That's a bit better. Thank you very much. That's good. Good morning and welcome to the second meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2024. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills on the budget 2024-2025 and on education reform. It's a pleasure to have you back, Cabinet Secretary, and alongside the Cabinet Secretary today are Andrew Watson, director for children and families, Sam Anson, deputy director of workforce infrastructure and digital, and Stuart Gregg, head of reform division. We welcome you all here today, and thank you for your time this morning. Can I now invite the cabinet secretary to make a brief opening statement on the budget 2024-2025 before we move to questions from members? Cabinet secretary, do you have up to three minutes? Thanks. Happy new year to you and to the committee. I thank you for the invitation to speak today about the education and skills budget. As members will know, the overall context for this budget has been extremely challenging, with high inflation continuing to place extreme pressure on public finances. That is on top of course of more than a decade of UK Government under investment that has left our public services with very little resilience. Within my own portfolio, and across wider Scottish Government, we have had to take decisions to protect priorities aligned with our three missions of equality, opportunity and community, while also ensuring financial sustainability. It is against that challenging backdrop that I am pleased that the education and skills budget has increased in resource by £128 million or 4.3 per cent. The capital and resource budget combined has increased by almost £121 million in cash terms with 3.4 per cent. We continue to invest in high-quality funded early learning and childcare and wider family support, and overall the Government will invest £1 billion in high-quality funded ELC in the next year. We remain committed to keeping the promise to Scotland's care experience to children and young people, and we will continue our delivery of the whole family wellbeing programme. We are fully funding our commitment to pay staff in the private, voluntary and independent sectors, delivering ELC and children's social care with £12 an hour, and we are investing more than £387 million in our teaching workforce. That includes £145 million to maintain teacher numbers as well as £242 million as part of the teachers' pay settlement, making Scottish teachers the best paid in the UK. In addition, with our investment of a billion pounds in the Scottish attainment challenge over the course of this Parliament to support closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Finally, we remain committed to supporting a high-quality, post-school education research and skills system, with more than £2.4 billion of investment. However, that is not to diminish the extremely challenging backdrop to this budget. Like every cabinet secretary, I have had to prioritise legal and contractual obligations in determining how to deploy the budget. Throughout the budget process, I have deliberately sought to protect those who are most disadvantaged. An example of that is the Scottish Government's commitment to supporting families with the provision of free-skill meals at this time of financial uncertainty. We are starting with the expansion of our offer to those in receipt of the Scottish child payment during this year, with budget also provided for the infrastructure needed for this delivery. Similarly, we will invest £10 million of capital in targeted device and connectivity provision for our most disadvantaged households with children. That will bring in a range of different benefits for families struggling with the cost of living crisis, while also tackling digital exclusion amongst our most deprived learners. This approach will enable access not only to digital tools and resources for learning, but also to digital society and online public services, expanding the impact of that investment beyond learners to their wider families. This is a budget that protects education spending throughout the lifetime of a child's education, despite the headwinds of decisions taken by the UK Government. Scotland is the only part of the UK to offer 1,140 hours of eligible funding for all three and four-year-olds and for all eligible rather two-year-olds, regardless of their parents' working status, putting children first. We have the highest level of spending per pupil in the UK, with the highest number of teachers for every pupil. All primary school pupils in primaries 1 to 5, all children in special schools and eligible pupils in primary 6 through to secondary 6 can benefit from free-skill meals in Scotland, the most generous national offer of any nation in the UK, saving families on average £400 per child per year. Those who need the greatest support will receive it, including through our investment of £1 billion over the course of this parliamentary session, to close the poverty-related attainment gap. Following on from that, we are taking action to support our colleges, universities and skills system with over £2.4 billion of investment. For those wishing to move into higher education, our long-standing commitment to free tuition remains unwavering. Saving students in Scotland nearly £28,000 and ensuring that the ability to learn remains predicated on the ability to learn and not on the ability to be. I look forward to discussing the budget settlement in more detail with you this morning. I know all the topics that you have mentioned. I am sure that they will be brought up in the session as we progress through. Can we kick off questions this morning from Michelle Thomson, please? Good morning, cabinet secretary, and thank you for attending the panel as well. Before other members come in on the budget, I wanted to discuss briefly public sector reform, which was quite extensively pre-tailed, but the budget itself didn't contain any specific plans for how that would happen. I appreciate its complex and challenging, and there is a real cost associated with it. I understand that the approach thus far is for agencies, as some 129, to look at where they could make improvements, which arguably is perhaps like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. I want to explore with you what your understanding of the approach that is being taken from your portfolio perspective is. Is it top-down, or will it be working in alignment with you? In which case, how will you be able to dovetail the education reform programme, which is extensive enough with the wider public sector reform? I thank the member for her question. I think that she raises a hugely important point, particularly in light of the challenges that the Government faces, which are well known to the committee in relation to the DFM's update to Parliament at the end of last year. My portfolio is not insulated from those challenges. I think that we have worked quite hard to protect the education budget as best possible. My understanding of the public sector reform that will need to take place is that all organisations will need to play a role in that all of our public sector bodies will have to play their part. I think that we need to take a nuanced approach to that. That will be easier for some public bodies than it may be for others, given the services that they deliver. We need to be mindful of that. I am acutely mindful of that, given some of my responsibilities to those organisations and the services that they deliver. The member touched on education reform. I know that we are going on to another session following the budget topic on that very issue. I am mindful of the need to support education reform, which is why, of course, the budget contains additionality—I think that just over £12 million to help to support the reform process itself. I accept that we will need to work very carefully with those organisations. The DFM set out at the end of last year was that it will be a 10-year plan that we will look across Government to reduce spend bluntly and to look at where there are efficiencies to be made across the piece, but all organisations will have to be part of that drive. I think that, to the member's specific point, we will have to take a nuanced approach. The way in which the budget has been delivered takes that nuanced approach to protect certain services, whether that is health or education, through the three missions approach. That is what I would seek to do through reforming the public bodies within the education and skills portfolio, that we remember the impact that education can have. That is not just about the spend in relation to education itself. It is a preventative spend, too, that can benefit other portfolio areas. I have a couple of follow-on questions. In terms of just pure delivery, if we knew the deadline was 10 years hence and there was no electoral cycles, the approach that one would choose to adopt and, indeed, public pressure might be different to where there are intervening events such as elections. In terms of the nuanced approach and the pressure that will be for demonstrable delivery, how are you going to be able to square that off, cabinet secretary, where people will be crying for real, evident change, but with a nuanced approach against a 10-year delivery? Perhaps you can reflect on some of the complexities in that. I cannot get rid of electoral cycles, because we do not live in a dictatorship. We need to be pragmatic. That is a political challenge for all parties, not least my own, who are currently in government. For the Government of the day and 10 years, we all need to be mindful that the trajectory that the Scottish Government operates in means that we have to operate with a balanced budget. We need to have that forecast in relation to the savings that are needed to be taken across Government. The member makes specific points in relation to education. I think that the DFM is going to set out more detail on that at stage 1, but I am more than happy to hear suggestions that members might have in relation to how that should operate. My personal view, cabinet secretary, for education, is that we need to protect the education budget as best as possible. The budget settlement that we have has done so, but we need to be mindful of the investment in education, not just being about my portfolio area. Throughout the budget process, every cabinet secretary is keen to make those points, but I believe that investment in education is a preventative investment that can help to alleviate pressures elsewhere in other portfolio areas. That needs to be better understood through the public service reform agenda, recognising that, if we were to take from certain parts of my portfolio, there might be unintended consequences for other parts of Government. The invest to save option that I know the DFM is also pursuing gives us an opportunity to do things quite radically different in education space. I know on the reform agenda, and we will talk about that later. Mr Day was at committee last week talking about some of his work. I think that there is much more opportunity for us in education to have a holistic approach to reform that will help to drive efficiencies, but will also help to improve outcomes for our young people. Thank you for that, and you are right that we are going to come on to that. Just following on from it in terms of a lean to the budget, there is not a specific public sector pay policy that has been published. So how will you be able to support agencies struggling to set budgets, and, as I commented earlier, where there is a real cost to the savings that they need to make? What do you see as your role in supporting them without this kind of framing of a public sector pay policy? I do not think that, at this time in the financial year, we would usually have published our public sector pay policy, so in budgets of the past it is not the case that we would have published it at this stage in the day. However, I recognise the need to work with those agencies and organisations. We did so last year and we have done so in years previously. If I had been at the committee this time last year, I would have been in front of the Transport Committee talking about some of the challenges that we were facing in relation to Scotland at that time. We work with that organisation around the confines of public sector pay for that organisation in setting their approach to resolving a pay dispute at that time. So we will continue to work with the organisations that we support, but bluntly there is significant financial pressure on this year's budget. Financial pressure that I do not think that the Government has ever faced has been compounded by inflationary pressures. We all need to be mindful of that and that includes our public bodies in relation to what that will mean about the offers that they are able to make this year in relation to public sector pay. However, I do not want to say too much on public sector pay policy because that sits out with my remit. Absolutely, fair dues, but I suppose just finally I wanted to just explore a wee bit more. I absolutely agree with the constraints on pay and the difficulty of the budget, but it is how specifically you will be able to support agencies in squaring off that circle to use a horrible analogy, if I could, because they will be required to deliver to budget exactly the same as the Scottish Government and make those changes at the same time and manage the very real issues with cost base that they have. So my question really is about how you see your role of supporting these agencies with these conflicting demands almost. So it's quite a general question and I suppose I gave the transport example as the one that came to mind as a very specific example of a role that I've played in government in bringing about a resolution to that dispute and we worked with ScotRail at that time to bring about a result in relation to that. My view as cabinet secretary will be very much to support these agencies in trying to square what will be a hugely challenging financial settlement for them. I recognise that. It's a hugely challenging settlement for government too and that's meant that I've had to make some pretty tough and not particularly nice choices in relation to the prioritisation of budget. In an ideal world I'm not sure that those are choices that any cabinet secretary would want to take and I'm sure members around the table will be sitting in front of other committees hearing cabinet secretary say similarly, I do think through this budget we've been able to best protect education. I recognise the point that the member makes. What I would say is that I will continue to work with these organisations and supporting them to bring about resolutions but obviously we don't yet have a public sector pay position so I don't want to prejudge the outcome of that but any cabinet secretary would tell you and I will say the same that in my experience working with these organisations to bring about resolutions but actually to ensure that they can deliver reform which we will go on to talk to later is hugely important and to some extent reform gives us an opportunity for some of the efficiencies that public service reform requests government deliver. You'll know last week we had one of your ministers in committee, the minister for further and higher education and the budget that we were talking about last week in that field set out a cut in the resource budget for further and higher education. Last year the budgets faced in-year cuts and last week the minister could not rule out this happening again for the coming year when asked. What can the cabinet secretary say about whether further in-year cuts may be likely to happen in 2024-25? I listened back to my minister's contribution at your committee over the weekend and I think he's set out a pretty pragmatic