 I remind members that Covid-related measures are still in place and that face masks should be worn while moving around the chamber on the wider Holyrood campus. The next item of business is portfolio questions. On this occasion, the portfolio is education and skills. If a member wishes to ask a supplementary question, they should press the request-to-speak button to place anon in the chat function during the relevant question. As ever, I would appeal to members and to ministers for brief questions and brief responses. Question 1 comes from Elena Whitham, who joins us remotely. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to extend financial support for outdoor clothing, to early learning and childcare settings. Minister Clare Haughey. Providers have worked creatively over the pandemic to increase opportunities for outdoor learning. As evidence shows, the risk of transmission is reduced outdoors. To support that, in December 2020, we launched a £1 million outdoor clothing fund for providers of funded early learning and childcare as part of our wider winter support package. The fund was used to buy outdoor winter clothing for children who needed it most. 1,040 childcare providers successfully bid for funding through the fund. Children continue to benefit from the clothing this year. We continue to work closely with the childcare sector to monitor the impacts of the pandemic and to keep the need for further financial support under review. Elena Whitham. I thank the minister for that answer. Can she outline what steps are being taken to increase child access to outdoor play? We are supporting the growth of outdoor learning and practitioner confidence in this area in a number of ways. We funded a virtual nature school programme during the pandemic. That supported more than 2,000 practitioners and 40,000 children and families to have quality outdoor experiences. We funded Inspiring Scotland through the ELC expansion to help to increase outdoor play and learning activities. We continue to add to our out-to-play practitioner guidance series. The national practice guidance realising the ambition is also supporting practitioners to deliver more outdoor play. Going forward, we will be working with practitioners to develop strong communities of practice. Colin Smyth, who also joins us remotely. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The minister will know that pupils are not just in need of warm clothing outdoors at the moment, but frankly are freezing indoors just now in classrooms. Could the minister tell us what additional financial help is being made available to parents to keep their children warm inside the school because teachers are having to open windows in the middle of winter in place of proper classroom ventilation? As Mr Smyth will be aware, the Scottish Government provides school clothing grants to school-age children, and that has increased over the years. We will continue to support families who need our assistance to provide adequate school clothing. To ask the Scottish Government how many pupils in East Kilbride will be included in the roll-out of free school breakfast and the expansion of free school lunches. Cabinet Secretary, we join us remotely. Free school meals and providing breakfast to all primary school pupils during the course of this parliamentary term. Once free school meals are expanded to include P6 and 7, the total number of pupils being offered free school lunches in Scotland will be around 390,000, based on most recent pupil census figures. We have already expanded free school meals universally to primary four and five pupils from January this year. I cannot provide specific information on the number of pupils who will be eligible for these important benefits in East Kilbride, whereas there are currently 17,627 pupils in primary one to five in special schools in South Lanarkshire and just over 25,000 pupils in primary and special schools in South Lanarkshire who would benefit from free school meals and breakfast expansion in due course. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Can she outline how the Scottish Government will work with local authorities and organisations like Magic Breakfast to deliver this and what benefits will this provision have to pupils in terms of nutrition and wellbeing? The Scottish Government does work closely with our local authority partners on an essential basis to support them as they deliver food and drink in schools, and we will continue to do so as universal school meal provision is expanded. All food and drink in schools, including lunch and breakfast, must meet the school food and drink regulations, which are designed to ensure that children and young people are provided with balanced and nutritious food and drink to support their growth and development. As they deliver school meals, local authorities can, of course, partner with organisations such as Magic Breakfast in the member's constituency of Scotland, take account of local needs and priorities. To ask the Scottish Government what assessment is made of how access to further education by students from the most deprived areas have been impacted by Covid-19. Minister, I am clear that every young person should have an equal chance of success no matter their background or circumstance. SFC College data published this week shows that 32.2 per cent of credits on FE courses at colleges in 2021 were provided to learners from the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland. It has a university student statistics also published this week, so we have a record high 16.7 per cent of full-time first degree entrance to university coming from those same areas in 2021, maintaining the position from the year before of exceeding our interim target of 16 per cent by 2021. The financial support provided to students over the course of the pandemic has been substantial with now over 96 million pounds provided by a hardship funding. Did the access, mental health support and for student associations? Bob Doris. I thank the