 Diolch yn fawr. Fawr i'r next item of business, which is a statement by John Swinney on the launch of the Education Governance Review. The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary will take questions at the end of his statement. Last week in this chamber, the First Minister spoke about the defining mission of this Government delivering equity and excellence in education. Excellence will raise the bar for all and equity will close the attainment gap. We have put specific timescales ar y gaf ddaeth o gaf i ddoll. Rydw i'n gynnwys llwythau fathiau ar hyn ac yn nodi'r final ddaeth ar hyn o gyffredinogau y Gaf neu Rhywodraeth, yn ei wneud yn cael ei gysylltu i wedi i hyn agweleddau i hynny oherwydd ei teimlo oedd yn tynneis i'r llei oedd y tandd y panthau gan eithaf oeddiadau i siaradau i gael y dymog. Avis Glaes, trefio ac yn ei ddywedd oír unedig iawn hefyd ac doedd yn hoffi'r cwysylltiad We will do that, put it simply, poverty is not destiny. Our task is to make sure that that is the case in Scotland and we have made a strong start. We have expanded our attainment challenge to £750 million over the life of this Parliament providing direct support to those schools with the biggest attainment gap challenge. We have introduced the national improvement framework. Standardised assessment will be introduced to inform teacher judgement about the performance of young people, a new transparent reporting on school performance will allow us to measure the attainment gap more accurately and set clear targets for closing it. We have also moved decisively to free teachers to teach by removing unnecessary bureaucracy and workload. We have provided a definitive statement of priorities for Scotland's schools, setting out clearly and concisely what teachers should and shouldn't be focusing on. It will empower them to spend their time teaching and giving our children the best possible opportunities to learn. Those are strong foundations for Scottish education. In its review of Scottish education, the OECD found Scotland is above the international average in reading and science, that attainment is improving, that Scottish schools are inclusive and that our children are resilient and have positive attitudes towards school. This is a testament to the bold reform of curriculum for excellence and the energy applied by many to ensure success for Scotland's young people. The OECD also told us to continue to be bold. Andy Harviews of the OECD review team set out the challenge at the recent education summit, telling us not only to remain ahead of the global curve in education but to become the curve that others will refer to around the world. We accept that challenge. We will create the world-leading education system that our children and young people deserve. Our next step in that challenge is to ask ourselves how should Scottish school education be run. That is what our governance review will seek to answer over the coming months. We do not ask that question in a vacuum. Today, I will set out our vision for the most critically important part of our early years and school education system, our teachers, practitioners and their relationship with our children. That relationship is at the heart of every story of success. In every school that succeeds, you find great teachers able to reach out and touch the lives of the children in their classrooms. In every story of a child lifted out of poverty by the power of education, you find teachers and the bond that they formed with that child. Nothing is more critical. In the 118 days since becoming education secretary, I have been deeply impressed by the excellent work that I have seen from teachers and early years practitioners across the country. I have also heard about the barriers and challenges that they face to delivering great education. Our guiding principle for the way that our schools are run is simple. Decisions should be taken at school level. That will be the presumption and we will place it at the heart of this review. We want to empower our teachers and our early years workers to make the best decisions for children and young people. They have the expertise that we need. They are the professionals charged with using the power of education to change a child's destiny. We will place them at the heart of a system that makes decisions about children's learning and school life within the schools themselves, supported by parents and the local community. That is a vision of empowerment and devolution. Devolution from local authorities to schools, teachers, headteachers, parents and communities. Devolution from a national to a local or regional level. Let us ensure that decisions about a child's learning are taken as close to a child as possible. Devolution of decision making has to be allied to devolution of resources. We have begun the process with the allocation of £100 million from council tax reform directly to schools to support their work to close the equity gap, but we are committed to go much further. We are committed to establishing a fair and transparent needs-based funding formula for schools. We will consult on proposals for a funding formula in March 2017, but this review offers an opportunity to comment on how funding can be made fairer and support decision making by teachers at a school level. We know that improvement in education is driven by co-operation and collaboration, not competition or marketisation. This Government is committed to a publicly funded comprehensive education system that enables every child and young person to achieve. We will not, we will never go down the divisive academy model and we will never allow children to be labelled as failures at the age of 11. There will be no policy of selection or grammar schools in Scotland. Our reform will be based on evidence of what works, not right wing ideological dogma. The evidence shows that systematic collaborative engagement at