Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government’s budget for the year ahead focuses resolutely on the priorities of the people of Scotland. Accordingly, the education and skills budget for 2026-27 is more than £3.5 billion, with an increase of £136 million in resource spending this year. That will support the expansion of free breakfast clubs and wraparound childcare; the delivery of the real living wage in early learning and childcare and children’s social care sectors; and increased investment in our colleges and universities. That ensures that the education portfolio is focused on helping to eradicate child poverty.

For children and families, we continue to fund 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare. Last year, nearly every three and four-year-old took up their entitlement, meaning that more than 90,000 children benefited and families saved more than £6,000 per child per year.

We will invest an additional £15 million to provide free breakfast clubs in every primary and additional support needs school by August 2027. We are also investing £2.5 million of recurring annual funding to expand the delivery and reach of the extra time programme and provide wider after-school activities in areas with the greatest need. The £5.5 million that we are already investing in the extra time programme is delivering free after-school and holiday clubs for up to 5,000 children who are most at risk of living in poverty. We will work with the Scottish Football Association and other partners to test the delivery of wider after-school activities for primary school children, including testing a 3 pm to 6 pm wraparound activities model. Those measures help to improve outcomes, support school attendance and family stability, and reduce the number of children moving into and staying in care.

In school education, we remain absolutely committed to closing the poverty-related attainment gap. In 2026-27, we will build on what we have achieved regarding the number of children achieving record levels of literacy and numeracy, improvements in attendance, more teachers in our schools, lower class sizes and, perhaps most significantly, the poverty-related attainment gap being at its lowest level on record.

The budget protects teacher numbers and allocates funding for the development of local pilots that work towards the delivery of reduced class contact time. Up to £200 million will be invested to maintain the Scottish attainment challenge, including pupil equity funding. We will also do more to address the cost of the school day for families by uprating the school clothing grant, in line with inflation, and extending eligibility for free school meals to enable a further 5,500 pupils, from primary 5 onwards, to access nutritious and healthy food.

The schools budget will also support the on-going reform of our public bodies, and I am pleased to advise the committee that, subject to the completion of pre-appointment checks, I intend to recommend the appointment of Ruth Binks as His Majesty’s chief inspector of education in Scotland. Subject to those checks and the appointment being made by His Majesty by order in council, Ruth is expected to take up post on 30 March. Graeme Logan will continue to cover as interim chief inspector until that time.

Reform in the post-16 education and skills landscape also continues while providing stability for existing provision. We are providing an above-inflation investment for colleges, delivering an extra £78 million of investment and an additional £55 million for our universities. We will continue to protect free tuition, widen access and give more people more opportunities to take up apprenticeships.

Stability, sustainability, progress and delivery are the key themes underpinning the priorities in the education and skills budget for 2026-27. My ministers and I would be happy to take any questions that the committee may have this morning.

Because I think that there are a number of really positive things in the budget that we have provided for that were not provided for in the 2021 manifesto. We should be mindful of the fact that things have changed substantively since the manifesto was written, and there have been challenges for the Government, which I am sure that we will come on to discuss. I am not going to provide you with an exhaustive list of manifesto commitments from 2021, but I will talk about some of the really positive measures that we have put into the budget, not least the funding for free breakfasts.

If you want to talk about examples of policies in that manifesto that have not been delivered—which I said I would not do, but I am now going to do it—the provision of free breakfasts is one. We have not been able to get there during this parliamentary session, but we are now putting in funding to ensure that that will be delivered in every primary school and every special school across the country. We should welcome that. I totally accept that we should have been able to deliver that more quickly than we had originally planned for, but we also need to reflect on the substantive changes in the financial climate, which is now markedly different from that which existed in 2021.

You will well recall some of the challenges that we faced during my time in transport in relation to the roll-out of big infrastructure projects that we had promised to deliver and which were much more challenging to deliver due to soaring capital costs—of course, that has been the subject of other debate in recent weeks. The challenges that have been experienced in different portfolios have also been experienced in the education portfolio, and we have tried to mitigate those challenges as best as possible.

