, for example, ruling out the levy that the UK Government is going to charge international students. By doing that, we have sought to make sure that we emphasise that international students are welcome, and to try to create advantage for Scottish institutions that are competing for international students.
Remarkable collaborative work is also being done with the relevant stakeholders to tell the world as broadly as we can that Scotland is a great place to study, with remarkable institutions, historic prominence, reputations and extremely high-quality delivery. We know how well our universities do in the international rankings, for example. Scotland is a great place to study. We want people to come here, and we are trying our best to emphasise that in an environment in which the UK Government is making it more difficult for students to come here and has sought to tell the market indirectly that we want fewer students to come here. That is the only message that can be deduced by the immigration changes that are being made.
The pressures that our universities in Scotland face are similar to the pressures that universities across the UK face, in that financial sustainability is being compromised because of a number of external factors, one of which is the immigration changes. The unexpected national insurance hike was also challenging for our universities and it continues to be so as it was not alleviated in the UK Government budget that was announced at the end of last month.
Our universities are facing a challenge. We are seeking to support them and there will be more information about the work on sustainability that we are doing collaboratively and on a cross-party basis in the period ahead.
With regard to students from Gaza, I recently had the great privilege of meeting some of those who have come here to study. They are remarkable, skilled, passionate and determined individuals who have acquired and sustained their education in unimaginable circumstances. We can only try to think of how difficult it has been for them, and they are here in Scotland and grateful for the opportunity to study at our universities and to contribute to our society. They will also be determined to contribute to the rebuilding of Gaza and their society, if they return.
One of the issues that they face concerns visa arrangements, which goes back to the central point that the UK Government immigration changes are making it more difficult for people to study here.
We all know about what is taking place at the universities in Dundee, Edinburgh and, to a certain extent, Aberdeen, and those circumstances might perhaps be alleviated to some degree if a decent number of international students were able to sign up at those universities. I hear what you say about home students, and it is terrific that more of them are signing up to be part of the university system, but it also benefits those home students if they can study alongside people from across the world who come into this country to boost what we have here already.
Thank you for your reply. It is important to note that the Scottish Government is aware that we should be able to get as many people in to sign up to Scottish universities as we would like.
Internationalism creates innovation. The Elsevier report, which was a remarkable piece of independent work, showed that our Scottish universities collaborate extremely well. As far as I recall, we collaborate three times more than the global average and two times more with the business community than the global average. The collaboration of Scottish universities internationally and within the UK is remarkable and one of our strengths when it comes to research.
The intangible benefit of people coming together from across the world and thinking, creating, innovating and collaborating is also enriching for academia, wider society and our economy. That is why international students matter. They are not just financial units that are important to universities, which are, of course, autonomous institutions; they are enriching in the round.
On an associated point, will the minister join me in welcoming today’s news that the UK will rejoin Erasmus+, which provides opportunities for students across Scotland and the wider UK? That has happened within two years of the new UK Government being elected. Also, does the minister have any reflections on the progress that has been made over the past six years, during which we have only just reached the test-and-learn stage of the Scottish education exchange programme, which is the Scottish Government’s programme?
First of all, we should never have left Erasmus+. That was very clear. I was minister for Europe for 18 months, and I and the current cabinet secretary who followed me have had multiple meetings with UK Government ministers, at which we and representatives of the other devolved Administrations stated that it made no sense economically, socially or otherwise for us to leave the Erasmus+ scheme. The UK coming out of the Erasmus+ scheme was literally a waste of time. However, we welcome the news that we are back in.
The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture had a call with UK ministers this morning. We are awaiting more details regarding how the new arrangements will apply to Scotland, and the UK Government needs to be forthcoming and provide us with more information. However, the move is welcome, of course. It is a positive thing.
Did the member want to ask anything specific about the Scottish education exchange programme?
12:30
I was making more a general point about the fact that, in the six-year period in which we have not been in Erasmus+, SEEP has only just reached the test-and-learn phase. Was SEEP at a stage at which it was going to expand, prior to the news this morning?
Adam Reid wants to inform the committee about that.
SEEP was launched in 2023, and since then the Government has invested more than £1.3 million in 86 projects across colleges and universities. Just yesterday, we published an evaluation of SEEP that includes a number of recommendations. We will now need to work with the minister and partners to consider how best to proceed with that in light of this morning’s announcement.
Many of Scotland’s universities, including the University of Aberdeen, have intakes in January each year, including for international students. Are those later intakes being impacted by the rules on international student visas and immigration?
Anecdotally, I have heard this week from a contact made at an event that I attended at the University of Aberdeen about the negative impact on international admissions resulting from the UK Government’s immigration policy. It is important that the Government explores beyond anecdotal feedback, but that feedback is concerning.
I will be engaging with Universities Scotland in the weeks ahead, and I hope to have the opportunity to ask that question at some point during the dialogue and deliberations that I will have with Universities Scotland tomorrow. I would like to get a sense from the sector of whether other institutions are experiencing that. If they are, that is concerning for us all in Scotland and across the UK, as it shows the negative impact of UK Government immigration policy on our university admissions processes.
Is there a different impact on January intakes, or is the impact the same right across the board?
As I said, with regard to the January intakes, I want to get a better sense—beyond anecdotal feedback—of what is happening with other institutions. That is in the context of the UK Government’s intention to reduce the duration of graduate visas from two years to 18 months for most international students, which will apply to applications from January 2027. If that is already having an effect, we need to explore why that is.
I have a question on widening access more generally. Can I have an update on the progress that is being made, as well as the work that is under way, on ensuring that someone’s background does not impact on their ability to access university?
I commend the committee for its work on widening access, which was discussed in the recent debate in Parliament. We discussed a number of points, including the positive progress that has been made towards meeting the widening access targets and the 37 per cent increase in the number of Scots from deprived areas who entered full-time degree courses at university in 2023-24. That is a 37 per cent increase since the Government established the commission on widening access, and it is obviously significant progress. The continued provision of free tuition for Scots-domiciled people who go to university and into state-funded education is a collective investment in our people and workforce, and it continues to encourage people to go to university on the basis of their ability to learn and not their ability to pay.
Minister, you will undoubtedly have anticipated this question. Where are you with the committee’s unanimous recommendation to introduce a unique learner number? You told members in the chamber that you would consider the strong opinions that you got from them on that issue.
I did, and I appreciated the dialogue in the chamber, convener. I hope that you will forgive me, but we have not had a huge amount of time between that debate and today’s appearance at the committee. I undertook to look at the matter afresh, and I reaffirm that commitment today. I will update the committee as soon as I have details to share.
Thank you. We will now move back to university funding, as we previously looked at colleges. Miles Briggs is next.