minister for that answer. Minister, Glasgow Kelvin College in my constituency informed me that over the last two years Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on part-time community-based and non-advanced further education programmes that the college would normally be involved in, most pronounced for learners from SIMD 20 postcodes. Will the minister ensure that that is taken into account when allocating resources for the coming year to ensure that those most impacted by Covid-19 from our most deprived communities can access educational pathways that they require to help to close attainment gaps and will he accept my invite to visit Glasgow Kelvin College to discuss those challenges further? Minister, let me first of all be happy to accept my friend Bob Doris's invitation. I can say that I've always been very impressed by Kelvin College and the work that they undertake particularly in the area of apprenticeships and indeed the work that Bob Doris has mentioned in their community learning and development work in terms of funding for the forthcoming year. SFC is currently identifying the best split of available resources for the coming financial year taking into account our priorities and the needs of the sector with a view to providing indicative institutional allocations in March. My clear expectation is that those allocations should be responsive to our social and economic needs but also to community requirements and in that regard the issues that Mr Doris has raised are very pertinent. A brief supplementary from James Dornan who joins us remotely. Thank you, convener. Does the minister share my concern that the most recent heistic show has continued to drop in the number of EU students coming to study here in Scotland? Did the minister catch that question? I think that Mr Dornan might have been referring to the drop in the number of EU students coming to Scotland to study. The impact of Brexit has, of course, magnified by the pandemic, has contributed to a significant drop in EU applicants. That is, I think, very regrettable. Of course, we have world-leading institutions here. We value the contribution of EU students. They make to our economy, to our culture and to our academic institutions. They enrich our campus life and I hope that we can still welcome many in the future to our world-leading institutions. I am not sure that all of that is true, but I am not sure that they come from the most deprived areas impacted by Covid. Nevertheless, question number four comes from Jim Fairlie. I would like to ask the Scottish Government what assistance, skills development Scotland can provide to Oval energy employees in Persia, Southland and Russia, who may be facing redundancy. We have already offered support to Oval through our partnership action for continuing employment initiative for employees who may be affected by redundancy. Skills development Scotland leads the delivery of pay support on behalf of the Scottish Government. SDS PACE representatives met with Oval on 20 January to discuss the type of support that might be available and PACE representatives maintained contact with Oval during this time to progress the planning of pay support. Jim Fairlie. I thank the minister for his answer. He may be aware that I met with senior Oval management last week and I have to say that John Swinney peat worshiped myself left with more questions than we went into the meeting with. It is somewhat reassuring to hear that despite the lack of assurance from Oval that the Scottish Government will be able to give some kind of assistance. Can the minister tell me what support the Scottish Government might be able to provide to ensure that facilities such as Oval, office and Perth can continue to be used as major employment hubs or training hubs? Of course, this is an issue that impacts my own constituency as well. There are some 600 jobs under threat in Cumbinald. Of course, Ivan McKee is rightly leading this as the business minister, but in my own experience as the previous business minister, Scottish Enterprise would be very happy to have any conversations around how that could be taken forward. For my own part, I would very much expect SDS to continue to play its part in discussion of those matters and how they can support Ivan McKee in responding to the types of points that John Swinney has raised. supplementary Murdo Fraser My colleague Liz Smith and I also met Oval on Friday and impressed on them. We need to continue supporting workers. As John Swinney said, there will be a large office building left lying empty in Perth as a consequence of the decision. The previous Scottish Executive had a programme of relocating public sector jobs out of Edinburgh to different parts of the country. Is that something that the current Scottish Government could be considering? Minister, of course that is something that we have done. The Social Security Agency was located in Dundee for that very purpose. I think that what we would do in this instance, of course, as we would seek to engage with Oval, as I have laid out, is to understand their plans and engage with them to see how we can support their workforce. Those other matters could be part of a wider consideration. Emma Harper To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting Skills Development Scotland to engage with the agriculture and rural sector to promote opportunities and apprenticeships for young people as a positive career destination. The Skills Action Plan for rural Scotland is driven for the partnership approach developing skills and talent needed to make sure that Scotland's rural economy and communities continue to flourish and grow. The plan recognises that rural areas face particular skills challenges and supports activities to address them in particular. The Scottish Government provides funding and direction skills development in Scotland to ensure that it delivers against our priorities. In 2021-22, priorities include driving the implementation of the plan by supporting the development of the employer's