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I thank Mr Rennie for his question. I have not seen the article in question, but I would be happy to write to the member and the committee with more detail. As I understand it, councils will be able to reprofile their planned £7 million contribution to the redress scheme in 2024-25. They will still have to maintain their agreed overall contribution of £100 million, with the Scottish Government ensuring that sufficient savings are available in the interim. As such, the decision will not have a detrimental impact on operation of the scheme.

Nonetheless, I very much recognise the sentiment and the importance of the member’s question. As I have intimated to the member, I would be more than happy to write to him directly on the matter, or to the committee more broadly, because I recognise the sensitivities in this instance.

I thank the member for her question. As she has intimated, the four-year settlement for PEF is hugely important, as it gives headteachers certainty in planning—for example, in hiring staff. It is important to recognise that that additionality has helped us to make progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap.

In relation to the teachers’ settlement deal, it is not my understanding that PEF was reprofiled as part of that arrangement, but I would defer to officials on that, because I was not in post at that time. I have not seen the evidence to which you allude, but, more generally, it is my understanding, as cabinet secretary, that PEF absolutely remains a focus of the Government in terms of the delivery model and will remain on a four-year basis until the end of the cycle.

I can understand what Mr Rennie has outlined, but I do not agree with it. He has suggested that I can enforce in our college sector the policy of having no compulsory redundancies. That power is not currently at my disposal.

I hear the concern that has been expressed on the broader matter of transition funding. As Ms Somerville will have done when she was before the committee—she might have also done so in the chamber—I ask Mr Rennie to say where else in the Scottish Government’s budget that funding should have come from. At the time, it was made clear to the teaching unions that it would have to come from the education budget; that was part of the settlement that was agreed with our teachers. The suggestion is that we should find additional money for college lecturers. From where in the education budget should I take that funding?

Undoubtedly, inflationary pressures are having an impact on our budget, as I alluded to in my answer to Mr Kerr. Mr Kerr did not think that it was an answer, but I attempted to provide a response. Our money is not going as far as it used to, and I think that members around the table accept that.

Scotland has more generous free school meal provision than any other part of the UK. The next phase of that is expansion to primaries 6 and 7, starting with children whose families receive the Scottish child payment. Inflationary pressures are being felt in relation to decisions taken elsewhere. I am not going to make political points, but we are doing everything that we can to mitigate those pressures. As the member will know, free school meals provision is a manifesto commitment. Quite aside from that, it is the right thing to do.

In my view, the policy will help to improve attainment and how children engage in the education system. Some evidence suggests that it can even help to stymie childhood obesity.

There are lots of good reasons why we should invest in free school meals. Rising food costs are impacting families across Scotland. We provide £169 million a year to support universal free school meal provision in primaries 1 to 5, as well as for the roll-out for primary 6 pupils to those who are eligible in secondary 6. We continue to support that policy. It will be challenging, but there is a commitment to deliver it and I assure the committee that we are working towards it.

I am happy to write to the committee—or to ask Mr Dey to do so—in answer to Ms Thomson’s question and to share with you a bit more about the progress that has been made as well as the specifics that have been raised.

It is not my understanding that there is new money in the education budget to look at how this will work. We need to look at what we are currently spending, which is significant, and ensure that that funding works more effectively for our young people.

No, convener, but I am aware that that power is at my disposal. I would defer to my officials on precisely how we would go about doing that work. The mechanism has existed previously. However, it is not one that I would want to enact. Going back to Ms Maguire’s line of questioning, I add that I do not want to be in that position; I want to be able to trust our local authorities to deliver at that level, where our schools are run.

Going back to Ms Thomson’s point about the new deal and the Verity house agreement, I note that that is where we should be. If additionality is provided by central Government but it is not used for teacher numbers, the question that I have is what it is being used for. That would be challenging for me to defend as cabinet secretary. There are risks on both sides.

I am not going to pretend to the committee that it will not be challenging—things are extremely challenging just now with regard to where we are and the education budget more broadly. However, I think that, in the light of Brexit and the fact that Erasmus does not exist for us any more, our commitment to undertaking this work is really important, as it could provide our young people with the opportunities that they have thus far been deprived of.

I am currently working across Government to see how we might be able to provide financial support to that end. On 5 September, we committed through the PFG to launching the programme, and we will build on an initial test approach that we are developing and delivering this year. However, I should make it clear for the committee’s understanding that the programme will not be able to replicate the full benefits of Erasmus; it will be much smaller in scale. That said, we should be ambitious about the outcomes that it will deliver.

As for the member’s question about the budgetary challenges, I will continue to engage with Mr Dey to that end. It is really important that we deliver on this outcome, because I worry about the cohort of young people who have been deprived of such opportunities.

As I have said to the committee on a number of occasions now, the Government is currently operating in a very challenging financial climate. Part of the reason for that is the number of public sector pay deals that we have settled; we have done that in the right space, but it costs money. We have to balance our books; after all, we cannot borrow money as a Government might usually do.

The £46 million represents a relatively small fraction—just over 2 per cent—of the nearly £2 billion that we provide to the SFC. That funding was, as the member has alluded to, meant to support strategic change in the sectors; however, it was not part of the core funding for colleges and universities that the SFC had already announced in April 2023, and I am not aware of any projects having been adversely affected as a result, given that this was transition funding that was meant to support the work more broadly.