 I think that concludes portfolio questions. We're going to move straight on to the next item of business which is the statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on the Scottish enjoyment challenge. Local authority, stretch aims and recovery and accelerating progress in 2022-23. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of our statement and therefore, there should be no interventions or interruptions and I call on the cabinet secretary for around ten minutes please. Thank you very much. I'm pleased to provide this statement to Parliament today to update iaith o'r blaenau all漂亮um a phalfuigfaint a'r agon fod yn ddif Weinham Ffritwyrir Llywodraeth yn ddiolch i ddeic o'r lleol, ac yn ddiolch i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol, ac yn ddiolch i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol i'r lleol, a sgwrdd anblyriedd. Y g journo i washerno a oeddynt ar-gweithgabodei go iawn i ymni, ac yn gwneud eich Paidiynau cael ydysi efhysιαwn gael yn gwneud o dechrau i gweithioliei amdano ac hydro corei o agurth g wedi'i eich ond. I don't expect teachers to achieve this on their own. Schools and education services must collaborate across services and with local partners to make progress. The approach recognises that every local authority has a part to play. From the £1 billion investment in the Scottish attainment challenge over the course of this parliamentary term, we are now distributing strategic equity funding to all 32 authorities—something I know which was welcomed by COSLA. It comes along side continued investment of over £130 million per year in pupil equity funding, going directly to schools and continued funding to support the educational outcomes of care experience children and young people. Alongside this significant investment, Education Scotland continues to provide local authorities and schools with a range of support. This includes a new approach working with local authorities to agree a model of universal, targeted and intensive support. On top of that, the range of published resources includes the Scotland's new equity toolkit, which draws together in one place research and learning from the Scottish attainment challenge. Earlier this year we published a framework for recovery and accelerating progress, which We know that a ground-up approach works best in embedding improvement, so the stretch aims have been developed by local authorities using local knowledge, data and expertise, and they express each local authority's own ambitions for learning and their learners. Local authorities operate in a range of different contexts and have different starting points for this work, very importantly. At the same time, however, I am committed to the importance of ensuring that every child and young person has the same opportunities throughout their education wherever they live in Scotland. We know through the range of analysis of the Scottish attainment challenge that we are making progress, but we need to progress more quickly. A key element of the progress made to date has been a change in the culture and ethos across the education system, which has raised the profile of equity in education. Through the refreshed mission of the Scottish attainment challenge and the introduction of local stretch aims, we have shifted our focus towards outcomes for our children and young people impacted by poverty. And key to improving those outcomes is the work done in local systems, with schools, third sector organisations and other local services. Further, by introducing a requirement for local stretch aims, we also seek to ensure clear local ownership of progress towards the overall mission of the Scottish attainment challenge, to drive a greater transparency around data for improvement, creating opportunities for learning and partnership working, and to help address unwarranted variation in attainment and progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap between local authorities. With both consistency and flexibility in mind, the requirements for stretch aims involve a core plus model, so the core aims are a subset of the existing 11 national improvement framework measures of the poverty-related attainment gap, and they include aims for literacy and numeracy in the broad general education, the senior phase at SCQF levels 5 and 6, the sustained positive destinations through the annual participation measure and the locally identified measures for health and wellbeing. Alongside the core aims for which all local authorities must set stretch aims, the plus element enables local authorities to set aims for their own local improvement priorities. To be clear, those are locally identified stretch aims determined by councils. They have been undertaken by rigorous local processes to set those stretch aims and they will work with schools to meet them, keeping in mind very much the local context, the continuing impact of Covid and the increasing impact of the cost of living crisis. Collectively, the core stretch aims set by local authorities show a great deal of ambition for both recovery and accelerating progress. Aggregated, they represent local ambitions for improvement, both on 2020-21, the last year of published data when this requirement was introduced and 2018-19, the last year for pre-pandemic data. I welcome that level of ambition. However, I also know that ultimately what matters is the implementation of the plans, supported through strategic equity funding that underpin the stretch aims and the actual progress made locally throughout the academic year. For both overall attainment and in terms of closing the poverty-related attainment gap in literacy and numeracy in primary schools, the collective stretch aims of local authorities amount to working towards achieving the biggest two-year improvement recorded since the introduction of the challenge. If the stretch aims for literacy and numeracy are achieved in full and the rate of progress continues, we will be on track to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap in primary schools, which is where the Scottish attainment challenge started. Given the effect of Covid-19 on children and young people's achievements of curriculum for excellence levels in 2020-21, those aims represent a significant local ambition for recovery back to and beyond the national position pre-pandemic. In terms of the senior phase, we asked local authorities to set stretch aims for SCQF levels 5 and 6. Contrary to the dip in ASL attainment as a result of the pandemic, the changes to approaches and certification played a part in seeing record levels of attainment in the senior phase for 2020-21. Therefore, I very much welcome local authorities' aims to sustain or exceed the levels of attainment scene in 2020-21. In terms of the annual participation measure, which helps us to understand outcomes for young people, local authorities have set aims to improve the already high 92.2 per cent in 2020-21 to 93.4 per cent in 2022-23 and to narrow the poverty-related gap by 1.2 per cent. In terms of the range of health and wellbeing aims and the plus aims, which reflect local authorities' various local priorities, there is a wide range of different aims for progress this year. That includes aims for improved attendance and participation, aims that break down the component parts of some specific core aims, for example focusing on the specific elements of reading, writing, listening and talking, aims specifically for care experience children and young people and aims that span the full learner journey with aims for early years and aims that capture the full range of achievements of children and young people in the senior phase including foundation apprenticeships and a focus on learner pathways. What matters now is local progress towards those stretch aims. Detailed questions on the ambitions of individual local authorities for their children and young people are, of course, for local authorities themselves to address. The impact of the pandemic now and the impact of the current cost crisis means that the moral imperative to support our children and young people most impacted by poverty to achieve their full potential is stronger than ever. In this difficult context, we remain absolutely focused on our children and young people and that is why, alongside the £1 billion investment in the Scottish attainment challenge, this Government is supporting children and young people in numerous ways. We are tackling the cost of the school day through the expansion of free school meals and continued investment in the school clothing grant. Teacher numbers are currently the highest, they have been since 2008 and with a number of primary teachers the highest since 1980. We have delivered the highest educational spend and more teachers per pupil than any other UK nation while also protecting free tuition and higher education. We are listening to children and young people, parents, carers and professionals through our national discussion and our reform agenda. We are, of course, delivering on the national mission to tackle child poverty through measures such as our increased Scottish child payment, a key benefit unavailable elsewhere in the UK, which is projected to lift 50,000 children out of poverty next year. Taken together, those demonstrate this Government's commitment to making Scotland the best place in the world to grow up. We will continue to work together with our local government partners to deliver on our shared mission to improve outcomes for children and young people. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow her in 20 minutes, after which we will need to move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if members who wish to ask a question could press the request to speak buttons now or as soon as possible. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of the statement. There is a great deal in the statement that lies behind the statement in terms of the spreadsheets that we have also been sent that deserves much more scrutiny. I hope that we will have lots of opportunity for much more scrutiny. I welcome some aspects of the statement. I welcome the fact that the cabinet secretary acknowledges that it is not down to teachers to achieve the reduction in the poverty-related attainment gap, that there is much need for further collaborative work between different agencies and services in order to support individuals and their families. I absolutely agree with her that this is about implementation. We have been talking about this for a long time. This is not a new subject. Audit Scotland has made it clear that it has grave concerns about implementation and outcomes. She is right to highlight in the statement the importance of attendance. When I speak to teachers, the one thing that they say, particularly in the post-pandemic reality, is that they have grave concerns about the regular attendance of pupils at school in general. The statement makes some claims about narrowing the attainment gap, which I think are highly debatable, because I think that the facts do not always stack up with what the SNP ministers like to claim in this chamber. Many educational experts have said that to restore Scottish education to the standards that it once had, we should be focusing on raising attainment overall. They say that focusing on closing the attainment gap could lead to a levelling down of Scotland's educational attainment overall. I hope that we can all agree that we should be aiming for levelling up. I will come to my question now. Fewer pupils in primary 1, primary 4 and primary 7 are achieving the expected levels of literacy, reading, writing, listening, talking and numeracy. In relation to the statement and the progress that is measurable, what does the minister now feel is the reason why so little progress, if we can agree that there has been progress at all, is how little progress has been made so far in this work? There was indeed a lot in that. To be fair, I would have liked to spend some time on it, because there is actually a fair bit in that. I agree with Mr Kerr-on, which does not always happen in debates, but I welcome what he said in this. I should certainly strive for more of that, Mr Kerr. I will do my best. He is important very correctly to talk about attendance. I would point out that attendance at this moment in time seems to roughly be what it was in pre-pandemic levels, but I do appreciate that there are concerns around why pupils are not attending, and that might be for a variety of reasons. It is something that I, COSLA, ADES, have given attention to and will continue to give attention to, because he is quite right to point that out. I appreciate that there is a lot of information from each of the individual councils on that. When he looks at it, he will see that, as well as his ambitions to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap, there is information out there about raising attainment overall, because that is a very important point. Councils, just as the Scottish Government, are keen to do, so I do not think that it is an either or. I think that it is both in all of those. I hope that he finds that in the material as he looks at it. There was pre-pandemic year-on-year a positive trend in the ASL data. Clearly, that has been impacted by Covid, as Mr Kerr has said, and we will have to await new information to see what the results are as we look to see the approach to the ASL data in the most recent years. On the first point, I think that he made about welcoming further scrutiny to this, I would indeed welcome further scrutiny, and I believe that I have written to the committee to invite them to do just that. We hear this statement from the cabinet secretary today, with schools closed, kids at home and striking teaching unions outside this Parliament, and the first action that the cabinet secretary must take is solving this dispute as a matter of the utmost priority. We must not forget that this policy refresh is being paid for by cuts for the poorest children in the poorest communities, described in this Parliament by school leaders as an immoral disgrace. The statement claims that, if those stretch aims for literacy and numeracy are achieved in full, and this rate of progress continues, we will be back on track to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap in primary school. I would ask the cabinet secretary to confirm whether that means by 2026. More cynical people than I, Presiding Officer, would say that this exercise here amounts to an attempt to pass the responsibility to meet the SNP's pledge on to local authorities. No one will forget that this was Nicola Sturgeon's pledge, her defining mission. This week, the SNP is asking teachers to do more. Is it right that next week, this Government will be asking them to do more, with much, much less? I genuinely ask Mr Marra to approach this in the way that the Government, Education Scotland and local authorities have. This was a new process for local authorities, and I commend them for the way that they have approached this. Yes, when I'm talking about substantially eliminate, I mean by 2026. Importantly, we recognise the different roles for everyone in this. Yes, there's a role for the Scottish Government within this work. Yes, there's a role for our national agencies from Education Scotland to the Retainment Advisers and the work that they do to provide support to local authorities. There is, of course, an important role for local authorities in that as well. They have a strategy duty, for example, for the provision of education and the improvement for education services. So what we're actually trying to do is not pass the buck here, but genuinely work together to recognise our different roles, to have some transparency around the data and actually work together to deliver the improvement that we all want to see. He mentions, of course, the current pay dispute with teachers. I would, just for the sake of time, briefly reiterate the Government's position on this, that the current ask from trade unions for 10 per cent flat rate is not affordable within a fixed budget. We are absolutely committed to resolving this dispute, but we need to find a way to do that, which is fair and affordable within the fixed budget that we have. Graham Dey, to be followed by Sue Webber. Thanks, Presiding Officer, Cooley. This endeavour has to be a partnership once. I ask the Scottish Government how the Government and its agencies will support schools and local education authorities to achieve, improve the attainment and tackle the poverty related attainment gap. I think specifically about how they will ensure that the best practice, gleaned from all the work done to this point, is shared amongst councils in our schools so that the delivery focus can be on approaches that have been proven to pay dividends. Mr Dey quite rightly points within that question about the collaborative work that is required to solve the poverty related attainment gap. The framework for recovery and accelerating progress that was published this year makes clear the importance of that collaboration right across the system to share best practice to close that gap. Education Scotland, for example, does have a key role in this about the professional advice and guidance, professional learning opportunities, subject networks and through its range of published resources, including that publication highlighting effective practice in the use of pupil equity funding. The launch of Scotland's equity toolkit, providing practitioners with an access to a range of evidence and research, is another important piece of work. Again, at the point of the collaboration and the way that both national government, national agencies and local government are very much trying to work together to achieve the outcomes that we all want to see for children and young people. We can all agree that headteachers play a critical role if we are ever to make progress in closing the attainment gap. Your statement, cabinet secretary, claims that nine out of ten headteachers have responded citing improvements in closing the poverty related attainment gap and or health and wellbeing, which perhaps to help us in the chamber and those watching the cabinet secretary could expand on how this was indeed measured if we are now to focus on outcomes. Again, nine out of ten does sound impressive, cabinet secretary, but how many actual headteachers responded out of the 2,129 headteachers in Scotland and how many of our local authorities are represented in this data? I don't have the specific details about the number of headteachers that responded, but it was from the headteachers survey, the most recent headteachers survey that we had, but I would be quite happy to provide that to Ms Webber. It's not a compulsory survey for headteachers to hand back in to government and its agencies, but it was from that survey, and we'll provide further information on that in due course. Can the cabinet secretary set out what impact the cost of living crisis and the UK Government wholly in adequate response to it will have on our national mission to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap? Can the cabinet secretary set out what action the Scottish Government is taking to support families through the crisis? The Conservatives are asking, is that relevant? Well, yes. Let me be very blunt about why it's relevant, because while we can do everything with any education to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap, the easiest, most simplest way, if only we had the powers to tackle it, would be to tackle poverty itself. That is absolutely why it's relevant, and I am genuinely disappointed but perhaps not surprised that the Scottish Conservatives can't see that link. The Scottish Government analysis published in April highlighted the devastating impact of successive UK Government welfare reforms imposed since 2015. That has had a very detrimental impact on children and young people right across the country. He contrasts that with the Scottish Government approach. In this financial year, of course, we've invested £3 billion through a range of measures that will help mitigate the impacts of the cost of living crisis, whether that's the Scottish child payment, the fuel and security fund or our new winter heating payment, which begins in 2023. I'm determined through those new stretch aims and the £1 billion increase investment in the Scottish attainment challenge programme to support the work that is being done to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support those families if we need it, but it is disappointing about the lack of action being taken by the UK Government, and that certainly is not helping. I feel to be followed by Evelyn Tweet. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Cabinet Secretary said that I don't expect teachers to achieve this on their own. Schools and education services must collaborate across services and local partners to make progress, but with 1,784 fewer teachers since 2007, cuts to support staff over that time and cuts to staff at the centre, who is it in the schools and education service will do this? Well, teacher numbers are currently the highest they have been since 2008, with a number of primary teachers the highest since 1980. Indeed, there's now over 2,000 more teachers than before the start of the pandemic, and the issue of pupil to teachers is at its lowest in 2009. Very much what we've been trying to do through the Scottish attainment challenge to recognise the work that, and indeed encourage the work that schools do with other parts of the public sector, and indeed with the third sector colleagues to work collaboratively on this work. That is one of the changes that we have taken to widen the approach to the Scottish attainment challenge in this refreshed approach that we have. Evelyn Tweet to be followed by Willie Rennie. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the Cabinet Secretary's statement today and that all local authorities have set out their ambitions for tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. Can the Cabinet Secretary give her view on the totality of ambition demonstrated by councils across Scotland? I once again would want to take the opportunity to thank councils for the way that they have approached this work. I'm pleased to see that taking together the stretch aims for progress point to real ambition for progress, building on the progress that was made particularly pre-pandemic. For literacy and numeracy in primary schools in particular, we are seeing ambitions to close the gap by over seven percentage points compared to 2021. If those aims are achieved, they would represent the biggest two-year improvement since the introduction of the challenge. That's very important, very ambitious aims that councils have set, and the Government and Education Scotland look very much forward to supporting them in the work that they're doing, taking close cognisance off the local context and, indeed, the further local difficulties that local authorities are experiencing in supporting their children, young people and families during the cost of living crisis. Willie Rennie to be followed by Rona Mackay. The statement is an admission that the poverty-related attainment gap won't be closed completely by 2026. At the current rate of progress, can the education secretary set out by when, what year, she expects that gap to be closed completely? Forgive me, Presiding Officer, if that wasn't correct, I think I mentioned it during my statement, but for the avoidance of doubt, just in case I didn't, I will repeat it again. If local authorities achieve their stretch aims for literacy and numeracy in full and this rate of progress is sustained, we'll be on track to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap in primary schools, which is where the Scottish attainment challenge started. If that wasn't clear enough in my statement, I will add by 2026. Rona Mackay to be followed by Pam Gosall. Apologies, Presiding Officer. What steps are being taken to improve outcomes for care experience pupils and how are stretch aims being used to drive improvement for care experience children and young people? There is a very strong focus within the Scottish attainment challenge in assisting care-experienced young people as part of our work. There continues to be funding on this specific issue that is given to all local authorities. I commend local authorities once again for the way that they are approaching this work, learning from each other with the assistance of Education Scotland, but of course very much learning from each other to ensure that we will see an improvement in attainment for care experience young people right across the country. Pam Gosall, to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. The cabinet secretary mentioned in her statement that the Scottish Government is tackling the cost of the school day through the expansion of free school meals. We have all heard countless times about the positive impact that eating nutritious meals has on a child's ability to learn. Can the cabinet secretary explain why the Scottish Government failed to deliver free school meals for primary six and seven pupils in August? And when will school meals be extended to secondary pupils? Does she accept that accelerating the provision of free school meals will have a positive impact on pupils' attainment? I very much agree that free school meals are a very important policy and that is why the Scottish Government is committed to universal free school meals within primary. That is why the budget for this year included £30 million for capital improvements for local authorities because there needs to be changes and improvements to facilities to allow us to move forward with primary six and seven. That is exactly why we have had to look again at the timeline for this. For the benefit of Ms Gosall, the current system within Scotland is the most generous within the UK. Fulton MacGregor, to be followed by Brian Whittle. The cabinet secretary has set out the responsibility and approach of the Scottish Government and its agencies. However, clearly the provision of education in Scotland is the responsibility of local authorities. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that it is crucial that every local authority, including Malone and North Lanarkshire, take ownership in the national mission to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap? I would point to the fact that all local authorities have taken the development of Strait James exceptionally seriously. This is a new approach that we have had and I commend them for that. It is crucial, as we have said on a number of occasions now during this statement, to recognise our different responsibilities within different parts of the education system. There is absolutely a role for the Scottish Government, but there is, as I have mentioned previously, a statutory responsibility for improvement within councils. It is very important that we work together. Of course, we are supporting the work with councils with £43 million in strategic equity funding that will assist them in setting the strategic direction for local approaches to closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The Strait James that they have set and we are publishing today are underpinning lots of detailed work that a range of local approaches are already being undertaken to improve the situation across our schools and therefore improve outcomes for learners. The first step to tackling the Strait James has to be ensuring that our teachers are properly supported, resourced and that their health and wellbeing is properly invested in. What is the Scottish Government doing to reduce the increasing pressure that is causing so much anxiety in our over-stretched teaching profession? It is just one of the ways that we would like to do that and we are committed to doing that. That is a reduction in the class contact time for teachers. That was a commitment that we have made recognising the heavy workload that teachers have. I completely appreciate and support the fact that the national government has a role in supporting our teachers. For the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that one example.