toolkit, the agricultural sector and convincing planning for a review of land-based apprenticeships to ensure that they deliver the skills for the sector needs now and into the future. Emma Harper I thank the minister for that answer. Through engagement with local manufacturing and agricultural businesses, I have had feedback that Skills Development Scotland can be sometimes challenging to engage with on manufacturing and agriculture career opportunities. Those are vitally important sectors in our rural areas. Can the minister outline what action the Scottish Government or what further action the Government can take to support STS to promote apprenticeships in agricultural and rural skills, particularly given their importance to Scotland's economy and in our fight against climate emergency? Minister, let me first of all say if there are any specific challenges that Ms Harper wants to raise. I will take that away and pursue that with Skills Development Scotland. My clear expectation is that they do engage and in relation to the challenges around ensuring that rural Scotland is supported, I have to say right now that they are a member of the Skills for Farming group. They are engaging with the National Farmers Union conference. In February, they are sponsoring the Lanter Aquaculture and Land Based Awards in March. They have updated the My World of Work website which has been supported by Skills for Farming group as part of the Scottish Apprenticeship week. They are taking an advertorial on the Scottish Farmer newspaper. They contributed towards the Skills Action Plan for rural Scotland that I mentioned. There is significant engagement and, more fundamentally, I would expect them to deliver as well. In that regard, in terms of the number of apprenticeships we see in Scotland, broadly speaking, the number of apprentices starting in the last year of 2021 were broadly consistent with the population share in our rural communities. For example, in Precent Galloway we see 2.8 per cent of the population share and 2.8 per cent of the constituent. 2.8 per cent of the Scottish population but 3 per cent of modern apprenticeship starts and Scottish borders 2.1 per cent of the population aged over 16 but 2.3 per cent of apprenticeship starts. I think that Skills for Farming Scotland is doing a fairly good job delivering for rural Scotland. Rural depopulation is an issue and we need to ensure that we have vibrant communities across Scotland so that we can keep new entrants alive in farming. Will the minister agree that the Scottish Government should put a greater emphasis on food and farming in schools and further and higher education settings? May I ask when the minister last met the Royal Highland Education Trust so that we can discuss the importance of education to meet the skills that are needed to manage the countryside, produce good food and indeed tackle rural depopulation? I can see to Ms Hamilton I have had the pleasure of meeting with the trust in the past. With the Royal Highland show when that is able to be up and running again I will be very happy to do so again. We place considerable emphasis on supporting the sectors that Ms Hamilton has referred to. We would also be expecting our developing young workforce regional groups to be engaging with those sectors so that young people are aware of the great opportunities they have in those particular sectors. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on our teacher recruitment drive. Cabinet Secretary. Teacher numbers have increased for six years in a row and there are now more teachers than at any time since 2008. There are now over 2,000 more teachers than before the start of the pandemic in 2019. We have provided £240 million of additional investment over two financial years to support this and a further £145.5 million of permanent funding from April this year to support the sustained employment of those teachers. A new phase of our teacher recruitment campaign is under way. We are continuing to offer bursaries for career changers to move into STEM teaching and we have increased initial teacher education targets for student intakes this year. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that answer. In a recent EIS member survey 17.8 per cent of respondents said that violence and abuse from pupils was the greatest cause of stress in the past four months. In my region, Western Bartonshire pupils at the secondary school went so far as to create faking dating profiles to humiliate teachers. Can I therefore ask the Cabinet Secretary? Does she agree that the long-term retention of teachers will be more difficult if problems like this will continue and what action is the Government taking to permanently end this kind of abuse? I thank Pam Boswell for raising this very important point. The teacher wellbeing is critical at all times but particularly giving the most challenging circumstances that teachers and support staff have been working on during the pandemic. Behaviour such as abuse or attacks on teachers and support staff is completely unacceptable under any circumstances and it is important that schools and local authorities have strict processes in place to be able to deal with measures and certain circumstances when they happen. If there is a requirement for further support from either Government or from Education Scotland to support councils and schools directly as they target that abuse we would stand ready to give that support. I have a number of supplementaries and I hope to get them all in but they would need to be brief as well as the responses. I am very grateful Deputy Presiding Officer. The Cabinet Secretary has talked about the increasing number of teachers. Could the Cabinet Secretary confirm how many of those new posts will require applicants to have additional support qualifications or experience? Cabinet Secretary. Of course, as the member knows he will support pupils with additional support needs. He will also be aware of the proposal and assurance that we have within the agreement