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I am concerned about the word “patchy”, because the point of the recommendation in August last year was, kind of, that the situation was patchy and that the Government, COSLA and the Improvement Service should stop it being patchy.

I understand that having a strong process through which local authorities engage with the third and private sectors does not mean that providers will necessarily get the rates that they would like—although we hope that the output will be good news for the sector—but there must still be a strong, robust and engaged set of practices across the 32 local authorities. We understand that everyone is under financial pressure, but that is not an excuse not to have strong processes.

Matthew Sweeney, has the process been strengthened? How can we measure that across 32 local authorities, instead of just asserting that we have engaged? That is not, in the slightest, a dig at COSLA. How can we measure whether a robust process has been put in place for engagement?

Can I ask another question, because we have time constraints? The process has been outlined by you and COSLA, and there was a health check in August last year. That all sounds good, and it is very positive that 1,000 partners have fed in on what the costs pressures are and so on.

Rates are being set just now, so engagement is taking place. If we were to fast forward a few months, would we get a report from the Improvement Service on where improvements have been made and—just as important—on the local authority areas where more work still needs to be done? If, later in the year, we were to ask, “How did things go?”, would we be told how they actually went instead of getting some reflective general comments about the process of engagement? How will we be able to measure success in a few months, after the rates have been set?

I want to ask about the diversity of the workforce. The recent exchange with Mr Rennie was helpful because it flushed out quite a few things, but we need to see the bigger picture.

We have had a revolution in the provision of early learning and childcare, the number of local authority staff in the sector has gone from 10,000 to 18,000 and there is now a requirement to pay the real living wage across all providers, which is the right thing to do. My earlier line of questioning was about the financial challenges on the sector, irrespective of that, but we have to look at things in the round.

There is something called a stability index, which is very important. That is about the retention of early years staff in the sector—

I am really interested in the exchanges that have taken place. The submission from the National Day Nurseries Association welcomed the “Financial Sustainability Health Check of the Childcare Sector in Scotland”, which was published in August last year, because it acknowledges some of the challenges in setting sustainable rates. There is a call for that to go further and for the rates to be reviewed.

I dug out that document, which says that the Government will

“Strengthen the process for local authorities to set sustainable rates for providers in the private, third and childminding sectors to deliver funded ELC.”

It goes on to say that the Government would

“work with COSLA ... in time ... for setting ... rates for August 2022.”

That recommendation is from August last year, and we have just heard that the rates are about to be set. Has the process been strengthened? Jonathan, what engagement has there been to ensure that that happens?

It is not, of course, for me to speak for the committee, because it will have its own deliberations, but, if the committee thought that it would be useful for the Improvement Service to do that work, would you be interested in doing it in the months ahead?

Is that replicated across the 32 local authorities, so that we get a national flavour as well as any local variation? The committee has heard that different local authorities might collect and present the data in different ways.

I think that we have entered into this afternoon’s education debate early, convener. I thought we were pursuing an inquiry into the attainment fund, but there you are.

I would like to look a wee bit at evaluation and measures of success. Mr Rennie had an interesting line of questioning when he said that he thought that progress, including on closing the attainment gap, had not really occurred in any meaningful way. I am going to put some statistics on the record, convener, and then make a comment on them with a question to the cabinet secretary.

Two years before the pandemic, the achievement of the expected standards in primary schools was up 3.1 per cent in literacy and up 2.7 per cent in numeracy. The gap between school leavers from the most and least deprived areas achieving one pass or more at SCQF level 5 or better reduced by 12.5 percentage points between 2009-10 and 2019-20. Last year, as you know, I was very proud to talk about St Roch’s secondary school in Royston, in my constituency, which got 100 per cent positive destinations, and about the record positive destinations in Glasgow and mostly across the country.

Those three indicators give a snapshot of progress that might suit the Government, but how do we take a balanced approach to monitoring and evaluating progress? Is it by using the 11 indicators in the national improvement framework? Is there an agreed dashboard of progress that we can look at, at a national level?

The convener also wanted to get under the skin of the issue at a local authority level. I have looked at some of the documentation around the attainment challenge evaluation and refresh, and it is pretty hard reading. How can we get clear, transparent indicators or a dashboard, if you like, that allows the committee and the education sector in general to take a balanced view of how the Scottish Government is or is not succeeding in addressing the attainment challenge?

I would welcome the committee taking a view on, and reporting on, how clear and readable that dashboard is. Maybe we will look at that in the report and return to it.

We met some teachers at St Roch’s secondary school, which is in the West Partnership. They told us that their primary concern was that the impact of Covid would mean some slippage in the progress being made by young people. Their secondary concern was that it would also negate a lot of the good work that was being done before and during Covid and that that progress might not be recognised because of the Covid crisis.

Is an impact statement likely to follow every annual reporting process? Such a statement could deal with the impact of Covid on the progress that was made and on other external measures. We are talking about a poverty-related attainment gap, so what were the impacts of the £20 cut in universal credit and of the UK cost of living crisis?

On a more positive note, there is the impact of the Scottish child payment, because massive moneys are at play not just within education but within wider public expenditure at the Scottish and UK level that will impact on the poverty-related attainment gap. Cabinet secretary, will there be an impact statement when we look at future evaluations?

Convener, because of time constraints on my questioning this morning, perhaps we could ask the cabinet secretary to write to the committee about the positive destination data, which is quite exceptional this year—I place on the record the efforts of teachers and students to get to that stage. The committee is interested to know what happens to those young people one year out, two years out, three years out, and so on. It is about lifelong learning, closing the attainment gap and making sure that there is a positive impact on life chances. I would like a bit more information about how the Scottish Government and its agencies track the journey of young people in a meaningful way once they have left school and over a longer period of time. It would be helpful if the cabinet secretary or one of her officials could deal with that in correspondence with the committee.

Thank you, Mr Smyth, for applying for recognition for the cross-party group.

My blushes have just been spared. The initial papers that I had did not list any individuals or organisations as members of the group and I was going to ask why that was the case. However, the clerking team has just furnished me with an outstandingly impressive list of stakeholders. I am pleased to see that you are reaching out to all the relevant individuals and groups.