 Mae gyntaf gyda'r hyn sy'n edrych i ddod y gwneud. Mae'r gweithio'r cwestiynau ym mheisio cyflymwy yn eu cynhyrch. gan ystafellol fyddai a ddwi'n cael ei ewch. Mae'r gweithio'r cwestiynau i'r cyffredin犯deg ещё yn eu ddechrau, yn y byd y ysgolfyniadau'r diwylliant i'r llunio arni, i ddiwerth o'r cwestiynydd diwylliant. Dyma'r ddechrau'r cwestiynau efallai o'r cwestiynau, gyllidau sydd wedi amlwyddiolion gynghoriadau a gaelig i'r syniad? Microtheywch gwendroedd y Llyfrgell, i fynd i gaelig i chi i wneud i ddeithas ar gyfysgwr y Llyfrgell fyddai rai ni, o ran unrhyw gallu gweld rai, o sydd gyntaf eich tynnu o'r newydd mewn oeddiolion yn gweithio eu cyfysiwn i'r rai cyfysiwn. Dewan Williams-Withers yn ymgyrchu unig o'r syniadau yn ei wneud ar gyfer y Llyfrgei Llyfrgei i Llefrgei Llancau yn Scotland. Rhyw yw yn ystafell yna yn ystafell, ond bydd y bydd yn gweithio y gallu neud yn cyd-iggramu, yn ddigleidio, yn anhyfaredd gyda'i cyfnodol, i unig o'r honellfaol i'r cyfrifiadau. Ysgol Llyfrgei'r ysgol yn cymhau eich hwrdd y cyfrifpaiddig y Llyfrgei Llyfrgei ar gyfer y cyfer case for a stronger focus on skills excellence rather than mere competence. Does the minister therefore agree that such an ambitious focus for the skills sector should be considered by the review and that it fits with the stated purpose and I quote the specific functions remit and status of Skills Development Scotland? Well, the first thing I would observe, Presiding Officer, is I'm happy to say that I see Hydw i ddwylai wrth gwrs o'r dyfodol gyda'r cyfnod, ac mae'n ddwylai'r dyfodol ar gyfer mae'r ddwylai'r dyfodol yn ddi-dwylai. Ac mae'n edrych yn dataeth i gweld rhaid o'r ddyfodol. Cŵelwch â yma, rydyn ni'n edrych â'r dyfodol, ac mae'n edrych a'r ddwylai'r ddwylai. Rydyn ni'n meddyl nhw fy moddol i ddyfodol i ddwylai'r dyfodol, rydyn ni'n edrych o ddwylai. wrth gwrs, yn autorol iaith, mae y ddeginio'r bwysig yn ei ddoch i'r pwyntau cymdeithasol mey Prifysgol Llyr Gruffydd, pangozel. Fy fyddai'n gyllideb yn яrgyn ystafell amdano ar gyfer callu cyfrifiadol yn dda'u ddechyd. Felly y cyrraedd yn gofair o phryd o gofair o gallu cyrraedd cymdeithasol yn byrd i ddweud. Nid yw ddigonfaniaeth, mae clywed yr rhodod yn bywydol trwy gyd. Rwy'n cael ei chweithiaeth atebwyd. Rwy'n cael ei chweithio ei fod yn cymwyno i niaddyntau dynion yn grafod y gyrfaenol yn ymgawr? Rydyn ni'n grafod diolch ar gyfer beth mae'r newid? Rydyn ni'n grafod diolch ar gyfer beth mae'r newid yn grafod? Rydyn ni'n grafod er mwyn am busud y gyrfaenol yw'r union i'r ddynynt. Rydyn ni'n grafod ar gyrfaenol yn grafod. Janysgw filled, that will be a feat, so let's be clear, there is no phrase on apprenticeship places this year, in terms of contribution rate that is something I would expect. Skiw Milford Scotland, as the agency tasked with these matters to consider in conjunction with any agency that is looking to consider those matters? 2. Gordd McDonald To ask the Scottish Government what action has been taken to tackle skills shortages. In our strategy for economic transformation has set out our commitment to ensuring employers have the supply of skills they need in 2021-22, the national transition training fund, the north-east economic recovery and skills fund, provided over 23,000 training interventions across a range of sectors and to attract people to Scotland who are committed to launching a talent attraction migrations service in 2023 which builds in our talent attraction programme to attract workers from the rest of the UK. I thank the minister for that response. I share the concerns of the construction industry training board in filling the skills gap across the sector from bricklayers to building safety to digital skills and skills relating to energy efficiency to address our commitment to net zero. CITB have suggested that an additional 26,000 construction workers by 2025, but with access to previously available EU workers no longer an option coupled with the skills gap. Can the minister advise what action is the Scottish Government to tackle this problem? I certainly recognise the nature of the challenges of the challenge that I have been able to discuss directly with the sector, including the construction industry training board. I have laid out some of the activity that we are undertaking, including trying to attract others from other parts of the UK to come to Scotland. In terms of what we are doing here and now in 2020-21, there were over 11,000 construction and property students in Scotland. That is about 9 per cent of full-time equivalent places in our colleges. Apprentices are, of course, a key mechanism in promoting employment investment in the construction sector. In 2021-22, the Scottish Government had 6,540 people into modern apprenticeships in the construction sector, the highest number on record and a 30 per cent increase in the previous year. In addition, construction is accounted for the highest level of individual training account usage. Alongside that, almost 600 employers in the sector have accessed the flexible workforce development fund since 2018. We have a range of initiatives under way, but of course I recognise that there is more to do and that is something I am committed to taking forward. I have a couple of supplementaries for Stephen Care. On the basis of that answer, and on the basis of a whistleblower who has contacted us, can the minister confirm whether Skills Development Scotland has had any of its budget reclaimed by the Scottish Government for this year? I think that it is no secret that the Deputy First Minister has stood in his feet in this chamber to talk about the process that we are undertaking to try to manage some of the cost pressures this year. However, if that is a reference to the question that has been asked by Pam Gossel, we do not need any form of whistleblower to raise the issues. Pam Gossel raises the issues. There is no freeze on the recruitment of modern