 That concludes the debate and the implications of the EU referendum for Scotland. It's now time to move on to the next item of business, which is a statement by John Swinney on a delivery plan for excellence and equity in education. The Deputy First Minister will take questions at the end of his statement, and there should therefore be no interventions or interruptions. I call the Deputy First Minister, Mr Swinney. Ten minutes are thereabouts, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This is the last week of term for many schools across Scotland. It is the end of another year of hard work for teachers, parents, children and young people, and the start of a new journey for those young people as they embark on the next stage of their lives. Today marks the start of a new journey for Scottish education, a journey that will ensure that we realise our ambition for excellence and equity for every child and young person in Scotland. In its review of Scottish education, the OECD found that achievement in Scottish schools is above the international average in reading and science, that attainment is improving, that Scotland schools are inclusive, that our children are resilient and have positive attitudes towards school. Those are strong foundations for Scottish education. They are a testament to the bold reform of curriculum for excellence and the energy applied by many to ensure success for Scotland's young people. The OECD also advised us to continue to be bold, and it argues that the OECD review team set out the challenge at the education summit for us not only to remain ahead of the global curve in education but to become the curve that others will refer to around the world. It urged us to move from a culture of judgment to a system of judgment that delivers for every child and young person across our country. We must ensure that every child, no matter where they are from or how well off their family is, has the same opportunity and an equal chance to succeed. I am pleased to share a tangible and deliverable plan for delivering excellence and equity in Scottish education with Parliament today. The plan covers three themes. The first and overriding theme is our shared commitment right across Scottish education from early learning and childcare through school and in our colleges and universities to close the attainment gap between children from the most and the least deprived backgrounds. The Government will be relentless in our efforts to make this happen. For most children, our system already delivers. Our young people achieved record exam passes last year and only last week statistics show a new record in the percentage of young people leaving school for positive destinations. Those same statistics also showed that we continue to make progress in narrowing the gap in attainment, but narrowing the gap is not the same as closing the gap and good is not the same as great. Closing the attainment gap is not a choice but an imperative to creating a fairer and a smarter Scotland. We will start with a programme to transform children's early education and to ensure that it links cohesively with when children start school. The focus on literacy in P1 to P3 will be designed to close the vocabulary gap and from September this year school inspection and self-evaluation will focus more directly on progress to close that gap. From the new school year, funding for the challenge authorities and schools will double to £50 million and will be extended to secondary schools into the bargain. We will work with those schools and communities to develop and implement programmes and activity to enable and encourage families' involvement in learning. We will encourage action in all schools through the increased investment announced today in the innovation fund and from 2017-18 through an additional £100 million that will be allocated directly to schools. In order to focus our efforts on closing the gap, we must first of all be able to identify precisely where the gap is. We will use the new data that will become available through the national improvement framework to identify the attainment gap in P1, P4, P7 and S3 and at school and at local authority level and agree targets to reduce that. We will focus our collective efforts where they are needed most and school inspection will focus more directly on closing that gap. The second theme of our plan is the need to ensure that our curriculum, applauded by the OECD, can be delivered in a fashion that our teachers are free to teach and that our children have the opportunity to learn. We will put in place clear, simple statements that give teachers confidence about what curriculum for excellence does and does not expect of them. We will declutter the curriculum and will strip away anything that creates a necessary workload for teachers and learners. I have instructed Education Scotland to prepare and publish a clear and concise statement of the basic framework within which teachers teach. This will be published in time for the new school session in August. Also by August, Education Scotland will provide clear practical advice on assessing achievement in literacy and numeracy, making clear the expected benchmarks for literacy and numeracy for each level of curriculum for excellence. By the end of the year, Education Scotland will provide similar advice on the achievement of curriculum levels in every curriculum area across broad general education. That will allow teachers to make sure that their learners are on track and are developing the range of skills that they should be able to command. We will also significantly streamline the current range of guidance and related material on curriculum for excellence, and by January next year a much simpler set of key resources will be available on the National Improvement Hub. We will carefully consider the ideas contributed by teacher associations and other partners in education and take forward a new programme of reducing workload in schools. I will directly oversee this activity and will test these proposals' effectiveness with a panel