every level of education is what builds capacity and delivers the best outcomes for children and young people. School clusters are a way in which schools can work together and we want to hear how this type of collaboration and others can be encouraged so that it is supported and sustained. By working together, we can achieve more. We will not set school against school, parent against parent and pupil against pupil. We will bring people together to pursue the world class education that every child deserves. I have set out our presumption that decisions should be taken at school level. That will lead inevitably to some elements of our system that will have to be the responsibility of other organisations. The question that the review poses is what elements and where should those responsibilities sit? Sometimes the answer will be obvious. For example, there will always be the need for a national examination body. No one would suggest that schools should set their own hires, but there are some elements that will be a matter of genuine debate. Some of the support schools need is best delivered at a local or a regional level. Currently, many of those services are delivered by local authorities. Let me be clear that local authorities will continue to exercise democratic control over Scottish education at a local level, but we must question how the role of local government can become more effective. Devolving responsibilities to our schools means that we need to question the support provided at every level of our education system to ensure that it delivers what teachers need. Although there are some examples of partnership working across local authorities, the OECD highlighted the need for more effective partnership and collaboration between local authorities. The Government will therefore introduce new educational regions to ensure that good practice is shared across education and to ensure that we deliver best value. The governance review offers the opportunity to shape that approach. Local authorities are accountable to their electorates. I am accountable to the electorate and to this chamber. Schools should primarily be accountable to parents and their local communities. We need a system of accountability, a system of governance that is clear to parents, teachers and communities, to every one of us, whether we have a formal role in our education system or a stake in its success. The governance review is our opportunity to make that a reality. I want to hear views from across every part of Scotland in the weeks and the months ahead. I want to hear from children and young people, from parents, teachers, practitioners and the wider community. There will be opportunities to engage directly with the questions in the review and online. We will be publishing information about engagement events on our website, and those will take place around the country. I will also meet monthly with my counterpart in COSLA, Councillor Stephanie Primrose, during the course of the review to share emerging findings and build consensus where possible. I plan to spend a significant amount of time over the next three months talking and listening to teachers, children and young people and partners about how education is run. I want to hear from members of the chamber and invite every member of this Parliament to engage and to contribute to the review. Closing the attainment gap and raising standards for all, delivering excellence and equity for all of our children and young people is our national mission as a Government. We are ready to take the next steps in making Scotland's school education world class. I invite everyone in the chamber to join us in that effort. The announcement that is central to the statement is on page 6, when we learn that there will be the introduction of new educational regions operating above local authorities. Will the cabinet secretary accept that this looks a little bit like centralisation of education, which seems to be at odds with the statement on page 3 when he says that decisions should be taken at school level? Secondly, on the crucial related funding issue, the Scottish Government appears to be suggesting that the £100 million attainment fund will be paid for by council tax and then allocated to pupils according to whatever the Scottish Government sees as the appropriate measure for deprivation. Could he clarify exactly whether that money raised from council tax will be spent in that particular local authority, in the relevant region or by a free-for-all system overseen by the Scottish Government? Finally, the cabinet secretary says that he wants schools that work and deliver good results, so do we. Does he intend to make the legislative changes to allow more Jordan Hill-type schools or schools where parents want state education but are not provided by local authorities? On the first of Liz Smith's questions, the argument about educational regions is a direct response from the Government to the OECD challenge to us to encourage more collaboration in the education system in Scotland. When Liz Smith says that these would be regions operating above local authorities, I encourage her to think of the concept as co-operation between local authorities. I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not want to run every school in the country. That is not the purpose of this review. This is about discussing what are the right powers and responsibilities to be exercised at school level to ensure that our teaching leadership, in whom we are investing frankly, our hopes as a country in educating our young people, is able to take the decisions that best suit the needs of their children in that individual school. Our message about the collaboration that needs to exist between authorities is about encouraging joint working and collaboration, as we are seeing in certain parts of the country between individual local authorities to ensure that the direct