 I remind members that Covid measures are in place and face coverings should be worn while moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The next item of business is portfolio questions and the portfolio is education and skills. I would remind any members wishing to ask a supplementary to press the request to speak buttons or put an R on the chat function at the appropriate question. I call question number one, Annabelle Ewing. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the young persons guarantee scheme. Since the launch of the young persons guarantee in November 2020, we have invested an additional £130 million, which aims to provide at least 24,000 new and enhanced opportunities for young people. An update was provided on our young persons guarantee implementation progress report published in July demonstrating that we have delivered that 100-day commitment. We now have over 200 employers signed up to the guarantee to support young people in their communities, as well as DYW school co-ordinators in every mainstream secondary school. I thank the minister for that answer and it would be helpful if further specific information could be provided as to the roll-out of the young persons guarantee scheme in Fife, and in particular, can the minister advise as to what he will do to ensure that the opportunity for real job progression is built into the guarantee scheme, so that it can be truly life-changing for the young people concerned? First of all, let me acknowledge Annabelle Ewing's long-standing interest in this area. She has been a real champion for developing young workforce in Fife and indeed they piloted the school co-ordinators role that I have mentioned and I know that she was very keen to see that approach embedded. In terms of what is happening in Fife, a number of actions have been taken forward by partners there, supporting young people to access short industry-focused courses on subjects, including digital literacy, data science and security. They provide SQA qualifications to support young people to access higher, skilled and better paid employment as they progress through their careers. There has also been a particular focus on support for mental health and those living in deprivation to ensure that additional barriers are eliminated. I have also been very clear that all of this approach must ensure meaningful opportunities that are sustainable and enduring that as true in Fife as it is across the entirety of the country. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it plans to implement the recommendations by the OECD on the Scottish national standardised assessments in its report Scotland's curriculum for excellence into the future. The Scottish Government has welcomed the OECD's independent review and has accepted all of its recommendations in full. We continue to consider carefully all of the observations in the OECD report. National assessments were originally introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Government before they were scrapped by the Liberal Democrat Labour Government here because they resulted in crude league tables. The recent OECD's report criticised the use of the Scottish Government's assessments for national monitoring purposes. Now we have crude league tables once again. Why is the education secretary more persuaded by the logic of Margaret Thatcher than the OECD? I make clear, as I did in the committee yesterday, that the purpose of national standardised assessments is primary formative. The OECD made no recommendations about standardised assessments. We will consider the commentary in the report, but it recognised that they are a valuable tool to support teachers' judgments. We are keen to ensure that the OECD's recommendation about what we can do with data and do it effectively is considered. That work is on-going. However, as I made clear to Willie Rennie yesterday in the committee—I am confused about why we are having the same conversation today—the Scottish Government does not collect and therefore does not publish the standardised assessments. The cabinet secretary is either in denial or keen to hide her Government's dire record when it comes to education. We need to have the right data for the right purpose. Any cabinet secretary serious about restoring standards across our education system would want to end the data desert. Why won't the cabinet secretary get a refreshed SSLN back up and running and rejoin the internationally respected Tim's and Pearl's assessments? I absolutely believe that we should have the right data for the right purpose. Since the introduction of the national improvement framework in 2016, there has been an increase in the data and wider performance information that is collected by the Scottish Government. Of course, the Scottish Government continues to participate in the largest international survey, the PISA survey. Yesterday, we did undertake to reconsider the merits of SNLN compared to ASAL in response to a former education and skills committee inquiry. That work is on-going. It had been delayed during the pandemic, but we will respond on that and on other methods, on other recommendations and comment in the OECD report in due course. Can I ask the cabinet secretary how the Scottish Government plans to engage with stakeholders, including children and young people, as we move forward with education reform? It is very important that we engage with stakeholders and groups because there are a variety of different opinions on different areas of education reform. Professor Ken Muir, for example, is the independent adviser that I have asked to come in. He is engaging widely to understand the needs of schools, practitioners and, very importantly, learners as we look to design our new national education agencies and what they will look like in the future. He has recently published a consultation on that issue. I also intend for the Scottish Education Council the key strategic stakeholder forum for oversight of improvement activity in Scotland to have a key role in that, as well as the once-established Children and Young People's Education Council 2. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that the future workforce can have access to vocational skills training in light of the current staff shortages in certain sectors. Ensuring a sustainable workforce supply requires continued investment and collaboration across the system to ensure that provision is aligned to economic and social need. That is why we have committed an additional £500 million investment across this parliamentary term to support new, good, green jobs of the future, including £20 million this year through the national transition training fund for sectors that are impacted by the pandemic and Brexit. We will also continue to urge the UK Government to rethink post-Brexit immigration policy to grant labour shortages from undermining our recovery. I thank the minister for his answer, but the issues that I am raising today existed long before Brexit. There has been a sharp decline in the number of students in further education during the pandemic and the number of 16-year-olds enrolled full-time at college has fallen by nearly a quarter in the last decade. With businesses also struggling, how will the Scottish Government support these very businesses and their apprenticeship schemes to ensure that all our young people have the best opportunities as they leave school? We will do what we have always done. We will continue to invest in apprenticeships and apprentices in the country. That is the approach that we have always taken and continue to do. Of course, we have seen some disruption in the last year. How can we have seen anything other, given the impact of Covid-19? I am pleased to be able to tell Ms Webber that, as of the first quarter of this year, we have seen a 3.7 times number of more apprenticeship starts than we did last year. We are recovering, and we will continue to work to that end. To ask the Scottish Government how many children are leaving school to positive destinations. The 2019-20 date of the latest available showed that 92.2 per cent of school leavers were in a positive destination at the nine-month point after the end of the school year. The 2021 figures will be available in due course. I believe that those figures are reflective of the resilience and tenacity of young people in Scotland and, indeed, our education system as a whole. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support lifelong learning and reskilling in Argyllun Bute and other rural areas. We are making significant investments to ensure that people of all ages in rural communities have right skills now and in the future to support recovery and transition to net zero. Argyllun Bute is covered by six skilled development Scotland career centres in Cameltown, Rotsie, Islay, Dunedin, Helmsbury and Oban. They play a critical role in guiding people to skills opportunities. Since the individual training account scheme began in 2017, we have invested nearly £100,000 of support to learners in Argyllun Bute. Over the next 10 years, through the growth deal, we have committed £25 million in the region to supporting a rural skills accelerator programme with a mobile STEM academy, learning hubs and a rural enterprise accelerator programme. I thank the minister for that answer. Both Argyll College and the Scottish Association for Marine Science provide a variety of courses across a number of locations within Argyllun Bute to local people and those from out with the area. I recently took part in a round-table meeting with SAMS to discuss the lack of student accommodation. Can the minister outline what support is available to colleges to provide suitable living accommodation for students? In the first instance, I would always encourage any students who are worried about their housing situation to seek advice and support from the institution that they attend. The issues within Jenny Mintle's question are important. That is why our programme for government commitment to review purpose-built student accommodation and our 100 days commitment to establish the next stage of this is already under way. We have taken forward in parallel with work to ensure rent affordability and improving standards across the private rented sector. In the summer, I had the pleasure of visiting the award-winning globe burn farm shop in Persia. The owners told me how difficult it is to recruit butchers within their local area. According to a survey by Meat Business, 37 per cent of women believe that they would face barriers to success because of their gender and 80 per cent believe that they are unable to see role models in the sector that would encourage them to join. In light of the long-standing issue of shortage of butchers, especially female butchers, what support does the Scottish Government offer to help women and young people to reskill in rural areas to become butchers? We are committing £300,000 this financial year to bring about practical solutions to support women in the agricultural sector in the wider sense, including Argyll and Bute, where the original question is about and indeed Persia, where the supplementary question is about. That will include the wider role of the be your best self personal development training, a pilot of business skills training and a range of other activities. I recognise the challenges that Ms Hamilton has laid out. We must respond to the R1s and that is exactly what we are doing. Well done on knitting those questions together. I will allow the minister to extend slightly further. Young people from rural parts of Scotland who want to stay in their area already struggle to get apprenticeships or studies that allow them to stay, and this is leading to a rural brain drain and depopulation. This is now being exacerbated by the fact that lecturers at one of the main places for rural study, the SRUC, are having to undergo strike action to get their voices heard as their pay and grading has fallen significantly below the norms across both further and higher education. Our lecturers carry out vital work for our citizens who want to continue their studies. So what steps will the minister commit to to help resolve this deadlock? In relation to the first part of Mr Whitfield's question, I do not have the latest figures before me, but the last I saw was that the spread of apprenticeships across the country broadly correlated to population share. That has been the experience in the last years. In relation to the situation at SRU, I would encourage management and unions to come together. The last thing that any of us wants to see is disruption to learning and disruption to research as well, as SRUC is a world leader on. I would encourage management and unions to get together to resolve this situation. I remind members asking supplementaries to try to keep them broadly relevant to the initial question, but I congratulate the minister again on managing to knit those together. 