of teachers to ensure that their voice and experience informs what we take forward. I have instructed Her Majesty's inspectors to carry out a focused review of the demands placed on schools by each local authority in relation to curriculum for excellence and will receive their recommendations by mid-September. The SQA, Education Scotland schools and local authorities must deliver the commitments that are made in the first report of the assessment and national qualifications group. The SQA will be expected to deliver the actions to simplify and streamline qualifications, set out in the 51 subject reports and consult on how best to streamline its course documentation for the national qualifications. I will meet the chief examiner for Scotland on a monthly basis to ensure that the SQA is delivering its commitments. We will also reconvene the assessment and national qualifications group, which I will chair, to further explore what more could be done to reduce workload associated with assessment and the new qualifications as quickly as possible. This work to declutter CFE is key to freeing up teachers' time to deliver the broad general education at the heart of our curriculum in a way that enables all children to benefit and to succeed. The third theme that we focus on in the plan is the need to create the right structures to encourage and enable everyone to participate fully in school life, children and young people, parents, teachers and communities. Doing so represents the biggest opportunity to improve the outcomes and life chances of all children and young people. In September, I will launch a review of governance alongside the programme for government. It will explore all options and avenues to ensure that we create the right balance of autonomy and accountability in our education system. It will consider the changes that are needed to education to empower our teachers and schools, seek to devolve decision making and funding to schools and communities and support the development of school clusters and new educational regions. At the same time, we will develop proposals for a fair and transparent national funding formula to ensure that resources go where they are needed most. Schools are the building blocks of our education system, but that is not reflected in our legislation, with responsibility for delivery and raising standards currently resting mainly with education authorities. We will introduce an education bill in the second year of this Parliament to address this issue. Delivery of each of those themes requires leadership at all levels and by all involved in Scottish education. Teachers are key to our ambitions and investing in their skills, knowledge and confidence will create the right culture of empowered leadership. We will invest £1.5 million over the next three years to support up to 160 aspiring head teachers every year to benefit from the inter-hedship programme and nearly £1 million this year in masters-level learning for teachers. We also need the right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time. We will ensure that new teachers start their career confident in their ability to raise attainment in literacy and numeracy, as well as nurture children's health and wellbeing. We will expand distance learning initial teacher education models, develop a Scottish masters programme that focuses on the vital transition phase between primary and secondary, and we will introduce a new route to encourage the highest quality graduates into priority areas and subjects. The delivery plan sets out the actions that this Government will take over the course of this Parliament to free up teachers to teach and empower our schools to deliver excellence and equity for all. The reforms that we plan are substantial and our ambition is clear. We will deliver on the basis of evidence whilst also being unafraid to innovate and find our own solutions. We will invest and seek to transform our education system and at every step we will engage building on the education summit that has brought together key partners to share ideas for change by establishing a teachers panel and by putting in place the International Council of Education Advisers. Closing the attainment gap and raising standards for all, delivering excellence and equity for all of our children and young people must now be our shared national endeavour. This plan is focused on doing exactly that. I thank John Swinney for the prior sight of his statement. Both he and the First Minister have been very clear in recent weeks that equity is one of the principles that underlines everything that they are trying to do with education, and I think that that is a good sign. I keep my three questions to that principle of equity. In the first instance, could the cabinet secretary expand on exactly how he intends to disperse the funds that will be used to assist the most vulnerable pupils? In his answer to my parliamentary question last month on 24 May, he said that the details of that will be forthcoming in the next few weeks, but I do not actually see those details in this statement. Secondly, the cabinet secretary knows that there are many parents who are very anxious about the subject choice issue, the fact that different schools are not offering the same number of subjects of national 5, and indeed that some key subjects are not actually being offered at all. The cabinet secretary rightly sounded very concerned about that education question, so I wonder if he could tell Parliament what he intends to do to address that. Thirdly, the cabinet secretary rightly says in his statement that the early years are absolutely crucial. Can I ask again where the equity lies when half of Scotland's young children do not actually have the same level of nursery entitlement as do others? Does he intend to change that? In relation to the three points that Liz Smith has asked me on the question in relation to the distribution of funds, the Government has already made allocations in relation to the support for local authorities and for schools driven by assessments of