The next item of business this afternoon is portfolio questions, and we'll start with question number one from Alec Rowley. To ask the Scottish Government what support it can provide to teachers in Fife regarding reports of over £2 million of reductions in the second rescue education budget. Despite continued UK Government real-term cuts to Scotland's resource budget, we have treated local government very fairly. This year, Fife Council's increase in spending power to support local authority day-to-day services, including secondary school education, amounts to £18.8 million, or 3 per cent, compared to 2017-18. Thank you for that answer. I'm tempted to say, meanwhile, in the real world, and I don't mean that disrespectfully. The fact is that a presentation that's being given to teachers across Fife right now shows that savings approved by Fife Council in secondary education, £4.095 million, £2.338 million, is expected to come directly out of school budgets. The reality is that teachers, with all the pressures that they've got on them, are now being asked how to work out in the secondary schools in Fife, how they're going to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds out of their working budgets. Does the cabinet secretary and Deputy First Minister think that that's acceptable? I won't even start on the cuts in primary school. How are we going to raise attainment if we're seeing the levels of cuts taking place in our front-line education in the classrooms? The first thing that I say to Mr Rowley is that I attached the greatest of importance to investment in education, which is the foundation of the Government's education approach, and particularly the focus on the Scottish attainment challenge and on pupil equity funding. I reiterate to Mr Rowley the point that I made in my earlier answer, that Fife Council's budget will be increasing by £8.8 million, spending power, as a consequence of the decisions in the Government's budget. We are, of course, being distributed directly to individual schools. Schools in Fife have been allocated over £10 million in pupil equity funding, which I know from my various visits around Fife has been used very effectively by Fife schools to meet the needs of young people. In addition to that, I have just come from a meeting of the Scottish Education Council at which the Executive Director of Education from Fife Council was present, who is leading the south-east of Scotland improvement collaborative. We heard at the Education Council this morning of the very significant plans that have been deployed by the improvement collaborative to support the enhancement of education in the school sector in Scotland. I understand the points that Mr Rowley is making. Those are decisions that Fife Council must make within the overall financial allocations that are made by the Scottish Government and other sources of money available to it. On that part of it, I think that the Scottish Government has invested significantly in local services in Fife Council. Alexander Stewart Several heads at schools in Fife have told me that they would like to spend pupil equity fund money on employing more teachers with skills in addition to support needs, but that the spending of pupil equity fund money on additional teachers is not permitted. Can the cabinet secretary clarify the situation if that is correct? Michael Russell Of course, pupil equity funding can be used to employ members of staff. I can say to Mr Stewart that I can't get the right... Yes, I can. 506 additional teachers have been employed under the Scottish attainment challenge and pupil equity funding arrangements. That provision exists around the country, so there's no reason why that shouldn't apply in Fife. I'd also be very surprised, to be honest, that schools in Fife would face that difficulty, because I can think of particular examples where additional teachers have been recruited by schools in Fife and are able to contribute to the education of young people. Ben Macpherson To ask the Scottish Government what role the educational maintenance allowance, or EMA, plays in encouraging young people to stay on at school. The education maintenance allowance programme provides a financial incentive for 16 to 19-year-olds from low-income households who are attending non-advanced learning in school, college or are on an activity agreement to stay in learning. Those who are home educated are also eligible. The EMA programme is an entitlement in Scotland, unlike the rest of the United Kingdom. The Scottish Government wants young people to be able to choose from the same learning opportunities, regardless of background or circumstance. Ben Macpherson I appreciate that answer from the cabinet secretary and welcome the fact that the SNP Government continues to recognise the importance of the EMA programme and its role in allowing our young people to make learning decisions based on their abilities and aspirations, rather than on their financial circumstances. Can the cabinet secretary outline what proportion of EMA recipients live in our most disadvantaged areas? The latest statistics on education maintenance allowance show that those living in Scotland's 20 per cent most deprived areas in 2016 increased to 36.8 per cent from 34.9 per cent in the previous year. Those figures tell us that education maintenance allowance arrangements continue to make a positive difference to those from the most disadvantaged areas in Scotland. I welcome that increase that has taken place in the most recent figures that are available. Mary Fee This morning at the Education and Skills Committee, we heard evidence that families lose access to clothing grants and tax credits when a pupil applies for education maintenance allowance. That results in families falling into poverty and debt due to the gap in processing the applications. What action will the Scottish Government take to prevent families falling further into debt as a result of applying for EMA? I will look with care at the transcript of the committee this morning to follow that evidence. It is my understanding that the decision as to whether or not other benefits are forfeited as a consequence of applying for EMA will be enshrined in individual rules pursued by individual local authorities in terms of their eligibility criteria. I will look with care at the point that Mary Fee raises, because I would be concerned if a family were to apply for an education maintenance allowance but to forfeit access to other elements of provision such as a school clothing grant because an EMA will be available to an older pupil and older pupils will be obliged by the same rules on uniform that school clothing grants are designed to try to support and to assist. If Mary Fee has particular information that she wants to draw to my attention, I will look at it carefully, because certainly that is not the policy intention that I would want to be seeing emerging from this, and I will examine the details of that to see what the Government can do to rectify it. It may be within individual decisions taken by local authorities over which I have no control. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage female pupils to consider enrolling in the STEM teaching initiative run by the University of Dundee and of the Highlands and Islands. The Scottish Government's STEM strategy includes a range of actions aimed at encouraging women and girls to take up STEM-related careers. The partnership induction model being developed by the University of Dundee supported by £240,000 worth of Scottish Government funding will contribute to that goal. The University of Dundee has more females than males across its STEM teacher education programme currently and has an action plan in place to encourage the on-going recruitment of underrepresented groups, including females, into STEM teaching. The new programme is being marketed in conjunction with four partner local authorities who will actively encourage female applicants. Rhoda Grant There is big skills shortage in engineering and very few women taking up a career in this area. Indeed, in all STEM careers, women only make up 14.4 per cent of the workforce. That will not change as it would appear that there is still a shortage of girls taking up STEM subjects in school, which are crucial to them having a career in the sector going forward. Can I ask what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that more girls choose maths and science at school? There are a number of measures that are detailed within the STEM strategy, which I had the pleasure of launching last year. Recently, at the second implementation group for that STEM strategy, we discussed some of the issues around gender imbalance. That included tackling some of the unconscious bias that goes on within society and how we can do that within school, building on the fine work of the Institute of Physics in that area. We are obviously also looking at what can be done to tackle some of the challenges around apprenticeships that is being led by my colleague Mr Hepburn. There are also further education and higher education challenges that we have through the funding councils gender action plan. There are a number of other methods that are being dealt with, particularly through the STEM strategy. For example, some of the KPIs deal specifically with the challenges around gender imbalance around schools and encouraging that take-up. If the member has further questions in relation to some of the particular aspects within the STEM strategy and how we can take that further, I would be happy to take that up with her in due course. Following the recent refresh of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's publication, Tapping All Our Talents, what measures have the Government taken to ensure that women who are qualified but not currently working in STEM have an opportunity to take up the new STEM initiative? I had the pleasure of receiving updates on all this briefly and informally when I attended UKRI reception last night where I spoke to Professor Yellowlees, who is chairing that working group from the RSE. We are having very detailed discussions between Government officials, myself and the RSE about how we can support them in terms of the data that they are looking at. I have committed to working with the RSE to look at the updated recommendations that they have, once they have refreshed that strategy and their consultation, as I understand that it is still on-going. We have a number of measures to tackle gender imbalance at the moment. Those include, for example, funding through the Equalities Budget to support Equate Scotland, an organisation that, as the member knows, works to tackle women's underrepresentation in the STEM sector. For example, through career-wise, a placement scheme exclusively for women studying STEM subjects at the universities and colleges, and also through Equate Scotland funding up to £50,000 to deliver a women returner programme. We are taking action at the moment but are very aware and helping in any way we can the RSE, and we will listen carefully to the recommendations that come from that refresh. James Kelly To ask the Scottish Government when it last met officials from South Lanarkshire Council's education resources. My officials meet regularly with officials from South Lanarkshire Council's education resources to address a range of issues. The Child Poverty Action Group told the Education Committee last month that young people face a postcode lottery in terms of their opportunities in education. That is emphasised in the South Lanarkshire Council attainment figures where those who are able to attain the standard of five national fives are just over a third running below the national average. