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The support that we can provide to young people in general during the school holidays has been an important development in our approach to Covid, and it is something that we are keen to move further on as we eventually see the back of Covid.

The entitlement is for those who receive free school meals. It is targeted. However, that is the minimum, and we know that some local authorities will have gone further and will go further. We can ensure that we are delivering a project that works for families on low incomes, reaching out to a diverse range of children—particularly children with disabilities or additional support needs and children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, for instance. Although the focus is on targeting those who receive free school meals, we are conscious of the need not to consider everyone as one group; it is a matter of considering what can be done within the funding to support children and young people from different backgrounds, ensuring that the support is going as wide as it can under the entitlement.

I point to the fact that we have delivered a very strong budget for education and skills. We have seen investment—

We have seen a very important development in our investment in teachers, for example, but if Mr Rennie will point to that £100 million cut and—

It is not something that the Scottish Government can deliver. We must work with local authorities and trade unions. We would like to move forward quickly, with the trade unions. Our wish to deliver on that comes down to the brass tacks of planning and modelling whether that can be achieved, but we are pushing towards that. It will have different implications for different local authorities, for different sizes of schools and for primary and secondary schools. We need to get into those fine details.

The guidance remains as it was before Christmas. The guidance is based on the expert advice that the Government receives.

Can the convener tell me if anybody else can hear me?

Perhaps Mr Marra can come back to me in correspondence if he cannot hear me. I will carry on and see where we get to.

I said that the guidance had not changed from before Christmas. We listen very carefully to the expert advice on the issue. The £5 million is in addition to the £10 million that was given previously for CO₂ monitoring and the previous allocation of £90 million for Covid logistics, which many local authorities have used part of for improved ventilation.

The ventilation support fund that was announced by the First Minister yesterday is to ensure that we are supporting the Scottish guidance on ventilation in schools, which is, as I said, the same as it was before Christmas. It will help to support any remedial action that is required. As I have said to Mr Marra and others, from the feedback that we get from local authorities, there is a very small amount of remedial action required for a small minority of spaces, but I wanted to ensure that funding was not a blockage, and that is the reason for the fund. It could be used for high-efficiency particulate absorbing filters if they were identified as the only appropriate solution for particular spaces.

However, once again, I point out that the expert advice that we are getting on this issue is that air-cleaning devices should not be used as an alternative to improving natural ventilation, and the updated guidance makes very clear the circumstances in which the use of air-cleaning and filtration devices might be appropriate. That is aligned with the advice that we are getting from the Health and Safety Executive. Therefore, the money is not simply for HEPA filters but is for whatever remedial action local authorities feel is required, and they can discuss that with Scottish Government colleagues.

Mr Marra—

We are working very quickly with local authorities to determine how to get the money out of the door as quickly as possible. If there is a wish to have funding provided, we want to be able to provide it in the current financial year.

That ties in with the point that you raised about need being different among local authorities. It may vary, depending on, for example, the age of the schools and what is already in place in a school setting. It would seem more sensible for the money to be drawn down as required by local authorities, so that we can be sure that we are getting the money to where it is needed. Mr Greer rightly points to the information that we got back from the EIS survey, and I would highlight the feedback that we are getting from local authorities on their CO₂ monitoring, which notes that very little remedial action is required at this point. We want to be able to direct the £5 million funding to where it is needed.