 Rwy'nühri O'r edrych yn ar gyffيفu ar awd siaill ystins y cyhoeddwn i eich cyflaeniamhau ac mae'n nhw'n ei chwaraeg o'ch dreunio amser ar gyflosio y tanfaenau oherwydd ei chyflogi. Mae y defnyddio yn mynd i gael o gyflosio i gyflaenio i gaelio i'r blynyn amser, ond mae'n wneud am y cymredu'r llwy dolphinol, ac mae'n cymrygodd yn llwyfan i'w wneud i'r nifer. Ond yn cydweithio gysylltio, ond mae'n ddim yn hyn wedi gweldio amser hynny yn ei gaelio byddwyd byddwyd am holl mwyfyrraedd ac yn hollu. That is why our national mission to tackle child poverty is so vital. Our second tackling child poverty delivery plan, published only last month, sets out how we will drive forward our national mission, recognising the contributions all parts of society must make for all of Scotland. It sets out a critical path towards meeting the ambitious statutory target to significantly tol poffiti by 2030, as led out in the 2017 tol poffiti act unanimously passed by this Parliament? Yes. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for taking this intervention. Does the Cabinet Secretary recognise that three out of four of the child poverty targets will be missed next year? I think that it's very important to recognise, as we did last month, the important work that has been done by this Parliament. As was also set out, the difficulties that we will continue to have tackling child poverty and indeed all poverty and inequality in this Scotland as we face the welfare cuts from Westminster and the universal credit £20 cut is just but one example. That makes it exactly difficult for us to meet our targets but we are determined to do so as the cabinet secretary laid out when she launched that plan just last month. The new plan is backed by up to £113 million of additional investment in 2022-23, including to mitigate the benefit cap to further increase the game-changing Scottish child payment to £25 a week and to deliver a new employability offer for parents. The actions that we have set out are putting money in the pockets of families now, helping them to tackle the cost of living crisis and setting a course for sustainable reductions in child poverty by 2030. High-quality early learning and childcare can make a huge difference to children's lives, particularly when they are growing up in more disadvantaged circumstances. Evidence shows that accessible and high-quality ELC helps to provide children with skills and confidence to carry into school education and is a cornerstone for closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Since August 2021, all councils have been offering 1140 hours of funded ELC to eligible children, making high-quality early learning and childcare available to families and saving parents up to £4,900 a year for each eligible child. It has been a significant achievement in the face of the pandemic by local government and our local delivery partners in the private third and voluntary sectors to achieve those levels of provision and the uptake that we are now seeing. I would pay credit to the work that they are doing on that issue. Does the cabinet secretary accept that the funding formula that is currently used within our councils is unfair for the PVI sector and does she agree that there is something that needs to be done in order to sort that? We are investing heavily in ELC right across the provision office, but we are looking very carefully at what is happening with private providers. That is exactly why the Government has already undertaken work on the financial health tech, for example, and is continuing to work with local authorities and private providers to ensure that we not only understand what is happening within the system but we are acting upon that. The minister is in close contact with those providers to talk through those issues with them, as I know that she has done very regularly. This year, of course, we will begin engagement with families on setting out our ambition for the early learning and childcare to all 1 in 2-year-olds. That will start in the course of this Parliament with children from low-income households. Our vision is to develop an offer that will contribute to supporting the wellbeing of the whole family. It is important that we engage directly with families, the early learning sector and academic experts, to design how the new offer can best support children and families. We will be guided by what the evidence tells us about what is best for children and families depending on the age and stage of the child. As set out in best start break futures, tackling child poverty delivery plan for 2022-26, we will also be conducting an eligibility review in order to ensure that a coherent joined-up system for families and aligning with plans for the expansion of school-age childcare. We are contributing to reducing costs for families further by committing to transformational reform as we design a new system of wraparound school-age childcare, offering care before and after school and during the holidays free to low-income families helping to support parents and carers to have secure and stable employment if they wish to do so. Our new system will also help to reduce inequalities and access to a range of activities around the school day for children from low-income households. Children will have access to a range of activities, offering them life-enhancing experiences, including positive learning and developmental opportunities. Building a new system for school-age childcare, which is accessible, affordable and flexible, will play a pivotal role in our mission towards tackling child poverty, especially for families on lower incomes. That will have positive outcomes for the parents as well, leading to sustainable employment and increased earnings, enabling families to lift themselves out of poverty. This year, we are also investing £10 million into a targeted summer 2022 offer for children and families in low-income households, which will provide co-ordinated access to food, childcare and activities during the holidays. The school holidays should be a time for fun, and our summer 2022 offer will support young people with their wellbeing through access to a range of activities. Furthermore, of course, we will continue to provide funding for the payments vouchers and meals during all school holidays for those eligible for free school meals on the basis of low income as part of our phased expansion of free school meals. In relation to those who are eligible, for example, for free school meals or for the school clothing grant, what proportion of those entitled to the support are getting? I presume that the member is talking about how many of the families are coming forward for free school meals that we think are eligible for them. I recognise that as a challenge that we have. I say that the challenge is made even more difficult in some ways because of the universality that we have in P1 to P5 and a recognition that we then need to encourage those who are not on free school meals. I do not have the exact figures to hand them. I am happy to provide those in writing to the member if he does not have them already. However, it is something that I am aware that we have a challenge on and something that we need to look at, and it is made more complicated by the universality. However, I think that that is a good complication to have in many ways. Of course, I will come back to free school meals and universality later on in my speech. We also recognise that transformational change is needed for providing holistic support for families. That is why, through our programme for government in 2021, we have committed to investing £500 million over the lifetime of this Parliament and the whole family wellbeing funding. That will enable the building of universal holistic support services available in communities right across Scotland, giving families access to the help that they need, where and when they need it for as long as they need it. In collaboration with our partners, we are developing an ambitious programme seeking to drive whole system change to shift from crisis intervention to early preventative support. We now have a clear collective vision about what good family support looks like and the key features that characterise it, underpinned by the principles of the promise. Delivering this vision will help families to thrive, to stay together and contribute to key national priorities, including delivering the promise. Martin Whirlfield. Does that include looking at the data sharing challenges that exist between local authorities, third sector and charities and indeed central government when we reach this because the data seems to be siloed in different places? It is always a challenge when we are talking about any holistic approaches, the data sharing and the challenges that are within that. I think that we need to recognise that, if we are going to have holistic support, we will need to face up to those challenges and find a way through it. I am happy to work with the member on that and, indeed, on other issues on the whole family well-being fund, because I do believe that this could be genuinely transformational if we get this right and data is but one of the many challenges that we will face. I am conscious of time and the number of interventions, but I will try to get through the rest of my speech. We have a bit of time in hand, cabinet secretary. We do. I am so happy to hear that. I have more time for interventions. As we progress through the new parliamentary term, our mission to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap is, of course, as important as ever, and we are committed to strengthening the links between that and our national mission on child poverty. That is why the Refresh Scottish attainment challenge programme that I launched at the end of March has a new mission, to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. By removing barriers faced as a result of low income, we can ensure that children and young people have the same opportunities to succeed. Working together with local authorities Education Scotland and Schools on the back of £750 million investment over the last parliamentary term, we are investing £1 billion over the course of this parliamentary term in the Scottish attainment challenge programme. I recently announced the pupil equity funding of over half a billion pounds, which will continue to empower our headteachers over the next four years so that schools can support the children and young people who need it most. Local authorities and schools will continue to make local decisions on how best to support children and young people impacted by poverty with funding for the first time allocated to each and every local authority to drive forward a joint mission. Funding will support approaches in the classroom and approaches that reach beyond the school gates to mitigate the barriers to learning caused by poverty, and that is expected to have a long-term impact on the readiness of children and young people impacted by poverty to enter and sustain positive destinations. Michael Marr, I appreciate Minister Given Way that she recognised that the poverty related attainment gap is at its widest that it has ever been following the pandemic, certainly a huge impact, but the number she quotes represents a cut on last year's money. Can she justify that? Well, I have said that we are investing £750 million in the last parliament, £1 billion in this parliament. It has, of course, been the case that last financial year we had a £20 million Covid premium that we could add if only the UK Government had given the Scottish Government the ability to have more consequentials to deal with Covid, which is still very much with the education system. Over the next financial year, we could have perhaps repeated that. Unfortunately, we are instead in terms of a real terms cut to the funding for the Scottish Government overall. We spoke earlier about free school meals and the importance of free school meals, and that is widely recognised. We have been providing free school lunches during school term time to all children in primary 1 to 3 since January 2015. We have committed to going even further, and those universal school free lunches are now available to all children in primaries 1 to 5. We will continue with our expansion of universal provision throughout the remainder of this parliamentary term to make free school lunches available to all children in primary and special schools. Indeed, this year's budget includes an additional £42.2 million of funding to support the provision to primary 4 and 5 in special schools, and £30 million of capital for initial investment in the infrastructure needed, including dining and catering facilities ahead of the roll-out. A link to that during this parliamentary term will also work with local authorities to introduce a universal school milk scheme in primary and secondary schools. I will now turn to the school clothing grant. It is important that every child in Scotland should be able to attend school, feel uncomfortable, confident and ready to learn. I know that buying school uniforms is one of the biggest costs associated with attending school. That is exactly why we have increased the national minimum school clothing grant from its previous level of £100 per child to £120 per eligible pupil in primary schools up to £150 per eligible pupil in secondary schools last year. That partnership approach with local authorities is supported by £11.8 million of funding to provide that support to local authorities. I also appreciate that not all families are eligible to receive the school clothing grant, so that is why we are also introducing statutory guidance for schools during this parliamentary term. The guidance will seek to assist schools in reducing the cost of school uniforms for families. We will also consult on the principles of a national school uniform policy and use the findings of that consultation to inform the new national guidance. In light of the consultation, the scope of the guidance is yet to be fully confirmed, but it is expected that, alongside support for reducing costs of school uniform, the guidance will address the quality issues, clothing for PE and sports, an example of approaches already in place that reduce the cost of uniforms for families. As part of our approach to reducing barriers to participation in education, we have also continued to support the removal of core curriculum costs for primary and secondary pupils. That ensures that families do not need to meet the costs of resources and materials for practical lessons. We are also supporting families with the cost of instrumental music tuition that we have already provided local authorities with funding to ensure that no parent can be charged for instrumental music tuition during this academic year, and we are working with ADES and COSLA on a sustainable funding package for the future. As part of our emergency response to the closure of school buildings at the outset of the pandemic, we also provided £25 million in 2021 to tackle digital exclusion. That investment resulted in more than 72,000 of our most disadvantaged children and young people receiving a device to support their learning. Recognising the increasing importance of technology and education councils across Scotland have invested in their own device roll-out programmes, and we understand that in total almost 280,000 devices have been or are in the process of being distributed to learners. The pandemic has reinforced the importance of digital technology, and that is why we are committed to ensuring that every school child in Scotland has access to both a device and connectivity by the end of this Parliament in 2026. I am afraid that I am already well over my time, convener, from the committee. My apologies, but I am sure that you will make your point for me to return to enclosing. In conclusion, however, we are working across Government and with our partners to deliver our commitments to child poverty. We recognise that our schools and services that support families have a key part to play in delivering our commitments, and we are seeking to change the experiences for those who are affected by low-income in order to provide opportunities and experiences, including through education, which help them to reach their full potential. I look forward to hearing from members right across the chamber on their reflections and aspirations for young people during the course of this afternoon's debate and to move the motion in my name. Before I call the next speaker, just a reminder, given the number of interventions there that, if you make an intervention, you may find that if you want to speak later in the debate, you need to repress your request-to-speak button. I call Oliver Mundell to speak to and move amendment 4138.2 for around 11 minutes to Mundell. I move amendment 1 in my name. Back in 2015, Nicola Sturgeon said and I quote, Let me be clear, I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line for the education of our young people, then what are you prepared to? It really matters. I agreed then and I agree now. The problem for this SNP Government and in turn for Scotland's young people is that that rhetoric and reality have never been further apart. With every passing day, those words become more and more hollow. I have lost track of how many of those debates I have sat through and participated in in the past six years. SNP minister after minister stands up and sets out all those wonderful things that they are just about to get round to doing. It is depressing and it borders on the insulting when this SNP Government has had 15 years in power to get on and do things. All we hear is that it is too hard or too complicated or best of all that all the problems will go away if only we dish out a few laptops and promise people a bike. The truth is that many of the problems that we are talking about today have been created on the SNP's watch. While it might be politically convenient to scream tories every time the