My line of questioning is similar to what I was asking earlier. I welcome the fact that ministers have established the review, which will meet tomorrow morning to consider the current impact on our universities. The committee has done a huge amount of work on the University of Dundee, but other universities are now reporting concerns about their future financial stability and I wonder where Scottish ministers are on that ahead of the budget in January.
I will bring in Mr Macpherson to speak about the wider work, but two members have now referred to the University of Dundee and members need to be mindful of the fact that it was a unique institution in relation to some of its financial decisions. The uniqueness of what happened at the University of Dundee justified the Government’s use of the section 25 powers. It is important to note that.
Mr Briggs is quite right to say that there are pressures across the sector and that a range of external factors are at play. We have heard this morning about the impact on international students of immigration rules, employer national insurance contributions and the inflationary pressures that are making staff wages go up—it is quite right that they do so, but those pressures also mean that it is much more expensive to heat buildings, for example. Universities and colleges are having to contend with a lot of things that they did not have to contend with five years ago.
We should be mindful of the fact that the University of Dundee is a bit of an outlier in relation to some of the financial decisions that that institution made, which were all documented in the report by Pamela Gillies that was published before the end of the summer recess.
I ask Mr Macpherson to talk about the wider work in the sector.
I caution Mr Briggs and the committee more widely against getting ahead of the announcement that the Government will make very soon on the sustainability work. I am mindful of the fact that we are working collaboratively and in sync with Universities Scotland and others. It is important that we respect all partners in the process. If the Parliament and the committee can be patient, there will be an update on that work very soon.
I am sure that all MSPs’ mailbags, including those of the minister, show that there is real fear out there among the people who are working in our universities. There was a rally not that long ago, and many committee members spoke at it. Have ministers outlined to universities their opinion about compulsory redundancies being progressed as a cost-saving measure in the university sector?
On our engagement with universities and the Parliament, Mr Briggs will recall Martin Whitfield’s topical question about the University of Edinburgh that I answered a number of weeks ago. I will repeat the main points that I made in my answer that are relevant to all our universities. Although they are autonomous institutions that are responsible for operational decision making, we strongly encourage them to engage constructively with trade unions to seek resolutions to the disputes, in line with fair work principles, as has been raised today. I would also emphasise that compulsory redundancies should be considered only as a last resort, after all other cost-saving measures have been fully explored—that is absolutely the key point.
We recognise the financial challenge that our universities—indeed, universities across the UK—face, but they are important employers and are hugely important to the economy, and the staff at universities are key to teaching and research. It is the people who make the organisations, and we will continue to engage with the universities, as autonomous institutions, on these points. We will also need to engage with the unions, and I am grateful for the engagement that I have had with them in recent weeks.
Thank you for that. Moving on to widening access, I have a question for the minister for keeping the Promise. I thought that the debate that we had in the chamber was quite useful in pointing out the work that the university sector had done to encourage and support more care-experienced young people to get into university. However, what was not clear was the course completion levels. The committee has raised this matter before, but I am wondering where the Government is in relation to tracking young people from a care-experienced background as they move through university and what it might change in that respect.
That is something that we absolutely have to do, because it makes no sense to ensure that there are statistics for the start of a care-experienced person’s educational journey and then not see that through. We will, absolutely, have to consider the issue.
It should not be hugely complex. A lot of care-experienced young people are already supported by certain services in a local authority, whether they are aftercare services, continuing care or whatever. It is very likely that connections with the young person will already have been made, and what you suggest might help to ensure that our care-experienced young people get those educational opportunities and, equally, the opportunity to remain in education. After all, we know from discussions that we have had with you, Mr Briggs, and discussions that I have had with the committee that, depending on what stage we are talking about in a care-experienced young person’s life, there are difficulties that can manifest themselves as issues with education. Essentially, I absolutely agree with you, and if there are ways of bolstering our approach, I am more than happy to look at them.
Thanks for that.
Building on that point, I should say that, a few days ago, Miles Briggs and I had a meeting with Who Cares? Scotland about the issue. When it comes to widening access, it is important that we do not lose sight of it.
My question for the panel is this: what more can we do to widen access and to give those who have not been able to go to university in the past the ability to do so now? That is a really important point that we cannot lose sight of. I do not know whether you want to come in on that, cabinet secretary, but, with regard to the budget, what broader plans do you have to ensure that we continue the good work that we are doing in that area?
Undoubtedly, more can be done, but the progress that Mr Macpherson has set out has been remarkable. We now have far more children and young people from poorer communities going on to university, because they think it is for them. We know that, in the past, they did not think that, and it is really important that those pathways are open.
I am also mindful of the fact that, post-pandemic, some of our progress in this respect has stalled in a way that it had not done previously, although I think that the most recent statistics were very welcome news. The UCAS data published on exam results day again showed progress on widening access, and that is to be welcomed.
My own view is that there is now a much more distinct link between what is happening in our schools and the pathways to college and university, partly because we now have a far broader range of qualifications. I am sure that we will talk about school education in due course, but, if we look at this year’s examination results, we will see that more than 100,000 technical and vocational qualifications are being delivered, with pathways being created that did not previously exist for young people.
We have seen a real sea change in the way that our education system is delivering for our children and young people. Universities have been in the driving seat of some of that culture shift, and they have recognised their responsibilities. I do not know whether Mr Macpherson wants to say more about that.
On that point about pathways, I have a niece and nephew who both went to college and then went on to university. The fact that they went via that particular route is really important, because, at the start, they did not see themselves going to university, but they now have their qualifications and have progressed. I just wanted to make that important point before the minister came in.
12:45
I endorse everything that the cabinet secretary just said. We need to consider the issue collectively and in the broader context. The ambition is fair access for everyone who wants to go to university and whom university is right for, and, in recent days, the commissioner and I have talked about that in relation to widening access.
From what I have heard around the committee table, in previous engagement in Parliament and certainly from stakeholders, I feel that we collectively want to lead a shift in social consciousness whereby people undertake the pathway that is right for them. Genuine parity of esteem needs to be realised by moving away from any sense of hierarchy of achievement. Of course, different qualifications require different demands, skills, talents and abilities, but the most enrichment for the individual and for all of society together would be getting to the point of parity of esteem, whereby people feel empowered to proudly drive forward in the area that is right for them.
That wider context is important in relation to Withers and what we are trying to do with apprenticeships.
Ross Greer, do you still want to ask about fair work and universities?
No. I am content to move on.
We are going to move on to schools. We will start with Mr Greer on teacher workload, and then we will look at contact time.
Cabinet secretary, can you set out what the Scottish Government has done in this parliamentary session to reduce teachers’ workload, particularly in relation to bureaucracy?
We have been working with the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers on reducing teachers’ workload. The main way that we will achieve that, to my mind, is by reducing class contact. We know that Scotland’s teachers are currently working more hours than they should be, and a large part of that—as, I think, the Educational Institute of Scotland has documented in recent weeks and months—relates to the increase in additional support needs, which I am sure we will come on to talk about. With the increase in additional support needs diagnosis, which I think is important, comes the associated increase in bureaucracy—we need to be mindful of that.
