Chamber and committees

Yes, it is a very fair point. When you have such large organisations, there is a tendency to listen only to the teachers, but I assure the committee that my team and I work hard to ensure that everyone is heard and understood.

Would you like to answer, Orlando?

The policy will support young people with ASN in the classroom. I do not accept for a moment that the investment is divorced from the needs of ASN children. It will support them very much, because their teacher, who stands in front of them and tries to get the very best for them, will have more time to prepare and think about how they do that.

That is not to say that we do not also have to invest in the ASN workforce. I have spoken before at committee about my intentions to create easier registration for other parts of the profession to move into ASN roles—including those who are facing underemployment in primary school and who would wish to move into such a role. It is not just a singular focus.

Are we back on RCCT?

I will give a few examples, and maybe Orlando Mason can come in if I miss any. I have spoken about the teaching bursary and the 850-odd people who have already used it. To date, that bursary has been linked to hard-to-fill subjects, but we are considering whether we could layer place on to that, so that it would cover subject and place at the same time.

I also mentioned the £1 million fund for rural recruitment, which is another practical thing to help people to take up jobs in rural areas and sustain those jobs. I appreciate that that is only £1 million, but I hope that it can help us as we implement the reduction in class contact time policy over the next couple of years. As I said, we have also attempted things such as recruitment campaigns, and we will keep doing that.

I will bring in Orlando Mason to respond, because he and I were discussing the differences between collegiate and professional time the other day.

Yes, that is absolutely something that we can comment on, although doing so early on will require me to give you a very significant answer, with lots of detail. Although RCCT is a quite self-contained part of education spending, the Promise covers almost every service that comes into contact with children. I would be very glad to support the committee in understanding the differences in that respect, but it is probably better if I answer that question in writing rather than orally this morning.

You mentioned that you are aware of a few things that we are trying to do, such as the bursary that focuses on subjects with teacher shortages, which Orlando Mason may be able to find figures for while I am speaking.

We have also been running recruitment campaigns that are focused on subject areas with teacher shortages, including STEM, home economics and other subjects. I have spoken about the £1 million teacher recruitment assistance fund, which is linked to RCCT, with the understanding that rural areas are most at risk of teacher shortages and are the most likely to face difficulties with implementation. The fund will provide practical support, such as help with housing and other things, to encourage teachers to apply in those areas.

My officials engage regularly on workforce planning, which is connected to but broader than RCCT. We are working with local authorities to get clear data about vacancies. We have 32 local authorities, which are all separate corporate employers and hold their own data. We are asking them to bring their data to the Scottish Government so that we can look at it together and feed it into an up-to-date approach to recruitment, teacher training and all the other matters that will help to get the right people to the right place. We have enough teachers but, often, their location creates difficulties.

Orlando Mason has just let me know that, so far, 850 teachers have been supported to teach secondary subjects through the bursary.

I will come in first on that point. In relation to public sector reform, are your comments about looking forward or looking back?

I have been reflecting that, out of eight or nine portfolio questions this week, six or seven were about ASN, either about a parent’s needs that had been reported to their MSP, or exactly the point that you have put to me about the extent to which the workforce feels supported and the extent to which we need to grow that support, so, I am very conscious of the issue.

I want to do couple of things in that space to grow the workforce. You mentioned one of the things that is uppermost in my mind, because it feels a little easier than some of the others, and that is supporting additional registration. I hope that, by working with the General Teaching Council for Scotland, as well as with local authorities and schools, we can make it easier for people with education qualifications who want to help address the national need for ASN working to get their registration more quickly.

There are other things that we need to do more of that relate to what Mr Dunlop said about supporting the ASN workforce as a stand-alone group and acknowledging and understanding that they have distinct needs. I spoke about the overarching workforce planning that we are trying to do and how reliant that is on local authorities letting us know where their vacancies are. I think—I am checking with Orlando Mason—that we set a deadline in October for local authorities to get that information back to us, but only a third of them have sent it to us so far. I know that they are really busy—I get that—but we need the data in order to plan properly.

Uppermost in my mind is how I can support more people to get ASN registration and into provision.