Chamber and committees

Yes, convener, and good morning, everybody. As I have previously stated to the committee, it is my ambition as education secretary that every child and young person in Scotland, regardless of their background, should be able to have the chance to succeed and fulfil their potential. The two matters on which the committee has been taking evidence, and which will be raised this morning, contribute to that ambition, and the minister and I welcome the opportunity to speak to you as you carry out your pre-budget scrutiny.

First, on the reduction in class contact time, the Government has a strong interest in action that will drive improvement in learning and teaching, and the tripartite agreement on reduced class contact time that has been achieved between the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Scottish Government and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities leaders represents a significant investment in Scotland’s teachers and in the quality of education for our children and young people.

By providing more protected professional time, we are responding to the principal ask on reducing workload pressures and supporting a more sustainable profession. It will mean more planning time for lessons, and opportunities to provide timely and meaningful feedback to students. It will, for example, mean time to prepare tailored content for lessons for children with additional support needs.

We have agreed a phased approach to RCCT, which will be implemented in primary and special schools from August 2027 and in secondary schools from August 2029, and we are committed to funding the implementation cost. Initial funds have been released to councils to support local implementation, with £1 million made available to support recruitment in island and rural Scotland.

I will now move swiftly to the Promise, convener. The Promise, and keeping it, are absolutely fundamental to our ambition for Scotland’s children and young people. It is about ensuring that children grow up loved, safe and respected and that families receive the right support at the right time to prevent crisis and to keep them together, where possible. The Scottish ministers provide national leadership on the Promise, and the minister and I are committed to creating the conditions that are needed for change, to driving that change and to working across Government and across society on that effort.

With 2030 very much approaching, and with a lot achieved to date—although with very much still to do—we are firmly focused on delivery. That means progressive implementation of the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026, containing as it does substantial work on aftercare, continuing care, reform of the children’s hearings system, the strengthening of family group decision making and more.

Alongside work on the 2026 act, we will continue to transform whole family support with preventative and relational early intervention support for families. We will also take forward work on foster and kinship carers; we will strengthen the social work workforce; and we will continue to roll out the bairns’ hoose model, among other interventions.

Our officials, the minister and I are working on a clear and decisive implementation plan that covers these matters and more. These are ambitious aims, and delivering them will require sustained investment, clear leadership and strong partnership right across national and local government as well as civic services, with the voice of lived-experience individuals always at its heart. Siobhian Brown and I care deeply about this issue, and we look forward to taking your questions.

I mentioned in my opening remarks that RCCT was the principal and foremost ask in respect of reducing teachers’ workload. The Scottish Government has been committed to the policy for some time, because we recognise that a teaching profession that has more professional time, more scope for preparation, more scope for feedback and more scope for tailoring curriculum content and lessons is a profession that is working best for young people.

The discussions that we are now having about implementing RCCT are being had between us, COSLA and the teaching unions, and that is a very important forum for gathering the voice of the teaching profession as well as that of the local authorities and the Scottish Government.

I know that reduced class contact time is principally about the teaching profession, but there are many ways in which it supports young people, too. In considering its implementation, we have looked at how it will create opportunities for young people to get more specialised time with a specialised teacher, whether that be in music, art, physical education or whatever, and it will hopefully create better content in the classroom, as teachers will have more time to think and prepare lessons.

One of the things that appeals to me is the idea that teachers will have more scope to give meaningful feedback to young people to identify their needs and the ways in which we can support them to make progress. In that way, it really meets the goal of reaching a young person’s potential. Therefore, the policy both relates to teachers’ workload and can have a very positive impact on young people, although I should point out that we will have to monitor it to ensure that it is having those intended impacts.

The question is about the provision of teacher training for hard-to-fill subjects in rural areas, which feeds into our workforce planning. My impression is that there is a good spread of provision and that there are opportunities for learning across the country. The challenge that rural areas face is more about people wanting to settle and make their lives in those areas, as opposed to the central belt.

I am open-minded, but I would diagnose the issue as being more about where people want to have their careers and that they want to live in areas with population centres, as opposed to there being a lack of available training and learning opportunities for the teaching profession.

Just last week, I visited the centre for teaching excellence at the University of Glasgow, which we fund. Although it is based in Glasgow, it is very much a national offer of teaching support. For example, I was in Skye two weeks before that visit, where I met the women who lead the Gaelic hub of the centre for teaching excellence. The centre has a hub-and-spoke model that provides support right across the country.

I am happy to start, and then colleagues can come in.

Officials can keep me right, but I think that the aim of 5 per cent is absolutely still there. However, attributing 5 per cent of spending across such a large area has proved difficult. We are still committed to significant proportions of whole family support being funded, but our approach now is slightly different, because, instead of saying that it is 5 per cent of a certain pot, we are much more in a place now of integrating funding streams. We will probably come on to talk about that, but we can see that excellent work has been funded by the whole family wellbeing fund. However, we recognise that, instead of targets such as percentages, we need to integrate funding, make it available earlier and ensure that it is relational and supports families pre-crisis.