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the objective should be to give a fair opportunity for all young children in Scotland? That is constrained by the Government policy of penalising councils through cuts, as demonstrated by the £134 per head of cuts that South Lanarkshire Council citizens have faced since 2014? I thought I was on the verge of agreeing with quite a bit of Mr Kelly until he got to the last bit. On the first bit of Mr Kelly's question, I was ever to agree with him that the whole focus of the Government's education policy, with its emphasis on the achievement of excellence and equity for all, is about ensuring that young people, regardless of their background, are able to achieve their potential within the education system. In some of the disparities that have existed within our education system for all of my lifetime are what we are trying to tackle by the focus on the attainment agenda. In relation specifically to South Lanarkshire, there are three points that I would make the first. South Lanarkshire Council's spending power has increased by £16.3 million or 3 per cent in this financial year compared to last. Secondly, schools in South Lanarkshire will be benefiting to the tune of just short of £8 million in the current financial year in pupil equity funding. What I have seen from pupil equity funding is schools being able to take specific action to address the individual issues that confront them within their own localities as a consequence of having the resources of pupil equity funding available. In all the localities that Mr Kelly will be concerned about, they have the means now available to help them to address that attainment challenge. Thirdly, in the context of having the resources available for schools, in South Lanarkshire there has been an increase in the number of teachers that are available in the South Lanarkshire schools in the latest census. There has been an increase from 3,202 to 3,282, which is a welcome indication of the priority that has been allocated to education and the increase in the number of the teaching professionals that are there to educate our young people. To ask the Scottish Government what action schools take to protect children from knife crime. All staff in schools share a responsibility for identifying the care and wellbeing needs of children and young people. Schools should establish open, positive, supportive relationships across the whole school community. Education authorities in consultation with key partners, including staff unions, should develop their own policy on knives and offensive weapons within the wider context of positive relationships, learning and behaviour. The Scottish Government is also investing significantly in various violence reduction preventative approaches with young people across Scotland as part of a wider strategy to promote positive relationships and behaviour. Since 2007, we have invested more than £14 million in violence reduction programmes for young people and we continue to expand the work undertaken with children and young people on those programmes. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response, but recent figures show that the number of pupils being excluded from school for incidents involving conventional or even improvised weapons is currently at a five-year high with an average of two exclusions per day involving a violent incident with a weapon. Given those shocking statistics, can I ask the cabinet secretary if it is his understanding that local authorities have standardised their processes on gathering knife crime data, why he thinks that there is a five-year high in incidents and what comfort can he offer parents that when they send their child to school they are sending them to a weapon-free and safe environment? The first thing that I say to Mr Greene is that I agree with the aspirations of his question that parents should be expected to send their children to weapon-free schools in a safe environment. All of the work that we undertake—yesterday I chaired a meeting of the wider stakeholder group on behaviour in schools called Sigrabus. It focuses on putting in place the mechanisms to enable positive behaviour and a positive ethos to be created within schools so that the type of policy environment that Mr Greene would expect to see is present in every school with an emphasis on removing the instances of any weapon carrying. The statistics to which Mr Greene refers are a concern to us because we have seen for some time reductions in the overall levels of exclusion, and generally in Scottish education levels of exclusion are falling, but we have seen a rise in the instance of exclusions in relation to weapons and weapon carrying. That tells us that we must ensure that we have a vigorous involvement in some of the activities such as the No Knives Better Lives campaign, which is a youth engagement programme, or whether the work of the mentors in violence prevention programme to make sure that those programmes are felt within individual schools and the positive behaviours that we would expect to see in our schools are prevalent in all of our schools. I assure Mr Greene that those considerations are very much uppermost in the mind of ministers and our stakeholders in trying to ensure that we create the environment to which he referred in his question. James Dornan Obviously, that is a very serious issue, cabinet secretary. Although it is probably harder for young people to access knives in terms of buying them, what sort of discussions has the Government had with the UK Government on restricting the online sale of knives? In the aftermath of the Bailey Gwyn tragedy, the Government considered the recommendations that came from the report that examined those circumstances. From that, the Justice Secretary made representations to the United Kingdom Government to work together to raise concerns about the online sale of knives and the need for a cohesive approach between our actions and those of the UK Government. The United Kingdom Government agreed with that approach and, in October, published a consultation on knives, corrosive substances and firearms. The consultation extended some of those proposals to Scotland and the consultation ended just before Christmas. The United Kingdom Government is currently working with our officials on preparing legislation to address the concerns about online sales of knives, because those are reserved responsibilities and we are very keen to co-operate with the United Kingdom Government and putting in place the most effective regime that we can to tackle this issue. I appreciate the detail of the cabinet secretary's answers but I would encourage some succinctness to get through some of our questions. Question 6, Rona Mackay. To ask the Scottish Government how it encourages people to consider becoming teachers in STEM subjects. Minister Shirley-Anne Somerville. We have taken a series of actions to encourage more people into teaching STEM subjects. Our teaching makes people recruitment campaign targets STEM undergraduates and career changers to consider teaching as a career. We have increased student intake targets for the STEM subjects and we are offering bursaries of up to £20,000 for up to 100 career changers to train to teach in STEM subjects. We are also supporting innovative new routes into teaching in STEM subjects. Those include the University of Strath Clyde's master's course for STEM graduates to complete an initial teacher education course alongside a master's degree. Rona Mackay. I thank the minister for that answer. In my constituency of Strath Kelvin and Bearsden, one school is only able to offer an elective computing class to third-year students due to a shortage of teachers. Does the minister agree that this subject is crucial to young people's future careers and should not be compromised where possible? I absolutely agree that digital skills are of crucial importance both for everyday life and for Scotland's future economic prosperity. Only yesterday I was at Tullial and primary school, where I heard first-hand the work that is being done in a number of schools and secondary schools to develop young people's digital skills through the digital schools awards programme. We do recognise that some councils are facing challenges in relation to STEM teacher recruitment. That is why the Government has taken a number of actions to support further improvement within teacher recruitment. Some of those I mentioned in my original answer, but there are also work, for example, on going with Aberdeen University to allow former oil and gas workers to train as teachers the bursaries that I mentioned to Rona Mackay earlier. We are also doing the work with the University of Dundee, where we are looking at highly qualified graduates and career changers specialising in science and technology-related subjects. That is an issue that the Government is determined to take more concerted action on. There are some encouraging signs that uptake in higher and advanced higher is increasing in some science subjects, but there are others where uptake is falling. What is the Scottish Government doing to improve uptake across the board? The issue around encouraging more young people, but particularly young women, to take up STEM subjects within school and then, hopefully, within an apprenticeship for their education or higher education is something that we are doing a number of strands of work on, as I mentioned earlier on in a previous answer. Most of those are detailed very specifically within the STEM strategy. We are looking to inspire, connect the work that we are doing through inspiring young people all the way through early years primary and secondary school subject choices and connect that to ensuring that the young people know about the exciting opportunities that there are for them to be able to access STEM careers at the end of that. The issue around the uptake of STEM subjects is something that the Government again is taking action on, along with the funding council and, for example, the STEM implementation group. We have the representation from COSLA and from ADES, so we are taking a whole systems approach to looking carefully at the challenges that we have around attracting more young people into STEM subjects so that they can see the opportunities that are undoubtedly out there for them. Iain Gray Can I ask the minister how many people have signed up to the career change or bursary programme? There are a number of different schemes that individuals can go on to within our different universities to look at encouraging a STEM career. Those examples, many of which have started, but others are due to start in 2018. If the member would like detailed figures about the number of those who have started a specific course, I would be happy to extend that information to him. We can then look at the progress that we are taking on to date, who has signed up, but particularly to encourage more people to take advantage of the courses that are due to take place in due course. To ask the Scottish Government whether any changes that will be introduced to the governance of education will be island-proofed. Any changes proposed will be island-proofed. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills will be aware that Cunninghsbury primary school in Shetland has a head teacher who teaches. Shetland's council advised me that it is increasingly difficult to recruit head teachers who also have to teach as part of their day-to-day responsibilities. Given that reality, not just in Shetland but in other parts of the country as well, if he plans to increase the responsibility of head teachers, how will that work in the context of island-proofing? What I want to make sure—this is a consideration that applies in any circumstance around the country, whether it is an island circumstance or a mainland circumstance—is that young people are able to have access to the strongest quality of leadership and learning and teaching in individual schools, because those two elements are the foundation of a successful education at local level. Any of the reforms that we bring forward will be about strengthening that leadership capability, ensuring that leadership has more support available to it and ensuring that that support is also available to enhance the quality of learning and teaching. Those provisions will be applied. I quite understand the different circumstances that exist in many of the schools that Mr Scott represents in his constituency. To that end, we will ensure that the steps that we take forward take due account of those considerations in the final design of our legislative proposals. Jamie Halcro Johnston Yesterday, a number of people protested outside Orkney Islands Council at a proposed cuts to support for learning budgets. The council has now decided not to proceed with those proposals. The cabinet secretary will be aware that, because of the geography and demographics, island communities are often less able to collaborate and share costs between schools for those types of services. Can I ask the cabinet secretary to outline what provision there is to ensure that budgets assigned for support for learning are sufficient to meet local needs and whether ministers have had any contact with the council over those particular proposals? There has been no dialogue with the council to my knowledge about those proposals. Obviously, those proposals are ordinarily and properly a matter for Orkney Islands Council to consider. What I would say to Mr Halcro Johnston is that he raises the point about the challenges of collaboration in the island communities. In fact, in my view, the best example of inter-authority co-operation on education policy is in fact the Northern Alliance, which includes Orkney Islands Council. That is one of the members of that group. What I detect from talking to practitioners around the north of Scotland is that they are feeling the benefit of the co-operation, particularly about the strengthening of learning and teaching, which is able to be facilitated by that co-operation across a number of different authorities. Indeed, some of the smaller, more remote local authorities are benefiting enormously from their co-operation with other authorities. There is good work going on in that respect. It is work that takes proper respect to the democratic interests and perspective of Orkney Islands Council, but it enables the council to co-operate with others to enhance educational provision for the young people of Orkney. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the EIS campaign value education value teachers, which is calling for a restorative pay rise for teachers. We value Scotland's teachers highly. We are committed to taking an active role in the current discussions through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, and I would urge everyone around the table to take a constructive approach. This Government is the first anywhere in the United Kingdom to commit to lift the 1 per cent public sector pay cap, and the teachers' pay deal for 2017-18 is an example of exactly that. The truth is that, under SNP management, our teachers have seen their pay go from amongst the highest in the OECD to well below the average. Not only that, but they are now teaching some of the biggest class sizes in Europe. This Government has cut 4,000 of its colleagues and still managed to create a teacher recruitment crisis. Will the cabinet secretary accept that it is not divisive reforms that our teachers need? Do they need the pay that they deserve and the resources to do the job that they do so well under more difficult circumstances? I remind Mr Sarwar that we have been living in a period of fiscal austerity applied by United Kingdom Governments going back to when his Government was in power before the 2010 election. It is all very well for Mr Sarwar to come here and to talk about pay constraint. Pay constraint was applied by the Labour Government when it was in office because of the financial crisis that the Labour Government presided over in the aftermath of 2008. It is not easy for Mr Sarwar to come here with his simple solutions to the problem. I am committed to a substantive negotiation with the teaching profession. As I indicated in my original answer, our work in 2017 has seen us deliver a pay deal for teachers that has moved out with the pay caps that have been in place. I welcome that fact. We are committed to putting in place the support and the assistance to enhance the teaching profession because I want teaching to be an attractive career for individuals. I would close by reminding Mr Sarwar that there has been an increase in the number of teachers in our schools over the past 12 months of 543. It is a very welcome increase in the number of teachers that are in post in Scotland schools. To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made with COSLA regarding funding for increasing the provision of early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours per year. I suspect that I know the answer. The Scottish ministers and COSLA leaders reached a landmark agreement on a multi-year revenue and capital funding package for the expansion of early learning and childcare on 27 April. The agreement, which is the culmination of more than two years of hard work by local authorities and the Scottish Government, represents a shared understanding of the costs that are required to deliver the expansion in entitlement to funded early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours from August 2020. It is evidence of real partnership working to deliver a shared ambition and to give all of our children the best start in life. Under this agreement, the Scottish Government will provide local authorities with additional recurring revenue funding of £567 million per year by 2021-22, the first full financial year of the expansion. In addition, the Scottish Government will provide local authorities with capital funding of £476 million over four financial years, 2017-18 to 2021 inclusive. I congratulate the minister on her role in reaching this landmark deal and thank her for her response. The deal with local government will ensure our children get the best possible start in life, but can she outline how the expansion will deliver the flexibility that parents need to support them in work or training and whether she thinks that flexibility is already improving? I believe that the simple increase in the number of hours available to parents will make a massive difference to every family in the land. It will save £4,500 per year per child for each family. The funding follows the child model, underpinned by the national standard, will indeed be a provider-neutral means of delivering flexibility to the parents, which will absolutely transform their opportunity to work and pursue education themselves. To ask the Scottish Government when the Education Secretary last met the director of education and children services for Aberdeenshire Council. Cabinet Secretary John Swinney. I last met the director of education and children services for Aberdeenshire Council on 7 March. Mike Rumbles. Will the cabinet secretary meet the new director when he or she is appointed and discuss with him or her the overall state of staff morale in our north-east schools? Could he outline to us now, today, what specifically he can do from his perspective to help to improve staff morale? I am very happy to engage with Mr Rumbles about his perspective on those matters. When I go around schools, I meet teachers who are very positive and utterly motivated by the work that they are doing to educate young people. I was in Smithycroft secondary school in Glasgow this morning, where I have to say the staff and the leadership team were very buoyant about the conditions of Scottish education. In relation to the north-east of Scotland, we are taking a range of different measures to enhance the recruitment of teachers in the north-east of Scotland by some of the new routes into teaching that we are undertaking. We are supporting the delivery of education very directly. Aberdeenshire Council is benefiting to the tune of £3 million in pupil equity funding very directly into our schools. However, if there are particular concerns that Mr Rumbles has, I am very happy to consider those and to do what I can to address them with the director of education at Aberdeenshire Council once they are appointed after the retirement of Maria Walker. Ivan McKee To ask the Scottish Government how it enshrines the rights of young people and how it plans to further embed these. Minister Murray Todd We are committed to enhancing children's rights across all aspects of Scottish life. The Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014 places specific duties and all ministers to consider steps that might give better or further effect to the UNCRC. Those provisions take us further than any previous Scottish Government. We continue to look for opportunities to apply the principles of the convention on an issue-by-issue basis where we consider it right and proper to do so. For example, through raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 8 to 12 and supporting Mr Finney's proposals to introduce a legislative ban on the physical punishment of children, it is very fitting that in this year of young people, a global first, we have commenced a comprehensive audit on the most effective and practical way to further embed the principles of the UNCRC into policy and legislation, including the option of full incorporation into domestic law. Ivan McKee I thank the minister for that answer. Can the minister outline what the Scottish Government's position is on the rights of young people to opt out of religious observance in schools and all the forthcoming education and governance bill enshrining their right to do so? As Mr McKee may be aware, the Scottish Government's statutory guidance on religious observance amended in March 2017, states that schools should include children and young people in any discussions about aspects of their school experience, ensuring that their views are taken into account. The law currently provides a right for parents to withdraw their children from participation in religious observance. The statutory guidance makes it clear that local authorities must ensure that pupils' views are taken into account rather than providing pupils with a direct opt-out. The Scottish Government's views that pupils' views should be supported to make their views and preferences clear. Ministers are open to exploring the best way to give effect to children's rights, as expressed under the UNCRC. However, any changes that there might be to the current statutory position would need to be subject to full consultation with all key stakeholders. Colin Beattie To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the development of the new battle high school digital centre of excellence. John Swinney The development of a digital centre of excellence is part of the new high school that new battle is the initiative of Midlothian council. I commend the collaborative approach that has been taken by the council in seeking to ensure that young people across all Midlothian secondary schools have access to specialist digital learning and diverse range of pathways to follow into digital jobs. I am aware of the funding shortfall for the digital centre of excellence in the new school, and I have asked my officials to explore opportunities for supporting the progress of this project. Colin Beattie The cabinet secretary will be aware that the new battle high school's catchment area has too many pockets of relative deprivation. Would he agree with me that all involved in the creation of this centre should be congratulated for this groundbreaking and forward thinking initiative that will have a considerable and positive effect on the life chances of young people in the area? John Swinney I think that this is an excellent initiative by Midlothian council. It recognises the need to ensure that there are clear pathways for young people to be able to access education and then to have links into the world of work. It fits very comfortably into the developing Scotland's young workforce agenda. As I indicated in my other answer, I am very keen to see if there is any way in which we can be of assistance. Liz Smith To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it is having with local authorities regarding the provision of music tuition in schools. The Scottish education system devolves decision making to the most appropriate level enabling local authorities to make choices to meet their local circumstances and needs. I am however very concerned about decisions by a number of local authorities to reduce access to instrumental music tuition for young people. I have asked my officials for respecting the autonomy and responsibility of local councils to assess the impact and identify ways of working with key stakeholders to ensure that instrumental music tuition remains accessible in the future. Liz Smith Thank you for that answer, cabinet secretary. I think that local authorities of all political persuasions are having great difficulty on this issue. Can I ask what the timescale is for your working group to report to Parliament because, as you rightly say, it is a very urgent matter? John Wallace There is work under way, which has been led by John Wallace, formerly the principal of the Royal Conservatory of Scotland. I am looking forward to meeting with the music education partnership to discuss their thinking on those matters. It is an issue in which the culture secretary and I are both actively involved. I do not have a specific timescale that I can offer Liz Smith today, but I can assure her that I will be happy to engage in dialogue with members of all political persuasions to ensure that this important characteristic of education in Scotland is available for young people across our country. That concludes portfolio questions. I thank all members and ministers for their contributions. We will move on to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion S5M-1984, in the name of Miles Briggs, on NHS financial accountability. I urge members to wish to speak in this debate to contribute to press their request to speak buttons whenever they wish, or as soon as possible. I note, for members' interests, that the Conservative Party has asked to use the new debate management flexibility to increase the number of speakers from three to four, but that means that Conservative speakers will have one minute less. They will be speaking for five minutes rather than six minute contributions. However, as that happens, we have quite a lot of time available over the afternoon, so I encourage all members to take interventions.


