Chamber and committees

No. I think that there are still issues to address, some of which I set out in my opening statement.

Look—I accept all the good work that is happening in our schools, and I think that we should celebrate it, given that these young people lived through a global pandemic and that, therefore, we can expect their outcomes to look different to the outcomes of those who came before them. There are still challenges with absence, but there has been improvement in the past year, and I certainly welcome that.

There are also challenges with getting young people back into formal education, and there are challenges with families, too. A number of our schools now use their pupil equity funding from Government to employ family liaison officers to help with that work. Not long ago, I was in a Kirkcaldy primary school that has attendance officers—they are now called family liaison officers—going out to have individual conversations with parents on the doorstep in order to bring children into school. Some of the work is very detailed and individual, and it will necessarily take time, because there is no quick fix when it comes to such work—it is relational.

As for the point that Mr O’Kane has rightly raised on persistent absence, that is a new measurement that we introduced two years ago, I think, because we were not gathering data on it and we were of the view that we needed to do so. I would also draw Mr O’Kane’s attention to local variations across the country within that persistent absence measurement. It is not a flat or static picture, and some local authorities need more support than others. For that reason, I announced in, I think, 2023—I will check that, convener, but Alison Taylor will correct me if I am wrong—some intensive work to improve attendance, and Education Scotland has been tasked with supporting those local authorities facing the greatest challenges.

Finally, we launched the national marketing campaign on improving attendance in October. That has been quite successfully received, but it is very much in the space of supporting parents with regard to pupils coming back to school.

I worry about the fact that many of this generation of young people have experienced much of their education online, and about what that says to them about the importance of attending and being present. Being present at school is important for good reasons—after all, there are legal requirements in that respect—and we need to go back to encouraging families to recognise why it is important.

However, if you look at the statistics on attendance, you will see that there are other issues, such as the numbers of young people who are absent because they are on holiday. That, to me, is not acceptable. There are issues with how schools can support children when they miss periods of their education, and a lot of that work is being supported by Education Scotland. When it comes to the young people who missed out on their education during the pandemic, we must do all that we can to help provide that supportive environment in school.

I am going to stop talking now, Mr O’Kane, because I am aware that I have given you another very long answer.

Again, there was quite a lot in that. In relation to numeracy, I gave an update to Parliament on the back of the last set of PISA—programme for international student assessment—results, which I think would have been this time in 2023. At that time, PISA called those results the Covid edition, and we had seen a stagnation in progress.

On numeracy, there were challenges so, in 2023, I appointed Andy Brown to lead on that work as the national maths specialist. He is a headteacher but is a maths specialist to trade and, for the past two years, he has been leading a body of work to improve our numeracy curriculum. Much of that work leads to the curriculum improvement cycle, and I understand that he will be setting out some of that in very short order. I had a meeting with him and Education Scotland a few weeks ago. We need to look at the core curriculum content.

There are other issues with how children are taught maths. I am not a maths specialist to trade, and I do not pretend to be one, but I have had very informative discussions with Andy on the ways in which maths is being taught in our schools and the ways in which we can support more enjoyment in the learning of maths, because I recognise that there are challenges in that regard. We see a split in subject choice in the senior phase. In recent years, we have seen an increase in applications for maths, and that needs to be considered in the round. We have engaged with local authorities—with COSLA in particular—and with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland.

On Mr O’Kane’s concern about writing, a really important piece of work through the national improvement programme has been supporting improved outcomes on writing, particularly in our primary schools. I would be more than happy to write to the committee with details of that work. It is a programme that works, and I would certainly like to give due consideration to scaling it up. Of course, that would require budget, and I again invite committee members to consider how they might play a role in that.

I think that we are seeing an improved picture, although I take on board Mr O’Kane’s points. In my statement to Parliament last week, I made reference to the issues in primary 1 and some of the work that I will take forward in that regard. Those are our Covid babies, and I am very worried about their outcomes. We also see gaps in speech and language development in some of our youngest pupils in our poorest communities—Ms Don-Innes will be aware of that, as we have discussed it with officials. All of that plays into a trajectory whereby educational outcomes have been disrupted, and we need to think about the different types of interventions that we can make to better support children and young people.

The chief inspector has a key role to play in that regard, and I have set out some of the further work that Education Scotland is taking forward. However, the ACEL—achievement of curriculum for excellence levels—data from last week shows that the proportion of primary pupils achieving the expected CFE levels in literacy has increased to the highest level to date. For S3 pupils, the proportions achieving third level or better in literacy and numeracy are at their highest-ever levels. In 2024-25, the poverty-related attainment gap for primary pupils in literacy reduced to its lowest-ever level, and for primary numeracy the gap has reduced to its lowest-ever level.

I accept that those are top-line statistics, as it were, and that, within different year groups, there are different challenges, but the overall picture is nonetheless one of improvement. I hope that all members will welcome that picture and support the Government’s agenda on how we drive further intensified improvement.

I will bring in Alison Taylor on the specific issue of Donaldson’s school, but I come back to Mr Mason’s general question about how we better support pupils with additional support needs. The Government has a number of specialist schools that we fund directly, which is quite a unique approach and is, you might argue, a historical anomaly. However, I will bring in Alison to talk about Donaldson’s school, if that is okay.

