Chamber and committees

With respect to the member, I say that the allocation of money to my portfolio is extremely challenging, which is why I have had to take tough decisions in the financial settlement. The member has heard about some of those and I am sure that we will rehearse them later.

The First Minister committed to the additionality: it is in my budget, so direct action has been taken. Mr Rennie might think that it is not enough, but that is a separate issue. Action has been taken to close the gap between the PVI sector and the local authority sector. We will have to continue to work with local government on some of the challenges, because they are not going to go away. However, the additionality will make things better and will mean that eligible staff get an extra £2,000 a year. I would have thought that Mr Rennie might have welcomed the additionality.

That is an important point, which I am sure we will discuss at length in the chamber this afternoon. Part of the challenge with behaviour, attendance, the curriculum and reform relates to conditions for teachers in their places of work. Last year’s negotiations on the pay settlement did not include changing or improving conditions for teachers, but we now have an opportunity to reduce class contact time, to which we have committed. As I said when I wrote to Pam Duncan-Glancy at the end of last year, we have commissioned independent research that will look at that exact issue.

Across the country, class contact time will look different for every teacher, despite the allowances for non-contact time that were built in for all teachers following the McCrone report. We are looking at the national picture in order to get a granular view of current allocations. Earlier, the convener and I spoke about the falling pupil roll, which will have an impact on what we are able to deliver. We need to be mindful of the forecasts and the financial challenges with the budget, but I am committed to looking at how we can deliver.

Another challenge that I face is that what we are able to do will depend on negotiations with the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers. The tripartite approach was adopted by McCrone and Jack McConnell when I was at school—some years ago now—so we need to work on that tripartite basis if we are to reduce class contact time across the country.

I accept that there are challenges, but there is also an opportunity to get this right for Scotland’s teachers. Having reflected on my past eight or nine months in post, I think that that part of the jigsaw has not yet been tackled. Providing time is a way in which we can respond to some of the challenges in our classrooms, whether they relate to attendance or behaviour.

We also need to build in time for teachers in relation to curriculum reform. One of the reasons why I decided to delay legislating last year was that I did not feel that secondary school teachers in particular had been given that time. We need to give them that time. We can have a debate with the trade unions—I am sure that we will—about the purpose of that time, but we need to build it in to how we support the teaching profession in the 21st century. We are not there yet; the work is on-going. I do not have the commissioned response, but it will be coming to me. I am looking at Mr Anson, because his team has been leading on commissioning the work. I think that we expect to have it by the end of this month.

You are right, convener. We will cover that in the update to the committee.

I am not necessarily sure that it could be said that Scotland’s attainment gap is wider than that of any comparable country. I do not have the data in front of me, but I do not think that we are unique. We were one of the first countries to identify the challenge. Before a number of countries took action in that space, we said that there was a problem.

I will give a bit of a technical answer, but it is my honest opinion. In the past, historically—certainly, when I was at school and, I imagine, when Mr Rennie was at school, although that was longer ago—[Laughter.]

At that time, certain young people were encouraged to leave school after S4. Basically, they were told, “Do you know what? School’s not for you. You’re not bright enough,” and they were filtered off somewhere else. Things have completely changed in our schools now, as a result of the Government’s reforms and a different approach to how we measure success, which says, “Do you know what? If you’re going on to study an apprenticeship or a course that might not be the traditional five-highers offering, that, too, has accreditation and merit.”

For example, last week, I was in a school in Glasgow that is doing fantastic work with the Scottish credit and qualifications framework’s ambassador programme. Four confident young people presented to me the work of their school and got accreditation for it. In the past—when I was at school in the 1990s—we encouraged some young people to leave school. We said that school and university were not for them. We have completely altered our approach to what education is about.

Back in 2018, when Mr Swinney was Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, we had a joint agreement with COSLA. Since then, we have taken a number of actions in relation to the empowerment agenda. I think that the committee took evidence on that from SLS, which understandably had an interest, given its membership. We have the headteachers charter, which looks at setting out how we could deliver a more empowered system. We have empowerment guidance for school leaders and staff. Ms Thomson, you also spoke about the importance of other members who support school education, and we need to be cognisant of the role of parents and the wider community in that.

The driving of the empowerment agenda is contingent on local authorities. In my experience, they can curtail that empowerment agenda, and I think that the committee might have heard evidence to that end.

The status quo will not cut it. Mr Rennie knows the PISA scores, and I have been up-front about our approach in responding to the challenge in relation to maths education, for example. There is a challenge right now in relation to languages education, too, and I am sure that we will come on to talk about it.

We need to look again at some of the courses that are delivered. That is not about the status quo; it is about the role of knowledge within curriculum for excellence. We heard a critique about that at the end of term, and I am sure that we will come on to discuss that in a bit more detail. We need to fundamentally consider some of the course content in relation to the delivery of CFE in the BGE to ensure that the curriculum is fit for purpose in the modern age and to update and refresh some of it.

On the maths curriculum, I have spoken to maths specialists—I confess that I am not one—and have heard that there is a certain way in which our young people require to be taught maths to build their learning. That needs to be better supported across the system.

Mr Rennie will not hear the status quo from me. I will come to the Parliament with a plan for the action that I intend to take. I am extremely mindful that there is lots of flux in the system just now in connection with the expectation stemming from the various reports. I was not the cabinet secretary during lockdown, nor during what happened with the SQA, but at that moment in time there was an anger in the system, as I still hear from teachers, around the SQA—and Government, to be fair—during the examinations period, with real frustration.

When I was appointed, I was told that there was a real appetite for radical change in the system, but I would gently suggest to the committee that, if you engage with secondary teachers, particularly those who teach S4 and up, you will find that the degree of appetite for radical reform is not as present as it might have been in the system in 2021.

That it is my understanding of the way in which we will administer the fund.

In answer to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s question, I said that I would look at the merits of every local authority’s position in detail.