going gets tough, it is SNP cuts to local government budgets that have seen education squeezed and our schools left so short of resources that they sometimes even struggled to function. We have heard at the education committee only this past week that many schools are using attainment funding just to keep the show on the road. I know myself having been lucky enough to be educated before the SNP came to power that schools used to have enough resources not to have to charge young people for the basics. It did not need to be written into guidance or law. They were able to do the right thing because they had the budget flexibility. Instead, what we see today is an endless stream of policies and announcements at a national level. Lots of alleged new funding, but in turn we see core school budgets squeezed to the point where stationary and other basic equipment is being topped up by teachers and charitable sources. I believe that, in 2021, it was the sixth year in a row that education gross revenue expenditure saw a real-terms increase that does not exactly match the picture that the member is painting. I would be very surprised if the cabinet secretary was speaking to schools, pupils, parents and local authorities who all see resources under more pressure than ever before. I do not know how any Government can claim education as their top priority when schools are struggling to provide the basic materials in order for people to participate fully in lessons. I agree that it seems to be only teachers as a profession who come to us to say that they have to contribute to what they need day to day to make their classrooms work. We do not hear the same from surgeons or, indeed, lawyers. We certainly do not hear the same from politicians or Scottish Government ministers. Let us also remember that this is a Government that was all too happy to oversee a culture of exorbitant charges for music tuition. It is under their watch that this became commonplace. Shamefully now they come to this chamber and seek our thanks for intervening, but having been in the previous Parliament and listened many times to the Deputy First Minister, the Education Secretary told us that it could not be done. I find that all very depressing. The idea that, somehow, all local choices that councils just came up with is just not, frankly, believable. The truth is that this is another symptom of the squeeze that we are seeing on education budgets. Again, this routine speaks to the true motivations of the SNP. Young people suffer, but it is okay as long as the SNP can put something nice in their manifesto, promising to solve a problem that they created on their own watch. Then we move on to free school meals and breakfasts. Given the cross-party support in this Parliament, have you ever seen a Government move so slowly? Where is the urgency? Let's reflect on the fact for a second that we now live in a Scotland where charities tell us that under the eligibility thresholds there are less young people entitled to free school meals than there were 20 years ago. Something has gone badly wrong. Or on reducing the cost of school uniform, lots of words, but where has been the drive to change practice? Why are so many schools still encouraging branded items? It's not good enough to identify the problem after 15 years. You have to have shown some willing to actually do something about it. Perhaps if our education agencies weren't so weak and dysfunctional or our inspectorate was more rigorous, those messages might have got out there. Perhaps essential education teams at local authorities had the capacity beyond firefighting they might have been able to work with schools on those types of issues. I could go on and on, but you start to see the pattern. For this SNP Government, it's more important that things sound good in this chamber than that they're actually deliverable for those who need our education system the most. Yes, some things might have got better, but overall this last 15 years has been a period of stagnation at best and has ultimately seen decline. Under this SNP Government, education has lost its sense of purpose, a toxic combination of botched attempts at radical reform and empty soundbites have taken precedence over a system that delivers for our young people. Vague notions of wellbeing are now more important than doing well. Under the curriculum for excellence, we see a methodology that serves those who would do well under any system rather than a truly progressive, knowledge-based mindset that's ambitious for every young person. Education should help to break down barriers and create opportunities. It should not be about lowering expectations. Too often that's what this SNP Government's approach looks like, and that doesn't hurt those who are well supported and resourced at home. They get a head start. That impacts most on those who come to school to learn. By cutting teacher numbers and limiting school resources, a deliberate choice is being made. Again, how any SNP minister can stand up in this chamber with a straight face and claim that teacher numbers are at the highest level since they started to cut them is beyond me. At least, I suppose, there has been some recognition and admission that cutting school staff to the bone was the wrong thing to do. This was painfully exposed during the pandemic, and again, all of the evidence suggests that it was our most vulnerable young people who once again paid the price. Rather than congratulatory rhetoric, maybe the minister might start by apologising. Or, can we take another issue, the funding received to support those impoverty in rural communities like my own Dumfrieshire constituency? Again, I can't tell you how many times I've raised this issue in Parliament, yet we continue to hear that the Government's always looking for better ways of doing things. The idea that there are no young people in poverty in some small rural schools in this country that receive no peff funding is quite frankly absurd. I thank the member for taking that intervention. I assume that Oliver Mundell isn't forgetting about many of the cruel social security cuts that are presided over by his colleagues in Westminster, including the recent cut of £20 to universal credit, which is resulting in more parents struggling to put food on the table and feed their children. Oliver Mundell? I'm not denying that there are challenges there, but once again we're seeing the typical approach from this SNP Government that rather than answering questions about the things that they're responsible for, they'd rather talk about anything else. Maybe if the minister wants to intervene and tell me if it's acceptable that there are young people in poverty at some schools in our country who, under their current funding formula, don't receive any additional funding, then I'd be happy to take another intervention, but, quite frankly, I'm telling us time and time again. Of course the funding package is around free school males, and also importantly we're looking at the number of children in low-income families. If he does not agree with those measures of data about measuring poverty, particularly the number of children in low-income families, which is specific, and the 97 per cent of schools across Scotland that get the pupil equity funding, if he disagrees with that, will he tell us what ratio he would like us to use for funding? I thank the minister for that intervention, but I go back to what she said earlier in the debate to my colleague Stephen Kerr, which is that not all families are taking up their eligibility. That's a starting point. I don't think that that is a good problem to have. It's not a new problem, and it's not being created by universality. In rural communities, there are many young people who have gone without meals that are entitled to for years, and the Scottish Government should stop using that as the model for allocating funding. Yes, it's welcome that we've started looking at low-income families, but that does not apply to PEPF funding. The Government could have made that change if it decided not to. That's before we move on to the challenge of even getting to school in rural communities. Again, council budgets have been squeezed so hard, and the Government points us in the direction of local authorities' discretion, but what discretion does a local authority have to provide transport in rural areas outside of the statutory mileage limits when they have no money to do so? It all speaks to a lack of priority and an unwillingness to be upfront about the true scale of the challenge. As I conclude, it is worth noting how today's debate only found time in the weeks ahead of local government elections. If the issues that are set out today aren't enough to convince you of the lack of priority given to education under the SNP, then the amount of parliamentary time spared to discuss it certainly should. This is an SNP Government that does little more than pretend it cares. Yes, there are lots of worthwhile initiatives, but we must remember the amount to absolutely nothing if they are not delivered. Until ministers deliver on their promises, they should stop coming to this chamber patting themselves on the back. They are responsible, and Scotland's young people are being failed. Behind all the bluff and bluster, what do they really have to show for 15 years in power? I now call on Michael Marra to speak to and move amendment 4138.1. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I happily move Labour's amendment in my name. Scottish Labour is absolutely committed to the removal of the barriers to the full experience of education for every family in Scotland. Teachers, headteachers, churches and school communities have long recognised those barriers and worked over many decades to help as many young people access school trips and extracurricular activities, which make a huge difference to their lives. It is absolutely right that good practice be adopted nationwide, and the Government has a critical and key role to play in ensuring that that is the case. We know that far too many significant barriers remain, and there is our need for real poverty-sensitive policy in our schools. As the child poverty action group, and I think that we should put on record the much work that has been done by that group in recent years, so key to the development of the cost of the school day policies, they have stated that the development of poverty-sensitive school policies and practices reduced cost barriers, increased participation in school and after school activities, reduced financial pressures and improved promotion and uptake of entitlements, much to be celebrated. Further testimony quotes one parent of many that they spoke to. Times are hard when paying for the family, home, food, childcare and general child costs. Parents just need to do without to ensure that the kids don't. That's a common experience I think across Scotland, ever more so as bills increase and that household budgets are ever squeezed. We know the cost of living crisis gets worse week by week and will continue into the autumn when fuel prices will set to rise again. Parents are regularly going without meals in Scotland to ensure that their children can keep their friendships as they see it. They can and that they can smile and they can feel like all the other kids. That is still necessary, demands the kind of stopgap measures because I believe that's what they are outlined in the Government motion, but they also demand that we talk about why they happen in the first place, why work does not pay enough to make a decent life for a family, why too many are locked out of employment and why Scotland's economy continues to stagnate with chronically low levels of productivity, a yawning innovation gap, low levels of research and development, a posity of technology uptake and key skills gaps in critical industries. But one crucial part of the solution and it's detailed in Labour's motion today is truly flexible wraparound childcare that is available and affordable and the Minister had some words to say on that in her opening speech. But Labour's amendment today focuses not on what has happened or not happened and I'll come on to that in a moment, but on what needs to be done next. If families continue to be locked out of the workplace because it does not make financial sense to work, given the absence or expense of childcare, then we have a system that is broken and an urgent need of repair. The cabinet secretary had some warm words in those speech and I'm assuming that this is a kind of a preamble to saying we're already doing all the things that Labour are asking for in their amendment. But after 15 years, they will be now hearing the representations that we on these benches are hearing on a weekly basis from people who run nurseries, people who would love to have their kids in nurseries, families who can't take on the extra hours that they would be able to put money into the bank accounts to pay for many of the things they want for their children. That requires a public, published analysis of what is going on in our childcare sector because they have been profoundly disrupted by the pandemic and I regularly hear from those operators who are losing staff and are unable to replace them. Behaviour and working patterns have changed for a huge percentage of the population that has to be recognised, but that is threatening the business models of current service providers of needs of shifted and changed in new ways. Labour believes that urgent assessment is required of the health of the sector and the Scottish Government should commission that work rather than having private conversations behind closed doors. So there's a significant impact, and let's be clear on this, on the most impoverished communities and families, than the lack of that childcare, the lack of its availability and the steadfast refusal of this Government to quantify the impact of the pandemic on the life chances of the poorest children in this country. The list of interventions that the Government has put together in this motion today is a list of words rather than real actions in many cases. Many of those initiatives have yet to be delivered and the cabinet secretary shakes her head at that. Some are years away from being so if they were ever to be delivered. Digital devices, we know how slow the roll-out of that has been. We know, frankly, that digital devices were needed last year more than ever, and we know that hundreds of thousands of them won't be delivered for years to come. The figures just mentioned today are seemingly an update to around 220,000, is approaching 30 per cent of the number that will be required. At the moment when need has been greatest, it's frankly not good enough. I've spoken with head teachers across Scotland who have used peff money for those purposes to ensure that young people do not miss out, to upgrade the kinds of additional experiences that schools can offer. The cuts to central attainment funding this year of £27 million last year shows the real priority that the Government gives to those efforts, the real priority that they do in all of their spending plans. In answer to my intervention, there was no real justification because this is a question of priorities. What do we think that money should be spent on? We know that Audit Scotland said that very limited progress had been made to closing the attainment gap. We know that the attainment gap is now at its greatest and largest level ever. The idea that that's the point in which you cut the money, that you don't find the additional resource from somewhere else to actually allow you to accelerate, because if we go back on to the same track that we were on pre-pandemic, we're bound to fail, without any doubt, because the resource won't be there most certainly. The figures do actually show that we were making progress in tackling poverty-related attainment gap before the pandemic, but I'm afraid that Mr Marra's speech up until now has been a long list of demands of what the Government should spend on, but at the budget every single year, his party do not deliver any budgeted costing stats to be able to deliver that. If there's any danger of warm words and little action, it's from the Labour Party who continue to demand that the Government does something, we are doing a lot on education, but the warm words and the demands from him are all a bit little… Michael Marra? I'm afraid to say that the Government says it's entirely false. Labour provided costed budget proposals this year, as it had previous years, and we absolutely believe that education has to be a priority for investment in this Parliament. The question that has to be put to the Cabinet Secretary is why she was singularly unsuccessful in winning any arguments around the Cabinet table to get the investment in her portfolio from early years to primary school, secondary school, the cuts to education in colleges and university. Every part of her portfolio is screaming out loud saying that she can't win the arguments that require her to win for our future. No, you've had your chance, thank you very much. The child poverty action group has been behind so much of the policy drive. I thank the member for giving way eventually. Investment in education is actually from resource and capital spending 2023 up almost £200 million. That's an increase, but if he doesn't think that that's satisfactory, where does he want it to come from in the rest of the Scottish budget? Is it health? Is it justice? Where does it come from? Because once again, we're getting rhetoric and very little else. Perhaps the Cabinet Secretary is deaf to the many of the other conversations that have gone on in this chamber in recent weeks. Perhaps he could come from the grotesque waste that this Government undertakes on a day-to-day basis. This party laid out last week £3 billion of waste from this Government in recent years. We look at the very scandal and the amount of money that has been poured down the drain. This Government cannot not