I look so gorgeous. I look gorgeous. I'm very natural looking.  Oh, that's even better All right, okay. I'm confirming right now Turtle Bay is in the bottom left. So we need to go south. Oh Just south yeah south just south just south. There's no southeast. I'm spawning now Are you spawning now? Oh my god. Don't give me a warning. She says no Oh Press X for oh That's it. That's that's the look Okay, right now sniff and just head south Although I did just your raptor call out. Wow. How did you know to click X? I? Watch things.  Yes south is a down pointing area Yeah, I don't know if this is the best idea because I'm probably gonna end up like running off a cliff on time You'll be fine. I'll be fine. Of course. I will be baby bones.  No, don't Life advice with excited Don't bounce the baby. Oh, you will end up having a me. Oh I think I'm excited. I think I think I'm there You think I'm here too. I'll make a little call I'm at a beach. I don't know if it's Turtle Bay Beach. I Think I'm too south. I think I needed to be a little bit north I'm running uphill and I don't like the idea of that because I know that Turtle Bay is downhill Yeah, you're approaching the uphill and then you'll you'll launch yourself off It awards Turtle Bay And away we go Hey look turtles Is that it turtle Bay? Maybe I'm on a giant cliff though. I feel like if I jump I'm gonna land in the water Have you found the holy grail of meat?  Do I run off and maybe swim over towards it? Or do I risk running off and landing on a rock and dying? I made it though. I can see it. I can see the cabin bit. Damn it Why did you do that? Because I'm just born back. It's fine. Oh, I Oh I think I see I see Turtle Bay. Oh, I see Turtle Bay. You see it Yes, but I'm on a cliff.  Look with this many attempts gonna be made to get into Turtle Bay. We don't have wings. It's fine Okay, night time officially Something that I do not like. No. No, I I've never liked night in this game ever since they put it in I'm like look the game looks really good during the day. Okay. What why are we making it deliberately a worst experience by putting night in? add some Chloe plans or something make it Pandora. I don't care. Oh, yeah Oh, there's a car. I can see it apparently You found food possibly. I don't even know it's probably gonna be a trap though. Oh I think I know where I am.  I can't even get the Turtle Bay right It's gonna go in the water and drown myself solid Why do you want to drown yourself? So I can spawn somewhere else. I Need to kill myself. Oh that well, that's silly. I am killing myself There we go sweet embrace of death It's fine. We didn't want content anyway.  Oh, God South South South South Oh, I found raptors Oh God, I've been invited by teddy bear. Oh, there's three of them Get them to go to Turtle Bay What you doing? What you doing this real home? What do you mean? What am I doing looking for? I killed turtles for a living. I killed turtles for a living. Oh, we found them. We found the perfect friends Can you escort me? They said yes excited they said yes, I'm on your back. Yes. I Am I'm starving now as well. I'm asking if he's got any food Where the others are there was a signal.  I'm at the beach. Oh my god Give me a title. I made it this far. Is all the turtles Every rock looks like a turtle Every rock looks like a turtle. Oh, it must be torture. No Why is there no turtles here? please I beg of you. Yeah, I can't believe you actually made it as well. There's no turtles I made it and there's no turtles in Turtle Bay Poor bugger.  You really do and then It's completely different actually playing the game Oh, yeah, me next time we're gonna spawn in we're gonna we're gonna find Turtle Bay in two seconds. We'll find a turtle Okay, let's see who gets to Turtle Bay first. Okay, okay Me who can actually see stuff now Are you with a pack that has no idea what they're doing? Well, I'm only there's only one one person called Frost hard His name is hard There's the big rock that excited killed him in the first time Okay, okay. Whereabouts did you do? Oh, he's bringing something. He's got something.  I think you might be me. Hold on. Are you orange? Kinda.  This might be no, it's not my dead body.  Is that all right? Yeah, yeah, I give consent for you. Oh, thank you. I'm excited My old buddy Little bit of cannibalism never hurt anybody now did it? I see a turbo in the water. Oh Did he get it? Hey, he does have it sweet. Okay. We got a turtle's a turtle Bay He got a turtle to tell me Right now.  I'm running towards to bear it. I can see the rock I died at from the little cave that I'm in right now. Oh, are you past like the containers and stuff? No, no, no, I'm the other way. Oh the other way Wait, this is my buddy Oh, you're there. Oh, there's a tornado Oh God, oh God. Oh God. Oh God. You see us.  Yeah, I can see you right here. I can see you on the beach over there. Yeah, wrap the jump on him No, oh Bloody to run it on I think I see the turtle Okay, I'm gonna I'm hiding in bush. I'm here now. I'm going to watch. Oh That's my buddy. It is your body Yeah, yeah, I thought so. I'm standing on myself. I'm standing on myself right now You look let's go find the turtle. Come with me. Oh, hold on. Hold on. I need to invite you I need to invite you, but yeah, don't come too close because I'll accidentally bite you In the cave In the cave. Oh, okay, okay I don't know what he means by cave though. Is there a cave? Oh, I see. There's a cave right here. Is there a cave in there? How did you?  There we go I'm just getting as much as I can while I can Yeah You hear that? Nope. That was a car now Um, no No, I definitely didn't hear it Well, actually should we just go with these guys? I mean we were planning to stay here until we got to a certain size But if we're big enough, why not? They should make a uh, oh he's got a board I need that I need a tool No, I need it Thank you, father This sustenance. Oh, sorry sustenance Substance I like this sustenance Want to go play in the water What? What what what? What about what? You want to drink our water bottle Okay, excited.  Yes, I need to use the dinosaur room. I'll be right back. Okay. All right. I am bought. Did I miss anything? I'm just eating a little bit. Okay, so nothing nothing's changed. We're all good still turtle bay is a haven I can't believe we're gonna grow. We're gonna be adults excited I'm so excited about this. Yes Because we're gonna be adults and it's day Oh I know just think of it.  Oh, wait, what? Are they doing courtship? What what did they add that into the game already? That was weird. I it did look like courtship, didn't it? I was like a call. I've never heard before Oh, they're making a nest in there Although it makes it's making horrible noises Sounds like they're boiling their eggs It does doesn't it it does not sound like nest building Oh, they made eggs. Are they laying eggs? Oh, they did just like that Eggs Exactly excited exactly.  So I need I need to go for a rabbit or or dry a soul in order to start getting some buffs, but uh Yeah, it's not gonna happen I mean we could venture Do you want to venture? Let's go Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. We have content to make excited content Yes, what do you I see?  We're gonna hunt down something. Thank you. We need to find something first Oh something's coming Who's this? Oh, it's a little baby raptor Oh cute To invite him Oh, that's a stego Yeah, where was that? Okay, let's go Oh tenottos. Ah, never mind. I knew he was a herbivore Look at us. We're parents. I know It looks nothing like me You can't get rid of him We can't, we can't. It appears expendable Where's your bronan? He's the one that rings first of the river This is a problem. We have 26 30 frames Oh really? I'm on like 80s and 90s Oh, that's nice Oh that came from over this way, right? Is now was that a crocodile or was that like a stego? Oh god Right. This is this there's a river right here So it could be a high chance that There's that big bella was a crocodile then Oh no, that was a cano the big bella you just heard was a cano Oh, yeah, that one was a cano, but I'm saying that the the big one before Zoinksy I think the best bet is probably back to Turtle Bay Really? We're just stuck up Unless you can find other food If we go further we have to hunt in the dark I know that's the only thing and I hate night Okay, did he did he did he just cross the river? Fine. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god Oh god. Yeah, there we go. There we go Yeah, I always hate that pick pick pick pick pick pick pick. Oh you found a ball. There's killed the ball He's here. Oh my god.  Well done excited Wait, we lost that baby though Did he No, he surely didn't kill the baby Oh, well, there you go. We've hunted something. Hey end of video. Bye. Bye There's a compi right here. Is there a compi? Is that what you can hear? Did you have you got it in your mouth, dude? Nice Can you eat it whole? Oh, yeah Oh, there's loads of them.  It's only raptors that can look in the dark. Yeah Uh true. Yeah, but if something drinks on a crocodile's near it can sense you drinking and it'll come Oh my god. Look at you. Look at you with the cajonas To have a drink I'll just if I see anything I'll just Oh Hey distroso. Yeah, we found him. We found him and his friends Oh, oh, they've got this. Yeah, they've got us to go back back against the corner This this is gonna be a stalemate like nothing's gonna happen here Can they even see anything or can they just hear all the raptors? That must be terrifying Well, if you turn off your night vision, that's what they can see Just like What if you went up onto the cliff and it slid down? Oh, that sounds like an easier prey though Like the best hunts with detour raptors is either taking on a car now or taking on tornadoes That's when it feels like okay. This is a fair fight But stegos nah, it's not happening Also, we need food and water at some point.  Yeah, my god.  No Did you see that there? No, what happened? I saw someone like running around fighting, but I yeah, I think that was a it was a corner. I think Oh, wait, what that? What do you hear? It's in the bushes Oh, I see it. Yeah Or at least I thought I saw it and then you disappeared just killed it. I just killed it Oh, yes. Well done. Excited was that another toast another car though. Yeah, it's a Yum yum yum yum yum Yeah, 50% extra growth. I'm on 93 now excited.  I'll get you there. I'll be big. I'll be a big boy I don't want to pounce on him. Why not pounce on the baby You pounce on him That's me Did I do any damage to you? No Almost come on 99.5 percent come on. Come on. My growth is 115 percent now Come on It's like when the loading bar gets stuck on 99 percent. Yes 100 percent.   I threw up Basically all my food and water Oh, no I've just realized this Yeah, I was gonna say like like I get I get punished because I can't eat as much or drink as much or have as much stamina But then I just need to eat again Do you think we could convince all these guys to migrate to turtle bay? Everybody going to turtle bay Oh, I would but like there's nothing going on at turtle bay except for just turtles Right now I need food What is my food on my food is now on 22 percent? It was on a hundred I see food all around us Friends names names Oh Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. What is this? What? What is that just like it? It's like a big Is it another? Yeah, I think it is Oh Oh, nice. I can't even like see it properly Oh Okay, it does have a big kick behind it.  