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Attendance is a very black-and-white measurable, is it not?

I tend to agree with what you have said. I will bring Michael Marra back in, in a minute. To be fair to the petitioner, we are not likely to get to this in the immediate future. As I said, I cannot see over the brow of the hill, but I do not see us getting into that policy area in the work of the committee in the next year at least. I therefore think that the best thing to do is to be completely on the level and say that we should close the petition but that, should we get to the subject of initial teacher education, we would have an institutional memory of the petition and could revisit it at that time.

This is about funding as much as anything else. We have another budget cycle coming almost as soon as we get back from the summer recess, so we could consider the issue in the context of our pre-budget scrutiny. Over the course of that process, it would be a fair issue for the committee to address with witnesses, including the cabinet secretary. We could keep the petition open to take us to that point and then review it. Does that answer your question?

We could perhaps ask for a timescale in which we can expect to see the guidance that the working group has developed.

That is a very clear position. To an extent, the issue is a silver thread that runs through so many other issues that we consider as part of our work programme, so it is not completely out there. As you pointed out, it keeps coming back up in the committee’s work.

Willie Rennie is right. It has dawned on a lot of us in the committee that headteachers’ leadership calibre is the critical factor in the performance of a range of indicators. We heard some amazing stories when we were interacting with teachers and parents. The committee would be interested in learning more about the leadership development programmes that are being used and successfully deployed, and the effect of those programmes. That is a subject that we would want to come back to.

Michael Marra has a supplementary question.

I will give you a break for a minute. Willie Rennie wants to come in with a supplementary question. I will make way for him and then bring in Mark Ratter, which will give Mark a bit longer to prepare his answer.

What proportion of the workforce in your local authority area is on temporary contracts?

Is the money additional in the sense that it is not being used to plug any gaps that have arisen from core funding shifting or being cut?

When you say “manage the staffing out”, does that mean that people will lose their jobs?