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It is good to hear you say that. We hear quite a lot about what teachers are looking for—I do not want to diminish teachers’ experiences or their importance in this regard—but we should also consider what children and young people are looking for.

Good morning again, cabinet secretary. With regard to the curriculum, I would like to talk about the breadth of choice in secondary education. The committee heard last year about the research from Dr Marina Shapira and Professor Mark Priestley. Dr Shapira told the committee:

“We found some absolutely appalling practices such as channelling young people into higher-performing subjects, discouraging them from taking up subjects in which they were not predicted to perform well and abandoning whole subjects that were deemed to be low performing but that might have been very important for providing a holistic, well-rounded education. For us, the culture of performativity was one of the main issues standing in the way of the successful implementation of curriculum for excellence.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 8 November 2023; c 3-4.]

When I was listening to some of your previous interactions, perhaps particularly with Willie Rennie, it struck me that the first part of that quote could have been plucked from any time in education, because it is not necessarily specific to curriculum for excellence. There is perhaps a bit of a challenge in that. You will be aware of that research, and I am interested in hearing your reflections on it.

The report on the research spoke about a reduction in the number of national qualifications entries at S4 compared with the period prior to the introduction of curriculum for excellence. It also spoke about

“significant curricular fragmentation in many schools”,

with pupils having a large number of teachers.

To go back to what was said about prescription versus an open-ended approach, could it be the case that, without having prescription, there is a temptation to steer pupils into subjects that perform well for the schools?

When I was at school, people studied one of the sciences and a language for a number of years, but that does not happen now. Yesterday’s members’ business debate was about modern languages at the University of Aberdeen. If young people are being funnelled towards subjects in which they are likely to perform well—it might be hard to study modern languages in schools if there is no demand for such subjects—could the breadth and the less prescriptive approach actually narrow things for young people?

Thank you.

You were very generous in indicating that we might have been at school at the same time—I think that I was a tiny bit ahead of you, but thank you.

That is very polite.

We have covered a number of the factors that might make it challenging for schools to provide a broad offer in the senior phase. I know that you have partly addressed this already, but is there any more that you want to say about what the Government might do to mitigate the barriers or challenges that schools are facing?

Will Dr Gulhane take an intervention on that point?

I will stick with the social care budget. Forgive me—you mentioned some of this in your opening remarks, but I think that it is worth getting clarity for the record. What is the total level of planned spending on social care for 2024-25? How does that position compare with what the Scottish Government inherited in 2006-07? How does that increase compare with the received Barnett consequentials?

Sandesh Gulhane appears to be making an argument against physician associates and AAs, but we have heard that they have been practising for 20 years. The instrument is about regulation of those professionals. Is Dr Gulhane making an argument against having those professionals in the system?