Chamber and committees

I have heard it from his party leader, so I wondered whether that was the point that he was making.

We have been able to protect education spend and we have enhanced it. However, there are challenges for the public finances, which are not unique to the education portfolio. Across the Government’s budget, we have had to make difficult choices.

We have protected health spend, for example, and we have protected and enhanced social security spend, but we have to look at the public service reform agenda that Mr Briggs spoke to earlier, and we all have a role to play in that regard. To my mind, though, the uplift that we have had for education this year has been really helpful, given the points that Ms Don-Innes made about childcare, the wraparound provision, the free breakfasts support and the support for the real living wage in ELC.

It is worth pointing out that there are always reconsiderations of budgets in-year and, of course, after an election. The next Government will look at those things in due course, and there may be reconsideration of some of the wider issues and the points that the SFC has made, particularly in relation to education. Protecting the budget has been a focus for this Government, though.

I accept that it is a challenge. We could have a political debate about the origins of said challenge, but I am not going to do that today. It is important that we are transparent. The approach to setting out our funding cycles has provided for that, but I put on the record that that will not preclude the next Government from looking again at allocations and considering where additionality might come from.

We have had an increase in this year’s portfolio resource funding—it is important to welcome that—for all the good work that Ms Don-Innes has set out, but we have also been able to protect funding for things such as teacher numbers. To my mind, protecting the education budget is vital. Of course, a former teacher would say that. As a Government, we have put in significant additionality through the Scottish attainment challenge and through protecting things such as free tuition, which speaks to our values as a Government.

I recognise the challenge here, but I do not believe that the challenge is unique to Scotland. The UK Government faces very similar challenges with regard to the public finances. We might have agreement in our politics on the origins of that and where it may have arisen, but it is important that we work in a transparent manner, and the way in which our spending is set out allows that to be open and us to be accountable to the public.

Officials might want to say more on the planning that we have done, but I say again that nothing precludes a future Government from looking again at the allocations. That is important.

Andrew Watson, do you want to say more on that?

If that were the case, we would not have seen the increases that I spoke to in relation to the uplift. We have talked today about the increase in relation to colleges, the increase in relation to childcare and the increase for free breakfasts, but—

I am going to be political here. Mr O’Kane invites me to welcome additionality from his party, but we have to be pragmatic about the challenges that his party’s settlement has created for this Government, not least of which is the increase in employer national insurance contributions, which are costing the public sector in the region of £400 million per annum. Those challenges could be alleviated by different decisions being taken elsewhere. I encourage Mr O’Kane to encourage his colleagues elsewhere to look again at the ways in which they can support this Government. When considered in the round, the uplift to Scotland is marginal because of the increased ENICs that are hitting our public services and having a detrimental impact on them.

11:45

Mr O’Kane makes an interesting point. What comes next in relation to the PEF Scottish attainment challenge is a matter for the incoming Government. As Mr O’Kane knows, I commissioned John Wilson, who is a former headteacher, to do a piece of work for the Government to look at what comes next for SAC. I think that Mr O’Kane’s party and mine are aligned in relation to our commitment to continuing SAC, because we know that it is so important.

I have spent the past year or so going around the country asking headteachers what they think should come next. We need to think creatively about what replaces PEF and SAC and how we can get that additionality into our schools. It is not additional any more to the point that Mr O’Kane makes.

However, I am not sure that we can divorce a decade-plus of austerity from what is happening in our classrooms now. The interventions that I see being used now in relation to PEF are a response to poverty. That is a change that we have seen in the past decade. I see PEF being used in creative and imaginative ways, and I am not sure that that is where the spend would have been used 10 years ago. We need to respond to that in how we fund our schools, which is exactly the piece of work that John Wilson is taking forward. We also need to recognise that in our budget provision. It is not about pure education any more; it is about the way in which we support families more broadly. In my view, as a Government, we need to adapt and respond accordingly in our budgetary provision.

The role of local government is really important. I am of the view that local government has received a good settlement this year—that is certainly what the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government set out. Additionally, it received a very good settlement last year. We will, of course, continue our engagement with it.

Forgive me—it is a quote.

We will continue to work with local government. I hear the points that are being made today. The delivery of school education, though, is inherently in the hands of local government, so I need to work with it. I have done my best to protect education spend in that regard, although I accept the point that you are making, which was also made by Mr O’Kane, that this is not just about education spend.

Just for clarification, are you asking about transitions between education and other things, or are you asking about ASN in school?

To echo Mr Briggs’s point, there is a lot of cross-party consensus on this, and I agree with a number of his points. I think that Angela Morgan reported in 2020, just before lockdown. Things have changed so much in our schools since then, to the extent that it has been very difficult for some of our pupils with additional support needs to return to school. When they have been able to do so, their experience of education has been turned on its head, which has led to complicated and often time-consuming interventions being put in place by very patient headteachers, who work with families over months, if not years, to ensure that the right educational provision is available for their young people. I recognise that.

In response to Mr Brigg’s points on health and education, I note that Roz McCall asked me a question on that issue following my statement last week. I caught up with her afterwards and made it clear that I am keen to pursue the matter further.

To give some reassurance, when Maree Todd was Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, I engaged with her extensively on the learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill. For all the reasons that Mr Briggs has enunciated today, I wanted to ensure that there was a coherent read-across on how we support ASN in schools and what the provision looks like in our health system. I accept that there is a silo, but we are committed to the LDAN bill, which Tom Arthur is working on. I alluded to the fact that we had a brief discussion about that yesterday, at the back of the chamber, but we will have a more formal discussion about it with our officials.

My officials were very involved in the work with health officials to reach a shared understanding on how we meet additional support needs. We should stop creating new pathways or new ways for people to find support, because the current arrangements are very confusing for families. The way that people access support through healthcare services will look different from how they access support in school education. A much more coherent approach needs to be taken. I like Mr Briggs’s suggestion of bringing health professionals into our schools, and I will certainly take that away from today’s meeting and mention it in my conversations with Neil Gray. Some of our schools share locations with health services, which can work well, depending on the school.

I think that I made the point to Mr Mason or Mr O’Kane that that speaks to some of the wider work that John Wilson is looking at. Our schools now meet needs that are not purely educational, so looking at co-locating services must be part of the solution. On top of that, it will bring additional budget.

Natalie Don-Innes wants to come in.