Oh careful careful. Okay, I bit him bit him a little bit What's he doing? He's just walking around in circles Are you hurt at all? Oh, you're on him. No, I keep housing him. Yeah, I don't know if I'm doing any damage Uh, remember just if you run out of stamina, you'll fall off and you'll open yourself up. I keep I keep I keep falling off How do we stay on? Hold right click and then do lots of left clicks Yeah, what what is this guy doing? He's not like doing any attacks He's just walking right. He's probably he might run out of stamina to be fair, but then why is he? There you go That work I think so or did you just click and hold right click?  Did you or did you just dismount ungracefully?  Oh, okay. Are you damaged? Yeah, half damage.  I'm terrible at this like pouncing melancholy Right No, he's bucking me up. Oh god jump jump. Yep. There we go. Okay. I got a few few little claws on him It's a lot of food if we get him and I need it I'm on like 50 percent hunger Is he dead? He's dead Yum-yums. Oh my goodness That would have been really cool to film that I feel like Yeah during the day that would have been awesome He must have just wanted to die with the way he was like not really attacking. No, no, no. He was attacking You think so? Yeah, I think it was just panicking because he couldn't see anything Oh look at us all grown up with our colors. See this is the second like this is uh, You have the a Oh So mine's more stripes than yours is spotted Spotted stripes Oh, yeah, the stegos. I wonder what happened to them. They're probably still there, aren't they? Because their nest was there Oh, the stegos are moving off together. Have you seen it?   Well done you I'm trying to think which side the the crocs are on this side or are they on the other side of the waterfall Well, I need water so we need to go Find some I know I'm like having a oh, yeah the croc clouds are on this side. I see one If you come around the other side of the rock, you'll see them Or you could come up here, you know Look at him.  I'm surprised this like raptor's still alive Yeah Oh, yeah, I forgot this stego nest is here Oh, he's going in he actually went in it's cheeky bugger. That was amazing Go on get him. Oh I know if you imagine if he crawled up here imagine if the crocodile lands on them Don't fall out that way cook and I'll come round falling them He's actually getting bites in Oh, there's a tonado here How did he he's just appears Oh, he might have locked off here, maybe oh, I just think yeah, he probably spawned on him. He's like, oh god Oh, this is amazing. This is so random. I can't even do anything about it because we're not allowed to kill it Oh, yeah, well, maybe the tonado body's gone now Well, the thing is you have to do body down Which is you have to stay with the body until it disappears. So even that rule we've kind of broken anyway Oh Wait Oh, he saw the dead to run a little bit. Yes mine. Nice job Wait, did he just give us the to run it on? What I think he did he just gave us this a more legend What a nice crocodile that was That baby must have taken hits now. Oh He killed one.  I didn't realize he could do that What is running towards us right now? Tonado If you wanted to he could kill me. Yeah. Yeah, I hide in a bush or something Yeah, I don't think he will just because he hasn't attacked anyone, but you're right.    I don't know. I didn't I wasn't doing anything Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm up. I'm up. Let's go. We need to find rabbit. There we go. Okay, okay Okay, okay you Oh, you hear that? Oh my god. There's oh Dude, there's like three of them There's two adults and three babies man.  Yeah, so if they spot us Like there's nothing we can do If only I knew where the other raptors were and then like we could have a proper big battle wait If you want like to find other raptors we have to go north And if we go north then we just have to go south again to find these guys Oh, really? Is it just north? Yeah Okay, okay, let's go then let's run into the the jungle Yes, look at them So there's there's only one big one and the rest are like small. Oh, are you ready? Should we just do like a lunge towards them? I have no stamina. Okay, rest then How fast are they? Oh, no, this is gonna be the end of the video.  Did I kill it? Oh I think I killed the baby car now This is such an imprecision of water If we only did it a little bit sooner, we might be able to see stuff and attack Well, I've killed one of the babies so that that's something and I can hear that there's a car now attacking you guys Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, he's he's taking in turns to like pounds him Oh never mind Was that you? Yeah, are you dead? Oh, so you were on the floor and they were just norming on you Oh god I tried I tried. Oh, there's there's this big red car. No now this big red car. No I can't believe after all that that happened. Oh, what are you doing? Wait, where did did did we kill one? Oh, yeah, I think yeah, we've killed I think we've killed the majority of the car knows Can't believe you died I just couldn't make out what was happening. I was like, why is there a rafter on the floor like being pounced on? Why is it always me that dies? Because you set the example Yes, I lead by example I want to sit in the in the middle of them Oh, yay, I've been accepting because they don't allow me to be good. Yay They're actually sleeping as well No, no


Actually has question here. How can I add one SharePoint private team site members? Show SharePoint site members group to a newly created SharePoint site and give them read-only permissions. I don't have an on-prem server, everything this is in the Cloud and SharePoint online. So when you create a SharePoint site, there are three default permission groups that are created. There's the owners, the members, and the visitors, and their permissions are full access or full control contribute, which lets them add and even delete things, but sometimes I don't agree with the deletion part of it. Then you have the visitors. Now, how that equates to teams, I have still figured out where the visitors come into play, because there's not really that role in teams, if it's a teams supported site or teams backend site. But if you add them to the visitor role, there's two you can change this or you can create your own custom group, but you can change it to view only or restricted view only, which view only they would be able to download and access the content offline if they needed to, but the restricted view allows them to only look at it, they can't print it, they can't download it, they can't change anything. So there's a couple of different levels there. I think there's 20-some different check boxes when you go to create a custom permission level that you can decide exactly what they're able to do. That would be my answer. Stacy, you're muted. Sorry. To me, teams assumes that they need permission to do something, not just view, which is why we don't see it in teams. If you have teams, you want them to do something, you want them to interact, collaborate, which is the whole purpose of it, right? If you have a scenario there where you do have a team, but want to restrict access, you can always go and have an unattached SharePoint site and library, have those permission levels, make sure those people are in there as visitors, and then any content that you put in that place, you'll still have access and control there, and you can add in and add to a tab and access that content. This is one of those things where, again, where people were struggling with the flatter architecture of teams saying, look, you can still have complexity. Just don't use the out-of-the-box SharePoint sites that are created when a team is created, but have yet a secondary SharePoint site that's standalone, and then provide access there. I'm not going to add. I don't use that anymore. I don't do that stuff anymore. I stick with the flat and the out-of-the-box, but you have those tools. Yeah. The only thing, the difficulty with that is the fact that you have to know which teams are set up that way and which ones are not. It's an administrative overhead to do those things. So you've got to keep that in mind along with that, because otherwise people are going to end up in the wrong thing with the wrong permissions and it's no better than document libraries when people are breaking permissions or document level permissions. But I'd say it's not a solution that scales. But if you're doing a one-off and you have that need and you are actively managing that, then you have that option. But you're right. It's not a scalable. You get hit by a bus. Good luck to the people taking that over. Document, document, document. Well, to your point, if you add or remove people, you have to remember there's multiple sources that are being surfaced in the team and those people have to be added to both sites or both permission groups. Or when you create the SharePoint site, the team SharePoint group can be used as the contributors or the owner's group of another SharePoint site. You don't want to duplicate or create exact same permission groups in two different sites when you can use the same one. Yeah. We don't have to create random ones. Just remember, whoever sets that up may not be the person that is the people who are answering the phone as support to help that person with their permission. So you're asking for a nightmare there. So document, make it public, so he knows that that has special permissions. Let's just clarify. It's a nightmare for out-of-the-box management and governance. Yes. But with third-party tools, it's pretty simple actually. Can be, can be, if you set it up properly. Yeah, but you can go and look at the profile of an individual. Somebody leaves the company, see every site, every team, every group, every community that they're a member of, and change that. Yeah. But then the support team, typically FYI admins have that access because they can see into the back-in, but who are the people that actually get that support call? It's not the admin. It's tier one support. Yeah. And they go, oh. Yeah. It's a balancing act, right? It's completely a balancing act. Well, I think, Stacey, we've done some projects together, and we always put the primary point of contact on the main SharePoint page. This is where you contact if you have an issue here. Don't call the help desk because they can help you reset your password, or doesn't power on, or don't have network access, whatever. Often they don't know, and may not even have access to the sites that you're having a problem with. The people web part is my friend. It's my friend. I always appreciate that, whether I'm going into a Yammer community or a SharePoint site or whatever, when I see that, like over on the right nav or the left nav, and see a link, a list of it, I just, right there, it just makes me think of that scene from Tommy Boy, you know, it's like, I'll see in that label that it's, you know, on there, it just gives me, it warms the heart to know that that, that your protection is there of, that's guaranteed.  One of the best movies ever. So, and the thing that I'll say is someone who's been listening to this, this conversation, and all the points have been very valid, but if you're trying to jam a read-only user into a collaborative tool like Teams, then I would want to take a step back and say, is this the right tool, right, for the right function? Right, yeah. Right, you don't need to use what you can, but, you know, sometimes you have to advocate for the right tool in the right, right place at the right time. Well, how, like, how would I go and solve that today?  