talk about the prudent... No, thank you, sir. The Government does not have a record where it can talk about the prudent management of the finances of this country and the responsible expenditure of taxpayers' money, because that is what it is. This funding was meant to help to close the attainment gap. It is £1 billion of taxpayers' money and that gap is bigger than ever. We have to remember the First Minister's personal defining mission, the top priority of this Government. Just last week, we saw that, as a cut to the poorest communities of attainment funding of 60 per cent, the EIS had to say this. We have been absolutely appalled at the level of funding cuts at six of the original challenge authorities. It beggars belief as to why those cuts would be made at a time when poverty is rising and the pandemic has absolutely bludgeoned some communities the EIS's words. School leader Scotland said, we know the number of young people impacted by deprivation in these nine challenge areas, surely it is immoral to take away that funding. The NASUWT said that it is clearly not right to be making those swinging cuts, swinging cuts, and that will certainly have a negative impact in those areas. The cabinet secretary knows she has cut this money, 60 per cent, for the most impoverished communities in Scotland, 79 per cent in my home city of Dundee, and a former headteacher in Dundee saying that he has no idea how Dundee can cope with the cut of more than 100 posts for those working with the most deprived. That is the way that the funding works. It is critical to deliver more equal education. Why won't the minister listen to those voices? It does not sound like she is listening to ours. No young person should be unable to fully participate in their school life. No young person should lie awake worrying about finding money for dress down days, book sales and bake sales. No young person should be prevented from tuition and favourite subjects, such as home economics or music, due to family budget pressures. No child should miss school due to the stigma brought on by poverty and disadvantage. No child should miss out on the excitement and the challenge of their school residential because the fee set is amounting to the climate itself. I remember my school days clearly, and whilst most of those memories are fond, the time that we were experiencing state poverty when I was about eight is forever etched in my soul, despite those memories being the ones that I would rather forget. I have already spoken in this place about the hunger, the food banks and the anxiety that I had surrounding food and security, but I also remember clearly not having so much as a quarter to buy a cake at the many fundraising bake sales. I remember scouring the scholastic book leaflet that was popped into my school bag earmarking all the books I would choose if money was not so tight. I watched with envy my cheeks burning with stigma and shame as the box of books arrived in the classroom and was unpacked with gleeful happy kids running up to fetch theirs when the teachers shouted their name. Even at that young age, I knew the pressures that my parents were under and I hadn't even shown them the form less it made the whole situation worse. Kids in poverty make these decisions all of the time to protect themselves and their carers. I can also vividly remember my toes cramping at the front of my shoes as they began to pinch but not saying a word. Right now, in our country, there are young people ignoring their pinch toes, crumpling up and hiding away their book form, feigning a sore belly on yet another non-uniform day and dreaming of a P7 school residential that they know they won't be able to attend. Deputy Presiding Officer, we know that this is damaging for the wellbeing of our young folk and we all know that this adds to the poverty-related attainment gap. When you spend your life worrying as a small child about money and food, you will often struggle to focus on anything else, including your lessons. That is why reducing the cost of the school day for low-income families is crucial. Recognising the on-going work across national and local government and third sector partners in this area is key. I welcome the cabinet secretary's recommitment to delivering on our priority policies. According to the child poverty action group, who have pioneered this work and their cost of the school day programme, removing cost barriers at school helps to build the right foundations and conditions for better participation, wellbeing and attainment. Boosting incomes through access to financial entitlements helps to support families in the here and the now and contributes to the wider national mission of ending child poverty. An independent evaluation of the cost of the school day programme found that those approaches can support increased understanding of child poverty. The development of poverty-sensitive school policies and practices reduce cost barriers, increase participation in school and after school activities, reduce financial pressures and improve promotion and uptake of entitlements. As a member of the party of government, I am proud that we have created the Scottish child payment and I am glad that our budget decisions ensured that we will be increasing it to £25 per week per child. That money is vital to help those families facing the worst effects of the Tory cost of living crisis, and she will have experienced the worst cut to welfare in living memory. I know that the Opposition may say that the uplift was only ever to be temporary, but when every penny is a prisoner and that extra 20 quid a week meant not a trip to the food bank, having it snatched away again only results in further poverty and debt, it is not like a banker's bonus, it is not a nice wee bung, this made a huge difference to families and its removal was cruel. Our welcome decision to mitigate the UK Tory benefit cap, including the hated rape clause, will also mean that those larger families who were plunged into absolute poverty will see a marked improvement to their finances. My own SNP-led local authority, area and east theatre, where I am still a councillor for exactly 10 more days, is making great strides in reducing the cost of the school day in a number of ways with our poverty proofing error establishments programme, which uses innovative ideas to help families, including everything, from using the PEF funding for something like a school steamy, where the entire community has access to clothes washing facilities, to free breakfast clubs and reducing hunger and food waste by packaging up surplus school food for children to help themselves to on the way out the door, on the way home from school. Many schools are also holding clothing swaps, as it is recognised that children do not just grow over the summertime, children continue to grow right throughout the year. We have ensured that free period products are also available in multiple locations, but those can also be ordered and delivered straight to the home for all via an online form. We have made great strides in allocating digital devices and connectivity to ensure pupils have the tools that they need for learning. If you listened to everybody else in this place today, you would think that no child has received a laptop nor the connectivity that they need. Holiday times can be very hard for families, and we have ensured that we have school meal provision coupled with access to free activities and outings. A very simple and yet effective tool has been the move towards automatic awards for free school meals and clothing grants to reduce the stigma of the application process and to increase uptake. We all recognise across the chamber that increasing uptake is vital and that we need to make sure that we do it, but remember that more than three quarters of families are already in receipt of the Scottish child payment. I do not have time to complement the wide range of policy initiatives, including in the Scottish Government's child poverty strategy for Scotland, to maximise household resources and improve children's wellbeing and life chances. I am sure that we can all agree that that has never been more important as costs soaring and family budgets are squeezed like never before. All of our children deserve a supportive and nurturing school environment free from money worries. I now call Stephen Kerr to be followed by Paul MacLennan. Eleanor Whitten has pointed out that the SNP promised every child in Scottish schools a free device and a free internet connection, and they are failing to deliver that. I have always believed that education is the best tool for social empowerment. It is one of our country's greatest achievements that taxpayers fund education. For every child that calls here home, a privilege that many millions of children around the world do not enjoy as they are right. As has been highlighted by the contributions that we have already made, taxpayer-funded education does not instantly create equal opportunities within our education system. As a Conservative, creating equal opportunities for every child regardless of family income can succeed at the heart of my politics, but at the heart of my politics is pragmatism. It is correct to remind ourselves that creating equality of opportunity will not occur with one policy idea alone. There must be a wide range of policies, and three of which I intend to address briefly in my speech. First, we must raise the standard of education across our schools. We do not create equality of opportunity by lowering standards in Scottish education. Professor Lindsay Paterson has said that available data shows that low-status students do well in England as well as in Scotland, while high-status students do better in England. He goes on. It would thus be highly disingenuous to say that only that inequality in Scotland is falling and is less than in England. Inequality also fell in England mainly by raising the low-status students while also raising high-status students. Scotland raised low-status students by less and depressed high-status students. It would not be reasonable, he says, to describe this as better progress towards equality of outcome in Scotland than in England. I know that it is a comparison that the SNP loves to make all the time. The SNP has run out of ideas to improve education stars in Scotland, while it offers slogans and expensive promises, international league tables and the increasing attainment gap show the continuous decline of Scottish education on the SNP's watch. Rather than believing that more bureaucracy is the answer to our problems, the Scottish Conservatives want to restore the values that make Scottish education the envy of the world. We want to empower teachers in the classroom, allowing them to decide what approach is best for pupils in their school. Second, we must ensure that support is made available to the poorest families and that that support reaches them. Just yesterday, meeting with teachers from schools in the western partnership area, I was forcibly reminded that that support is not getting to the families that most need it. Those who most need the help are often the ones not accessing it. Yes, I will. I hear what he is saying about targeting money to low-income families, but does he also recognise that many of the actions that the Scottish Government takes to support low-income families—for example, increasing the Scottish child payment—is simply undermined by his colleagues at Westminster when they raise benefits by 3 per cent and when they cut universal credit? Stephen Kerr. The minister may not like it, but we are here today examining the record of the Scottish Government. I know that you all love to talk about the Tory Government at Westminster, but we are actually here to hold the Scottish Government to account. Not only is there a problem with accessing support, but there is an issue even with eligibility, as has been mentioned by my colleague. According to Aberlawer, fewer children are eligible for free school meals today in Scotland than 20 years ago. In 2002, low-income working families with an income of just over £13,000 were eligible for free school meals today. That income threshold is little more than £16,000. Adjusted for inflation, however, the income threshold from two decades ago would be the equivalent of around £22,000 in 2021. To ensure that families that need support get support, the Scottish Conservatives are committed to introducing free school breakfast and lunches for all primary school children. Why the Government, with such cross-party support in this place for such a measure, does not make haste, is completely beyond my reckoning. The practical points about why we need to provide capital expenditure for local authorities is if we actually increased free school meals for primary 6 and 7 at this point, while there are not the catering facilities available. What we would have in areas is actually a cold lunch being provided that is not as good as the hot lunch, which, thanks to the cuts in welfare down Westminster, is likely to be sometimes the only hot meal that a child will get. We would have actually seen the diminishing of the quality, which is why we are ensuring that we are taking our time to get the right capital and revenue expenditure working together to provide that. Stephen Kerr. The cabinet secretary once again betrays her obsession with blaming other people for the lack of progress that her Government makes in measures where there is cross-party support in this chamber. During the school holidays, we also support the provision of free school meals for eligible families. We would ensure that the income threshold is adjusted to take inflation into account. Thirdly, we must create the economic conditions for family incomes to rise across Scotland. Research that was published yesterday by the Scottish Trade Union's Congress—an unlikely ally, I must admit—found that the average take-home pay for Scots is the lowest compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. The SNP has presided over a low-growth, low-wage economy since 2007, and last year went in the coalition with the Greens who do not even support the concept of economic growth. Can I take one more? Yes, briefly, to Stuart McMillan. Thank you, Stephen Kerr, for taking the intervention. Will Stephen Kerr tell me which Parliament actually controls employment legislation? Stephen Kerr? The economy—I am talking about Stuart McMillan—is the reality is that you cannot escape your economic record. You have delivered a low-growth, low-wage economy. You have been in power for 15 years. You have made a coalition with a party that does not even accept the concept of economic support. Make no bones about it. Economic growth is about good jobs, well-paid jobs for people to be able to support themselves and their families. The Scottish Conservatives believe that there must be a change in the Scottish Government's attitude and approach, moving past slogans and self-congratulatory motions to build a high-growth, high-wage economy. To do that, the Scottish Conservatives want to create an environment where Scotland is at the forefront of innovation, the forefront of enterprise, skills, vocational development and business opportunity by creating the right economic conditions to increase pay throughout Scotland. Families will have more money in their pocket and keep more of their money after tax, helping them with not only the cost of the school day, but all the bills that families throughout Scotland face to conclude. I am sure that the Scottish Conservatives will work with every party in this chamber to help families with the cost of the school day, but we will approach that pragmatically knowing that there is not only one solution. We need a fundamental shift in how we approach this question, with greater emphasis being placed on raising broad educational standards and building a high-skill and high-wage economy. I now call Paul McLennan to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. This is an incredibly important debate at a time when the cost-loving crisis is impacting us all. There are many things that make me proud to call Scotland my home, our welcome approach to old Scots and new, our role as a progressive nation that is brimming with innovation and confidence, if it is all in this world. It is my privilege every day to represent my local areas loading in our national parliament and to have an opportunity to discuss issues that mean so much to those people who live in the constituency. One of the most important issues that I have had the chance to debate and lead changing my role as a member of the Scottish Parliament is ensuring that Scotland is the best place in the world for children to grow up. A passion by in that I know is shared by across all the different benches in the chamber and, of course, is a priority for our Scottish Government. It is because of the shared passion that this very chamber unanimously passed the UNCRC Bill, which sought to incorporate the United Nations Convention of Rights of the Child into Scots law. Indeed, if we are not being constitutionally prohibited from enacting such legislation, we could have had enshrined and fully protected the rights of our children in domestic law. Article 28 of the UNCRC says that children and young people have the right to education no matter who they are. I want to get more into my speech. Of course, all children in Scotland are afforded this right free of charge. This educational journey begins when the majority of Scotland's children usually start school, usually between the ages of four and five and a half. It is in primary schools that our children experience the majority of their formative years. Given our children their first experience of formal learning, which can influence the route that they take throughout the education system and their success in it, it is undeniable that primary schools are very important places in a child's life. Secondary schools, of course, represent the next chapter in