I am pleased to be joined today by my colleagues Mr Dey and Ms Don-Innes. I will start by setting out some of our key work across the committee’s remit and acknowledging some of the challenges.

In childcare and support for families, we have expanded the provision of free early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours a year and we continue to work with local authorities to reach more of the eligible two-year-olds. We are investing in 23 early adopter communities across six local authorities to design new childcare offers for children from early years to the end of primary school. That work is targeted at families who are most at risk of living in poverty. Our £3 million bright start breakfast fund will create thousands of new breakfast club places and, just this week, we announced more investment in our extra time programme.

Across Scotland’s schools, we have reset the agenda, following the pandemic, by using the national improvement framework to focus on our ABCs: attendance, attainment, additional support needs, behaviour and the curriculum. We are prioritising investment in those areas through our joint commitment to increase teacher numbers and our behaviour action plan, and we continue to speak directly to stakeholders to inform that work. As of yesterday, through our headteacher national events, I have engaged directly with every headteacher in Scotland, and I pay tribute to them and to all of Scotland’s teachers and school staff for the care that they invest in our children every day.

Members will note that the latest statistics, which are from December, show the highest levels of literacy and numeracy since records began, as well as the lowest ever gap in literacy attainment between the most and least disadvantaged pupils. This year’s settlement with local authorities has provided a 3 per cent real-terms uplift for education, and we continue to have the best-paid class teachers, the lowest pupil-teacher ratio and the greatest spend per pupil across these islands.

In further and higher education and skills, we have worked to support colleges and universities through extraordinary financial challenges that have been influenced by factors that are outwith the control of this Parliament. Ministers listened closely to the sector as we developed this year’s budget, and we are investing more than £1 billion in university teaching and research in 2025-26.

Since February, we have made an additional £25 million available to support the sector. Yesterday, Mr Dey chaired a cross-party discussion on the future of the sector with Universities Scotland, and we both look forward to continuing to work closely on that. Crucially, and unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom, we have also ensured that university tuition remains free.

All of that is complemented by an ambitious reform agenda across our education and skills system—strengthening and rationalising our curriculum, assessment and qualifications landscape; simplifying funding arrangements; and focusing on improved outcomes for all learners.

I will close there and hope that I have set the tone for a collegiate evidence session that will have the wellbeing of Scotland’s learners at its heart.

As I understand it, principals’ salaries are set by our universities, which are independent, autonomous institutions. However, the point that the convener made, which was raised at committee last week, relates to restraint. I believe that restraint should be exercised in relation to salaries, and that we should be particularly mindful of other salaries, the cost of living crisis and the optics of salary levels to other staff.

On Thursday evening, I spent a long time at the EIS annual general meeting with my official, who I am looking to, listening to the concerns of members in relation to some of the points that you made.

The views of teaching staff have been central to all of my work as cabinet secretary. In the past year, as I alluded to in my opening response, I have spoken to every headteacher in the country, which has not been without challenge. Your point about engaging with them directly is important. I have directly addressed the issue at every single one of those events, and we had a robust discussion about it at the EIS AGM.

More broadly, one of the points that I have made when that point has been raised with me is that, across our society, we see challenges with aggressive and violent behaviour. We see that playing out in increases in misogyny, and we even see it in politics. Therefore, it should not be a surprise to people that that is now happening in our classrooms. We should look to connect those two issues and try to tackle them jointly, as opposed to saying, narrowly, that they are issues faced only in our classrooms.

As for teacher engagement, the EIS and our other professional associations have been at the forefront of helping to formulate the national action plan, which I launched last August. The plan is part of the solution here, but I accept that it is not the totality of the response that is required. Schools cannot tackle such behaviour alone. The national action plan is starting to have an effect in our schools.

You will be aware that, in addition, before the end of this term we will publish updated guidance not only on consequences but on violent incidents in our schools, which I think was the premise of your question, convener, and in particular on conducting risk assessments.

