Chamber and committees

It is probably the latter—I think that it will evolve. We need to rework the relationship with local authorities. We need to get to a place where we can trust each other. I accept that that is a two-way street and that, in the past, that relationship has not necessarily been in the best of spaces.

Despite what I said in my commentary around teacher numbers, we have had very good working relationships with local authorities over the past four weeks. The committee will be aware of the challenges that we have faced in relation to the presence of RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—in the school estate. COSLA has worked very closely with our local authority partners on that issue at pace and with urgency, and I thank it for its endeavours on that. Although the work on that issue was not part of the Verity house agreement, it is representative of a new approach to local government working with the Scottish Government. I currently meet COSLA weekly. As well as RAAC, we discuss matters such as the industrial action that is taking place this week. That has been a positive process.

To answer Mr Greer’s question, there is no end date for the process as far as I am concerned, although I am mindful of the fact that budgetary responsibility sits with another cabinet secretary, who might have a different view on that, given her interests. However, we are currently looking at how we can explore with COSLA that approach to governance and assurance in terms of accountability. That is our focus. There is no end date for the process per se, but we all recognise that, in the longer term, we want to get to a better funding situation that does not involve us recouping money or directing blocks of funding to local government but, instead, means that we are able to trust authorities to spend money in whichever way they see fit and in a way that meets the needs of their young people.

Mr Greer highlights a really important point, which is to do with local variance in how things are recorded. I know that the committee will have taken an interest in the work that His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education has carried out on how we measure incidents related to bullying and the disparate approaches that are used around the country in relation to how that data is gathered.

It is important to remember that, as the committee will know, more than a third of our pupils in mainstream education have an identified additional support need. Given that most of our young people will be in the mainstream, the question that arises is how local authorities are gathering that data. I would be keen to work with the committee on that, if that would be helpful, because I think that we need to develop a national approach to how that is measured and tracked.

I have been taking such matters forward with SAGRABIS in relation to behaviour. I think that I have written to the committee about that, but I will explain that SAGRABIS is the group that brings together the Scottish Government, COSLA and wider partners on the issues surrounding behaviour. At that meeting, COSLA’s clear ask was that we look to have a more standardised approach to measuring bullying incidents in schools. A more standardised approach to measuring ASN spend and how that information is gathered at local authority level would also be very helpful.

I go back to Michelle Thomson’s point about the Verity house agreement and local accountability. Having that data at our fingertips would be helpful in measuring ASN spend and the outcomes that that additional spend is delivering for young people with additional support needs.

It is really challenging. Every young person with additional support needs is unique, so the measurement of inputting X and expecting Y as an outcome cannot really be used. We need to be mindful of that. These are people. We all have different needs as adults, and our young people are exactly the same.

I go back to your question about the measurement and the tension with local authorities on that issue. To me, this is an opportunity for us to better evidence how the funding that we provide at a national level can drive improvements at the local authority level. We have heard from Education Scotland about some of the partnership work that it is engaged in in relation to attendance and different things that work, and I have certainly seen fantastic examples of how provision for additional support needs is working in mainstream settings, but also in special school settings.

I do not have a direct answer to the member’s point—I will be frank about that. However, I want to explore the issue more fully with COSLA in the context of the Verity house agreement, recognising the need for transparency about spend, but also the member’s point about outcomes for these young people. They will not necessarily be binary things that we can measure, because they will depend on the individual young person. That can be difficult to grasp in the heat of political debates. We should all recognise that, given that more than a third of our young people in schools have an additional support need, they are part of the mainstream. We have a different approach to education in Scotland now, but I think that we sometimes miss that in the mix.

I might bring in Alison Taylor on that. As she said, there is limited evidence from down south and other parts of the world. However, the principle of universality is an important one. In my response to Mr Macpherson, I talked about how, certainly when I was teaching, stigmatisation could be attached to those who were in receipt of free school meals. Universality removes that, but I do not know whether we have further international evidence on that.

Obviously, the Government has some really ambitious targets in relation to expanding our childcare provision. The PVI sector will be critical to that. We will not be able to do it with local authorities alone. We also need to be mindful of the role of childminders in that respect.

We published a financial sustainability check in the summer, and we have committed in the programme for government to giving the funding to enable workers who are delivering ELC in the private and third sectors to be paid at least £12 an hour from April next year. We are also committed to a pilot to look at how we can grow the childminding workforce in rural and urban communities by a further 1,000.

More broadly, Mr Rennie speaks to a number of challenges in relation to ELC. I will bring in Eleanor Passmore on how we have been moving that agenda forward. It will take substantial additional investment from the Government and, as I mentioned, it will require the PVI sector to be a huge part of that, recognising that local authorities will not be able to do it on their own.

There are a number of things to unpack in that question. I think that the Verity house agreement sets out a new way of working between local authorities and the Scottish Government, and there are many positives that we can take from that. I would say that it is an iterative process. At the current time, we are working through what an accountability framework will look like in terms of measuring progress. One of the points that I made in response to the convener’s question about attendance was on local variation, and I am keen that we look at local variation in relation to attainment, for example. We should look at local accountability and how that can be better advocated for, given that, as the cabinet secretary, I do not run our schools at a local authority level—that is the responsibility of councils.

Scottish attainment challenge funding is very much targeted funding, as is other funding within the portfolio, and that has to remain the case. That will continue through the course of discussions around the framework.

In terms of ring fencing more broadly, I accept that local authorities have certain statutory duties that they need to fulfil, but how they do that and their overall level of resource is, in the main, the responsibility of local authorities, and I do not think that the Verity house agreement will interrupt that—in fact, if anything, it will seek to empower councils further. It is, though, also important to say that only 7 per cent of funding provided in 2023-24 is actually formally ring fenced in relation to education, and that represents a relatively small percentage of councils’ overall spend on education. That is why I think that the Verity house agreement is important in resetting the relationship between Government and local authorities but also with regard to recognising local accountability within that process.

We will need to look at how we support that strategic change going forward.

The system will be very much separate from SEEMiS, which can be quite clunky.

Absolutely, and that is part of the on-going discussions that we are having with COSLA about the iterative process that I mentioned in response to Ross Greer. Currently, the funding is ring fenced, so we are engaging with COSLA on that.

On wraparound childcare services, we have the four pilots in Glasgow, Dundee, Clackmannanshire and Inverclyde. It is also important to say that we are investing additional funding, including a £2 million fund in partnership with the Scottish Football Association, to deliver funded after-school and holiday clubs for children and their families. That is being targeted toward our six priority family types—the committee will be aware of Shirley-Anne Somerville’s work in social justice. It is important that we have a cross-portfolio approach to recognise responsibilities in education, because that can help us to reach our targets on child poverty in other parts of Government.

I heard the concern that Mr Rennie expressed, and I will take that concern—and my own—to our engagement with COSLA in relation to the Verity house agreement process and how we can ensure that we meet the targets that the First Minister has set.

I was not in post in 2014.