Chamber and committees

I am sorry for the error, Jenny.

It has always been put to me that Screen Scotland is beginning to outgrow, if it has not already outgrown, the structure of being part of another organisation. Screen Scotland feels that, in order to enable it to take decisions at the pace that is needed and move with the nimbleness that I discussed, it must be a stand-alone organisation.

It is also worth noting that the wider review of Creative Scotland has made some substantial recommendations on how Creative Scotland could improve as an organisation by moving from being a grant-giving body to being a development body. That is probably quite telling in respect of some of what Screen Scotland needs to experience as a stand-alone body.

There is going to be quite considerable change, and we—you as the committee and I as the minister—will be grappling with that in the coming years. There will be change at Creative Scotland, including a change in the focus of what it does. I think that it is quite exciting to talk about Creative Scotland as a development agency, while equally allowing Screen Scotland, as a fledgling stand-alone organisation, to fly the nest—I have used that analogy a few times—and to flourish, and, we would hope, to meet the incredibly ambitious goal that has been set for 2030.

Let me take the two parts of the question separately. Underpinning this whole answer is the fact that every public body in Scotland is part of our assessment of the landscape and has to be challenged and to challenge itself on its functions and how best it is working.

I talked previously about the sharing of estate, infrastructure and so on, and Historic Environment Scotland will have to consider its operations like anybody else. There are good examples of that already happening, which Jamie MacDougall might be able to elaborate on. Despite the well-documented problems that it has faced—I state our commitment to getting it back on a stable footing of governance—it has been undertaking public sector reform already, because there has been a shift in support from the Government versus what Historic Environment Scotland raises in revenue. The balance has been shifting for it to be more self-sufficient, and that work is ongoing.

That is an example of how public service reform is already working in HES but, in relation to structure, my priority is for HES to get itself back to the excellent levels of governance and functioning that we expect and, indeed, that the employees of HES deserve to experience every day.

Jamie, do you want to say any more?

It holds that every public body under a public service reform work programme will have to consider its functions and the extent to which it can improve its delivery for the people of Scotland, but it is also true to say that the process is about renewal, not just reduction.

There is a very clear example of that in the culture portfolio. We are going to make Screen Scotland an independent entity and take it out from Creative Scotland, where it has been. It has experienced considerable growth, and to allow it to flourish independently and reach the £1 billion of gross value added target by 2030 that we have set for it, it will become a separate and stand-alone body. That is about having an additional body, rather than making a reduction—it is a good example from culture of how public service reform is not only about reduction.

I cannot pre-empt anything that might decided with regard to the number of bodies that will come out of the process of dialogue in which we are engaged.

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.

I will take those two points in turn. First, on whether there should be a classroom ban or a whole-campus ban, I have visited a school that has implemented a whole-campus ban but which allows the young people to use their mobile phones when they are outside for lunch or when they are travelling to and from school, and that worked well there. Equally, I have spoken to staff in some schools where phones cannot be used in the classroom and must not be seen in the corridors, but the young people can have them out when they are inside at lunchtime. In the schools where mobile phones were banned across the whole campus, young people reported enjoying more social time at lunch and break, as they would interact with one another rather than turning to their phones. Also, it seemed that, because they had not looked at their phones all day, they were less inclined to look at them all night—it was almost as if the habit had been broken. However, I will see what the consultation says and respond to that.

The question of digital devices generally is separate from that of mobile phones, and I am not treating them in the same vein. The ban will be on mobile phones. How much screen time pupils should have, and at what age, is a huge question in education. Clare Hicks can tell me whether it is the OECD that gives us guidelines on children’s screen time.

The chief medical officer and others are developing guidelines on what should be used and at what age, and I want us to stick with that approach. I may be old-fashioned in this view, but I think that outdoor learning and face-to-face learning with a teacher, particularly in the early years, are really important for speech and language and for dexterity and motor development, and I will be guided by international evidence on all of that.

Thank you, convener. I will make a brief statement.

Our comprehensive education system represents the opportunity of a lifetime for our young people, and it is my intention as education secretary that it be the basis on which every child has the opportunity to reach their potential. I stressed in Parliament last week that, for me, that means having excellence and equity as core principles in our work over the coming years.

This is a very large portfolio. Its remit starts before a child is born, and it covers all early learning and development; childcare; school-age education; tertiary education and lifelong learning; Gaelic, Scots and British Sign Language; children’s services; and child protection, care and the Promise. I am, thankfully, ably supported in the portfolio by two ministers, who lead on their areas day to day, but I am very pleased to have the chance to give the committee an overview today.

As the First Minister’s programme for government set out, we will lead a transformation in early learning and childcare from 1,140 hours to a year-round offer from nine months to primary 7. We will enhance early child development, and we will bolster child protection, including through a new public health approach to online harm, a national roll-out of the bairns’ hoose model and the highest scrutiny of child sexual abuse. We will undertake the work that is needed in order to keep the Promise by 2030, underpinned by early preventative whole family support.

We will continue to remove barriers to an excellent education by supporting, among other things, Gaelic-medium education, further reducing the cost of the school day and developing a national staged intervention model for additional support for learning.

In our classrooms, we will focus on the ABCs—that is, attainment, attendance, behaviour and curriculum. On the last of those, we will take forward the largest reform of our curriculum since curriculum for excellence was introduced, which will be developed with the profession and implemented with care. We will also end the intense rise in the presence of mobile phones in the learning environment that we have seen over the past 10 to 15 years.

Our teaching workforce will be supported with additional non-contact time and a new teacher recruitment assistance fund for rural and island Scotland, among other interventions. With increased college and university funding, we will collaborate on future frameworks for sustainability and success, and we will never introduce tuition fees. We will do that while increasing apprenticeships and supporting more parents and carers to train.

That only scratches the surface of activity across our portfolios, and I very much look forward to working with your committee in the coming years, as do my ministerial colleagues, who I am sure will appear before you soon to discuss their areas.

Finally, if you will allow me, I note that this morning we have had the results of the programme for international student assessment—PISA—2025, and we can go on to discuss aspects of that, should you wish. However, it is worth putting on record that the headline findings are that Scotland performed significantly above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average in four of the five areas reported, namely science, reading, computational problem solving and environmental science. We are sitting at or around the OECD average in mathematics. We have therefore maintained our competitive international position at a time when reading and maths have declined right across the OECD.

I welcome those findings and others that show a weakening of the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and academic attainment. However, I am also clear on where reform is required, and I am focusing in particular on the maths results. We will be able to discuss that in the context of the curriculum improvement cycle and, indeed, public service reform of education.