I just go out in one drive. I create a folder, the view-only, and then I provide that link out to the people that needed it for that. Done. Yeah. Yeah, but no, here's the problem with that. Christian, you win the lottery and run away, and all of that content is sitting in your one drive and people are expecting to go find it. Now, their links are all broken. So, you're saying all this stuff. Are you trying to elicit an emotional response from me? Yeah. I just won the lottery. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Really? Really. But the people behind do care. I stopped saying hit by a bus because that's bad. How does that impact me, Sherry? Yeah. Don't say hit by a bus because I would be that person. I'm looking at that name. No, no, no. Wait, no. I didn't win the lottery, then get hit by a bus. No, you used it. You said I get hit by a bus, and I stopped using that phrase because I'm like, that's just asking for bad juju. I'd rather say you won the lottery. I'm with it on the whole one drive thing because you know how it sets up. If the manager gets that notification, hey, this person's leaving you got 30 days, right? Or whatever you defaulted to, right? And if that manager doesn't go get that data, you lose that data, right? Now, I love the fact that Microsoft put in that link now that you can generate as an admin as long as you have access and give it to anybody and then get into that one drive so you can go get that data, right? But still, you're going to have those broken links, but at least they're giving us alternate methods of getting in there to get it, but someone still has to do it. Right. And we're talking about one drive for business and providing a folder with those rules around it, even if I'm hit by the bus or I win the lottery and run off, I buy an island or whatever. If you're impacted. I'm lost to say. I'm no longer there physically. That ownership of that content in that site remains with the company. Somebody there, it rolls up and admins get that access. But again, the problem is solved though of not changing the flat structure of teams, not changing any of those permission levels and for this purpose of giving read-only access to a subset of documents very quickly without headaches. That solves it. Well, it just reinforces my philosophy. You have to have information architecture. It needs to be planned. B, you have to have a documentation strategy based on the lifecycle of that document. And not everything belongs in a team's file library. You don't take your J drive and dump it all into that one document library. You have 10,000 documents. You got to look at your documents and say, are these ratified? I mean, are these gospel documents? We're not going to put them in a document folder that can be edited anymore. That needs to be moved to another library and maybe provide a link back to that read-only version of that library. But you're making my point for me. Well, one other thing I'd like to add is as a person who doesn't gamble, I don't play the lottery. Statistically, it doesn't really change that my chances of winning. So I have an equal chance of winning the lottery. So it could happen. That's all I'm saying. Everyone pray for me that I win the lottery. Of course, it's getting hit by a bus. We always found it better to email them a check and say I would have lost this.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com and we've got a nice little mixer here for you. Jaspy's 4 box quick hit football mixer and it's a division mixer, break number two. This is, now every single filler that we have for that 48 box high end mixer that we have on the site on jaspyscasebreaks.com, every mixer has its own little unique thing to it. This particular one, it's a division break. So yeah, it's a lot more expensive per spot. But remember, when we're giving away that $3,000 football mixer spot, it's out of eight. So think about that, really, really good odds. Mixer is pretty solid too. We got a box of 2018 valiant, 2019 plates and patches, 2020 optic team all and 2021 flash football. Big thanks to everyone here. Christopher, Sean and Mark, thanks for grabbing spots straight up. Sean won a spot as well and Gail, congrats again to you two for taking the risk on that filler. Congrats again for winning. There are the divisions right here. Let's roll it, let's do it. Oh, that's not dice, here's some dice. Let's roll it and randomize it. One and a six lucky seven times, seven times for names and teams. One, two, three, four, five, six, and a one, seven and final time. Gail down to Christopher and one and a six, seven times for the divisions. Good luck, one, two, three, four, five, six, and a one, seven and final time. NFC East and the NFC West. All right, Gail with the NFC East, Christopher AFC East, Sean NFC North, Christopher AFC North, Sean AFC South, Christopher NFC South, Mark last spot mojo AFC West and Christopher with the NFC West. Let's sort by column B. Trades are allowed so I'm gonna pause the video really quick and when we come back we're gonna see if there's any trades and then we'll have the break. Stick around, be right back. BRB, be right back. I try to say both at the same time. All right, welcome back ladies and gentlemen. No deals are done in random division break number two and our four box quick hit mixer. So that list that you saw before remains the same. Thanks everybody for getting in on the action. So I think we're just gonna go in chronological order. We'll go with 2018, 2019, 2020 and close with that 2021 box. Good luck. This one has that graded card in there. First one out of the gate is gonna be Bo Scarborough. Champions autograph, two out of 35. I'm pretty sure the checklist will have him as a cowboy. Yep, Dallas cowboy. We got Carlton Davis, Valley autograph gold, five out of 10. Nice low number there. Carlton Davis is a buccaneer for Tampa Bay. So Dallas, that's NFC East. Gale will get the Bo Scarborough and the NFC South, Chris Gerard will get the Carlton Davis. We got Mark Andrews, big targets autograph, 45 out of 60, a Raven, I wanna say. Baltimore, yes. You know what, I think he, I think it might be his birthday today. AFC North, Christopher Gerard, Mark Andrews, birthday was yesterday, September 6th, 1995. He's 26 years old and I think yesterday he got a four year, $56 million contract extension. That's a great birthday present. So happy birthday, happy belated birthday to Mark Andrews. He is a big target, 45 out of 60. Once again for the AFC North, Chris Gerard and the graded card inside is a 9510 Deon Cain, valiant autograph and that is 22 out of 50. Do not remember where Deon Cain ended up. With the Colts, that's right. AFC South, Sean Maddock with Indianapolis, the blue horseshoes. All right, that was 2018. Let's get into 2019, plates and patches. Dodgers that Cardinals on the background, bottom of the eighth, Dodgers up 5-2. I think the Giants are winning too. The plate is autographed. Dante Pettis, one of one plate and auto for the NFC West. Chris Gerard out of fives and I'm gonna get the train whistle, all aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-hoo! Behind Josh Allen is two out of 25, Russell Wilson. NFC West, behind Josh Allen is Calvin Ridley, 40 out of 50. Nice dual relic here, kinda hard to see the lettering. There you go, you can kinda see it right there. Grid iron gear, some of the Falcons lettering up there too, AFC South, Chris Gerard. Behind Josh Allen is Bryce Love. We love it, 62 out of 99. Two color patch autograph for the Washington football team, NFC East, Gale. Again, 62 out of 99 on that one. And then there's the Josh Allen, 75 out of 99 for the AFC East, Christopher. All right, that was 2019 plates and patches. Now let's get into 2020. Donner's Optic Football, Asia Exclusive, Team All Edition. So the Team All Edition has those red stars parallels. This is what we're looking for. Gonna be a big rookie name, big rookie quarterback. Be nice. We got Colin Johnson, rated rookie. The Anjulio Jones is Stefan Gilmore. Behind Julio Jones is a Hollow Joe Mixon. And your red stars cards are Miles Sanders, Andrew Thomas, rookie red stars. Defense attack for the Giants, that's gonna go to the NFC East. Then we got the Julio Jones as well. All right, nothing too crazy in there. But we're gonna close out with 2021 Leaf Flash Football, five autographs in this box. Good luck. And thanks everyone for getting in.  We can run this back if you want. So go to jaskyscasebreaks.com and get into the action. All right, first one is Carlos Basham Jr., who is a Buffalo Bill, AFC East. Christopher with the AFC East. He numbered? No, not numbered on the back. That's speckled parallel. Next is Paulson Adebo. Paulson will go to the Saints. NFC South Christopher. Next up is Tyler Vons. That's five out of five Tyler Vons. Vons ended up with the Colts. The Blue Horseshoes, AFC South, Sean Matic. Sean, all aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-hoo, couple more to go. We got Amonra St. Brown, Flash of Brilliance. Auto, 25 out of 75. Amonra St. Brown is a Detroit Lion, NFC North. That's Sean M. again.  Such high hopes for his rookie year. 14 out of 15 for the first rounder, but injured. Probably out for most of the season, if not all of the season. But this is one to hang on to AFC South. Sean, hopefully he comes back strong. Thanks, everybody. The four box quick hitter in the books now for the biggest hit of all in this break, a $3,000 spot. Given way one of those, that's the biggest hit. So let's gather all your names again. There's some new dice, there's a new list. Let's roll it, let's randomize. That list, four and a one, five times. Name on top, $3,000 spot, let's go. One, two, three, four. And once more, fifth and final time. After five, it's, wow.  