As Mr Greer knows, the changes need to be driven through the SNCT. It is regrettable that we have not been able to make as much progress in that space, particularly on reducing class contact, as we had hoped to do by this point, although I welcome the fact that we have been able to get record pay deals through the SNCT. In recent weeks, there has been another pay increase for Scotland’s teachers, ensuring that they remain the highest paid in these islands. That is very welcome, but, to my mind, reducing class contact is the thing that will make the difference. We have to go further in that regard.
I also want to give Mr Greer some reassurance. A few weeks ago, I set out some of the Government’s proposals for how that reduction might be delivered. That is, of course, a matter for the SNCT to engage in, and I understand—Alison Taylor, who is to my left, will keep me right on this—that the trade unions made public comment on that yesterday. There will also be a meeting tomorrow with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on how we can take that work forward. I am very keen—as you will know from public commentary—that we use a number of pilots across the country to look at how that reduction could be delivered.
We have to work with the profession on how that works, how it is timetabled and what it looks like in primary versus secondary, but, to my mind, reducing teacher class contact is the thing that will make the difference. I am disappointed that we have not been able to make as much progress as we should have done, but I am pleased that there seems to be some movement from partners in that regard. That is to be welcomed, and I give Mr Greer a reassurance that we will be grasping the thistle on the issue, because, to my mind, it is the thing that will make the biggest difference for our teachers and pupils.
I do not know whether Alison Taylor wants to add something on officials’ engagement on the issue.
All that I would add is that we have a focus on working through the practicalities now, trying to understand the art of the possible—to use that old cliché—and seeing what can work on the ground and what we can build from.
I absolutely agree that the key to reducing teachers’ workload is the reduction of class contact. I welcome the proposals that you have set out—I think that they are pretty ambitious—but it is impossible to imagine that ambition being realised without substantial additional resource. What I am concerned about in the here and now is the unnecessary bureaucracy that teachers are still having to wade through, which it would not require additional recruitment or a significant amount of resource to reduce. As you have heard me say previously, the Scottish Government and local authorities could save money by tackling that bureaucracy. It has now been just over a decade since the tackling bureaucracy report was produced, but a substantial number of the recommendations in that report have not been implemented.
With respect, it sounds as though you are struggling to come up with an example of something that the Scottish Government has done during the current parliamentary session to reduce teachers’ bureaucracy workload.
I remember the 2014 tackling bureaucracy report, as I chaired a departmental meeting to look at it and what it meant for my department at that time.
When we talk about bureaucracy, it is important to note that it differs at local authority level and at school level. I am sure that others would contend that this is not the case, but I would argue that the Government has not asked for the majority of administrative and bureaucratic tasks that are asked of teachers, so we do not collect lots of educational data nationally. You all know that, because various parties have made freedom of information requests of local authorities. That is not necessarily particularly helpful, but it is the case that we have different policies for how things are recorded and the administrative tasks that are asked of teachers.
One of the announcements that I made, alongside how we might deliver on reducing class contact, was about our plans for independent work on how we can reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. In the summer, I commissioned work that will look at driving some of that, particularly given the possibility of using artificial intelligence to reduce the workload of teachers’ administrative tasks—
I am sorry to cut you off, cabinet secretary. I welcome all that new work—particularly the work on AI, which was obviously not relevant when the 2014 report was produced—but my worry is that we are going to go through the same process of having working groups, reviews and consultations to come up with new ways of reducing teachers’ workload and then not implement them, just as we did not implement most of the 2014 work. Why has the Government not just taken that 2014 report, dusted it off and implemented what is still to be done and what is still relevant? It feels as though there must be low-hanging fruit there.
I take your point that a lot of that bureaucracy is driven by local authorities, but you have heard me say previously that, in a lot of cases, that is because they have bolted things on to the Scottish Government’s requirements. We disagree, in principle, on Scottish national standardised assessments, but the Government’s position is to deliver them. That is fine, but why has the Government not set a condition saying that local authorities are not allowed to bolt on to them all sorts of additional reporting requirements? That is one of the drivers of teachers’ workload—not the testing itself, but everything that has been built around it.
It is. You make a fair point, Mr Greer.
On the SNSAs, I remember sitting in this room, where Ms Dunbar is sitting now, and debating these exact issues with COSLA, because we have 32 different approaches to the monitoring of progress and assessment. As you will recall, local authorities were meant to use the SNSAs as a diagnostic tool, and they should not add to teachers’ workload. Beyond the SNSAs, the Government asked for very little in terms of teachers’ workload. As Mr Greer has alluded, much of it is driven by local authority practices.
On the 2014 report, our schools now exist in a different era. What is happening in our schools now is not what was happening when I was last in a classroom. If we consider poverty and the ways in which schools are meeting needs, a lot of the workload might be not necessarily administrative but about support for families and broader social support. It is quite difficult to quantify some of that.
Although I accept some of Mr Greer’s points in principle, we need to look at new ways of reducing teachers’ workload, and the work on AI reducing unnecessary bureaucracy is important. However, to my mind, reducing class contact will make the biggest difference. I am pleased that we have seen some real progress in recent weeks, and I hope that we will see further progress following tomorrow’s meeting. That work, accompanied by the work on reducing bureaucracy for teachers, will be the game changer.
I am mindful of the fact that much of the bureaucracy is related to the increase in additional support needs, which we might come on to talk about. We need to be mindful of the ASN review and what that means for teachers’ workload and administrative tasks.
I will give a crude example from my experience of teaching in Edinburgh. We had a pupil support assistant who would come to the department once every two weeks, and her job was to input pupils’ grades from their test results and so on. Having somebody in the department to undertake those administrative tasks meant that fulfilling our reporting requirements for year groups was far easier. It reduced the bureaucracy for teachers and the time that we had to spend on those tasks. That is a crude example of one local authority using additional budget to employ a pupil support assistant.
Mr Greer alluded to a wider challenge in Scottish education, which I have tasked John Wilson with, which is to look at how we deliver education in Scotland’s schools post-pandemic. Is it sustainable to have 32 different approaches to that? We need to ask ourselves such big, challenging questions at the current time. Budgets are challenging—we will come on to talk about that in January, I am sure—and there are perhaps more sustainable ways in which we could deliver an equitable education system for all our children and young people.
As tempted as I am to get into a debate around education governance—I agree that having 32 different ways of doing it is not working—going down that path would be a huge piece of work that would take a number of years. Are there not things that can be done here and now?
There are.
To focus my question a bit more, my challenge to you is this: how confident are you that the work that you have commissioned will not go the same way as the 2014 tackling bureaucracy report and just sit on a shelf, and that, in 10 years, we will not all lament that it was never implemented and say, “Society has moved on, so we need another working group and another consultation”?