our children's lives, a place where they meet new people, have the opportunity to learn more than they ever have, experience new experiences and develop from teenagers into young adults before entering the world. At every stage of Scotland's children's lives, our schools have a huge impact, both positive and negative, on the people our children become and strive to be. Why is this important today? It is important because whether the majority of Scotland's children are given the same opportunity to attend school, the school experience and, indeed, the cost of the school day impacts Scotland, children across Scotland, very differently. Yes, on the face of education in Scotland is free, but there are often hidden extra costs that can act as a barrier for participation in school. As we all know, school costs can put pressure on low-income families and put children and young family at risk of missing out on opportunities and feeling different, ashamed and stigmatised. We heard from Elena Whitham's speech in that regard. I can remember the same kind of feelings as well, and I can remember kids going through school myself at the same time. Uniforms, trips, school lunches, gym kits, pencils and pens, dress down days can be difficult to afford for low-income families. There are one in four children in Scotland in poverty, which works at around 5,000 children in East Llywain. The scale of poverty-related stigma that some children in our schools may experience should not be underestimated. The universal credit cuts affected 8,000 families in East Llywain alone, so taking lessons from the Conservatives around about the support for families is no thanks. The poverty-related stigma is combined with a very real ally for our families with school-age children. Costs associated within and out of school activities can place significant burden on financial resources and increase the cost of living even further. Of course, in recent years, Covid-19 has magnified already a greater risk of poorer educational outcomes and well-being, increased barriers to engagement and reduced participation in the school life associated with growing up in poverty. We have had extensive debate in this chamber about the cost-loving crisis that we are already living through right now. Skyrock and energy prices are impacting families on the lowest income in our local areas. I want to consider the number of food bank parcels that are given across the county doubling on a month-to-month basis. Last month alone, it is 104 per cent year-on-year. Schools cannot eradicate child poverty alone. It is for that reason that the Scottish Government has plans for the entire suite of measures that can prevent and mitigate the effects of poverty. The doubling of the Scottish child payment to £20 a week and, with the intention to go up to £25 a week, of course, is one example of that. Well, there is a wee bit of time in hand if the member wishes to take the intervention. I thank the member for taking the intervention. Would you also welcome the doubling of the Scottish child payment for children on bridging payments? I do not know that the member has raised that before. I think that the cabinet secretary and board of ministers will pick that up in their summing up. Schools and education services can do their bit to face up to child poverty by tackling the cost of school day and partnership with other services. That will impact the impact of the quality in the health, well-being and learning outcomes that are being experienced by our children. Of course, the extension of free school meals to all primary school children aged pupils in the recent announced £1 billion funding that was given by the Government to close the poverty attainment gap over this parliamentary term will make a huge difference alongside these local solutions. Does the member recognise that there is a problem, as has been mentioned in the previous debate, with getting the people that need the support that supports that support in terms of accessing it? Does he acknowledge that? Is that something to perhaps sit across the parties that we could work on, despite his earlier comment about my party and our interest in the welfare of families? Paul McLennan? I think that the universal credit point, but I think that the point that you make, Mr Kerr, is very relevant, because I think that there is still that stigma that is attached, and I think that we have all got a role as MSPs and working with the local authorities to break down that stigma that exists. So, there is an issue around that, but we all have a role to do that. I think that we have learned from the cabinet secretary about the wraparound care and the intentions and plans for that. We need to level up the playing field for children and striving for an education system that has pupil equity throughout. There is no doubt a goal for all of us, regardless of where we come from in the chamber. I will finish with this key point. An equal access to learning and opportunities at school means an equal outcomes for our children. It is crucial that every child is able to make the most of their school day. The Scottish Government is helping to make this happen in Scotland. Thank you, Mr McLennan. I now call Pam Duncan-Glancy to be followed by co-capture. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Just last month, the Scottish Government published the second tackling child poverty delivery plan. We on those benches recognised the action taken to date, but shared concerns of many organisations that, although it contained some good ideas, most of those were little more than that—ideas presented without plans or actions. Despite whatever the Government has done to date, experts still say that, and only on a good day, we might just scrape through the relative poverty target and that we will most definitely miss three out of four of the other child poverty targets. Deputy Presiding Officer, that means that this time next year, 120,000 children will still live in absolute poverty, unable to pay for their very basic needs. It is clear that the actions of this Government right now are not enough. Warm words won't pay bills. If they don't pick up pace and scale, hundreds of thousands of children in Scotland will be on a path to destitution. That grim reality is only the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse when we look at priority families. The Government's failure to provide targeted support to those families also means that households with a disabled person in them, single-parent families and black minority ethnic families face disproportionately high levels of deprivation, and the child poverty plan does little for them. This is about children and human rights. An adequate standard of living is a right under the Human Rights Act, the UNCRC and the UNCRPD, yet tens of thousands of children are yet not able to realise that. Those treaties also protect our rights to education, and I'm proud to live in a country where that education is free, and thanks to previous Scottish Labour and Liberal Democrat administrations here in Scotland, that continues all the way to university. Just because every child has a place at school doesn't mean that each child is able to enjoy that experience equally. Children cannot learn when they're hungry. That's why our cost of living package backed money in people's pockets. That's why we asked the Government to make the Scottish child payment £40 in April next year and called on them to do more for those on low incomes and those in the squeeze middle. Now that the Tories and Westminster nor the SNP in Scotland have done enough to mitigate the effects of rising food and fuel prices, they've ignored our calls and families are buckling under the pressure. For people living in poverty or even those just about managing to stay afloat, the costs of going to school and fully realising their right to education are for too many rights that they cannot afford. Third sector organisations are doing their best to step up and plug gaps, providing hardship funds to those who have no one else to turn, and I thank them for their incredible work this and every year. Organisations such as Aberlour have given out £1.5 million to over 6,000 people to help them to cover basic necessities, but the truth is that it shouldn't be down to them. Uniform, a school bag, a pencil case, a stationery, indoor shoes and outdoor shoes, lunch shoes, travel to get there, those are the basics. There are initiatives, including some Government ones, in place to help with some of those, such as free school meals and pre-loved uniforms and kitbanks. Using them often comes with stigma felt by parents and their children. They don't reach everyone or work for everyone either. There are families who just miss out on free school meals who are unable to pay the rate of a basic daily meal. Never mind including extra for additional treats that other children can afford. With the rising cost of living and increasing food prices, those who were just about managing to provide packed lunches are now struggling to do so, at least to the nutritional standards that children in need. And too often, children are even hiding their lunchboxes or eating separately from their friends to hide what they've got or not got. Those initiatives make children feel different, less than their peers, sometimes by their peers. It doesn't have to be like that. Reducing stigma is crucial and it's possible. Many schools operate a card-based system where children can either top up their card online or with cash. With people on free school meals, they automatically receive credit, meaning that they and their friends use the exact same method of payment at the front of the lunch queue. No child should be handed a letter, chasing them for debts or being unable to pay for their lunch. Interactions with schools and payments processes should all be via parents. Schools and local authorities should be reaching out to parents, establishing where support is needed and offering it. And hardworking teachers and school staff know how to do this. They know their pupils well. They are a line of defence against children going hungry. Collaborative working is vital to ensure that, when parents are struggling, the school can point them in the right direction for additional support via local authorities, citizens advice bureaus and third sector organisations, in a way that is not judgmental or stigmatising. However, the more that school, council and third sector budgets are cut, the harder it is to do that and to support families. Furthermore, schools that mandate specific uniforms and PE kits from particular suppliers should really consider changing to a more flexible and generic approach, making it easier for parents to look for cost-sensitive options. One school in my region demands a uniform that costs almost £100 on outfit, while others are more flexible, meaning that parents can easily pick up much cheaper alternatives. Lastly, school trips, clubs, special celebrations and events, the favourites of which I am sure many of us can recount, fill many families with dread, and those arise as those arise in the school calendar. For some, they are simply unthinkable. Budget restraints facing school means that more and more children are having to pay to attend or cover supplies at extracurricular clubs. Families see their children missing out as they watch others participate in those experiences, with no feasible ways of doing so themselves. Trips to parks, museums, libraries and leisure facilities are, of course, a good alternative, but that is only possible while those places are open and accessible. I know only too well in my region of Glasgow that the diminishing council budgets mean that those places are the first to be cut and that the options available are not there for schools. Places such as the People's Palace are a prime example. I hope that Glasgow City Council will pledge to ensure that it is never again forced to close its doors. The cost of the school day is too often a hidden cost, but the effects of it are not. Not properly considering it when we celebrate the right to freedom of education leaves children to face stigma and prejudice made to feel different. Justice children cannot learn when they are hungry. They cannot learn to feel potential when they feel judged or stigmatised. We do not need miracles to change that. We need innovation, proper funding for councils, money in people's pockets and real action to tackle child poverty and the cost of living crisis. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to speak in this debate, reflecting on the many vital actions that are being taken by the Scottish Government to reduce the cost of the school day for children from low-income families. I welcome the Scottish Government's recognition that the state of affairs is totally unacceptable. The motion demonstrates its commitment to ensuring that children can participate fully in all aspects of school life without additional financial costs. Education should, of course, be free for all children. As a teacher of 30 years' experience in the classroom, I have seen the impact on the left-out child of not being able to go to the Christmas fair and being left in the classroom because they do not have a ticket, not having the £30 to adopt the soft toy. The thoughtfulness of teachers giving their own money to children to enable them to buy the popcorn or guess how many sweets there are in a jar. In fact, teachers in collaboration with parent councils have long been aware of the needs to ensure that no child is excluded. I am sure that we all remember participating in sponsored walks and asking friends and family to contribute. Perhaps some of us would have provided more benefit by taking part in sponsored silences. Not wanting to come across as a total mistrunchable, I accept and believe that these activities are a vital component of the school day and calendar. They contribute to the school and wider community in so many fun ways. Of course, all children should participate fully, but without experiencing the stigma of not having the financial resource. The child poverty action group's cost of the school day campaign focuses on raising awareness of disproportionate and hidden costs from dress down days, to dress up days, charity support days and other fundraising events. It also highlights the cost of basic necessities such as stationery, uniform, food and transport. It provides the wealth of creative ways for a school to identify and tackle these costs, and I myself participated in the pilot training programme in Glasgow. Not only did it challenge my own assumptions but led to the school's wider re-evaluation of the school calendar events in order to cut out any additional expenses placed on children and families. The Scottish Government has quite rightly committed substantial funds to address the costs of the school day, including uniform, meals and transport. The school uniform grant currently stands at £120 per eligible primary child and at £150 per eligible secondary young person. £11.8 million of additional funding has been provided to local authorities to enable this. All children from P1 to P5 and eligible children in P6 and P7 have been in receipt of free school lunches since January. I welcome that provision and will be extended to all children in primary and special schools during the course of this Parliament. It should be noted that the policy of providing universal free school meals saves all families an average of £400 per child per year. Child poverty levels in Scotland are six percentage points below the UK average, standing at 24 per cent compared to 30 per cent in England, 31 per cent in Wales and, of course, matching Northern Ireland at the 24 per cent. Child poverty in Scotland is projected to fall to its lowest level in nearly 30 years as a result of the actions taken by the Scottish Government to date and commitments in the second tackling child poverty delivery plan. Other examples of game-changing Scottish Government action on child poverty include doubling the child payment to £20, increasing it to £25, extending it to all children in low-income families up to the age of 16 by the end of this year. The child poverty action group has reported that the cost of bringing up a child in Scotland will be reduced by 31 per cent or nearly £24,000 a year once the Scottish child payment is doubled and the expansion of free school meals provision is fully delivered. However, those actions are being taken in the face of UK Tory Government, which seems to be determined to increase inequality instead of reducing it. Of course, the Scottish Government is trying to deal with this issue with one hand tied behind its back. Inequality is a blight on Scotland and, in fact, it is a blight on the whole of the UK. The difference here is that, in Scotland, we have a Government that understands this and takes action to address it. I therefore welcome this motion and even Miss Honey, I think, would defer to the words of Kofi Annan. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want, and that they can grow up in peace. Too often we talk about education as the route out of poverty and the great level or between people of different backgrounds. It clearly has a huge role to play, but those kind of statements are often made without any acknowledgement of the wider structural inequalities in society, which mean that even the most academically gifted, high-achieving young person from a disadvantaged background is likely to be disadvantaged for the rest of their life compared to their peers from far more affluent backgrounds, even if they achieved far less in terms of qualifications at school. That is the line of argument that leads us to treating teachers and school support staff as something between a social worker and a miracle worker, expected to cure all the societal injustices that too many children and young people enter the classroom each morning, already suffering as a result of. We cannot eradicate poverty through our schools. Whatever policies we adopt and however much money we spend there, it would be desperately unfair to already overwhelmed school staff, not to mention children and their families if we were to try to do so. But schools have a really important role in a wider holistic plan to tackle and eliminate child poverty. At the very least, the policies and support mechanisms should be in place to stop them from actually making inequality worse. That is something that EIS has produced excellent resources on in recent years, and I would strongly recommend their poverty-proofing schools packs to every school and council in the country. The objective of poverty-proofing our schools and reducing the cost of the school day is at the heart of the Scottish Government's agenda, and in particular the Bute House agreement that was reached last year by the Greens and the SNP. Capping the cost of school uniforms via statutory guidance, for example, is a policy that I was proud to take from the Scottish Greens manifesto into the programme for government. Across far too many schools and council areas, there are unnecessarily prescriptive uniform requirements and exclusive agreements with certain suppliers, which only serve to drive up the cost of uniforms, putting greater burden on low income and on larger families. Parliament's education committee took extensive evidence on that in the last session, with the examples of mandatory blazers with unnecessary braiding, needlessly specific PE uniforms and other policies that were, and still are, harming some of the most vulnerable families in those school communities. Would you also confirm that that should also extend to the protective PE sports equipment that exists, without which it would be dangerous for children to participate in some sport and often gets missed out in this discussion? I think that that's a really important point. I have to say that I wasn't the sporty one in my family, but I know that my brother would certainly strongly agree with those sentiments, and my parents, with the cost of providing for my brother's enthusiasm for every sport under the sun, would certainly agree with that. As we get to the point of scoping out that statutory guidance, I think that that is a really important point to make. Increasing the school clothing grant is of course a welcome step in this area, particularly now in the context of rising inflation, but in and of itself it could never be the solution without creating statutory guidance to cap the cost of school uniforms in the first place. The uniform grant would amount to a never-increasing subsidy to the companies producing those unnecessarily expensive uniforms, so I'm looking forward to the production of this guidance and the opportunities it provides us to tackle many other inequalities that the cabinet secretary mentioned, for example, in the financial impact on young women and girls of needlessly gendered uniform policies. The expansion of free school meals is another cornerstone policy in this agenda. Universal free meals in primary school was first agreed as part of the last budget deal between the Greens and the SNP in the previous session of Parliament, and despite the challenges of the pandemic, its roll-out continues. Every child in primary 1 through 5 has access to a free meal at school with primary 6 and 7 following as soon as possible. I understand completely the cause for this roll-out to be sped up. That was the Scottish Government's original plan, but the cause is quite fairly set. It needed more time and money to make the necessary changes to school kitchens and other facilities to meet an increased level of demand. That funding has been provided this year. There are £35 million in capital funds, so I hope that the expansion to all primary year groups can now take place as quickly as possible. I thank Ross Greer for taking the intervention design, however, in larger authorities, where there is an expanding school population such as Ysgrwm, Sianis and Barton, there will be a requirement for further capital funding to ensure that school lunchtimes can be provided within the timescales. I am thinking in particular of men's primary and Newton men's, for example, where there are upwards of 1,500 pupils to be fed over a lunchtime. Ross Greer, I am grateful for the member for that intervention. I agree absolutely. The need to meet local authorities is not exactly the same, and particularly in the local authorities with growing populations like the two that the member and I both represent have just been mentioned. There is a need for continued funding to make sure that that is available. One other area that has made it from the Scotch Greens manifesto into the Government's programme is the expansion of family income maximisation services attached to schools, because for all the other important initiatives through which we support low-income families, the single most effective thing that can be done to help, which gives families the most dignity and respect, is to increase their income. The Health and Welfare children programme, run by NHS Greater Glasgow and Cwyd, is an excellent example of that. It has been running since October 2010, and as of August 2020, the financial gain for families was estimated at £36.5 million from 27,000 referrals. That is an average of £1350 going to families who were entitled to it, but for whatever reason we are not already accessing it. I know that similar schemes have seen similar levels of success in other areas. The Bute House agreement will see funding for family income maximisation services increased by £10 million over this session. That will not all take place through schools, but they play a critical role, because schools are often, not always but often, the only route through which some families have a trusting relationship with the state. Despite the wide range of measures listed in the motion and the others that the Government is undertaking, it is entirely right for those such as the Child Poverty Action Group and the Scottish Youth Parliament to push for this work to go further and faster. I can see that point made in Labour's amendment this afternoon, and that is exactly what the Government is constantly asking of itself. Just look at the new child poverty delivery plan, which commits to a further increase in the Scottish child payment to £25 and action to mitigate the UK Government's cruel benefit gap and another green manifesto commitment, which I am proud to see implemented. Eradicating child poverty is a mission that unites all of us in this Parliament, and with the caveats that I mentioned earlier, schools have a critical role to play in that effort. The Government's agenda is ambitious, but I am glad to see a collective desire for us to go further, and I look forward to discussions about how exactly we do that in the months ahead. Thank you, Mr Greer, and before I call the next speaker, could I remind all those members who are hoping to speak in the debate to ensure that their cards are in and that their requests to speak buttons are pressed? I now call Bob Doris to be followed by Pam Gozel. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I am pleased to speak in this debate regarding reducing the cost of school day for low-income families. There is a way of direct interventions that have been made by the SNP Government to help low-income families—the nearly doubled Scottish child payment, for instance—together with the three best start grant payments, those being, of course, the pregnancy and baby payment, early learning payment and school age payment, together with best start foods. That is worth over £10,000 to low-income families by the time their first child turns six. I also point out, Presiding Officer, that we saw today that, if you qualify for the Scottish child payment, the Scottish Government will now automate payments for early learning payments and school age payments, and that is a significant progress. It is worth noting that the difference of more than £8,200 for every eligible child born in Scotland compared with similar initiatives in England and Wales is a real difference. We want and must do more in Scotland, and this debate has been outlined in some of the ways that the Scottish Government intends to do that, and we are also hearing some other suggestions, and that is right. However, I have a very cynical reason for comparing the Scottish Government's priorities for low-income families to those of the UK Government in particular, and it is not to make a party political point. I think that it is self-evident that, Presiding Officer Scotland's ambitions, plans, priorities and resourcing decisions go far beyond anything that the UK Government is doing. Indeed, there is much cross-party support for SNP plans, and I think that the nature of the Labour amendment says yes to that, and I will say more a little bit about that later. The debate has moved on in Scotland from questioning universal free school meals to questioning universal free prescriptions and to questioning free access to universal higher education. Labour once described that as a something for nothing society. The debate has now moved on dramatically, and I welcome Labour coming on board with the SNP in relation to that. When compared to the deviant stationally harmful and retrograde steps by the UK Government's decisions to withdraw £20 universal credit uplift, a decision that has hammered some of our most vulnerable and struggling households, it is clear that together we have set together across-party a different, more progressive path forward for Scotland. I want to compare the decision taken here in Scotland with Westminster, because I want to urge Westminster to take a similar approach. Not only would that benefit English families in England with the initiatives that I suggest to the tune of an additional £8,300 for every child by the time they turn six, but because of the way Scotland is financed via Barnett consequentials, it would release another £225 million of Scotland's own money to reinvest in those initiatives and do further to tackle child poverty and the cost of the school day. That is by dint of the way Scotland is financed. We need England to adopt those policies so that Scotland can go further. I am proud of the priorities that are set and achievements that are secured by the Scottish Government. On a cross-party basis, I have to say, in much of those have been targeted at those in the lowest incomes. However, I want to reflect on the Scottish Government's policy in relation to the important universal approach, an increasingly universal approach, with the provision of universal free school meals. In 2015, the Scottish Government delivered universal free school meals for P1 to P3. By January this year, it is extended right up to the end of P5 pupils. For the end of this parliamentary session, it will be all children in primary school. As you put on record, I see the natural ending place universal free school meals irrespective of the school setting for children, quite frankly, but that will go beyond this Parliament, I suspect. Of course, there is also the addition to the targeted approach of free school meals for other children outwith the groups that will qualify universally. The scale of the universal provision should not be underestimated. 274,000 children between P1 and P5 are automatically registered to qualify for free school meals if they take up the offer, of course, Mr Kerr, which I accept is an issue that we should look at. That is an investment of over £95 million for the Scottish Government to provide universal free school meals, but it is also more than that. It is about tackling stigma. Yes, there is the cost of the school day, but there is the cost of stigma within the school day and the impact that has on education. It is about the right to a school meal not because you are poor but because you have the right as a young person to have a free, nutritious school meal in the first place. A dignified approach and a key child welfare approach, I rarely make personal contributions in this chamber because I am in a privileged position, including with my income, but I remember very well my experience in the 1980s with my experience of free school meals being at the end of the queue if you lost your dinner ticket. I also remember selling my dinner ticket, so I knew what it was like to have cash in my pocket for the first time ever. The Scottish child payment dramatically impacts on that in the quality of life for young people living in poverty, but I hate to mention those things because I am now in a privileged position. The Labour amendment gives us a nod to universality regarding universal available summer clubs. Much good work is going on in this area already for the last five years in Glasgow. Clings will run by the SNP regarding its holiday hunger programme, and Mary Helen Springburn, the constituency that I represent, this summer is coming in Coda, in Royston, in Somerson, in Lamb Hill, in Rutkill, in Milton, in Winford, in Maryhill. I will continue, in Springburn, in Postal Park, in Parkhouse, and in Westercomon are all individual sites where there will be summer clubs running with free access to food for all who want to come along and take part in the activities there, run by the third sector, and it will be huge when successful. The member is closing his remarks. Do I have time? Will the member bring his remarks to a close, I believe? In that case, I apologise to Pam Duncan-Glancy. In closing, I will say that I think that there is more consensus in this debate than we may realise, and I police the part on it as we work together commonly jointly to reduce the cost of school day for all the young people that we represent. I am grateful to be contributing to this important debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives and expressing my support for the amendment that was made by my colleague Oliver Mundell. We often come into the chamber and judge the performance of our education system based on attainment, but rarely do we get a chance to discuss the factors that make attainment possible. For our spend in school to be worthwhile and effective, pupils' only concern should be learning. I find it rather distressing hearing accounts of children from low-income families who have left and felt embarrassed, stressed, ashamed or outcast during their time at school due to their financial circumstances. Thank you very much to Pam Gossel for taking me into intervention. I hear what she is saying about how she feels distressed about hearing about children whose lives are impacted by poverty. Will she join me in condemning her Tory counterparts at Westminster who have imposed that poverty on many of the children and families in Scotland? I thank the member for her intervention. However, it was said earlier on that the SNP Scottish Government needs to stop hiding behind the UK Government. We are talking about failures that were mentioned earlier on. It is not just the very fiasco that you threw money away on. We are talking about the malicious prosecution of rangers. We are talking about the hospitals. We are talking about money that could be spent today on issues that are so important to our children. Ms Gossel, hold on a second. Could the front benches please stop having a slang in match while Ms Gossel is trying to speak? I hear that recently announced changes to funding for the Scottish attainment challenge will result in further examples of that in my region. The changes to the attainment gap funding model will see pupil equity funds cut by around £850,000 per year by 2025 for West Dunbartonshire, a council with the fourth highest level of child poverty in the country. In fact, an analysis by Audit Scotland published in 2021 shows that when you exclude attainment Scotland funds, spending on education in nearly all attainment challenge areas fell from 2013 to 2019. That money can be crucial in helping to cover the cost of the school day for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, so we continue to disagree with the reduction in key funding for attainment challenge areas. However, I welcome the increase in school clothing grants for primary and secondary pupils, and the full best start bright futures plan has some commendable ideas. However, you can understand my cautious optimism in relation to some measures, such as promises from the Scottish Government to provide digital devices for every school child by 2026. We need the Scottish Government to make good on its promises in the immediate term, not in four years. I am surprised by the appearance of this pledge in the Government's motion today, as though the roll-out of digital devices so far has been something to be applauded. The cabinet secretary earlier on spoke about devices being delivered. However, in my region, more than 80 per cent of pupils from West Dunbartonshire are still waiting for the digital devices, and more than 90 per cent in East Dunbartonshire are also waiting. With the initial roll-out stemming from the pandemic and the very slow delivery of devices having little to no impact on digital poverty, it is now imperative that pupils who have missed out are able to catch up. I therefore urge the Scottish Government to back our national tutoring scheme, something that we have championed for over a year and which could make a real difference to young people's education. As for the removal of music tuition fees, some councils were giving music lessons for free. However, those charges had been increasing in more local authorities over the past 10 years because of the cuts to the core council funding. Although we welcome the removal of charges, we wish that it had not been necessitated by the legacy of SNP cuts to the core local government funding. The Scottish Conservatives welcome commitments to ensuring low-income families do not incur costs for curriculum-related trips. We want to take it a step further and urge everyone across the chamber to back my colleague Liz Smith as she