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I think so. I have seen the evidence and am aware that that practice is used across the country in a range of different ways. Robert Eckhart might want to say more on that.

I do not want to put an arbitrary date on it, but I think that we would have expected them some time before now. If we wind back the clock to the end of June and my announcement to the Parliament then, we were pretty clear about the announcement of funding and what it was going to provide for. We then had a pretty quick change of leadership team, with an interim leadership team being installed, and we subsequently engaged with the SFC over the summer period. We then had correspondence that the committee is aware of in relation to the SFC setting out requirements regarding what the university was proposing. We have had to work with the university on that, which has taken longer than we had originally anticipated, going back to my announcement in June.

Yes.

That speaks to the point that the convener made at the start about the roles of local and national Government. Ministers have some powers relating to improvement in Scotland’s schools. There is legislation relating to standards in Scotland’s schools—Nico McKenzie-Juetten will be able to name the act—and there is the 1980 act, but the majority of the statutory responsibility for delivery of education lies with local government, which must have policies in place.

However, as we have heard in recent months and years, there has been a push from Parliament to have clearer direction from national Government on a number of issues, not least on this one. We have responded to petition PE1548 and to calls from parents and carers, and we published the national guidance last November. We can take a range of actions, but the primary responsibility for the delivery of education rests with local government. We can provide advisory guidance, and have done so, and we are, of course, discussing today whether Parliament will agree to put that on a statutory footing.

The committee might be interested to know that that might alter the future relationship between local and national Government and how we run our education services. That is a far bigger question than is dealt with by the bill, but the committee might want to be mindful of that, given the other issues that we have discussed in recent years. There are always challenges about where the responsibility for education sits.

Let us look at the history, which is that the previous cabinet secretary was asked to provide guidance. That was asked for by lots of different stakeholders, before my time as cabinet secretary—I think that that goes back to 2019. The original agreement was to provide guidance. We have moved on from that to putting things on a statutory footing, so I am not sure that I agree with—

I would expect the university to be able to meet those conditions, yes.

The permanent principal appointment is challenging. Mr Gillespie left in December last year, so, to my mind, that process should have been undertaken long before now. However, that is not the position in which the university finds itself. I also direct the committee back to Pamela Gillies’s report, which addressed the issues around governance in the institution and the lack of a permanent leadership team. As I understand it, that remains the position in the university today. I am sure that the committee will want to put those issues to the current management team, but we expect the SFC to pursue them on behalf of ministers, and, since March, I have been engaging with the SFC on all these matters, along with Mr Dey—and now with Mr Macpherson, of course.

If individuals are not being informed, it is the local authority that is accountable. The headteacher has a responsibility in that regard, too, but statutory responsibility is with the local authority. Therefore, the local authority should have practices in place. I think that the committee has taken evidence on that from ADES and others. Local authorities should have policies in place, and individual schools should be working with parents and carers. The committee has heard evidence that, sometimes, parents are not informed and things go wrong. In my experience, parents are informed. However, we are here talking about how we can ensure that things do not go wrong in the future.

The national guidance sets out the Government’s expectation that parents are notified by the end of the school day, so if a school did not do that, that would run contrary to the national guidance. However, the guidance is not statutory, which is why we are discussing legislation.

That question speaks to the point that Mr Rennie was pursuing in relation to our role in opening up the discussion. Mr Johnson’s bill is focused on education settings because, as Ms Duncan-Glancy has alluded to, we have different approaches in care settings and in ELC settings, where the Care Inspectorate has a role. If we were to take a similar approach in education, we would need to be mindful that that would completely alter the nature of the bill. I think it is fair to say that that would elongate its passage, because it would be asking much bigger questions. That is not to say that the issues are not important but, currently, we do not have the national data that we need on those incidents. I agree with Ms Duncan-Glancy’s intention in that regard.

There has been a suggestion that the inspectorate would have a role in gathering the data. When the committee is considering the bill at stage 2, I am sure that it will want to hear from the inspectorate with its views on how that would operate and how local government in particular would co-operate. It would depend on local reporting and recording practices, and we would need there to be much greater consistency across the piece. The Care Inspectorate’s approach is quite different from the approach that is taken in education, where there is no statutory requirement to record incidents. Ms Duncan-Glancy makes an interesting point. However, if we were to follow that approach, it would change the nature of the bill that we are discussing. I understand why Mr Johnson has focused on education settings.