Chamber and committees

Nurseries will hear what you are saying and they will not be impressed, because they have been waiting a long time for this, but let us move on.

I have a final question. How will you ensure that there is adequate funding to meet the commitments that you have made to a national Gaelic plan?

I will not be too political with you, but could you realistically spend £400 million in one year to meet the Promise?

That was savage.

I accept that. Let us move on. I am not sure that I have had a clear answer.

There is an expectation in the education world that we will have substantial reform, although opinion is divided. I will summarise what you have said: basically, a lot is going on—there are big challenges with behaviour, absence and the pandemic—and we need to deal with those and invest in teachers rather than in structural reform. I get that argument. Will that alone deal with the problems of the poverty-related attainment gap—which is still big—and performance overall, internationally? Will it be enough?

Okay, I accept all the pandemic stuff. I do not know whether I am going to get anywhere with this, but I am genuinely puzzled that the Government has embarked on a 10-year programme of education reform without really being able to explain why.

There was a kind of panic in 2016, and we set bold ambitions to close the poverty-related attainment gap, whether completely or substantially. At that point, there was an ambition to respond to get us further up the PISA tables, whatever you think of their validity. Nicola Sturgeon said that closing that gap was her “defining mission”. Now, we have moved on from all of that and are saying that it is all about the pandemic. Surely we have to recognise that something was wrong. My view is that you had a ragtag bunch of reforms that did not really come together because you did not understand what the problem was. Is that not right?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is your promise—your issue, which you promised to resolve. It is not my issue but yours, so do not put it back on me.

Various nurseries have come to me and said that they have advertised posts at £12 an hour, but their local council is advertising exactly the same type of post for £16 an hour. How are they supposed to close that gap? They are charities. Where do they find that £4 an hour? They have serious problems if you cannot provide funding that is more equivalent to council nursery funding.

Okay.

I have two quick questions. First, the Hayward review has two elements: changing the curriculum and changing the qualifications system. There is more in it than that, but those are central. Are you rejecting the extra columns of personal achievement and project work? Are they now gone?

Nobody is watching.

You never do.

Convener, I note—I do not expect an answer to this—that Nicola Sturgeon, the former First Minister, asked the question of the current First Minister last week and did not really get an answer, and I note that we have not really had an answer today. I hope that the cabinet secretary will ask the Deputy First Minister to respond on whether the money will be committed in full by the end of the session.