levels of deprivation. My objective is to make sure that as we roll out the further stages of the attainment fund that we ensure that the funding reaches the areas of the country where we see the existence of deprivation and that we are able to tackle that directly by the investment that the Government makes. In relation to our second point on subject choice, in a sense that this question gets to the heart of decision making within individual schools because the choices that I think are arrived at on this question are large. They are arrived at individual schools and I know that Liz Smith is a supporter of individual schools being able to take their own decisions. I think that there is a fine balance to be struck and I am wrestling with this question on a constant basis on all of my judgments about education, about the extent to which I should set out as the Education Secretary what I think should happen, or whether I should leave that to the professional judgment of educationalists in every part of the country. I point out respectfully to Liz Smith that there is a contradiction in the argument of complaining about the availability and range of subject choices arrived at by individual schools and then demanding that schools be empowered to take those decisions. I am still reflecting on that issue because I am determined to make sure that young people are able to have a broad range of choices to enable them to fulfil their own potential. Finally, on the issue of early years, the Government is making provision for the entitlement of young people to have access to the hours of early years education that we have committed to. That is the commitment of the Government to 600 hours that is being provided for in the local authority finance settlement. Obviously, if individuals are not gaining access to that entitlement, that is an issue that the Government has to address. As we look at the expansion of early years education, my priority is to make sure that that is provided in a way that addresses the needs of families around the country to ensure that every young person that has that entitlement is able to get that entitlement. Those judgments will be at the heart of the delivery mechanism and the models that are taken forward by the early years minister and myself. The Deputy First Minister for Advanced Sight of His Statement knows that we share its ambition at excellence and equity in Scottish education. There are things to welcome such as listening to teachers on the need to declutter and an acceptance that the Government has not yet listened enough to teachers with regard to reducing workload. There are other things here that remain somewhat ambiguous, however. For example, can the Deputy First Minister explicitly promise that any new route into teaching will not compromise the all-graduate, fully professionally qualified and registered teaching force that has served us so well for so long? The thing that we really need to hear is, of course, absent. There is no commitment here to protect education budgets. The £150 million attainment funding from 2017-18 has to be set against the £500 million taken from local authority budgets this year alone, with worse, presumably, to follow. We could believe so much more in all of the promises of this delivery plan if the Deputy First Minister would just commit to protecting education budgets. Will he do that? First of all, I welcome the recognition from Ian Gray about the Government's agenda on addressing the workload of the teaching profession and on decluttering the curriculum. I have a very clear motivation in addressing that. It is to enable teachers to be liberated from the unnecessary bureaucracy that has grown up over the years of which there have been commendable attempts to try to address that, but they have not been carried through, in my opinion, fully on the ground. That is why I have asked Her Majesty's inspectorate to assess the degree to which the bureaucratic burdens that were asked to be removed by the tackling bureaucracy report have in fact been removed by local authorities, because I want to be persuaded that that action has in fact taken its course. There will be a further programme to undertake that, with the express purpose of enabling the teaching profession to be able to concentrate on learning, which will be one of the most significant contributors that we can have to improving attainment within our schools and tackling the attainment gap by liberating the teaching profession to concentrate on teaching. In relation to his two specific points on the issue of the registered teaching profession, I simply say to Mr Gray that we will look at inventive and innovative ways to enable individuals to enter the teaching profession, and I would have thought that that would be something that he would support, given the fact that he is not at the back of the queue when complaining about teacher shortages within Scotland. We will deploy innovation and flexibility, but there is no point in putting teachers into the classroom if they are not of sufficient quality to be able to deliver the teaching that we expect of them. The importance of quality registration is absolutely fundamental to the process, but we should not allow that commitment to any way to blinker us from contemplating innovation about how we encourage and motivate individuals into the teaching profession and to secure those routes. In the initial point about finance, it is not for the first time that Mr Gray and I take different views about public finances. Local authority budgets were not reduced by £500 million in this financial year. Mr Gray knows full well that some of that sum of money that he talks about is in capital budgets that will be invested in local authorities in later years. I went through ad nauseam about those points before the election with Mr Gray, and we have had the election, so we have aired all those issues and they have been considered by the public. What I would hope that Mr Gray would acknowledge from the delivery plan is the very significant funding that the Government is