teaching experience of pupils is enhanced by the adding of value by greater collaboration across the education service. The Government's agenda is that I would characterise it as a combination of the encouragement of decentralisation and the encouragement of collaboration within education. Those are the values at the heart of the governance review that I am setting out today. In relation to the £100 million to be raised from the council tax, the resources that are raised by each local authority and by the changes that are made in council tax will of course be collected in their entirety in those local authority areas. Clearly, there will be a distribution of resources to ensure that the £100 million is allocated to support young people who are living in poverty and who require additional support to address the consequences of their background in closing the attainment gap. That was what the Government set out to the public in the election campaign, and that is exactly what we will make provision for. I suppose that this is a point of great debate within the review, but there is also a measure of agreement. I, like Liz Smith, want schools that work. Of course, I want schools that work, and I see much excellence in the schools in Scotland today. I think that it is right that that is acknowledged in the statement today. There is much excellence in our school system today. I want to make sure that every single school in which the young people of Scotland are entering is an excellent school, and I want to empower the schools of Scotland to enable that to be the case. The debate that we are going to have is how do we take the necessary steps in reforming the governance of Scottish education to make sure that we create excellent schools in every single part of the country to guarantee that young people can fulfil their educational potential? That is the question at the heart of the review, and that is what the Government will engage on in the course of the next few months. I encourage members to press their request-to-speak buttons. I call on Ingrid, who is followed by Jenny Gilruth. I thank the cabinet secretary for early sight of his statement, empowering teachers, parents and communities to achieve excellence and equity in education, is a laudable aim and one that we share. We recognise that we must have enough teachers and enough resources in our schools to properly pursue it. Today, we were told that councils might face cuts of £1 billion by the end of this Parliament. As I have asked often before, will the cabinet secretary commit to using the powers of this Parliament to protect school budgets as he reviews their governance? For Mr Swinney has made clear in his statement that local authorities will continue to exercise democratic control over Scottish education at a local level, and that is very, very welcome. Welcome is his ruling out of selection and the grammar school model. Welcome to his ruling out of the academy model here in Scotland. However, I ask him for clarity and completeness, for he failed to do this in response to Ms Smith. Will he rule out the idea that schools will be able to opt out from local authority control? On the point that Iain Gray raised on the appropriate resources, he will have heard from the Government of the position that we set out at the outset of the election campaign, of the propositions that we would put to the people of Scotland. The Government is now fulfilling those commitments in the governance review and in the agenda that I have set out in the Government's delivery plan. We will ensure that new resources are allocated to education to support the achievements of the Government's agenda in closing the attainment gap. That was the promise that the Government made at the election and that is the promise that we are going to fulfil by injecting new resources into Scottish education. It is important that we take those decisions to ensure that the support is in place to assist us in tackling the attainment gap within Scottish education. The welcome that Mr Gray has given to a number of the provisions that I have set out today should be extended to the additional resources that the Government is putting in place in that respect. On his second question about governance, it is not part of my plan that schools should opt out of local authority control. That is not part of my plan. What I want to make sure is that schools have the necessary powers and responsibilities to be able to create excellence, to take the decisive decisions that deliver on the quality of education and attainment of young people within those schools. My plans are about making sure that schools are part of the democratic fibre and fabric of Scottish society, that they are operating within the local authority context, but I want to make sure that the school leadership of Scotland is able to take the decisive decisions that will transform the life chances of young people in Scotland. That strikes me as an agenda that can be broadly supported within Scotland. I am sure that the chamber is very appreciative of the cabinet secretary's thoughtful remarks, but I will point out that there are 10 speakers trying to get in in the interest of brevity. Jenny Gilruth We know that greater parental and community involvement has been shown to promote children's attainment and achievement, and I welcome the cabinet secretary's plans to involve parents and the wider community more with this review. Could the cabinet secretary confirm that teachers, parents and communities will also be involved in the creation of a fair funding formula for our schools? On all those questions, I am determined to engage widely within Scotland. It is important that we have a broad debate about those questions to make sure that the Government's thinking and its approach is informed by a wide selection of opinions, and I can give the assurance that we will take every effort to