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All teachers provide significant support to pupils with additional support needs, as do specialist support learning staff. The budget that we are discussing continues to provide additional support to local authorities, investing £15 million every year to enhance their capacity to respond effectively to individual needs. That money can be used for additional pupil support assistance.

The overall responsibility to provide sufficient support for every young person lies with schools, but we and COSLA are jointly implementing the ASL review outcomes. Some of that work has been impacted by Covid, but we are keen to move forward with a revised action plan, and I hope that that will deal with some of the issues that Stephanie Callaghan has raised.

It is obviously a serious issue, and the Government takes it seriously. Much of the responsibility will lie with child and adolescent mental health services, but I can point to two examples of how education can assist. The first is through the funding that we have given local government to allow for a counsellor in every secondary school. That is a new initiative and we are closely monitoring the demand for the service to see how needs are being met across the country. It is a reasonably new initiative, but it is available and it is an important addition to what is going on.

The other example is the whole family wellbeing fund. For that development, we are putting additional funding of £50 million from across Government into next year’s budget, although that will increase over the current session of Parliament. It is important that we look in a holistic manner at the challenges that young people and families face, which may include child poverty, challenges with educational attainment and issues around mental health or substance abuse.

Our development of the whole family wellbeing fund is another important step to ensure that we support families and use education establishments as a way to reassure people that support is available. There is no wrong door; if a family needs support, the intention behind the fund is to ensure that they get it, and mental health plays an important part in that.

I cannot speak on behalf of Councillor McCabe, but I think that, on the overall issue, local government and national Government are in agreement that we want to do anything that is required to be able to assist in this matter. We will, of course, take information from other sources if that is at all possible.

However, I point to the fact that we have the workforce issues group, which is chaired by COSLA. It considers many issues, including, in particular, ventilation. Unions sit on the group, along with Scottish Government officials, and are asked for specific examples that are not being dealt with locally and can be escalated if they need to be dealt with in another way. That approach has not proved to be fruitful, as we have not had material coming through in that way. That is why I have taken the decision to write directly to appeal to unions. Of course, I am happy to hear from other sources about particular concerns in any area. That avenue is open, and the workforce issues group is the place where those issues can be considered in great detail.

From memory, I think that 97 per cent of schools receive pupil equity funding. We have not yet published the allocations for each school, but we will seek to do that in due course and Mr Mundell will be able to see them at that point. Free school meals have been used as a proxy as well. I hope that that is as relevant to small rural schools as it is to larger schools and other areas, as it is based on the number of children who present for free school meals.

There do not require to be any changes to the budget to ensure that exams will take place. The SQA’s central planning assumption is that they will take place and it is moving that planning forward. The budget for the SQA is set out on that basis.

If you let me answer the question, Mr Mundell, you will hear what I am about to say. The only reason why exams would not take place would be that there was public health guidance on the prevention of gatherings. Clearly, if there was such guidance, it would be irresponsible for the Government to say that exams should take place. The SQA is continuing to work to ensure that exams can take place safely.

Within the wider educational settlement, a great deal of work is continuing around what support can be given while learning is disrupted, so that there is a wider pool of material in relation to the e-learning offer, increasing study support sessions and so on. A great deal of work is continuing, albeit not within the budget that we are discussing. Clearly, we need to be delivering that work now, and increased support has gone into the e-learning in the current calendar year.

We are also working closely with local government colleagues on what they are putting in place for Easter revision and on whether further support can be given in relation to that. The reason why I have not made an announcement on that to date is that we need to know what local authorities will be doing in order to ensure that what we do is in addition to what is already happening. However, a great deal of work is being done to ensure that young people are being supported while their learning is disrupted at this time.

We increased the funding for the Scottish attainment challenge from £750 million in the previous parliamentary session to £1 billion.

This financial year’s budget included a £20 million Covid premium. Given that no Covid consequentials have come to the Scottish Government this year, it has been exceptionally difficult to make further progress or to provide specific Covid premiums.

In my opening remarks, I pointed to the fact that we have seen the biggest investment in teacher recruitment for many years, in recognition of the challenges that education was facing and was about to face. That is why we have made the massive investment that we have made in teacher recruitment. We knew that this was going to be a challenging time.

The key strength of providing specific funding for specific purposes is that that ensures that all the money that is provided for a certain purpose goes to that purpose. I point to the example of the expansion to 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare. Such projects have very much been a shared priority of the Scottish Government and local government. Such funding has allowed the Scottish Government to move forward with the commitment to provide that early learning and childcare via local authorities.

I appreciate that ring fencing funding reduces local authority discretion in some areas, but it is worth noting that, although ring-fenced funding is for increased investment in services such as schools and nurseries, 93 per cent of the funding that we will provide is not formally ring fenced. We recognise that local authorities have called for less ring-fenced funding, and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy has committed to reviewing all ring-fenced funding as part of the resource spending review. We will continue our constructive engagement with local government on education areas that are ring fenced.

There is no specific allocation within the overall Scottish Government budget for teacher pay. As Mr Greer rightly points out, the budget for teacher recruitment is, in effect, for teachers’ pay. That is what it is spent on. The committee will be aware that we are still going through the process of seeking an agreement on teachers’ pay for this financial year. The committee will also be aware that an offer was made by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which is currently with the trade union members for discussion and decision.

With the committee’s forbearance, I will not say too much about the current teacher’s pay situation, because we are clearly in the middle of the process. That process has gone on for an exceptionally long time, and I appreciate that teachers are very frustrated about how long it is taking. We need to come to agreement on teachers’ pay, but it needs to work its way through the SNCT, as per the usual process.

The Scottish Government stands by to make any changes that it can to allow that process to move forward, but the Government has already put in additional funding to the overall local government settlement, which assisted with the wider local government workforce planning and is a demonstration of how we have played our part in moving things forward. The process must now run its course through the SNCT.