Chamber and committees

It is hugely important that we create permanent contracts, and local authorities were given extra money in the budget to allow them to do that. I observe that Pam Duncan-Glancy’s party abstained on the budget.

Yes.

They are the same.

It is worth our while to reflect that there is still significant investment, although I accept the member’s point.

There is £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge, which includes the £130 million per year in pupil equity funding that goes directly to headteachers and the £43 million that goes to local authorities to undertake strategic approaches—the strategic equity fund, in essence. There has not been a reduction, I should say, to that £43 million for SEF.

Reflecting on the totality of investment from the Government in education more broadly, I note that our funding in Scotland by far outstrips that in any other part of the United Kingdom. The Institute for Fiscal Studies report that was published during the February recess said that, per head, we now spend more than £10,000 per pupil. Some reports say that the gap between us and other parts of the UK could be as high as 20 per cent in real terms.

I therefore note, while accepting the premise of the member’s point, that we are spending far more on our education system in Scotland.

I go back to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s point on schools in particular. If we can get the data arrangement with the DWP in place, that will help our intelligence with regard to how we target that support.

That is the point that I tried to make in my answer to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s point. I do not think that we are gathering the totality of qualifications through the NIF, but we are doing that via the stretch aims. There is therefore a disconnect in how that is portrayed. We are looking at ways in which we can move that, and that work is very much supported by Scotland’s secondary headteachers. Our measurement is a bit out of date in relation to capturing that totality; it is quite traditional in using the narrow measurement. I made that point to Ms Duncan-Glancy in discussing leavers’ qualifications. We are not telling the full story there, but we are doing that via the stretch aims. There is an opportunity for us to reset that through the NIF.

I hand over to David Leng to talk about the technical detail behind how we do that, because it has not been without challenge.

That is an interesting point. I do not know whether members were out and about in their constituencies last week for Scottish apprenticeship week, but I hope that they were. I always ask young people who are undertaking an apprenticeship how they found out about it, and I always receive a variety of answers. I think that there is space in the careers collaborative work that Mr Dey is leading at the moment and in education reform, in particular—although not through legislation—to look at our careers offering. I am very keen that we do that—Mr Dey is already undertaking such work—to ensure that young people are advised about the pathways that are open to them.

When I was at Glenrothes high school in my constituency last week, I had a chat with Roddy Campbell, who is the careers adviser there. He knows all his young people. Some young people who have left Glenrothes high school will come back to speak to Roddy about their pathways. There might be confusion about destinations for many young people, but others get real support, and the headteacher at Glenrothes high school says that she could not do her job without having such a strong offering from that careers adviser.

There are examples of good practice, but there is also a need for us to look again at how we can better support consistency. One key theme that came out of the 2022 report was that there is local variance in attainment across the country. We need to see greater consistency in the support that is provided for young people, particularly by the careers service.

I will wait to receive advice from officials. That relates to wider work. We are coming to the end of the 10-year investment, so the aim was to pull some good working together.

I have not seen it yet, but I will be happy to share the details of it with you.

Yes, it is quite striking. I think that there are a number of reasons for the issue. I have not been given further advice in relation to that gender split, so I will ask our officials to look at that in a bit more detail.

I suspect that it might relate to the fact that, in general—although I do not like to make generalisations—women are often able to talk about their feelings in ways that men might find more challenging. That relates to our understanding of masculinity. Particularly in Scotland, there are quite gendered traditional perceptions around talking about your feelings, and that might be coming out in some of that evidence.

Of course, the other interesting point is the rise of misogyny in our schools, which might be behind the issue. However, to be perfectly honest, I have not had official advice on the issue, and I will ask officials to look at it in the round.