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We will have to work through that in-year.

No.

For a start, we have not cut the funding for the poorest communities.

What we have done, as agreed with COSLA, is look at where the poorest communities and the poorest children are, and we have put the funding to those areas—and, yes, that is across the 32 local authorities.

The exceptional circumstances application would take place once we were in-year and looking at changes to teacher numbers, either up or down. Councils would come forward and suggest that there were exceptional circumstances for a change. No council will be making an application now, because they are setting their budgets and it would be inappropriate for a council to do that just now. That is what the in-year discussions are for, as I just went through with Mr Rennie. They are about dealing with any variations to teacher numbers. That is the point for us to talk about exceptional circumstances.

As I have said, the letter was the final piece that came after a number of meetings between the Scottish Government at ministerial level with COSLA spokespeople and at official level before that final opportunity was given to see whether more could be done in a different way.

We were very clear that we wanted to see progress, but we were also very clear with COSLA that that could be done in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that that approach was required. The reason why that was required was obviously the teacher census, which sparked concerns about what happened in the previous year.

For clarity, I highlight that the proposals are from officers, but we saw a number of councils coming out with proposals for the 2023-24 budget that were exceptionally concerning in terms of what they would mean for teacher numbers.

If we put those two things together, that is why we were on a trajectory—

That will all be from the teacher census, in essence. The census gives the national statistics on teacher numbers. The numbers on pupil support assistants are not published in December; as I referred to previously, they are published in March. When you look at where the baseline is for each of the years and where the numbers that I quoted came from, you will see that those are from the teacher census.

In the letter that I have just issued on teacher numbers, I recognise that pupil numbers have decreased, and are expected to decrease in some local authority areas while some others will experience an increase. It is clear that, in certain local authorities, it would be possible keep the pupil teacher ratio the same with a reduction in teachers. That is something that local authorities could look at.

However, the challenge that we face is that we also want to improve attainment, and it is clear—the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s research supports this—that teacher numbers and teacher quality have an impact on attainment. Therefore, a decreasing pupil roll is not necessarily a reason to reduce teacher numbers, particularly if an authority is considering how it can support pupils from the poorest communities or pupils who, for whatever reason, are struggling in school. Teachers can be used in different ways.

The pupil teacher ratio is important, but so, too, is how the overall teaching workforce is used. When it comes to expenditure, whether pupil numbers go up or go down has an impact on the funding that goes to local authorities.

When it comes to the challenge authorities, parts of my letter to local authorities recognise that we might need to take into account exceptional circumstances. I mentioned recruitment and retention earlier; we would take cognisance, too, of the changes to challenge authorities.

I fully appreciate the difficult decisions that local authorities have to make. I said in my opening statement that local authorities have very difficult decisions to make, just as the Scottish Government did as we put our budget together. We have—this is a joint understanding—a desire to improve attainment. I have yet to see any suggestion that reductions in teacher numbers or pupil support assistants would help to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

If we want to get those education fundamentals in place, we have to take the decisions. If we have a joint understanding about why money has been put into a budget, it is not surprising that local government would wish to provide further challenge to local authorities to ensure that that money was spent in that way.

Local authorities have to make very difficult decisions on other areas of their expenditure. However, to go back to the point that we made earlier when we were discussing the budget that was set yesterday, the Deputy First Minister introduced additional expenditure for local government of more than £700 million, which is a substantial real-terms increase. The decisions that we have taken allowed that to happen.

As I mentioned earlier, no costed proposals came forward from other parties to suggest how that funding could be increased.

The Government target remains at 3,500 by the end of the year. We have to work with local government colleagues once budgets are set to analyse further projections in-year, and we also need to look at what the ITE number will be. That is not a one-stage process but an iterative process that will go on throughout the year. The Government’s commitment to those numbers remains.

Because we will work closely and carefully with local authorities in-year, there will be a clear understanding from them about what will happen and the implications of that. It is for local authorities to then weigh up whether it would be sensible to carry on strategically cutting teacher numbers because they will know the implications. I do not think that we will get to that situation because, through the collaboration that we will have in-year, they will be very clear about the implications of that and how it might not make financial sense for a council to do it.