³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

—and that has consequences—

Certainly. I totally appreciate that the work for the budget proposals that come from local authorities goes on for a number of months before anything goes to the councils themselves. I go back to the point that the teacher census comes out at the start of December. That was when we had the information that showed the reduction in teacher numbers. I completely appreciate that councils had been working on it, but the material and information came out in December, which is when we began immediately to take action.

I am conscious of the fact that we have said previously that we would make the announcement on the next stage of the learning estate investment programme. I have been looking at that very carefully, and I hope to make the announcement soon. It would be fair to say that a number of local authorities have come forward with proposals, all of which are of good quality and that fulfil the criteria, so I am giving the matter due and serious consideration. I appreciate that my taking some more time to look at that is difficult for councils, but I hope that they appreciate that it is because I recognise the real significance to them of the decisions that we would take and because of the number of proposals that came in.

Letters went from me to COSLA straight after the teacher census, so no, Mr Marra. I think that you are trying to suggest something. The discussions about that started right after the teacher census. I point out that teacher numbers are still at a near record high in Scotland.

Teachers are only one part—but an exceptionally important part—of reducing the poverty-related attainment gap. As I said earlier, we have seen an increase of 2,000 teachers on pre-pandemic levels and, as in other countries, the overall attainment levels have been impacted by Covid. However, in large part because of the exceptionally hard work of teachers and support staff, we have seen improvements in the attainment gap, such as the biggest single-year decrease in the attainment gap in primary numeracy and literacy since levels began. We absolutely still have more work to do on that but we have seen recovery in place and, as I said, that would in large part be down to the teachers.

There are a number of ways in which that work can be done; I pointed to some of those earlier. It is not just done by one teacher in front of a class, but involves specialist work by teachers for small groups of pupils and support for those with additional support needs. There are a number of ways that that can be done.

The quality of teaching and learning is also important. It is not possible to say that there is one thing that will improve attainment. There are different aspects to that, but I hope we can agree that teachers are an integral part of that. That is why the Government has placed such importance on increasing teacher numbers and why I have taken decisions to ensure that we do not see decreases in teacher numbers, which should be maintained throughout the year.

I am looking at the evidence of what has happened in the past, which shows that that has not happened in any council in any year in the past. That shows that the approach works and has been demonstrated to work in the past.

I had a number of discussions in the chamber on the issue of temporary and permanent staff, particularly with, I think, Mr Rennie. One point that local authorities continually raised with me was the difficulty in moving staff from temporary to permanent positions, because the money was not permanent—it was not baselined. That is why we moved from using Covid money to providing permanent funding.

We looked at the teacher census to see what had happened in that regard. It was clear that there had not been the movement that we had wanted to see. I would have hoped and expected to see an increase in the number of permanent contracts. Very understandably, because the money was temporary and because of the urgent need to get people in, the number of temporary contracts was high during Covid. I had hoped and expected that that would change, but that has not happened. However, I am keen to work with local government to see what can be done on that issue.

There is a myriad of ways of using a teaching workforce—it could be for supporting pupils with additional support needs or for smaller group work that assists with numeracy and literacy. I do not see those teachers as surplus but as a teaching workforce that can be used by a local authority to assist children in a variety of ways as it sees fit, particularly to try to improve attainment.

As we go through the year, we work with local authorities to put monitoring arrangements in place. One challenge for us was that the figures that showed the problem came out in December but, because our agreement with local authorities did not include additional monitoring, we did not have in-year monitoring last year. We want to improve on that. We are still looking at how that will be done, but it will probably be done quarterly and will flag up in-year issues with local authorities. Our discussions with COSLA are on-going. We do not want an overly onerous or a continuous monitoring process. We also recognise that numbers will go up and down because of recruitment and retention at different times of the year.

If there is an in-year issue, that will begin with concerns being raised at council officer or official level. They will look at the reasons for that and at the challenges in the area. If the issue has to be escalated to me and we have to have discussions with that particular council, that will happen. If we reach a point where the situation still has not improved by the end of the year, the last tranche of money can be withheld from a council at that point. That is absolutely a worst-case scenario and is one that we do not want to get to. We want to work with local authorities in-year to understand their specific circumstances. There is no blanket approach.

I will challenge something that you said in your question, if I may. We have not been taking the 2022-23 approach for years. We tried that one year. Actually, until 2018-19, we had exactly the system that we are now putting back in place. During that time, no council got to the stage of having a financial penalty. That proves that that approach worked and I anticipate that to happen again.

What we did for years is what we are just about to reintroduce. I hasten to add that I do not want it to be in place for years—I want to get to a different situation for the next financial year—but, when you look at what happened historically, not a single council in any of those years got to the point of having a financial penalty.

There are areas that the Scottish Government controls and there are areas that we do not.