Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has a responsibility to have a funding package in place that recognises that and provides funding to every local authority. I think that everyone agreed that there needs to be a fair model. That is what we have delivered through the new funding allocation.

Would you like to take money away from somebody else’s portfolio? Would you like to take it from health, justice or social care?

You have insinuated that there are difficulties with overall education expenditure in different local authorities, so I am merely pointing the committee to the actual overall education expenditure. We have very much looked to provide a fair funding formula right across Scotland. The allocations that were distributed to the nine local authorities were determined based on bespoke bids for resource, rather than a data-driven approach. We have moved to a distribution model that recognises that poverty exists in every local authority in Scotland. I point to that 59 per cent figure that I mentioned earlier.

Ruth Binks, from Inverclyde Council, who was one of the directors of education in front of the committee, made it very clear in her testimony that

“When we started as attainment challenge authorities we were very much told that we were the pathfinders, looking at how to make things work. We were asked to adopt”

and

“adapt”.—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 4 May 2022; c 8.]

That is what they did. It is very important to set out that context. I have been invited to find an extra £43 million in the education budget, but there is not £43 million sitting spare, not being spent, in the education budget. If the committee—

I saw the evidence that Jim Thewliss gave. There is no longitudinal work of the type that I think he was referring to. A lot of evaluation work has been undertaken, and we are finalising the evaluation work for the refreshed SAC. It is an interesting proposal and I am happy to consider it further, perhaps hearing directly from Jim Thewliss, who can of course feed in his views.

We gather a lot of data on education in Scotland. There is data that is gathered by local authorities and data that is gathered as part of the NIF. I am keen to consider whether what has been proposed would be a worthwhile exercise, and there is a query within that about what impact it would have on teachers’ workloads and so on. We have to consider all those caveats, but I am happy to take the proposal away, have further discussions on it and see whether there is a role for it. I will take a decision on it in due course.

What we have seen with the Scottish attainment challenge and PEF, in particular, is schools progressing in a range of ways that, from being directly involved with the young people, they have determined are most important in impacting on their health and wellbeing and in setting a child up, through tackling any attainment challenges that we might have. I would, of course—

I took the decision to stay with the free school meals to ensure continuity in PEF with what schools had previously. I took that decision very early on to ensure continuity within the system.

There were discussions and consultations about the SAC in general before I came to that decision. I am not aware of any modelling having taken place, but there were a number of discussions with stakeholders and groups that were set up specifically to look at the refresh, and continuity was an important part of PEF that I was keen to continue.

PEF already goes to 97 per cent of schools, and it is important that we recognise—

As we went through the refresh, particularly with the introduction of stretch aims, we were keen to ensure that we were not asking local authorities or schools to carry out work that they were not already doing, because we did not want to put an additional burden into the system. The way that the refresh has worked is that it has been done in collaboration with the Scottish Government, and the determination of what could be involved in the stretch aims will involve things that are already part of school improvement plans and local authorities’ work. It is important to me that, as we look at this, we do not put further pressure on the system at any time, but particularly at this time.

National accountability is very important, but I hope that there will also be an ability to have local accountability for the stretch aims and for what happens in local authorities, with discussion at any time, whether that is through the committee, through elections or whatever. It is important to have that accountability at different levels. However, at the national level, it sits with me.

I have been heartened by the overall acceptance of the need to ensure that there is excellence and equity in education. I do not think that that is just a national Government thing; it is also accepted by local government. At both the local and national Government levels, we need to continue to look at what we can do in our different areas in order to see progress. There will be some aspects that national Government should rightly be challenged on, and there are some aspects that rightly sit within local government’s focus, on which it should be challenged and asked to consider doing more.

We touched earlier on the variation within and across local authorities. The data that we have suggests that that variation is marked, and if we can tackle that, we should do so. That is another lens for looking at the poverty-related attainment gap, because it cannot all be explained by different poverty levels in different parts of Scotland. I think that there is a real desire and a determination in local government to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap. That is a shared endeavour between local and national Government. When my COSLA counterpart is elected to their position, I will be keen to meet them to continue the discussion on how we can take that forward within our different responsibilities.

The easiest way for me to answer that is probably to direct the committee to the evidence that it took from the directors of education, and Ruth Binks in particular. She said that they were very much told that they were pathfinders who were to look at how to make things work. There is always a wish for funding to continue over a number of years, but I think that that was clear. The pathfinders were very successful in trying out different models, looking at what worked in their systems and ensuring that the learning was shared not only in their local authority, but with others. The easiest way for me to answer the question is probably to point to the evidence that the director of education in Inverclyde gave when she was at committee.