I do not want to prejudge the outcome of that work, but it is important and it is under way. I have set out some of the steps that are being taken, but Mr Greer was instrumental last year in ensuring that the Government put extra money into the budget to provide for an increase in teacher numbers and for ASN. That extra funding is making a difference. For example, it means that higher numbers of pupil support assistants are being employed locally than was previously the case.
We can protect education budgets in our negotiations—I am very amenable to listening to members’ views on that, because they are important. In the coming weeks, I will be involved in budget negotiations with the finance secretary, so if members have views, I am all ears.
I look forward to those discussions.
I apologise pre-emptively—I need to head off shortly after 1 pm, because the meeting has overrun.
Yesterday, the SNCT teachers panel met, and it was pretty scathing about the Scottish Government’s proposals, saying that they
“fail to adequately address the pressing need to resolve the SNCT dispute on reducing weekly class contact time to 21 hours”.
Its response also talked about a “lack of meaningful progress” and referred to its “statutory ballot”.
Why has the education secretary’s announcement on the four-day teaching week not broken the logjam, and what new things will she do to prevent the strike at the end of January?
I do not think that any of us want another strike by teachers. I certainly do not want one on my watch, so I am keen to avoid that. Two or three weeks ago, in the Parliament, I met the EIS and the other professional associations to talk about those issues in more detail, and we have to resolve those challenges.
One point that I will put on record—I have said this publicly previously—is that the trade unions have a view that pay and conditions should be negotiated separately, which is entirely in their gift. However, I observe that, when I was transport minister, the transport unions did not necessarily take the view that such matters should be negotiated separately—they wanted to negotiate them together. The separation means that we could perhaps have seen a resolution to the issue more timeously than we did, because teachers have had successive pay increases each year. That means that teachers are more expensive to employ and the budget, which Mr Greer rightly talked about, becomes more constricted. However, we will have to work on those issues through the SNCT.
On how changes will be implemented, I have spoken to all the professional associations, and I am very keen to work with them to establish pilots based on what works. We have to work with the profession to understand its needs and the practical requirements of timetabling. I speak as a secondary specialist, but changes will look different in primary schools, which have other challenges as well. However, we also need to provide some reassurance because our independent modelling shows that, if local authorities had gone back to 2023 levels, there would be enough primary school teachers in the system to deliver the reduction in class contact. I welcome Mr Rennie’s party’s support for last year’s budget, which allowed for an increase in funding to be provided for teacher numbers and for ASN. That will make the difference when it comes to delivering a reduction in class contact.
We also have to give teachers time. We have looked at international comparisons in relation to how many hours teachers are working. I know that teachers are currently stressed and struggling. We have talked about ASN before in this committee, and we agree that we have to create the necessary headspace for teachers. We are trying to reform our education system, which we cannot do if we do not give teachers time to engage with the process. It is important not only for our children and young people but for our teachers, who are professionals, to have the headspace and time to engage in the work of education reform.
You have said all that before, but it has not broken the logjam. What will you offer that is new in order to make such a change? As you say, we cannot have a strike, so what will you do? The teachers panel is pretty clear about where the responsibility lies.
Well, it is a tripartite responsibility, Mr Rennie.
The panel is pretty clear about where the responsibility lies: it is your manifesto commitment, which you have not delivered.
It is our commitment, but we need to get agreement on the time. The panel has also been clear that, once we can get agreement on the use of the time, it thinks that we might be able to move forward—that is what is said in the letter that I received from the panel, which was published yesterday. The panel might not agree with everything that is being proposed, but I had a really helpful meeting with it a few weeks ago.
13:00You asked what is new, Mr Rennie. I have published quite a few things about the four-day teaching week, which is new because, for example, it relates to how we might standardise learning hours across the country. At the moment, we see variance in learning hours across local authorities—Clare Hicks or Alison Taylor can keep me right on this, but I think that it is up to two hours per local authority for primary 1 pupils. That means that, depending on where you live, your child will perhaps receive either two hours more or two hours less education in the working week. We need to look at those things to ensure greater consistency.
All the things that I have announced, including work on reducing bureaucracy—that was announced only four weeks ago—are new. It is for the SNCT to agree with the proposals—I cannot unilaterally foist changes on the profession, nor would I want to. We have to get agreement with COSLA, which is why the meeting that officials will have with COSLA tomorrow is so important.
Let us hope that that works. Initially, the approach was to recruit 3,500 extra teachers to create the space to reduce teacher contact time. Now you have worked out, through your various bits of research, that the falling school population would allow you to do so without recruiting 3,500 extra teachers, which leaves lots of them underemployed or unemployed. Do you regret changing the approach halfway through the process?
I will just walk Mr Rennie back to the 2021 election, as we are now living in different financial and economic times. The 2021 election predated Liz Truss’s mini-budget, the inflationary challenges that we have seen and the war in Ukraine, which have meant that inflation and wages have increased. As a result, in order to meet teacher pay demands throughout the period, which we have done successfully, other things and the way that we fund them have had to adapt over time.
I do not recall it being an overt choice of the Government to change approach and pursue change via this mechanism. We commissioned the independent research that you spoke about, Mr Rennie, but we have to be mindful that things are more expensive now than they were. The Government has responded to that by paying our teachers appropriately, but you are right that our modelling suggests that we could use 2023 figures to deliver on the expectation to reduce class contact.
You would be scathing of any other Government that made such a change halfway through the process. You would say that it had broken its promise, let teachers down and left lots of them unemployed, but you say that this change is somebody else’s fault. Surely you should accept responsibility for changing the policy halfway through and leaving lots of people unemployed. Do you not accept any responsibility for that?
I am not necessarily sure that I was blaming anyone, Mr Rennie. I was simply pointing out that the financial environment that we have is different to the one that existed in 2021.
It sounded like blame to me.
I also point to the significant increase in teacher salaries that we have seen since 2021. The significant increases—
If you do not have a job, that makes no difference, and lots of them do not have a job.
In the past financial year, we managed to increase the number of teachers in our schools by 63, thanks to the Liberal Democrats and others around the table supporting extra funding for our teachers, which was welcomed.
As Mr Rennie knows, the Government does not employ teachers, so certain local authorities have taken the money but reduced teacher numbers, and, in relation to the issues that Mr Greer raised, there are challenges because of that. I will pursue that issue directly with COSLA.
It was your responsibility. You recruited and trained thousands of extra teachers based on the promise that we would reduce teacher contact time, and they are now unemployed. You cannot suddenly say, after you have failed to deliver on the manifesto, that it is all the councils’ fault. It was your manifesto commitment, and those people are pretty angry now.
