Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am.

What are they?

So many questions arise from the evidence that you are giving this morning and I do not have the time to ask them. When will we hear the outcome of the talks that you are having around flexibilities? That is my first question. Secondly, when will we tighten up the accuracy of the reporting on course completion and drop-out rates in colleges? Thirdly, when will you end the freeze on apprenticeship places?

Okay—that was my opinion.

That is not what is being suggested.

There is a certain inconsistency between your answers to Willie Rennie and your call for radical reform, cabinet secretary. It is a strange organisational set-up that calls for radical reform when you say that nothing much is broken.

Let us return to the Tes article, which contained a quote from an email from Clare Hicks, the Scottish Government’s director of education reform, in response to a freedom of information request. In that email, she said that the funding request from the delivery boards is being

“borne down on”

and

“reduced ... to the minimum viable”.

She also made it clear that the Government’s education reform team is “lean”—there is nothing wrong with lean, by the way—and that the Government is having to

“rely on ES and SQA prioritising activity to meet ministers’ goals”.

Are we really saying that we are leaving the bulk of the workload of reforming Scotland’s education system to Education Scotland and the SQA? Are you satisfied with that? What controls and direction are there around the delivery of education reform—

—given that those bodies, which have failed, otherwise they would not be getting scrapped—

Can I ask what the definition is of

“EU nationals with protected rights under the terms of the Citizens’ Rights Agreements”?

I want to make sure that I properly understand what that means.

From what you said, we agree, I think, that Scotland’s colleges will play an indispensable role in delivering the transformations that we all seek in our economic situation. Do you agree with that?

But it is the funding—