It would be fair to say that our planning and strategy in that regard has moved on quite a bit recently. I hope that we now have a commitment to the new whole family support programme, which has done exactly that: it has brought funding streams together and is working to have them support families earlier. It is an example of the track that we see as necessary for funding.

For the most part, if not completely, the whole family wellbeing fund goes to the children’s services planning partnerships at local authority level, which have discretion on how best to use it. Some of that goes directly to families, when that is considered the right thing, and some of that is a cash-first approach. Ultimately, it is for local partners, who will know the family, to make the best judgment about that.

Since the three of us first had the conversation in the summer at which you mentioned the issue, we have been thinking a lot about it, and I have been asking people about it as well. There are, undoubtedly, those who agree that it would be the right thing to do. However, there are some, as I think I mentioned to you at the time, who would be uneasy or reticent about carrying that label, if I can put it that way, for their whole lives. Some people are very proud—some consider it part of who they are and their community, but others do not want to go through their whole life knowing that, when they pass away, that will be noted. It is a delicate balance. As Ms Brown said, we are keen to keep working through it, but I do not think that there is a definitive answer just now.

There are a couple of points to highlight in that respect. I might ask one of my colleagues to say a word about corporate parenting and the teaching workforce, but I would just say that, because I have oversight of both of those areas in my portfolio, I can take a view across the board on what we are asking of services and how that can be timetabled to best effect to optimise chances of success. For example, I am very mindful of RCCT being introduced alongside the curriculum improvement cycle, because that will mean significant change over the coming period. That said, I think that RCCT can support the implementation of the new curriculum, because it will give teachers more time to think about it.

Equally, though, our very fulsome approach to additional support needs in our schools, which captures our care-experienced young people, too, means that we have a very good understanding of the needs of the young people in our classes, which our teachers, whether supply, permanent or otherwise, have a strong grasp of and an expectation of responding to.

Gavin, is there anything that you want to say about education and the Promise?

There are a number of dynamics involved in your question. I will have a go at answering it, but please come back to any aspects that I do not address. You talked about the importance of a lifelong stable loving relationship, and that is why, over the summer, the minister was so keen to spend her time on placements. We understand that, although we keep children at home where we can, where a placement is necessary, having it happen well, as early as possible and on a permanent basis is probably one of the best ways that we can pursue lifelong loving stability.

On the other services and individuals who you are right to mention—from youth work to police to general practitioners and teachers—we ensure that they all understand their responsibilities through, for example, corporate parenting work, ensuring that the getting it right for every child approach is embedded across everybody who works with children, and by trying to create the circumstances where they can fulfil that. For example, earlier, we talked about what happens in the classroom and our approach to additional support needs in Scotland being broad—I get challenged on that a lot—and capturing children with care experience. That means that the teacher in front of the class knows and understands their responsibilities towards the individual and supports them as they need it. However, we are talking about different degrees of relationship—someone who you might come into contact with on a transient basis versus the place that you call home for your life. We recognise the difference, and we want to support both.

First, we have come into post with a clear and heavy duty, knowing that, all being well, we will still be in post come 2030, so we know that we will be the ministers who will be explaining to Parliament and Scotland what happens in 2030. As I said in my opening remarks, we care deeply about this. Together with our teams, we are clear that a lot of preparatory work has been done.

We talk about the Promise in a singular way, just to be able to have a conversation about it, but it is everything, everywhere, in the life of a child who needs support. In some ways, the preparatory work that has had to go on until now has been very full, and there have been lots of plans and lots of strategies because there are so many aspects that need to change, and it is a whole-system change, but we now absolutely have to pivot to delivery.

That does not mean that we have not been delivering to date. There are lots of things that we are proud of having done, such as stopping young people going to Polmont, the bursary support that we have talked about, the establishment of the bairns’ hooses, the establishment of the National Social Work Agency, changes across the board and many more. However, we are clear that we want to produce the plan now, we want it to capture the substantial piece of legislation that has been passed, and we want it to be concise and clear as to what will happen and, as Siobhian Brown said, be monitored.

This year’s budget had an additional £28 million for local authorities for ASN. The £1 million that the Government held back is being used by Education Scotland to develop training that is relevant for the current broad spectrum of ASN that is presented in the classroom, which can then be provided to teachers. That is proving exceptionally popular. The Government now has to say, well, okay, how do we roll that out even more?

I will also mention the centre for teaching excellence, which I visited last week at the University of Glasgow and which is funded by the Government. Its representatives explained to me how, in the hub network that I described earlier, they can respond to needs for the additional continuing professional development that teachers want, in the areas in which they want it, and how additional support needs are one of the top areas on which they are developing content. There are lots of ways in which we are bolstering support for a teacher to deal with ASN, but the additional individuals will always be needed, because they do great work.