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Forgive me, Mr Marra, but there are timings to when those reports will come out and data must be collated. I do not need the report to tell me that there has been an impact. That is why the Government has already acted to put in place additional teachers and additional pupil equity funding to support schools through Covid.

We have not waited and are already taking action. With the greatest respect, we cannot be both criticised for there being nothing new in a report about education recovery and told that we should not wait. We have not waited. We have already taken action. When further detail, such as the information about health and wellbeing or the data about curriculum for excellence levels comes out, we will self-check at that point.

There has clearly been concern about the timing of the report’s publication and the fact that it was the day after Fiona Robertson was here. I would like to make clear that the timing of publication was not the SQA’s decision. It had been hoped to publish the report earlier, which would have been before Ms Robertson’s committee appearance, and it was not the SQA’s decision to have the date that was finally settled on. That was for the commission to decide.

I agree that it is disappointing that the publication did not happen earlier, so that Ms Robertson could have discussed the issues with the committee. To be absolutely clear, that decision was not of the SQA’s making.

I heard that the First Minister answered an entirely different question from the one that you asked. I think that she misheard the question and answered a question about small businesses, so I came prepared for you to try again today.

The distribution for the £10 million has been agreed through Convention of Scottish Local Authorities leaders. Each local authority will receive an equitable share of the funding, on the strict understanding that it is for the purpose of improving ventilation. That includes covering the cost of monitors. The funding will be processed through the local government settlement. The capital element will be provided to local authorities as a one-off payment in November and the revenue element will be provided in March, as is the normal practice.

Local authorities have taken great strides to undertake their initial monitoring before the October holidays, which I stress are not all at the same time in Scotland. They are making good progress to allow that to happen. Some local authorities are reporting concerns about supply issues, which we always knew might be a challenge in some areas. We have been working closely with COSLA to give advice on procurement routes for quick supply and brokering discussions between local authorities to arrange the loan of mobile devices, if that is feasible when some councils are, perhaps, further ahead.

Once the October holidays have begun, we will collate the final position. I anticipate that we will provide a report later in October. That will allow an assessment of how the work has progressed. We will keep a close eye on what happens after October once the initial monitoring has taken place.

I was made aware of that a few weeks ago, prior to the public announcement being made.

I will take those two issues separately, as they are separate.

With regard to next year, the SQA has plan A, which is that exams will take place, and that is what we as a Government, the SQA and, importantly, schools and young people are moving forward with in their teaching and learning. There have, of course, been discussions around contingency measures that need to be in place. For example, if the public health advice at that point was that we could not have an exam diet, teacher judgment would be absolutely at the heart of those. However, the reassurance for teachers is that no additional assessments would need to take place. That is different from the alternative certification model.

In short, there will be no dual assessments. Normal assessments can take place and, at the end of the year, if there is no exam diet, teachers will be able to form a judgment based on what has taken place during a normal assessment year.

As for what will happen in future years, that is a very separate issue that will be looked at. I will make further announcements on that later in the autumn, as we have just had the Stobart report on what will happen in future. Exams will, of course, play a part, but the Stobart review has presented us with opportunities and questions about what these things will look like in the future. That is an issue not just for Government, and it will be taken forward very much in collaboration and discussion with others. However, as I have said, I will make further announcements in due course.

We will look very carefully at what the OECD has recommended. One of the challenges that we will have in taking the report forward is that there is a lot of change in it. Some of those changes can happen at the same time and some of them will have to happen on different timescales. Part of the reason for that is that our collaborative work with stakeholders to get the details of that change correct—which I believe that we should do—will take some time.

There is a lot to do. Some of it is work that we can undertake quite quickly, and in some areas, as I have said, it will take time. As I look to make further announcements on this, I will try to set out what we can do in the short term and to highlight the areas that will take longer. Part of the OECD’s suggestions about how to take things forward involved the time that it takes to take them forward.

The manner in which we do that is exceptionally important. As I said in earlier remarks, I am determined to play a collaborative role as education secretary. The committee and the Parliament will decide how it wants to take forward any work on these issues, but I will be more than happy to work with anyone and everyone who has a role. There are a number of challenges in the report, and not all of them can be addressed at the same time or quickly.

It is important that we look at this issue in the round, particularly when we look at the senior phase. Our school-college partnerships are exceptionally important and becoming even more so.

We are linking in with the colleges, as demonstrated by the fact that Colleges Scotland has been invited on to the Scottish education council, which it was not on previously. I hope that that demonstrates our commitment to look at this in the round and to recognise that we cannot look only at what happens in schools. When we look at attainment and achievement, we need to view it in a wider sense, and colleges play a very important role in that.

As you will appreciate, convener, discussions about the case have been on-going for some time, but the Supreme Court’s judgment has come out while I have been at committee.

To be clear, the Scottish Government does not, and will never, produce league tables of schools.

As I think I said earlier, we need to look at that to ensure that we are gathering the correct data about the correct areas. Although that is more challenging in some areas of curriculum for excellence than in others, we need to be up to that challenge.

There will be a review of the national improvement framework measurements in 2022. That will allow stakeholders to assess, with Government, how we have measured for the NIF in the past, whether that is correct, what needs to change, and what they would like to change it to. Although areas to do with health and wellbeing are, of course, already part of our analysis, it is the right time—as we move out of Covid—to ensure that we are doing that correctly. That consultation will happen early next year.