Woo, congrats to you. Hey, listen ladies and gentlemen, this could happen to you as well. Get in on the action on jaspyscasebrakes.com. Give it a try. I'm Joe Jaspy and I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Cluster API Provider AWS Project update. I am Sadaf Sawaj. I'm a software engineer at VMware Tanzu team. I am one of the maintainers of Cluster API Provider AWS Project. I've been working on this project over a year now. Hello, everyone. My name is Richard Case. I'm a tech lead at Weaveworks. I'm currently working on bare metal Cluster API based products and solutions for Weaveworks and also a Cluster API Provider AWS maintainer. This is our agenda for today. We will give you an overview of Cluster API Cappy and Cluster API Provider AWS Kappa. They are both C cluster lifecycle sub-projects. Then we are going to mention about some new features in Kappa and do a quick demo to give you an idea about how all this works together. Then we will talk about our roadmap and last we will mention how you can get involved as a contributor. So what's Cluster API and what does it do for us? Kubernetes lifecycle management is complicated with day one and day two operations and Cluster API brings Kubernetes style, declarative APIs to simplify this management. It manages Kubernetes clusters again by Kubernetes clusters and you see the Cluster API logo on the right. It is a reference to Tartus all the way down because we are using Kubernetes clusters to manage Kubernetes. In general, Kappa brings some automation to the management of the clusters in terms of creation, skating, repair, upgrades and deletion. You can create your Kubernetes clusters on either on-prem data centers or cloud providers and each infrastructure provider has its own way of provisioning resources like virtual machines, load balancers, etc. And Cluster API is infrastructure agnostic stuff to support these various infrastructure providers. It acts as a building block and provides interface for providers so that providers can implement these contracts and gets plugged into Cluster API so that users can provision clusters on them. Currently, we have provider implementations for all the logos you see on screen like AWS Azure vSphere. And if you want to see the whole list, you can check the link below. If you do not find your provider in the list, you can always build your own provider. There is a section in the Cluster API book that shows the contracts for adding a new provider. And I'm going to, no, next slide, please. Yeah. And Kappa has lots of cool features. If you want to know more in detail, there's a deep dive session on Friday. I suggest you see that session if you want to know more. And now I'm handing over to Rich to talk about Cluster API architecture details. This diagram represents the high-level architecture of how Cluster API works. There are three main portions to it. On the left-hand side, we have the cluster's definition as YAML. In the middle portion, we have the management cluster. And on the right-hand side, we have the resulting clusters that are created or the tenant clusters. So everything starts with a definition of a cluster. And this is created using YAML. This is essentially like you would declare the applications that run within Kubernetes, but for your cluster. The actual YAML was made up of a number of different kinds. And on the left-hand side, you can see a color-coded diagram that represents this. So the purple is the kinds that are provided to us by Cluster API. There's an upstream project. And then the pink and the orange are implemented by our providers. So essentially, you have to start with that. You have to create your cluster and its definition as YAML. This is applied then to a management cluster. So this is a core concept to Cluster API. You have to have a management cluster where you apply these definitions into. The role of the management cluster then is to run the controllers from the various providers and from Cluster API as well and provision the clusters, the tenant clusters on the right-hand side. So essentially, this is a two-step process. So the first step is it provisions the infrastructure in the target environment. So whether that is creating as your VMs or with an AWS, creating VPCs and EC2 instances. So the provider will need to provision that infrastructure first for Kubernetes to run on. Then a Bootstrap provider is used to bootstrap Kubernetes on that infrastructure and to create the cluster for you. So you can see within the management cluster, you can see the color coded representations of the various controllers for the different providers and also Cluster API itself. When a cluster is provisioned, essentially it will also store a kube config for that cluster within the management cluster and you can then use that to connect to the newly created cluster. So what is Kappa? First and foremost, Kappa is an infrastructure provider. What that means is it will provision the AWS infrastructure that is required to run a Kubernetes cluster within AWS. It provisions the infrastructure in an opinionated way. So you don't have to specify every aspect of the infrastructure. You can just let the provider take that opinionated view on what infrastructure it should create. Obviously that doesn't fit everyone's needs. So you can bring your own infrastructure. So you can provision your infrastructure via some other means like Terraform or Crossplane and plug in the details of that into the Kappa manifests. When creating clusters with Kappa, you can create two types of clusters essentially. So one we call unmanaged and that is basically an easy to instant space with a kube ADM bootstrap. And more recently, you can create what we call managed clusters which are essentially BKS clusters under the cover. So going back to the diagram we saw previously. So what I've taken here is essentially the representation again with the purple representing the cluster API resource kinds and overlay that with the Kappa resource kinds. Now this doesn't show every single resource kind that you can use within Kappa, but it shows you as representation. Main things to note here is on the left hand side, all clusters are provisioned with the set of credentials and this will be covered a bit later on within the talk. Then when we come to the cluster, we have an AWS cluster representation. One thing to note here is when you're using a managed cluster the AWS management control plane represents the infrastructure and the control plane which is slightly different to an unmanaged cluster. We look towards the bottom of the diagram, you see representations for the actual worker nodes. In this diagram we have machines and machine cores but they might also be machine deployments. And what you can see from this is within Kappa the resource kinds are AWS machine, AWS machine pool and AWS managed machine pool. And you'll see for managed clusters that sits across all of this is a bootstrap type and this is essentially for for managed clusters. This is called EKS config. Yeah and now I'm going to mention about a command line utility called cluster AWS ADM that we publish with our releases. It has some helper functions for Kappa. For example cluster AWS ADM bootstrap command manages identity and access management objects like roles policies and these are used by clusters and Kappa controllers. Also after every Kubernetes release we build and publish AWS images, AMIs using another Kubernetes subproject called image builder. And these AMIs comes with packages that's needed to bootstrap the node. By default when you create a Kubernetes cluster with a specific version Kappa picks the right image depending on the version from an AWS account. And to list all available AMIs for specific Kubernetes versions and OS distributions you can use cluster AWS ADM AMI list command. As a side note by the way we also support custom AMIs created by users. On the Kappa managed EKS site we have cluster AWS ADM EKS command to list available and install that once. Yeah so let's talk about some new features of Kappa. So in general we release minor releases every six months or so and a patch release almost every month. We are currently at version 0.6 release which was released last September. And I'm going to mention about some new features in 0.6 release which is common for bot managed and unmanaged clusters. The first one is multitenancy. Previously Kappa controller used to use same set of credentials. It is initialized with to reconcile all the workload clusters. And this was not suitable for especially large organizations where they would prefer to run their management cluster in a management AWS account. And each team has their own AWS accounts to run their workload clusters. So we introduce a multitenancy support with this release. Kappa can now do an IAM role assumption at runtime on a per cluster basis. And each workload cluster can pick and choose a different principle to be used during reconciliation of that cluster. And you see the CRDs we introduced to support multitenancy different kind of principles controller principle role principle and static principle. Also we have a new controller for backward compatibility for the existing clusters because we need to create a controller principle to make the previous clusters work, continue to work. And the next feature is AWS machine pools. So we added this feature with this release and it is responsible for creating and managing AWS auto scaling groups using a launch templates. So users don't have to manage individual meshes. So let's continue with our demo. All right. So before even creating our management cluster with Kappa and Kappa controllers, we need to create some IAM resources. And we use a cluster AWS ADM for this. We create as you see here a cloud formation state with all the necessary roles, instance profiles, and policies. And these resources can be customized by passing a content file to cluster AWS ADM. In this demo, I'm going to show a use case where management cluster is running on a management AWS app and a team has a different account that wants to bootstrap a workload cluster using a workload role. So on the left here, you see I created a management role. This role will be used to bootstrap our management cluster. So our Kappa controllers will use this role. You see this management role has the necessary permissions to manage AWS resources for our clusters like EC2, ELB, et cetera. On the right-hand side, do you see the workload role? This is the workload AWS cluster, sorry, the workload AWS account. I created the workload role here, which can be assumed by the management role on my management AWS account. It also has the necessary permissions to reconcile the resources necessary for our AWS cluster. Here you see. Let's see how we represent these roles in our workload cluster manifest. This is a simplified version of the workload cluster. You see a controller principle here, which represents the principle our management cluster is bootstrap. In our case, this is the management role in our management account. And then this role principle represents the workload role on our workload AWS account. We also provide details about how this role will be assumed with source principle. For our case, we want management role to assume this workload role. So we added this controller principle as source principle here. So for the sake of time, I already created our management cluster and a workload cluster. Let's see what controllers our management cluster has. So these are all the CAP and CAP controllers in their own namespaces you see here. Let's check out our cluster objects. We have a CAP cluster that's referred to the infrastructure provided cluster object, which is a AWS cluster for us. And here in the AWS cluster object, we specify infrastructure specific things such as networking. And also we provide a principle ref here. This principle ref will be used to create infrastructure resources for this AWS cluster. Let's take a quick look at the resources created by CAPA for a workload cluster. So here you see a VPC created for the demo cluster. And when we check our subnets, we CAPA controller created a public and private subnet, private mostly control planes and workload nodes are located in the private subnet. And load balancer is located in the public subnet. But these are all configurable. We create some route table rules, Netscape-based security groups, et cetera. And if we go to our EC2 dashboard, we see the API server that came up on the public subnet. With, let's check the instance, with our single control plane instance. When we check our running instances, this is our control plane, workload control plane instance. We also have security groups created for this workload cluster here. I'd like to show one final thing in our YAML file, which is machine pools. So you see this is the cluster API construct for machine pools, which refers to AWS machine pool. And here, AWS machine pool has details about how we want to create our launch templates for auto scaling groups if we go back to our console. So this is the machine pool created by CAPA controller with this launch template. With the specific instance site we provided and key payer name, et