Chamber and committees

Over the past 10 years, the Scottish attainment challenge has seen about £1.75 billion of investment. About £1 billion of that has been in pupil equity funding—the PEF—which goes straight to school leaders to decide how best to address the poverty-related attainment gap in their schools. We can discuss that, but I think that that has been one of the breakthrough differences in approach in Scottish education in the past 10 years. It brings the question of what Ms Gibson asked about right to the fore and says that we all have a responsibility to tackle that. Another part of the £1.75 billion supports care-experienced young people directly and goes through councils.

I said in my statement last week that I remain committed to the model of the Scottish attainment challenge and to its continuing. I am looking carefully at the balance between what goes straight to schools and what goes to local authorities, but I am committed to the idea that it is for school leaders to decide what it is best to do in their schools. That might be supporting care-experienced young people or, if there are particular problems with attendance, really leaning into that and working out what is going on in families. There is a range of things that can be done, but the beauty of it is that it is up to the school leader.

That is what we are working on just now. COSLA is the delivery partner, but we are investing £15 million this year in enhanced provision and £44 million a year thereafter. I have been clear with COSLA that the commitment is to an offer in every primary school, but I understand that flexibilities will be required with regard to, say, rurality. Were you going to come on to that?

I can answer specifically about PISA. From my perspective, it is just one way of measuring one strand of success in an education system. It is important, and I will take it into account, as I do all the ways in which we measure success, including ACEL data, exam results, positive destinations, the number of young people going to university and the widening access work that we do with universities. There are many ways of measuring success, and I do not put one above the other.

I believe that our education system should be capable of driving academic excellence as well as supporting strength in vocational excellence and readiness for the world and the world of work. PISA looks particularly at reading, mathematics and science, which are very important in our system. However, Scotland’s curriculum for excellence also looks at artistic expression, problem solving and moral education. Frankly, I would not have one without the other. I want to draw on the evidence that we have to ensure that our education system is capable of providing academic excellence, as certain bodies will encourage us to do, as well as producing well-rounded individuals who are ready for the world and are capable of being resilient. PISA is just one factor.

It is quite hard to boil down a child’s whole offer academically, vocationally and extra-curricularly—if that is a word—into one presentation of facts about them. I know that there are recommendations about the certificate of achievement.

There is much in the Hayward review that I support, and we already have a system that does not unnecessarily require final examination in areas where it is clearly not required—in technical subjects, home economics and others. However, to be absolutely clear, I still support final examination in a range of areas not only as a means of doing what I think you are challenging me to do, which is to help our young people to demonstrate their capacity, but because many young people will go on to do things in life that require them to perform under pressure in that way. That is why I support having a mix of assessment.

As I say, it is hard to distil a child’s ability down to one measure, but I will continue to use achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data, which is teacher led. We will use our national exam results, which this year showed, for the second year running, increased academic attainment across the board; we will use vocational awards, which have shown a quite remarkable increase—they have gone up by 121 per cent since 2019—and we will record what our young people are doing after school.

A senior officer in an education authority recently said to me, “Our positive destination levels are now so high that I could chap the doors of the young people who I know are not currently in education, training or work.” That is a really successful position. We will keep working on all those issues, but the approach is different for different young people.

I actually wrote to my counterpart in Sweden last week to seek support, because, like you, I am conscious of the work that is being done there and I want to understand how it might apply in Scotland.

We have to strike a balance, given that this is a digital world. Our young people are going to have to grow up and find careers that are digitised—that is just the nature of the world—but I agree that there is a time and a place for the use of those devices, and we do not want that to take the place of person-to-person learning.

I will hand over to Clare shortly, but I say that the approach is not about removing anything; it is about actively facing up to things that have happened in the past that Scotland has been involved with, and understanding our role in that, why aspects of it were wrong and what the motivations were for certain aspects of it, to help us to understand the past and, therefore, the future. I think that your point is: if we do not understand our past, how can we hope to build our future? That is what it is about. However, I will defend anti-racism to the hilt.

I cannot confirm an exact date today, but I want to do it as quickly as possible. I recognise that there is, to a large extent, cross-party support and support among parents and teachers, although I understand that that is to varying degrees. I want to move quickly, but it is incumbent on us to consult and to do so properly. That needs to be done, analysis of the consultation will be done and I will then be able to confirm when we will move forward.

I take that on board. You and I have discussed family support centres. I support them because they are a physical and tangible manifestation of whole family support in the community, with multiple organisations and support under one roof, meaning that the family only needs to go to one place. We are engaging with that model.

The spend that has been invested to date was helpful and useful, but we understand that we need to go further. I am working with Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing, on pulling budgets together and working across Government on budgets more than ever before to support whole family support. Siobhian Brown and I will drive all that work in respect of the objectives of the Promise.

Yes, it definitely does. We talked about the fact that cross-boundary childcare provision can be difficult and create problems for families. We have talked about local authorities’ different practices with regard to teachers’ employment and how the three-year guarantee is trying to deal with that. We can also see how, with regard to something as fundamental as ASN, different approaches could create different landscapes across the country.

We have not touched much on PSR today, but it will be a big topic for us. It is up to the committee, but I will be happy to speak to you about that as the work develops. However, local government reform and its prominence in the PFG is closely tied to education reform, because, as we know, education funding makes up a significant part of local government funding. The delivery of education lies with local authorities, so, as PSR takes place in local government, reforms in education will run alongside that.

We have the opportunity to improve, which is the core of PSR. Where is the system not working for people? Where is it too complicated? Where do boundaries mean that families are left facing in different directions and end up coming to their MSPs? How many times have we sat in round-table meetings with actors from the different public services that support people in Scotland? This is our opportunity to try to bring that together.

Yes, I have to be at the Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee in 15 minutes.