apprenticeships this year, which is the core activity of Skills Development Scotland. It will continue to deliver on the programmes and the projects that it has in place. When it comes to skills shortages, can the minister comment on Derek Smeal's evidence to the Education and Children and Young Persons Committee on September 21? When he said that the reality is that when we did our own analysis we found that as we go forward in the presence of chronic underfunding, there is a reason why I use that term, the impact looks at this early stage to be likely to mean a reduction in my workforce of 25 per cent by the end of year 5. That is 2027. How is that helping our skills shortage? I recognise that there are obviously challenges in relation to the college sector. We will work closely with them to make sure that we find a way through that. Of course, there is the independent review that is under way to make recommendations. We are responding to the Scottish Funding Council's review into sustainability coherence of provision. We are working our way through those matters. On the budgetary position, I would have thought that Mr Whitfield would recognise and understand that, as a consequence of decisions that have been taken by the UK Government, there is significant pressure on the Scottish Government's budget. If it is Labour's view that there should be more invested into this area of activity, I look forward to them coming forward to suggest what other areas of the budget should be cut from. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will amend education support guidance to distinguish between voluntary home education as a matter of choice and involuntary home education as a matter of necessity. Opting to home educate your children should always be a choice and no family should feel they have to withdraw their child from local authority education. There is a clear duty on education authorities to provide an education for all children in their area, especially children with additional support needs. Fiona Hyslop The cabinet secretary will be aware that there is a small number of pupils who have very serious difficulty in physically being in school because of their neurodiversity or struggle with mental health. Does the cabinet secretary acknowledge the difference between those parents who voluntarily home educate as a choice and those parents and children who have it involuntarily imposing them as the only possible way that they can engage in education? Can the Scottish Government amend the draft guidance that is being consulted on to reframe this involuntary home education as a necessity rather than a choice? Local authorities say that they can provide discretionary support without such a change in guidance. What support can the Scottish Government offer in the meantime to those young people so that they do not miss out on education? Fiona Hyslop Her continued interest in this matter. As I said in my original answer, home education should always be a positive choice by a family and rightly no one should be required to home educate local authorities. I have that duty to provide a suitable education to every pupil and despite the challenges that individual pupils face, a local authority must support every child. I am very sympathetic to the wide range of situations where children and young people may struggle at school and I recognise that that may lead a family to consider home education. However, where a family feels that school education is not meeting the needs of their children, I would expect the local authority to work with that family to resolve any concerns. On the matter of guidance, I know that the member is well aware of the consultation that the Government has at the moment. Local authorities have the power to respond to our request for discretionary access to a range of resources, including from home educated pupils, and the responses will depend on the support that is requested. Our guidance does encourage local authorities to support home educating families where it is possible. I thank Fiona Hyslop for her continued interest in the matter, note her recent correspondence and will consider that as we consider all aspects regarding the guidance during our consultation process. In cases where home education is a matter of necessity, what support can the Scottish Government to provide to ensure that children have the connectivity and equipment needed for a modern education? As I said in my answer to Fiona Hyslop, home education should always be a positive choice and not a matter of necessity. The guidance, as it is currently configured, does allow for local authorities to be able to assist families with the request for discretionary access to a range of resources and that might include aspects around connectivity. The consultation on home education comes at a particularly challenging time for local authorities. I have pressed the cabinet secretary on numerous occasions to do more to find out about how many pupils are not returning to school following the pandemic, many of whom are moving on to forms of home education. Will the cabinet secretary commit to a full analysis of how many young people across Scotland have disengaged from education, the number of families struggling to get their kids back into school and to accompany that with a real plan for education recovery? It is an issue that is discussed both within Government at a national level and at a local level. That is not a matter that is just happening in Scotland but in other jurisdictions as well. I recognise that there is a challenge of some young people returning particularly to full-time education because of the pandemic. I reassure the member that we are taking this issue very seriously. As is education in Scotland, as are local authorities, we will continue to analyse and to do what is necessary to be able to support schools, to be able to support young people and to get the education that they are entitled to. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the actions that are being taken to recruit teachers in primary and secondary schools. Local councils are responsible for the recruitment and deployment of their staff. That includes providing a complement of teachers that best needs the needs of each of their schools and its pupils within the resources available. During the pandemic, the Scottish Government provided an additional £240 million to local authorities to support the recruitment of additional teachers and support staff. We have since committed further permanent funding of £145.5 million a year to further support education staffing. That provides assurance of funding for councils and removes that as a barrier to employing staff on permanent contracts. Cabinet Secretary, in the summer holidays Aberdeenshire schools were only sent a handful of the newly qualified teachers they requested with particular gaps in STEM. Meanwhile, other parts of the country have been given surplus teachers they don't need. Those issues are longstanding and show no signs of abating, with the effect that pupils are not getting the same teaching and key subjects just because of where they live. Ahead of the next school year, what action is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that the system for allocating new starts does not overlook our brilliant schools in the north-east, outside of the central belt? Of course, the decision on where a probationer may wish to take up the probationary year is for that individual to consider where they wish to go. We cannot make probationers go to different parts of the country. There is a process that happens that allows them to give a number of their options that they would wish to go to. We need to bear cognisance of the fact that there is an individual choice part of that. However, I recognise that, in particular areas, there are shortages, particularly in some aspects of education, STEM being one of them, and there are other aspects in Scotland where there is not such a similar challenge. We will always consider what can be done at a Scottish Government level and within the initial teacher education to provide information to those going through initial teacher education about the options that are available. Of course, there is a responsibility within local authorities to ensure that they are doing everything that they can. I admit that there are challenges for that. I am quite happy to work with individual councils where those challenges arise. However, we have to take account of the fact that there are individual choices that are made by individual probationers and those who are moving in to full-time education posts where they may wish to go to particular areas. That will present challenges and that is something that we are very cognisant of. One of the issues relating to recruitment and retention of teachers is the state of the moral of the profession. That is, in large measure, being driven also by the incidents of violence in classrooms against teachers. There have been some very disturbing reports published recently by the EIS and other bodies trying to quantify the level of incidents in classrooms. What is the cabinet secretary doing? What initiatives? What plans has the cabinet secretary got to help and support teachers in those very difficult situations? That is an exceptionally important issue. I thank Stephen Kerr for raising it. I think that he has done in the past as well, and certainly colleagues have. We are, of course, in close contact with all the teaching unions. I have spoken to the teaching unions directly about their concerns about violence within schools or indeed any harassment. There is no place and no excuse for an attack, either verbal or physical, on a teacher or a member of support staff, anybody involved in education. There is, of course, guidance that is made available on a national level. It is up to schools to be able to decide what the right process and penalty and decisions happen on an individual basis, but certainly anything that can be done at a national level, I would be very keen to work with the teaching union colleagues to see what can be done on that. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to support the workforce skills needed to pursue a transition towards a fossil-free future. Minister. It is supporting Scotland's current and future workforce to develop the skills needed for the net zero transition as a priority for this Government. Our commitment to green skills and the just transition is clearly set out in the national strategy for economic transformation and we are already making strong progress in this area. We will be updating our first climate emergency skills action plan in 2023. We are working with the skills agencies to ensure that our existing skills programmes are providing people with the skills that employers will need as they move to greener ways of working. Gillian Mackay. I thank the minister for that answer. A recent report by Scottish Renewables found that over 27,000 people in Scotland are directly employed in Scotland's renewable sector. With fossil fuel supplies likely to be impacted this winter, the need to accelerate the transition towards a green future has never been greater. Can the minister outline what steps the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that the green jobs workforce academy and similar programmes are boosting skills and employment across Scotland and in my central Scotland region? In terms of green jobs workforce academy, it has been undertaking good early initial work. We have seen through the design phase learning from that and building on successful existing programmes such as the national transition training fund on young persons guarantee. That is informing the evidence base of what we need to do in the longer term to support the scaling