I agree with Mr Rennie that local authorities and the Government have a responsibility, which is why the Government fully funds the probationer scheme. I think that the Scottish Government provides around £42 million of funding for that scheme. We need our local authorities to play a role in the employment of teachers, but the main issue is that we have been unable to get agreement on the use of time through the SNCT, which has prevented us from moving forward. Had we been able to secure that agreement before now, we would have been able to move forward regardless of the other points that Mr Rennie made about extra teachers because of the points that I made about independent modelling.
Good morning. When John Swinney was Covid recovery secretary, he said that recovery in our schools was the Government’s immediate priority. My understanding is that that pledge related to the lifetime of the parliamentary session, of which we are now at the end. What was your understanding of that pledge?
Sorry, I missed the final sentence. Could you just repeat the—
Certainly. What was your understanding of what John Swinney meant when he said that recovery in our schools was a priority? What should that look like by the end of the parliamentary session?
In response to your point, Mr O’Kane, I would say that we have actually had a very successful year in Scottish education with regard to the recovery in our schools and that we are turning a corner.
In my statement to Parliament last week, I highlighted improvements in attainment, a narrowing of the attainment gap, the smaller class sizes in our primary schools and the increases in teacher numbers, and I should say that we have also seen real improvement in this year’s examination results. If we go back to the 2019 figures, we will see that there have been real improvements, with the gap narrowing; of course, 2019 was the last time that we could make those judgments, given the pandemic, but we have seen attainment rise across the board. The generation who have worked through our schools have had support. Indeed, the Government provided some of that additional support during the pandemic, with the employment of extra teachers at the time—which was, I should say, prior to my time in this role.
I think that this year’s education results, particularly in our schools, tell us that recovery is happening. We need to reflect better on how we can support our schools, and part of that will involve reviewing how we fund the Scottish attainment challenge. My party and—I think—Mr O’Kane’s party have given a public commitment in our manifestos for next year’s election to continuing the Scottish attainment challenge. That is important, but what I think has shifted since the implementation of the challenge 10 years ago is the normalisation of poverty in our schools, the existence of food and clothing banks and schools now being stretched to meet societal needs in ways that they might not have been stretched previously.
Therefore, we need to look at and review the fund. It is part of the work that, as I alluded to in my response to Mr Greer, John Wilson, a former headteacher, is leading, but we need to be mindful of how we can bring additionality to our schools in the post-pandemic period to support the recovery work that I believe is happening and which I believe has been evidenced by last week’s statistics and this year’s exam results.
That was quite a long answer—
I am sorry.
—but the question was: what was the sum total of the Government’s ambition when it talked about recovery being a priority? Was it about turning a corner three months out from the end of the Parliament, or did you have some vision that we would be further on? Attendance, for example, is at 91 per cent, which is below the pre-Covid average of 93 per cent—
It is.
—while persistent absences are at about 28.5 per cent, which is well above the pre-Covid average of 21.8 per cent. Was that the ambition for recovery during this session of Parliament?
No. I think that there are still issues to address, some of which I set out in my opening statement.
Look—I accept all the good work that is happening in our schools, and I think that we should celebrate it, given that these young people lived through a global pandemic and that, therefore, we can expect their outcomes to look different to the outcomes of those who came before them. There are still challenges with absence, but there has been improvement in the past year, and I certainly welcome that.
There are also challenges with getting young people back into formal education, and there are challenges with families, too. A number of our schools now use their pupil equity funding from Government to employ family liaison officers to help with that work. Not long ago, I was in a Kirkcaldy primary school that has attendance officers—they are now called family liaison officers—going out to have individual conversations with parents on the doorstep in order to bring children into school. Some of the work is very detailed and individual, and it will necessarily take time, because there is no quick fix when it comes to such work—it is relational.
As for the point that Mr O’Kane has rightly raised on persistent absence, that is a new measurement that we introduced two years ago, I think, because we were not gathering data on it and we were of the view that we needed to do so. I would also draw Mr O’Kane’s attention to local variations across the country within that persistent absence measurement. It is not a flat or static picture, and some local authorities need more support than others. For that reason, I announced in, I think, 2023—I will check that, convener, but Alison Taylor will correct me if I am wrong—some intensive work to improve attendance, and Education Scotland has been tasked with supporting those local authorities facing the greatest challenges.
Finally, we launched the national marketing campaign on improving attendance in October. That has been quite successfully received, but it is very much in the space of supporting parents with regard to pupils coming back to school.
I worry about the fact that many of this generation of young people have experienced much of their education online, and about what that says to them about the importance of attending and being present. Being present at school is important for good reasons—after all, there are legal requirements in that respect—and we need to go back to encouraging families to recognise why it is important.
However, if you look at the statistics on attendance, you will see that there are other issues, such as the numbers of young people who are absent because they are on holiday. That, to me, is not acceptable. There are issues with how schools can support children when they miss periods of their education, and a lot of that work is being supported by Education Scotland. When it comes to the young people who missed out on their education during the pandemic, we must do all that we can to help provide that supportive environment in school.
I am going to stop talking now, Mr O’Kane, because I am aware that I have given you another very long answer.
It is interesting, because when we had an exchange on this following your statement in the chamber last week, I raised the issue of the chasm in the attendance numbers that exists in a lot of places. I referred to South Ayrshire and East Ayrshire. South Ayrshire, because of its demographics, has a high level of attendance, while East Ayrshire, which has a very different set of demographics in some ways, has a very low level of attendance. Your response to me at that point was that that was a local authority issue.
This morning, you have referred to your frustration about there being 32 different local authority approaches, but you also referenced the leadership of Education Scotland and your role as cabinet secretary in leading some of that change. It would therefore be useful to hear that you accept that you have a responsibility for leading some of the work on reducing absences, particularly persistent absences. What more can the Government do with its important convening power?
Your exchange with Mr Greer was interesting, although I appreciate that we do not have time to get into the complexities of education reform and how 32 local authorities work. However, for example, you decided not to move ahead with regional improvement collaboratives for what I assume was a variety of reasons. They were collaborating on a range of issues, including the issue of how we ensure that young people are in our schools and classrooms and are learning. Could you reflect on some of that?
There is quite a lot in there, Mr O’Kane, but I will try to touch on it all.
I do not recall flat out saying that attendance is purely a matter for local authorities. Of course the Government has a role to play in that. We have shared legal responsibilities that are set out in statute in that regard. Ministers have a clear responsibility, but the statutory responsibility rests with local authorities. We can provide advice and guidance, and we do that on a range of different things such as behaviour, for example, and I am sure that we will come on to talk about that.
Mr O’Kane cited a number of areas in attendance and, if I was to draw out the attainment statistics for those areas, they would look impressive. There is a correlation between poverty and attendance and that is accounted for in the data that was published last week, which shows that pupils from poorer communities struggle more with their attendance than those who do not come from those communities. We need to be mindful of that gap.
