Chamber and committees

That might be the case, but we are in quite a fluid situation with our budgetary envelope. There have already been changes to the way that we work. The Government is trying to get things across the line and pass the budget, and we want to do the best for our pupils, too. Do you not think that negotiations on this issue should be reopened?

Okay.

Will the policy deliver that?

If you do not mind my saying so, I am hearing a bit of scepticism about whether the policy is beneficial for children, so who does the policy benefit?

I know that this was not necessarily your idea but, to go back to Karen Adam’s initial question, what do you think the metrics of success are that will allow us to know whether the policy will benefit children and young people? What should we look for that says that the policy will benefit education?

At the moment, we do not have teachers at all.

That is all—thank you, convener.

It was somebody who works in the system in England who told me this, so it might be wrong, but I was told that Teach First-qualified graduates in England are not allowed to teach in Scotland, because their qualifications are not recognised here. I thought that that was a shame, if we have massive deficiencies in certain areas, that those people could not fulfil those positions. Even if somebody is just there for the short term, it is better to have somebody teaching the subject than nobody, as far as I can see.

The more I listen to and read about the discussion on this area, the less sense it seems to make to me as a priority that we are choosing for an education system which—as we know after last week’s programme for international student assessment results—is struggling in certain areas.

The Institute of Physics in Scotland says that 18 secondary schools do not have a full-time physics teacher. I know people who have been trying to teach themselves online. A total of 55 per cent of our secondary school teaching positions are filled, and we are going to reduce further, by between 6 and 7 per cent, face-to-face teaching time with students. I cannot see how that is going to benefit the students, given the current situation that we are looking at. I wonder whether there is something else in which we should invest that money. We know that we are going to be facing significant reductions in the public purse in the current session of Parliament.

You have experience, and I get that you all represent different bodies. What would you invest the resource in, if you had £300 million to improve the outcomes for our learners? I am interested in hearing contributions from all of you, given your different perspectives. You have been teachers or have been involved with negotiating through your various bodies in your lifetime.

I am interested in your personal view—you have enough professional experience in this—but I guess that that might create a conflict of interest for you.

On a slightly associated area, it is good to hear about additional support needs. As a political party, we were very strong on recognising that issue, because teachers told us that it was a solution that they really wanted us to focus on.

You talked about an equivalent to Teach First, with the potential to retrain local authority employees or transfer those who have the skills. In England, they have the Teach First programme, in which the training is condensed so that somebody from a different profession can come into teaching in the area. Are there ways to enable that to happen—to meet the needs of those living in more rural areas, for example?

That, for me, is the core issue. For all our children, it is about a stable, lifelong, loving relationship. If we zone in, that is what we are trying to achieve for children and young people, because, if they have that, they are held, guided, grown, developed and nourished. That is exactly what you are saying about being safe and respected.

However, somehow, we seem to lose focus on that, and we are left with a feeling that, although we are sometimes meeting the Promise in one area, there is evidence that we are nowhere near meeting it in another. We have not even implemented reforms that predate the Promise, and it feels like a boorach, because we do not have everyone in the system working towards that goal. A child needs to be cared for in a stable, lifelong, loving relationship. Who will provide that, and what are we doing to enable that to happen?

10:30

A resolute focus on that would be helpful, because I am left with the question of who is responsible for delivering on the promise that such a relationship will be provided. Saying to a child that someone is going to love them and that it is our job to make sure that they are loved is quite a basic promise. However, we are saying that the Promise can be delivered by various people, that the Government has too much control, that we will give responsibility to local authorities, and that many different agencies will be involved, from justice to housing to addiction services and so on.

When she was First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon told us that the Promise was the biggest priority for Scotland, and that it was an overarching policy on a level with independence and climate change for the Government at the time. Therefore, the Government should have overarching power over every other agency and institution to say what should happen. If it is the case that the policy has that level of priority for the country, who should be responsible for delivering on it?