cetera. And when we check, again, our EC2 instances, this is the single instance, because we set the desired instance to one in our machine pool specifications. This finalizes our demo. And here are some more features that become available with 0.6 release. First one is we add a support for using spot instances in this cluster. Spot instances are not reliable EC2 instance types that are cheaper and more suitable for fault-tolerant workloads. The second one is we started watching for EC2 instance state changes using EventBridge and simple queue services. Previously, when there's an EC2 state change, CAPA was not detecting it until the next reconcile which could take up to 10 minutes. Now, when a change is detected, it triggers AWS machine reconcile. Also, in this release, we added support for dedicated instances which are basically EC2 instances that run on hardware that are occupied by a single tenant. Also, we added AWS request throttler logic because AWS throttlers API request for every AWS account on a per region basis. And we added a logic to stop our service request when we detect AWS starts throttling us. And now, I will ritual mention about new features in EKS. So, on the managed side of the provider, EKS support is new in the 0.6 release. So, this is still marked as experimental and you actually have to enable it explicitly via the EKS feature flag. So, there's two main CRDs that you need to create a cluster, EKS cluster. First one is AWS managed control plane. So, when you create a unmanaged cluster, you have a AWS cluster and you have a CUBE ADM control plane. Within the managed side of the provider, you only have the AWS managed control plane. It acts as both the cluster and the bootstrap provider combined into one. For the worker nodes within the EKS cluster, we support three types of worker nodes, essentially machines which are EC2-based instances and these are individual machines. So, you individually declare the machines you want to add to the cluster. And from a declaration point of view, you use the CAPI machine kind and the AWS machine kind when you're declaring these. So, there was already mentioned about machine pools and machine pools can be used within an EKS cluster and these again are essentially EC2 auto scaling groups. From a EKS point of view, you have to use the machine pool CAPI declaration and also the AWS machine pool. But in the EKS side, we also have another variant of the machine pools and these are called managed machine pools. If you're aware of EKS and use EKS normally, these get represented within as EKS node groups, essentially. To use these, you need to use again the CAPI machine pool, but then there's a different kind from a CAPI point of view and that is the AWS managed machine pool. If you want to use either variant of the machine pool, you must make sure that you enable the machine pool feature flag. And you can use all three of these within an EKS cluster. So, you can mix and match and have different types of working as within an EKS cluster. You just need to create the declarations and reference the managed control claim. So, we also support per cluster IAM role creation by default when you use cluster AWS ADM, it will create some default roles for use with the control plane and the worker nodes. That may not be suitable for your fuel type of scenario. So, you can enable via a feature flag that there is IAM role creation and then there's IAM roles per cluster. And within that cluster, you'll have an IAM role for the control plane and the worker nodes. So, that's something to be aware of. Also, if you use the EKS, you'll be aware of the way that you authenticate and authorize into the cluster. That's using IAM authenticator. So, the AWS managed control plane allows you to declaratively map users and roles that will result in the configuration, the required configuration changes within the cluster for AWS IAM authenticator. We also recently added support for EKS add-ons. There's only one add-on present, which is the VPC CNI. But this enables you to declare what add-ons you want within a cluster and then also upgrade the versions of those add-ons in a declarative manner. We've also added support for Fargate profiles. This is in 0.65. And this allows you, essentially, to attach a Fargate profile to your cluster and then effectively run specific pods within that Fargate profile. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see that they... How you install the GAPR provider into your management cluster. A few things to note. We've talked about feature flags quite a lot. There is a convention about how you can enable those feature flags via environment variables. And in the bottom of the screen, you'll see some examples of that. So, what does the YAML look like from a managed point of view from the EKS cluster point of view? So, here's two examples. On the left-hand side, in the box A, you see an example of the AWS managed control plane. So, this represents the cluster and the bootstrap, like I mentioned before. I want to point out a few things here. Firstly, we have that principle ref. So, a link to the credentials that are going to be used when provisioning this cluster. So, which account and which user, etc. We specify which version number we want to use within the cluster. And then, as I mentioned just previously, we have the section for add-ons. So, this is where you declare what add-ons you want within that cluster and specific version numbers. And this is where you would edit this area if you wanted to upgrade to a new version of the add-on. Finally, within this example, you can see that I'm mapping a role. I'm mapping the administrator access IAM role to the system master's role within Kubernetes or group within Kubernetes. So, this is where you do that declarative configuration of AWS IAM Authenticator. On the right-hand side, you'll see an example of an AWS managed machine pool. So, this is very similar to what Sedef showed in the demo. But this is just for the managed machine pool side of things. And you can see it's very simple. We are interested in two properties here, the min and the max size of that machine pool size. So, what does the red map look like for Kappa? So, we essentially have two versions of Kappa at present. So, we have the 0.6 release version. And this maps to the Kappa V1 Alpha 3 version. And you should consider the stable option. So, use this first, especially for any production-like scenarios. We're also currently working on 0.7. And this is compatible with Kappa V1 Alpha 4. Focus really with this is on stability and UX changes in the API that eventually going to lead to the beta release or the beta graduation of Kappa and Kappa. When talking about these two versions, you should note that we are only going to back port bug fixes and security vulnerabilities from 0.7 to 0.6. Yeah. So, we are still working on clarifying the features that will be in for V0 7 release. We will continue to focus on improving stability, that's for sure. But these are some of the features that are coming up. For the unmanaged site, we plan to extend our spot instance support by also supporting Amazon EC2 release and spot release. Also, we will verify using GPU EC2 instance type as workload nodes. So, for that, we will probably add conformance test that uses NVIDIA GP operator, which is basically responsible for installing necessary drivers for Kubernetes GPU support. And finally, we will add ignition support and start supporting ignition format for our bootstrap data instead of only using cloud in it to run our bootstrap script during instance initiation. That's all on the unmanaged site. So, on the managed side, we're focusing on three main areas. So, the first area is to implement the OIDC provider association. So, this feature was recently introduced into EKS. So, we're implementing that so that we get to the point of having feature parity within EKS. We're looking at a change in the way that we handle launch templates within the managed side. Currently, we generate a default launch template, but we don't actually allow you to configure all of the options within a launch template. So, this will become an alarm. From an API point of view, we are going to refactor the AWS managed control plane and essentially deprecates the AWS managed cluster. So, currently, the AWS managed control plane has grown organically a bit in all honesty, and we're going to change it and refactor it so there's a bit more structure to it. So, it's obvious when you use it, what options you should be using. So, how do I get started? So, first and foremost, try Kappie and Kappa. Kappie is a project that creates a quick start guide, and within that quick start guide, you can follow it through and choose which provider you want to use in order to get you from the point of creating a management cluster to creating your first tenant cluster. Once you've done that, you can then look at the Kappa-specific book that we publish. This has various topics that are specific to Kappa that will be useful, like different scenarios, how to contribute in our release cycle and stuff like that. Then, if you're still interested, come and look at the code, come and look at our repo. It sits within the Kubernetes SQL within GitHub, and so you can come and take a look at the issues, the releases, and the code. We also have our own channel within the Kubernetes Slack called cluster-api-aws, and we also have office hours that you can attend and listen to where we discuss issues and the roadmap. These are bi-weekly on a Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific time or 6 p.m. UTC. So, how can I contribute? So, there's a number of ways you can contribute. It's not all about coding. So, the first way, do you have right of skills? So, every project needs documentation, quick start guides, architecture diagrams, and so on. For the project to be successful, we need documentation. So, if you have those skills, we really welcome you to come and join the project. Do you have product skills? Can you translate actual real-world scenarios into requirements and issues that need to be implemented within Kappa? Can you help with prioritization with when we're planning a new release? These skills are really, really important to make sure that we deliver on what users want. Do you have coded skills? It's not all about actually cutting code. We need people to review pull requests. We need people to investigate issues and try and recreate them and create really useful tickets for us. If you want to code, that's great. We need more people to code, and you can look at the issues and see the ones that are tagged as a good first issue or help wanted. That's a great place to start. We also require people to improve our test coverage, whether that is the unit test or the end-to-end test. There's lots and lots of other ways that you can help with this project. Just come along and get involved. Thank you all for attending.


Welcome back to News Now, plus TV Africa. Niger's Defense Ministry says hundreds of Boko Haram militants have attacked a military post in southern region overnight, killing 16 soldiers and wounding nine more. In a statement, the military said about 50 of the Islamist militants were killed in result in combat in the West African country's Defa region, and significant quantities of weapons were recovered. The Boko Haram insurgency broke out in northeastern Nigeria in 2009, but violence frequently spills over into neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon in the Lake Chad Basin.