Chamber and committees

If the trend is down the way, that is positive and I hope that it endures.

How have schools improved at managing pupil absence? My son is at primary school and has Covid, so he is self-isolating. Within 24 hours, a core literacy and numeracy package was provided by the school along with some bespoke work that the class is doing. I suspect that, at the start of the first wave of Covid, schools were scrambling to do the best that they could, but I hope that there is a lot more finesse and capacity in the system now. Perhaps Greg Dempster is best placed to answer my question.

Staff have to be present to issue work to pupils who are self-isolating. If staff are absent and other staff are filling in doing “please takes” and everything else, there is a staff management issue in getting good-quality core resources out to pupils who are self-isolating to keep the continuity of learning. Can you say a little more about where we are now and what the constraints are in relation to making sure that we get good-quality teaching and learning packages out to young people who are self-isolating?

I would like to direct my question to Douglas Hutchison. In doing so, I declare an interest with regard to the Educational Institute of Scotland, to which I still give my union dues. I declare that before I mention the EIS survey. I also welcome Douglas Hutchison to his post in Glasgow. He has been in it only three days, and I expect that his post bag is quite voluminous already. Thank you for taking on that task.

The EIS survey found that 65.9 per cent of teachers thought that rooms were well ventilated but 29.2 per cent did not. We are short on time, but I will give one other statistic: 62.8 per cent of teachers knew that the ventilation in their rooms had been checked but 11 per cent did not. I want to ask Douglas whether he is aware of whether education leaders at a local authority level had gone back to the EIS with that survey detail and drilled down, for example, on the 29 per cent who did not think that classrooms were well ventilated or on the 11 per cent who did not know that the ventilation had been checked. That is very important data on a bit of a disconnect between some of the teachers at the coalface, who are EIS members, and some of the good practice that we have heard about from Simon Cameron. Does Douglas have a view on how that data could be used and what discussion there could be with the EIS on doing something positive in relation to that?

Thank you, Margaret. I appreciate that.

Thank you, convener. I think that Simon Cameron will be best placed to answer the question. The exchange between you and Mr Cameron was fascinating.

The Scottish Government has been pretty clear that permanent contracts should be secured with the additional baseline funding. Mr Cameron, do you anticipate that there will be many more permanent contracts as a result of that funding?

I imagine that there may be two reasons for not flipping a temporary contract into a permanent contract, but we need clarity. First, a local authority may wish to redeploy that resource to a different post in a school, doing a different task, in which case, that contract should surely be permanent. Secondly, the local authority may have to do some form of external recruitment to make sure that it is abiding by the law on recruitment and employment.

I just want clarity. The expectation is that there will be permanent contracts. Whether the configuration of staff is as it currently looks is one thing, but we are expecting permanent contracts. Will Simon Cameron give us more clarity on that?

Our papers note that, if the cross-party group was to get the approval of the committee, I would be a member. I attended the first meeting, which Beatrice Wishart spoke about. Clearly, therefore, I may be a bit prejudiced—in a positive sense—as to whether the group should go forward. Ms Wishart, I very much hope—I am sure—that it will draw on the lived experience of those who have had to endure poverty not just currently but over a number of years.

The minister said that election offices in each local authority area will remind individuals to ensure that their voter registration is still valid and at the address where they stay, remind them that they have a postal vote and ask whether they wish to retain it. Is there a uniform approach to that throughout Scotland? The Electoral Management Board for Scotland is involved with each local government election, but are there 32 ways that that happens in Scotland—one per local authority—or is there a more standardised approach?

I do not expect the minister to have the answer at his fingertips, but I ask in case the committee wants in future to examine the management of postal votes throughout Scotland. I am not saying that it will, but the convener’s question was interesting.

Finally, convener, can I just ask the cabinet secretary—

What engagement work is planned for the college and university sectors between now and May to establish that the funding, whatever it may be, can be used most effectively?

I do not doubt the financial challenges that the Scottish Government faces in setting the budget, but Colleges Scotland says that it has had a 2.6 per cent real-terms cut to its revenue budget, and 38 per cent of school leavers from the 20 per cent most deprived cohorts according to the Scottish index of multiple deprivation go to Scotland’s colleges. Has the Scottish Government had discussions with Colleges Scotland about, or made any assessment of, the impact of what that body tells us is a 2.6 per cent real-terms cut?

For once, this will be brief. Would it be possible to get at some point the full quantum of spending on colleges reported in the one place, so that the committee does not have to do its own budget scrutiny and look at other committees’ scrutiny to get a global figure for the money that is to be spent in colleges in the coming financial year?