 The next item of business is a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, the future Scottish attainment challenge. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of our statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions, and I call on the cabinet secretary for around 10 minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to provide this statement to Parliament today on our plans for the next phase of the Scottish attainment challenge. I'd like to thank leaders in local government for their support in developing and agreeing the plans that I will now set out. This government is unwavering in its commitment to tackling the impact of poverty on children and young people's lives. Since its launch in 2015, the attainment challenge has played a key role in our strategy to improve outcomes for young people. Building on that and in the light of the pandemic, it is right that we take this opportunity to ensure that the challenge is designed to maximise progress. Education continues to be absolutely central to how we can improve the life chances of our young people. That has not changed. We also recognise the disproportionate impact that Covid-19 has had on the most disadvantaged in our society. Schools, teachers and those working in partnership with them all play a vital role in the wellbeing and life chances of our children and young people. As we continue to navigate the challenges that are presented by the pandemic, we will learn more about its impact on children and young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. In the primary school achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data that we will publish in December, I anticipate that we may see evidence of the impact of the pandemic on educational attainment. It is not for me to presume what that evidence will show, however, given the evidence from our own equity audit, we may well see the proportion of young people achieving the relevant level in nursery and literacy reduce in comparison to previous years, as well as an impact on the poverty-related attainment gap. Let me be clear about this. We have a moral imperative to focus our resources on supporting the educational attainment and life chances of our children and young people most impacted by poverty. We are also determined to reduce the variability in the outcomes of children and young people achieve in different parts of the country. That is exactly why we are rising to this challenge by increasing our investment in the attainment Scotland fund from £750 million during the last parliament to now investing £1 billion in targeted funding over the course of this parliament to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support education recovery through the Scottish attainment challenge, with up to £200 million to be distributed in 2022-23. That has already begun, through our delivery of our first 100 days target, to issue the first instalment of that £1 billion commitment this year, alongside a £20 million pupil equity funding premium to further mitigate the impact of Covid-19. Of course, children's lives are hugely influenced by what they experience in school, but it is not only school that affects their wellbeing, the readiness to learn and their educational outcomes. The refreshed Scottish attainment challenge will have a new mission. From next year, that mission will be to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. That embeds SAC funding in our wider national mission to tackle child poverty. We will, of course, maintain our focus on educational attainment, but, at the same time, take account of the findings of the recent Audit Scotland and OECD reports, we will look beyond those traditional metrics of success to take account of other skills and achievements. I do not expect schools to do that alone. Indeed, teachers and education leaders have been clear with me that schools cannot do that alone, so schools and education servitude must reach out across services and sectors and into their communities to draw on the wealth of resources, assets and experience available across the country to achieve their aims and make their contribution to our targets to reduce child poverty. We know that many schools and authorities already do that well, supporting children and young people through, for example, family link workers, and there are already lots of good practice out there to build on. Although progress has been made in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, I am clear that the pace of progress must recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic and it must increase. We are therefore working with partners across education to develop a framework for recovery and accelerated progress, which we will publish in the new year. That will see greater support and challenge for all those who contribute to the mission. I have no desire to see teachers and headteachers tied up in bureaucracy when they should be doing what they do best—teaching. Indeed, I wish to work with headteachers to reduce the burden that is placed upon them. I see that as a key consideration as we work with colleagues to develop a framework for recovery and accelerated progress. Therefore, planning and reporting will be streamlined and will include the identification of local stretch aims for closing the gap based on their local knowledge and their professional expertise. That will enable us to understand what schools and local authorities expect to achieve and by when. That is an approach that is already being used very effectively in some schools and in local authorities. In Government, we will work with our local partners to develop that national picture in terms of pace of expected progress later in the year. Alongside that, Education Scotland will continue to provide a wealth of support to all local authorities via its senior regional advisers, attainment advisers, regional teams and, of course, national programmes of leadership and professional learning. Signposting of effective evidence-based approaches to closing the attainment gap via the national improvement hub and on-going development of the equity toolkit will also be an important development. A key priority for Education Scotland will be sharing learning from what has worked in the Scottish enchantment challenge to date and working with schools and local authorities to accelerate progress. That work also remains a central theme within the HMIE inspection frameworks. I am confident that our local authority partners, headteachers and teachers know their learners best. Since introduction of pupil equity funding in 2017-18, we have invested over £630 million in powering teachers to decide what approaches best support their pupils. I am delighted to announce that pupil equity funding will continue to be the central feature of the Scottish attainment challenge, providing headteachers directly with significant additional funding to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap in their school communities. Building on good existing practice, we want to continue to encourage headteachers to extend their work with partner services to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap and increase support for children impacted by poverty. To further enable that, I will announce PEF allocations for the next four years, providing headteachers with the clarity they need to plan their approaches and develop long-standing partnerships. I also want now to set out some important changes to the funding distribution for local authorities. Following extensive consultation across the education system, I fully recognise the impact of the pandemic and poverty on pupils in every local authority area in Scotland, reaching those impacted by poverty in urban and rural communities alike. Therefore, all local authority areas, not just the nine challenge authorities funded under the challenge to date, will have an enhanced leadership and support role to play. All local authorities will now share the investment of £43 million to help tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support education recovery. Allocations will be sent out for the next four years, and we will be writing to directors of education shortly to confirm those. That will further enable local authorities to set out strategic direction to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, work collaboratively with their schools and school leaders to ensure approaches across the system are evidence-based and impactful and draw in broader local authority and other services to contribute to the work. It will also continue to provide targeted funding to local authorities to support care experience to children and young people and contribute to efforts across all services to keep the promise. Finally, a number of national programmes funded through the £1 billion attainment Scotland fund will be enhanced to strengthen work with third sector organisations and with a stronger focus on youth work, community learning and development, and family learning services. We know from the evidence of our analysis and audit Scotland's report earlier this year that we have solid foundations to build on, but we need to consolidate and accelerate the impact of the programme. Although we will build on those trends through the refresh Scottish attainment challenge, it will not be through that initiative alone that we make progress in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and supporting education recovery. The Government continues to demonstrate its commitment to excellence, equity and education through a whole raft of significant policy initiatives. Those include investing over almost £500 million in education recovery initiatives and investing in teachers. A cornerstone to our recovery is ensuring that our schools have the highly skilled staff that they need. That is why, over the course of this parliamentary term, we will fund the recruitment of an additional three and a half thousand teachers and 500 classroom assistants and ensure more time for teachers to plan high-quality learning and teaching by reducing their class contact time by one and a half hours per week. We are also tackling the cost of the school day, ensuring that children have access to the same opportunities, including digital devices, school trips and school uniforms, making sure that no child is hungry in our classroom by providing free breakfasts and lunches to every pupil in Scotland's primary and state-funded special schools, providing 1140 hours of early learning and childcare, laying an excellent foundation for all children to progress into their school education and committing to the young person's guarantee to name but a few. To conclude, let me be clear that there is nothing more important than ensuring that every child and young person have the same opportunity to succeed in education regardless of their background. We can and must deliver that for our children and young people. This overall approach to the Refresh Scottish attainment challenge is designed to do just that and will see a broader recognition of children and young people's positive outcomes, continued empowerment of school leaders through the pupil equity funding, funding in a clearer role for local authorities, continued targeted resources to support care experience to children and young people and a clear framework setting out our expectations for recovery and accelerating progress, which will enable greater support, challenge and collaboration throughout the system. I am confident that, taken together, that will see significant and faster progress in delivering this Government's vision of excellence and equity in education and of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes, after which we will need to move on to the next item of business, who is intending to ask a question. Please press the request to speak buttons, please. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. Nothing the SNP do to rehash the same failing initiatives can rewrite history. Nicola Sturgeon has broken her promise to close the attainment gap in the last Parliament and nothing the SNP have set out show any real ambition to do so in this one. Teachers, pupils, their parents and carers all know that simply throwing money around the system while ignoring the real challenges facing our schools is never going to work. What is missing is a credible plan to restore standards in our education system, one that ensures that pupils in every school get the education that they deserve. Only by refocusing our attention on teaching and learning can we hope to help those who start at a disadvantage close the attainment gap and give them a fighting chance. Continuing to lower our aspirations and plug the gap with well-meaning initiatives alone cannot deliver the equality of opportunity and the social mobility that we all want to see. Every day wasted sees those who need our education system the most continue to be let down. So, cabinet secretary, after 14 years, how can anyone trust the SNP Government to get things sorted when the only solutions that you offer is to double down on the same failed strategies? I would begin by fundamentally disagreeing with the premise of where Oliver Mundell is coming from. We have seen progress in tackling the attainment gap. We had a cross primary for example the attainment gap in literacy and numeracy were narrowing. Pre-pandemic we have seen an improvement in positive destinations for example and 90 per cent of head teachers reported an improvement in closing the attainment gap for health and wellbeing. I give an example of that. Some of the discussions I had with teachers this morning when I visited the Citadel Youth Centre in Leith, where they talked about the importance of pupil equity funding in allowing them to ensure that they, knowing what was right for their local community, were able to invest in that and to be able to work with children and their families to deliver results. Of course we want to see the pace of the programme increasing. Of course we want to ensure that we are assisting recovery from the pandemic and that is exactly why the money is increasing. I am sorry if Oliver Mundell thinks that we are throwing money away when what we are doing is investing in empowering teachers. I am proud to be in a Government that is empowering teachers to use that pupil equity funding in the way that results in better outcomes for the children and young people. I hope and expect that this will be something that will pay dividends for our young people as they continue to go through a very difficult time as we recover from the pandemic. The SNP is choosing this moment to make callous cuts to the education of the poorest children in our poorest communities is grotesque and intolerable and it almost defies belief. This policy decimates education funding for the poorest children in the nine poorest local authorities in Scotland. Those children have suffered most in the pandemic, they have seen their life chances weakened and so is the case again today. I will get to questions because we are short of time, which means I am also short of time to talk about the shameful and humiliating position on this from the SNP's green nationalist coalition partners. The cabinet secretary is presumably too ashamed to come to Parliament and set out the financial impact of those cuts. Will she tell us the funding allocations now or is she too embarrassed to do so? I spoke to one council leader this morning, one council leader of nine, who now has no money to pay for 120 front-line education staff paid for attainment challenge funding. What will she have to say to the many hundreds of teaching and front-line education staff in the poorest communities whose posts she has just cut? Deputy Presiding Officer, this is a betrayal of our most vulnerable children. They said that this was a sacred mission. They have just shown that nothing could be further from the truth. As I made clear at the beginning of my statement, we have worked very closely with local government, particularly on the issues of education. The change that we are making to local authorities is supported by COSLA. I presume that all the criticism that Michael Marra has just directed towards me is also directed towards COSLA leaders. For example, I quote from the press release that has come out today from the COSLA spokesperson from children and young people that says that councils are on the front line of her efforts to support children and young people in poverty every day. That is why we welcome the recognition that councils across Scotland will be pivotal in working to tackle the attainment gap. That is the response from COSLA from what has happened. We absolutely recognise, as do our colleagues in local government, that poverty exists in every local authority in Scotland. That is exactly why we have taken the decision that we have. We also know that that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which is present in every local authority in Scotland. There will be a redistribution of funding. It will take place over four years to ensure that local authorities can work through that, particularly the nine challenges of local authorities. That has been something again that has been agreed by COSLA. It is very important that we do this to ensure that there is an equitable share of overall investment, that we do recognise where the concentration of poverty is in local authorities. I stress that that is again a decision that has been agreed by COSLA. As I said in my statement, we will be writing out to local authorities within the next few weeks with the distribution for local authorities and pupil equity funding, which should be coming out in the new year, as it usually does. I encourage back ventures and the front ventures to listen to the responses to the cabinet secretary. He may not agree necessarily with what she has to say, but I think that you are the courtesy of listening to the responses. I would like to ask the cabinet secretary what progress has already been made in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and what lessons have been learned from the first iteration of the Scottish attainment challenge? Evidence shows that, over the first five years of the Scottish attainment challenge, we have seen almost all of our short and immediate terms outcomes achieved across primary schools. The attainment gap in literacy and numeracy narrowed in 2016-17 and 2018-19. We recently saw university acceptances, for example for the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland, reaching a record high for SQA results day earlier this year. Importantly, 90 per cent of headteachers surveyed in 2020 to report an improvement in closing the gap and or health and wellbeing. I am quite right that we need to learn the lessons from what worked and what we need to improve on. One of the areas that specifically worked was around the empowerment of headteachers through the people equity funding, which means a very strong focus of what we are doing. Ensuring that we are picking up the pace in tackling that is why we are increasing the support and challenge within what we are doing to ensure that we are supporting teachers and local authorities to develop that at pace to ensure that we are tackling the impacts of the pandemic as well. I would like to draw members to my register of interests as I am a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire. Recent reports have outlined that the Scottish Government's pledge to revolutionise the care of children in Scotland is under threat as social work staff struggle to deliver services due to understaffing, underfunding and a lack of resources. Although the cabinet secretary has reaffirmed the commitment to provide targeted funding to local authorities to care-experienced young children and young people, the Scottish Government must do more to achieve the promise. Therefore, can the cabinet secretary outline if the Scottish Government will commit to additional funding for local government to tackle those issues? If Megan Gallacher will forgive me, it is not my place in the statement this afternoon to announce local government settlements for future years. That will be something that I am sure Kate Forbes will do so for the budget upcoming. I am sure that she looks forward to a productive relationship with the Scottish Conservatives as they continue to provide costed promises that they would wish to deliver if they were working in partnership with the Scottish Government, as we would be delighted to do so. I welcome the cabinet secretary's comments that planning and reporting will be streamlined, including the identification of local stretch aims for causing the poverty-related attainment gap. What reassurances can be provided that that will not add to the workload and bureaucracy for our teachers? That is a very important issue that we are determined to work with schools and local authorities and teacher unions on. We know that schools and local authorities already undertake improvement planning, for example, including their ambitions using local knowledge and expertise. What we are doing through the work that we are doing in the Scottish attainment challenge should not be an added and necessary burden. It needs to allow us to help to understand and accelerate the improvement, as I am sure all headteachers wish to do as well. We are working with the system to learn and build from the good practice that already exists out there. I am absolutely determined not to introduce new raft of bureaucracy on this. I absolutely take the health and wellbeing of our teachers exceptionally seriously. That is why, as we move forward with this part of the package, we will work with teachers to ensure that what we are doing is assisting them in supporting their children and young people, rather than adding to workload and bureaucracy. In October this year, the Government shared with others the changes to the funding streams that this paper sets out. Indeed, it encloses it in this. It did not form part of the statement today and has not been published. More importantly, when will teachers, when will parents and when will children find out how the changes to their school will be affected? To answer Ms Gallagher's question, I can tell you that, in 2022-23, care experience children and the young people fund will be reduced by 0.1 million pounds. I thank the member for that question. I highlight that he is picking one aspect of what is happening in the Scottish attainment challenge, which absolutely does not relate to what Meghan Gallagher spoke about, which is much wider as we ensure what happens with the promise. The context of the overall local government settlement, which is what I was asked about, is certainly something that we will come back to. We have had discussions with local authorities, of course, for many months about our proposals on this area. That is usually what we are asked to do. By members, quite rightly, right across the chamber, is to work in partnership with our colleagues in local government. None of those decisions are easy. There is no simple challenge that we can move forward with without ensuring that we are working with our local government colleagues to ensure that we are making the best decisions that we can. They have supported the work that is going on, they have worked with us on that and I thank them for the collaborative and constructive approach that they have taken on that issue. I think that that proves that national and local government can work together for the benefit of our children and young people. Pool equity funding makes a substantial contribution to helping schools across Meadhouse and Springburn to develop initiatives to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap. Can I ask the cabinet secretary whether the multi-year funding announced today will allow headteachers and local school communities together to spend strategically now to ensure that they can plan longer-term over a four-year period rather than year-to-year to best support young people in my constituency and across Scotland to reach their full potential? That ties in very much to the question that was raised by Co-Cab Stewart about the lessons learned. One of the lessons learned and came across very strongly from teachers and from local authorities was their wish to see a multi-year funding proposal coming forward so that they could know what to expect. Last year, for the first time, we confirmed pupil equity funding allocations over £250 million for two years, but knowing that schools know their learners best and ensuring that they have the ability to plan and to decision-make in short and longer terms, that was something that we wanted to develop still further. That is as responding absolutely as a Government to the consistent feedback from the system as part of our extensive stakeholder engagement. I hope that the multi-year funding package will provide much reassurance to aid the development of those longer-term strategic plans that Bob Doris mentioned in his question. Willie Rennie, who joins us remotely, to be followed by Ross Greer. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This statement just paves the way for bad news to come, and you are already yawning poverty-related attainment gap. Years ago, the SNP Government promised to close it completely, but it is now set to get even wider. The SNP Government has lost its way on transforming Scotland's education. Fiddling around with the challenge fund is hardly the bold action that we need. If the Cabinet Secretary believes that those measures will make a difference, can she tell me by which year the poverty-related attainment gap will be closed completely? I will not rehearse the figures that I have given in previous answers around the improvements that have been made around tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, particularly pre-pandemic. However, we know that there is more to do, and we know that we need to increase the pace of change in assist recovery from the pandemic. That is exactly why we have increased the investment from £750 million to £1 billion over this parliamentary session. As I said in my statement, we are working with schools and with local authorities to work with them to deliver their stretch aims so that we can see the pace of change that they think that they can deliver. We expect that the pandemic will have had an impact on children and young people. We saw that in the analysis that we did previously. Again, I point to that. That is exactly why we are increasing funding in this, and that is why we will work with schools and with local authorities so that they can respond with their own stretch aims and we will be able to deliver the funding to support them on that. We have always said that tackling the poverty-related attainment gap is a long-term challenge. That has been recognised by the OECD, by the international education advisers, and we know that we have to pick up the pace of change of that, but it will be a challenge that we are certainly determined to deliver on. Unlike some others, I welcome the recognition in the statement that there are children living in poverty and the 23 authorities not previously supported by the challenge fund and that they are equally deserving of support. However, if there has been any survey work or consultation done with teachers in schools who have previously been supported by Education Scotland in how they deploy those funds to ascertain whether that support and advice was in fact useful. That is something that I am keen for Education Scotland to work with teachers and with schools on, because we have made a significant investment in Education Scotland with attainment advisers in every local authority, the regional teams that are there to assist them, but we need to ensure that what they are delivering is useful. I have spoken in my statement about some of the ways that they are doing that through the hub with information about what teachers think has worked within the first phase of the Scottish attainment challenge. That is one example of what we are trying to do, but I am very keen to hear directly from teachers to ensure that the support that they are getting from Education Scotland is the support that they need to be able to deliver on the challenge that we all have for the poverty-related attainment gap. I would, of course, be happy to hear from Mr Greer if he has particular suggestions about how Education Scotland should improve its offer. We have three questions in two and a half minutes. Emma Harper, to be followed by Pam Gull. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it has taken to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap in rural areas in the development of the refreshed Scottish attainment challenge. I recognise that poverty exists in all parts of the country, including local authorities covering rural and remote areas. All local authorities will, of course, now receive funding for the first time. The distribution of the funding is based on the Children and Low Incomes data. That is measuring directly the household income and therefore provides a precise count of children impacted by poverty that contrasts with SIMD, which does not always represent the needs in rural communities. The pupil equity funding, I would also add, continues to empower headteachers, with 97 per cent of schools receiving this funding this year. That programme will continue, so I hope that Emma Harper has reassured that we have adapted the policy to ensure that we are serving rural and remote Scotland well, both through attainment funding and through the pupil equity funding. Pam Gull, you will join us remotely to be followed by Marie MacNeill. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In my region of Western Bartonshire, there are 4,189 children living in poverty, an increase of 504 children from 2014 to 2015. The attainment challenge fund has had six years to make an impact in tackling the attainment gap. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, by diverting the attainment challenge fund away from the most deprived areas, it will take vital funds away from those that need it most? I have just read out to Emma Harper about how the funding is being distributed. It is to children in low-income families data that directly measures household income and therefore provides a precise count of children impacted on poverty. That is the distribution of funding that has been agreed with local government. That is what we will be moving forward with, because we recognise that there are children in poverty in urban, rural and remote areas, and the pandemic has been right across Scotland. We have to support children right across Scotland. It is unfortunate that it would appear that neither the Tories nor Labour think that we should be doing that. I thank the cabinet secretary for her statement. The cabinet secretary mentioned the cost of the school day. Does she agree that listening to parents and pupils has been at the heart of supporting families to deal with the cost of the school day at a time when Westminster welfare cuts have been hitting hardest? Is briefly as possible, cabinet secretary? I think that it is very important that we not just look at what happens within the classroom but obviously what is impacting on poverty right across society. That is exactly why we have broadened out. I am sorry that Mr Mundell is not interested in how we tackle poverty in Scotland. Perhaps, if he listened to what was going on, rather than hectoring from the sideline— We are already over time, please, cabinet secretary, and Oliver Mundell. We are determined as a Government to ensure that we are tackling child poverty in the round, not just within education. That is why we have been working with the work on protecting young people from the cost of the school day. One of the many ways we will protect children from poverty right across Scotland. Remiswm me not to note that I am an elected councillor in Dundee, one of the council areas that the cabinet secretary has just cut the budget for. That is on the record. Mr Mundell was my point of order. We now move to the next item of business. I will allow a short break for the front benches to change.