Chamber and committees

I know that the 2021 programme for government included plans to get 3,500 extra teachers—although teacher numbers have actually dropped since then—and 500 more classroom assistants. Given the teacher workload issues that we keep hearing about, would having more additional support needs staff not be a better use of the money that we are talking about? Having more admin support would also free teachers from doing the photocopying or preparing classroom and lesson resources. Would that not be a more logical way of using the money?

Sheena, you said that there is no causal link between the problem and the solution. Do we need to do more work to understand the issues? You framed the problem well by talking about the OECD report. I am still not convinced that reduced contact time is the right way to achieve better, less stressful, working conditions for teachers. There is a burden that is caused by paperwork and systems. Do we need to do more work in that area to ensure we are spending money in the right way?

Given that the estimated cost is £310 million per year and that there is no causal link between what we are trying to do and what we want to achieve by that, would it be prudent not to continue until we have a value-for-money case?

After listening to all the issues, I want to reiterate that we have staff issues and workload issues—there are many issues in implementing the 90 minutes of no-contact time. From following the evidence and reading through the documents, I think that we have the wrong solution for the problem. Sheena Devlin said that there is not a causal link between the problem and the solution as defined. The 2010 OECD report suggested systems issues and highlighted the burden on teachers. Every workload review since 2013 has identified issues such as bureaucracy, over-detailed planning and data demands.

Stuart Bain, this might be one for you. Having been a teacher and sat there with piles of paperwork, I know that the average amount of unpaid overtime for teachers in this country at the moment is 11 hours a week, so I do not think that the 90 minutes of no-contact time will even touch the sides of that. If a systems redesign is needed and that is the actual problem, reducing paperwork and data burdens seems to be a more logical assumption, and possibly a more cost-effective solution, than putting £310 million in every year to try to free teachers up. Are we looking at the problem from the wrong angle?

The commitment to 90 minutes of no-contact time was in the programme for government in 2021. The curriculum improvement cycles that we have talked about are more recent. Have they been built into everything in terms of risk, and does the 90 minutes of no-contact time commitment cover the implementation of the new elements of the improvement cycle? I know that there is a 10-year plan, but is that aspect considered within the plan, given that it will take a lot of time and effort from teachers who are involved?

Good morning. I am still not clear on the purpose, and I wonder whether sharpening the purpose would help with the focus on what problem we are trying to solve. I know that the proposal was originally in the 2021 programme for government, so it has been around for a long time, but I wonder what the driver was back then. From reading all the information, I know that a few different purposes were set out in various documents. The one that I landed on—this might be because of my background as a primary school teacher—is that of reducing workload burden. Is that the core driver? I just want to understand the purpose.

Yes.

Ben Farrugia, what is the biggest risk going forward? We have four years.

It is also about the cost and the human impact. We have four years left. So far, with the progress that you are talking about, have we achieved enough impact on care-experienced people? Up to this point, has the cost been worth it?

I come from a private sector background, and I was quite surprised to see that, with a project of this scale—in terms of its complexity and including our complex care system landscape, with more than 40 bodies and a multitude of funding streams—it was quite late in the day when we got the national performance framework, route maps and the clarity that seemed to be missing earlier. We did not get those until around 2025.

With regard to the overarching approach, the project management was not effective, and accountability comes into play in that regard. With regard to effective project management, I would have been thinking of things such as agile feedback loops, in addition to clear accountability, and a risk register.

In the documentation, I noted that we had a risk register in 2021, but that it was not updated until 2023 and it did not contain a lot of detail. Given that there are four years remaining of the plan to deliver the Promise, who is ultimately accountable? There are some suggestions in the documentation that it is the Scottish Government, but, in your eyes, who is ultimately accountable for driving this work forward and reaching success by 2030? Did we miss out on a clear project management strategy that would have saved us a lot of time, because a risk register would have identified early on that there was not accountability?