Chamber and committees

I am somewhat confused by your line of questioning.

I have not been presented with clear-cut examples of the health service not meeting that need. On CAMHS in particular, data was published last week that showed that the Government has met the required timescale on CAMHS referral waiting times, which I think is 12 weeks. That is welcome news. Therefore, children and young people should not be waiting in excess of a year for that support. That improvement has been driven by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care with the aim of supporting some of our most vulnerable young people.

Of course, CAMHS is the extreme end of the system. From an educational perspective, we always want to try to help support health and wellbeing in schools. It is one of the curriculum areas in the curriculum for excellence, but we also provide funding that is separate to PEF of £15 million for school counsellors. Money from that goes to every secondary school in Scotland, so there should be that provision in every secondary school.

In the post-pandemic period, society has many challenges in relation to mental health. The issue is not limited to children and young people, and many parents are struggling. Some of the interventions that we see, such as the one that I gave the example of at the primary school in Kirkcaldy, are about supporting the mental health of mums. In supporting better mental health for the mums and the carers of young people, the initiatives support better educational outcomes.

More broadly, there are challenges with mental health. I have not been presented with examples of where the health service is not making that intervention and the need is being mopped up by education, but if Mr Briggs or others have such examples, I would be keen to look at them, because we want to ensure that there has not been an erosion of the PEF and that it is being used to support the people that it is intended to support.

Of course, PEF money may well be used to, for example, support nurture in schools. I have seen examples of that in a primary school in Glasgow, where the third sector was brought in to get primary 6 pupils to talk about their emotions. That is not something that, as a secondary teacher, I would have countenanced teaching my young people to do, but teachers are now having to instil in their young people things such as the ability to cope with emotions and talk about their feelings, perhaps because of pupils’ frustrations in relation to having to deal with other challenges.

To reflect the real ask here—to give you that reassurance—the appointments process will have to take account of any amendments that are agreed to at stages 2 and 3.

I put on the record my recusal from involvement in the Promise, due to my wife’s role in that, but I think that I am permitted to talk more broadly about care-experienced young people. I will allow officials to correct me if that is not the case.

I am told that I am able to talk about that. The gap has been narrowing since 2009-10. I know that Mr Rennie does not like that measurement, but we need to look at the trajectory of improvement between care-experienced young leavers and all children. The narrowing of that gap is welcome news. The gap has widened slightly for lower-level qualifications—across level 4—but it is still half the size that it was in 2009-10 and narrower than it was before Covid. As we often see in August when the exam results are published, to some extent, we need to discount the Covid years, because, in those years, different rules were applied to, for example, the qualifications system. With regard to the Covid measurement, the gap is still narrower than it was, but there remains a sizeable gap in relation to care-experienced young people’s educational outcomes, so we need to do more to focus local authorities on driving the improvements that are required.

In response to Mr Briggs’s question about attendance, I spoke about the role of virtual headteachers. They have been doing a lot of work at the local level in supporting care-experienced young people to access education and to come back to schools. There are a number of examples of how that works on the ground that officials might want to talk about—I see that David Leng has a wee note about that. The virtual headteachers programme has been used in a number of local authorities and is making a real difference to the lives of care-experienced young people, but there is still challenge in that regard.

Do you mean if the draft order does not pass today?

That is a matter that the Parliament will have to respond to.

Ah, right—okay. Regarding leavers’ destinations more broadly, some of the challenge relates to the pandemic generation, and we have talked about some of the impacts in that regard. How we measure what success looks like is a broader challenge.

In its report, the committee highlighted the disconnect between the aspirations that are set out in the national improvement framework and the stretch aims. That challenge is partly borne out by the fact that today’s broad educational offer looks totally to different to when you and I were at school, and lots of different qualifications are delivered. At the current time, I am not clear—headteachers will probably agree with this—that we are gathering the totality of achievements in all our measurements.

Some of that is quite unhelpful for the full story. Last week, on the radio, Mr Briggs received a bit of pushback on that from a headteacher, who said, “If you look narrowly at one measure, what you are saying is right, but actually, you need to look at the totality of achievements”. Historically, we had a cohort of young people who left school with no awards or qualifications. Nowadays, they are more likely to have national progression awards or national 3 qualifications and be supported to achieve and go on to a positive destination as a result.

Therefore, the gap is in part due to our measurements—you might have a view on that. Local government has a view on it, and it uses the measurements that are set out in the stretch aims. Officials will correct me if I am wrong, because it is a long time since I looked at this, but it does that because Insight, which is the tool that is used by headteachers and school staff, looks at the totally of qualifications across the piece. It presents a truer story in terms of the full picture of destinations.

I am comfortable, convener, because, if I do not move now, we will not have an operational board to fulfil the functions of the new body. There is a requirement on me, on which I have been advised by my officials, to move forward on that—to have the board ready to operate.

It is worth saying that, if the motion on the order is not agreed to today, it will not be possible to start making regulated board appointments to qualifications Scotland before its establishment. It is hugely important that that body has a working board that is ready from day 1 to undertake the work that we expect it to do.

Such matters will be discussed in relation to the amendments that are lodged. As I have made clear to the convener, we will look to engage with committee members across the Parliament on that basis.

In my opening remarks I spoke about a number of board appointments—five were made late last year. I referred to Ms Rogers as the new chair, but I accept the convener’s point that she was appointed in December 2023 and so is perhaps not so “new” any more. Fresh leadership was brought in at that time, and we will look at further appointments as part of the upcoming recruitment process.