approach in relation to where we are at the current time. As a committee will be aware when I was appointed back in March I inherited a teacher's pay deal which required to be funded from my portfolio so I had to make a number of really tough choices pretty quickly to fund the teacher's pay deal and the committee will go on. I'm sure to talk about the detail of some of those budget lines but in November of this year the deputy First Minister published details of where those reductions had come from and those in-year savings bluntly had to be delivered in order to balance my budget but also in order to pay for a teacher's pay deal that was negotiated prior to my time in post. Those requirements around the in-year savings have been baked into the settlement for this year's financial allocation and I recognise the challenge here and I'm sure we'll come on to talk about that specifically in relation to the budget line but I think that to Mr Day's point the allocations particularly for colleges are going to look broadly similar next financial year to those which they have experienced in the last financial year. So there will be challenges in that, I accept that and we here today of course the inflationary impacts are not going away for any organisation and I'm keen to work with our colleges particularly on what that will mean for them but to Mr Day's point about in-year savings the challenge that government has faced throughout this year has been the uncertainty of our budget allocation so I hope that when the chancellor comes back of course for the spring update and spring statement there may be additionality coming to Scottish Government certainly I would request that it came to my portfolio as the convener would expect but there is an opportunity I think to rebalance here and we bluntly have been through a period of extreme financial pressure on the Scottish Government budget which has meant we have had to meet a number of record paydeals across the piece. Those are things that I think were quite right for the Scottish Government to deliver so the teachers' paydeal being one of them but it has meant that we have less money overall to go around and we need to be pragmatic about what that means for every portfolio including my own. Thank you cabinet secretary you mentioned about the timelines about what you're coming into post in November 2023 the deputy first minister then set out savings or maybe 56 million pounds to the further and higher education budget across demand led programmes at the Scottish funding council. During last week's meeting the minister for higher and further education I indicated that these were to the further education budget when in fact they affected both further and higher education budgets so I want to clarify that on record specifically firstly but the fact remains however that it's really unclear what these demand led programmes were and where the savings came from so I was wondering if you could let us know what programmes were affected because I know that when the Scottish funding council were questioned around this 56 million at public audit this week they were unable to identify specifically these demand led programmes so just for clarity community are we talking about the Scottish funding council cuts or wider the 56 million to the Scottish funding council that was under the line I think it was described as a demand led programmes so there are a number of different demand led programmes I might bring industry on some of the specifics here so my understanding was some of the the savings that were generated from the Scottish funding council included of course as the committee will know the transformation fund that saved the region 46 million pounds so that's been baked into this year's financial settlement there were a number of other budget related demand led rather budget lines which include things for example like the education maintenance allowance we had less uptake of that in the last financial year than had been forecast we also had reductions to the European social fund income and more broadly the strategic change transformation fund too I don't know if you want to say more on the specifics of those budget lines from last financial year so I think it would be hard to add anything over and above what the chief executive of the Scottish funding council provided to you the Scottish funding council operate a number of programmes that translate the budget settlement into the way the money flows out into both the college and the higher education sector some of those programmes will be bid in programmes that they've set up and funds and so forth so in those areas that they will have seen savings as you always have within year and I think the challenge for this budget has been to ensure that those savings have been brought through this year rather than maintaining the budget at a similar level and then work through savings within year which I think gets back to your point about the within year savings what has happened with this budget is to take those tough choices at the start of the year to bake those savings in the 24-25 budget so I suppose but I'm excuse me asking for some real clarity and detail as to what has where this 56 million has come from and how it's come about and if it's possible perhaps to get some more detail and specifics around that you mentioned a number of programmes cabinet secretary but it would be good to see what proportion of that 56 million came from each of those to see. I want to write to the committee with more detail on that I don't have the specifics but I understand that in front of me but I take your point community I think it would be helpful to set that out to the committee in more detail. Thank you. Can the cabinet secretary also say something about how colleges and universities can approach the overall skills reform agenda at a time when they are facing some significant financial pressures and maybe also dig into about what assistance the Scottish Government and the Scottish funding council can help and offer these institutions when we are moving through that period of reform. So as I mentioned I listened to Mr D's contribution to committee last week and I think the trajectory in relation to skills reform is in a similar position to that in a school space which we'll come on to talk to later. I think there are opportunities through reform for efficiencies and we need to be mindful of that in the current challenging financial context. I know that Mr D spoke with great passion last week around the opportunities that colleges saw in that endeavour and I think that the reform agenda lends itself to us working more closely within our portfolio at the current time it can often feel quite siloed between responsibilities and if I'm a threat to my officials between directorates even. So there is a need for a closer cross portfolio collaboration in relation to budget, particularly given the challenge that we all face at the current time. But I'm keen to support Mr D in his work in leading the skills side of reform and as the committee will know and again we'll go on to talk about this in the next session, I've reformed some of the governance arrangements around skills reform to bring skills into a space alongside schools so that we can have that cross portfolio approach to delivering change across the system but it must be funded. So I spoke to Michelle Thomson's point earlier on about school reform, there is budget to support that through the school reform programme, we will continue to work with the colleges sector in relation to how we can best support them too in that endeavour. Okay, thank you. Pam Duncan-Clancer, you're looking to come in. Yeah, thank you, convener, just for a brief supplementary. When I'm speaking to colleges, some of the things they're telling me is that in order to make the efficiencies in the reform they might need some additional funding up front to do that but there's nothing in the budget so how do you think the colleges are going to be able to make those efficiencies in the long term without that? I would agree with the member that there is no additionality in my budget for those that support that might be needed. What I would say to the colleges sector is that I'm keen to work with them very much so I think I heard that the committee took evidence from colleges Scotland and shown us that others talked about, for example, duplication in the system. That is a point that I've discussed with Mr Day at length given our responsibilities in relation to qualification delivery and the levels of duplication that may exist in the system at the current time. I think that it's important to say that we have done our best to protect spend across the portfolio and I'm particularly mindful of colleges and where they are at the current time and their financial sustainability. There is a precarious, I suppose, challenge in that sector that has built up over a number of years and since I've been an MSP certainly since 2016 there's been industrial action in the sector every single year, I think, perhaps bar one and I think that that's detrimental and challenging to trying to change the narrative around about the importance of colleges and we really need to start celebrating again, I think, the importance of our colleges sector. I'm not going to pretend to the member have additionality to provide other than that which is provided for in the face of the budget but I do commit to working with the sector on where we can help support them and that might look like working differently in the future and in the space of reform. I heard some suggestions on that from committee members last week which I think are quite helpful but I can't pretend to the member that I have additionality to support some of that work because it is not there in my budget and we're not yet at stage one so if the member has suggestions from where that could come from in my budget I'm happy to hear it or from which other portfolio but that is a reality that I'm currently working in and I will not pretend that there is additionality in my budget that doesn't currently exist. The budget proposes a cut of £28.5 million to the teaching grant at universities. Yesterday the finance secretary hesitantly quantified that as about 1,200 first year student places, others suggest that it could be over three and a half thousand. Cabinet secretary, it's your portfolio so you must have calculated this. How many young Scots will not have a place at Scottish universities going forward? I saw some of the coverage from the finance secretary's appearance yesterday and I've seen the press coverage too and it is the case that these are the additional places that we included in allocations during the pandemic. It is my understanding, though I'm prepared to be corrected by my officials on this and we have discussed this at length, that these are the additional places that we built into the system during the pandemic to protect students and support them through their learning. Remember during the pandemic we had higher numbers of young people going on to higher education as a result largely, and I heard elsewhere some say this on the radio this morning, of changes to the qualifications and the examinations during the pandemic. We expected higher numbers to flow into our university system and that's why we built in those additional numbers. Throughout the period since the pandemic, we have progressively withdrawn those places. The final removal of the additional places that were built in prior to my time in office is removing an uplift of funding for over 1,200 places that were added during Covid. I think that the member then asked about places for Scottish students specifically, and of course the last official statistics show that in 2021-22 we had record numbers of Scottish students starting full-time first degrees at Scottish universities, which I know was welcomed by universities Scotland. I think that there isn't evidence at the current time that we don't have places or enough places for Scottish students at institutions or that, for example, Scottish students might be choosing to study elsewhere, but it's something that I'm keen to keep a very close eye on, but I am mindful that those places—I go back to my initial response—are additional places that were built in during the pandemic. The committee understands well enough the challenges all portfolios face. This, to me, in terms of protecting outcomes for our young people, was a decision that I had to take given the challenges that I face elsewhere in the portfolio, and it is the additionality that we built in during the pandemic. You say that it is 1,200 places only that are being cut, and you can come back to me on that if I'm not correct. The universities say that they need more, not less funding if they are to reach the 2030 target of widening access. The Scottish Government's own analysis has identified a significant risk that, on the current model, there will be disadvantages to learners from socio-economically deprived areas. What impact does the cabinet secretary predict those swinging cuts will have on the widening access agenda? I'm not sure that I would characterise funded universities in those terms. I have seen evidence from University Scotland that requested that the funding for those additional places was removed and given to the sector to help respond to some of the points that the member makes. Of course, in an ideal world, I would like to be sitting here saying exactly those things, but the reality is that I have to balance my budget and I need to identify where savings can be taken. The member asked a question in relation to socio-economic deprived areas, and, of course, our work on widening access continues. We will work with the sector in relation to progress on that, but I go back to my original point, which is that those were additional places built in during the pandemic. I'm not necessarily sure to the member's point that I would characterise those removals, or the cuts, as swinging. They are simply us moving back to where we were prior to the pandemic. The member also asked a supplementary in his question about further removal of further places. Of course, at this stage in the budget, we wouldn't be in a position to give the member detailed information on that, because, of course, the SFC will need to work with institutions. It is for ministers to provide the SFC with guidance in relation to any expectations that we would have around courses or places that should be protected, so I want to work very closely with the SFC on that very point, to the member's point, on socioeconomic disadvantage, because we want to protect places for our most disadvantaged young people. That is the point of the widening access policy. I think that many people would characterise a cut of 28.5 million or 6 per cent as swinging, however we clearly differ on that. Does the cabinet secretary get involved in considerations of the economic and future workforce impact of anything between 1,200 and 3,800 students leaving Scotland to study elsewhere, both during their education and going forward? I am not sure that we can yet quantify that impact at this stage in the budget process. I am happy to come back to the member on that in written detail. At this stage in the budget process, I am not sure that we can yet quantify that impact. In my last response, I explained that we will work with the SFC on those allocations. They go through the process every year, and it is a robust process that happens every financial year. It is not something that is new to the portfolio, and we will work with institutions, particularly on what that will mean for them. I think that, more broadly, the impact in relation to the socioeconomic point that the member makes will be quantified in due course, because at this stage in the budget settlement, we do not yet have