Mr O’Kane also mentioned the RICs, on which I took a decision two years ago. I know that Mr O’Kane is new to his role, and I encourage him to go out and speak to teachers about their experiences with the RICs. Most teachers that I have engaged with have varying views of them. Some of the RICs—
With respect, cabinet secretary, I have done that. I was an education convener for five years as well as a member of an improvement collaborative, and I worked closely with a wide range of teachers in the west. You are indeed right that there was a variance of opinion, but a lot of learning could be taken from RICs such as the West Partnership.
The West Partnership is an example of one of the strongest RICs in the country, but not all RICs worked in the manner that the West Partnership worked. Some of the work that the West Partnership undertook has continued, which is helpful.
However, in other parts of the country, there was some scepticism about the impact of the RICs. I took the decision that I did at that time having listened to the profession, but I appreciate that Mr O’Kane has had a different experience.
There is no quick fix for the issues with attendance. We have to work with families and I have been struck by the number of schools that are now employing family liaison officers in place of what would have been attendance officers when Mr O’Kane and I were at school to work directly with families and put in place the support that they need.
The previous example that I gave involved parents being supported with qualifications. In other primary schools I see parents being supported by health and wellbeing coffee mornings to get mums and dads into schools so that young people also come into school. Much broader support is now being given to the community by the school, and that is why we need to evaluate the Scottish attainment challenge fund. I am not sure that, when it was introduced more than 10 years ago, we could have predicted some of the interventions that are being used now, some of which involve schools responding to societal change and poverty and, in so doing, supporting families and broader social cohesion. However, we need to think again about educational outcomes and how we can intensify progress.
We have made some progress, but I agree with Mr O’Kane that we need to move at pace to provide more intensified support. That is where the Government comes in through Education Scotland and through working with individual local authorities in the way that I mentioned.
I am grateful. There was some useful content in that answer and the committee will want to look at it further in some detail.
Convener, I will turn to attainment briefly. The Government prefers a measure that combines an average figure across primary 1, primary 4 and primary 7. I suggest that that approach is questionable because, as we know, those are very different stages of a child’s development.
For example, I have raised concerns about numeracy in primary 4, and about the fact that, on those individual measures, the gap is very often widening or stagnating. With literacy and writing, we have seen a fairly flat line on the individual measures.
Is the cabinet secretary concerned that we are painting a fairly positive picture when we are not getting into the detail? At crucial stages such as primary 4, where we know that children are in a transitional phase in their primary education, we are maybe missing something.
13:15Also, does she have a concern that, if rates are flatlining on things such as literacy and writing, by the time that children get to secondary, we will have to do a lot more and invest in things such as reading recovery and supporting children to continue some of what they have been doing in primary into the early years of secondary?
Again, there was quite a lot in that. In relation to numeracy, I gave an update to Parliament on the back of the last set of PISA—programme for international student assessment—results, which I think would have been this time in 2023. At that time, PISA called those results the Covid edition, and we had seen a stagnation in progress.
On numeracy, there were challenges so, in 2023, I appointed Andy Brown to lead on that work as the national maths specialist. He is a headteacher but is a maths specialist to trade and, for the past two years, he has been leading a body of work to improve our numeracy curriculum. Much of that work leads to the curriculum improvement cycle, and I understand that he will be setting out some of that in very short order. I had a meeting with him and Education Scotland a few weeks ago. We need to look at the core curriculum content.
There are other issues with how children are taught maths. I am not a maths specialist to trade, and I do not pretend to be one, but I have had very informative discussions with Andy on the ways in which maths is being taught in our schools and the ways in which we can support more enjoyment in the learning of maths, because I recognise that there are challenges in that regard. We see a split in subject choice in the senior phase. In recent years, we have seen an increase in applications for maths, and that needs to be considered in the round. We have engaged with local authorities—with COSLA in particular—and with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland.
On Mr O’Kane’s concern about writing, a really important piece of work through the national improvement programme has been supporting improved outcomes on writing, particularly in our primary schools. I would be more than happy to write to the committee with details of that work. It is a programme that works, and I would certainly like to give due consideration to scaling it up. Of course, that would require budget, and I again invite committee members to consider how they might play a role in that.
I think that we are seeing an improved picture, although I take on board Mr O’Kane’s points. In my statement to Parliament last week, I made reference to the issues in primary 1 and some of the work that I will take forward in that regard. Those are our Covid babies, and I am very worried about their outcomes. We also see gaps in speech and language development in some of our youngest pupils in our poorest communities—Ms Don-Innes will be aware of that, as we have discussed it with officials. All of that plays into a trajectory whereby educational outcomes have been disrupted, and we need to think about the different types of interventions that we can make to better support children and young people.
The chief inspector has a key role to play in that regard, and I have set out some of the further work that Education Scotland is taking forward. However, the ACEL—achievement of curriculum for excellence levels—data from last week shows that the proportion of primary pupils achieving the expected CFE levels in literacy has increased to the highest level to date. For S3 pupils, the proportions achieving third level or better in literacy and numeracy are at their highest-ever levels. In 2024-25, the poverty-related attainment gap for primary pupils in literacy reduced to its lowest-ever level, and for primary numeracy the gap has reduced to its lowest-ever level.
I accept that those are top-line statistics, as it were, and that, within different year groups, there are different challenges, but the overall picture is nonetheless one of improvement. I hope that all members will welcome that picture and support the Government’s agenda on how we drive further intensified improvement.
I have a closing comment, because I am conscious that the convener wants to move on. As I think that I said in the chamber during the statement, we accept that, but we need to be careful and drill down into exactly what we are talking about in terms of statistics, rather than grouping together the entire primary experience into one measure.
Sticking with attainment, I will bring in George Adam.
Many of the questions that I wanted to ask have been answered by the cabinet secretary. Unlike some, I do not feel so needy that I have to ask them again, so I am quite happy for you to close the meeting whenever you want, convener.
Okay. We will move to the poverty-related attainment gap, with questions from Willie Rennie.
This follows on from what Paul O’Kane asked about. When Michael Marra was a member of the committee, he challenged Shirley-Anne Somerville, your predecessor, about whether the Covid recovery plan—the education recovery plan—was sufficient for the task. She was adamant that it was. She said:
“Working together, we will ensure that all pupils are given the support that they need to recover their learning and health and wellbeing. That includes maximising how we support and challenge improvement and reduce the variability in what children achieve in different parts of the country.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2021; c 29.]
She was therefore adamant that the plan was good enough and that it would deal with the undoubted challenges of the pandemic.
However, we now know that we will not close the poverty-related attainment gap, as was promised. I know that the minister will talk about the pandemic. Why was the plan not sufficient to meet the challenge, and why was Michael Marra not listened to?
I am not going to comment on Michael Marra, because he is not here this afternoon, Mr Rennie.
