Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Official Report 915KB pdf

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Literacy and Numeracy

The next item of business is a statement by Jenny Gilruth on literacy and numeracy. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.

14:20  

I welcome the opportunity to update Parliament on a range of evidence concerning the performance of Scottish education. Today sees the publication of the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels, commonly known as ACEL, for the academic year 2022-23.

ACEL reports on the proportion of all pupils in primary 1, primary 4, primary 7 and secondary 3 who have achieved the expected curriculum for excellence levels in literacy and numeracy. It is the most comprehensive national data set on attainment in literacy and numeracy, and it is predicated on teacher judgment. The proportion of primary pupils attaining the expected levels in literacy and numeracy has increased—that is the case for children from the most and the least deprived areas. The attainment gap in literacy in primary schools has decreased, and at secondary level there have been increases in attainment across the board while the attainment gap has reduced. It is further worth remembering that, this summer, the overall pass rates for national 5, highers and advanced highers were above pre-pandemic levels in 2019 and that the poverty-related attainment gap has narrowed.

I hope that everyone in the chamber welcomes the achievements of our pupils, their teachers and our support staff. Nonetheless, I do not shy away from the challenge presented by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s post-Covid edition of the programme for international student assessment, which is an international sample survey in which Scotland participates and which measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge to meet real-life challenges. However, that data set should not be read in isolation. To understand the accurate picture across our education system, we have to fully consider a range of different factors.

Today, the Government published the annual pupil, staff and early learning and childcare census, which provides a wealth of information, including teacher numbers, pupil to teacher ratios, the number of young people reported as having an additional support need, and attendance and exclusion rates. Taken in the round, the evidence shows that the pandemic has had a profound impact on the attendance and achievement of Scotland’s young people. However, I want to be clear with Parliament that the Government does not accept the trajectory based on attendance, behaviour or PISA. We must commit to real-terms improvements in Scotland’s education system for our young people, their parents and the future of this country.

Education can only improve the life chances of young people who are supported and encouraged by their parents or carers to attend. Since being appointed as cabinet secretary, I have expressed my concerns about the on-going impact of the pandemic in our classrooms. Figures published today show that our attendance rate in 2022-23 sat at 90.2 per cent, which shows a decrease from 92 per cent the previous year. Some councils have higher absence rates than others, and there is variation in certain year groups.

Anecdotal evidence of unrecorded absence from class continues to suggest that, although some pupils might be attending school, they are not necessarily present in class. That is not good enough. At my request, Education Scotland has undertaken work to better understand the current barriers and challenges experienced by children and young people and their families that influence school attendance and behaviour. Its report “Improving Attendance: Understanding the Issues” was published at the end of last month. Building on that work, I have tasked the interim chief executive of Education Scotland, Gillian Hamilton, to work directly with directors of education to drive improvements in attendance as a matter of priority. That will require local authority leadership.

The role of Scotland’s dedicated teachers is critical to improving our education system. Although the pupil to teacher ratio remains the lowest in the United Kingdom, at 13.2 per cent, figures that have been published today show a fall in teacher numbers of 0.3 per cent. Although that is a small change, Parliament will recall that the Scottish Government made an additional ring-fenced investment of £145 million to protect teacher numbers. It is therefore extremely disappointing that a number of local authorities did not choose to use the additional funding to protect their teacher numbers. Conversely, some local authorities went above and beyond to protect their teacher numbers. I thank them for that and for investing in better outcomes for their young people. We have written today to the local authorities where the number of teachers has reduced to seek an explanation, and I will meet the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to discuss the matter later this week.

Although the Government will, of course, consider those reductions on a case-by-case basis, I will continue to reserve the right to withhold funding allocated to protect teacher numbers where that has not been the case. Fundamentally, we cannot hope to improve attendance, behaviour or attainment with fewer teachers in our schools.

One issue that has been raised by PISA and in the recent behaviour in Scottish schools research—BISSR—is pupils’ use of mobile phones. As cabinet secretary, I cannot unilaterally ban mobile phones—that power rests with headteachers and local authorities, of course—but I want to examine all the evidence on that and encourage schools to take the action that they deem necessary. Therefore, we will work to provide refreshed guidance to schools on the use of mobile phones in schools as part of the joint action plan to respond to the BISS research. That will take a range of factors into account, including pupils’ personal circumstances—particularly those of young carers. However, our starting position is that headteachers are empowered to take the steps that they consider appropriate, and, if they see fit to ban mobile phones in schools, the guidance will support that.

