Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I have said to the committee on a number of occasions now, the Government is currently operating in a very challenging financial climate. Part of the reason for that is the number of public sector pay deals that we have settled; we have done that in the right space, but it costs money. We have to balance our books; after all, we cannot borrow money as a Government might usually do.

The £46 million represents a relatively small fraction—just over 2 per cent—of the nearly £2 billion that we provide to the SFC. That funding was, as the member has alluded to, meant to support strategic change in the sectors; however, it was not part of the core funding for colleges and universities that the SFC had already announced in April 2023, and I am not aware of any projects having been adversely affected as a result, given that this was transition funding that was meant to support the work more broadly.

The member has asked a really important question, and it is not one that we can necessarily divorce from wider education reform issues. As the committee will be aware, I intimated in my statement in June that I would come back to the chamber in the autumn to provide an update to that end.

We are, as I suggested in my response to Ms Thomson, facing a really challenging economic backdrop. From my perspective, this is not about taking money out of the system but about ensuring that we get the best outcomes from the £3 billion that we invest annually. Currently, we are in the very early stages of looking at how we might approach the development of a new funding model. As I have suggested, I might be able to say more in my update on education reform that I will give to the chamber later this year, because the two things are connected. However, we will work very closely with stakeholders to understand any issues that might arise, and the opportunity to look more broadly at how we ensure that funding follows the learner should be welcome.

In essence, it is about making it easier for parents to access childcare digitally so that they can look at the availability for childcare on our digital system and find what is available in their area.

A booking system? I am not sure that that will be the unique selling point that I give it.

I am not going to pretend to the committee that it will not be challenging—things are extremely challenging just now with regard to where we are and the education budget more broadly. However, I think that, in the light of Brexit and the fact that Erasmus does not exist for us any more, our commitment to undertaking this work is really important, as it could provide our young people with the opportunities that they have thus far been deprived of.

I am currently working across Government to see how we might be able to provide financial support to that end. On 5 September, we committed through the PFG to launching the programme, and we will build on an initial test approach that we are developing and delivering this year. However, I should make it clear for the committee’s understanding that the programme will not be able to replicate the full benefits of Erasmus; it will be much smaller in scale. That said, we should be ambitious about the outcomes that it will deliver.

As for the member’s question about the budgetary challenges, I will continue to engage with Mr Dey to that end. It is really important that we deliver on this outcome, because I worry about the cohort of young people who have been deprived of such opportunities.

I will probably bring in Elizabeth. In my experience, it depends on the individual child, their context and their circumstances, so having a blanket national approach to attendance can be challenging. We need to recognise—I took notes as Elizabeth was speaking—that the data that I am presented with each fortnight shows variation at the local authority level. We need to be mindful that there is not one static national picture. In certain local authorities and in certain groups of children, attendance will be higher than it is elsewhere. Poverty has an impact on attendance. Therefore, I do not think that we could narrowly say, “Let’s just focus on attendance.” We need a renewed focus on attendance, though, because there are cohorts of young people who are not engaging with the education system in the way that they should be.

That is an important point, and I very much recognise the challenge and the opportunity that the flexible workforce development fund has provided. We reduced the allocation in 2022-23 and no final decision has been made on the fund. We are working to confirm the final position shortly, and I will be happy to provide the committee with an update. Obviously, that is part of budgetary negotiations, which have, as I have said on a number of occasions today, been very challenging. There is significant pressure, not just in education and schools but right across Scottish Government and our agency budget.

However, I appreciate the convener’s point about the uncertainty that that has caused for colleges and employers. We are working really hard with our partners to confirm the position as quickly as possible. I apologise that I cannot be more direct with you today, because those discussions are on-going as part of the budgetary negotiations.

I will be happy to provide that.

Precisely.

The role of Government in the college sector is entirely different from its role in the school sector. I do not accept Mr Rennie’s comparison between the two. We do not get involved in operational decisions that are for our colleges to make, because they are independent.

I hear what Mr Rennie has outlined and intimated, and I agree that challenges undoubtedly exist, but to compare the colleges situation with the one that we recently faced in our schools is not fair.