I want to be absolutely clear that no teacher should experience violence in school. They should not be in fear of that happening in their classroom, for example. In recent weeks we have seen really challenging cases that have given me great cause for concern, and you have given examples of those from press articles. I will continue to engage with the teaching unions, to listen to Scottish teachers who have been at the forefront of the issue and to provide the funding that is required.

You will be aware that the Government’s budget provided for extra funding to increase the numbers of teachers and additional support needs staff. That is imperative to providing wraparound support for classroom teachers, in particular, in our school community. We need to work with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, too, to that end. We might come on to talk about some of those points in more detail but, for me, having that extra workforce is fundamental to tackling the behavioural challenges that we are seeing.

I would like to make other points on mobile phone use and gender-based violence, but I am aware that we have limited time. Members might want to come back on those, though.

I hear Mr Rennie speaking over me and ask him to allow me to complete my point.

Extra funding was provided in the budget and there was also extra additional support needs funding, which was ring fenced to local authorities for the provision of specialist staff. It is in their gift how that funding is deployed; that is not my role as cabinet secretary. If Mr Rennie wishes the Government to employ teachers, I would be interested in hearing him expand on that point because I often hear that in the chamber.

The second point is about primary teachers moving into secondary teaching. We are working with the General Teaching Council for Scotland on that very point and we are also looking at creative ways in which we might be able to use professional learning to support some of that work. I met with School Leaders Scotland last week and that body is amenable to that. I must say that the issue of having primary teachers working in secondary schools is not without debate in Scottish education and that our professional associations have differing views on that. I am a secondary specialist by trade, as Mr Rennie knows. I do not think that there is any support, quite rightly, for primary school staff being involved in the delivery of national qualifications and the GTCS would certainly have something to say about that, but there is a role for us in looking again at the role of primary teachers in the early years of secondary education. I know that a number of headteachers are now using primary teachers to deliver the broad general education. That is happening across the country and what matters is how we work with our professional associations to support them in that.

I can come back to Mr Rennie on his substantive points about numbers, but I must also say that we were not provided with any detail in advance of today’s meeting about what the committee wanted to consider. If Mr Rennie wants me to obtain that information from local authorities, which employ our ASN staff, I am more than happy to write to the committee with that detail.

I am sorry—it has declined since last year, but, in totality, there has been a great improvement since 2007. We have narrowed the attainment gap, particularly on the number of young people going on to positive destinations. We know that, historically, that was not always the pathway that they would have found after school. Ms Duncan-Glancy and I are of similar ages. She will remember that, when we were at school, at the end of secondary 4, there was often a cohort of young people who were encouraged to leave and go elsewhere. Their destinations were not tracked, their pathways were not supported, and they often did not go on to positive destinations. We have completely transformed that post-education pathway. There is now far more support for young people at school.

I accept that there has been a slight movement since last year, but, when we consider the statistics in the round, that level is still the second highest on record, so I am not sure that I can accept your overall negativity about our education system. It is clear from the ACEL data that we are starting to see improvement there, too.

I accept that we are moving into an election year, which might characterise some of our debates in the coming months. However, it is not all doom and gloom in Scotland’s schools and our education system. We do a disservice to those who work in our schools, colleges and early years facilities if that is the way in which we choose to characterise the situation.

The member will be well aware that there are currently a number of challenges on teacher numbers. Historically, there has always been a challenge on subject gaps, but we are currently seeing it present in some subjects in more ways than in others. More broadly, we also accept that there are challenges on primary staffing and impermanence, and I am sure that we will come on to discuss those in more detail.

We all know—because we regularly debate these matters in the chamber—that the Government does not employ teachers; local authorities do. I have been clear that, through our budget negotiations with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, I need to agree with local authorities on a funding approach that will protect teacher numbers and also deliver on the point that Ms Duncan-Glancy rightly raised on reducing class contact time, which we know will make a difference in alleviating the workload. She rightly mentioned the burnout that the profession is currently experiencing.

