 The next item of business is urgent questions. I call Michael Marra. To ask the Scottish Government for an update on the publication of the appeals process for 2021 national qualifications in light of the Scottish Qualifications Authority missing publication deadlines. I understand and appreciate that for our young people undertaking national qualifications along with their parents and their teachers, this can be a naturally anxious and stressful time and I of course recognise the additional challenges that Covid has presented this academic year. However, I want to offer reassurance that across Scottish education people are working hard on behalf of our learners to ensure that they achieve the fair and credible grades they deserve. The key message to learners is that your grade will be determined by your teacher or lecturer informed by assessment tasks that you have undertaken in your school or college, not based on an algorithm or statistical model. This year, unlike with an examination diet, schools and colleges are in direct control of the assessment process, teachers have a significant degree of autonomy and flexibility to exercise their judgment to create and conduct assessments in ways that suit local circumstances and take account of the specific needs of learners. They will look across a range of assessments, consider national standards and reach a judgment about the grade that the learner has attained. The focus of schools and colleges at present is on ensuring that all of our learners get the right and fair result first time. Nonetheless, I appreciate that every approach must allow for appeals and we must ensure that we get that right and deliver a fair incredible process for that too. We are working hard with the Scottish Qualifications Authority to do exactly that. Subject to parliamentary business, I intend to make a statement to Parliament on this next week. I welcome the new cabinet secretary to a role. Last week, the now former Education Secretary promised pupils, parents and Parliament that this process was on the way. I welcome the fact that we are going to hear about this next week. The SQA has promised the publication twice and I have missed both of those deadlines. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that it is now less than four weeks to the deadline for submission from schools to the SQA? If evidence is to be collected for appeals, when would pupils, parents and teachers be able to do that in the absence of a published process? I do not think that the Scottish Government is in any doubt from this statement now that a public appeals process is a necessity. Can we ensure that the process is communicated to teachers immediately, as soon as possible, and that they are assisted in producing the evidence and collecting the evidence to make that system work? I also welcome Michael Marra to the Parliament and to his role as education spokesperson for Labour. I look forward to working with him, hopefully constructively, as the First Minister has just set out. I believe that we have our first meeting next week on that basis. We are absolutely right to point out to the chamber that we need to ensure that people have faith in the process and that they have an understanding and appreciation of the way that the decision has been made and the conclusion that has been come to by the SQA. I pointed out in my original answer the importance of a credible and fair assessment and appeals process, and that is exactly what we intend to do. That will, of course, be communicated very thoroughly, not just to teachers but also to the young people themselves. We are giving very active consideration about how we can support young people through this process to ensure that they have the maximum opportunity to take advantage of the appeals process and to be encouraged and supported to do so. I thank you for that further answer. As we take those constructive discussions forward, certainly on Labour's part, we would ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on the conduct of the SQA across the last year. Those latest delays show a level of contempt, frankly, for parents, pupils and teachers across Scotland who are having to deal with the situation. I am really glad that there is a change in tone in that, to deal with the truth, from the new cabinet secretary. She is not digging in, as we have heard recently, that those assessments are not exams. People are sitting exams across the country and they have a right to that appeals process and to put it in place. As part of those discussions next week, I will be raising with the cabinet secretary the status of the SQA and whether she thinks that their continued role is tenable given repeated mistakes again and again over the last year. Some reflections on that would be appreciated. I am, of course, open to any discussion that Michael Marra and any other member of the chamber wants to have on the SQA or any other part of that process. That has undoubtedly been a difficult year for young people and for the teachers that have been supporting them through that. I think that the SQA has worked very hard to ensure that what is in place is fit for purpose and to ensure that they have done that, as I say, in a fair and equitable way. Those are the principles that I have certainly been speaking to the SQA about and that is something that the absolutely share and have a determination to have right at the heart of the system. Will we have lessons to learn at the end of this process? Undoubtedly we will. I think that we have made clear during the entirety of how we deal with this pandemic that we have to reflect about what went well and what we could have done better. That goes for every single part of government. I would say that everyone—I would include the SQA in that—has worked very, very hard to ensure that we have worked right across the education sector and with all stakeholders to deliver a system for assessments this year that will be robust, which young people can have faith in, which employers, universities and colleges can have faith in. I hope that we can unite across the chamber, despite the differences that we may have had during this process, to ensure that young people know that we all have faith in the results that they will get and that we all have faith in the system that will then allow them to go into the positive destinations that I hope they will do. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome you and the Cabinet Secretary to your new roles. It was clear by the end of the last session of Parliament that the SQA had lost the confidence of the institution and the public as a whole, and I will raise those issues with the Cabinet Secretary next week. Of more immediate concern, though, a large volume of appeals now seems inevitable this year. What has been put in place to ensure that the SQA has the capacity to process those appeals in a timely manner? What discussions have taken place with colleges and universities about the impact that a high volume of appeals and potential delays might have on their admission processes? It will be a pleasure to work with Ross Greer once again, reliving our Yes Scotland days as part of the referendum campaign, but perhaps we might have some more disagreements than we did on that. I hope not, because, as I said to Michael Marra, I hope that we will work constructively on that. He is right to point out that we need to ensure that people have faith in the system to be able to deal with whatever might come up. We are initially determined to ensure that young people get the right grade the first time so that the appeals process is not the route that people have to go down. The focus for me, the SQA and others is to ensure that we are delivering an assessment process that is supported and that children and young people can get the right grades the first time. I have, of course, discussed the capacity of the system with the SQA, as Mr Greer would thoroughly expect me to do so, and I am sure that in the statements that I will be making to Parliament next week, if Parliament allows, we can go into further details on that. Beatrice Wishart Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I also add my welcome to you and the cabinet secretaries in your new roles? How are there still big questions on issues like appeals six months after exams are cancelled, halfway through assessments and four weeks from the end of term? Will the new cabinet secretary respect the vote won by Scottish Liberal Democrats in February to reform the SQA for the recovery? After weeks of exams, pupils need fast and accessible mental health support. Can the cabinet secretary guarantee that? As I said in one of my previous answers, I am looking very carefully at what we need to do to ensure that the information that is going out to young people is informative, succinct and detailed where necessary. Part of that is around the support that we can give to young people going through that process, not just in the practical sense of how to appeal and how to go about that, but also the support in general that any young person might require, given the difficulties and the challenges that many of them have faced this year. I give my reassurance to Beatrice Wishart that this is something that I am giving active consideration to. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. On a point of order, I would be grateful if Kevin Stewart, Minister for Mental Well-being and Social Care, would apologise to the Parliament and correct the official record following an inaccurate response to an urgent question last week. The minister was responding to a supplementary from myself on whether patients had been risk-assessed under health and safety legislation and the minister stated that the unlawful transfer of patients from hospitals to care homes without the conducting of risk assessments had already been looked into by the Mental Welfare Commission as part of their report last week on authority to discharge. I wrote to the Mental Welfare Commission to ask if this was the case and here is an extract of their response. Our report does not focus on health and safety legislation or the risk assessments that you refer to. This is not an area that has been investigated by the Mental Welfare Commission. Accuracy matters in this Parliament. I am sure that the mistake was inadvertent. On the basis that the Mental Welfare Commission did not consider this, will the minister apologise to the Parliament for misleading it and correct the official record? I thank the member for advance notice of this point of order, but as the member will be aware, I am not responsible for the accuracy of members' contributions in the chamber. However, the member will be aware that there is a corrections mechanism available to members. The guidance on the mechanism sets out the steps that a member should use if they realise that they have provided incorrect information and also the steps to take if they consider that another member has provided incorrect information.