I want to reflect directly on Scotland’s PISA results. In absolute terms, it is true that Scotland mirrored the overall international trend of a reduction in PISA scores in reading and maths between 2018 and 2022. We are not unique in that respect. As has been noted, the OECD has referred to this year’s results as the “Covid edition”. Covid impacted, and continues to impact, on educational outcomes. In Wales, Northern Ireland and England, the trajectory on scores is a downward one for maths and reading. Across the OECD, as was the case in 2018, Scotland is above the average for reading and similar to it for maths and science.

The challenge for Government is this: is average good enough? I do not think so.

Although it is true to say that PISA provides only a snapshot of data, the results should serve as a wake-up call to all Governments. I hope that the Parliament hears the gravity with which I am considering the results. The new post-Covid norm cannot be allowed to define the educational outcomes of the next generation.

To build on my direct engagement with the OECD last month, I will meet the OECD’s director for education and skills, Andreas Schleicher, next year to ensure that Scotland continues to learn from other countries and starts to improve her international standing on education once more.

It is worth reminding members that curriculum for excellence was endorsed by the OECD in 2021 as the right approach for Scottish education. However, I recognise the need to improve our curriculum in a planned and systematic way, as the OECD has recommended. We need to do so to ensure that it remains relevant and forward looking and that it ultimately supports high-quality teaching and learning. That is why we will begin a curriculum improvement cycle next year. That will include curriculum content, the role of knowledge, transitions between primary and secondary, and alignment between the broad general education and the senior phase.

My view is that maths education requires to be a central focus for improvement—indeed, it is critical when considering the 18-point reduction in Scotland’s PISA score. Maths will therefore be the first curricular area to be revised. I want that work to be led nationally by a maths specialist working alongside our national response to improving mathematics. The specialist will have a key role in the full-scale update to the maths curriculum, which will begin in 2024 and will be tested with Scotland’s teachers later next year. They will provide a key role in driving the improvements required and learning from the outputs from PISA and a range of other evidence sources to improve Scotland’s performance in maths.

Furthermore, to support the implementation of our new maths curriculum, the interim chief inspector has agreed that a maths national thematic inspection with a focus on teaching and learning will be taken forward in 2024, to report next autumn.

Finally, the Scottish Council of Deans of Education will convene its initial teacher education national maths group. That group will ensure that initial teacher education aligns with the latest developments in maths and numeracy.

On English and literacy, the national response to improving literacy is taking forward work on identifying priorities for improvement. I have asked the interim chief inspector to begin a thematic inspection of literacy and English nationally, to inform the work that is required to update and improve the literacy and English curriculum. Literacy and English will flow as the next priority for curriculum update following maths.

Children’s speech, language and communication is an area that has been particularly affected since the onset of the Covid pandemic. The Scottish Government has invested in a new team of speech and language specialists with a clear focus on supporting preventative work in speech and language development in the early years. The curriculum update will therefore require to embed learning on speech and language in reviewing our curriculum content, to better ensure progression and drive improvement.

As Lucy Crehan noted, the history of PISA can be traced back to an American President in the 1980s who was keen to drive national educational improvement and yet faced resistance from state-level governments. Thankfully, that is not the case in Scotland. Here, councils’ collective ambition to raise absolute attainment in literacy and numeracy and to narrow the attainment gap is reflected in their new three-year stretch aims for progress by 2025-26, which were also published today.

If those stretch aims are realised, compared to 2016-17 we would see overall attainment in literacy and numeracy increase by around 13 and 9 per cent respectively and the poverty-related attainment gaps in literacy and numeracy narrow by around 30 per cent over the lifetime of the Scottish attainment challenge. I am grateful to COSLA for the progress thus far, and I commit to working with our councils, in the spirit of the Verity house agreement, to drive the improvements that we need to see.

I recognise that the experience of education has changed for our young people, their teachers and parents and carers. Covid has had a profound impact on attendance, behaviour and achievement, but, fundamentally, we need to disrupt the PISA trajectory and drive improvements across school education. That will also be informed by working with our International Council of Education Advisers and with COSLA, national agencies and professional associations.

To that end, the next steps that I have set out today are part of the solution but they are not the whole picture, because I agree that a knee-jerk political response is not going to help our young people. Scotland is at an educational juncture. Perhaps radical reform to our qualifications system is the answer. Some argue persuasively that that is the case, and I look forward to returning to the chamber in the new year to debate those proposals more fully. However, others point to the need for improvement versus radical reform, recognising the extraordinary pressures that our teachers are working under. Working with them to plot a pragmatic route forward might just be the way.