that clarity or detail from the SFC because, of course, the SFC needs to work with ministers around about the allocation and what that will mean. I am not able to give the member more detail at this current time in relation to where we are on the chronology of the budget itself, but I am happy to write to the committee, perhaps, convener, with more detail on that point as we progress through the budget process. Again, we are not yet at stage 1 of the budget, so if the member has suggestions about where else that finance could be deployed or where else we could meet that requirement or requests from the university sector, I am happy to hear where it may come from. Well, certainly something that is certain is that funding to Scottish universities for each Scottish student place in the total capped numbers is less than the cost to the university of that place and 19 per cent less in real terms than in 2013 to 2014 and about 21 per cent less than for English universities. Given that, does the cabinet secretary worry that this budget will make Scottish universities ever more dependent on international students and if so, what plans does she have to address that? The member raises a really important point. I engaged directly with university principles. I met with the Edinburgh university principle only last week and discussed this exact issue around about the challenge in relation to international students. Of course, one of the real challenges here, I have to say to the member, are changes made to the immigration rules, which make it far more difficult for universities to attract inward outside students from outwith Scotland and international students, because they are put off by the immigration rhetoric coming from the UK Government and the rules around what that might mean for visas. We heard more detail on that from Alistair Sim from University Scotland on GMS only this morning, so I suggest to the member that some of the challenge here rests with another Government. However, I recognise the point that he makes in relation to cross-fertilisation of Scottish places. That is not a new feature in relation to how we fund higher education in Scotland. It has been the case for a number of years. On Monday, it relates to my party's policy of funding free tuition for our students. I think that that is a good policy. It is a policy that I will stand by, but it does create challenges for our universities. I recognise that, too. Our universities are experts in working independently of Government, because they are autonomous independent institutions to raise finance, whether that be through international students that they may have coming into study in their institutions or through other sources. I have a lot of faith in our university sector from my engagement, certainly with principles directly in their ability to respond to some of the challenges. However, I would say to the member that some of the challenge here, particularly in relation to international students, does not rest with the Scottish Government. The cabinet secretary is suggesting that her Government's policies are making the universities ever more dependent upon international students and then in the same breath saying that decisions taken elsewhere are making that more difficult. What is she doing to address that to ensure that Scottish universities are not dependent on the international students? I say to the member again that the policy of free tuition is one that I will stand by as cabinet secretary. It is a policy that this Government funds. We also provide additionality into the sector that does not exist in other parts of the UK in relation to student support. I am sure that we might come on to talk about that, too, but the current time, of course, the universities are facing challenges in relation to our international students. We have spoken to some of the challenge here in terms of the changes to immigration rules, and that is making it far more difficult for certain institutions to attract inward investment from international students. Some institutions are less dependent, though, I would say to the member than others. Some universities can weather the storm more so than others, but some institutions in Scotland just now are being harmed by immigration rules—decisions taken by other Governments elsewhere. I say to the member that it is not my responsibility as cabinet secretary for education in Scotland to mop up the mess of a Government elsewhere around its approach to international students and immigration. Those decisions have been taken elsewhere, and they are harming the sector in Scotland. If the member has any leverage with his colleagues in Westminster, I would suggest that he makes those points to my opponent in Westminster rigorously, because I recognise the challenge here, but I am not going to walk away from this Government's policy of supporting free tuition for our young people. No, but you will abandon the university sector. That is an interesting choice of words. The opponent makes it quite confrontational. Can I come back to the 1,200 places for university students that have been removed, shall we say? It is interesting. We are seeing throughout various points of our education system where, at the very early years, we are seeing fewer young people coming in, but there are other points in terms of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds. Numbers are increasing. In fact, the number of 18-year-olds right now is on an upward trajectory, and it will follow that way for the next five to six years, so it does seem a bit counterintuitive to me, certainly, that we should be seeking to reduce the number of places for first-year students by 1,200. I was wondering if you had any comments on that. What sort of data do you use on school-age children at various ages to determine your budget and your priorities? I suppose that I will go back to the response to Mr Kerr about those being additional places, but we do look to quantify and the SFC does this measurement in terms of looking at places and how we can allocate additionality into the system and forecasting that and what it will mean for the sector. I should say to the committee, and I am sure that the committee is aware of this, that there are longer-term forecasts that look at a reduction in our current school-age provision, and, therefore, across the piece, we expect to see less young people coming through the system in the coming years, so that work will be factored into the SFC. I agree with that cabinet secretary, but I am saying that right now, for the next five to six years, we will be seeing an upward trajectory of 17 and 18-year-olds coming in and looking for further and higher education. I am addressing the fact that, yes, further down, we are going to see reductions, but right now, we are going to have a peak in numbers. I go back to the point that I made to Mr Kerr around record numbers of Scottish students going on, of Scottish young people rather going on to university at the current time, so I do not think that removal of spaces is going to adversely affect that. However, I go back to the second point that I made to Mr Kerr about the allocation and work with the SFC, which, at this stage in the financial year, we would not expect to have detail on at any point in the past. However, I am more than happy to write to the committee on more detail on that point. Those are calculations that the SFC looks at every year. They look at that very point that the convener makes about calculating the number of spaces required, the funding that is required, and then, of course, ministers are required to provide grant provisions. We will write to the SFC about our expectations on how we can protect certain courses, how we can protect young people from certain groups, for example, and that is factored into the allocation from the SFC. However, you are right to say that the SFC looks at that as a forward planning approach. Those spaces, though, I go back to, are quite unique in that they are additional Covid spaces that we built in during the pandemic. At a time of financial uncertainty, an extreme challenge across my portfolio, the removal, I think, was one of the less worse options, I suppose that you could describe it as, in relation to how we might balance the education and skills budget. I have got some supplementaries in this section here. I have got Ben Macpherson, and I am just double checking as well. Pam Duncan has introduced them. Thanks, convener. There have been some questions in discussion so far in the session about the potential reduction in numbers in the 24-25 budget. However, just for context, I think that it is important to consider the provision that there has been in recent years. The cabinet secretary said that, in 2021-22 financial year, there was a record number of Scottish students that were state-funded to go to higher education institutions in Scotland. I just wondered if you wanted to put a number on that, because we are talking tens of thousands of young people having a state-funded opportunity in Scotland that is not available elsewhere in the UK. Indeed, it would be useful and interesting, I think, for Parliament to hear the numbers for 22, 23 and 23, 24. I have the UK statistics in front of me. I do not know if this is for 22, 23, but it shows that certainly over 35,000 Scots have once again secured a place at one of our universities. The data from last December shows that we have record numbers of young people going on to age 19 and under securing a university space in 2023, so last year. That also includes a record number of young people aged 19 and under from deprived areas, so I think that, to Mr Kerr's point, on socioeconomic disadvantage, it is hugely important that we remember the cohort of young people who are supported through our school system, through things such as the Scottish attainment challenge, but that we also have that consistency of policy approach to widening access in relation to HE. The member asked a question around numbers, so since 2006-07, when my party came into office, the number has increased by over 31 per cent to 33,880 in 2021-22. Significant numbers of our young people now record as the member outlines going on to study full-time degrees at Scottish universities who live in Scotland. I think that progress is certainly to be welcomed. What is the projection for 24-25? The figures that are being quoted are from the actual data that is fed back from the universities and so forth, so we do not have the forecast to look ahead. Do you have an approximate figure? I have heard between 38,000 and 40,000 quoted in recent days in media sources. Can we come back to us with that one? I do not expect that we would have that usually at this time in the year, because of course it must be forecast for next year. I think that we need to have a degree of accuracy here to the member's point in relation to media reports, but I cannot imagine that media reports have the accurate update. I hear figures quoted often in the media that are not necessarily accurate. Once we have an accurate picture from the NSFC around that provision, I am happy to again provide that detail to the committee. I would just observe that we are at quite an early stage in the budget process, so some of that will be worked through the iterations of budget. Noted, cabinet secretary. Pam Duncan-Clancy, sorry, my voice is gone. Thank you very much, convener. Maybe I can help the cabinet secretary out about the projections for next year, because if the budget of £20 million is to come out of colleges and universities, chances are that it will be 3,800 students less next year than it was this year, which I find intolerable, and I hope that the cabinet secretary also does. The Government's own detail on the budget says that changes in the college and HE resource budgets reduce education and skills training opportunities for young people and for older people to upskill. How does that meet the principle of opportunity and equality? To the member's first point in relation to places, and we have covered that now with a number of different members, but the impacts on spaces are the 1200 spaces that we added in during the pandemic, so the member has now quoted additional figures. I am not sure of the evidence base of that. I can help with that, so the 1200 is the figure that you have given for the Covid increase, but the difference is that that only saves £5 million. Universities have got £28 million to save, so if you make the comparison, that is an additional 2,600 students less next year, so that means that because of cuts by this Government, fewer Scottish students will be able to study at Scottish universities. I think that the member is misconstruing perhaps some of the data that we have already published in relation to the savings that were taken in year already. The allocation that universities will receive is broadly similar to that which was received during this financial year. The best analysis of it is that it is only 28 reduction, only that is a swinge and cut, I would agree. The worst-case scenario is that it is near 50 million, so to claim that it is the same as what it got last year is just inaccurate. I do not agree with the member's assertion. The Deputy First Minister published details of the savings that were taken back in November. We have spoken to some of those savings with the convener at the start of the meeting. The members will verse, for example, in relation to the removal of the transformation fund, which was in the region of £46 million at the start of this financial year, but there are additional savings that had to be taken during the year to balance the budget. More broadly, the member is citing specific examples of course reductions that I do not yet have in front of me. Of course, during the budgetary process, the SFC has to carry out this robust consideration of the number of places that are available. I do not yet have that data in front of me, so those are calculations that have not crossed my desk. However, if the member is happy to share her working with me, I am more than happy to hear it. The SFC has to make the savings in a way that minimises the impact on learning and teaching. I have been very clear about that. To the member's supplementary question about disadvantage, we need to ensure that there is support there for students, particularly in disadvantaged areas. The SFC is doing some of the work around removing that strategic transformation fund that I spoke to. It has also taken savings from a range of demand-led and other budgets, so some of that has involved underspend. I am happy to share detail of that with the committee and also through the European Social Fund's income. Those savings that were taken during this financial year are baked into the allocation for next financial year. A lot of what we are talking about today is not new. It is already in the public domain, and the DfM spoke to that back in November. However, the SFC now has to look at the return of savings, and it needs to provide me with advice about the allocations going forward. At the current time, we have not gone through that robust analysis. That would not happen at this time, usually during the financial year. However, we know that the 1200 spaces that the member spoke to, which I have accounted for in responses to the member and to other members, relate to the additionality that has been baked into the system during the pandemic. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Can we come to questions now from Ruth Maguire? Thank you, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary and your officials. I would like to go back to colleges, if I may. In opening, you acknowledged that it is not just this year that is financially challenging for the public sector. We have had a decade of challenge, and that does impact on organisations resilience. Our committee has been keen to explore previously how arrangements could be made more flexible for colleges to help them to manage challenges. Colleges have had some financial flexibilities around allocation and delivery of credits. At last week's committee meeting, Graham Day told committee that they had not been utilised as expected, and that they had not made full use of those flexibilities. Can you tell committee a little bit more about what benefits have been seen and any issues that you are aware of in colleges that have faced, in implementing those changes and taking advantage of those flexibilities? The arrangements around colleges' flexibility were made by Mr Day and my predecessors, so those arrangements were baked in. It is fair to say that, as you heard from him last week, some of the changes here have not been as dramatic as we might have hoped and have not perhaps delivered the flexibility that our predecessors and Mr Day and I would have hoped for. The SSCI has made some enhancement in relation to flexibilities on the college funding mode, and it is working with the sector around the publication of the budget on what the sector can deliver with the resources that it has. However, that is not something that has happened overnight. It has been a challenge over the course of a number of years in relation to the power that colleges have in the space of flexibilities. We are working through the tripartite group, which I know that the committee took evidence from Mr Day on last week to look at any remaining opportunity that there might be to give colleges that additionality, particularly when ensuring public accountability, because they do not have the same flexibilities that other bodies have in the space. I recognise that challenge. They have certainly raised it with me directly since my own appointment, but that also includes us looking at processes that allow our colleges to have that maximum flexibility to allow funds to be generated from estate disposals, for example. I know that the committee took evidence on that exact point last week. I think that it is fair to say that it is not operating in the way that we would have hoped. Part of the challenge here relates to colleges' classification. The student might want to say a little bit more on that, because I know that this is a historic challenge for colleges. However, the answer rests in the work of the tripartite group to look again at how we can drive forward more flexibility in this space. As you heard from Mr Day last week, it has not worked in the way that we would have, perhaps, first envisaged. Just to add to those points, the distinction for colleges versus universities is, of course, the lack of borrowing powers. That creates limits to how they can generate funds to invest, and that is why the SFC has put so much time and effort into enhancing the flexibilities available to colleges. I think that there was both the evidence last week from Mr Day and then there was further evidence from the chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council last week that went into this in quite a level of detail. The only additional point that the cabinet secretary mentioned is this point around asset disposal. College sectors sit on a large estate, and the focus of that tripartite group is to find things that we can do very quickly together with the SFC and with colleges to give as much flexibility to those colleges right now so that things like when they sell off some of that estate, those funds can be reinvested swiftly and some of those funds can be retained by those colleges so that those funds are going into the local investments that are needed. I think that Mr Day is committed to keeping the committee abreast of progress on that. That is helpful to hear. I think that particularly the word urgency there will be reassuring to committee. Cabinet secretary, notwithstanding your previous answers in terms of what assistance can be provided, the SFC highlighted its recent report on colleges finances to committee, which highlighted that a number of colleges were going to struggle to remain operational. Is the work described there in terms of flexibility the main form of assistance that the Government will be able to give and the SFC, or are there other things that can be done to assist? I think that there are other things that we will not need to consider. I referenced in my response to a member previously my concern about the colleges sector more generally and the precarious nature of that sector in particular in recent years. Baking in some of the financial challenges that we have across Government makes it even more challenging for the sector. I am also conscious of the role that our colleges sector plays for some of our most vulnerable young people. It has a reach that other parts of the education sector does not, and we need to be mindful of that in Government. I am keen that, through the reform process, we better understand that. Although I understand the committee to give evidence from Mr Day on this last week, I will shortly give evidence on school reform. We have to have a better connect between the two. They feel quite desperate at the current time, which is why I have reformed some of the Government's arrangements. You might think that that is a tweak. Who cares, Cabinet secretary? That is not going to deliver real change on the ground. I think that it is really important that we need to have more of a joined-up approach to how we deliver our education system. Part of the narrative and the rhetoric around curriculum for excellence was meant to be that delivery model, yet we still seem quite siloed in relation to how we think about the delivery of school education HE additionally. I know that Mr Day spoke in his appearance last week about opportunities for reform, particularly for colleges. That is not just about your point on flexibilities and that colleges recognise that. That includes, for example, the potential for them to take more of a leading role in the delivery of modern apprenticeships. I heard Mr Day speak to some of that last week. That college's first model would be quite a shift for the sector in the future, but perhaps there is an opportunity through some of that work on reform to better support the sustainability of the sector. I suppose that it goes back to Mr Duncan Glancy's point about that there is no additionality here. No, there is not, but we will need to look at how we work smarter in the future to help to protect that sustainability. The other point is to make, of course, that there are a number of colleges that are having challenging time at the current time. I know that the SFC is working with them directly on that. Perhaps in the evidence session that you heard last week, Mr Day spoke about a number that the SFC has been supporting directly. They do that anyway without ministers getting involved, but we need to be mindful of the challenge becoming more so, I think, for our colleges sector and the current financial climate. I am very conscious of that. I think that reform and the flexibilities that we spoke to previously offer is an opportunity and a route forward. I particularly recognise that point around the connection between schools and colleges. Certainly in North Ayrshire with Ayrshire College and Irvine Royal, there were previously some excellent programmes. I have not necessarily continued, and I know that that was not uniform across the country, but there certainly is good work that can be learned from. Obviously, staff costs make up more than 70 per cent of college expenditure. Many colleges have run voluntary redundancy schemes. The committee has heard that some are planning compulsory redundancies. Audit Scotland has stated that further staff reductions could, and I will quote them here, severely erode colleges ability to deliver a viable curriculum. What is the Scottish Government's response to the FFC's forecast of the potential removal of 21 per cent of full-time equivalent staff employed in the college sector? I mentioned my response to Ms Duncan-Glancy, the real challenge that we face here. That is not a challenge that has grown up overnight. That has been happening over the course of time, actually, that Ms McGuire and I have been MSPs, and it probably predates 2016 additionally in relation to colleges. We need to be really mindful of the challenge here in relation to industrial action. I remember that I was at committee in September. I remember Mr Rennie asking me a question on this very point in the role of ministers. I am extremely limited in relation to the role that I can play in industrial disputes in the colleges sector because they are independent of government, but I recognise that the challenge here is on-going disputes that I will not comment on. I think that, last week's session, Mr Kerr raised the Strath Esk report with Mr Day on the recommendations that report was made back in 2022. There is opportunity through that report to drive forward some of the change that we need to see here. We need to reset some of the agenda in relation to colleges and the importance that they play in our education system. I worry that some of that has been forgotten about in relation to how we think about school education. The member spoke to some of the opportunity there, particularly in working with our schools. Some of our colleges do fantastic work with our schools. We need to quantify that impact better, and we need to support the sector. I know that we are working on—well, colleges Scotland have formally responded to the Strath Esk report, and they are meeting with Regenians to look at next steps, working with them collectively on supporting the continued success of national bargaining. However, that does offer us a route forward. However, we need to inject a bit of urgency into that now, particularly post-pandemic. The education sector is under an extraordinary amount of pressure post-pandemic. It is expected, in all its guises—whether that is early learning and childcare for schools, colleges and universities—to mop up all of society's ills and to solve everything. It cannot do that alone. We just need to have a bit more of a pragmatic think about how we can quantify the impacts of our education spend on the outcomes for our young people, and our colleges are really fundamental to that drive. Resolving some of the on-going dispute—which I do not want to comment on the specifics on for obvious reasons—will be part of that, and then, as you heard from Mr Day last week, we move forward with those recommendations and try to bring about more sustainability in the sector. Yes, that might look like flexibilities, but it also looks like education reform, giving colleges a driving seat in delivering some of the opportunities that I think reform has for the sector. Liam Kerr, do you have a brief comment? Very briefly, convener. We all agree on the importance of colleges in the need for support of no doubt, but the college sector, the further education sector, is still unclear about how much funding that they might have for the coming year and the finance secretary was unable to answer when they might know yesterday. Does the cabinet secretary have any idea when they will have that clarity? Obviously, they need to make plans for the coming year. I think that this goes back to my initial response to Mr Kerr's question about college places. A lot of the work at this stage in the budget would not yet be known, so the SFC is working at the current time on allocations and translating what that will mean for the colleges sector. That is not unusual, and I would be interested here to prove this issue with officials prior to the committee. I do not think that in the past we would have had this level of detail at this time in the financial year. It has always been the case that, through the education budget portfolio, we asked the SFC to look at translating that, but I hear the comments from Shona Struthers and I recognise the challenge there, particularly in relation to the points that Ms McGuire was making on financial sustainability and the wider forward look. I am happy to write to the committee with more detail when the SFC has decided on and given me advice on those allocations, but we would not expect to have that detail at this point in the financial year. We anticipate, cabinet secretary, when they might... Well, we are not yet at stage 1 in the budget. I will defer to one of my officials, but we do anticipate those allocations being very similar to the core funding that colleges received and are investing in 2023-24, which I think was the point that I made to Ms Duncan Glancy previously. In simpler terms, the funds that are available to colleges at the start of 2024-25 are expected to be very similar to those in this financial year. I will pass to Mr Gregg in relation to a specific date on which we can provide the committee the specifics that he asked for. The letters of guidance to the Scottish Funding Council will typically be issued in March, if there is any reason why that is not the target date this year. The work between now and through that early stage of February is where that intense work takes place with SFCs, so that should give you the time right. Can we come now to questions from Ross Greer, please? Thanks for your patience, Ross. Thanks, convener, not a problem at all. Morning, cabinet secretary. The budget line for student support and tuition fees payment is down 23.4 million compared to what was allocated in the previous year's budget. The detail for that, the explainer for that, is a combination of recognising the end-year savings that took place. The allocation for next year is going to more closely reflect the actual spending in this current financial year, but also some presumptions around anticipated demand. I was wondering if you could detail a little bit exactly where within that budget line that the savings are coming from, particularly in relation to what effect that might have on student support? In relation to student support, we have a generous offer in relation to student support. Some of the budget lines that the member spoke to were published by the DFM back in November, and they were taken as in-year savings. The member is right to say that those were demand-led budgets, so a number of savings were quantified by bakes and presumptions around uptake that, bluntly, was not there. We were able to identify those savings through that process. In terms of the support for student support, we have built into the budget an increase in relation to higher education student support by £2,400 for all undergraduate students. That is an equivalent uplift that will be applied to the postgraduate support package in the same year. That is raising student support for those who might be disadvantaged, so care leavers, for example, as student students and those from the socioeconomic areas that Mr Kerr spoke to earlier on. However, we will have to consider more broadly student support in the round. It is worthwhile to say, though, that the support and tuition fees are demand-led. During 2023-24, we had £21.6 million of savings identified due to reduced demand. Those savings are baked into this year's financial allocation because they are both demand-led budgets. Therefore, the demand was simply not there last year. That is almost entirely a reflection of the in-year savings from this year. There is a marginal additional amount. Can I clarify where those demand-led changes came from? I recognise what you said, but DFM published this in November. I apologise, but I cannot remember the detail of everything from that point. If you could just give us a little bit more detail on how much of that came from demand around student support programmes versus tuition fee payment? For memory, it is a mixture. I may bring in sure on the specifics of that, but it is not a clear-cut split, if that is the point of the question. In response to my questions earlier on on that demand-led, you were expecting some more information to come, so I am not asking you to respond to that question for the second time. You are right, convener. We will cover that then in the update to the committee. Can we come to questions now from Bill Kidd, please? Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, team. You have already spoken to us about the necessity of moving money from one area to another because of the tightness of the budget in certain levels, but the budget is set a cut, we are told, of £23.5 million for the overall lifelong learning and skills budget. The £13.7 million of that is coming from the skills budget line, including cuts to grant funding for supporting young people into employment, education and training. That is obviously an area that the Scottish Government has been very happy to push on developing the skills abilities of people who are not in universities but may be using colleges for boosting their skills training and so on. In terms of the cuts, what impact do you believe that that will have in achieving the ambitions of the skills system reform? In a similar space to the question from Mr Greer about savings that we are taking during this financial year and the detail in relation to those specific programmes, I can include that in the written update to the committee if that helps. The member quoted £23.5 million. I have the savings in front of me. I am not sure where he gets that number from. If it is from the lifelong learning and skills budget line, I suspect that that is where it is from, perhaps with an addition to elsewhere. However, if the member is able to clarify perhaps after committee, I am more than happy to include that detail in the written update that will cover the convener's points and Mr Greer's points additionally. I understand that. I have a question about the whole family well being fund. The commitment is £500 million over the course of this Parliament. So far, £100 million has been committed. That will mean £400 million in the last year of the Parliament. How on earth are you going to do that? Before I answer the question, I am going to give a very factual answer. My wife sits as a member of the promise oversight board and I have an interest here. Given that, he will understand my factual response. I will pass to Andrew to answer his substantive question. We have allocated £50 million from the whole family well being programme for 24-25. That is significant investment in relation to how we go about keeping the promise. It is working to support local areas to really transform some of their services. The Deputy First Minister has lead responsibility for the whole family well being fund. In terms of the policy, I will now defer to Andrew Watson noting my address. That is probably just a couple of points to make on your question. The commitment is still the Government's commitment to £500 million of investment in the whole family well being. I think that the next key stage for us will be the publication this year of an investment strategy, which sets out some of the more detailed about our forward plans for the funding. One of the things that that can do is look at the evaluation of the funding so far. We are due to publish later this month or early into February a significant evaluation of how the funding has been performing so far. That will then inform the strategy that the DEFM will publish later in the year. In terms of decisions about remaining funding over the Parliament, that is for annual budget cycles. We have not set out a multi-year budget for that. The decisions about levels of funding beyond £24.25 would clearly be part of the budget process. I will not be too political with you, but could you realistically spend £400 million in one year in order to meet the promise? I guess a couple of points on that. One is thinking about the purpose of the spend. At the moment, a lot of the funding has been witted through community children's services planning partnerships. There has been a particular way of using the funding at the moment. The evaluation will tell us how effective that has been. One of the answers to your question is, in the future, whether the funding will be used in different ways and that might then affect the ability to spend it within the time period. The second point to consider, and the DEFM will be considering, is the feedback from delivery partners. You are possibly implying that there is discussion with partners around their ability to spend quickly in local areas. We need to take that into account in terms of the future plans. It is fair to say that spending a large amount of money over a short period of time can be challenging, but I think that the answer to the question lies in who is spending the money on on-work purposes. A final point would be that one of the rationales behind whole family wellbeing funding is that it is around holistic support for families. There are strong connections between the whole family wellbeing funding and other investments that the Government is making, such as investment in school-age childcare. One of the other things that we need to do with the investment approach is to look at the range of different funding streams that all have an impact on the same families and communities. It might be quite a strategic approach that we take around those issues. I just want to note, and I do not expect the answer to this, that Nicola Sturgeon, the former First Minister, asked the current First Minister this last week and did not really get an answer. We have not really had an answer today. I hope that the Cabinet Secretary could ask the Deputy First Minister to respond whether the money will be committed in full by the end of the Parliament. I am happy to ask the DfM to respond. She has relieved responsibility, but that is the public commitment at the current time. She is leading, I know, on the feedback in relation to the timescales to the member's point, so we will take that away as an action from today's committee. Earlier learning in childcare, so I have seen the £12 an hour. I have had the promise that there would be more coming in addition to that, to close the gap between the private voluntary independence sector and the council pay rates that are resulting, as you know, in the departure of experienced staff from private nurseries. I was promised that we would have a solution, but I have not seen anything. What has happened? I have had an acknowledgement from the minister that it does not deal with the problem that we have talked about, which is the loss of experienced staff who will be above the £12 an hour. That does not help that. How are you going to close the gap? I think that the sustainable rates review gives us an opportunity to do that. We need the PVI sector to operate in relation to how we deliver our childcare expansion, so we need them to be operational. The member and I have talked about that previously. I think that the £12 an hour commitment is really important. It does the draft budget, provide local authorities with an additional £16 million, and that is to pay for staff in the PVI sector who will be delivering funded DLC from April of this year. That demonstrates our commitment to the fair work agenda, but it also demonstrates our commitment to recognising the challenges in the PVI sector. We have discussed that previously. The member might not think that it is enough. The sector might not think that it is enough. I would like to hear from where in my budget the additional issue comes from. No, no, no. That is your promise, your issue that you promise to resolve. It is not my issue, it is your issue. Do not put it back on me. I have various nurses who have come to me and said that they have advertised posts for £12 an hour. Their local council advertising exactly the same post for £16 an hour. How are they supposed to close that gap? They are a charity. Where do they find the £4 an hour from? They are in serious problems if you cannot provide the funding that is more equivalent to the council nursery funding. I accept the premise of the member's question. The point that I was making to him is that I am dealing with an extraordinarily challenging budget settlement. All cabinet secretaries are taken as a result of an unfair allocation, I think, from the UK Government. We can have a debate about that another day, but let's look at what I have in relation to my portfolio. I actually think that the £12 an hour additionality that has flowed to my portfolio as a result of this commitment is to be welcomed. I recognise that some local authorities might be paying more than that, but there has been significant investment from the First Minister into that specific commitment. It helps to bridge the gap between the PBI sector and the local authority run sector. It also means an increase of around £2,000 a year for eligible staff who are working full-time. I think that that is to be welcomed. I recognise that there will remain to be challenges here. The sustainable rates review gives us an opportunity to reset some of that. We need to work with the PBI sector on the delivery of what that will look like. I heard some of the critique on that. I hear it from Mr Rennie today, but the reality is that there is no additionality in my budget to meet additionality in terms of that ask. If we need to look again at that offer, it will need to come from somewhere. If not from my budget, then again, we are going into a round of budget negotiations in the chamber. There will be opportunities for opposition parties to put forward suggestions. I hear the member's point about it's my problem as cabinet secretary. I accept it, but we have taken direct action in this budget around supporting the PBI sector, action that has not been taken previously. I hope that the member recommends that. You may be in trouble with your First Minister, because the First Minister, during the SNP election hustings, promised to resolve this problem. I would suggest that she did not know that he promised completely. I heard it. He promised that he was going to close the gap between the council and the private nurseries. I have heard nothing today to indicate that you have solved the problem that he said he had identified and would commit to solving. However, there is additionality in the budget of £16 million to increase pay in the PBI sector to help in dinner. I do not agree with the member. The First Minister committed to this additionality. It is in my budget, so there has been direct action taken. The member may not think that it is enough, but that is a separate issue. There has been action taken in relation to closing that gap between the PBI sector and the local authority sector. However, we will have to continue to work with local government around some of the challenge here, because it is not something that is going away. However, I think that this additionality will make things better, and it will mean an extra £2,000 a year for staff who are eligible. I would think that Mr Rennie might have welcomed that additionality. Nurseries will hear what you are saying, and they will not be impressed because they have been waiting a long time for this, but let us move on. One final question is about the national Gaelic plan. How are we going to make sure that it is adequately funded to meet the commitments that you have made? In relation to Gaelic, we are taking forward legislation through the bill that we have presented later this year. Of course, in relation to the work around Gaelic, we will continue to work with Bornau Gaelic and others in terms of their obligations around the national Gaelic plan. The legislation itself gives Gaelic and Scottish language official status, and it also looks to change some of the way in which we support the Gaelic language and Scottish languages and schools, including changes to education. Therefore, we will look to support the development of that. It is worthwhile saying that support for Gaelic has increased from more than £15 million back in 0506 to around £25 million in the current budget allocation. The way in which we fund the Gaelic is split between our approach to education and those for the cultural side of things that I suppose you would classify as. MGL bus sits in my budget line 2, and we support Gaelic broadcasting through that additionally. Thank you very much. Pam Duncan-Clancy, can we come to yourself now, please? Thank you, convener. I'm not sure if I said good morning earlier, so good morning, cabinet secretary, and thank you for your contributions so far. Cabinet Secretary, we're well aware of the importance that I place on non-contact time for teachers. So I wonder if she can set out how the 24-25 budget will support the aim to reduce non-contact time for teachers. The member raises a very important point. I'm sure that we will be discussing it at length in the chamber later this afternoon. I think that part of the challenge around whether it's behaviour, whether it's attendance, whether it's curriculum, whether it's reform, is actually around about teachers' conditions in their place of work. If I could just reflect on last year and the negotiations around about the pay settlement, that didn't look at changing conditions or improving conditions for teachers. I think that we have an opportunity through the commitment to reduce class contact to do just that. We commissioned independent research that I wrote to the member about at the end of last year, which is looking at this exact issue. Of course, class contact across the country looks different for every teacher. It won't be the same, despite the allowances that are built in for all teachers in relation to Macron and their non-class contact time. We are looking at the picture nationally to get that granular picture of the current allocation. I spoke earlier on about the following pupil role, and that will have an impact on what we are able to deliver. We need to be mindful of that, too, in terms of the forecast and the financial challenge within the budget. However, I'm very much committed to looking at how we can deliver that. The challenge that I face in this space, I should say, is that it depends on the negotiation between the SNCT. That tripartite approach, which is, of course, the approach that was adopted by Macron when, I think, Jack McConnell established the approach there back when I was at school some years ago now, means that we need to work on that tripartite basis to enable any reduction in class contact time across the country nationally. However, I accept the challenge here, but there's also an opportunity to get this right for Scotland's teachers. If I could reflect on the past eight or nine months in post, that, to me, is part of the jigsaw that hasn't yet been tackled. That's actually how we can go about responding to some of the challenges in our classrooms, whether that's on attendance or behaviour. Actually, on curriculum reform, too, we need to build in time for teachers. It's one of the reasons that I decided to delay legislating last year, actually, because I didn't feel that secondary teachers in particular had been given that time. We need to give them that time to allow them to—we can have debate with the trade unions, I'm sure that we will, around the purpose of that time, but we need to build that into, I think, how we support a profession of teachers in the 21st century, and we're not yet there. The work is on going. I don't yet have the commission response. It is coming to me. I'm looking to Mr Anson to my right, because his team has been leading on the commissioning of this work. We expect, I think, to have that by the end of this month. We expect that to report in January. Thank you. On much of what the cabinet secretary has just said about the importance of non-contact time, including