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Cabinet Secretary, do you accept that Colleges Scotland is predicting 1,500 jobs losses over the next five years because of the budget that you are praising? I do not think that Colleges Scotland is praising it. It is saying that it means cuts. How can you be satisfied with that?

Cabinet secretary, what is your vision for the role that Scotland’s colleges play in our education landscape and in the wider plan to transform and modernise our economy?

Okay—good. It is therefore greatly concerning—to you as it is to me and others, I am sure—that the Glasgow Kelvin College principal, Derek Smeall, said that the impact of the budget on funding

“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, which is 2027.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 21 September 2022; c 14.]

He is looking at progressive reductions in his workforce until 2027.

This morning—perhaps he knew that you were appearing before the committee; I do not know—Jon Vincent, principal of Glasgow Clyde College, sent an email announcing that the college has to find £2 million of savings in the next financial year, that there is a need for redundancies and that it is opening a voluntary redundancy scheme.

That is not the backdrop that Scotland’s colleges need if they are going to fulfil the indispensable role that we agree they will play in our economic transformation. Do you accept what those college principals say, and will that cut in their staffing and teaching capacity undermine the quality of the education that they can deliver?

My question has to do with teachers and morale within the profession regarding an area that I have raised with you before: violence and threat in the classroom. We both agree that it is utterly unacceptable that teachers are being subjected to maltreatment on the scale that we are seeing, with 20,000 incidents reported in the past year. In a letter to me, you described the work of the Scottish advisory group on relationships and behaviour in schools. Will you expand a little on exactly what SAGRABIS is, practically, going to do to support our teachers?

Do you agree that, when it comes to reported incidents of violence and threat in the classroom, we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg, because there is no standard for reporting such incidents? Some local authorities are very hot on reporting, whereas Glasgow, for example, reported only 400 incidents. I say “only”—though it is ridiculous to say “only 400”—because, given the scale of Glasgow City Council’s school population, that figure seems unrealistic. Do you agree that it would be good to have a standard for reporting, and perhaps even a mandated requirement for reporting incidents of violence and threat in the classroom?

It is a very clever—

It is a clever response, but it is not based on any reality, because you are the cabinet secretary and you have to deliver a programme for government that is based on your political priorities. It is clear that the colleges sector does not number among those political priorities. That is what the sector reflects in the evidence that it has brought to the committee.

Let us talk about flexibilities for a moment. The college sector is asking for some flexibilities that might allow colleges to use the resources that they have to greater effect and perhaps for some degree of financial relief. Are you looking at flexibilities for the college sector?

According to the Scottish Training Federation, there is.

One question was on flexibilities and another was on accuracy about drop-outs. I pressed Jamie Hepburn on that and got a bit of a non-answer. When will we get accurate reports on drop-outs and an analysis of them? The figure is pretty high—it is about 27 per cent.

Earlier, you had a discussion with Ross Greer about the waiver scheme and contributions from organisations. It was very difficult, of course, to work out what the potential cost would be, which was acknowledged in the previous parliamentary session when the legislation was going through the legislative process. Now, a year down the line, are you in any better position to estimate where we are in relation to the original estimate of the costs of the scheme?

Just to confirm, did you start off with 12 caseworkers in place?