The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for that, after which we will move on to the next item of business, and it will be helpful if those who wish to ask a question press their request-to-speak buttons.

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement, and I welcome not just her acknowledgement of the poor legacy of her predecessors but her recognition of the need for action.

I also agree with the cabinet secretary’s recognition of the fact that teacher numbers are concerning, so I want to ask her the following question. Despite the Government’s overuse of temporary teacher contracts, the forcing of councils to rely on probationers and the failure to deal with rural and non-central-belt recruitment, the cabinet secretary has today reiterated her threat to withhold money from the 17 councils that have not increased teacher numbers. What is her thinking behind that threat, given that uncertainty over funding is not going to improve matters?

Secondly, there has been a 25 per cent increase in pupils with additional support needs since 2008, with 34 per cent of pupils in 2022 recorded as having such needs. However, there has also been a decline of 700 in support-for-learning teachers. What, precisely, is the cabinet secretary doing to increase ASN teacher numbers?

Finally, although there was a welcome rise in pupil support assistants between 2018 and 2022, that was done with additional Covid funding. What is the cabinet secretary going to do to address the consequences for PSA numbers of ending that funding?

I thank the member for his questions. He touched on a number of points, and I welcome the tone with which he responded to my statement.

It is important that we learn not just from the plethora of different data sets that we have published today but from the PISA data that we published last week to help support the improvements that we need to see. We need to be pragmatic because the ACEL data gives us a bit of a different picture to the PISA outcomes; it is predicated on teacher judgment, and I trust Scotland’s teachers to tell us where our young people are in terms of their progress.

That said, the member has raised issues about teacher numbers. The point that I made my statement is that the Government has provided additionality for additional teachers in the system, but a number of our local authorities have not delivered on that. It was ring fenced for a reason but, as I set out previously, we will listen to any mitigating circumstances that local authorities want to set out. This afternoon, we have written directly to local authorities to hear what those concerns might be, and I expect to hear from them at the start of next week.

More broadly, the member touched on teacher contracts. During recent exchanges in the chamber, I have set out the approach that I have taken, working with the strategic board for teacher education. Last week, I met the member’s colleague, Alexander Burnett, who is not in the chamber today, to talk about some of the challenges that he faces in his area of Scotland. I recognise that there are rural challenges and particular subject challenges, too. We need to ensure that the system better meets the needs of our rural areas.

Of course, it is worth saying that the Government provides the preference waiver scheme, from which I myself benefited some years ago, to help incentivise our probationers to go to other parts of the country. However—and this is anecdotal—we have seen since the pandemic that our probationers or those who are in their student year are currently less likely to tick the box than they might have been prior to the pandemic. We need to look again at whether the system is working and helps to ensure that we have a spread of probationers to more rural parts of Scotland and in different subject areas.

The member has talked about the challenge in relation to additional support needs, which is one of the key findings from the data today. We should be mindful that additional support needs will be greater in certain schools and lesser in others, depending on the cohort. Yesterday, I was at a school in East Lothian where the ASN cohort was much higher than average, at around 47 per cent. According to the snapshot, the national picture is around 40 per cent, but some schools have greater needs and others have fewer.

During my visit, I asked teachers whether they thought that mainstream education was not working. That was not their response—they thought that it was working. We need to look again at how we can resource that need and support it.

It is worth while pointing out that we have a record number of additional learning support assistants in our schools. We supported that with £830 million in 2021-22, and we have ring fenced additional funding of £15 million every year to respond to the individual needs of children and young people. That will help to maintain our record levels of investment in those staff.

More broadly, I should say that, in all that I have set out today, our having a close working relationship with COSLA will be key to driving the improvements that we need. That is why the Verity house agreement is so important. We need to work with COSLA to ensure that, at a local level, we do not see that variance in the support that is provided.

We must ensure that we get in as many members as possible. To that end, I will always appreciate succinct questions. I will also appreciate succinct answers, cabinet secretary.

I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance copy of her statement. I welcome the recognition of the gravity of the situation in schools and the need to disrupt the trend that PISA has highlighted. We must do all that we can in that respect for the future of Scotland’s young people.

