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She is relatively new to the organisation, convener.

That is correct. She has been leading on a number of changes, which the committee has been broadly supportive of, in relation to getting the organisation ready for the change to qualifications Scotland. Although there will be some continuity in the move across to qualifications Scotland, there are still some relatively fresh appointments. I spoke to the members who joined the board just before Christmas—five appointments were made at that time.

Although there is continuity, the body needs to operate, and the order is needed to give it the powers to do so and to fulfil functions in relation to the 2026 exam diet.

The alternative would be for the Government to sit still, which I am not sure is acceptable to Scotland’s parents, teachers and young people. We must reflect on the real urgency for reform of our qualifications body, which has been expressed by stakeholders and by the committee. The committee backed the general principles of the bill at stage 1, which is important.

Absolutely, convener.

I am somewhat confused by your line of questioning.

I have not been presented with clear-cut examples of the health service not meeting that need. On CAMHS in particular, data was published last week that showed that the Government has met the required timescale on CAMHS referral waiting times, which I think is 12 weeks. That is welcome news. Therefore, children and young people should not be waiting in excess of a year for that support. That improvement has been driven by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care with the aim of supporting some of our most vulnerable young people.

Of course, CAMHS is the extreme end of the system. From an educational perspective, we always want to try to help support health and wellbeing in schools. It is one of the curriculum areas in the curriculum for excellence, but we also provide funding that is separate to PEF of £15 million for school counsellors. Money from that goes to every secondary school in Scotland, so there should be that provision in every secondary school.

In the post-pandemic period, society has many challenges in relation to mental health. The issue is not limited to children and young people, and many parents are struggling. Some of the interventions that we see, such as the one that I gave the example of at the primary school in Kirkcaldy, are about supporting the mental health of mums. In supporting better mental health for the mums and the carers of young people, the initiatives support better educational outcomes.

More broadly, there are challenges with mental health. I have not been presented with examples of where the health service is not making that intervention and the need is being mopped up by education, but if Mr Briggs or others have such examples, I would be keen to look at them, because we want to ensure that there has not been an erosion of the PEF and that it is being used to support the people that it is intended to support.

Of course, PEF money may well be used to, for example, support nurture in schools. I have seen examples of that in a primary school in Glasgow, where the third sector was brought in to get primary 6 pupils to talk about their emotions. That is not something that, as a secondary teacher, I would have countenanced teaching my young people to do, but teachers are now having to instil in their young people things such as the ability to cope with emotions and talk about their feelings, perhaps because of pupils’ frustrations in relation to having to deal with other challenges.

To reflect the real ask here—to give you that reassurance—the appointments process will have to take account of any amendments that are agreed to at stages 2 and 3.

I put on the record my recusal from involvement in the Promise, due to my wife’s role in that, but I think that I am permitted to talk more broadly about care-experienced young people. I will allow officials to correct me if that is not the case.

I am told that I am able to talk about that. The gap has been narrowing since 2009-10. I know that Mr Rennie does not like that measurement, but we need to look at the trajectory of improvement between care-experienced young leavers and all children. The narrowing of that gap is welcome news. The gap has widened slightly for lower-level qualifications—across level 4—but it is still half the size that it was in 2009-10 and narrower than it was before Covid. As we often see in August when the exam results are published, to some extent, we need to discount the Covid years, because, in those years, different rules were applied to, for example, the qualifications system. With regard to the Covid measurement, the gap is still narrower than it was, but there remains a sizeable gap in relation to care-experienced young people’s educational outcomes, so we need to do more to focus local authorities on driving the improvements that are required.

In response to Mr Briggs’s question about attendance, I spoke about the role of virtual headteachers. They have been doing a lot of work at the local level in supporting care-experienced young people to access education and to come back to schools. There are a number of examples of how that works on the ground that officials might want to talk about—I see that David Leng has a wee note about that. The virtual headteachers programme has been used in a number of local authorities and is making a real difference to the lives of care-experienced young people, but there is still challenge in that regard.

Do you mean if the draft order does not pass today?

That is a matter that the Parliament will have to respond to.