Chamber and committees

More data in this area would be helpful. I know that the equity audit was not quantitative. We need to see more information on the area so that we can assess, in the kind of work that you are involved in, whether the current policies and spending priorities of the Government actually address what has become a far greater problem in terms of the level of need.

That brings me to two specific areas. One is around pupil equity fund spending. I would like colleagues from the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland to comment on the availability of that money and the transparency of how it is allocated in different areas. As a councillor—which I will continue to be until May—and as a member of the Scottish Parliament, I find it difficult to find out what that money has been spent on and to what end, at a local and a national level. It would be good to hear some comments on that, after which I will turn to the question of school buildings.

I appreciate that. With regard to spending on ventilation, £10 million was recently allocated to recording the amount of CO₂ in classrooms so that teachers would know whether to open the windows. Has Audit Scotland or the Accounts Commission looked at the question of whether school buildings are now prepared for the pandemic that remains with us and how public spending is being used to adapt them in order to prevent infection?

I have a question for the Auditor General about his report on education that was produced prior to this year’s Scottish Parliament election. The report concluded that the equality gap in education remained far too wide and fell far short of the Scottish Government’s aims. We have been living through the pandemic since that work was done. As far as we can tell, there has been huge disruption, the impact of which has been very unequal and has affected some of the most deprived and least privileged groups in society.

Do you have a sense of whether any work is being done on the impact of the pandemic on the sorts of outcomes that you looked at in your report?

Are you aware of any work to quantify the general impact of lost learning across Scotland? I understand your description of how local and national education authorities reacted to deal with the immediate impact of the pandemic. Do you have a sense of whether any work has been done to assess the longer-term impact on children and young people?

That is fine. Thank you.

You will understand that, when the chief executive of an organisation—the person who leads that organisation—welcomes the announcement that the organisation is to be folded, the hundreds of staff who work for that individual and who she is charged with leading would be incredibly disappointed. Dr Robertson’s welcome for your announcement is a dereliction of leadership, in fact. Staff have made it clear that they want separate representation on that body—they do not have faith in the leadership of the SQA to represent their expert opinions and experience. I hope that you might consider that and write again to the trade unions on that basis.

If I could move to my last question—

That is superb. My last point is on a separate issue. A significant theme emerged from the evidence that the committee took and the conversations that we had with pupils across Scotland. They have all been very concerned about qualifications, as we have all been, but the challenge relates to what they have learned over the past two years. They have had a huge amount of time out of school. Have you and your officials assessed the knowledge and learning gaps and the impact of those? Has that informed your recovery plan?

That is critical. The document that you published yesterday does not contain any data about that loss. It talks about the equalities audit that took place in January. Everyone in Parliament and in the country would want to see a response that is based on what has happened. What has been lost? How much time has been lost? It does not seem to me that you have a full grasp of what that is. It is great that some measures might be forthcoming, but those must be in response to what has happened. I worry that the Government has not grasped the scale of the challenge.

You just do not know how much.

I am animated by the issue of digital skills, which pertains to my home city of Dundee and more broadly across the country. I am not convinced by the cabinet secretary’s analysis. We have a situation where companies offering computer games training or universities providing computing courses cannot make it compulsory for applicants to have passed higher computing, because there are not enough teachers to enable our kids to pass those highers.

It is reasonable for the convener to say that there is an issue with SDS, but there is more in the cabinet secretary’s portfolio that pertains to the issue of training. Those are not low-paid jobs; they are well paid. They are the jobs of the future and could be attracting investment.