However, we really need more detail on some of the announcements in the statement if we are to understand how they will effect the change that is needed, including on the curriculum improvement cycle and the approach to maths. As was mentioned in the previous question, there is a real lack of detail on children with additional support needs, despite their numbers increasing and fewer of them reaching the expected levels of literacy and numeracy than other pupils. The solutions that the document accompanying the statement points to are almost three years old, and the statement itself mentioned nothing specific in relation to them. Does the cabinet secretary believe that the actions that she has set out today are proportionate in meeting the scale of the challenges before us, including for children with additional support needs?

I thank the member for the tone that she has adopted in relation to our working together on the issue. There is now a need for us to work across parties on some of the challenges, and she has my commitment that I will continue to work with her and Liam Kerr to that end.

More broadly, the member talked about curriculum improvement. One of the things that I was keen to say in my statement, given the wide range of data sets that are being published today, is that this is not the whole picture. My statement is part of our response, but we will work with our teaching profession to help to drive the improvements that we need, particularly in maths education.

Indeed, I am very keen to work with our maths teachers, and I want to appoint a subject specialist who has the necessary skills and qualifications to give me advice on where improvement needs to be made and how that can be driven forward. I am not a maths specialist—I do not pretend to have those qualifications—but it is important that we recognise the qualifications of those, particularly in our secondary schools, who deliver our subjects. Their investment in their subject and their knowledge will help put us on the right trajectory in relation to PISA.

PISA is part of the story, but as it is survey data, we will need to be careful about making direct comparisons. That is why the ACEL data has been helpful today, because, as I touched on in my response to Liam Kerr, it is predicated on teacher judgment.

I am conscious of time—and, indeed, that I have not had time to respond fully to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s ask on additional support needs—but she is right that there is a challenge here. I intimated in my response to Liam Kerr the Government support that we provide, but we will need to look at that again.

Part of that work comes through the national action plan that we have with local government. We are working through a number of those actions. To my mind, local authorities are not yet fully supported in the way that I would like them to be supported, but we will continue to work with local authorities and protect that budget line, too, as it is vital to ensuring that we have consistency at local authority level.

The member has my word that this is not the end of the story with regard to our response to PISA or to the other challenges that we have touched on today.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

We have had two questions and nearly seven and a half minutes have passed. Is there any possibility that we can expand the time allocated to questions in response to the statement, so that all members who wish to ask questions have the privilege of doing so, on the basis that we will all be succinct?

I thank Mr Kerr for his contribution. I assure him that we have a bit of time in hand this afternoon and that I am conscious of that.

I make a further plea to the cabinet secretary—I hope that what I am saying is being listened to by those on the front bench—that we need briefer responses to ensure that back-bench members have the opportunity to put their questions to the cabinet secretary.

A University of Melbourne study, “The effect of classroom environment on literacy development”, found that noise levels are significantly higher in open-plan classrooms. They are, on average, 5.4 decibels higher than they are in enclosed classrooms, which leads to a 10 to 15 per cent decline in classroom speech intelligibility. Meanwhile, the reading fluency of primary school pupils in open-plan classrooms was half that of pupils taught in enclosed classrooms. Given those stark findings, does the cabinet secretary agree that it is time that local authorities began to work towards the removal of open-plan classrooms, which should quickly improve attainment, not least among sensitive and neurodivergent children?

The member raises an important point. The design of our classrooms and, in particular, our schools are matters for local authorities. I have never taught in an open-plan classroom, but I imagine that a number of challenges come with it. I have visited a number of schools, particularly primary schools, where those designs seem to work well, but such decisions are for local authorities, and their work with teachers should inform decisions on the type of learning and teaching that is needed. That said, the member has raised some important points about how pupils interact with such settings, particularly if there is a need for quiet areas in order to deliver learning and teaching.

I note the cabinet secretary’s recognition that average is not good enough in maths and reading, and that the PISA data set should not be considered in isolation. Given that the Scottish Government previously announced its intention to re-enter Scotland in international league tables based on the trends in international mathematics and science study and the progress in international reading literacy study, and given that the latest available data for Scotland comes from 2006 and that the next cycle will not be until 2026, what international data does the cabinet secretary suggest that we use to measure success in the interim?

The member is right to mention TIMSS and PIRLS, which we will be rejoining. I asked officials whether we could expedite our rejoining of those surveys, but as that is not possible, I do not currently have an answer to that question. It is worth pointing out that, in absolute terms, the reduction in Scotland’s PISA score mirrored the overall international trend, but it is also worth providing the caveat that we have maintained our position in that important international study.