with the Scottish Greens to ensure that we are looking at what more we can do to insist that teachers are able and supported to be able to deal with these matters and we gladly keep the member and indeed Parliament updated on this in the Scottish Greens. Willie Rennie. I remain very concerned about the large number of unemployed teachers as well as those on casual short-term contracts. The last time I asked the Cabinet Secretary how many there were in the country she did not have a clue. If the Government does not know the scale of the problem how we are going to fix that problem. Does she have an answer yet? As Mr Rennie well knows we have workforce planning both within the Scottish Government and within local government to assure that we have sufficient teachers in place to be able to assist our schools as they do that workforce planning within separate schools. We are working on that with local authority partners. As I have already said in my original answer the Scottish Government has committed additional funding to ensure that the number of teachers is something that is looked at exceptionally seriously. The funding for local government has now been baselined. There is no need for teachers to be on temporary contracts if they were previously on a temporary contract through the Covid funding that we had in place. Of course, this is a matter for local authorities as the recruiter and retainer of teachers. A final brief supplementary I would like to ask the Scottish Government what impact increased investment in teacher recruitment is having on pupil teacher ratios. Is briefly as possible cabinet secretary. As I said in my original answer I think that there are more teachers now than at any time since 2008 and the ratio of pupils to teachers is that it's lost since 2009. 7. Colin Smyth We joined him remotely. To ask the Scottish Government what resources will be provided to ensure that all students have equitable access to revision support ahead of any exams. Cabinet secretary. Schools are best placed to support learners who have experienced disruption to catch up on their learning and have the best chance to demonstrate their potential. To complement and enhance the school-based supports Education Scotland has put in place a package of support through the national e-learning offer. Through Glow, our national schools internet senior phase learners can access e-school supported study webinars and resources. Senior phase Easter study support programme extremely popular last year will be repeated this year offering live webinars covering over 60 courses at a range of levels from national 4 to advanced higher. All learners also have access to over 1,850 west online school videos to support senior phase learning. Colin Smyth. We know that disruption to students education continues with on-going significant absent levels among pupils and school staff. Some parents will be able to afford additional tutoring for their children ahead of the exams but the poorest won't. For the cabinet secretary, we need to urgently escalate support for students sitting in SQA exams this year, including providing in schools additional resources for targeted learning support during the Easter holiday ahead of forthcoming exams. Cabinet secretary. I very much agree with the premise of Mr Smyth's question that's exactly why the Scottish Government is working with our colleagues in local government exactly on the issue of Easter support. We are currently working with COSLA and that is going through the usual COSLA processes. Once it has gone through that process we will of course then be able to make a further announcement on that because I quite agree that we need to ensure that support is there, particularly for those that have had severe disruption this year and that's why I'm delighted that we are working with COSLA and I would hope to make an announcement on that very soon once it's gone through the usual COSLA processes. Thank you in question number 8, Fausal's territory. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to make a student housing strategy which includes rent controls and student tenants for every student in Scotland. Minister Jamie Hepburn although the Scottish Government has no direct role in the provision of student accommodation nor with capacity in the private rental market we are aware of the pressures related to these that's why we are committed to bringing forward a student accommodation strategy for Scotland which in part will be informed by a review of purpose-built student accommodation. We will look to develop and incorporate the student accommodation strategy alongside and within the rented sector strategy. There are issues such as supply affordability and wider planning and regulatory issues. Fausal's territory. Thank you. With a 34 per cent rent hike over the last three years does the minister agree with the national union of students that the student housing system in Scotland is fundamentally broken and that the disconnect between student income and rent levels poses an extreme and immediate threat to access and participation in education? Will the Scottish Government commit to urgently creating a student housing strategy which includes rent controls and student tenancy right for every student in Scotland? Minister I have been able to meet with the national union of students to discuss those issues. I understand the concerns that they have. They have been particularly exacerbated in the last year by taking place that have put pressure on housing supply. The issues that Mr Chowdry raised will be fully considered as part of the review that we undertake in terms of purpose-built student accommodation but also as part of that student accommodation strategy that we are committed to taking forward. If Mr Chowdry would like to provide me any information engaged with me on that matter, I'd be very happy to discuss that further with him. Thank you very much indeed, minister. That concludes portfolio questions. I'll see you in the next item of business.