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We have always had a cohort of school refusers. That is not a new feature of Scottish education; it exists in most education systems. Fundamentally, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 sets out the expectation that children and young people should be in school. It is a legal requirement that they go to school, and we should be mindful of that.

There are ways in which local authorities can support young people. To go back to Mr Kidd’s question, we can use virtual headteachers and online approaches. There are outreach mechanisms—some schools use their pupil equity funding to employ people to go to young people’s doors to encourage them to attend school, which can help with the problem. There is a range of mechanisms that schools have always used to engage young people in their education. I do not see that as a new feature post-pandemic. The real difference is the move to digital as an option. However, it should not be the first preference; attending school is the first preference.

If there are areas that the committee thinks are missing from the action plan, I would be happy to read about that in the committee’s final report. We are progressing our update on the actions, which will be published in the next few weeks, but we have an opportunity to ensure that the action plan is actually driving the change that Ms Maguire has spoken about.

On Ms Maguire’s substantive point, the landscape is quite cluttered as far as the support available to parents is concerned, and one of the actions in the action plan is to simplify that. After all, there is a range of support available—there is the let’s talk ASN service, the support for children and young people, the Enquire service and so on—and we need to pull all of that together and signpost parents to ensure that they get the support that they need and to prevent escalation, which in turn brings us back to the point about the tribunal service. Right now, parents and young people can receive support in a variety of ways, and the situation is not always clear.

I think that we are open to revising the specifics in that regard. I know that Laura Meikle wants to come in on this point, but I think that we reviewed access to CSPs in 2021 on the back of the Morgan review.

We have already committed to strengthening the code of practice in this space, and I know that that work has been going on since the 2021 review. However, on Mr Greer’s substantive point, he is asking me to commit today to changing legislation, so I seek to come back to him on that.

There is undoubtedly an opportunity in public sector reform. Audit Scotland and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have made points about that here and have said that parents should not have to fight. That goes to the heart of the issue, because we have built a system that can result in a senior teacher in a school having to pull partners together to co-ordinate the support for a young person. We must put the young person at the centre—that is the GIRFEC ethos—but let us build support around the young person rather than fight over budget lines as often happens now. Public sector reform will give us an opportunity to drive that forward.

We are already beginning cross-portfolio work with health on a number of different areas. Speech and language therapy is a good example, and there are other opportunities to bring health to the table. For example, I would be happy to share details with the committee of how Education Scotland is working with Public Health Scotland and a number of headteachers on a public health approach to attendance. That is really interesting, because health has a huge role to play in tackling some of the challenges.

To that end, I hope that the update that we will publish following the committee’s report will be helpful, but I will speak to officials about that. Given that officials and I engage with the partnership boards more regularly than the committee does, it may be that we can send the committee updates every six months, for example, on the progress of that work.

Absolutely. A key theme in the committee’s evidence has been that the approach cannot simply be about education responding to the challenge; we need a partnership approach from various partners. I have touched on health today, but the member makes a good point about the importance of football clubs and local communities.

In the debate that we had on behaviour in schools a couple of weeks ago, in Conservative parliamentary time, Brian Whittle gave a very good speech to that end. He is passionate about the subject anyway, but the role of sport in responding to some of the challenges post-Covid is fascinating, and that is an opportunity for us to pursue further. I know that Mr Macpherson has a constituency interest in the matter, as he has raised that with me in the chamber previously.

On attendance specifically, I think that, when I was first appointed, I received weekly updates; those are now fortnightly updates. In the first few weeks of my appointment—we have discussed this in the chamber—we touched on the variance in relation to certain groups after the pandemic. We were seeing dips in attendance in year groups that were transitioning during lockdown, whether that was from primary 7 to secondary or during the transition from broad general education to the senior secondary phase. At the time, we were of the view that those young people had had really important periods of their education disrupted and had then found it very hard to re-engage with the system.

Last year, I commissioned Education Scotland to undertake further work on absence. It published national guidance on that in November, which the committee might be aware of, and we then published further data in December that showed that school absence across the board was at record low levels. It is important for the committee to understand that.

The new measure that we have introduced is about persistent absence—10 per cent absence in a school year of, I think, 190 days, so let us say 20 days a year of missed education. That is a big chunk of your education to lose.

With regard to engagement with other portfolios, I have not specifically engaged with other portfolios on attendance, but I have engaged with them on behaviour and on a number of other educational issues, and I will engage with my colleagues on the issue of absence, because, of course, it is not just about school.

First, I very much welcome the committee’s inquiry, given that we are halfway through the ASL action plan. We will update that in the coming weeks, and we intend to learn from the committee’s output and use that learning to inform that process. In recent weeks, I have been considering a number of points that the committee has looked at, and I will touch on some of them now.

Some of the evidence that the committee has taken in relation to the funding of ASL has been important, particularly the commentary from Audit Scotland, which talked about the current approach being not just a local authority question. We often think of ASN as existing in an education silo and believe that it is for education budgets to mop up the need. However, that is not the case.

We also need to be more mindful of different budgetary requirements and how we can be more holistic in that provision, so that our young people are better supported. I know that that point was also made by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, which talked about how we could do that more holistically and not have a fight over funding. I am mindful of that point, because, fundamentally, our approach must be about getting it right for every child. Using GIRFEC as our measure, we need to reflect better on how that funding works on the ground. I know that the committee has taken evidence on how that can be fragmented in relation to delivery.

Those are two examples of things that jumped out at me in relation to funding, in particular, but I also note that the committee has heard about a number of other areas, such as the design of school buildings and how that can impact on additional support needs, and, more broadly, the way in which the pandemic has changed our education system. I am mindful that, as the committee knows, I will need to formally respond to the Hayward review in the coming weeks, and we must be mindful of the increase in additional support needs in that context and of the challenges in relation to behaviour. As Mr Kerr knows, the challenge that we face right now is attendance. All of those factors have been compounded since the pandemic.

Fundamentally, the educational offering now is completely different from the situation that pertained when we passed the 2004 act. As Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, I am keen to hear the committee’s views on the evidence that you have taken, and I think that we can better reflect what you have to say in our updated ASL action plan. We have made progress on that, but I know that the committee will want to talk about some of the specifics around what it looks like in practice.