5. Siobhan Brown To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the national digital academy. Work on developing a national digital academy is at an early stage. Its development will build on learning from the pandemic, including the national e-learning offer that is built on the glow and e-school programmes. Over the coming year, we will engage with young people in particular to understand fully how remote learning has worked for them over the pandemic and how it can support their on-going learning. A number of colleges already offer SCQF level 6 courses and qualifications including hires remotely, and work will take place to understand how they already support the provision of courses outside traditional educational settings. Siobhan Brown I welcome that response from the cabinet secretary. I believe that the implementation of the digital academy will give a lot of people comfort, especially some of our children who have missed a lot of school during the pandemic and did not get the exam results that they needed for the course that they wished to get into. What other steps are being taken to support senior phased learners across Scotland? It is very important that we support our senior phased students. They have gone through an incredibly difficult year over the pandemic and it is important that we support them. For example, the work that has already been announced includes e-school learning and the investment that we have already put in to local authorities and to schools directly through the Scottish attainment challenge and PEF funding. It will assist schools to be able to develop what is right for them in their situations and in their community to be able to support their pupils during this time. That may and I am sure will include online learning at some points and we will learn from this as we go forward to see what more can be done as we build the national digital academy. To ask the Scottish Government how many additional qualified teachers of children and young people with vision impairment will be recruited as part of its commitment to recruit 1,000 new teachers and 500 pupil support assistants in the next academic year. The recruitment and employment of teachers are matters for individual local authorities since the pandemic we have provided £240 million to support educational staffing, including our commitment to support the recruitment of 1,000 additional teachers and 500 support staff. Furthermore, we have provided £145.5 million baseline into the 2022 local government settlement to support sustainable employment for these additional staff. We are committed to an additional 3,500 teachers by the end of the parliamentary term. The Scottish Government is committed to increasing the capacity and expertise of school staff to support pupils with visual impairments, and we fund the Scottish Sensory Centre to provide specialist training to school staff to support pupils with sensory impairment. Can I thank the minister for that answer, but say that in the last decade, the number of visually impaired young people in our schools has doubled and that a large number of the QTVI teachers reach retirement age in the next decade. The quickest route to qualification is postgraduate, which is around £9,500. If you do the competence route, it takes a lot longer. Will the Scottish Government or the Cabinet Secretary agree to go and look at the issue? We potentially have a shortage of QTVI teachers over the next decade, and we need action now to make sure that our young people do not miss out on the skills and experience that, particularly those who are visually impaired, definitely need. I thank Sarah Boyack for that question, which raises a very important issue. I will give her the assurance today that we will look at it further. As a Government, we are aware of the issue and of the campaign that has been recently organised by Site Scotland, for example. However, I am certainly more than happy to take the issue away again and look at it further. To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to promote Scottish literature in schools. The Scottish Government does not prescribe literature to be used in schools. However, curriculum for excellence provides schools and practitioners with the opportunity to make choices about the literature that is studied in schools to reflect the circumstances and needs of learners, and that will often include the use of Scottish texts. SQA national 5 and higher English courses have a strong focus on Scottish literature, allowing candidates to develop an awareness and an appreciation of Scotland's rich social and cultural heritage. I thank the minister for that reply. Can the minister say whether the Government feels that there are lessons to learn from other countries around Europe where learning extensively about their country's literature is almost without exception regarding that there is an essential outcome of secondary education? Dr Allen raises a very important point. Clearly, the Government is always keen to learn opportunities from other countries in this and other areas of education. For example, we recently commissioned OECD to review the curriculum for excellence and its implementation precisely because we are determined to learn that good practice from abroad. As I outlined in my earlier response, curriculum for excellence provides young people with the opportunity to engage with a range of literature, including Scottish texts. I am sure that that is being done across the country with great enthusiasm by our teachers and our learners. Thank you, cabinet secretary. That concludes portfolio questions. Question 8 was not lodged, so that concludes portfolio questions. I note that all the members who need to be present for the next item of business are here, so we will move on to that shortly.