Chamber and committees

More generally—I know that the committee has taken evidence on this—we have seen a real uptick in dysregulated behaviour. I spoke about the challenge with some of our youngest citizens, such as speech and language delays. In the behaviour in Scottish schools research that was published in November, we saw some really challenging behaviour in some of our youngest citizens. In primary 4, which is age eight, there were real challenges with behaviour and relationships that we would not have seen before the pandemic.

I do not think that we can say that Covid has not made a difference. It has compounded the challenge that existed in the system prior to lockdown—there was challenge previously—but we also see gaps in our children’s learning. When we talk about comparing exam results from the past four years with exams that were taken before the pandemic, we need to be careful. We all need to accept that there are big gaps in our children’s learning, because they were not in school for extended periods.

How the system responds to the need to support our young people is important. Prior to my time in this role, the previous cabinet secretary worked with the Scottish Qualifications Authority to provide a package of support to children and young people before the previous examination round. We have looked at a number of ways in which we can support people online, and I think that the committee might have taken evidence on that. E-Sgoil has been very important in that respect, in providing digital opportunities. We also have the national e-learning offer—NeLO—via Education Scotland, which is very strong.

The final point that I want to touch on is the work that we have done through the SAC programme with virtual headteachers, who, in a number of parts of Scotland, are working with our care-experienced young people to support their learning and their attendance. We know that there are real anxieties in the system, and sometimes virtual headteachers have a reach that traditional classroom-based or school-based headteachers might not have.

We are looking at different ways of working to enhance and protect the outcomes for the young people who, during the pandemic, became disengaged from their learning.

I have previously touched on evidence—I think it was at the committee, but certainly in Parliament—that was published down south in January by the Centre for Social Justice, which looked at the frayed link between school and families during the pandemic and how that is having a compounding effect on attendance. Again, I hope that we will go back to this issue, because we have real challenges with attendance. I encourage the committee to look at the local-level data and the variance across the system. We have a local authority in Scotland where 50 per cent of young people in secondary school are persistently not attending school, which means that they are missing 10 per cent of their school year. That is a significant amount of learning. We cannot hope to respond to challenges relating to behaviour, attainment or attendance if our young people are not in front of us.

All the post-pandemic issues that Mr Kidd speaks to are intrinsically linked. Obviously, we might now hear Mr Kidd’s views on whether what is being done is working. I do not think that there is a magic wand that we can wave, but we are looking at new ways of working, and the virtual headteacher programme is a good example of that.

We have always had a cohort of school refusers. That is not a new feature of Scottish education; it exists in most education systems. Fundamentally, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 sets out the expectation that children and young people should be in school. It is a legal requirement that they go to school, and we should be mindful of that.

There are ways in which local authorities can support young people. To go back to Mr Kidd’s question, we can use virtual headteachers and online approaches. There are outreach mechanisms—some schools use their pupil equity funding to employ people to go to young people’s doors to encourage them to attend school, which can help with the problem. There is a range of mechanisms that schools have always used to engage young people in their education. I do not see that as a new feature post-pandemic. The real difference is the move to digital as an option. However, it should not be the first preference; attending school is the first preference.

If there are areas that the committee thinks are missing from the action plan, I would be happy to read about that in the committee’s final report. We are progressing our update on the actions, which will be published in the next few weeks, but we have an opportunity to ensure that the action plan is actually driving the change that Ms Maguire has spoken about.

On Ms Maguire’s substantive point, the landscape is quite cluttered as far as the support available to parents is concerned, and one of the actions in the action plan is to simplify that. After all, there is a range of support available—there is the let’s talk ASN service, the support for children and young people, the Enquire service and so on—and we need to pull all of that together and signpost parents to ensure that they get the support that they need and to prevent escalation, which in turn brings us back to the point about the tribunal service. Right now, parents and young people can receive support in a variety of ways, and the situation is not always clear.

I think that we are open to revising the specifics in that regard. I know that Laura Meikle wants to come in on this point, but I think that we reviewed access to CSPs in 2021 on the back of the Morgan review.

We have already committed to strengthening the code of practice in this space, and I know that that work has been going on since the 2021 review. However, on Mr Greer’s substantive point, he is asking me to commit today to changing legislation, so I seek to come back to him on that.

There is undoubtedly an opportunity in public sector reform. Audit Scotland and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have made points about that here and have said that parents should not have to fight. That goes to the heart of the issue, because we have built a system that can result in a senior teacher in a school having to pull partners together to co-ordinate the support for a young person. We must put the young person at the centre—that is the GIRFEC ethos—but let us build support around the young person rather than fight over budget lines as often happens now. Public sector reform will give us an opportunity to drive that forward.

We are already beginning cross-portfolio work with health on a number of different areas. Speech and language therapy is a good example, and there are other opportunities to bring health to the table. For example, I would be happy to share details with the committee of how Education Scotland is working with Public Health Scotland and a number of headteachers on a public health approach to attendance. That is really interesting, because health has a huge role to play in tackling some of the challenges.

To that end, I hope that the update that we will publish following the committee’s report will be helpful, but I will speak to officials about that. Given that officials and I engage with the partnership boards more regularly than the committee does, it may be that we can send the committee updates every six months, for example, on the progress of that work.

Absolutely. A key theme in the committee’s evidence has been that the approach cannot simply be about education responding to the challenge; we need a partnership approach from various partners. I have touched on health today, but the member makes a good point about the importance of football clubs and local communities.

In the debate that we had on behaviour in schools a couple of weeks ago, in Conservative parliamentary time, Brian Whittle gave a very good speech to that end. He is passionate about the subject anyway, but the role of sport in responding to some of the challenges post-Covid is fascinating, and that is an opportunity for us to pursue further. I know that Mr Macpherson has a constituency interest in the matter, as he has raised that with me in the chamber previously.

On attendance specifically, I think that, when I was first appointed, I received weekly updates; those are now fortnightly updates. In the first few weeks of my appointment—we have discussed this in the chamber—we touched on the variance in relation to certain groups after the pandemic. We were seeing dips in attendance in year groups that were transitioning during lockdown, whether that was from primary 7 to secondary or during the transition from broad general education to the senior secondary phase. At the time, we were of the view that those young people had had really important periods of their education disrupted and had then found it very hard to re-engage with the system.

Last year, I commissioned Education Scotland to undertake further work on absence. It published national guidance on that in November, which the committee might be aware of, and we then published further data in December that showed that school absence across the board was at record low levels. It is important for the committee to understand that.

The new measure that we have introduced is about persistent absence—10 per cent absence in a school year of, I think, 190 days, so let us say 20 days a year of missed education. That is a big chunk of your education to lose.

With regard to engagement with other portfolios, I have not specifically engaged with other portfolios on attendance, but I have engaged with them on behaviour and on a number of other educational issues, and I will engage with my colleagues on the issue of absence, because, of course, it is not just about school.