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We had set out the direction of travel clearly in our Covid recovery plans before the budget came out, because we recognised that there was going to be a very big challenge in that area. That is exactly why we made a commitment to £1 billion in funding for the Scottish attainment challenge, and it is why a commitment was made pre-budget to make permanent, and therefore baseline, the funding for teacher recruitment.

We knew that it was going to be a difficult time for children and young people, and we dealt with that by putting in train, for Covid recovery, the money for the Scottish attainment challenge. That was funded through the budget process. Of course, it was on top of the £500 million for Covid response and recovery that we had already put in place as the pandemic began.

We have carefully considered calls from further and higher education institutions for multiyear funding packages. I am sympathetic to that idea on the basis that that will allow for better planning. Obviously, given that the Scottish Government does not itself have a multiyear budget, providing multiyear funding for those institutions is challenging. The issue of further multiyear funding will be taken forward as part of the work that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy is doing. The Scottish Funding Council review also highlighted the importance of that, and we are keen to take early action on the SFC review overall to determine what else can be done to support the sector.

On what will happen from now on, there are aspects on which Governments should not intervene—industrial relations within the sectors, for example. As universities are autonomous bodies, industrial relations should certainly be left to them. It is also important that the role of colleges should be allowed to play out in relation to trade unions and to ensure that there is a positive working relationship with colleges and universities on industrial relations.

The spending review gives us the opportunity to consider how we can assist the higher and further education sectors in delivering not just for young people but for learners of all ages, as they do.

That is where the SFC has an exceptionally important role to play. It will engage with the sector to allocate the funding to the institutions and, importantly, continue to discuss with colleges and universities aspects of long-term financial sustainability—for example, long-term financial forecasts. It has an integral role to play as we move to the institutional settlements that will come from the funding. My officials and I will keep in close contact with the council as it continues to make its decisions on that and, particularly, as we move to wider discussions on the spending review for future years.

I appreciate that the college sector has expressed disappointment about the settlement that it has been given. It has been an exceptionally challenging process, and I laid some of that out in the first part of my introductory statement.

The challenge, as we moved through the budget process, has been to deliver a fair settlement that allows the Government as a whole to deliver on our multiple priorities. We have supported the college sector, and its budget has been maintained for the coming financial year. I appreciate that that is a difficult settlement for colleges, but, as I said to Mr Dornan, the SFC will now work closely with the sector on the institutional settlements that will flow from that, to see how we can best deliver for the sector in what I readily admit is a difficult and challenging year.

It is not fair to say that the funding that we are putting into teacher recruitment—which is the biggest increase in funding for teacher recruitment since 2007—is a rehash of what we were doing already. It is a substantial change in investment compared to last year.

I certainly think that it is something that the teacher census can look at. I am very conscious of the fact that, just as the Government is looking to ensure that the money delivers over this year, the committee has a key interest in that as well.

We do not dictate to local authorities how the money should be spent. It is important that local authorities are the recruiters of educational staff. They are able to determine what is best in their local area, so we do not provide the funding on the basis that it has to be for a certain percentage of teachers or support staff. That would be the wrong message to send to local authorities. We are keen to ensure that it is delivered locally by them.

We have to be careful not to overburden local authorities with reporting duties on this matter, but we keep in close contact with councils and COSLA right across the year in order to be able to determine what is happening. Numbers are very fluid—they change from week to week depending on what is happening in local authorities. It is not a static exercise. We will continue to keep a close eye on the situation and we will keep the committee updated in any way that we can.

I do not have figures about the uptake, but I would be happy to provide that information to the committee. The feedback that I have seen is that the scheme has been widely welcomed and that teachers have found such schemes useful. Education Scotland has also delivered on some aspects of teacher wellbeing. It is important to look at those things in the round. The feedback that I have had is that the scheme has been well received and well used. I do not have the exact figures to hand, but I can supply them to the committee.

You have raised a very important point about how that money goes out to local authorities and local authorities’ discretion to move it forward. Yes, the money will go from the Scottish Government to local authorities to allow them to make the decisions that they wish to make, within the funding streams that we put out.

Alison Cumming or Graeme Logan may wish to give more detail of that.

Within the budget, we are allocating nearly £2 billion to Scotland’s universities and colleges. That is a fair settlement in a challenging area. We have also provided fair settlements in the past. I appreciate that there have been challenges but, for example, between 2007 and 2021, the college sector resource budget has increased by more than 30 per cent in cash terms. I give that as an example of how we can invest, have invested and will continue to invest in the college and university sector, and we will continue to look at that very closely in the spending review.

We are committed to driving the work forward. The Government would like that to happen in August, but the Government cannot make it happen. The Government is absolutely committed to doing everything that we can, on our side, to make that happen, but it is not just up to the Government. The Government is willing to do that, and I know that our partners in local authorities and trade unions will be looking at the matter very carefully, too. There is a willingness to make that happen, and there is an absolute commitment from the Government to do everything that we can to make it happen, but we have to look at the very fine details of how we make it happen in every school. We have to consider the different sizes of schools and local authorities. We will start by then if we can.