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I am afraid that the answers will have to be very brief, because we are out of time.

Item 2 is an evidence session on how schools are coping with the start of term in the context of the high numbers of Covid cases as a result of the omicron variant.

I warmly welcome Douglas Hutchison, director of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and executive director of education at Glasgow City Council; Greg Dempster the general secretary of the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland; Simon Cameron, chief officer of the employers team at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; and Margaret Wilson, the chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland. I thank all of you for giving up your time to help us with this session.

I will start off with a question for COSLA, in particular, but others may comment if they wish.

Simon Cameron, COSLA’s written submission for today’s meeting talks about how the budget has been baselined for additional teachers and how

“individuals will be employed on permanent or temporary contracts as appropriate to the role and identified needs of services.”

Could you talk me through how your members will make decisions about whether a contract should be permanent or temporary?

Simon, are you there?

Have you been personally involved in any discussions with the Scottish Government about reducing the number of temporary teacher contracts? Last summer, one in eight of our teachers was on a temporary contract. Have you or any of your members been involved in discussions with the Scottish Government about reducing that number?

As I said, the level of temporary contracts in Scotland last summer was one in eight, which is pretty much double what it was a decade before.

Okay. Bob Doris has a brief supplementary question on contracts. He will direct his comments to whomever he wishes to give a response.

As we draw our session to a conclusion, does James Dornan have any questions to put to the witnesses?

I will bring in Margaret Wilson of the National Parent Forum of Scotland to comment on the impact that parents are feeling from the disruption of teacher and pupil absences in the delivery of education in general. What are parents telling you about their experience?

Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. This is a virtual meeting.

Agenda item 1 is consideration of a piece of subordinate legislation. The regulations are being considered under the negative procedure. Do members have any comments on the instrument?

As there are no comments, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument.

Members indicated agreement.

Are there D-days? Are there decision days for those things? Are there trigger moments?

Is Douglas Hutchison right to think that the trigger date for making a decision is the end of January?