Chamber and committees

What is your solution, Fraser?

It does not, Ben. When we are looking at a care and protection system, what is the bigger goal that we are trying to achieve? From what I understood, the intention of the Promise was to give every child a stable, lifelong, loving relationship so that they can go on to live a successful life, whatever that may be, from where they begin, and particularly for those who are at risk. I thought that we were in agreement that that is what we are trying to achieve. We can think about all children, but let us consider those who are at risk. Is that a fair overarching metric for that we are trying to achieve?

Good morning, everybody. I am sorry to do this, but I would like to go back to the beginning, because I am not clear. What is the specific metric of success that will be met if Scotland delivers on the Promise? I do not think that we can just have a range of things. What is the specific thing that we should expect for all children?

My point is that it appears that Scottish Borders Council has signed a long-term agreement with Apple that binds it to a contract for learning for pupils from primary 4 onwards. I understand that that might have been done with good intentions on the part of the council, particularly following on from the Covid period. However, countries such as Sweden have gone in completely the other direction, with pupils doing computing only in information and communications technology suites, and only when they require to do those subjects, particularly in the primary years. As a parent of young kids, I have a concern that we are now using those devices as a crutch to manage classroom behaviours rather than to ensure that core skills are learned. I would appreciate hearing your comments in that regard.

We have been reviewing and transforming the care system for 10 years—since the care review started. That is as long as a childhood, if we take that as being from the age of about five to 15 years. We have only three and a half years left until we are meant to have achieved success. To summarise last October’s Audit Scotland report, we have a lot of intent but not enough action. We still lack a clear implementation plan for our areas and key indicators of success, and we do not even know how much it will cost to guide local authorities on what they should specifically start and stop doing. I am interested in when we will get that detail.

I am conscious of time, but I will follow up on that, as Laura Moodie did with her questions. Given the major governance and implementation review that is under way in Scotland, which includes questions about the structure of national health service boards, social care and local authorities, is now the time to answer the question of who should be responsible for—and who should deliver—care? From what I can see, that has never been answered in any of the reviews. We still have financial directors at local authorities who are responsible for flower beds as well as our care budgets.

While an argument could be made that you should be responsible for specialist provision at a national level, the same questions apply at a regional level for peripatetic social workers, and at an ultra-local level, in order to ensure that families get support and children get love. Will all that structure be questioned?

I am sorry—there was rather a lot in that question.

I have a small follow-up question. What worries me about the levels of funding that we give to whole family support—this comes back to my earlier question about targeting breakfast clubs, which I assumed were in place to assist those who could not afford to feed their children—is that Nicola Sturgeon committed £500 million to the whole family wellbeing fund in a previous budget, but only £200 million was spent. This year, the Government is giving only £20 million to the equivalent fund, which is a real-terms cut. We have to focus on that money.

I do not know why we are not looking at family support centres. A recent review of the sure start initiative set out its longer-term benefit, which was to reduce school absences by 15 per cent among the cohorts that went through it. I encourage you to look at investing our spend in the areas in which we most need it.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. Thank you for coming along. I will go back to the issue of decreasing child poverty. All of us agree with the ambition to eradicate child poverty but, given that money is increasingly tight and that the Scottish Government’s budget will be constricted during this session of Parliament, why are you rolling out universal service offers rather than targeted offers? For example, last week, the First Minister opened a breakfast club at East Linton primary school. That town is almost exclusively middle class, and parents are openly using the provision as a way of alleviating pressure on their commute, so it is not being used to eradicate or address child poverty. Why are we not targeting resources in the areas that really need them?

I support the removal of mobile phones from classrooms, but will we commit to removing them from the school estate and monitor how they enter it? There is a whole issue regarding children’s social time—playtime, lunchtime and so on.

While you are consulting on mobile phones, will you please go further and review the proliferation of screens as a de facto learning aid? For example, Apple now has a long-term contract with Scottish Borders Council, whereby children in primary 4—which means those from the age of seven—are now given an iPad and are expected to take that home. I have concerns that that is enabling a reliance and building an addiction that will lead to disruptive behaviours, which is a point of concern right across Scotland. What are your views on that?

09:30

This links to what Angela Ross said, and it might fall under other committees’ mandates. I worked a lot with young people who were considered to be in positive destinations. I am quite honest about this. Post-16, if someone is in education or employment, that is a positive destination. If someone is on a course lasting 10 or 12 weeks, that can also be classified as a positive destination, but it is not really, because what matters is what comes next. Is that course leading something that will give someone the prospect of sustained, progressive, positive activity, which ultimately results in them being economically active? Quite a lot of them are not.

If we look at the report of the Milburn review in England, we can see that the position is fairly similar up here—we are kidding ourselves if we think that it is not. There is an impending crisis in how our labour market will change, and our education system and support for young people need to respond to that.

It would be good for us to be inquisitive, in a different way, about what the solutions might be. I used to run schemes where I employed young people and then taught them how to work. That was because, if there was a training scheme but no job at the end of it, they did not always have the motivation to follow it through. What mattered was whether someone was at home, kicking them out of bed in the morning to ensure that they got on with it and embedded that learning.

All that we do must respond to a fast-moving economic and employment climate. Our responsibility is to ensure that we do not end up with much of this generation being economically inactive. When someone gets beyond 23—to 25 at the latest—it becomes very hard to get them into work if they have not worked previously.

There is one issue that has not come up. I should have declared that I have a masters in community, youth work and non-formal education.

There has been quite severe degradation of youth work provision across Scotland, particularly in terms of the formal activities that are delivered by local authorities. Many charities deliver provision locally, but they are always scrabbling for funding. Given the issues that we are aware of around additional support needs and the fact that a formal classroom setting is not the best place for some people to learn, youth work is a key resource. The skills that people learn through that can set them up for life, if they are not the most academically minded. We ought to be inquisitive about what is happening in that sector, so that we can ensure that provision exists across the board, and not just in certain pockets.