³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

All our institutions are currently facing inordinate pressure; I was in front of the committee to discuss the issue earlier this year. There are pressures relating to changes in the United Kingdom Government’s approach to immigration, which has harmed some of our institutions. There are issues in relation to employer national insurance contributions—Universities Scotland put a figure of around £50 million on the cost to the sector in Scotland.

There are broader inflationary pressures that mean that staff wages have gone up, so things are more expensive. All those things are compounding factors, but the issues at Dundee university are unique and relate to the financial challenges that we have spoken about previously with regard to Pamela Gillies’s investigation, and governance issues. That is why the Government was able to use a section 25 order for Dundee university and not for other institutions.

On the point in relation to the budget, we will continue to engage with Universities Scotland in the run-up to the budget. I am mindful of the issues that Mr Briggs puts to me, because our institutions in Scotland are extremely precious and we want to continue to ensure that they are supported.

At present, all teachers are not trained in restraint. The committee has previously considered the approaches that are used in relation to ASN and teacher training. We cannot mandate individual education providers.

I would have been keen for us to explore the number of hours that are allocated to the teaching of additional support needs in initial teacher education. It is difficult to mandate independent universities, which are autonomous from the Government, as you are about to hear, and tell them that they have to teach X number of hours on autism or dyslexia, for instance.

There are challenges in relation to initial teacher education, but there are also challenges in relation to local government, as local authorities have a responsibility to provide continuing professional development. There are disparate teacher training practices across the country and within local authorities, and they are often dependent on individual teacher needs. At present, we do not mandate; we say that teachers use their professional judgment for their own continuing professional development. They have 35 hours a year—as I recall from the back of my brain—in which to complete CPD activities that they think will benefit their teaching and learning. We do not mandate at the current time.

There are disparate practices, and you are right to say that there will be different approaches to how teacher training is done, but the national list that the bill provides for will give us some certainty. Under the 2024 guidance, only training providers who have achieved Restraint Reduction Network certification should be used, and that approach is mirrored in Daniel Johnson’s approach. Consistency is provided for in the guidance and in the bill, but at present we have different approaches across the country. I think that the committee is taking evidence from local government on that.

Yes—and there are rural dynamics.

They do.

To be fair—as a woman with caveats—this is not a Government bill. I am being candid with the committee here. We published guidance last November; we are not even a year on since the guidance was published. We need to review that guidance, and it would be remiss of me not to say that we need the data to inform good law. That is important. I am supportive of the bill at stage 1, and I understand the aspiration. I have had a lot of engagement with Mr Johnson on that, and I have set out our position on a number of different areas in correspondence to the committee—in relation to the definitions, which we have discussed, and in relation to the duty to record, on which there is an issue in the bill, although I think it can be resolved pretty easily. There is no requirement for education authorities—our councils—or for independent or grant-aided schools to report the use of restraint and seclusion at a national level under the terms of the 2024 guidance. I think that Mr Johnson’s bill has grant-aided schools and independent schools reporting to the individual local authority. Is that correct?

That concern was put to the committee by Mike Corbett of the NASUWT, and I heard again from him last week that better reporting, which the convener has called for and which I support, might put children in danger to some extent. Those are issues that we would need to consider in the round. I was quite taken by Mike Corbett’s point, and we would need to be mindful of it. I am sure that there are ways in which we could work with local government to provide more reassurance around that, but it should not be the case that we are not informing parents about things for fear of other things happening. There might be something in the mix in relation to how we work with schools and parents in individual circumstances where there might be a concern at home about that type of behaviour.

They could be in that situation, but they might not have had training and might be reticent. It is difficult for me to comment on individual examples but, in my experience, teachers are very reticent ever to involve themselves physically in any debates that may ensue in school, because—responding to the points that the convener made at the start of the evidence session—they are fearful of what may happen as a result. That is also part of the trade unions’ position. We need to be careful about that.

The bill stipulates an approach that does not mandate training, although it does provide for a national list of providers, which we are supportive of. We have provided further detail in that regard in our guidance. I think that the approach that Mr Johnson has taken is the right one, and we will work with him further on training. The training that is required of staff can take a number of days, as I understand it—I think that the committee took evidence on that. We are talking about staff going out of school for quite a long time. We need to think about the costs that that will incur in terms of school budgets and what it might mean for people being out of school and for staff cover. All those things will need to be resolved at stage 2.

To my mind, training on restraint is not something that all teachers will want to take part in. In fact, many teachers will not want to be part of it, because it is for teachers who work in specialist provision or perhaps in ELC.

I am always sympathetic to having more money provided to my budget. I have seen the evidence from the EIS and the NASUWT. That is a routine ask from the trade unions—that will not surprise the committee. I accept that pressures on our schools in relation to additional support needs have increased, particularly in recent years. Last year’s budget included £28 million of extra money for additional support needs, which complements the additional £1 billion of spend in the previous financial year.

There is extra money going into the system, but I am sympathetic to the points about resourcing. We need to consider those issues with regard to the financial memorandum. We have raised some challenges in relation to inflation, which has not been accounted for and which I know that the committee will be keen to consider. We need to look at that. If we are looking at a need for extra resourcing, we must consider where that will come from. Of course, we are approaching the budget, so, if members have views on where extra money for education should come from, I am all ears and will engage on a cross-party basis, because I would be supportive of more funding coming to the education portfolio.

I have had a lot of engagement with the trade unions. As the committee might be aware, I have done that deliberately over a number of months to ensure that we had a ready flow of information coming from the staff in relation to their experience of what was happening in the institution, because not knowing what is happening continues to cause an inordinate amount of stress to staff and students, and, as cabinet secretary, I am very mindful of that. That being said, the recovery plan does not belong to the Government; it belongs to Dundee university, so the university has to engage with staff and students, and it is a matter for the current management team to undertake that.

With regard to the conditions, I think that Ms Duncan-Glancy said that she understands that one of the conditions is that the university will engage with staff and students. I think that that was an ask from the SFC in the correspondence, but in relation to the conditions that the Government will attach directly to the funding, I have not yet been provided with that advice from the SFC. I suspect that I will hear more after this meeting.

We have not yet reviewed the guidance, so it would be pre-emptive of me to say that we have learned lessons from it. The guidance has not even been in place for a year, so the review will allow us to learn lessons. It is important that we allow the review to be conducted, regardless of the passage of this legislation.

I am live to the concerns that have been raised by the NASUWT. However, the committee also heard from Mike Corbett—I discussed the issue with him only last week—that his preference is that we look again at the guidance and, for example, at the approach that we have adopted in relation to the national behaviour action plan, on which the NASUWT has played a key role. The NASUWT was also involved in the publication of the guidance. I know that it was critical of the guidance, but it was also involved in its formation.

As I understand it, the view of the NASUWT is that we should look again at the non-statutory guidance and make improvements to it, working with the professional associations, parents, carers and others, as opposed to putting it on a statutory footing. I am sure that Mike Corbett will correct me if I am wrong in that interpretation. We discussed the guidance last week, and he is critical of it, but his view—certainly, the view that was expressed to me—is that the preference of the NASUWT is that the guidance be improved, as opposed to moving it on to a statutory footing.

To go back to the points that I made to the convener, Mike Corbett has concerns about teachers and there are fears in the profession about what the guidance might say if it were to be put on a statutory footing.