Seòmar agus comataidhean

On the member’s first point about places—I have covered this now with a number of members—the impact on spaces relates to the 1,200 spaces that we added during the pandemic. The member has now quoted additional figures, but I am not sure of the evidence base for those.

I think that the member is misconstruing some of the data that we have already published about the savings that were made in-year. The allocation that universities will receive is broadly similar to what they received during this financial year.

Of itself, at the current time?

Oh, mon ami—okay.

At the end of last year, there were a number of different reports about the provision of language courses at the University of Aberdeen. I also met the principal to discuss that very subject towards the end of last year—I should say that it is a matter for the university, which is independent of Government—and I understand that the issue is one of footfall: the university does not have the numbers to drive the availability of courses.

Nevertheless, I accept that there is a challenge around languages. I have asked to engage with Education Scotland on the point, and I met officials last week to look again at our languages policy and how we are supporting it. We have done a lot of work in our primary schools on the one-plus-two model to support the delivery of language learning, with our young people learning two languages, and I think that we could look to support more in that space.

Liam Kerr’s substantive point goes back to Ruth Maguire’s point about whether we should prescribe in the curriculum that language learning should happen until the end of S4. That is not in our current curriculum. If that is a view that Mr Kerr would like to explore with me when it comes to qualifications reform, I will be happy to hear it.

Both Liam Kerr and I have a qualification in languages. I have found mine very helpful in conversing with Mairi Gougeon’s husband, who is from France. However, in seriousness, having a second language is helpful, including with a person’s development. A friend of mine who is a former German teacher spoke to me recently about the joy of learning languages.

We need to be mindful of some changes to curriculum for excellence. Going back to Mr Rennie’s question about what is wrong with Scottish education, we need to consider the link between the BGE and the senior phase but also the role of subjects. In secondary schools, subject specialists with degrees and teaching qualifications to deliver them need to be part of the solution. We need to be mindful of changes to CFE that might drive changes in the uptake of courses, whereby we will have less language learning than we had in the past.

When Liam Kerr and I were at school—although, obviously, he is older than I am—we had to study a language until the end of S4. Probably all of us in this room—maybe not Ross Greer—have an S4 qualification in a language, but the generations who followed us may not, because they were not compelled to learn a language by their curriculum, which was flexible.

The counter-argument to that is that we should prescribe. Such a curriculum would be very different from the one that we currently have. However, if the committee holds that view, I am happy to hear it. Obviously, we will have a wider debate about qualifications in the next few weeks.

No, it is not. The curriculum improvement work that I committed to in December is starting now. We are already getting going with the maths element of curriculum improvement. I expect to have recommendations with me towards the middle of the year and we will go out and test those with the profession in October. That must be part of informing improvement.

The fact that I have delayed one aspect of reform, the legislation for the new bodies, does not mean that we cannot get going on curriculum improvement. To speak bluntly, given the PISA results at the end of last year, we have to do that.

Yes.

I look forward to hearing them.

I have certainly heard evidence to that end. Sometimes, authorities take a monolithic, one-size-fits-all approach to their area. That can be really disempowering for headteachers. It can also mean that headteachers and middle leaders in schools—as I experienced in a previous life—can be disempowered in things such as the recruitment process, so they do not have the ability to appoint a member of staff to their team. Those are the key decisions that you would expect middle leaders and headteachers to have control over. However, when local authorities view teachers as numbers that can be moved around from school to school, they are not always thinking about what is best for the leadership in that school, for the teachers’ professional development or for the young people.

We have resources at a national level and we have the headteachers charter, but the answer to Michelle Thomson’s substantive point must come from the new relationship with local government in the Verity house agreement, and it must be about encouraging a spirit of empowerment across the country rather than only in pockets. We know that, where empowerment does happen, it works well, staff feel valued and outcomes improve.

It is broadly—

From memory, it came from a mixture of the two. I may bring in Stuart Greig on the specifics of that, but it is not a clear-cut split, if that is the point of the question.