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I am really interested in the exchanges that have taken place. The submission from the National Day Nurseries Association welcomed the “Financial Sustainability Health Check of the Childcare Sector in Scotland”, which was published in August last year, because it acknowledges some of the challenges in setting sustainable rates. There is a call for that to go further and for the rates to be reviewed.

I dug out that document, which says that the Government will

“Strengthen the process for local authorities to set sustainable rates for providers in the private, third and childminding sectors to deliver funded ELC.”

It goes on to say that the Government would

“work with COSLA ... in time ... for setting ... rates for August 2022.”

That recommendation is from August last year, and we have just heard that the rates are about to be set. Has the process been strengthened? Jonathan, what engagement has there been to ensure that that happens?

This is important, convener, and others on the committee are allowed to give a context to what they say.

The stability index shows that 78.9 per cent of staff in the sector are there at the start of the following year—they are retained for a year—and that is up by 2.5 per cent.

The reason why I put that on the record is that it is exactly the same as the level of retention across the wider social services sector, so it might be that there is an issue across that wider sector.

I am now going to ask a question, convener.

I want to look at the people who are in the sector, because recruitment and retention remain a challenge. They tend to be female and lower paid. We are not doing very well at attracting men into the sector, and that is an opportunity for recruitment and retention.

That was the context, convener. Would any of the witnesses like to pick up the cudgels? I know that, previously, there was a men in early years challenge fund of £50,000 to get men into the sector. What work is being done to achieve that and what success has there been? Clearly, if we are ignoring 48 per cent of the population for careers in early learning and childcare, we are letting down 100 per cent of the children. We need a diverse workforce—not just men, but black and minority ethnic individuals as well.

I think that we have entered into this afternoon’s education debate early, convener. I thought we were pursuing an inquiry into the attainment fund, but there you are.

I would like to look a wee bit at evaluation and measures of success. Mr Rennie had an interesting line of questioning when he said that he thought that progress, including on closing the attainment gap, had not really occurred in any meaningful way. I am going to put some statistics on the record, convener, and then make a comment on them with a question to the cabinet secretary.

Two years before the pandemic, the achievement of the expected standards in primary schools was up 3.1 per cent in literacy and up 2.7 per cent in numeracy. The gap between school leavers from the most and least deprived areas achieving one pass or more at SCQF level 5 or better reduced by 12.5 percentage points between 2009-10 and 2019-20. Last year, as you know, I was very proud to talk about St Roch’s secondary school in Royston, in my constituency, which got 100 per cent positive destinations, and about the record positive destinations in Glasgow and mostly across the country.

Those three indicators give a snapshot of progress that might suit the Government, but how do we take a balanced approach to monitoring and evaluating progress? Is it by using the 11 indicators in the national improvement framework? Is there an agreed dashboard of progress that we can look at, at a national level?

The convener also wanted to get under the skin of the issue at a local authority level. I have looked at some of the documentation around the attainment challenge evaluation and refresh, and it is pretty hard reading. How can we get clear, transparent indicators or a dashboard, if you like, that allows the committee and the education sector in general to take a balanced view of how the Scottish Government is or is not succeeding in addressing the attainment challenge?

I would welcome the committee taking a view on, and reporting on, how clear and readable that dashboard is. Maybe we will look at that in the report and return to it.

We met some teachers at St Roch’s secondary school, which is in the West Partnership. They told us that their primary concern was that the impact of Covid would mean some slippage in the progress being made by young people. Their secondary concern was that it would also negate a lot of the good work that was being done before and during Covid and that that progress might not be recognised because of the Covid crisis.

Is an impact statement likely to follow every annual reporting process? Such a statement could deal with the impact of Covid on the progress that was made and on other external measures. We are talking about a poverty-related attainment gap, so what were the impacts of the £20 cut in universal credit and of the UK cost of living crisis?

On a more positive note, there is the impact of the Scottish child payment, because massive moneys are at play not just within education but within wider public expenditure at the Scottish and UK level that will impact on the poverty-related attainment gap. Cabinet secretary, will there be an impact statement when we look at future evaluations?

Convener, because of time constraints on my questioning this morning, perhaps we could ask the cabinet secretary to write to the committee about the positive destination data, which is quite exceptional this year—I place on the record the efforts of teachers and students to get to that stage. The committee is interested to know what happens to those young people one year out, two years out, three years out, and so on. It is about lifelong learning, closing the attainment gap and making sure that there is a positive impact on life chances. I would like a bit more information about how the Scottish Government and its agencies track the journey of young people in a meaningful way once they have left school and over a longer period of time. It would be helpful if the cabinet secretary or one of her officials could deal with that in correspondence with the committee.

Is that replicated across the 32 local authorities, so that we get a national flavour as well as any local variation? The committee has heard that different local authorities might collect and present the data in different ways.

Thank you, Mr Smyth, for applying for recognition for the cross-party group.

My blushes have just been spared. The initial papers that I had did not list any individuals or organisations as members of the group and I was going to ask why that was the case. However, the clerking team has just furnished me with an outstandingly impressive list of stakeholders. I am pleased to see that you are reaching out to all the relevant individuals and groups.

I have a supplementary question that is based on the convener’s interaction with the witnesses. He was right to push you on whether there was improvement pre-Covid. The statistics that I have show that, in the two years before Covid hit, the number of young people in primary schools who were meeting the expected standards for literacy was up by 3.1 per cent; for numeracy, the increase was 2.7 per cent. Therefore, quantifiable progress had been made.

Last week, we heard from local authorities that we need to be better at celebrating the progress that has been made. The committee also met the West Partnership teachers at St Roch’s secondary school, in my constituency. Graeme Dey and I were with one group of teachers who were a bit concerned that the impact of Covid might mask some of the really good success that has been evidenced in previous years. We need to ensure that that success is acknowledged and that the good practice is supported and embedded, along with the recovery that Mr Marra mentioned.

Will you say a bit more about how we ensure that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water, and that the good practice that has led to those improvements is not masked by Covid? That is a lengthy supplementary question, so if just one witness could answer, that would be good.