Well, it is a tripartite responsibility, Mr Rennie.

I am sorry.

The West Partnership is an example of one of the strongest RICs in the country, but not all RICs worked in the manner that the West Partnership worked. Some of the work that the West Partnership undertook has continued, which is helpful.

However, in other parts of the country, there was some scepticism about the impact of the RICs. I took the decision that I did at that time having listened to the profession, but I appreciate that Mr O’Kane has had a different experience.

There is no quick fix for the issues with attendance. We have to work with families and I have been struck by the number of schools that are now employing family liaison officers in place of what would have been attendance officers when Mr O’Kane and I were at school to work directly with families and put in place the support that they need.

The previous example that I gave involved parents being supported with qualifications. In other primary schools I see parents being supported by health and wellbeing coffee mornings to get mums and dads into schools so that young people also come into school. Much broader support is now being given to the community by the school, and that is why we need to evaluate the Scottish attainment challenge fund. I am not sure that, when it was introduced more than 10 years ago, we could have predicted some of the interventions that are being used now, some of which involve schools responding to societal change and poverty and, in so doing, supporting families and broader social cohesion. However, we need to think again about educational outcomes and how we can intensify progress.

We have made some progress, but I agree with Mr O’Kane that we need to move at pace to provide more intensified support. That is where the Government comes in through Education Scotland and through working with individual local authorities in the way that I mentioned.

It is our commitment, but we need to get agreement on the time. The panel has also been clear that, once we can get agreement on the use of the time, it thinks that we might be able to move forward—that is what is said in the letter that I received from the panel, which was published yesterday. The panel might not agree with everything that is being proposed, but I had a really helpful meeting with it a few weeks ago.

You asked what is new, Mr Rennie. I have published quite a few things about the four-day teaching week, which is new because, for example, it relates to how we might standardise learning hours across the country. At the moment, we see variance in learning hours across local authorities—Clare Hicks or Alison Taylor can keep me right on this, but I think that it is up to two hours per local authority for primary 1 pupils. That means that, depending on where you live, your child will perhaps receive either two hours more or two hours less education in the working week. We need to look at those things to ensure greater consistency.

All the things that I have announced, including work on reducing bureaucracy—that was announced only four weeks ago—are new. It is for the SNCT to agree with the proposals—I cannot unilaterally foist changes on the profession, nor would I want to. We have to get agreement with COSLA, which is why the meeting that officials will have with COSLA tomorrow is so important.

I will just walk Mr Rennie back to the 2021 election, as we are now living in different financial and economic times. The 2021 election predated Liz Truss’s mini-budget, the inflationary challenges that we have seen and the war in Ukraine, which have meant that inflation and wages have increased. As a result, in order to meet teacher pay demands throughout the period, which we have done successfully, other things and the way that we fund them have had to adapt over time.

I do not recall it being an overt choice of the Government to change approach and pursue change via this mechanism. We commissioned the independent research that you spoke about, Mr Rennie, but we have to be mindful that things are more expensive now than they were. The Government has responded to that by paying our teachers appropriately, but you are right that our modelling suggests that we could use 2023 figures to deliver on the expectation to reduce class contact.

Yes, briefly. Last year, we provided an uplift to the colleges sector of 2.6 per cent. There was also extra funding in the budget of £3.5 million for offshore wind and social care skills.

However, I am very alive to the fact that there are real challenges in our colleges. I met Colleges Scotland last week, ahead of the budget. As you would expect, I have also been having discussions at ministerial level with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government so that she is well appraised of the challenges in the colleges sector. Its sustainability is perhaps one of the most challenging parts of the education system at the current time. Mr Macpherson is leading work on sustainability in the sector and might want to say more on that.

I am mindful that our colleges are suffering and that, as a Government, we need to reflect on how we can better support their sustainability. They provide pathways in our communities for young people and adult learners, who universities are often not able to reach. It is important that they continue to exist and that we support them to have a sustainable footing. The briefing from Colleges Scotland has been helpful in that regard, and we are thinking about creative ways in which we can provide more support to the sector through the budget.

I am all ears to any suggestions that Opposition members might have in that regard—we exist in a Parliament of minorities, of course. If Opposition members want to come forward with budget proposals to support the colleges sector, the finance secretary and I would be very amenable to sitting down with them and talking about those in more detail. My view is that we will have to radically consider how we can support the sector into the future, because it is facing a number of challenges.

We are looking at all those issues. There is a sustainability challenge for the here and now, which we need to look at for the next financial year. We will have to consider that in relation to the budget. There are wider issues in relation to capital, which we have looked at and have provided supplementary support for in the past. I am very focused on the here and now and on working with the colleges sector on a longer-term vision, which is exactly the work that Mr Macpherson is leading on in relation to sustainability. I know the specific issues that Dundee and Angus College is facing in that regard, some of which are historic. We need to be mindful of what we can do in a one-year budget and what we might be able to do in the longer term. Those discussions are happening through my engagement with the finance secretary, with Mr Macpherson and with Colleges Scotland directly.

Adam Reid might want to say more about the capital work.