I know, but I was here.
I hear that you were here. I was not here at that time either.
It is important that we look at the progress that has been made. In the chamber, I regularly hear all the critique from Mr Rennie and others around the table about our schools, and yet this year’s exam results show that the pass rate for national 5s and highers is up and the advance higher pass rate is up compared to last year. Grade A percentages in national 5, highers and advance highers are up. The deprivation gap has narrowed for national 5, highers and advance highers. The results also show increases in our technical and vocational qualifications. The data that I set out to Mr O’Kane also tells us a positive story of improvement.
I accept that there is more to do and I do not detract from that. We need to intensify progress. I set out some of that to Parliament last week, and Education Scotland and the inspectorate will need to take forward further work. I hope, however, that members can get behind some of the positive results that we are seeing in our schools. I do not detract from the challenges, much of which are in the funding space—I am interested in Mr Rennie’s views on that. However, these are real successes for children and young people, despite what they experienced through the global pandemic, and we should be proud of them.
There are 170,000 pupils at school now who are in the bottom 20 per cent of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation and their fortunes have hardly budged an inch in the past 10 years. The minister should not hide behind pupils and their success, which is undoubted—they have had successes. What about those 170,000 people who were promised that the gap would close, but it has not been closed, and who were told that the recovery plan was good enough and that they would be assisted and they have not been? What do we have to say to those people? Do they not matter?
Of course they matter, but they have been living through a period of austerity. Do we really think that schools exist in isolation? We should be mindful of societal changes that mean that families—
That was before the promise was made. The promise was clear. We were told that the recovery plan was enough and now you are shifting the goalposts. Those people deserve an answer. Those people were not even born when that promise was made.
I am sorry, but I do not recognise the position that Mr Rennie is taking on this issue. We need to be cognisant of the pandemic, which was a factor, but we also need to be cognisant of austerity.
In my constituency, which is just down the road from where Mr Rennie is, we see real challenges from poverty. I am mindful that the poverty that is being experienced in households, where bills are going up and mortgage payments and rents are going through the roof, means that things are tough at home, and that also impacts on educational outcomes. We cannot pretend that the attainment challenge has existed in a silo that has been divorced from the wider societal changes that have happened during that time.
When young people’s education was disrupted, it undoubtedly had an impact on progress. but that is not unique to the system in Scotland. We see challenges across the world in relation to attendance and attainment, with a generation of young people’s attainment behind where it would have been. I do not accept that Scotland is an outlier in that regard.
I hear the points that Mr Rennie makes about the recovery plan. Of course, there is more that we will need to consider, and I am all ears to hearing from Mr Rennie about where that targeted work and intervention should be. However, I am currently focused on working with local authorities. Officials will be meeting and working them tomorrow on how we can drive further intensification of support.
The national writing improvement programme, which I spoke to Mr O’Kane about, is a good example of that, as is the work that Andy Brown is leading on the improvement to numeracy. Those interventions will make the difference, and having that targeted support for local authorities is really important.
I am going to conclude. Those people have heard all this before and nothing has changed. They do not have confidence in the Government to deliver. The reality is that the Government has not delivered the promise to close the gap that it made 10 years ago, and that is the reality for 170,000 people.
I am very sorry that Mr Rennie cannot welcome the progress in Scottish education that we have seen in the past 12 months.
We will move to questions on ASN and support for mainstreaming and specialist provision.
As you and your team might know, cabinet secretary, we were recently looking at the Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill. As part of our consideration, we visited Donaldson’s school in Edinburgh, which I understand used to be a deaf school—or a school for deaf children—but which now focuses more on ASN, autism and similar issues. It was a really interesting visit, and we saw the school’s great facilities—it is an actual building in a beautiful location with a good number of staff. However, there were hardly any children.
My question, then, is this: where are we going with a school like that? Do we actually need a school like that if there are no kids there? What about the councils? I broadly agree with mainstreaming, but there are kids who seem to need a really special level of school. Those schools exist—we only visited Donaldson’s—but something is not working in that space. We have needy kids in Glasgow who have to stay in Glasgow, either because that is all Glasgow can afford, or because Glasgow thinks that it can do this itself, and here we have a facility that is just sitting there.
I will bring in Alison Taylor on the specific issue of Donaldson’s school, but I come back to Mr Mason’s general question about how we better support pupils with additional support needs. The Government has a number of specialist schools that we fund directly, which is quite a unique approach and is, you might argue, a historical anomaly. However, I will bring in Alison to talk about Donaldson’s school, if that is okay.
Absolutely, cabinet secretary.
As you have said, Mr Mason, Donaldson’s school now provides support in its special school environment to children with a much wider range of needs than it did traditionally. As Ms Gilruth has said, it is one of our grant-aided special schools, so it receives support directly from Government. I acknowledge your point about the singularity, if you like, of that type of provision. Councils themselves run a large number of special schools, a very small number of which are residential, so I suppose that the question of how best to distribute the available resource to meet the needs presented is quite a challenge around the country, and it is determined by what each family, and each child, needs.
I do not know, Ms Gilruth, whether you wish to say a little bit about the review work that we are looking at undertaking.
I set out to Parliament some of the work in this space last week, but going back to Mr Mason’s reference to children in Glasgow, I just want to touch briefly on ASN data. About a month ago, we had a really interesting summit at Murrayfield stadium with a range of partners, looking at ASN measurements across the country. There is variance in what we mean by ASN and, in the context of that measurement, what that looks like in individual local authorities, and that does not give me confidence in the consistency of application or in how we are recording these things. Therefore, we are working with local authorities to audit this space, essentially, and help drive improvement in it. I am happy to write to the committee with more detail on that, because it is a key part of the work that we are taking forward.
The other key part of our work, which follows a suggestion from Mr Rennie that came through the cross-party round table, is a national event that will, I hope, be hosted in February. Again, I am happy to write to the committee with more detail on that; indeed, I want to invite committee members to attend it.
The approach taken in the event will be to share good practice on what works. We know that across the country just now there are lots of good examples of support for children with additional support needs. Some of that direction—in fact, much of it—will not come from central Government; it will not come from me, and nor will it come from local authorities. As I saw in a secondary school in Edinburgh very recently, individual headteachers will very often use their own ingenuity to plan approaches that best meet the needs of their children and young people.
A headteacher in Edinburgh—whom I would encourage the committee to engage with; I can share details with the committee after the meeting—essentially restructured the staffing in his school, and his approach has led to better support for all young people, not just those with additional support needs. I found my interaction with him to be extremely informative; we might want to share learning from that at the national event—I do not have any detail on which schools we will be looking at there—and I am certain that there is learning that the committee will be interested in.
There is, of course, the review work, too. I do want to say more about the review that the Government has committed to carrying out, and I am happy to write to the committee with more detail on those aspects in due course.
