Chamber and committees

This is part of a trend. I have spoken to college staff several times, and they feel quite aggrieved. You intervened in the teachers’ pay dispute, but you refuse to intervene now. Why are you again drawing a distinction between cases where you intervene and others where you do not? What is the rationale for that?

I agree that we need to reach a settlement. The situation has gone on for years, and the foundations are weak. Can you imagine how the staff feel, though? Not only will you not apply the no compulsory redundancies policy—

Just let me finish my sentence. You will not impose that, you will not intervene in the pay dispute when you have done so in other areas, and then you take £26 million away from the college sector in order to pay the teachers whose pay dispute you intervened in. Do you not understand why college staff feel pretty furious about what has gone on?

I mean the wraparound stuff and the provision for younger age groups. I am keen to know how that is progressing.

I have one final question. The programme for government says that there will be a digital service that will lay the foundations to transform the childcare system in the longer term. What on earth does that mean?

Is it a booking system?

I understand the technical explanation—we have heard that before—but, at that time, you could have made a decision to apply the policy of having no compulsory redundancies to the college sector, but you did not. I am wondering why you excluded colleges from it.

It sounds like a booking system. Anyway, we will move on.

I wish that I had your confidence, but that is not what I am hearing, which is that the sector is really struggling with the differentials. I will leave it at that.

I am keen to understand the timescales for the roll-out of further provision that the cabinet secretary referred to. Can you tell us more about how that is progressing?

I would be interested in your reaction to Fiona Robertson’s comments at the committee meeting last week. In particular, she warned about

“unintended consequences, particularly around equity and the personal pathway element.”

She said that

“it would be important that such an SDA could benefit all learners, whatever their pathway … particularly around equity and the personal pathway element.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 13 September 2023, c 39.]