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The PEF sampling work has been pivotal in looking at clear-cut examples of where PEF has made a difference. I am sure that the member will be aware of examples from her constituency. Every headteacher whom I meet at the events that we host and at school visits is asking me not to take PEF or Scottish attainment challenge funding away.

If members remember, the funding stream was always meant to be a 10-year funding stream. I have discussed that with the committee and given it and Parliament an assurance that the funding will continue to 2026-27, which is as far as any Government can go. I suspect that there is probably cross-party consensus that it is important that the SAC funding is maintained and that there is a PEF budget line within that.

I have said at the headteacher events that I have been to that I am struck by the normalisation of poverty in our schools, and the existence of food banks and clothing banks. The reality in our schools is that PEF is being used to meet needs that it did not have to meet 10 years ago. That means that the funding is being used in lots of creatively different ways to impact on our schools. For example, a primary school in Kirkcaldy that I visited recently was using it to fund a parents’ group. On the face of it, that might not be considered to be an educational intervention, but it is about getting mums involved in their children’s education and, in so doing, helping to improve attendance and attainment.

There is a link between allowing our headteachers the autonomy to use that extra funding for best use and the requirement of the Government to reflect on the impact of PEF. We have done that through the PEF sampling report, which tells us a positive story about the detailed impact that it has had.

We also need to ask, what more? Schools are responding to a need that they might not have had to meet in the past, so we are required to reflect on how we resource our schools post-pandemic. I have been keen to discuss that point with headteachers at the national events.

I am not aware of the specific together to thrive programme, but I would be more than happy to engage in a visit with the member, perhaps during Parliament’s summer recess, after schools have gone back, to learn more about how that works.

On the substantive point about engagement with parents, no behaviour improvement plan will work without buy-in and support from parents. We have consistently seen that in relation to the way in which teachers have taken forward mobile phone bans. That will not work if you do not get the buy-in of mums, dads, parents and carers—you have to get that buy-in from home. When I launched mobile phone guidance back in August, I spoke to the head teacher at Stonelaw high school about the work that she had undertaken with the kids and with the school community, parents and carers to mine their own data so that they could look at how much time they were spending online and on screen. She got the buy-in of her whole school community by doing that, which took time but was the right approach for her school.

The same approach should apply in relation to behaviour. Many parents and carers are struggling after the pandemic and they turn to the school because that is often the service that is open. School is a constant in a young person’s life, but it is also a constant for many of our parents and carers who are unable to obtain support elsewhere. I was in a school in Dundee last summer and learned about approaches that they are using, through PEF, to support income maximisation officers who can support families with the cost of bills. We would not have countenanced using SAC funds for those things 10 years ago, but that funding is undoubtedly now being used to meet a wide range of family needs. That helps to close the poverty-related attainment gap, but we must be mindful not only of how support goes out to parents but of how it comes back to the school.

As I said, I would be happy to go on a visit with Mr FitzPatrick in the near future.

I could take further advice from my officials on that. I have no objection to sharing that detail with the committee, and I could provide that in written form following today’s session.

I will address Mr Greer’s point before I bring Graeme Logan in to talk about the changes that we have made to the SNSAs and reflect on the points that he has made.

Mr Greer talked about significant additional reporting being required. I am so old that I remember sitting around this exact table with Mr Greer in the previous session of Parliament and talking about these exact issues. The workload that we talked about then was associated with local authorities doing many different things in relation to how they measured attainment.

We must remember the rationale behind the SNSAs. I accept that there was a lot of debate about them at the time, but the rationale was to have a consistent approach across the country. We have heard today about what inconsistency does to children, young people, parents and teachers, so it was important to have a consistent approach to gathering that data.

However, regarding Mr Greer’s point, I am aware that some local authorities have kept their own reporting mechanisms in place in addition to using the SNSAs, which has resulted in an increase in workload. We have reflected on that through some of the changes that we have brought forward for the SNSAs. I will ask Graeme Logan to speak about that in a moment, but I do not accept the fundamental point that the broader workload is being driven by asks from the Government.

