Chamber and committees

Instability with teaching jobs extends to supply teacher posts. Recent figures from the Scottish teachers for permanence campaign suggest that 80 per cent of supply teachers have had little or no supply work this year and, in some councils, more than 60 per cent of those teachers have had less than a month’s work. Taken with Pam Duncan-Glancy’s statistics, that paints a picture of job insecurity, negative impact on pupil experience, financial uncertainty and little encouragement for those who are seeking to join the profession. Can the First Minister provide the Parliament with a published strategy to address the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, or is his Government making it up as it goes along?

New research has revealed that rural households endure more cold weather than any other part of Scotland. However, the winter heating payment to which the cabinet secretary referred was previously assessed in Scotland—and still is assessed in the rest of the UK—using data from the nearest weather station. In 2020, it was worth £150 in Aboyne, £175 in Braemar and £150 in Aviemore. This year, as we heard, the Scottish Government has capped it at a flat rate of £58.75.

Why did the Scottish Government choose to centralise that and ignore local weather data? Will the Government consider reverting to a fairer system, based on local weather conditions, to bring the people of rural Scotland back in from the cold?

That will be cold comfort to those in the north-east who are losing more than £100 this year. In other areas throughout Scotland, many pensioners will be faced with the end of the winter fuel payment, which is at the choice of the Scottish Government. The cost of maintaining it would be £140 million. The Scottish Government could have chosen to fund that by using some of the £2 billion projected cost of the national care service, but it chooses not to. Why does the Scottish National Party choose to fund pet projects rather than to help pensioners who are freezing in their homes this winter?

To ask the Scottish Government how it will ensure that pensioners can afford to heat their homes this winter. (S6T-02121)

One measure of growth might be to ask what size the Scottish budget is and what it would have been had the Scottish Government made the same policy choices as the UK Government. When the Scottish Fiscal Commission did so, it pointed out that the Scottish National Party’s policy choices have cost the Scottish budget £624 million, something that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government failed to mention in her recent statement.

Does the minister think that Graeme Roy’s or Shona Robison’s analysis is correct? Does he accept that the SNP’s drastic spending cuts are the result of its policy choices?

The very fact that we are having this conversation is productive, because the Government recognises the importance of that extra training. We have recognised it for a very long time—our manifesto for the previous election talked about ensuring initial teacher training that would fully prepare all teachers to identify and support children with things such as dyslexia and autism. That was core to our manifesto offering.

When it comes to the core nature of the issue, and the need for prioritisation of it, I am afraid that the Government is not taking it seriously enough. That is borne out by the Government’s response, including to the committee’s proposed solutions. The Government’s response claims:

“The Scottish Government is fully committed to ensuring that ... those with additional support needs, are supported to live their lives to their fullest”,

despite the committee’s report suggesting entirely the contrary.

The Government's response goes on to say:

“That is why we have a highly inclusive legislative framework in place, which enables early learning, childcare and school settings to address any barriers to learning.”

However, the committee’s report suggests that it enables nothing of the sort.

Willie Rennie’s intervention was spot on: there has to be honesty about what is going on. I worry about the fact that, in its 27-page response, the Government, in characteristic fashion, either lauds past funding decisions and proudly states the inputs, without interrogating or assessing whether the outputs or the key performance indicators are being achieved—as the cabinet secretary just did in her remarks—or it pushes responsibility on to what it describes as its “partners”, including COSLA, Education Scotland, the universities and so on. When it is not slopey-shouldering on to its partners, it talks about what the ASL project board might do.

Many people outside here might be unfamiliar with the board, which was set up in October 2020 with a remit to deliver the ASL action plan by March 2026. That lack of familiarity is no surprise. Given that the minutes of its 31 July meeting were uploaded only on 20 September, if we assume that the ASL project board duly met as was intended on 12 September 2024, people will remain unfamiliar for some time. That is a pity, because the cabinet secretary committed in her response to deliver a progress report on the ASL action plan.

That progress report was last discussed by the ASL project board on 31 July, when the project board was content to approve the progress report to be presented to the Scottish Government and COSLA decision makers for clearance. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can confirm in closing whether it has been presented and when precisely the plan—which, I think, she said would be presented in October—will come before us.