on behaviour in schools and teacher terms and conditions, we'll find agreement. But I heard nothing about what's in the budget this year to deliver it this year, so can I assume that the cabinet secretary doesn't expect the promised reduced non-contact time to be delivered this year? No, I think that we will make progress this year in relation to the commitment. What I would say to the member is that delivering a reduction in relation to class contact time would not be something that would happen overnight. It would take that approach from the SNCT, which it has not been able to resolve over the course of years. That has been on-going since I think the last election in that negotiation, so there have been challenges here for some time. We will work with the SNCT on the delivery of that commitment. I don't yet have the evidence base, so to give the member a full answer, so again I'm happy to include that in the written update to committee, because I expect that evidence base to give me numbers around what any additional budget might be in relation to the delivery of that commitment. I appreciate that, cabinet secretary, but the commitment was made in the manifesto for the SNP current government in 2021. It has already been years, so teachers are looking in vain. I'll move on, if that's all right, to breakfast provision and free school meals. There doesn't appear to be anything in the budget for the provision of breakfast in every primary school and special school, which, of course, was another one of the Government's commitments. Does the cabinet secretary expect to deliver free breakfasts in all primary schools and special schools in the coming year? We are still working towards that commitment, and what I would say to the member is that free breakfasts are available in a number of schools across the country just now, because headteachers are choosing to use their PIF funding, that additionality that the Government provides to invest in free breakfast. So there are hundreds of schools across Scotland just now that are already delivering free breakfasts. What I've asked officials to do is to give me granular evidence in relation to that audit of what's happening at the current time. We have a mixed approach to breakfast provision. Some local authorities, I should also say, take political choices to invest in funding breakfast provision. Now, that's a choice for local authorities to take. You might argue that I should provide that additionality into the system. There is a tension here, I think, in relation to local authorities' responsibility sometimes, but it is a commitment that we are working towards delivering. I recognise that a lot of schools are already delivering free breakfast, so I need to first of all have the national picture in relation to what that looks like. With respect, cabinet secretary, that is not a statutory requirement and funded by the Government, which is what the manifesto said. That's goodwill of some schools using PIF funding, which incidentally is stretched into its limit already, rather than the Government funding a pledge that they've made in their manifesto. Well, with respect to the member, the allocation that I have from my portfolio is extremely challenging, which is why I have had to take tough decisions through this financial settlement. The member has heard some of them, we will rehearse them, I'm sure, again later today. It was your Government's commitment. I understand that it was my Government's commitment. I asked the member where I should find that additionality from my budget. I also say to the member, I don't yet know what the national picture is currently in relation to the provision of free breakfast, because of course some local authorities are taking that decision to deliver free breakfast anyway. Some local authorities, I should also say to the member, took a decision to wipe school meal debt. Others have not done that. So what the Government has done in this budget is providing additional £1.5 million to some local authorities who have not been able to wipe school meal debt to encourage good behaviour. So I say in relation to free school breakfast that there is funding provided through PIF, for example, for local authorities to take political decisions at local level to provide that additionality. Some have done that. I praise those local authorities for promoting and supporting the nutrition of our young people in our schools. Others have taken decisions to invest funding elsewhere. I want to know what the national picture is, that's why I've asked for this audit in relation to breakfast provision. Thank you cabinet secretary, and I think headteachers in schools across the country will be looking and asking the question how many times do you want me to spend my PIF, if that's the answer on breakfast. I'm going to move on to my final question. Can I interject a slightly, because I do have Ross Greer wanting to come in on the theme of breakfast, if that's okay before we move on? Of course. On school meal debt. Yes, thank you very much. I'm sorry. Just briefly on that, cabinet secretary, and apologies to Pam for jumping in on that. Cabinet secretary, could you just clarify what you were saying there? The local authorities that have already wiped out their school meal debt, they won't be entitled to access this new fund that's being announced. This is purely for the local authorities who have not yet taken that action, is that correct? Yes, I think that's my understanding, certainly, of the way in which we will administer the fund. Is this a fund that the local authorities will have to proactively apply for and evidence the level of debt that they've got? The reason that I'm asking that is, when I started doing the FOI research on this, it became clear that some larger local authorities in particular were actually masking the level of school meal debt. They were only confirming the debt data that they had held centrally, and they weren't bothering to ask all their schools. And I think that in some cases the actual level of school meal debt is larger than what the local authorities have been telling all of us, but I'm not sure if you've had different information. So I can't give Mr Greer a specific answer in relation to local authorities masking their school meal debt. I don't think that would be wise, but I take the point that he makes, and there have been some suggestions around about, I think, from Averillor and others. And I think that Mr Greer has done some work on this very issue in relation to school meal debt previously. The way in which we will administer the fund is that it will be for local authorities to apply, but they will also have to provide us with that evidence based on relation to the debt. So we will be looking at the granularity and any claims around about school meal debt. But I say to Mr Greer, as I think I said to Mr Duncan Glancy, in a similar space on breakfast, local authorities already have the power to wipe school meal debt. Many of them have done that, and again I praise them for that action. And just very briefly, finally, on that. COSLA have produced excellent advice and guidance for how schools should manage their meal debt while local authorities have not adopted it. And I think that there's quite high overlap between those who have not written off school meal debt and those who have not adopted the COSLA guidance. Will they be encouraged or even required to do so by the Government to access the money that you're making available? That, I do not know the answer to, Mr Greer. I will defer to Mr Ranson on that point, but I think that that would be our expectation. It's absolutely our expectation for the well-added to that guidance going forward, yes. Excellent, thank you. Thanks, convener. To you now, Pam Duncan Glancy, thank you for allowing that interjection. No problem at all, convener, and when we were discussing breakfast and free school meal, I was mindful that my colleague had a question on it, so that's fine. So the next question I have is around teachers in schools. And I think it's fair to say that, as well as headteachers looking in asking how many times to spend, PEP, I think that local authorities are now going to be looking in also asking how many times to spend their budget because it is significantly tight. In an answer to me on teacher numbers, cabinet secretary said that providing the ratio stayed if it rose above 13.7 per cent the ratio of teachers in the national average, she would indeed look to claw back some funding from local authorities. The national average of the national ratio is currently 13.2 per cent, but local authorities have already said that they are fearful that they'll have to give some money back, and 15 local authorities haven't met the targets. So can the cabinet secretary clarify the position on this and set out in clear terms whether she expects any local authorities to have to return funds allocated for this purpose? I'm very happy to do so. So I think that Ms Duncan Glancy is talking, when she talked about 13.7 per cent, about pupil-teacher ratio. So we have the lowest pupil-teacher ratio in Scotland in the whole of the UK, which is certainly welcome. That means that we have the most teachers per pupil in the whole of the UK, too. The point that I think that Ms Duncan Glancy is asking about is this 145.5 million pound additionality that we baked into the settlement with local government that was meant to be for additional teachers in the system. And it's fair to say that some local authorities have used that for protecting teacher numbers. And again, I praise those local authorities, and particularly heads of education and leaders of councils who have said that we will use this ring fencing to protect teachers in our schools, because we know that teachers make a difference. That's how you improve outcomes for our young people. You can't close a poverty-related attainment gap with less teachers in our schools. But there are some local authorities who have taken other decisions. And for a number of different reasons, now some in the, I think, 15 or so that she quoted have maybe gone down by one or two. So I think we probably need to not consider them in the round. I think there are maybe four or five from memory where there has been a significant fall. And I have asked for an explanation from all of those local authorities, asked of why that may be the case. I have not yet made a decision on this challenge. But I do retain the right to recoup some of the funding. It's worthwhile saying the way in which we administer the £145 million from memory, so I will clear it up if I'm wrong, is we hold back some of that funding for the very purpose that if a local authority doesn't meet the requirements of ring fencing this funding for teacher numbers, we will not pay it out. So I retain the power to do that and to hold on to that additional funding. I appreciate that, but in the answer to me you said that whilst the national ratio remains below 13.7 per cent, you would not claw back funding. It's 13.2 per cent, so will local authorities have to give the money back or not? In answer to Ms Duncan Glancy's question, I said that I would look at every local authority and its merits in detail. So not the national ratio then, which is what you said in your answer. Well the national ratio, I may defer to Sam on this in relation to the pupil teacher ratio, but actually I'm also concerned by Government having provided an additional £145 million and some councils choosing not to use that to protect teacher numbers. The argument around about PTR is part of it, but it's not the whole answer here. If that additionality that central government has given local councils to pay for teachers hasn't been used for teachers, then the question has to be what has it been used for. I don't disagree that it's not the whole answer, but it is the answer you gave me. I defer to Sam in relation to PTR and the role it plays in terms of our calculation. It might be that that's something that we factor in. I think that in my correspondence with local authorities, I've asked for any extenuating circumstances they might have to explain it. So for some, there might be a rationale. I have heard some responses from local authorities which account for some of the change. And we need to be mindful of that, but there have been some other movement, there has been some other reduction, I should say, in the system, which I don't find acceptable, particularly when at a time of extreme financial pressure we're providing this additionality. I'm protecting it, but we would expect to see teacher numbers protected from all locals. Sam Hanson. Thank you. So I think the process with the local authorities has been quite clear throughout. In February 2023, we wrote to local authorities with a set of criteria for the £145 million to primary point of those criteria was that at a national level teacher numbers should remain constant. Now we saw in the recent census in December they fell ever so slightly. And so therefore for those local authorities and you're quite right, there was 15 where the teacher numbers had reduced. We asked for an explanation as to why those teacher numbers had reduced. We're working through those responses at present. They're quite complex. There's a variety of reasons. And we're just trying to assess the extent to which some of those are justified and others where we feel they're less justified. Yeah. And my final question on this with the convener's permission. Thank you. If that is the case and you're looking at the reasons that the numbers fell, are you also looking at what the local authorities might have had to use some of that money that they had for in relation to education? For example, free breakfasts or writing off school meal debt or meeting the needs of pupils with additional support needs given that this budget only increases that resource by £600,000. So are you looking at how else they might have had to spend that money? We're looking in detail at all the 15 responses and we've asked local authorities to present to us proactively the reasons why they feel they've not been able to use the £145 million for the express purposes of maintaining teaching numbers. I appreciate that. And that might, I suspect, speak to some recruitment issues. It might speak to some geographical issues. There's a whole host of reasons I expect you'll get back in that and that would be interesting. But are you also asking if the money was given to local authorities to do that and they didn't do it? Did they deploy it to the education budget and address some of the other challenges which we've discussed already this morning? Well, we would expect to see details of any of that additionality in their returns. So, committee took evidence from this last year on this point from someone who shall remain nameless who talks about the role of teachers and then other professionals and education also being important. I don't think that you can replace a teacher in a classroom with people who are not trained teachers. So, we need to be a bit mindful of this. This additionality was agreed to in an arrangement between Government and OSLA that it would be protected for teacher numbers. That is what our local authorities signed up to deliver. They understood the rationale behind it. They understood the requirements around about this funding. That's why we held back some of the funding at a certain point in the financial year. It gives me the opportunity to hold it back. I think that maybe some local authorities didn't think that we would do that because it didn't happen last year but I retained the power to do so and we will look in detail at I think the four or five where we have seen the significant falls in some of the local authorities Ms Duncan Glancy quoted from memory. We're talking maybe one or two. So, I think in those instances we should look