capture that input and then to report to Parliament on the changes that we intend to make as a consequence of that dialogue. Ross Thomson Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am not to labour the point too much, but could the cabinet secretary please clarify that, if there is a school that is producing top-class results where parents themselves want to opt out of the local authority, will he allow them to do so? Ross Thomson I said in my statement that I made a number of commitments in my statement about the centrality of the Government's view about the establishment of a comprehensive education system in Scotland and an education system that is under democratic control. I have just reiterated those points to Mr Gray. My objective is to empower schools to be able, within a comprehensive education system, to deliver the excellence that every single child in Scotland has a right to expect. The Government's review that we are discussing is about how we can empower schools to enable them to do that, so that wherever a child lives and goes to school within Scotland, they can do so with access to an excellent education system that has their interests, their needs and their aspirations at the heart of its design. James Dornan I welcome the cabinet secretary's commitment to stay away from the academy model and grammar skills. Will he agree with me that the conclusion of a recent institute for fiscal studies report that stated that grammars can stretch the brightest pupils but seem likely to come at the cost of increasing inequality? It just shows how right that decision is. James Dornan I started my statement by making reference to the importance of achieving excellence and equity within Scottish education. Those values and aspirations are right at the heart of the agenda that we will take forward. We are determined to ensure that every effort that is taken to focus on our mission of closing the attainment gap in Scottish education, and I do not believe for a moment that the closing of the attainment gap in Scotland would be made any easier. In fact, I think that it would be made a great deal more difficult by undertaking some of the reforms that we hear of that have been taken place elsewhere. Daniel Johnson To be followed by Gillian Martin Thank you, Presiding Officer. I do not know how many times the Deputy First Minister mentioned devolution in his statement, but I certainly welcome his conversion to the cause. However, with regard to the powers that he is considering handing down to both regions and to schools, currently teachers pay in conditions and are negotiated and set out nationally, will the Deputy First Minister confirm that those will continue to be set at a national level? Daniel Johnson My presumption in this governance review is that teachers' terms and conditions will remain a national issue to be resolved. However, I want to make sure that we have as open and participative a debate about the factors that will make a real difference at school level in ensuring the creation and delivery of excellence and equity for all within the education system. I have deliberately set the consultation exercise as an open consultation to enable that debate to be had within Scotland about what are the right levers to be located at school level to determine how we can best improve the performance within Scottish education and to deliver on the expectations of young people in every part of the country. Gillian Martin Gillian Martin To be followed by Tavish Scott The cabinet secretary says that he wants to engage with as many people as possible and hear views from across every part of Scotland through this review. I think that it is crucial that the young people themselves have had their say and I am pleased to hear that the cabinet secretary confirmed this in his speech just now. I am interested in what plans there are to facilitate this and if he can elaborate on this further. Tavish Scott Obviously, a range of different engagement opportunities will be taken forward to ensure that we capture the views of young people. Young people will be the ones who can most effectively tell us about the issues that they face in the development of their educational journey and it is important that we use every mechanism that we have available to capture their input. There will be specific consultation events and measures taken to capture that input from young people and to inform the discussions that we take forward as a Government. Tavish Scott Foll by Colin Beattie Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thank the cabinet secretary for a copy of his statement in advance. If the big idea for Scottish education is educational regions, will they be imposed and have ministers not forgotten the human and financial cost of centralising police? Why was there no mention of Education Scotland in his statement today? Would he agree to separate school inspectors from ministerial policy and advice and on funding and needs-based funding formula for schools? It is very different from Government funding to deliver education in a council area. Is not that centralisation of funding by another way? On the first point that Tavish Scott raised, the whole question of educational regions is, as I explained to Liz Smith, a product of the issues raised with us by the OECD review, which encouraged us to support a more collaborative model for the delivery of education, and it encouraged the sharing of best practice and expertise around different areas of the country and across different parts of the education system. What we are trying to do in the review is to respond to that challenge from the OECD, because what the OECD review did was that, yes, it said that Scottish education was strong, but it said that we had to continue to reform Scottish education and we must respond to that challenge from the OECD. On the question of how educational regions will come