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On the point about looking at the wider picture and not seeing this as a trade-off between the two things that you mentioned, I take it that you will accept that low wages—or wages below the real living wage—have a cost not just to the public purse but to the wider economy, given that a worker earning below the living wage is not going to have much discretionary spending power. They will not have much to spend on fish and chips on a Friday night.

I have a couple of questions about additional support needs, but, as a precursor—this is relevant—I go back to Michelle Thomson’s and Ben Macpherson’s line of questioning on the Verity house agreement. What flexibilities, such as the removal of ring fencing, from Verity house will be in place for the coming financial year for education? Is it your expectation that there will be no ring-fenced pots in the coming year? I cannot remember exactly how it is phrased, but will there be the equivalent agreements between local government and national Government rather than ring-fenced pots, and will that take place from 2024-25?

On additional support needs, I am interested, in the first instance, in the guidance that is provided to local authorities on completing their local financial returns. It is quite interesting that some local authorities are able to detail their spend on ASN across primary, secondary and special schools. They can break it down and disaggregate it. Some local authorities record an ASN spend of zero outside of special schools either because they feel that they can or because the guidance is not clear enough for them—I am not sure. Whatever the reason is, their return states that ASN spend is zero, certainly for primary and secondary schools. They have integrated it into their wider spend. Is the guidance on what is expected of local authorities in a local financial return clear enough? I ask that specifically about ASN, but, if you want to speak more generally about the expectation of a local financial return on education spend, that would be helpful as well.

I can ask the question in more general terms, because I recognise that that was a very specific technical question. Do you, in your local authorities, feel confident that you are directing spend as appropriate for children with additional support needs? There are a number of points of tension here. In the first instance, the Morgan review tells us that we need to see all education as ASN education and that it needs to be mainstream. That leads you towards a position where it is very hard to disaggregate the data, but we all recognise that the outcomes for children with additional support needs are not nearly as good as they should be and are not nearly as good as they often are for children without additional support needs. We need to be confident that we are putting in the right resources. There is obviously a tension here. How do you manage that in your local authorities so that you are confident that the resources are going to the individual children who need them and that you are directing resources at class and school level towards those where there is a higher prevalence of ASN in general and of specific, more complex needs that require additional resource?

I have one final question if we have time, convener.

It is just about additional support needs support staff or ASN assistants—the job title varies massively, and that is the point of my question. A couple of years ago, the Government statisticians who compiled the school staff census merged the categories of “classroom assistant” and “ASN assistant” into “pupil support assistant”. Our predecessor committee in that session brought them in to give evidence on that. Essentially, they said that there was no longer enough distinction in many settings between a general classroom assistant and somebody assigned to work specifically with kids with additional support needs, so they were unable to give us numbers on how many ASN assistants there were. Does it present a challenge for you that we are unable to count how many support staff work directly with children with additional needs rather than providing general support to the whole class?

On that last issue, there is an important point about whether we support kids with ASN either in mainstream or special education. Do you feel that, at the moment, in some cases at least, that is coming down to a question of resource and that there are children in mainstream education because of the lack of capacity in special educational settings? I recognise that there are two points here. The first is where the judgment is made that the child with additional support needs would thrive more in a mainstream setting. However, secondly, on the basis of what we get in our inboxes, there is the implication that local authorities are putting kids with more complex additional needs who would be better off in special educational settings into mainstream settings due to a lack of resource.

I will press you on that a little bit, because that is really helpful. In that case, what is your expectation for 2024-25? Is it just the in-year transfer flexibility that you referenced, or are you expecting some, but not all, of the currently ring-fenced funds to become flexible and go into the general grant?

I am incredibly enthusiastic about the whole package of reform that you have proposed. It is probably fair to say that the element that has captured public attention the most is the question about the status of high-stakes end-of-term exams and alternative assessment methods. You have not prescribed exactly what those alternative methods would be when it comes to what continuous assessment, et cetera, might look like.

To illustrate the options, I will pick Ken Muir’s subject. Five years from now, if a 16-year-old were to take geography, what could that assessment look like? If it is not the high-stakes end-of-term exam model, what might that experience be and what options are available?

You mentioned some of the potential new elements. Touching on what you said at the start of your answer, to what extent will it also be about recognising work that is already taking place? For example, you mentioned some of the assessment project work that is already happening in geography but does not currently count towards the final grade that a young person gets. How much of it is simply about bringing that into the mix of what makes up the collective assessment for their final grade? That would address some of the perfectly legitimate concerns that teachers have about workload, for example. It is about not just adding new stuff but recognising some of the good work that goes on that does not currently make up what decides the grade and what goes on the SQA certificate at the end of the year.