I am sure that that partly relates to the issues that Ms Dunbar raised in relation to PEF because, post-pandemic, schools are doing so much more to meet the needs of their children and young people. The expectations on our classroom teachers in particular are now completely different from what they might have been prior to 2020.

The responsibility for local workforce planning rests with local government; we have a responsibility nationally and we work with local authorities on that planning every year. However, through the work of the education assurance board, and through Ms Duncan-Glancy’s debate and another debate in this space more recently, we have agreed to have a national approach to workforce planning, with COSLA at the table—indeed, as the employer, local government must be there.

Finally, on teacher numbers and how we resource them, although we have our battles at the Cabinet table over the issue, I put extra money into the budget. We managed to uprate funding to £186.5 million to protect teacher numbers and there is £29 million of funding to support additional support needs in our schools. I must observe that Ms Duncan-Glancy and her party colleagues chose to abstain on the budget, which I do not think was the right call. The extra funding is there for a purpose; without it, I am not sure how we answer the challenge that Ms Duncan-Glancy has put to me today.

The premise of Ms Duncan-Glancy’s question is that ASN can be met only by an ASN teacher, but that is not the case. As we know, 95 per cent of pupils who are identified as having additional support needs are in mainstream education. Classroom teachers in Scotland have a responsibility to meet additional support needs, which is why they are provided with support to do that in their teacher training—

That takes me back to the point that I made previously, which is that we need to reduce class contact time. We do so by providing funding through the budget. If other parties can get behind it, we can deliver on that goal by putting in the extra teachers who are needed to allow us to reduce class contact and to create the time for teachers to engage in relation to ASN.

Roles and responsibilities are important here. Mr Rennie knows that local authorities are the employers. What we have done through the budget agreement, which was made in good faith—

That goes back to the challenge that we have been discussing about the relationship between local and central Government and how that is enacted in our classrooms. We have spoken about the reality that workload, in the main, is not being driven by national Government. In the main, as you all know, I do not have many levers that I can operate in my relationship with local authorities, so I have to work in partnership with them.

I have said to the professional associations that we must revisit the agenda with our local government partners to ensure that they are not adding to teacher workload. One way that we can do that is through the curriculum improvement cycle. I do not know whether we are going to talk about that today, because time is short. However, the curriculum improvement cycle allows us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we prescribe at national level and what we allow to be open to choice and local discretion, and a key issue that has come out of the headteacher events is the need for greater clarity and greater standardisation. Teachers want that to be spelled out for them in a way that I am not necessarily sure that we have done through the curriculum for excellence. Arguably, there has been too much fluidity in the system, which has not necessarily been as supportive as it could have been.

When we talk about reporting requirements, for example, or about tracking and monitoring, a bit more prescription and rigour in the system, particularly in primary education, would help to alleviate some of what is being asked for at the local authority level, given that we see local authorities doing lots of different things. If we had greater consistency on, for example, ASN, behaviour or how literacy levels are recorded, it would automatically alleviate the workload. I have been keen to press that point through the education assurance board.

We have also been in discussions with COSLA about the role of SEEMiS, which Mr Greer will know is the main reporting system that is used in Scottish schools. It is quite clunky and old, and we might be able to work in different ways in the future. For example, that system does not join up with the system for early years education, although we have been developing a new approach to that.

I am keen to revisit that agenda in partnership with local government. I appreciate the challenge from Mr Greer. There are opportunities through curriculum improvement and education reform. Mr Greer will also know about my cautiousness in relation to some of the work on education reform. That is because I taught in a school not that long ago and I know that we need to be mindful about the workload implications of changing our qualifications system. I am not sure that we reflected on that in the right way the last time that we did that, so, this time, we have to work with the profession.

That is why we have people such as Andy Brown, who is a maths specialist and a former headteacher, on secondment. He is leading all our work on numeracy. He is a subject specialist and he has credibility with the profession. It is only by using the profession to drive the curriculum change that we can also reduce workload. The profession must be part of leading some of the change that we need in our curriculum and, in so doing, alleviating the workload issues at the classroom level that Mr Greer rightly raises.