at them but it's where we've seen greater falls. And look, Ms Duncan Glancy makes a point around about other areas that it might have been spent on. I'm happy to hear that rationale. We set that out in the requirements and we'll look at it in detail. Recognising that for all local authorities this has been a challenging time just as it has been for Government. Thank you. Thank you and I think it's my recollection of some of that evidence that it was speaking about the complementary nature of having teachers and PSAs and speech language therapists in the classroom so it wasn't perhaps as binary as the other. Can I now move to some questions from Bill Kidd, please? Thank you. Thank you very much, convener. Cabinet Secretary and your officials have already covered a great deal to do with local authority dealings after the budget and so on. But what specific discussions have you had with local authority representatives and how the budget settlement will actually support delivery and improvement of education and children's services? Not the difficulties that you've had but how it will actually make an improvement for children's learning? I thank Mr Kidd for his question. I think he raises an important point. We have a new deal with local government through variety house arrangements and some of the budget settlement as the committee will be aware looks to remove a level of ring fencing. I think there are two budget lines from which we take ring fencing away from that are already baselined into their grant, as it were, for local government and so will be contained within that but come from my budget. Then there are additional lines that come from me directly that are more ring fence. Although they're quite a small proportion, I think 5 per cent or something overall around about that we ring fence. So they have flexibility to some extent in relation to how they spend other than that 5 per cent. What I was keen to do through variety house was to establish quality assurance framework between ourselves and local authorities. That's something we've been working on since the summer. So in August, we began engagements with COSLA. I meet with COSLA every two or three weeks very, very regularly. And I'm very keen that we deliver on a change in relation to that relationship. So yes, through variety house, also through accountability. So you might argue, well I might argue, I'm hyper-accountable as cabinet secretary to you in committee, to chamber, to the media. And yet education is actually delivered by local authorities and they retain the statutory responsibility of that. And when we look at some of the exam performance in last year's exam results, as I do, there is variability in the system. And we need to tackle variability in terms of outcomes. That's how you close a poverty-related attainment gap. We need to drill into some of that. Now Education Scotland, we have a team there of attainment advisers that the committee will probably be familiar with, who are supporting every single local authority in relation to trying to close the gap. Part of that work has been driven by local authorities identifying their stretch aims, which essentially is them forward planning and saying by in three years time, this is the progress we will have made on closing the gap. And Education Scotland are involved in challenging local authorities and supporting them additionally. But that speaks to Mr Bill's question around improvement and delivery. We need to get into a better space that recognises that local authorities have responsibility here. And in terms of improvement, whether it's on behaviour, on attendance, on curriculum, local authorities have a real responsibility here. Some of them take that extremely seriously and they have really good support mechanisms in place with quality improvement officers, for example. I want to look and work with local authorities in supporting them to deliver that. Part of improvement, of course, is also supported by the appointment of the new chief inspector. Again, I don't want to jump ahead, convener, but of course we're going to go on to talk about reform in the next session. And I think that the new chief inspector has a key role to play in supporting local authorities in relation to improvement. And of course the new chief inspector, I should say interim chief inspector, has powers as well to invest to carry out their own investigations, their own inspections rather, of local authority improvement mechanisms and how they work to support schools. And I know there are some in the system that say that that is a starting point for the new chief inspector. I'm sure she has her hands full at the current time in relation to a few other things I've sent her away, but I do think that we should look at how central government supports the improvement function at local authority level because there are 32 different approaches to it across the country. And look, sometimes that difference is a strength of the Scottish system in relation to education, but sometimes we're not great at learning from others where there are pockets of good practice. That's where education Scotland and the entertainment advisers have a key role to play. Okay, thank you very much for that. I'm going to just ask finally from me, do you believe that this direction that is being headed in shows genuine and measurable signs that things are improving in terms of delivery of educational services? Tentatively yes, but we need to work together more closely and in the past government and local government can sometimes have our challenges, I think it's fair to say. I've just rehearsed some of those with Ms Duncan Glancy around about teacher numbers. But in my experience of dealing with COSLA they have a pragmatic approach to the delivery of education at local authority level. They want to be transparent about what that means for outcomes for our young people. They want to support where they can. Improving outcomes for our young people. That's my job as cabinet secretary, giving them the opportunity to deliver on those improvements to help our young people to succeed. So I think we have reset some of the relationship there with local government. I'm not necessarily sure I can give you a scorecard at the end of this year. Maybe come back to me next year, Mr Keddon. I'll give them a mark out of 10 and see how we've done on improving that relationship. But particularly, it's not just on having improved relationships. So I'm working better to improve outcomes. That's why the accountability framework that we're working on, with them particularly in relation to school education and that variability across the system is hugely important. Thank you very much indeed for that. Thank you. Just, and then finally, I suppose cabinet secretary, you've spoken there about resetting your relationship with working with local authorities. I'll be interested in what scorecard you might give the city of Edinburgh council that is looking to deliver £8.2 million worth of cuts to the devolved school management fund, if you're aware of that. So I'm not cited on the specifics of Edinburgh council. I think the committee took evidence from Peter Bennett, school leader of Scotland on this. An SLS has certainly raised devolved school management challenge with me previously. I'll take a look at the specifics in relation to Edinburgh city council. And I know that the community and I are having a meeting on a separate issue. So in that meeting, we could perhaps update to on any engagement officials I've had with Edinburgh council. I'm not cited on the specifics myself. Front page of the evening news today. Not my local paper, I should say. I've got Michelle Thompson very briefly before we finish up this session. Thanks. Thank you very much, convener. I was just checking some of the earlier discussions about student numbers with the UCAS clearing table. And it shows that there were 20... This is of Scottish domicile students. The 2019 shows 28,750. Scottish domicile students. And if we setting aside a range of other factors which we all understand, if there was reduction from the 2023 figure which was 30,050 of 1200, that would take us back to 28,850, which compares very favourably with the 28,750 in 2019. I thought that would be helpful to put that on the record, cabinet secretary. Do you have anything to add to that? Am I correct? Well, I think that that is helpful and it is correct to recognise that we are going back to the situation which existed prior to the pandemic. And we just should be mindful that the education system has been through a period of turmoil in relation to Covid. That additionality was built into the system much in the same way that we have now gone back to using examinations in schools post-pandemic, things are different. And when we try to baseline or measure things against the year that came prior to when there were additional places in the system, I do not think that that gives an accurate depiction. Much like when we tried to compare the attainment gap to that which existed last year or the year prior to, because we had different arrangements in place for those years. So, I think that the member is absolutely accurate and correct in her assessment there to compare those numbers with 2019 as it gives a better overall understanding of the progress that we are making in relation to student places. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much and well done. Michelle Thomson will get in that on record. Can we now conclude the first part of our evidence session and we'll suspend until 11.10? No, 11.12, sorry, I can't add 30. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Welcome back. We are continuing to take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills this morning. And we are now going to move to questions around the education reform agenda. And alongside the Cabinet Secretary for the Second Session are officials Claire Hicks, who's the director of for education reform and Laura Murdoch, the deputy director curriculum and qualifications division Scottish Government. Good morning. And I now like to invite the cabinet secretary to make some brief opening remarks on the education reform agenda before we move to questions from members. Again, cabinet secretary, you've up to three minutes. Convener, I'm pleased to be back at committee to update on progress on education reform. I provided updates to Parliament back in November and in December of last year. And the Minister for Higher and Further Education appeared before your committee last week. The International Council of Education Advisers report back in November recommended that we do not change structures too much in the short to medium term and focus on improving teaching professionals and their development, collaboration and innovation. This is at the forefront of my thinking. And we cannot unleash the potential that reform has without taking the teaching profession with us. The education bill consultation closed just before Christmas, seeking views on proposals for the new qualifications body and the approach to inspection. A series of events heard the views of nearly 1,000 teachers and many others working in education. And my thanks go to all of them. We will continue to engage, including critically, with the voices of children and young people throughout the reform process. The role of leadership in the national bodies will be crucial in transforming practice and culture. I appointed the new SQA chair in November, Shirley Rogers, the first woman to hold this post, and approved the appointment of an interim chief inspector of education, Jenny McManus. I also announced my intention to initiate a curriculum improvement cycle from this year. That will include curriculum content, the role of knowledge, transitions between primary and secondary and alignment between the broad general education and senior phase. And my view is that mass education should be the initial focus for improvement. We will be recruiting a mass specialist who will lead on this work, working alongside the national response for improving mathematics, and we will seek input from teachers later this year. This year, we will also see the reform bill laid before Parliament, progressing the establishment of the Centre for Teaching Excellence and decisions on the reviews that I received last year. I remain committed to debating the proposals of the independent review of qualifications and assessment earlier this year, and it is crucial that those recommendations are thoroughly examined. Convener, this generation of young people had their formal education disrupted for nearly two years by a global pandemic. Last year, on-going industrial action further hampered the continuity of schooling. As Scottish Government figures published back in December, suggests that school attendance has fallen to a record low. Now, all of this is compounded by changes in behaviour and relationships in our classrooms and, indeed, evidence in England and Wales that was published last week by the Centre for Social Justice spoke about the freeing disconnect between home and schooling post-pandemic. So Scotland's challenges are not unique and reform can't sit in a vacuum of expectation informed by that cosy consensus that Walter Hume warned the committee of. It must try to deliver improved outcomes for our young people and, indeed, as the ICEA argued last year, clear beneficial impacts of the learning experience of the young people and their teachers should be the assas test of any proposal. So reform needs to improve outcomes for our young people, build on the importance of quality learning and teaching, support our teaching workforce and engage parents and carers. And I look forward to answering the committee's questions and to hearing any suggestions that committee members may have. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Can I invite questions first from Willie Rennie, please? So we're quite far into this reform programme. You could say it started in 2016. I'd just like to understand from the cabinet secretary what she thinks is wrong with Scottish education was wrong then that we're trying to fix. What she thinks is wrong? I believe Mr Rennie has attempted to set a trap for me. So look, I think there are many strengths in Scottish education. If I could just reflect in 2015, the year prior to the year, Mr Rennie says, I was in the classroom. So I went through the last curriculum reform iteration as a teacher. And I think we need to learn lessons from the implementation of CFE, through the implementation of any changes to the current qualifications. Because there are things that I think we should do differently in the future. We need to engage the profession in that. We need to create time for the profession to be fully engaged in that. I don't necessarily think there are things wrong with Scottish education. What I would accept is that there are challenges. So we see that in the PISA data that was published at the end of last year. I met with Professor Graham Donaldson, who the committee will be well acquainted with just after my appointment in the summer last year. And we talked about some of the challenge in relation to the broad general education in the senior phase. One of the things I think is unresolved from curriculum reform in Scotland is that transition from BGE, the straight through curriculum to senior phase. There's a disconnect. Now I'm going to argue from a classroom teacher level or a head of department. Part of that is about the hours you allocate to courses. It doesn't work when you timetable at the current time, so you kind of break the broad general education if you want to deliver more courses. So you've got variation in the system. So the committee knows, for example, I think the committee might have taken evidence on this. I know in the last session Mr Greer and I certainly heard evidence on this in relation to the numbers of courses delivered in S4, for example. So I've got a report on my desk from Professor Louise Hayward who talks about entitlements in the system. And that's a challenge to government. And I think that's something we need to resolve through reform. Because right now, we don't have entitlements, we have variation across the board in relation to the numbers of subjects that are delivered in schools. And I think that's something that we need to use reform to address and improve. You've dug into quite a bit of detail, important detail. But I've never really had from any minister any predecessor of yours just a simple explanation as to why we've slipped down the international rankings and why there's a yawning poverty-related attainment gap. I've never really had that explained properly, succinctly to me as to why that is.  