takes forward her member's bill to make it a statutory requirement for local authorities to offer 12 to 16 years old at least one week of residential outdoor education, which was highlighted by the member Cookab Stewart on trips outside of school. In conclusion, reducing the attainment gap is a key priority for the Scottish Conservatives. We believe that children from all backgrounds should have equal footing when it comes to attainment. We can do that by first investing £1 billion in the attainment gap, ensuring that it is allocated effectively, secondly, speeding up the roll-out of the digital devices and introducing a national tutoring scheme to help pupils catch up, and last but not least, maximising efforts to ensure that pupils are only concerned when they are at school as learning. I am a serving councillor at Stirling Council. I grew up a child of a single mum on a poor council estate in Aire, so I have some understanding of poverty and the challenges facing families today. My mum worked part-time in Greggs and to give me a real school uniform every year, she had to purchase it in credit at an exorbitant interest rate. We relied heavily on school meals so that I got at least one decent school meal a day. All through my school years, clothes and toys were in short supply. For example, I did not own my own bicycle until I could afford to buy one aged 22. Of course, at school, I often felt excluded as others enjoyed trips or had the latest fashions, and we have heard much about stigma today. I recall the benefit system at the time, certainly, was not generous and child benefit was something we came to rely on. I will never forget the look on my mum's face when I managed to lose the payment one day on the way back from the post office. Even after all those years, that look still haunts me. I have had first-hand experience of the hard choices and challenges that face families living on the bread line. As a result, I am determined that all children should have a good start in life. It is part of the reason that I get into politics. If you put yourself in the shoes of a low-income family, it is not hard to see why tackling child poverty is a number one priority for the SNP and our Government. Children from poor households do not just suffer from a lack of material things or decent food. They get bullied at school for having less. That then impacts on their enjoyment of school and on their ability to succeed there. Leaving school without making the most of opportunities is likely to result in a vicious poverty cycle. A child's experiences of school and their family's income are strongly linked. A 2007 Joseph Rowntree Foundation study found that school children from poorer families had narrower and less rich experiences with children in disadvantaged schools having less access to music, art and out-of-school activities. Alarmingly, the study also highlighted that poorer children accepted that they were not going to get the same quality of schooling, all the same outcomes as better off children. Every child should have the same opportunities and I know that this Government is committed to making a fairer society for all. The child poverty bill passed unanimously in 2017, setting out the targets to reduce the number of children experiencing the effects of poverty by 2030. Since then, the SNP and the Scottish Government have been working with charities, think tanks and the education community to break down the financial barriers that face a quarter of our children. The cost of a school day for low-income children is now mitigated by measures such as free breakfast clubs, free school meals and uniform allowance, plus supporting more parents with free childcare so that they can go to work and earn more for their families. It is good to see the shared priorities of local and national Government making impact. In my constituency, Stirling Council has introduced breakfast clubs, clothing grants and other measures to help families. The Scottish Government has also brought forward progressive policies such as increasing the Scottish child payment, which 1,360 children across Stirling have benefited from. It is our raison d'être to help struggling families. Think tanks and anti-poverty campaigners are generally in agreement that the Scottish Government's child poverty strategy could make a huge difference in maximising household resources and improving children's wellbeing and life chances. However, though our progress and commitment has been good, a question remains. How do we ensure that progress is not undone by the growing cost of living crisis and unhelp by a woefully ignorant UK Tory Government? It is quite shameful that the Tories ruthlessly cut the £20 universal credit uplift at a time when families were at their lowest point. The Scottish Government's welfare reform impact on families with children report earlier this year estimated that 70,000 people in Scotland, including 30,000 children, would be lifted out of poverty by 2024 if UK Government welfare reforms introduced since 2015 were reversed. Due to the number of mitigation policies in Scotland that put people before profit, child poverty here is notably lower at 24 per cent compared to 30 per cent in England. That includes a focus on the availability of social housing and local government schemes such as the Scottish welfare fund and council tax reduction, which help to prevent destitution. However, I am concerned that the pandemic and the on-going cost of living crisis will make our targets difficult to meet unless additional support is provided by Westminster or ultimately we achieve independence to control our own financial levers. Our promises provide hope and implementing these promises is key. I am proud to say that Scotland is a much better place for low-income children now than when I was a youngster thanks to the SNP. When we invest in our children's welfare, we invest in the welfare of all. I welcome that motion. Thank you. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to speak in this debate about what can be done to assist with the cost of the school day, especially at a time when families across Scotland are struggling with the current cost of living crisis. We know that this cost of living crisis has been the biggest fall in living standards since records began. That is why it is important that we take a planned approach. We must ensure that everything feasible is done to adjust the costs facing families from the cost of the school day. The approach that is set out by the Scottish Government is welcome and it will be of great assistance to many families across Scotland. It is also in tune with our national mission to eradicate child poverty. I welcome the investment that is removing barriers to education, including the removal of the core cricklin costs for all primary and secondary pupils. That will ensure that families do not have to meet the costs of resources and materials for practical lessons. The change in mindset that the cost of school day approach is bringing about will continue to see financial barriers to education removed. To be successful, it must listen and act on the issues that parents have identified. It also needs to be the mindset within our schools, with headteachers and staff being aware of the potential unintended implications of money being sought to facilitate school activities and events. I have seen the effectiveness of that type of approach first hand in my roles as a councillor on Weston Bartonshire Council and I draw members' attention to my regular register of interests. In Weston Bartonshire, every headteacher has undertaken training on the impacts of poverty and adversity on children and families. All schools have undertaken training on mitigating against the costs of the school day. All schools are committed to working with their parents and partners to address the challenges of poverty and to reduce buyers to inclusion as a result of poverty. A multi-agency group of staff have worked together to produce a cost of school day resource, which reflects surveys of parents and their views. That resource provides support and guidance to establishments and highlights barriers and ways to overcome them. A short-life working group is leading authority-wide developments in addressing inequality and supporting establishments in addressing that with their school communities. I am clear that our schools are committed to reducing financial and other barriers to education, and a step change made by that approach should not be underestimated. Parents are being listened to and their concerns have secured necessary change. We must match that step change by continuing to roll out policy that puts money in the pockets of families and gives financial support the need. That was especially important during the pandemic and now during this cost of living crisis. That is why in Weston Bartonshire we took the decision to double our payment of the school clothing grant to £300. That is why the Scottish Government has doubled the Scottish child payment among creases to £25. That is why we have upgraded Scottish benefits by 6 per cent at a time when the Westminster Government upgraded benefits by only half that amount. I take this further opportunity to call on them to do the right thing and follow our approach to upgrading. I also welcome our decision to mitigate. Pam Duncan-Glancy. I thank the member for taking that intervention. In line with such an approach to upgrading, will the member also support a doubling of the carers allowance supplement so that that too can be upgraded? I also welcome our decision to mitigate the benefit cap. The Westminster policy delivers to deprived families with children of the basic subsistence levels within the UK social security system. Our commitment to free-school meals is also massively important in reducing the cost of school while providing nutritional meals to our young people. Important too is the continuation of the education maintenance allowance when it was scrapped in other parts of the UK. Also one of our best start grants is paid when a child starts school in recognition that this is a time that puts more financial pressure on families with children. It is no surprise then that the child poverty action group pointed out in the report the cost of the child in Scotland that the combined value of Scottish Government policies and lower childcare costs were reduced to net costs bringing up a child by up to 31 per cent and that is nearly £24,000 for lower-income families. There is a wide financial package available to reduce the cost of the school day and support families in a wider setting, but it is not enough, Presiding Officer. We must maximise the take-up of this approach through access to advice and innovative approaches that minimise bureaucracy. As the child poverty action group pointed out, this support is one of the positive things from the cost of the school day approach. I welcome the continued commitment to this from the Scottish Government and local actions across Clydebank and Mogai. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I wholeheartedly welcome the Scottish Government's support for the cost of the school day approach. I pay tribute to all schools across my constituency, our teachers, all staff and our schools, our senior education officers for the commitment and compassion, and for the determination to ensure that unnecessary costs are removed from the school curriculum and that financial barriers are removed so that access to education is not shaped by your ability to pay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms McLean. I now call on Paul O'Kane to be followed by Jim Fairlie for around six minutes, Mr O'Kane. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Following the two previous speakers, I will also declare an interest perhaps for the last time in this chamber as a serving councillor in East Wales Council. I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate this afternoon. I want to begin by praising the excellent work of our schools and the many dedicated staff who work in them day in and day out, because schools are so much more than just places of learning. I am sure that we can all agree that, in our own communities, we see schools at the very centre of supporting children and young people and our families to grow and thrive in safe and supported environments. I am sure that we have all had experience of that wider role that schools can play in bringing communities together and meeting people where they are in order to work as hard as possible with them to respond to their needs. That means all children and all families have a relentless focus on breaking down the barriers that exist to achieving the full potential of every learner. In preparing for today's debate, I have been thinking about the genuine transformative power that experiences in and around school life can have on a young person. My mum taught in a primary school for 40 years and still speaks about so many of the young people that she taught and supported to experience the world both inside and out with the classroom. The first time a child has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and to perform for their classmates is when a child learns to swim and takes to the deep end on their own for the very first time, or taking a school trip away from home for the first time to Iona or an outward bound and watching children wonder in history or nature. It may seem simple, but there is power in these things. As CPAC has pointed out in its work on in-school poverty, children are missing out on having fun. It is more fundamental than that. Children are often missing out on being themselves and learning about themselves. That is why I commend CPAC's work on supporting schools to think about how to make those experiences as accessible and cost-neutral as possible, something that teachers such as my mum and many others have been doing for many years. We know that, with diminishing financial resources, it becomes harder and harder. We know that it often falls to staff, parent councils, charities, churches and others to help plug the gap. We also know that the costs of the fundamentals of the school day, such as uniform costs, key kit, food, equipment and digital access, all continue to rise. That is why it is right that the Government has worked with COSLA on increasing the school clothing grant and the expanded provision of free school meals. It is clear that councils have also gone above and beyond in extremely difficult circumstances. Whether it is Labour-led North Lanarkshire combating holiday hunger with club 365 and providing the first-ever clothing grant for nursery children, I am sure that Bob Doris does not get to mention North Lanarkshire, and I will not mention all the communities in North Lanarkshire that are benefiting from that holiday hunger programme. I will let other colleagues perhaps do that. I am sure that the member will want to concur that there is great work across all local authorities to address those issues, and much of the stuff in the Labour amendment is taking place across Scotland in SNP Glasgow, and I understand from what you say in North Lanarkshire also. The point that I am making is that councils have gone above and beyond to help to deliver much of this agenda, and Labour-led North Lanarkshire in my region has invested in a scheme directed at tackling the cost of the school day, with £0.5 million already invested to overcome what are the key financial barriers to participation at school for children from low-income houses. That is looking at delivering equal access to food, clothing and digital resources in order to poverty-proof school day. I know that we have heard from other colleagues about where that is happening in other parts of the country as well. However, those councils are struggling to deliver that in the face of years of cuts from this Government. The Government motion speaks about the removal of co-crit on charges and a myriad of initiatives, but much of that is simply replacing funding that is already stripped from local government education budgets, as I think that we have heard already. Many of those— Does the member believe that a slow roll-out of the devices to pupils in Scotland has little or no impact on digital poverty? With the interest in the area that I am in west and East Dunbartonshire, with more than 80 per cent or 90 per cent still to be delivered, does the member believe that the SNP Scottish Government is failing the pupils of Scotland? I thank my regional colleagues for that intervention. I think that there is clearly concern about the pace of the devices being rolled out. It was fundamentally important last year during the lockdown period that young people had access to digital devices in order to ensure that they could learn from home. I know from my own experience in the council in East Dunbartonshire that the roll-out of monies from the Government has been slow and has been patchy. I think that we would all want to see progress in that. I do hope that the minister will be able to say something in her concluding remarks about what progress they intend to make in order to ensure that that is delivered as a reality. It is all very well to see a device for every child, but we need to know when that is going to happen. As I have already said, many of those are headlines, not yet delivered, time-stale slipping. We know about things such as free lunches, but breakfast clubs in many local authorities were cut years ago. Local authorities have not been given appropriate capital funding, as I referenced earlier, to deliver increased dining space. We talk about free instrumental tuition, but many bands and orchestras have already folded and work to reach the poorest children with music tuition has stopped. As we have just heard, a digital device for every child but hundreds are still waiting. Also, council family learning services and outreach has been decimated. It is clear that we need to look at the fundamentals in order