Chamber and committees

I will also take this opportunity to ask about the provision for deferrals for four-year-olds going to primary school. We are supposed to have that provision in place from 1 August, and an evaluation of the pilot is due this month. Is it still the plan to have that evaluation report this month, in time for August?

Could you share the details of the membership of the deferral working group and how often it has met?

Ross Greer’s question was quite a powerful one, and Pam Duncan-Glancy has gone some way to dealing with it.

It is a slight counsel of despair to say that, because we have not been able to enforce such statutory rights or plans before, we should never try to do so again. Nevertheless, that begs the question whether this will be any different from what we have had before.

It is open to us to scrutinise co-ordinated support plans. We can question them in Parliament and do all that stuff just now. There is nothing to prevent us from doing that. However, you are saying that, by stipulating that a minister is responsible and that there are scrutiny angles, that will somehow change the position. Are there parallels in other areas, where that approach has really made a difference?

Talk me through this, cabinet secretary. If a council ignores your warning on teacher numbers, what happens next? What is the process?

Yes, I am, because you set it out.

I understand that you do not want to get to that and you want to have a collaborative approach. That is what you have been trying to do for years but, apparently, it has not succeeded. I am curious as to how you think that withdrawing more funding from a council will help it to balance its budget and get the appropriate number of staff in the right schools. Will it not end up undermining the objective that you set yourself at the beginning? Will we not end up with fewer teachers and classroom assistants?

The councils do not want to take that approach. As you know, they face really difficult financial challenges—you acknowledged that yourself. I do not understand how the penalty helps anybody. The councils are not the enemy. They are trying to do their best and your penalty might make it even worse.

In rural areas, in particular, some specialities are finding it difficult to recruit. Will those councils be penalised if they are unable recruit the appropriate number of teachers?

Okay. Let us say that you have clear evidence that a council has ignored your warnings and has cut teacher numbers. If you withdraw the funding, what does the council do next? For example, what happens if the council decides that, as a result of that cut in funding, it has to make further cuts in teacher numbers? Will you impose a further penalty on that council? How does that work?

If you penalise councils that believe that they have no other choice than to cut teacher numbers, is it possible that there could be even fewer teachers at the end of that process? Is that a possible scenario?

There is no point in having the threat of a penalty if you are not prepared to contemplate the consequences of that penalty. You have to accept that we could end up with a scenario in which councils have even less funding and, therefore, cannot employ as many teachers as they would like, so there will be a further cut in teacher numbers. You have to accept that that is a possibility with the penalty.