Seòmar agus comataidhean

We have a wide range of surveys that go out. As I said, the health and wellbeing survey is one of those. We are keen to look at the data that we gather in general to ensure that it provides the information that we think we require. That is why we have a short-life working group looking at those aspects.

We also have the growing up in Scotland survey, which looks at some of the types of data that the member is talking about. I hope that that reassures the committee that we are keen to gather the right data in the right way to enable us to determine the impact of policies not just in education but in other areas, along with the impact of what is happening in society in general, on children and young people.

We will provide information about what is happening at a national level as soon as we can. I am sure that, at a local level, work is already on-going with schools and local authorities.

I do not think that anyone wants to be in a position whereby young people are concerned about the build-up to their exams or learning. That is why it is very important to reassure them that, throughout the entire academic year, continuous work has been done to ensure that work in relation to e-Sgoil and other e-learning opportunities has continued to be built on, and that will continue during the year. The feedback that we have had is that it is going down exceptionally well and is being well received by teachers and pupils. There has been an exceptional amount of work during the entire academic year to build on what is available to support children and young people, and we will continue to do that work.

Professor Ken Muir has now completed his consultation on the work, which is, again, in the current financial year and not the next one. The consultation was exceptionally well received by front-line staff and stakeholders and was very heavily used within that. On top of that, we have had discussions in the Scottish education council and the teachers panel to ensure that there is maximum consultation and discussion.

Ken Muir will now report back to me by the end of this month. I think that his recommendations will cover a lot of ground, but I will report back as quickly as I can with the Government’s response. After that process has happened, we will absolutely make sure that the on-going work has a key role for both the agencies that are involved in the reform process and the staff. It is difficult to determine at this point what that will be, because Professor Muir has not reported yet. However, I have reassured stakeholders that I am absolutely determined to have a very empowered reform process where front-line staff and, importantly, pupils have a key role in the process, and that is adequately accounted for in the budget.

We had set out the direction of travel clearly in our Covid recovery plans before the budget came out, because we recognised that there was going to be a very big challenge in that area. That is exactly why we made a commitment to £1 billion in funding for the Scottish attainment challenge, and it is why a commitment was made pre-budget to make permanent, and therefore baseline, the funding for teacher recruitment.

We knew that it was going to be a difficult time for children and young people, and we dealt with that by putting in train, for Covid recovery, the money for the Scottish attainment challenge. That was funded through the budget process. Of course, it was on top of the £500 million for Covid response and recovery that we had already put in place as the pandemic began.

We have carefully considered calls from further and higher education institutions for multiyear funding packages. I am sympathetic to that idea on the basis that that will allow for better planning. Obviously, given that the Scottish Government does not itself have a multiyear budget, providing multiyear funding for those institutions is challenging. The issue of further multiyear funding will be taken forward as part of the work that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy is doing. The Scottish Funding Council review also highlighted the importance of that, and we are keen to take early action on the SFC review overall to determine what else can be done to support the sector.

On what will happen from now on, there are aspects on which Governments should not intervene—industrial relations within the sectors, for example. As universities are autonomous bodies, industrial relations should certainly be left to them. It is also important that the role of colleges should be allowed to play out in relation to trade unions and to ensure that there is a positive working relationship with colleges and universities on industrial relations.

The spending review gives us the opportunity to consider how we can assist the higher and further education sectors in delivering not just for young people but for learners of all ages, as they do.

That is where the SFC has an exceptionally important role to play. It will engage with the sector to allocate the funding to the institutions and, importantly, continue to discuss with colleges and universities aspects of long-term financial sustainability—for example, long-term financial forecasts. It has an integral role to play as we move to the institutional settlements that will come from the funding. My officials and I will keep in close contact with the council as it continues to make its decisions on that and, particularly, as we move to wider discussions on the spending review for future years.

I appreciate that the college sector has expressed disappointment about the settlement that it has been given. It has been an exceptionally challenging process, and I laid some of that out in the first part of my introductory statement.

The challenge, as we moved through the budget process, has been to deliver a fair settlement that allows the Government as a whole to deliver on our multiple priorities. We have supported the college sector, and its budget has been maintained for the coming financial year. I appreciate that that is a difficult settlement for colleges, but, as I said to Mr Dornan, the SFC will now work closely with the sector on the institutional settlements that will flow from that, to see how we can best deliver for the sector in what I readily admit is a difficult and challenging year.

It is not fair to say that the funding that we are putting into teacher recruitment—which is the biggest increase in funding for teacher recruitment since 2007—is a rehash of what we were doing already. It is a substantial change in investment compared to last year.

Teacher recruitment is absolutely integral to partners moving forward with the reduction in class contact time, which is exactly why the Government has invested so heavily in that. We are aware that there are practical challenges in bringing that in, of which timetabling is one, and that schools continue to be under pressure due to dealing with Covid. We know that there is a lot of pressure on the system, but one of the ways in which we can assist—if we can—is through a reduction in class contact time for teachers. Going back to an earlier point that we discussed, that is important for staff welfare.

You have raised an important point. As funding leaves national Government and moves to local government, it is—absolutely—for local government to determine how that money is spent if it is outside ring-fenced budgets.

It is very important that we all have a close regard to the variation in outcomes in education, which should be a shared concern for us all. The variation of how things are done in education is absolutely to be encouraged, because we should not have a one-size-fits-all policy set from Edinburgh. However, variation in the outcomes for children is something that we are determined to look at. I would point to some of the key aspects in the Scottish attainment challenge funding, which I raised with the convener earlier, that we are determined to move forward with and that look specifically at variation.

In other areas, we will, of course, set outcome frameworks for what we expect from those programmes. There are outcome frameworks for the 1,140 hours policy, so that there is an understanding of what is delivered for the funding that goes in. It is important that not just the Scottish Government but local authorities know what the outcomes of ring-fenced funding are and that they have an awareness of what happens with the funding that leaves national Government and goes to local government.