to tackle poverty in our schools and in our communities. We need childcare that supports people to access learning and the labour market with councils and partner providers fully funded to deliver with the genuine flexibility that was promised in its requirements. We need wraparound childcare not just in those early years but also before and after school, when we know that childcare can be exorbitant. Given the context of Covid-19, we need a recovery that works for everyone. That means universal availability of holiday clubs and extracurricular activities to help all our children and young people to bounce back, particularly in terms of their mental health and wellbeing. All evidence shows that addressing issues of poverty during childhood and in school vastly increases the life chances of those raised in low-income households. Poverty touches all areas of life, and we on those benches believe that fighting to end poverty should be the key priority of everything that we do in this Parliament. That begins with our younger citizens. I remember when I went to school getting free school dinners and I really didn't think anything of it. Why would I? Until someone pointed out to me that meant that I must be poor despite the fact that my dad worked two jobs while a student and my mum was working as well. That is where stigma kicks in. That stigma makes you feel like you are a charity case and that there are things that others can access that are just simply not for you. I take Bob Doris's point that we are talking about personal things while we are in this chamber very well paid, but it is important that we do talk about them because we need to make sure that people understand what we are talking from someplace that we actually understand ourselves. It does not just make you feel bad, it can lead to problems with your learning. Children develop an attitude of questioning what their worth is in the educational system and that can affect their ambition, their attainment and arrows and their sense of options and opportunities that are open to them. That feeling of that is only for other folk becomes the automatic thought. Another rare memory that I have from my school days that is relevant to today's debate is that my headmaster came in and told us that they were arranging a trip, a four-day trip to York, which sounded brilliant, but it cost £40. I did not even tell my parents about it and when they found that they were absolutely gutted that I should be so aware of family financial constraints that I had put it out of my head straight away. My dad might actually be furious that I am raising it today, but we have got to talk about this stuff. I should add that they found the £40 and had a fantastic trip to York and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, if we have to recognise and tackle the impact that poverty and the stigma of poverty can have on a child's education and, as importantly, a child's self-worth and belief in themselves, we need to make sure that education is not something that you buy. Education is just about academics of education, and it is about that whole school experience. School should enrich our children and not make them feel poorer. That school is a place where they feel they belong, not somewhere where they may feel different or not good enough because they do not have enough money. That is why the steps that the Scottish Government has taken and which are recognised in today's motion are so important. Getting a child kitted out for school can be a daunting prospect, but helpful measures such as increasing the school clothing grant and producing guidance to reduce school uniform costs place on families that are helping. In my days, we all went during the summer holidays to pick berries, and that is how we paid for our uniforms. However, you cannot get properly educated if you are hungry. That phrase that Billy Kay would have recognised today, a hungerson wane has nail lugs, is where breakfast clubs and free school meals, nutritious school meals, play such a key role. Universal provision removes the stigma that attaches to them. I do not want families on fixed incomes and tight budgets to experience that sinking feeling when they open their child's school bag and find a letter about the school trip or the music lesson that they will have to find money to pay for, or a way to let their child down without making them feel bad. I do not want parents to think of an excuse to get their child out of doing cooking classes, for example, because they cannot pay for the contributions to the ingredients. The Scottish Government's commitment to removing core curriculum charges and ensuring that low-income families do not face those costs for curriculum-related trips and abolishing fees for instrumental music education is really important in that regard. There are other steps being taken, not to mention in this motion, that will help ease the cost of the school day for folk as well. After school clubs are sports training sessions, that means that your child will miss the free school bus going home, would have to come out of your normal budget. That is no longer the case, because, under the Scottish National Party Government, children get to travel free on buses now. I am very grateful to the member to give way. Does he not also, however, share my concern that the travel costs for trips during the day are excessive and indeed place huge financial burden on schools that are not being alleviated by the free bus pass? I would absolutely concur that any extra cost that is put on a family in this cost-of-learning crisis is absolutely terrible, but, as Ross Greer pointed out, the school education system cannot sort out the problems of poverty. The introduction in recent doubling of our child payment is an incredibly helpful boost to low-income families. Just today, the plans have been announced to automatically pay the best start grant early learning and school age payments to parents and carers who already receive Scottish child payment when their children become eligible. Automatic payments are important. Less paperwork, less asking for help and less of that sense that you are holding out the begging bowl. The change will be reduced later this year when the child payment is extended to under 16s and increased to £25 per child per week. The SNP Government may have one-armed tie when it is backed by the Tory Government and Westminster, but it is nevertheless winning a tug of war. Benefit cuts in bedroom taxes may threaten to make life harder for Scottish families, but we are fortunate to have a Scottish Government shielding, amylirating and mitigating the worst of the Tory attacks on the poor. Over £1.4 billion to mitigate some of the UK Tory Government's welfare benefit cuts is just part of the cost of the union to Scotland. The positive steps taken by the Scottish Government, which I have highlighted and some that are listed in the motion, are a pointer to the fairer, better Scotland that we could build with full access to our own resources and the proper powers of our normal nation. Thank you very much, Mr Fairlie. I now draw to the closing speeches. I note that co-capture is not present in the chamber. I would expect an explanation for that. I call Martin Whitfield for around seven minutes, please. Very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is a great pleasure to close this debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. Child poverty, those on-going costs of living crisis, it goes against everything that Scottish Labour stands for. Our young people cannot reach their full potential unless they are supported properly during their early and school years to get the education, the care, the skills that they need to thrive. Indeed, it was a great pleasure in this debate for so much of it to be listened to by a school party that joined us. I hope that they took from this what is a consensus across this Parliament that we need to fight child poverty. We need to fight poverty in Scotland, and we need to make this the best place for a young person to grow up in. I welcomed the initial statement from Shillianne Somerville, and I was grateful for the comments with regard to data, because one of the challenges is that data is a problem. The sharing of data between local authorities, the Scottish Social Security, indeed the Scottish Government and others. If we want to make sure that the highest level of take-up of benefits and other resources available to our families occurs in Scotland, we need to find a way through the maze that is GDPR, not just across Scotland but also between the Scottish Government and indeed the Westminster Government. I hope that the Minister has an opportunity to reaffirm the commitment to find a way through that gap, because if we are to do better for our families, it is in these small steps that we will see the greatest benefits. So many speakers this afternoon have spoken about free school meals, and indeed, when we look at the statistics of availability for free school meals, it's interesting that the last cumulative statistics date from 2019 and were published in 2020, when, at that stage, 38% of pupils in Scotland were entitled to free school meals, but of that, only 78.1% took it up. Over 20% of young people entitled to free school meals couldn't take it up. I welcome the move away from free school meals as being an assessment of financial stability. However, I am extremely concerned that in moving away from such a relatively simple statistic to collect, we will lose families in this, and there are people who will be in a hidden poverty that they can't escape from and that so much of the potential that's been talked about this afternoon goes amiss for those individuals, because that in itself would be tragic. Looking at some of the other statements, can I, again, and I found myself doing this already before in this session, say an enormous thank you to Eleanor Whitham for her ability to share her experience of growing up and for her to be able to articulate what it feels like to grow up in a house which is different from perhaps some of her friends, and I found it very powerful, her statement that children are aware of children who are in poverty and that children take decisions that they feel they ought to for their parents about what they should and shouldn't share with them, and I think of all, and there have been many contributions of personal experiences this afternoon, I think that moment to think that a young person chooses not to share something with their family because of their perception of where their family is compared to others, a truly tragic flag that sits in Scotland, and I think across this chamber we must agree to try and bring an end to that stigma, and bringing an end to that stigma comes in many, many ways. It is not as simple as just improving the school situation. Indeed, as Ross Greer rightly said, the schools are not the answer to this poverty. The answer lies in a myriad of other decisions taken away, and I hope that Ross would agree with me that, similarly, the schools cannot be held responsible if those poverty targets, three out of four which we look like we're going to miss, should try to be held responsible for that. It is broader, and it rests in this chamber and on this government. I thank Ross again for allowing the intervention regarding specialist sports gear, and I raise it not because of my brilliant athletic attributes at school, but indeed because of the challenges that I've had speaking to young children who want to play rugby where I grow up, and the challenge of even buying specialist boots, the helmet to wear in scrums and other protection that is required. Again, I would look to the Minister in summing up to be able to say whether or not this is going to be part of the consideration going forward. So, it has been an interesting debate. It's been a fascinating debate. I would like to have heard people talk about young people having a voice in this debate. If I can mention one thing that has been absent from all of the speeches, it is actually perhaps listening to liaising with and talking to our young people about the experiences that perhaps are very hard to articulate at their stage, but to ask high school pupils what it was like to be in primary school when you had to wear a different band if you had a free school meal or your order was taken differently, and to those who couldn't make their P7 residential trip because their family couldn't afford it. I think to come back to what has been consistent throughout this is a desire across this chamber for an education system that will facilitate our young people to have better adult life and break as has been described, that cycle of poverty. Our young people should expect exactly what every other young person wants, from the desire to be a professional footballer, an astronaut, a nurse, a doctor, whatever they want to be that they're asked about in those P1 classes. What can you do to meet a policeman and want to be a policeman? Possibly even want to be a teacher. They should be empowered to do that because that is the dreams that they have and nothing in Scotland should take those dreams away from them, and every child, irrespective of the school they go to, irrespective of the community they come from, should demand from this Government and from this Chamber that they have their right, their right to see through their dream. There's been a lot positive said this afternoon, but I now turn to the Government and I would ask them, we have heard so much. Please, please ensure that you deliver on this, that you set out the measurements that we can say success is being achieved. Let's not look next year where three out of four of our poverty targets aren't being reached because there is cross-party agreement to this and you will have it provided you can show that success is on the way. Thank you Presiding Officer. I welcome the opportunity to close this debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. The cost of a school day per child for low-income families can be a tough financial burden to bear. As we have heard throughout today's contributions, this has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the rising cost of living. MSPs need to utilise the powers that we have in this Parliament to introduce policies to help and support those who need it most. If we look at the performance of this Scottish Government in relation to education standards throughout Scotland, they have not fulfilled their promise to parents and their young people to make education their number one priority. The SNP has had 15 years in office to make a difference, but they have failed to make meaningful improvements to the life chances of our young people. As we all know, a good education and positive destinations for our young people are paramount to tackling poverty. However, disadvantaged children continue to have lower attainment than their peers. The SNP has never fully got to grips with tackling the attainment gap, and it is our young people who continue to suffer. This was raised by Pam Gossel and others during their contributions. If we take numeracy and literacy results as an example, the size of the gaps in 2020-21 were larger than at any previous point since comparable data was made available in 2016-17. That shows that standards are slipping and the Scottish Government must explain why this has gotten worse under their watch. I was really interested in thanking member for giving me the member mentioned positive destinations. A couple of weeks ago, data came out in positive destinations. There are record levels of positive destinations, particularly from schools serving the most deprived areas. Can you find it in your heart to say something positive about that in the success of Scottish education? For making improvements, we are not making improvements quickly enough, and that is the problem that we are facing just now. That is what the Scottish Government must get to grips with. The Scottish Government initially set out funding for North Lanarkshire Council alongside eight other challenge authorities, which Michael Marra mentioned in his contribution, specifically targeting those areas to improve attainment and reduce poverty levels. However, since that has been scrapped, all local authorities will now have to share that funding. Regrettably, that takes away from areas such as North Lanarkshire and shows that the Scottish Government does not have a clear plan to tackle the attainment gap in areas of real needs. That, combined with the revised attainment gap funding being cut, will not help to improve outcomes for our young people or help to reduce the cost of the school day. We heard some interesting contributions this afternoon. The cabinet secretary mentioned the 1,140 hours early learning and childcare programme during her contribution, which is something that is unanimously supported throughout this Parliament. However, once again, when asked about the unfair funding formula created by this Government and its causing nurseries within the PVI sector to close and reduce their hours, not much was given in terms of response, this needs sorted urgently. I once again urge the Scottish Government to take action and to review the funding formula for the PVI and local authorities to make sure that the 1,140-hour programme is fair for all. Oliver Mundell mentioned the desperate state of our schools and how schools struggle to function with providing basic stationery for the classroom. He also mentioned the reduction in teacher numbers, which has undoubtedly impacted our most vulnerable young people. Michael Marra spoke about the pressures faced by the childcare sector and the SNP's failed laptop roll-out. 30 per cent of laptops distributed is nowhere near good enough, as many of our young people are still without this vital tool to assist them with their school work. That was also raised by my colleague Stephen Kerr, who reiterated how important education is to helping our young