Chamber and committees

That is a very good question, if I may say so, Ms Duncan-Glancy.

Earlier today, we talked about the pay dispute. The committee knows pretty well how that frayed relationships between Government, the teaching unions and the profession. I have been trying to make things a bit better in the past eight months, but we will have to work differently and work together. The professional associations want to be part of the solution to educational reform.

Ms Duncan-Glancy talks about bottom-up decision making, which I suppose speaks to some of the challenges that I rehearsed in my response to Ms Thomson. Decisions can be taken for people in education that leave them feeling disempowered by the process.

Headteachers have a degree of flexibility, but they can exercise that only if they are empowered to do so by their local authorities. For example, a local authority might make a decision about closing a building and, although a headteacher might have carried out a risk assessment and be happy to have the building open, they might be overruled by their local authority. Those things are demoralising and can be quite challenging for leaders in schools.

On the subject of things being taken out of classroom teachers’ control, it would be helpful to hear a little more from Ms Duncan-Glancy. Certain things are taken out of a classroom teacher’s control. They might not have control of their timetable or of the classes that present in front of them. I am speaking as a secondary school specialist, but primary teachers will talk about the year group that they might be planning for. Some of those things are not in their gift.

If Ms Duncan-Glancy has ideas about how we can build that into the reform agenda, I would be happy to hear them. To some extent, the empowerment agenda was a creation of the previous Parliament and we must not forget about that work, because it has to support education reform in the here and now. Returning to that work to refresh people’s understanding, particularly local authorities’ understanding, would be helpful.

On the point about the teaching workforce, we resolved the pay dispute but we did not talk about the other challenges that the profession faces. That speaks to the challenges that Ms Duncan-Glancy has illustrated, whether in regard to workload, additional support needs or behaviour, which I am sure we will come on to talk about this afternoon, if not now. We need to resolve that relationship around conditions, and I do not think that where we got to last year did that.

I am happy to ask the DFM to respond. She has lead responsibility. However, that is the public commitment at the current time. On Willie Rennie’s point, she is leading on feedback about the timescales. We will take that point away as an action from today’s committee meeting.

I would like to hear your ideas first, Mr Rennie, before I pre-empt my response.

We are not yet at stage 1 of the budget process. I will defer to one of my officials, but we anticipate that the allocations will be very similar to the core funding that colleges received and are investing in 2023-24, which was the point that I made to Pam Duncan-Glancy. In simpler terms, the funds that will be available to colleges at the start of 2024-25 are expected to be very similar to those that were allocated this financial year. I will pass to Stuart Greig, who can say whether there is a date on which we can provide the committee with the specifics that the member asked for.

With respect to the member, I say that the allocation of money to my portfolio is extremely challenging, which is why I have had to take tough decisions in the financial settlement. The member has heard about some of those and I am sure that we will rehearse them later.

The First Minister committed to the additionality: it is in my budget, so direct action has been taken. Mr Rennie might think that it is not enough, but that is a separate issue. Action has been taken to close the gap between the PVI sector and the local authority sector. We will have to continue to work with local government on some of the challenges, because they are not going to go away. However, the additionality will make things better and will mean that eligible staff get an extra £2,000 a year. I would have thought that Mr Rennie might have welcomed the additionality.

That is an important point, which I am sure we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon. Part of the challenge with behaviour, attendance, the curriculum and reform relates to conditions for teachers in their places of work. Last year’s negotiations on the pay settlement did not include changing or improving conditions for teachers, but we now have an opportunity to reduce class contact time, to which we have committed. As I said when I wrote to Pam Duncan-Glancy at the end of last year, we have commissioned independent research that will look at that exact issue.

Across the country, class contact time will look different for every teacher, despite the allowances for non-contact time that were built in for all teachers following the McCrone report. We are looking at the national picture in order to get a granular view of current allocations. Earlier, the convener and I spoke about the falling pupil roll, which will have an impact on what we are able to deliver. We need to be mindful of the forecasts and the financial challenges with the budget, but I am committed to looking at how we can deliver.

Another challenge that I face is that what we are able to do will depend on negotiations with the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers. The tripartite approach was adopted by McCrone and Jack McConnell when I was at school—some years ago now—so we need to work on that tripartite basis if we are to reduce class contact time across the country.

I accept that there are challenges, but there is also an opportunity to get this right for Scotland’s teachers. Having reflected on my past eight or nine months in post, I think that that part of the jigsaw has not yet been tackled. Providing time is a way in which we can respond to some of the challenges in our classrooms, whether they relate to attendance or behaviour.

We also need to build in time for teachers in relation to curriculum reform. One of the reasons why I decided to delay legislating last year was that I did not feel that secondary school teachers in particular had been given that time. We need to give them that time. We can have a debate with the trade unions—I am sure that we will—about the purpose of that time, but we need to build it in to how we support the teaching profession in the 21st century. We are not there yet; the work is on-going. I do not have the commissioned response, but it will be coming to me. I am looking at Mr Anson, because his team has been leading on commissioning the work. I think that we expect to have it by the end of this month.

You are right, convener. We will cover that in the update to the committee.

I am not necessarily sure that it could be said that Scotland’s attainment gap is wider than that of any comparable country. I do not have the data in front of me, but I do not think that we are unique. We were one of the first countries to identify the challenge. Before a number of countries took action in that space, we said that there was a problem.

I will give a bit of a technical answer, but it is my honest opinion. In the past, historically—certainly, when I was at school and, I imagine, when Mr Rennie was at school, although that was longer ago—[Laughter.]

At that time, certain young people were encouraged to leave school after S4. Basically, they were told, “Do you know what? School’s not for you. You’re not bright enough,” and they were filtered off somewhere else. Things have completely changed in our schools now, as a result of the Government’s reforms and a different approach to how we measure success, which says, “Do you know what? If you’re going on to study an apprenticeship or a course that might not be the traditional five-highers offering, that, too, has accreditation and merit.”

For example, last week, I was in a school in Glasgow that is doing fantastic work with the Scottish credit and qualifications framework’s ambassador programme. Four confident young people presented to me the work of their school and got accreditation for it. In the past—when I was at school in the 1990s—we encouraged some young people to leave school. We said that school and university were not for them. We have completely altered our approach to what education is about.