There is lots that we can learn from other countries, which is why I am engaging closely with the OECD and our international council of education advisers, as I touched on. They will support us in driving the improvements that are needed in the interim period.

This year’s Bookbug and “Read Write Count with the First Minister” campaigns encourage a lifelong passion for learning from the crucial early years. How will the Scottish Government ensure that parents and guardians are supported to make the most of such early years programmes so that more families can experience the transformative benefits of playing, reading, writing and counting together?

I absolutely agree that parents and families play a crucial role in supporting our children’s speech and language development in the early years, and they continue to play that role as the primary educators of their children. We know that parental engagement has a significant positive impact on children’s achievements. Some of the challenging PISA data shows that such development was disrupted during the pandemic.

Our Bookbug and “Read Write Count with the First Minister” programmes help to encourage an early love of books among our children, and they give opportunities for parents and carers to spend time with their wee ones having fun and learning. Some families need additional support to make the best use of those programmes. That is why it is important there that be broader activity, such as the Scottish Book Trust’s “Bookbug for the home” initiative, which supports families to share songs, rhymes and stories.

The cabinet secretary will be aware that last week’s First Minister’s question time centred on the PISA results. The First Minister assured us that the Scottish Government

“will reflect on that, consider the results and come forward next week with more detail on the action that we will take.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2023; c 17.]

Many of the questions so far have sought more detail. Is the cabinet secretary satisfied with the level of detail that she has been able to share in her statement?

The member will appreciate that, in my statement, I had 10 minutes to reflect on a range of data sets. I am more than happy to come back to the Parliament with a fuller update in order to provide the detail that he has asked for.

As I hope the member understands, I have set out a number of actions that we will take through working with Education Scotland and reviewing our curriculum. That is where we need to get to in driving the improvements. Mathematics has to be first, given the PISA results. There is a challenge in that, and we need to reflect on that.

We will get to the improvements that we need only by working with Scotland’s teachers. That is why they have to be key to understanding the challenge and driving the improvements that we need, while also engaging with the point that Roz McCall rightly made about international experts and the international evidence that is available to drive improvement.

Will the cabinet secretary advise what attention is being given to the qualitative commentary in the PISA report, which gives a much more nuanced understanding than the simple, raw statistical data?

The member makes an important point. The questionnaire evidence and the analysis across countries that the OECD conducts are important aspects to consider. The wider analysis looks at a much more complex and, in many respects, comprehensive picture. For example, the PISA student questionnaire asks students about their experiences of learning mathematics in schools, their views on maths in general and their future intentions to study and use maths later in life. That data, alongside data on student backgrounds, will be further analysed and used to give us a much more rounded understanding of the experiences of learning mathematics and what factors help to support learning in schools. That is why it is important to reflect on and share that wider analysis with local authorities, schools and Parliament.

We need to remember the context: back in 2016, we were promised significant improvements in the performance on education and the poverty-related attainment gap. In that context, the ACEL numbers have hardly budged at all. I am really disappointed that the cabinet secretary’s ambition now is to close the poverty-related attainment gap by a third by the end of this parliamentary session, when it was supposed to close completely.

Do I detect a fundamental change of direction on curriculum for excellence towards knowledge and away from skills?

I am not sure whether the member is aware that there was a global pandemic between 2016 and now. That has impacted on outcomes.[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I hear sedentary mumbles from the Opposition. I have to say that the OECD described—[Interruption.]

Cabinet secretary, please resume your seat for a second.

I ask members to listen to the person who has the floor. In the instant case, it is the cabinet secretary.

Cabinet secretary, please resume.

It was, of course, the OECD that called the data set its Covid edition. Setting that aside, in the context of Mr Rennie’s point, we need to be mindful that, this year, overall pass rates for national 5, highers and advanced highers have been above the pre-pandemic rates in 2019, and the poverty-related attainment gap has narrowed. The 2022-23 ACEL data, which was published today, confirms that the proportions of primary school children from the most deprived areas of Scotland who are achieving the expected curriculum for excellence levels in literacy and numeracy are at record highs. That is welcome news in the context of the pandemic, which disrupted our children’s education for the best part of two years.

The member asked a supplementary question in relation to the role of skills and knowledge in our curriculum. As I intimated in my update, we will consider that through the curriculum review, starting with mathematics education, recognising the challenge in relation to that.

A teacher said to me the other day that they wondered whether primary schools were trying to cover too many subjects. There certainly are more than when I was at primary school. How would the cabinet secretary respond to that?

