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The point I made in my statement is that an exam, or changes to it, cannot take account of the differential in disruption to learning between a pupil who has had to self-isolate and one who has not.
The guidance prioritises, according to their age, those who are most at risk from harm, and asks us to work our way through to the youngest adults and to take account of those who are clinically vulnerable.
They were told that exams would go ahead, although a final decision had not been reached, and they were told that courses would be amended to account for lost time, but not how, while days, weeks and months passed by.
If someone had told me three weeks ago that we would now be living in a Scotland where members of the public would have to account to the police for their movements, I would have been appalled.
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s associate director, Andrew Burns, who is himself a former finance director, said that there has been an overreaction to the change.
However, headteachers have much broader accountability—to pupils, to parents, to communities and to staff in terms of how schools fulfil the needs of young people.
That represents an additional investment in carers of about £37 million in the next financial year from the Scottish Government. Taking into account social security in 2019-20 and what we are providing through the carers allowance and the supplement, we are investing a total of £320 million in carers.