about, there is already, as I indicated in one of my earlier answers, collaboration emerging between different local authorities in the delivery of education around the country. That is a discussion that we want to engage in with local authorities, which is why I am going to see, on a regular basis, my counterpart in COSLA to advance those discussions. On the second point in relation to the role of education in Scotland, Mr Scott will see that I appreciate that there is not much time to consume the consultation document, but the document raises the role of different bodies at different levels within Scotland. Therefore, there is adequate opportunity for those issues to be examined and tested as part of the consultation exercise. On the needs-based formula, the complete text that I used had to be a fair needs-based formula. That means that it has to take into account the variety of different issues that have to be taken into account in arriving at an appropriate funding formula that meets the needs, the challenges and the aspirations of different areas of the country within the education system. The Government will consult on that issue in March of next year. We will take forward that debate and that discussion, but I stress that any analysis of that point has to be underpinned by an acceptance of the point that I made, that there has to be a fair approach to that needs-based formula. Colin Beattie, to be followed by Graham Simpson. As the Cabinet Secretary rightly points out, there are very strong foundations for Scottish education. Would he agree with the director general of the CBI, who recently said in my quote, on qualifications Scotland has a proud record, and again Scotland's curriculum for excellence is leading the way? I think that there is a very strong body of opinion that indicates that curriculum for excellence—not least of which is the OECD review—has been a bold and a successful reform. The challenge is that we have to make sure that curriculum for excellence works effectively alongside other policy interventions that the Government makes, particularly in relation to skills on developing Scotland's young workforce. The work that Mr Hepburn and myself are taking forward to integrate the school education and the skills agenda is vital to ensuring that all of our interventions are aligned to create the strongest skills base that will be relevant and applicable for the development of the Scottish economy. Graham Simpson, to be followed by Monica Lennon. The cabinet secretary wants councils to collect £100 million, which he will then divvy up. He will form new national and regional bodies. Why is that not more centralisation? The first thing that I say to Mr Simpson is that there is a certain democratic question in here where the Government went to the electorate to seek a mandate for those proposals, and the Government was given a mandate to take forward those proposals. We are now engaging in a consultation about the implementation of the manifesto commitments that we have made. I have invited local government to take part in the dialogue around the pursuit of this agenda. I commit myself to engaging purposefully in that agenda today and to ensuring that we make the necessary progress in delivering excellence and equity within our education system. Those are the values and the aspirations that underpin the policy commitments around reforming the council tax to generate this revenue and reforming the structures of Scottish education to deliver the collaboration that I have talked about in response to the OECD review. Monica Lennon, to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I draw the chamber's attention to my register of interests, as I am a local councillor in South Lanarkshire Council. Today's announcement acknowledges local authority control of schools, but surely signals a diminished role for local government in the delivery of education. What assurances can the Deputy First Minister give that the creation of educational regions will not put pressure on a divert vital funding away from local government budgets and not lead to unintended bureaucracy? I will certainly be taking steps to make sure that the reforms do not generate unintended bureaucracy because I am spending a very significant proportion of my life removing unintended bureaucracy from the system as we currently stand. The arguments about educational regions are about collaboration to encourage educational excellence. That is the purpose of the reforms. They are not to overlay bureaucracy. They are to ensure that we have the resources and the capability available to enhance the quality of Scottish education. That is the purpose of the reform agenda. That is what the OECD challenged us to consider and that is what the Government is consulting about today. I am extremely pleased to see the Scottish Government delivering on yet another manifesto commitment and continuing to make progress on giving every child the same opportunity to succeed. How long the review will last for and what role the national improvement framework will have in supporting parents and communities? The national improvement framework is predicated on a number of key themes, one of which is parental involvement. I will have the opportunity to discuss many of those questions with the National Parent Forum for Scotland when I meet the forum this coming Saturday. The national improvement framework also provides the guidance on how we take forward the agenda and how it supports, in every respect, the closing of the attainment gap. The steps that we set out in the Government's review today are integral to ensuring the message of excellence and equity that is at the heart of the national improvement framework is delivered as a consequence of the measures that we take forward today. I apologise to Ross Greer for not being able to call him. I thank the cabinet secretary for his admirable acceleration.