Chamber and committees

Perhaps Mr Marra can come back to me in correspondence if he cannot hear me. I will carry on and see where we get to.

I said that the guidance had not changed from before Christmas. We listen very carefully to the expert advice on the issue. The £5 million is in addition to the £10 million that was given previously for CO₂ monitoring and the previous allocation of £90 million for Covid logistics, which many local authorities have used part of for improved ventilation.

The ventilation support fund that was announced by the First Minister yesterday is to ensure that we are supporting the Scottish guidance on ventilation in schools, which is, as I said, the same as it was before Christmas. It will help to support any remedial action that is required. As I have said to Mr Marra and others, from the feedback that we get from local authorities, there is a very small amount of remedial action required for a small minority of spaces, but I wanted to ensure that funding was not a blockage, and that is the reason for the fund. It could be used for high-efficiency particulate absorbing filters if they were identified as the only appropriate solution for particular spaces.

However, once again, I point out that the expert advice that we are getting on this issue is that air-cleaning devices should not be used as an alternative to improving natural ventilation, and the updated guidance makes very clear the circumstances in which the use of air-cleaning and filtration devices might be appropriate. That is aligned with the advice that we are getting from the Health and Safety Executive. Therefore, the money is not simply for HEPA filters but is for whatever remedial action local authorities feel is required, and they can discuss that with Scottish Government colleagues.

Mr Marra—

We are working very quickly with local authorities to determine how to get the money out of the door as quickly as possible. If there is a wish to have funding provided, we want to be able to provide it in the current financial year.

That ties in with the point that you raised about need being different among local authorities. It may vary, depending on, for example, the age of the schools and what is already in place in a school setting. It would seem more sensible for the money to be drawn down as required by local authorities, so that we can be sure that we are getting the money to where it is needed. Mr Greer rightly points to the information that we got back from the EIS survey, and I would highlight the feedback that we are getting from local authorities on their CO₂ monitoring, which notes that very little remedial action is required at this point. We want to be able to direct the £5 million funding to where it is needed.

We have a wide range of surveys that go out. As I said, the health and wellbeing survey is one of those. We are keen to look at the data that we gather in general to ensure that it provides the information that we think we require. That is why we have a short-life working group looking at those aspects.

We also have the growing up in Scotland survey, which looks at some of the types of data that the member is talking about. I hope that that reassures the committee that we are keen to gather the right data in the right way to enable us to determine the impact of policies not just in education but in other areas, along with the impact of what is happening in society in general, on children and young people.

We will provide information about what is happening at a national level as soon as we can. I am sure that, at a local level, work is already on-going with schools and local authorities.

I do not think that anyone wants to be in a position whereby young people are concerned about the build-up to their exams or learning. That is why it is very important to reassure them that, throughout the entire academic year, continuous work has been done to ensure that work in relation to e-Sgoil and other e-learning opportunities has continued to be built on, and that will continue during the year. The feedback that we have had is that it is going down exceptionally well and is being well received by teachers and pupils. There has been an exceptional amount of work during the entire academic year to build on what is available to support children and young people, and we will continue to do that work.

Professor Ken Muir has now completed his consultation on the work, which is, again, in the current financial year and not the next one. The consultation was exceptionally well received by front-line staff and stakeholders and was very heavily used within that. On top of that, we have had discussions in the Scottish education council and the teachers panel to ensure that there is maximum consultation and discussion.

Ken Muir will now report back to me by the end of this month. I think that his recommendations will cover a lot of ground, but I will report back as quickly as I can with the Government’s response. After that process has happened, we will absolutely make sure that the on-going work has a key role for both the agencies that are involved in the reform process and the staff. It is difficult to determine at this point what that will be, because Professor Muir has not reported yet. However, I have reassured stakeholders that I am absolutely determined to have a very empowered reform process where front-line staff and, importantly, pupils have a key role in the process, and that is adequately accounted for in the budget.

We had set out the direction of travel clearly in our Covid recovery plans before the budget came out, because we recognised that there was going to be a very big challenge in that area. That is exactly why we made a commitment to £1 billion in funding for the Scottish attainment challenge, and it is why a commitment was made pre-budget to make permanent, and therefore baseline, the funding for teacher recruitment.

We knew that it was going to be a difficult time for children and young people, and we dealt with that by putting in train, for Covid recovery, the money for the Scottish attainment challenge. That was funded through the budget process. Of course, it was on top of the £500 million for Covid response and recovery that we had already put in place as the pandemic began.

We have carefully considered calls from further and higher education institutions for multiyear funding packages. I am sympathetic to that idea on the basis that that will allow for better planning. Obviously, given that the Scottish Government does not itself have a multiyear budget, providing multiyear funding for those institutions is challenging. The issue of further multiyear funding will be taken forward as part of the work that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy is doing. The Scottish Funding Council review also highlighted the importance of that, and we are keen to take early action on the SFC review overall to determine what else can be done to support the sector.

On what will happen from now on, there are aspects on which Governments should not intervene—industrial relations within the sectors, for example. As universities are autonomous bodies, industrial relations should certainly be left to them. It is also important that the role of colleges should be allowed to play out in relation to trade unions and to ensure that there is a positive working relationship with colleges and universities on industrial relations.

The spending review gives us the opportunity to consider how we can assist the higher and further education sectors in delivering not just for young people but for learners of all ages, as they do.

That is where the SFC has an exceptionally important role to play. It will engage with the sector to allocate the funding to the institutions and, importantly, continue to discuss with colleges and universities aspects of long-term financial sustainability—for example, long-term financial forecasts. It has an integral role to play as we move to the institutional settlements that will come from the funding. My officials and I will keep in close contact with the council as it continues to make its decisions on that and, particularly, as we move to wider discussions on the spending review for future years.