Thank you for suggesting the human rights legislation as a vehicle for updating the 2004 act. That will be a matter for members to consider.

On your substantive question, the ASL action plan is coming in the next few weeks. In discussion with officials ahead of this meeting, I was mindful that the committee will probably produce its report in the next few weeks. I want to ensure—because it is important—that the plan update listens to the outcomes of the committee’s inquiry. Therefore, the timescales associated with that are to some extent in the committee’s gift.

We previously published an action plan update last year. The commitment to deliver the entirety of the action plan will be achieved by March 2026. However, there has been an update every 18 months since the action plan was committed to. Mr Macpherson asked about quarterly updates. Updates have not been quite as regular as quarterly, but I can speak to officials about what we can do to fill the gap between the next update and the 2026 final plan.

I look forward to it.

I am not sighted on the specifics of the City of Edinburgh Council. I think that the committee took evidence from Peter Bain of School Leaders Scotland on that, and SLS has previously raised with me the devolved school management challenge. I will take a look at the specifics in relation to the City of Edinburgh Council. The convener and I are having a meeting on a separate issue so, in that meeting, we could perhaps update her on any engagement that officials have had with Edinburgh council.

I should say that that is not my local paper.

I thank Mr Kidd for his question, which raises an important point. We have a new deal with local government through the Verity house agreement arrangements. As the committee will be aware, some of the budget settlement looks to remove a level of ring fencing. There are two budget lines from which we remove ring fencing, and they are already baselined into the grant for local government. They will be contained within that but come from my budget. Additional lines come from me directly, which are more ring fenced, although they are quite a small proportion—around 5 per cent overall. Therefore, other than that 5 per cent, local authorities have some flexibility in relation to how they spend.

Through the Verity house agreement, I was keen to establish a quality assurance framework between us and local authorities. We have been working on that since this summer. In August, we began engagements with COSLA. I meet COSLA very regularly—every two or three weeks—and I am keen that we deliver on a change in that relationship not just through Verity house but through accountability. I might argue that, as cabinet secretary, I am hyper-accountable to the committee, the chamber and the media, but education is delivered by local authorities, and they retain statutory responsibility for that.

When we look—as I do—at the performance in last year’s exam results, we see that there is variability in the system, and we need to tackle it with regard to outcomes. That is how we close the poverty-related attainment gap, and we need to drill into some of that. At Education Scotland, we have a team of attainment advisers—with whom the committee will be familiar—who support every local authority in trying to close the gap. Part of that work has been driven by local authorities identifying their stretch aims, which involves forward planning and saying, “In three years’ time, this is the progress that we will have made in closing the gap.” Education Scotland is involved in challenging and also supporting local authorities. That speaks to Mr Kidd’s question about improvement and delivery. We need to get into a better space that recognises that local authorities have responsibility for that.

As far as improvement is concerned, whether it is in behaviour, attendance or curriculum, local authorities have a real responsibility. Some of them take that extremely seriously and they have really good support mechanisms in place, such as quality improvement officers. I want to work with local authorities to support them to deliver that.

Part of the improvement will be supported by the appointment of the new chief inspector. I do not want to jump ahead, because we will talk about reform in the next session. The interim chief inspector has a key role to play in supporting local authorities with improvement and has powers to carry out their own inspections of local authority improvement mechanisms and how they work to support schools. I know that some people in the system say that that is a starting point for the new chief inspector. I am sure that she currently has her hands full with a few other things that I have sent her way, but I think that we should look at how central Government supports the improvement function at local authority level, because there are 32 different approaches to it around the country. Sometimes that difference is a strength of the Scottish education system, but sometimes we are not great at learning from other areas where there are pockets of good practice. That is where Education Scotland and the attainment advisers have a key role to play.

That is helpful, and it is correct to recognise that we are going back to the situation that existed prior to the pandemic. We should be mindful that the education system has been through a period of turmoil in relation to Covid. That additionality was built into the system, much in the same way that, post-pandemic, we have now gone back to holding examinations in schools. Things are different. When we try to baseline or measure things against the year that came prior to there being additional places in the system, I do not think that gives an accurate depiction, much like when we try to compare the attainment gap with that which existed last year or the year prior to that, because we had different arrangements in place for those years.

Ms Thomson is absolutely accurate and correct in her assessment that comparing those numbers with 2019 gives a better overall understanding of the progress that we are making in relation to student places.

I do not think that it is something that has happened since 2016.

Michelle Thomson has raised a hugely important point, particularly in the light of the challenges that the Government faces—which are well known to the committee—in relation to the Deputy First Minister’s update to Parliament at the end of last year. My portfolio is not insulated from those challenges.

We have worked hard to protect the education budget as best we can. My understanding of the public sector reform that is needed is that all organisations need to play a role—that all our public sector bodies will have to play their part. We need to take a nuanced approach to that, mindful of the fact that that will be easier for some public bodies than for others, given the services that they deliver. I am acutely mindful of that, given some of my responsibilities to those organisations—for example, our qualifications organisation—and the services that they deliver.

Michelle Thomson touched on education reform. Following discussion of the budget, we will go on to a session on that very issue. I am mindful of the need to support education reform, which is why the budget contains additionality—of just over £12 million, I think—to support the reform process. However, I accept that we will need to work very carefully with those organisations.

At the end of last year, the Deputy First Minister set out that there will be a 10-year plan and that we will look across Government to reduce spend—to be blunt—and to see where there are efficiencies to be made across the piece. All organisations will have to be part of that drive, but, to refer to Michelle Thomson’s specific point, we will have to take a nuanced approach. The way in which the budget has been delivered takes such an approach. It protects certain services, such as health and education, through the three-missions approach. I will seek to do that through reforming the public bodies in the education and skills portfolio while remembering the impact that education can have. It is not just about the spend in relation to education itself; it is also about preventative spend, which can benefit other portfolio areas.

There are a number of different demand-led programmes. I will bring in Stuart Greig on some of the specifics.

My understanding is that some of the savings that were generated from the Scottish Funding Council included—as the committee will know—money from the transformation fund, which saved in the region of £46 million. That is baked into this year’s financial settlement. There were a number of other demand-led budget lines, including the education maintenance allowance, for which there was less uptake in the previous financial year than had been forecast. There were also reductions to the European social fund income and, more broadly, the strategic change transformation fund.

Stuart Greig may want to say more on the specifics of those budget lines from the previous financial year.

I am happy to write to the committee with more detail on that. I do not have the specifics of those budget lines in front of me—