One of the things that we have had to respond to is the soaring cost of staff pay. We have met those demands, but that has been challenging for the portfolio, and I think that such challenges have been experienced across the piece in Government.

Let us wind our way back to May—

I do not know whether officials will be able to answer that, but it is a little unfair to ask me whether I was on target to do that when I was not serving in my current role at that time.

It is imperative to understand that the financial climate that we exist in is markedly different from that which existed in 2021. That is why Governments across the world have struggled to meet demand. We in Scotland have been consistently clear in meeting, for example, the demands of the trade unions for higher public sector wages. It is important that we have delivered record salaries for teachers, and I stand by that. However, there have been consequences across the portfolio.

No, not necessarily. The briefing that Colleges Scotland has provided explains that external factors—not least, the increases in inflation and in employer national insurance contributions—have contributed to a much more challenging landscape for the sector. We have responded to that by providing a significant uplift.

We have also been engaging with the sector throughout the year. Mr Macpherson has been leading on that work, and I have been engaging directly with Colleges Scotland and with individual institutions. We wanted to ensure that this year’s budget provided an uplift. I think that the uplift has been welcomed by the sector, and we are keen to work with the Scottish Funding Council to ensure that it is distributed to those that need the help and support from the Government that has been provided for in the budget.

I am just gesticulating to my official to say that, from my recollection, there was an uplift in funding for colleges last year, so I am not sure that I accept that—

I cannot comment on other portfolios. I am not sure that that is accurate, but, having listened to the exchange, I think that it would be worth while us writing to the committee following today’s evidence session. I very much want to assure the sector. We are talking about welcome additional investment. I hear the points that Mr Mason has made, and I think that we need to reflect on the ways in which we communicate the data as a Government.

I will come back to you on that, if that is okay, convener, because I will be writing to you anyway with further information. That will allow me to set out the position in much clearer detail than has been documented thus far.

I think that that is a fair observation. I am not going to give you full details of how I may or may not lobby the finance secretary, but you can be assured that, every year, I put my case to her and she listens. This year, we have seen an uplift for colleges, which I think is welcome.

Mr Macpherson and I have been live to the challenges of the sector. I accept the points that the convener made at the beginning of the session. The challenges that the sector has been experiencing will not be resolved in a one-year settlement, and I accept that they will not be fully resolved in a one-year settlement this year. That is why the conditionality that is attached to the funding in relation to reform and sustainable growth is so important. We should not divorce those two aspects, as they are inherently linked.

Shirley Laing or Mr Macpherson will correct me if I am wrong on this, but I do not think that the autumn deadline precludes us from acting more urgently in this space up to that time, should an institution require additional support. Ministers are updated regularly in relation to individual challenges. We are across that detail, because the Scottish Funding Council provides us with advice on it. It is not that we are not able to act in the interim period—I want to give some reassurance on that point. We can respond as and when there are challenges in year, and the SFC does respond appropriately with additionality and assistance.

I accept that there have been challenges, but, more broadly, we need to be mindful that the college estate is not in the gift of ministers. We do not own the college estate. I would compare that, for example, with the school estate, where we have managed to put in significant investment through the learning estate investment programme and have transformed the quality of the school estate through dual investment with local authority partners. That has worked extremely well.

In colleges, it is quite different. Mr Macpherson talked about some of the challenges that the SFC has to take forward with individual institutions, while analysing the needs of those institutions. It is not quite the same as the uplift approach that we use in schools, so there is no doubt that there have been challenges. However, the inflationary pressures have played a role in that regard, as things have become much more challenging.

From memory, in late 2022, the RAAC issues would not have been as present as they became because of the issues that were unearthed probably in September 2023, when the extent of RAAC across the country—across the United Kingdom—became known.

I do not diminish what you are saying, convener, but those external effects have had an impact in relation to the pace of change. It is worth recording that we now have the additionality that is needed to move forward. I am pleased that we will be working with the SFC on providing the support that Mr Briggs rightly speaks to, particularly in relation to those individual institutions that are currently in need.