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A publication was produced by Education Scotland at around the same time as we launched the refresh. Forgive me—I cannot remember the name of the publication, but the point of it was to look at lessons learned, good practice and so on. Obviously, that happens in Education Scotland, and the national hub also looks at and discusses good practice.

You mentioned the west of Scotland. Every local authority is covered by a RIC, and they are important places for collaboration as well. The RICs are perhaps a part of the system that does not get much discussion. It is perhaps understandable that national Government, its agencies and local government get more attention, but the RICs form an important part of the information sharing and collaborative working. That was absolutely the intent when the RICs were established.

As well as the work that I have mentioned by Education Scotland, we have the 32 attainment advisers—one for each local authority—who are there to advise. They are aware of what is happening right across Scotland and they can relate that. There are also events that go on.

I refer back to the point that I made about the support that Education Scotland can provide to every local authority and indeed directly to schools. It can take the knowledge that has been gathered and disseminate it to headteachers.

It has been good to hear headteachers say—I hope that this is, in part, because of the work of the RICs and Education Scotland—that they feel confident and that they are in a place to be able to implement policies using PEF that they feel will make a difference. They are aware of the policies and they feel confident that they can take them forward. I think that I mentioned that in my introductory remarks, so I will not go through the specific stats on that.

The final part of the collaborative work that is being done is the work by Education Scotland and different local authorities on collaborative improvement. A number of local authorities have been through that process, and every local authority will go through it. The work is being done in close conjunction with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland to make sure that there is continuous improvement in learning.

One of the areas that we are very keen to look at in the refreshed challenge is the wider impact of poverty. However, on teaching and learning, one of the key lessons that we learned from the first iteration of this funding, and which we very much hold dear, is the importance of the PEF going directly to schools and having an empowered system so that schools can determine how the £520 million in this refreshed package will be felt. Teachers and their role have a very important place in the system.

From your questioning, I can see that you are aware that the decision has been taken to stick with the free school meals measurement for PEF. One of the reasons I was keen to see that—

As do I, convener.

The figures are available for what goes to local government and what goes to schools.

With respect, I think I have said that poverty is one of the key challenges in Scotland, as in other countries, and that we have had a system that has perhaps been too top-down and has not empowered the workforce to take decisions that are right for them. That is one of the lessons that we have had to learn. In looking at what we need to improve on from the OECD report in 2015, building on the further encouragement in its latest report, it is about empowering a system and providing resources to that empowered system.

The only way that the money could be put back would be if I took it off the local authorities that will be having it for the first time. If that is what the member is suggesting—

It is good to see that Mr Mundell is rising to the occasion once again on the issue. I am not going to rise to the political points that Mr Mundell makes. We have the opportunity to come together in the committee and as a Parliament to pass a serious piece of legislation that allows us to deal with future public health emergencies. That is the position that we are currently in.

I completely appreciate that Mr Mundell will be critical of the Government on all the aspects that he has raised, that he does not think that the Government has gone far enough, and that he thinks that we have gone too far on many other occasions. We have in front of us today a bill—

I was just trying to bring things to life a little with an example of how we can have differences.

I think that a framework approach would lead to gaps in our ability to make decisions. With regard to getting into the granularity of some aspects, I am happy to carry on our conversations with Universities Scotland to see whether we can come to more agreement on the matter than we currently have, as we clearly do not have agreement right now. Nonetheless, it is very important that we have the ability to take quick decisions and to enforce them. As we do that, we would, of course, work with institutions to ensure that nothing inappropriate was being done. To give one example, animal welfare measures would have to be taken into account if we were to move forward with regulations.

However, it would be difficult if we were to get into a particular position. I will give the committee an example. If we, as a Government, received public health advice that suggested that a term or semester should start later, and an institution said, “No—we think everyone should come back now, and we should have in-person learning”, we would need the ability to say, “No, I am sorry—the public health advice is that that is inappropriate.”

A framework would not get us through that. We can have a framework to enable us to talk about the issues and to try to work in partnership. However, when push comes to shove, if an institution said, “No, we think in-person learning is the way forward” and tried to move forward with that at a far greater pace than Government would be at all comfortable with, given the public health advice, I do not think, with the greatest respect to Universities Scotland, that what it is proposing at this point would allow any Government to deal with that situation.

I have made it clear that I am more than happy to carry on discussions with Universities Scotland about the granular detail of some of the issues that it is concerned about, to see whether we can alleviate some of those concerns. However, it must also recognise where I am coming from. I do not think that we have had an answer from the university sector on what we would do if an institution just said no.