putting in place through the Scottish attainment challenge to support the investment in education in Scotland. That is a very substantial investment in education for our young people in Scotland, and I would have thought that Mr Gray would have supported us in the investment that we are making. I repeat that we have short, sharp questions, and I will also say short, sharp answers. I call Jenny Gilruth to be followed by Ross Thomson. I begin by putting on record that the First Minister has appointed me as the parliamentary liaison officer for education, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the chamber in this capacity. To ask the cabinet secretary what steps are being taken by the Scottish Government to ensure that local authorities are working to tackle unnecessary bureaucracy in schools. One of the comments that I made to Mr Gray was that there had been some good work in formulating plans to reduce bureaucracy and workload, particularly by the tackling bureaucracy report that was produced in 2013. I have asked HMI to look into the degree to which the recommendations of that report and other examples of activity to reduce the administrative and bureaucratic burdens that are placed on schools by local authorities have in fact been translated into practice. That is one example of how I intend to do it. There will be inspections undertaken of all local authorities once the new term commences, and I will be in receipt of the recommendations of that process by mid-September. That is not to single out local authorities. I recognise that Education Scotland and SQA have got to contribute to this process of reducing workload and administrative burden, and I will make sure that they do so likewise. On page 3 of the cabinet secretary's statement, third paragraph on the bottom, required changes to empower teachers and to devolve powers are cited. Can the cabinet secretary tell the chamber what aspects within the current system does he feel are limiting the autonomy and also the accountability of teachers in schools and therefore need to be changed? I want to make sure that teachers are free to make the professional judgment that we rely on them about the educational progress of young people within our schools. I want to make sure that we have in place proper accountability to make sure that we can assess the progress that young people can make. However, I do not want that bureaucracy to be intrusive on the teaching capability and the teaching performance that we depend on. Frankly, that is out of kilter just now. What is required of teachers in terms of reporting and monitoring of performance in some parts of the school curriculum is duplicative. That needs to be stripped out and we need to be able to see and have clear line of sight about the progress that young people are making through their education system. We need to know that once, we need to know it authoritatively, we do not need to know it multiple times and unauthoritatively, if that is a word. That is what I am focused on creating. That is what the delivery plan is aiming to achieve to give us that assessment of the progress that young people are making but giving it to us in an authoritative way that is informed by teacher judgment. I welcome the review of governance announced and look forward to the education and skills committee playing its part in this. In terms of review of governance proposals to develop school clusters and our ambitions to empower teachers in schools, can the cabinet secretary outline what evidence can we learn from within Scotland and beyond? First of all, I look forward to working with Mr Dornan as the chair of the education committee. Indeed, we will have our first encounter tomorrow morning, to which I am looking forward. I am very happy to engage constructively with the committee in informing the agenda. I have committed myself in this process to engagement. The education summit was a very valuable and worthwhile exchange of views. Within that summit, we heard a range of international experience and input, which has been of benefit in formulating our views. I will draw on that as we come to our conclusions around the conduct of the governance review, which I will consult extensively about with local authorities, with the professional associations, with parents and with young people in Scotland. The appetite for new structures signals a reduced role for councils in the delivery of education, and I draw attention to my register of interests as a elected member in South Lanarkshire Council. Can I ask the cabinet secretary if the public can expect the schools version of Police Scotland, or is the Scottish Government more attracted to the model being promoted by organisations such as the Hometown Foundation? I can say to Monica Lennon that we have set it out in the document. The Government believes that, in a public education system, we believe in a mutual education system that operates in the interests of members of the public. We will formulate a model that is appropriate to the needs of Scotland. One that results in the empowerment of schools and headteachers enables greater decision making to be undertaken within the school to adjust to particular circumstances. Why is that important? It is important because, from the evidence that I have seen around the country, where schools are able to take particular decisions that meet the needs of young people in their locality, they are able to more actively and effectively take decisions that are correct for individual children. We are just running through all of our approach to education, and there is a requirement to get it right for every child in Scotland. We will discuss more widely with Parliament, with the committee and with wider stakeholders in this debate the details of how that will be taken forward. I welcome the statement from the cabinet secretary today, but the cabinet secretary will be aware that we need to encourage more men into early years and general teaching, more teachers from the BME backgrounds and more women into leadership positions. How will he