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There is an Attainment Advisor (AA) assigned to each local authority and they are having a positive impact. As the Scottish Attainment Challenge programme progresses Education Scotland is working with partners in local authorities to extend the reach and impact of Attainment Advisors in a number of ways, including:

• Forming clusters of AAs teams to ensure greater impact by more readily making connections across the activities being progressed by local authorities. The AAs will link up local project leads who are doing similar work so that they can consider joint delivery or share their experiences and learning.

• Making ever greater use of collaboration tools, including Yammer and Glow Office 365, to share ideas; to jointly develop exemplars for sharing on the National Improvement Hub; to enhance the communications between AAs and others involved in the programme whilst remaining locally based; and to gain the support and advice of other expertise in a timely manner.

• Bringing the AAs and local authority project leads together for professional learning and knowledge exchange sessions to enable the most impactful interventions to be planned.

• AAs are encouraging examples of what is working to be shared across authorities to reach schools that do not receive funding through the Scottish Attainment Challenge and more exemplars are being published on the National Improvement Hub to ensure all schools and partnering organisations are able to learn from the work and make use of materials shared.

The Learner Journey review will build on the solid foundations of Getting It Right For Every Child, Curriculum for Excellence and Developing the Young Workforce to further improve young people’s experience of moving through school, college, training, university or employment.

The review process, underway through the commissioning of research into the experience of young people at various points in the system, will consider 5 themes: careers information, advice and guidance; access; provision; transitions and progression; and funding. The Scottish Government will undertake a process of evidence gathering and extensive engagement with learners and those who work with them to identify improvements. We will publish more detail about that process by the end of this year.

We do not collect data on classes in secondary schools so this information is not available.

Good progress has been made. A new model of inspection was introduced in September 2016 following extensive consultation with stakeholders. The school inspection is based around the self-evaluation framework How Good is Our School? 4 (HGIOS?4) which sets out Quality Indicators (QI) together with associated key themes.

The QI ‘Raising attainment and achievement’ is one of four QIs being evaluated on all school inspections this academic year. In all inspections, this QI is graded on a six-point scale (excellent; very good; good; satisfactory; weak and unsatisfactory) and evaluates the extent of schools’ success in raising attainment and closing the attainment gap. The QI includes the illustration of an evaluation of Very Good: ‘we have raised the attainment of all our learners and in particular our most disadvantaged children and young people’ as an example of the ‘Equity for all learners’ theme. Discussions on this theme include a focus on how schools are using their SIMD data and what the school is doing to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Education Scotland will continue to monitor and evaluate the reporting through HGIOS?4 on closing the attainment gap.

Schools’ own self-evaluation reports form an important part of the inspection evidence. Inspectors use these reports help them make judgements on how well schools are raising attainment and achievement, and how well schools’ self-evaluate their performance across a range of QIs.

Plans for the appointment of a new Chief Education Advisor for the Scottish Attainment Challenge are in the advanced stages of development and I expect to be able to announce further details in due course.

The terms and conditions of employment used by non-departmental public bodies are matters for bodies themselves, unless specified by the body’s founding legislation. Non-departmental public bodies are required to operate within the framework set by the Scottish Public Finance Manual, relevant employment and equalities legislation and the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy.

The Scottish Government is committed to providing high quality, flexible early learning and childcare that meets the needs of children and their families. That is why we have increased the amount of funded early learning and childcare to 600 hours a year for all 3 and 4 year olds, and extended this to over a quarter of all 2 year olds, through the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. The Act has also placed flexibility on a statutory footing for the first time, and has placed a duty on local authorities to consult with local groups of parents every 2 years on patterns of hours that will best suit their needs. It is therefore through this consultation process that any specific needs, such as availability in large urban areas, will be identified and addressed.

More broadly, provision has increased nationally through additional hours. The Care Inspectorate’s overview of initial expansion, published in March 2016, indicated that “Local authorities have generally succeeded in making available 600 hours for all eligible children” and, “The clear progress being made by local authorities to measure and meet parental demand for early learning and childcare is welcome, and there is a need to embed effective and widespread methods for consulting parents”. We will continue to work with local authorities to increase and accelerate choice and access to early learning and childcare.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5O-00180 on 22 September 2016 which is available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

As detailed in the response to S5O-00180, public sector pay policy expects employers covered by the policy to pay their staff a Living Wage. Accreditation requires all directly employed staff and contracted staff to be paid the Living Wage (or for employers to at least demonstrate that they are moving towards applying the Living Wage across all contracts). Public Sector Pay Policy does not directly apply to contracted staff.

In line with the requirements for Living Wage Accreditation, the pay policy expects public bodies who take on a Modern Apprentice in a specific role to pay the Living Wage where they can afford to do so and as a minimum to pay the adult National Minimum Wage/National Living Wage rate rather than the Youth Development or Apprentice rates.

The Scottish Government made clear in the Delivery Plan that new data would become available through the National Improvement Framework in October. This data has now been received, is being analysed and will be published in December. The criteria for measuring the attainment gap will be set out in the National Improvement Plan that will also be published in December. Engagement with key stakeholders will take place to discuss plans to reduce the gap, together with any possible milestones towards delivery, and will be available by the middle of next year.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5O-00180 on 22 September 2016 which is available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx