 The next item of business is topical questions. In order to get in as many people as possible, I'd appreciate short and succinct questions and responses. At question number one, I call Megan Gallagher. Thank you, Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its nursery recruitment targets. Minister Clare Holly. The Scottish Government does not set targets for early learning and childcare ELC workforce recruitment. Megan Gallagher. In 2018, Nicola Sturgeon promised to recruit 435 additional graduates to nurseries to close the poverty-related attainment gap. Four years later, this target has not been met. New figures show a quarter of posts are lying empty and over 100 nurseries in the most deprived areas are missing a teacher. Presiding Officer, this is yet another SNP education failure. I ask the minister why this target has never been met and why children in the most deprived areas have been left without a nursery teacher. Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Since 2017, the earlier learning and childcare workforce has expanded significantly. Since the ELC workforce expansion began in 2017, the number of graduates working in ELC with degrees relevant to early years has increased by 52 per cent. That expansion means that by August 2021, every local authority in Scotland confirmed that they were able to offer 1140 years of funding to all three and four-year-olds and the two-year-olds who need this. This is great for families and for children and being able to access high-quality ELC, delivered by a range of staff with different skills and qualifications, is a cornerstone of narrowing the poverty-related attainment gap. I am astounded that the minister believes that the Scottish Government is doing a good job when our nursery sector is facing a staffing crisis. Nursery owners in the PVI sector have warned the Scottish Government that the expansion of free early learning childcare is under threat. Pay gaps between local authority and private settings of around £1.40 an hour is causing nursery staff to leave the sector. The Scottish Government cannot continue to ignore those serious concerns. What measures will the Scottish Government implement to create equity between local authorities in the PVI sector and how will they address the staffing crisis? Our collective focus throughout the 1140-year expansion has been to improve conditions across the private, voluntary and childcare workforce with regard to funded ELC. When ELC expansion began, local authorities were already paying above the living wage to their staff and the funding settlement reflects that. By contrast, our research indicates that around 80 per cent of staff delivering funded ELC in the private and third sectors were paid less than the living wage at the time. We have seen real progress since, with our 2021 health check indicating that 88 per cent of private providers intended to pay the real living wage to all of their staff by August 2021. Public funding and Scottish Government policy can only affect a certain amount of change and ultimately business owners make their own decisions about their business models and salaries. However, that said, the Scottish Government has taken a range of actions to support the private and third sector through the 1140-year early learning and childcare expansion programme, including to support the recruitment of highly qualified childcare staff. We are taking a strategic approach to mapping out the workforce requirements to deliver our existing and new commitments and taking forward a series of actions to support recruitment and retention across all parts of the childcare sector. My apologies, Mr Gryffin. It is excellent news for families that children are being offered 1140 hours of early education and childcare. Minister, how many children who were offered that 1140 hours have received it over the course of this year? I know that a number of nurseries have had to move on to reduce hours to cope with staff absences because of a lack of resilience in staff shortages in the system. Of January 2022, more than 111,000 children were benefiting from funded ELC. That is 97% of eligible children. Alex Cole-Hamilton. I'm very grateful to Megan Gallagher for highlighting the Scottish Liberal Democrat research on this. At the current rate of progress, it's going to take 10 years to achieve a one-year target. No wonder the attainment gap is getting wider. Thousands of nursery children have been and gone without the benefit of the extra teacher that they were promised by Nicola Sturgeon. Given that she has just abandoned that commitment made by Nicola Sturgeon in 2017, how should we believe any future commitment made by the First Minister in this chamber? Myndteachers continue to have an important role to play as leaders and educators alongside other degree-qualified ELC specialists supporting our youngest children on their learning journey. Research shows that the best experiences for children are provided where there is a range of staff with complementary skills and higher-level qualifications. We are proud of the continued growth in the number of degree-qualified ELC staff and those working towards degree-level qualifications. Since the ELC workforce expansion began in 2017, the number of graduates working in ELC with degrees relevant to early years has increased by 52%. I hope that Mr Cole-Hamilton will welcome those statistics. 2. Willie Rennie To ask the Scottish Government what immediate action it will take in light of recent reports that nearly £2 million in pupil equity funding has been spent on police officers in schools since 2018. Cabinet Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville Decisions on how to use pupil equity funding are taken by headteachers in an empowered education system. We trust schools and headteachers to know their people's best and to take decisions that are in the best interests of children and young people. The majority of the £634 million distributed in PEF to schools is invested in approaches to improve literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing through the recruitment of additional teaching and support staff, family link workers and partnership with third sector organisations. Could other projects involving Police Scotland in place schools find them to be of great benefit? They are highly engaged and proactive in preventative work in communities with families, working alongside social work and third sector organisations. They are not policing in school. To be clear, the £2 million described is a very small proportion, just 0.3 per cent of the pupil equity funding that has been distributed to schools across 32 councils since 1718. The education secretary needs to cut the slopey shoulders act. The pupil equity funding is an operational guidance that I have read and I am sure that she wrote that encourages that kind of spending. It says that consideration should be given to how the school can work with community partners beyond education. That is her doing. The children's charity Abelauer, who made this discovery, wants to know what the evidence is that policing in schools will help children's learning. So where is the evidence? Cabinet Secretary. For the avoidance benefit of the doubt of Mr Rennie, they are not policing in schools. I made that very clear in my original answer. The schools know their learners best. They are responsible for using the pupil equity funding to undertake approaches that they think will best support their pupils to achieve to their full potential. It is very important that we look at how the money is spent. It is often spent on family like workers, for example, and in collaboration with those outside the school, including youth work and family learning, on approaches to reducing the cost of the school day. I will give one example, Presiding Officer, about how the money can be used and has been used in schools in Fife, where there has been school holiday programmes targeted at supporting vulnerable and at-risk children, anti-violence programmes and also transition programmes. The school itself shows an improved attendance rate, early intervention in supporting children and families to avoid or limit criminal behaviours and very much improve community relations. That is what happens when schools work with partners right across the community, including if they decide it is necessary and appropriate with the police. I think that some of the examples of that show that that has been working as shown by the headteachers feedback themselves. Willie Rennie presented no evidence. There is no evidence that policing in schools will help to close the poverty-related attainment gap by 2026 or whatever the policy is this week, yet her operational guidance still encourages it. What a slur on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. They have been branded by their Government as criminals before they have even had their first lesson. It is the money that is supposed to follow the child, not the police. The First Minister has said that she has been branded by her Government as criminals before they have even had their first lesson. It is the money that is supposed to follow the child, not the police. Will the education secretary revise the operational guidance, without delay, to prevent vital funds for education, to ensure that children and families are safe and well-behaved, and to ensure that children and families are safe and well-behaved? It is the money that is supposed to follow the child, not the police. Will the education secretary revise the operational guidance, without delay, to prevent vital funds for education, for education being diverted to fund police in schools? Unsurprisingly, that has drawn great criticism from across the chamber. Mr Rennie may criticise the Scottish Government within the Opposition parties, but what Mr Rennie has just said is not a slur on the Scottish Government, but on the head teachers who have chosen to use the pupil equity funding in this way. It is a slur on the teachers who have decided that they know their children best. Mr Rennie once said to the Liberal Democrat conference, and it is not often that I will quote a Liberal Democrat conference speech, but I will on this occasion. I want teachers to be at the centre of how we make Scottish education the best. I want to make sure that education is delivered by teachers—I presume that is what Mr Rennie wanted in that quote—but he is saying that teachers do not go best. Somehow he knows best, without knowing any of the details of the projects involved, he is quite happy to come to this chamber and accuse teachers of making young people criminals. I hope that he goes away and thinks seriously about that. I am not apologised to me, but I apologise to the teachers who have put this in place and the pupils that they are there to serve. From 30 years of experience as a teacher, I would like to celebrate the hard work of teachers and our young people in all their endeavours. I know from very recent discussions with teachers and local police that staff are building relationships with the most vulnerable young people in our society. We are intervening early to build confidence, to increase engagement with the curriculum, thereby increasing achievement. Whilst it is a shame that Mr Rennie appears to have forgotten the Lib Dem's conference 2020 commitment to put teachers in charge, will the cabinet secretary assure the chamber that this Government is committed to empowering teachers to use peff funding to empower the teachers to use peff funding to the best meet the needs of the young people in their schools? Once again, you hear from Co-Cab Stewart an example of one of the projects where schools have been reaching out and working directly with the police. They have been shown through constant positive feedback from both staff and learners to have made a difference because young people have found that approach exceptionally useful. We have a range of projects where that can be used if teachers feel that it is the right thing to do. I think that it is very important, as Cabinet Secretary for Education, that I do not just talk about empowerment but I support empowerment in practice. It is a shame that the Liberal Democrats, rather than doing that, have come here today to accuse teachers of not just inappropriate use of funds but to make young people criminals as a sad and sorry state even for Mr Rennie. We heard at Education Committee that equity funding was being used to plug gaps in the budget. Little did we realise that it was the policing budget too. Will the cabinet secretary take this opportunity to say that this practice is wrong? It might be, in her view, a small amount of money but every penny going into education should be focused on teaching and learning. Can she not even agree with that? What the committee heard was that a number of directors of education come to the committee and state in questioning that the pupil equity funding was additional funding and it was that additionality that they found important that evidence is there on the record from the directors of education. There is an absolute support within the teaching profession for the use of pupil equity funding. They feel that it is an important part of the empowered system that we have. This Government is committed to an empowered education system. It is unfortunate that it seems that the Opposition parties are not.