Whatever you think of that, there's clearly a recognition that there is an issue, a problem, or as you describe it, a challenge. But succinctly explained to me how we've got into this position. So I don't think it's something that's happened since 2016. No, no, I accept that. It was before, but it was recognised in 2016. So what was it that was recognised in 2016? Because nobody's explained it. Sorry, you were talking about... Why have we embarked on this education reform if there was not something wrong? So I don't think the current set of reforms, and forgive me, I wasn't imposed in 2016, are mirror those which existed in 2016. I think we're working in a completely different space to that which existed, certainly when I was first elected in 2016. And the changes that I think would have been Mr Swinney at that time was bringing forward. We're living in a post-pandemic world, and I try to contextualise some of the challenge that we faced in Scotland, not being unique to us. Mr Rennie spoke about why are we uniquely falling down the international league tables, as it were, in relation to the PISA data that published last year. We're not unique. And actually, if you look at other comparable countries, it was the PISA edition. The Covid edition, rather. But look, I made very clear, I think, in my statements of Parliament, we need to turn that to actually, right? Okay, no, I accept all the pandemic stuff. I don't know if I'm going to get anywhere with this, because I have been genuinely puzzled that the Government has embarked on a 10-year programme of education reform without really being able to explain why. There was a kind of a panic in 2016. We set these really bold ambitions to close the poverty-related attainment gap, whether it was completely or substantially whatever. There was an ambition at that point to do it, to try, in response to the PISA tables, to try and get us further up, whatever you think of the validity. There was a, you know, this is my mission, Nicola Sturgeon said, this is my defining mission, is something I'm going to... And now, we've moved on from all that, and we're now saying it's all about the pandemic. Surely, we've got to recognise that there was something wrong. My view is, you had a rag-tag bunch of reforms that didn't really care together, because you didn't really understand what the problem was. Is that not right? I don't think I would accept Mr Rennie's illustration of what happened right to my time in office. Why did we do all this? Well, to Mr Rennie ask why we wanted to close the poverty-related attainment gap. I mean, surely the answer should be obvious to him that we want to ensure that children who live in poverty actually attain and go on to positive destinies. So why did it happen then? Why did the education system allow the poverty-related attainment gap to get so wide, much more than other countries of similar types? I'm not necessarily sure that you would say that Scotland's attainment gap is wider than any other comparable country. I don't have the data in front of me, but I don't think we're unique. I do think we were one of the first countries to identify the challenge. Actually, before a number of countries took action in this space, we said there's a problem here. And I guess this is a bit of a technical answer, but it's my honest opinion that in the past, historically, certainly when I was at school, I imagine when Mr Rennie was at school, although it's longer ago than when I was there. Certainly young people were encouraged to leave school after S4. They were basically told, do you know what? School is not for you, you're not bright enough. And we filtered them off somewhere else. And I think things have completely changed in our schools now. And I think that's as a result of yes reforms taken forward by this Government and a different approach to how we measure success which actually says, do you know what? If you're going on to study an apprenticeship, if you're going on to study a course that might not be your traditional five-hires offering, that has accreditation, that has merit too. So, like I was in a school in Glasgow, for example, last week, where they were doing some fantastic work with the SQS ambassador programme, four confident young people presenting to me the work of their school and getting accreditation for it. In the past, we encouraged some young people when I was at school in the 1990s to leave school. And we said, school and university wasn't for them. We have completely altered our approach to what education is about. I accept that. But so, okay, let's move on from that. I don't sure I've got a clear answer. If we're saying that there is an expectation in the education world that we're going to have substantial reform, and I know that opinion is divided, and you've said, I summarise, there's basically a lot going on, big challenges, behaviour, absence, pandemic. We need to deal with these things and invest in teachers rather than structural reform. And I get that argument. Is that alone going to deal with the problems of the poverty-related attainment gap, which is still big, and the performance overall internationally? Is that going to be enough? So, I suppose my rebuttal to Mr Rennie might be in relation to how we quantify the poverty-related attainment gap and the role of schools. We have this huge programme and commitment to invest significant amounts of public money in closing the gap, but schools can only do so much. Our children spend on average about 20 per cent of the time in school, 80 per cent at home. And I think that we maybe in this mix need to remember the limitations to schools in relation to some of this work around about closing the gap. But on his second point, on improving performance, that's where I think we can make a real difference in relation to how we invest in our teachers. We did that last year through the pay deal. We need to do more work, as we heard in the previous session from Mr Duncan Glancy. I'm sure we'll go on to talk about that, too, in relation to your class contact time. But we really need to invest in the profession and recognise their role in driving improvement. And I think teachers will be key to ensuring we get to where we need to be in relation to improvement itself. He talks about this tension between substantial reform, the bodies and all the reports I've got on my desk. Right now, we're going to come to the chamber in a few weeks time and have this wider debate on qualifications. And again, keen to hear views from members on that. But I am just really struck by the amount of pressure the education system is under, particularly our schools, and particularly, actually, in secondary. And if you just reflect, I suppose, the committee reflects on the fact that this was the first year since the pandemic that the SQA reintroduced some of the qualification requirements that existed before Covid. So some of our young people have never had to sit some of these internal assessments at the assignments that might sit alongside that. Suddenly they're being asked to do all these extra things. Teachers, many of them, might not have delivered some of this course content previously because the SQA stripped it out. So we need to, I need to, measure and balance very carefully changes that are coming in the future with the current reality, which, as we'll hear in the chamber this afternoon, is a challenging one. So I get that. My fear, though, is what your course of action is a bit more status quo and won't deliver the promise that you've made to make significant progress on overall performance and the poverty-related attainment gap. You're not afraid that that might be the case. I understand the pressures, I get all that, but you're not afraid that I characterise it as the status quo. It's more than that. The status quo. But you're not worried that if you don't drive forward more substantial change, you won't get substantial improvement. Well, the status quo won't cut it. So Mr Rennie knows the pieces of scores and I've been really upfront about, you know, for example, our approach to responding to the challenge in relation to maths education. So there is a challenge in relation to maths education. There is a challenge right now in relation to languages education. I'm sure we'll come on to talk about it. We need to look again at some of the courses that are delivered. I actually think that that is not the status quo. That's really bluntly looking at, for example, things like the role of knowledge within curriculum for excellence again. We heard critique about this at the end of term. I'm sure we'll come on to talk about that in a bit more detail. But we need to fundamentally look at some of the course content in relation to the delivery of CFA in the BGE to ensure that it's fit for purpose in the modern age, but also to update and refresh some of it. And in the maths curriculum in particular, having spoken to maths specialists, although I confess that I am not one, there's a certain way in which our young people require to be top maths in terms of building their learning. And that needs to be better supported across the system. So he's not going to hear the status quo from me, but I will come to Parliament with a plan in relation to the action that I intend to take. I am extremely mindful of lots of flux in the system just now in relation to the expectation built on from these reports. And look, I wasn't Cabinet Secretary during lockdown, nor during what happened in relation to the SQA. But at that moment in time, there was an anger in the system, and I still hear this from teachers around about the SQA and government, to be fair, during the examinations period, and a real frustration. And I was told when I was first appointed that there was this real appetite for radical change in the system. But I would just gently suggest to the committee if they engage with secondary teachers in particular, and in particular those who teach S4 and up. The degree of radical appetite for reform is maybe not as present as it might have been in the system in 2021. Okay, so two quick fire questions then. One, the Hayward review has basically got two elements, changed the curriculum and changed the qualification system. I mean, there's more than that, but that's for me central. Are you rejecting the extra columns of personal achievement and project work? Is that now gone? Oh, sorry, I thought it was a supplementary to that. Well, I haven't yet responded to Professor Hayward's review, so I'm not going to respond to the committee today. I haven't given up public. Got it, just between us. Just between us. Yeah, I'm not necessarily sure that's how it will work. Nobody's watch. I will respond formally to all of Professor Hayward's consultation. I think that there are parts of it that we will take forward. There will be parts of it that I will need to consider, and my consideration of some of this because Hayward's report in itself would be a substantive change to how we deliver qualifications in Scotland. What it needs to have happened to though, it needs to be translated into an action plan for schools to implement, and it's not there because it's not in that space yet. Now, to be fair to Professor Hayward, she talks about a 10-year plan. She talks about setting out how you would map change. But I'm a modern study teacher that thinks about how would I timetable that? So these are the practical things that the Government needs to have an answer to that we don't yet in responding to her report. So I will respond to all of the recommendations. So will we have that in time for the debate that you're proposing? I can't imagine. I would like to hear your ideas first, Mr Rennie, before I pre-empt my response. You never do. I think the committee is certainly looking for a definitive timeline as to when we can expect your response to the review. Please, that's the thing. My response to—well, it's not just Professor Hayward's review, of course. There's a plethora of different reports on my desk, and I think the point that I was making at the previous committee is that we need to have a bit more connectivity between what's happening in the LLS space and relation to Mr Day's responsibility in our schools. Last week, we were able to get a timeline of March from Mr Day in response to something, so we are looking for something similar, at least a guidance for the committee as to when we can expect some information. I think that we would also be working to similar timelines in relation to the end of March, so if that helps the committee. Before that or after that? I would like to have the debate inform my response to the recommendations to ensure that I've heard all those ideas that Mr Rennie and his colleagues have in relation to the committee. I have lots of ideas from Mr Rennie. I look forward to hearing them. I look forward to hearing them. As ever. Can we move now to questions from Michelle Thomson, please? Thank you. Good morning, and hello again. Last week in the chamber, the health secretary gave a speech with which I strongly agreed where he emphasised the need for culture change and some of the work that's going on there. I intervened to comment that, in my previous life experience, changing culture as part of general change programmes is significantly the hardest thing to do. So my question for you is in your opinion and therefore do you back up what Professor Humes from Stirling University described as a cosy conformity in the evidence session here, that the culture within the civil service don't take it personally, national agencies and local authorities needs to change, and if so, in what ways? So I read some of the evidence that the committee took from Professor Humes. I actually met him in the summer, after my appointment, because he has expressed many views in relation to the Scottish Government's performance on a variety of different topics, I should say, over the years, but I think his points around that cosy conformity is quite accurate. There's not a lot of grit in the system or challenge. Now, there's lots of grit directed my way because I am the lightning rod for grit, I'm the cabinet secretary. But I guess I go back to some of my response to questions from other members in the last committee around accountability at local authority level. We seem to have forgotten in the mix that local authorities have that accountability, so we need to reset some of that. And there's an opportunity, I think, through Verity House to reset it. I talked about the accountability framework in my response to a member in the previous session. But we do need challenge and we do need grit, and sometimes we can get reliant in Scottish education on hearing from the same people about the same topics. I simply make this observation as a previous member of this committee and observing some of the witnesses that have already appeared. We need to hear fresh voices. We also need to hear from teachers. In the previous session, certainly when Mr Greer and I were on this committee, we would take private evid