endeavour to improve the diversity of our teaching profession? We have to make sure that we broaden recruitment into the professions, and the question of diversity within the education profession is a very significant issue. We will see that in different areas. I answered a parliamentary question last week, which showed a significant level of underrepresentation of women in senior educational professional roles. That is a question that I will take forward with the General Teaching Council of Scotland, and I will take forward my wider discussions around the development of the profession to make sure that we have a more representative teaching profession able to meet the needs of all sectors within the country. I thank the cabinet secretary for early sight of his statement. Positive destinations for young people with additional support needs remain below the rate for those without additional support needs. Will the cabinet secretary consider making support for learning a promoted post as part of the drive to reduce the attainment gap? That would help to tackle inequality of outcomes for pupils with additional support needs, and it would enable progression for the most skilled teachers who want to remain in our classrooms. The key point in responding to Alison Johnson's question is the importance of ensuring that every child is able to receive, every young person is able to receive the appropriate educational support and service that meets their requirements. So, if they have additional support needs, the importance is that those additional support needs are respected. What I think is becoming increasingly clear in the secondary sector is good work that has been undertaken to align the thinking behind the developing Scotland's young workforce report to the work of schools, and that is better meeting the needs of young people with additional support needs. We need to make sure that that thinking is reflected right through the education system. Rather than giving a specific commitment to the point that Alison Johnson has made today, can I give the general response that the Government is focused on trying to ensure that every young person receives the educational support and assistance that they require to meet their needs and that, on that basis, there is a greater chance of fulfilling their better outcomes and their expectations? Tavish Scott, followed by Fulton MacGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for the courtesy of his statement in advance? Could he clarify how reducing the excessive workload on teachers that he's already mentioned can happen when he has described national assessments to be measured by his Government on pupils in P1, P4, P7 and indeed S3? Can he confirm whether the national levels pupils will be expected to pass for literacy and numeracy through school will be based on teacher judgments? On the first point, almost all local authorities already undertake some form of testing system through schools, but the challenge that we have, the difficulty that we have is that the data is not comparable to enable us to assess relative performance and, therefore, to tackle improvements in performance where that is required. I am not in any way suggesting an increase in the workload on teachers. I am talking about replacing a testing and assessment system that is in place within individual schools already. On the second point, it is important that, as we take forward the assessment approach, we acknowledge that we are relying on teacher judgment to be informed by the outcome of testing and assessment. Ultimately, we will be dependent on teacher judgment. That is the foundation of curriculum for excellence, but we want that to be better informed by the conclusions of the assessment process. Can the cabinet secretary ensure that the investment and focus in closing the attainment gap also delivers for a looked-after and accommodated young people? Mr MacGregor makes an important point, because, as the data all demonstrates to us, looked after children are the young people who have the greatest challenge in securing good outcomes. It is therefore an essential focus of the attainment challenge to address that point and to ensure that we meet the needs of those young people and to deliver better outcomes for them. That will lie at the heart of the delivery of the attainment challenge. Of course, the Government will monitor and assess the progress that is made as we take forward the improvements as part of the attainment challenge. Can I thank the cabinet secretary? I apologise to the three members I was not able to take. The next item of business is consideration of a parliamentary bureau motion. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 585 on substitution of committees. Formally moved. The question on this motion will be put at decision time, to which we now have come. There are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment 601.1, in the name of Ruth Davidson, which seeks to amend motion 601, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the implications of the EU referendum for Scotland be agreed. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed. Members will now move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 601.1 is as follows. Yes, 34. No, 68. There were 21 abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that amendment 601, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the implications of the EU referendum for Scotland be agreed. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed. We will move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 601, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, is as follows. Yes, 92. No, 0. There were 31 abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed. The next question is that motion 585, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on the substitution on committees be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are all agreed. That concludes decision time. We will now move to members' business. I will give a short pause to allow members to change places.