I am not quite sure what you are referring to. The Public Audit Committee has done some work on this issue, too, and I note that, in a letter that it wrote to our committee, it talks about
“a national data summit”
taking place
“this calendar year”.
Is that the event that you have just referred to?
That was in November.
So that has happened—fair enough.
The EIS, too, came out with something on Monday that talked about the level of ASN. I think that we are now up to 46 per cent in some places.
Forty-three per cent.
Is the problem a measurement thing? Surely there has not been such a huge increase in additional support needs among young people—has there?
13:30
A couple of things are at play here. First, we changed the measurements, which essentially broadened the categories. For example, the measurement now includes children who have suffered from bereavement and high-achieving pupils. Other categories sit under the ASN measurement, and we need to look at those issues. Secondly, more children and young people are now likely to be identified and supported. When Mr Mason and I were at school, eons ago—
I think that I was there a bit before you.
I make no comment on that, Mr Mason.
People would travel through their school career and very often leave without a diagnosis. I remember teaching in Edinburgh in 2011, when a colleague of mine, who was an English teacher, diagnosed an S4 pupil, who would have been 15 or 16 at the time, with dyslexia. That young person had gone through most of her school career without having appropriate support in place.
We have seen an increase in diagnosis, which is important, because without that, many young people feel that they will not get the support that they need, although it is also the case that, without diagnosis, they are currently still entitled to support.
We are looking at all those issues in the round as part of the review that the Opposition and members around the table have called for, which I support. I set out more detail on that in my statement last week. It will be a short, sharp review, but it will sit along the additional support for learning action plan, which is the work that follows on from Angela Morgan’s review in 2020. I again put on record—I have checked this with officials—that the work will be complete by dissolution. It is important that the Parliament has the data from the ASL review available in order to drive the improvements that we all want to see.
I think that Mr Mason said that the ASN level is at 46 per cent, but it is 43 per cent nationally. In some schools, the level is more than 50 per cent; in some schools, it is less than that. There is also a correlation between poverty and ASN, which we need to be mindful of.
Alison Taylor might want to say more about our engagement work.
My only other point to add is that, as much as some work needs to be done on the data that we have, it was evident from our data summit—which was very well attended; we were very impressed by the level of interest that our professional colleagues brought to it—that the great increase in recent years is partly due to an increase in the category of emotional, social and behavioural issues. That is where the big increase is. Such issues are different in nature from those that you saw at Donaldson’s, for instance, Mr Mason. There is a societal and cultural question around that, which we need to explore more with our professional colleagues.
Attainment among ASN pupils is increasing and improving, according to last week’s ASL data, which is welcome news. Ten or 15 years ago, many of those young people would not have attained in the ways that they are now. We should celebrate that, because it was not the case in the past.
I accept that a lot is going on and a lot of good things are happening—that is fine. However, you said that some councils have their own special needs school. In my constituency, there are two, but I get a lot more parents coming to me saying, “My kid has not coped at nursery, but they are now going to put him in mainstream primary 1.” Glasgow just does not seem to have available places, and the feeling in Glasgow is certainly that you need to have greater needs in order to get into a special needs school than you might need to have in some other areas.
We need some kind of national plan. Either we get rid of schools such as Donaldson’s and let the councils do it all themselves, or we somehow enable or encourage councils or whatever to refer needy kids to Donaldson’s. I only know Donaldson’s and one that I visited a few years ago—is it called Falkland House school?
Yes, it is.
It is also used to dealing with autistic kids. It is hugely impressive to have two staff to one pupil, but that does not happen in mainstream schools. The other angle to that was that we asked the staff at Donaldson’s whether they could go out and train some of the mainstream schools, because they have a specialism, but they said that they had never been asked to do that. What happens locally does not seem to be very joined up with the national facilities.
The national facilities are quite unique in that they serve a relatively small number of pupils. It would be remiss of me not to say that. However, our schools often have ASN units. In my constituency, one high school has a department for additional support, for example. Parents quite often vote with their feet by sending their child to the DAS unit in that local school, because they know that it has trained staff with the necessary expertise that allows their child to experience mainstream education but also get additional support in that facility. I see many schools undertaking very similar approaches, and PEF money allows some of them to employ additional staff in order to deliver such support.
You mentioned approaches in Glasgow. I would be keen to hear more detail from you on that. I do not know whether you can write to me. I am conscious of the time, but I am keen to understand the issues that you highlight, which are, I suppose, the same as those that I get in my inbox when parents feel frustrated that things have not worked out and have had to take action against the local authority because they are not getting the right support. If that has escalated to tribunal, that is very challenging and it should not be happening.
One of the ways in which we could consider that work is through a national stage intervention model, which we are looking at. That would provide greater consistency nationally in how local authorities work. The expectations of parents and children of how their needs should be met would provide for much more consistency. I do not want to say too much more on that today, because we have the review that I have committed to that will consider those issues in the round. However, Mr Mason’s point about consistency is important.
There is variance across the education system. That is the nature of having 32 councils run our schools, but there could be an approach at the national level that provides for greater consistency through a staged approach to interventions for our children and young people with identified additional support needs.
You talk about tribunals and parents pushing for their kids, which is great, but that tends to favour middle-class educated parents. As I understand it, we were told that virtually every parent at Donaldson’s was middle-class educated, so they are either rich enough to pay the £40,000 a year or whatever—
The local authority might also fund them.
The local authority might fund them, but that means that poorer families and less-educated families in my constituency cannot hope to get to Donaldson’s.
I am not necessarily apprised of a differential in socioeconomic background at Donaldson’s particularly, but I am happy to take that away and interrogate the data with officials, because that is certainly not the position that we should be supporting at national level.
The final item on schools is about the school estate, which is my question, but, to keep things brief, I will constrain it to one question.
I have asked you in the chamber and we have been in correspondence about the new Forres academy, which the Government is funding—that is very welcome. However, there are serious local concerns about where the school will be sited. That is rightly a planning matter and I know that you cannot intervene on that. Given some of the issues that we have raised about education in Moray, and the absence rates that you said that you would raise with COSLA, and given your affection for the area, given that that is where you started your career, would you be willing to come to Moray to discuss education issues and, while up there, meet some of the people who are concerned about the siting of the new academy on the Applegrove primary school site and the impact that it has on the veterans community, to make it clear that, although you cannot change any decisions, you can at least allow them to feel that they have been heard by the cabinet secretary, given that it is your Government that is funding the project?
I am more than happy to engage with them, convener. I would, however, put on the record that the site for the new school is a matter for the local authority. It is not for me, as cabinet secretary, to come in and tread on the toes of local government. I am, however, happy to have that engagement, convener.
I think that people would appreciate that.
I thank you, your ministers and your officials, for your time today. The committee members and I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a good new year when it comes.
Meeting closed at 13:38.