It is important that all children in primary school experience a broad and balanced education to help them to make sense of the world. That means experiencing learning right across all eight curriculum areas, as they are currently, which include literacy and numeracy, as well as opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. However, as I outlined in my response to Mr Rennie, we are soon to embark on a curriculum improvement cycle. That will help to clarify and strengthen a shared understanding of practice from three to 18 in each of our curriculum areas.

Covid-19 undeniably exacerbated the challenges facing the Scottish education system and others across the world, but most of those challenges existed before 2020. The Scottish Government’s package of education reform, including replacing the Scottish Qualifications Authority and bringing our qualifications and assessment system out of the Victorian era, is not the whole solution, but it is critical to improving outcomes. International comparisons are far from the most important measurement of success, but, as today’s welcome news on ACEL data suggests, they matter. How are those reforms expected to contribute to improving Scotland’s PISA scores?

The member raises an important issue. Reform of our national agencies is a vital part of our work in improving Scotland’s approach and our support for education and skills. Reform is essential if we are to address some of the challenge and the changing needs of our education system now and in the future. The design of the new bodies is an opportunity to deliver the needed change in practice and culture to support improved outcomes and to support the teaching profession in how it works, while strengthening the role of the new organisations within the system as a whole.

Reform of our qualifications and assessment system will be a central part of that wider reform agenda, and it will be required to help to address the challenge with which the PISA results present the Government.

Evidence shows that there is a clear link between mobile phone use and poor behaviour in schools. New guidance on mobile phone use in schools has already been introduced south of the border. The cabinet secretary stated that she

“cannot unilaterally ban mobile phones”

but will

“work to provide refreshed guidance to schools on the use of mobile phones”.

How long will it take to see decisive action on that?

The member raised that issue at First Minister’s question time last week and in asking questions about a recent parliamentary statement. She knows my view on the issue, which is that, where headteachers see fit, they should use the power that is at their disposal. As cabinet secretary, I do not have a power to compel schools to enforce a national ban. It is for teachers to work on the matter with their young people, parents and local community, and it will require them to buy into that process. However, I have discussed with the member a number of schools where bans are working successfully in practice. Also, evidence from the United Nations earlier this year suggests that excessive use of digital devices in schools can detract from the quality of learning and teaching. We need to be mindful of the mix between traditional and more modern approaches to learning and teaching.

The member asked for a timeframe, but I do not currently have one in front of me. However, I am happy to write to the member and update Parliament on that point. We will look to refresh the current guidance, which is not prescriptive on the issue. I will make sure that national guidance is in the future prescriptive in giving that option to headteachers, so that they are empowered to ban mobile phones if they choose.

I want to give the cabinet secretary another chance to properly address the question that Willie Rennie raised. I could not help but notice that, in the way that she described the curriculum improvement cycle, she put particular emphasis on the word “knowledge”. I give her the opportunity to restate her position on the OECD report from 2021 that called for a restoration of knowledge.

She mentioned clear guidance on mobile phones, which many of us would agree with, but how about some clear guidance on behaviour standards, boundaries, the consequences of misbehaviour, exclusions and the presumption of mainstreaming? All those areas require clear guidance from the cabinet secretary as well.

The member asked two questions, so I will be brief.

It is not true to say that curriculum for excellence ignores knowledge, but we need to improve the way in which knowledge is covered in our curriculum. That is why the place of knowledge is a priority for our systematic improvement cycle, which I mentioned in response to Mr Rennie. I have to query whether the Conservatives are now moving away from their support of curriculum for excellence—I hope that that is not the case.

The member asked about behaviour. A number of weeks ago, I set out in the chamber the response to the behaviour in Scotland’s school research and our commitment to a national action plan, which will give the detail that the member seeks.

What actions and investment are being put in place to support learners with additional needs such as dyslexia to have better access to digital technology to improve literacy? How can teaching be made more inclusive in the overall curriculum?

The member raises a really important point. We have heard from a number of members this afternoon about the increase in the number of young people with additional support needs. The Government is absolutely committed to improving the experience of those children, including those with dyslexia. We are working closely with a number of partners to promote the use of our addressing dyslexia toolkit, which includes advice to school staff on supporting children and young people’s literacy through the use of digital technology.

The Government also funds CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to school staff on supports, including on the use of assistive technology for children and young people with specific communication needs.

That concludes the statement. After a short pause, we will move on to the next item of business.