In her remarks, the cabinet secretary also committed to a consultation on a refresh of “Supporting children’s learning: code of practice”, but I can find no evidence of that commencing, or of when it will. She committed to a literature review on the relationship between masking and ASN, but I can find no evidence of that happening. On the problems of delays that the committee identified, she said that she would engage with Scottish Government partners, including COSLA, and provide an update to the committee. I do not recall an update to the committee.

As I have mentioned COSLA, I note that its response to the committee was received and published only on Friday afternoon last week. To be fair, I point out that the cabinet secretary’s response runs to 28 pages and was given to us in July. COSLA’s response runs to two pages and fails for example, to mention COSLA’s opinion on the progress report on the ASL action plan. I suspect that that was discussed at the latest ASL project board meeting, because COSLA co-chairs it, but I cannot be sure because the minutes of that meeting are, as I said, not yet published. My concern is that, in 2023, the minutes for September’s ASL project board meeting were not published until 21 December. I sincerely trust that we will not have to wait three months for the next update.

I said a fortnight ago, during the Conservative debate on the SNP’s axing of the school meals manifesto promise, that this is about priorities. The money is there to make good things happen; it is just that this Government chooses its priorities. In the two weeks since that debate, to add to the constitution budget being maintained at £347 million while education is axed by £6.7 million and health by £115 million, we have seen a Government whose First Minister prefers to go leafleting in Glasgow, that flew its net zero minister to New York last year on a trip that cost £70,000, and which devotes significant legislative time to a bill on Scottish languages.

ASL is one of the most serious matters affecting Scotland, and the report is a serious attempt to analyse what is going on and to recommend solutions. Unfortunately, it seems that the Government is anything but serious about dealing with it.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will set out how it measures economic growth, including what metrics it uses to assess success in economic growth. (S6O-03755)

The additional support for learning inquiry report is a serious document. I commend my committee colleagues, the Parliament staff and especially all those who submitted their views and appeared before the committee to help us.

The inquiry was launched to consider how the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and the presumption of mainstreaming from the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc Act 2000 are working—and that is not before time, because there has been an extraordinary increase in the need for additional support in Scottish schools. The cabinet secretary gave percentages, but I think that the figures are even more stark. There were around 260,000 individuals with ASN in 2023, which was up from about 70,000 14 years ago. That increase means that, although many people report feeling that the Scottish Government has, historically, ignored the issue, prevarication is not an option, now that nearly 40 per cent of Scotland’s pupils have some form of additional need.

In fact, given the conclusions of the report, which came eight years after the latest amendment to the 2004 act and four years on from the Morgan review, some people might consider “prevarication” to be a polite way of putting it. The committee’s conclusion at paragraph 62 is stark. It states:

“there was strong evidence to suggest that the majority of ASN pupils are not having their needs met.”

That is not surprising, given the committee’s finding that there is inconsistent implementation and application of principles across local authorities, which is leading to an inconsistent experience for children that is determined by where they live.

We also found, as a consistent theme, inadequate funding and lack of resources for schools to properly support children with additional needs, which is only getting worse.

That, in turn, is stretching existing services and is increasing pressure on already hard-pressed staff, which is being exacerbated by existing challenges in availability, especially of specialists. That, of course, stands to reason. To put a number on the point that Pam Duncan-Glancy made in an important intervention earlier, there are now more than 600 fewer ASN teachers than there were in 2010.

All that leads to inconsistencies in additional needs being identified, with some people being missed or identified only following their having experienced significant challenges at school. Ultimately, that leads to a situation in which, although the policy of mainstreaming is broadly supported—as the commission on school reform, the Govan Law Centre and Unison Scotland, among others, said to us—there is a huge gap between policy intention and delivery.

The committee has proposed solutions that include better resourcing and training for teachers and staff; enhanced collaboration between education, health and social services to ensure comprehensive care when that is required; improved data collection and monitoring to assess the effectiveness of ASL policies; increased awareness of parents’ rights; and clearer communication channels. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the Morgan report suggested much of that in 2020. The fact that, four years later, the committee is finding much the same things under much the same Government suggests that the issue is not being prioritised in the way that we all think it should be prioritised.

I recognise what the cabinet secretary is saying, albeit that the education budget has decreased to a small extent. However, those are the inputs. The committee and people are desperate to see the outputs. Will the cabinet secretary commit here and now to delivering by 2026 what the committee has demanded for the people?

Will Daniel Johnson take an intervention?