breadth of retaining and reskilling across the workforce with the very challenges that Gillian Mackay has mentioned. SDS has undertaken a detailed impact assessment of the academy to date, including drawing out information from the profile of users and etc. That data is informing the development of the next phase of the academy. Yesterday, Chris Stark from the UK Climate Change Committee stated to the convener group meeting that having a properly skilled workforce and jobs to facilitate the economic transition to net zero is the top issue. The EcoHouse project in West Lothian College is a prime example of the college sector and government funding working together to upskill Scotland and pursue a transition towards a fossil free future. It will see the development of two semi-detached houses at the Livingston campus, and those will form a state-of-the-art training facility in the heart of West Lothian to support the development of skills and knowledge and practical experience in its sustainable construction and efficient and effective new renewable energies, all underpinned by current and new technologies. This is a prime example of the Scottish Government, college sector and private sector should be doing to meet the challenge facing our country tackling climate change. Will the minister commit to providing the funding to replicate this innovative ground-baking project, EcoHouse project, throughout Scotland? What we do is support the college sector to respond just as is happening in West Lothian College in a creative fashion to support its local communities and its local economy to take up the direct challenge. I have seen a very good example of what is happening in West Lothian College. If you were to go to Borders College, you would see through the STEM centre that they have constructed some of the stuff that they are doing to support the transition. If you were to go to any college in the country, you would see a range of activities. That is already happening. Of course, we will get behind it and we will support it as best we can. To ask the Scottish Government what work is doing to improve attainment across primary education in Scotland. We are absolutely committed to improving attainment and substantially eliminating the poverty-related attainment gap by 2026. We are investing an increase of £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge over the course of this parliamentary term. To do that, primary schools will benefit from £520 million of pupil equity funding, empowering teachers who know their pupils' best to focus on improved attainment. The new framework for recovery and accelerating progress requires local authorities to set ambitious stretch aims on improving attainment and closing the poverty-related attainment gap, including improvement in literacy and numeracy in primary education. Local authorities are currently providing those stretch aims and Education Scotland will support them in implementing the improvements. Despite what the cabinet secretary said, the Scottish Government are failing Scotland's children. As the national improvement framework reports shows, the attainment levels are declining across the board. Does the cabinet secretary acknowledge that there are now less teachers and less pupils than there were when the SNP came to power in 2007? He is worried that despite the hard work of our teachers and support staff, the SNP is overseeing the decline in attainment levels in Scottish schools. I am disappointed by the tone and inference of Jeremy Balfour's supplementary. It does a real discredit to the good work that is happening within Scottish education. Before the pandemic, the year-on-year trending curriculum for excellence levels, the ASL data, was positive. There were positive M signs. Clearly, there has been an impact from the pandemic. I do not think that that is surprising. It is not something that is just happening in Scotland. When it comes to teacher numbers, we have the ratio of pupils to teachers at its lowest level since 2009, with more teachers than at any time in 2008. We have the most teachers if Mr Balfour would like to listen to the answer to the question. He might learn something. We have more teachers per pupil than any nation in the UK. We will continue to invest and support local authorities in the recruitment and retention of teachers, and we will continue to fulfil our manifesto commitment on attainment and their investment in teacher numbers. Poverty has a huge impact on children's ability to learn. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that any child would find it difficult to learn on an empty stomach? Free school meals, P1 to P5, the child payment of £25 per week for every child in a qualifying family and the extension of this through children up to 16, all from 14 November, will play an enormous part in improving attainment of all our children in schools? Christine Grahame makes a very salient point. The ability for the Scottish Government to assist children and young people is not just through our education policies, but also through our wider work on child poverty. Of course, that situation would be made much easier if it was not for the devastating impact of successful UK Government welfare reforms imposed since 2015. If we had seen some of those welfare reforms reversed, including the two-child limit, the removal of the £20 uplift to universal credit, in the 2015-2020 benefit phase among others, that would put £780 million into the pockets of Scottish households and lift 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, out of poverty next year. We will do, as we always have done, everything that we can to support children and young people. It is unfortunate that the UK Government continues to make that much more difficult than it needs to be. That concludes portfolio questions. There will be a brief pause before we move to the next item of business.