people to have the best start in life. One other issue that has been raised this afternoon by Pam Duncan-Glancy and others is the important role that local authorities play in reducing the cost of the school day for low-income families. I will refer members to my register of interests as the other councillors this afternoon. I am nearing my final week of being a councillor. It was an honour and a privilege to serve my local community over the last five years and, like other councillors, I tried my best to make improvements in the ward area that I represented. One of the biggest frustrations, however, I experienced during my time as a councillor is the lack of funding councils received from the Scottish Government to help to tackle the cost of the school day for low-income families. During this year's budget process, at one stage, councils did have to navigate a real-term reduction in funding of roughly £264 million. We heard at that time that councils leaders branded this as barely survivable, with many having to make cuts in their education budgets to balance the books. In my view, it is local authorities who are best placed to implement policies that benefit the unique needs of an area. For example, Forgewood in Motherwell has completely different challenges—social and economic—to Gifnock, for example, in Eastwood. However, the SNP's obsession with centralisation has led to councils being stripped of their ability to make good local policies that will benefit the people who live in that local authority area. The Scottish Government should empower our councils to reduce the cost of the school day for low-income families, but by cutting budgets year on year, it has led to many services that assist with the cost of the school day being reduced or scrapped altogether. I am grateful to the member for taking the intervention. Does she recognise the impact on families in Scotland that a decade of damaging austerity cuts, Brexit price rises and economic mismanagement have caused to children and families right across this land? Will she join me in calling on the UK Government to scrap the national insurance tax hike, reverse their cuts to universal credit and raise pensions and benefits that are reserved instead of imposing real-term cuts? Do you know what I can damn? I can damn the Scottish Government lavishing millions of pounds of taxpayer's money to fund yet another referendum instead of using that money to invest in our schools and other council services—what we are debating in this chamber today. As I was saying, breakfast clubs are important for many young people and it is not just politicians in this chamber who share that view. A recent poll showed that almost all teachers surveyed believe that breakfast is important for pupils and research shows that having breakfast improves school performance. By not having the service for parents or by increasing the cost of school meals, that contributes to the financial pressures that many parents face. It is my view that the Scottish Government must fund councils properly so that it can provide not only breakfast clubs but other innovative ideas that help families to reduce the cost of the school day for low-income families. Before I conclude my remarks, I would like to raise one last concern that relates to the Scottish Government's consultation to remove school uniforms for secondary school pupils and the unintended consequences that that could have on families expenses. Uniforms are an integral and sensible part of school life, but they also give pupils a sense of dignity and foster discipline. Most importantly, they promote equality throughout the school setting. If we had to change or remove school uniforms from our schools, parents who are struggling financially may not be able to dress their children in expensive, fashionable or designer clothing. My concern is that that could lead to bullying or young people being made to feel inferior to their peers. That was a concern that was raised by SNP members, who said that dress down days can be difficult for families to afford. The comment that was raised by Ross Greer and others was right in relation to specific items for school uniforms, and that needs to be looked at. Although I understand that following the largest survey of school uniforms in the UK, the school wear association is found at the average cost of the compulsory uniform in sportswear items is roughly £101.19 per pupil. However, if we had to cost the average fashionable or designer outfit, it would be significantly more. That is why we have clothing grants available for families who need to—sorry, I am about to conclude—who need this additional support. It goes back to my earlier point. If councils were funded properly, they could make the choice to increase this grant to assist with the cost of the school day for low-income families. To conclude, Presiding Officer, it is disappointing that SNP has turned up to date to give themselves a pat in the back for some of the measures that they have introduced without taking any responsibility for the significant improvements that they still have to make in reducing costs of the school day for low-income families. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It is the Scottish Government's aim to build an education system that ensures equal access to that full package of education, breaking down financial barriers to make a real difference to the lives of children. I was particularly struck by those who have spoken from across the chamber about the children's own experiences of poverty while they are in school—the decisions that they take in an attempt to protect their family from some of the costs of the school day. We should all be cognisant of that. I am also particularly cognisant of the point that Martin Whitfield made about the importance of listening to child experiences and their voices through this, and I reassure him that that is very much the Government's attention on this and on all education policies. We have heard some discussion from across the chambers about the Scottish education system in general, and I think that we should highlight some key facts before I really move into my closing remarks. Before the pandemic, we did see a year-on-year trend in CFE levels that was positive. We were seeing progress. In 2021, we had the most passes at hire since the advent of devolution, and as I think as Bob Doris pointed out earlier, we have just recently recorded the record-high positive destinations for our young people. We have a lot to be proud of in our education system, but we know that there is much more to do. Within the context of poverty, it is very important that we recognise the impact of that. We have made developments and improvements through our first tackling child poverty delivery plan, but we know that there is more to do. The almost £2.8 billion that was estimated in the previous plan to have been directly benefiting children is a great investment by the Government, but we know that there is much more. That is why we have increased the value of eight Scottish social security benefits by 6 per cent. A great deal more than has happened with the Westminster of Reserves. Of course, we have doubled the game-changing Scottish child payment to £20, and we will increase it again to £25 and extend the payment to children under 16 by the end of the year. That is five times higher than the £5 payment that we were being asked to do less than five years ago. Again, as Bob Doris pointed out, that is a result of that increase that, by the end of 2022, our package of five family benefits for low-income families will be worth £10,000 by the time that a family's first child turns six. That is a difference of more than £8,200 for every eligible child born in Scotland compared to other places in the UK. I think that that highlights the unparalleled support by this Government. However, when Oliver Mundell said in his opening remarks that I am not denying that there are challenges there when challenged by my colleague on the impact of the UK Government, we cannot get away from the impact that the UK Government has on discussing poverty, and Evelyn Tweed's remarks today showed the impact that that is having on families right across Scotland. However, we are seeing developments in the Scottish attainment challenge funding to ensure that we are supporting our schools and particularly supporting our headteachers. In March, I launched a refresh Scottish attainment challenge programme with up to £200 million worth of funding for the year ahead, part of our increase of £1 billion investment over this Parliament. Recognising that poverty exists in every community, a portion of the £200 million funding will be extended to all local authorities within Scotland. That approach was developed and agreed by COSLA through that process, because it is very important that we recognise that poverty exists everywhere. Oliver Mundell is about to intervene, I hope, to tell me where we should cut the money from if he does not agree with the changes that COSLA and the Scottish Government made. We have already heard in this debate about the significant waste that we have seen from this Government and money spent on constitutional obsessions. However, how can the cabinet secretary sit there and say that cutting support to some of our poorest communities is the right thing to do? We heard from one of our back benchers that some of the Scottish Government's initiatives were a foretaste of what we get in an independent Scotland. Is that one of them? Once again, Oliver Mundell does not deal with the challenge that Governments have about ensuring that we are delivering a fair funding settlement to 32 local authorities. It is unfortunate that the Scottish Conservatives still feel that they wish to see that money being taken away from the other local authorities that we have just given money to. Oliver Mundell, again, with his open remarks, attacks curriculum for excellence and knowledge-based mindsets is apparently what we need. Perhaps Mr Mundell should expand his reading list. Look at what the OECD has said, that to shift away from the traditional knowledge versus skills focus by acknowledging the importance of both in learning. It is important that we acknowledge and acknowledge the importance of knowledge versus skills on that. I am afraid that, given the length of previous intervention, I will not. Michael Marra also asked about the financial sustainability of early learning and childcare, and we have produced figures for the financial sustainability health check. We are committed to publishing data on local authority and ELC funding rates annually. He also challenged the Government to act rather than just talk. I remind him what has already been delivered by this Government very recently. Core curriculum charges removed, an increase in universalism for free school meals to primaries 4 and 5, music tuition fees removed, school clothing grants increased, 2,000 more teachers than pre-pandemic, 1140 childcare hours delivered, support for free school meals in holiday, free bus travel for under-22s. I could go on, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary did not mention free devices, so let me ask her a question about free devices and free internet connections, because they go together. How many of the current secondary school population in Scotland will leave school without getting the advantage of a free device and a free internet connection? By her own words, many of the young people in Scotland schools will never see the delivery of the SNP's so-called election promise. Mr Kerr will, of course, be fully cognisant of the pledge that was in the manifesto for the delivery of the devices and the connectivity by the end of the parliamentary term. That is exactly what this Government is determined to do. Co-cab stewards also mentioned the important work done by CPag on the cost of the school day. Some of that work is funded by the Scottish Government but through the Scottish attainment challenge funding. It is important work that has been done by CPag, giving practical advice to schools right across the country. I commend them for it. Ross Greer and others talked about the importance of the school uniform guidance, which I will be very pleased to work with Mr Greer on during our time in our partnership together. I am not sure whether the Scottish Conservatives are getting this from whether we are not taking away school uniforms from any school. The decision on school uniforms is for an individual school. What is being provided is the guidance. I take on board the point that Martin Whitfield mentioned earlier about PE. I would also say that I was not one of those people who excelled in that area of expertise at school, but that does not mean that I will not support those who do at this time. Many people within the debate have spoken about the importance of free school meals and the importance of universalism. We have a policy at the moment of providing free school meals to primaries 1 to 5, who now benefit from balancing nutritious free school lunches during school term time, and we are committed to rolling out universal free school lunches to all children in primary and special schools during this parliamentary term. That aligns, of course, with our commitment on free school milk. Again, many members have spoken about the real impact that curriculum costs can make to individual families making decisions and, indeed, sometimes individual children making decisions about subject choices. That is exactly why the Scottish Government has moved on this particular issue to ensure that we are providing support to local government to ensure that there are no core curriculum costs for primary and secondary school pupils. We do not want to get into a position where families are being asked to meet the costs and resources for materials in practical lessons. I do believe that the removal of the charges on families will support participation in core curriculum activities, which ties in to the Government's action that has already been taken on music tuition. Of course, we are determined to do more with that, working with our colleagues in COSLA to make sure that there is a funding package in place that can support the development of music tuition and people's experiences of music at school. We have also heard once again the importance of the school clothing grant in the debate and, again, the important role that has already been played by the Scottish Government in taking action on that. Mr Kerr earlier on alluded in his remarks to digital devices. I would reiterate once again that our commitment is to ensure that every child has access to a device in connection by the end of this Parliament. We have already provided £25 million in 2020-21 as a response to the pandemic to deliver devices for more than 72,000 disadvantaged children, and we have provided 14,000 connectivity packages to help young people to get online. A further £45 million was made available early in 2021 to support remote learning, and that was flexibly used by councils to create extra staff or to deliver even more additional devices or connectivity if that was required. It is important to recognise the work that has been taken by many councils themselves on this area, and that is why we have seen in total almost 280,000 devices that have been ordered in the process of being distributed to learners, and that figure includes the devices provided by the Scottish Government. In conclusion, we have taken a great deal of action on the costs of the school day right across government. We know that there is more to do. That is exactly what this motion sets out. In partnership with our colleagues in the Scottish Green Party, we are determined to take that challenge head-on. While we look at the cost of the school day and the challenges that we have within that, we absolutely still have to recognise the context that we are within Scotland on the levels of poverty within Scotland and our determination across government to be able to tackle poverty as part of our challenge to improve the life chances of young people right across Scotland. We have seen progress in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap pre-pandemic. We know that we now need to pick up that pace, but that is exactly why we have seen £1 billion attainment funding committed by the Government and 3,500 additional teachers on top of those already recruited in the pandemic. That is exactly why we have taken the action that I detailed earlier on in my closing remarks to tackle the school day. It would be remiss of me, however, to close without wishing good luck to all the people right across Scotland who from today are starting their exams. I hope that on behalf of the chamber, I can wish everybody who has taken part in the exam diet this year the very best of success. To include the debate on reducing the cost of the school day for low-income families, it is now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of motion 4115 on legislative consent motion British Sign Language Bill, UK legislation. I call on clear hohe to move the motion. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. The next item of business is consideration of business motion 4172 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau on setting out a change to this week's business. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press their request to speak button now, and I call on George Adam to move the motion. No member has asked to speak against the motion. Therefore, the question is that motion 4172 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed, and there are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first is the amendment 4138.2 in the name of Oliver Mundell, which seeks to amend motion 4138 in the name of Shirley-Anne Somerville, on reducing the cost of the school day for low-income families be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to a vote and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.