I am happy for Graeme to talk about some specific details of the SNSAs, but I will first reflect on a crude example from my experience in school some time ago. Classroom teachers are often asked to do administrative tasks, and my department used to have support once a week for data entry. For example, someone would deal with the administrative aspect of pupil reports, taking that task off my desk, which was really helpful in freeing me up and allowing me to do more planning, marking and other things during my free periods.

There are ways in which local authorities can drive workload, but they can also assist with it. The budget, which Mr Greer’s party voted for, provided extra funding to support ASN and extra teachers, which we know will make a difference, and some of that funding can be used by local authorities to alleviate teacher workload.

I will bring Graeme in speak about some of the substantive changes to the SNSAs.

I obviously do not have that detail in front of me; I would need to go on myjobscotland to collect it. It is important to recognise that many ASN staff are now employed using the PEF money that I mentioned in my answer to Ms Dunbar.

Mr Rennie raises a wider issue that he has written to me about as part of his constituency correspondence. The situation varies by local authority area. The issue of teacher recruitment practices was one of the first that I raised when I was elected back in 2016, because we have 32 different approaches and I do not think that that is a great way of supporting our teaching profession.

In a debate that we had a few weeks ago, there was a line in the Labour amendment about having a national list of supply staff. I am all for supporting that, and we agreed with the Labour amendment, but we now need COSLA to work with us on delivering that in practice. We see too much inconsistency in how local authorities use contracts and a huge overreliance on probation. We should not divorce the issues of permanency and short-term contracts from that of having a centrally funded probationer scheme. I have committed to reviewing that because, to my mind, we are seeing too much churn in the system, particularly in primary schools. That is not good for our early years teachers, it is not good for supporting them and it is not good for retention.

We need to work with local authorities to encourage them to provide permanent contracts. The budget settlement has been part of that process. The other part of it, which I alluded to in connection with pupil equity funding, concerns the four-year funding streams that the now First Minister committed to when he was cabinet secretary, to give local authorities clear sight of the funding that was coming, so that they could create permanent or longer-term posts, which Mr Rennie asked about.

There are significant challenges for our whole workforce just now, but that issue is not unique to Scotland. Last year, the United Nations published a really helpful report that talks about the precarity of employment that exists across the education landscape in many different countries, which we are seeing across the United Kingdom.

The situation has been partly driven by wages. It was right that we awarded the profession the good pay rises that we awarded it, but that means that local authorities are now having to look at other budget lines. We need to re-evaluate how we fund the totality of the teaching workforce, which was another point that came out of the debate that we held the other week.

You never know.

I agree with the sentiment behind Mr Adam’s question. I do not yet know whether there will be an announcement today about lifting the two-child cap, but we know that that would alleviate child poverty at the stroke of a pen. There are many actions that the UK Government could take and I hope that we will hear more about that today. Unless both our Governments work in unison to tackle child poverty, it will not work. We know that the Scottish child payment has been a game changer in ensuring that Scotland’s child poverty levels stay lower than those in other parts of the United Kingdom, but we must see a concerted effort across these islands and must be able to work with the UK Government, so I really hope that we will see more progress from the UK Government to that end today.

There are examples from across the brief. I see Mr Dey indicating that he wants to come in, and Mr Logan has just reminded me of the CivTech work that he alluded to earlier in relation to AI and the points that Mr Greer has raised about reducing teacher workload. Those are examples of public-private collaboration to try to drive a different approach to tackling an on-going challenge, as we heard from Mr Greeonr.

I am sorry to interrupt, convener, but Mr Dey might wish to come in on that point before we move on.

I am happy to engage with Mr Greer on the substantive points in the paper that he submitted some two years ago. More broadly, however, any engagement on teacher workload that has me at the table must also have COSLA there, because we are not going to change things if we do not get local government in the room. I am happy to be here and to give evidence for as many hours as the committee will have me, but if COSLA is not part of those discussions, we will not effect change in our classrooms.