6. To ask the Scottish Government what feedback it has had from headteachers regarding the pupil equity fund. (S5O-02212)

The Scottish Government regularly engages with headteachers and headteacher representatives about pupil equity funding. For example, the Association of Heads and Deputes in Scotland fed into the development of the national operational guidance that was published to support headteachers on pupil equity funding. The attainment advisers who are appointed to take forward the wider work on attainment are in regular dialogue with headteachers about the Scottish attainment challenge and pupil equity funding.

The Cabinet secretary will be aware of the continued attempts by North Lanarkshire Council’s Labour and Tory administration to raid the pupil equity fund, last year for classroom assistants and this year for swimming lessons. Does he agree that it is important that headteachers are allowed to choose how they spend the money to lower the attainment gap, rather than being pressured into giving up some of that welcome funding to pay for services that were previously supplied as part of the overall education budgets for councils?

The guidance makes it clear that pupil equity funding cannot be used to replace services that were provided by local authorities in the period immediately before the one in which decisions are made. I have taken action in relation to that question on one occasion, and my officials monitor the situation carefully.

It is important that headteachers can choose how to spend pupil equity funding, and the feedback that I have had from around the education system is that headteachers welcome the opportunity that it gives them to exercise greater discretion in meeting the needs of the young people whom they are trying to support. I encourage headteachers to continue in their efforts to utilise those resources effectively to help us in our national effort to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

As the Cabinet secretary is well aware, there are very positive signs on pupil equity funding, and the Education and Skills Committee has received a lot of good evidence in that respect. However, it has also received evidence that there has been some confusion about whether schools can spend that money on teachers. For the avoidance of any doubt, could the cabinet secretary confirm that schools can use pupil equity funding to take on additional teachers?

I am very happy to confirm to Parliament that pupil equity funding can be used to take on teachers, and I encourage headteachers to take such decisions if that is appropriate. As I think I said at the most recent portfolio Question Time and might also have said to the Education and Skills Committee, pupil equity funding is already supporting a number of teachers—if my memory serves me right, of the 600 teachers by which the number of teachers has increased in the past 12 months, 500 have been paid for using pupil equity funding.

One issue that was raised with me by the Education and Skills Committee was the longevity of contracts. The Government has given an absolute commitment that there will be £120 million of pupil equity funding in each financial year until the end of the parliamentary session. That should enable any school to take on a member of staff for a longer period of time than just 12 months. I have heard some evidence of 12-month contracts being offered. I give a commitment that that funding will be there until the end of the session, which I hope will encourage the offering of longer-term contracts to members of staff.

I welcome that last point. However, the Cabinet secretary will recognise that the allocation of PEF is based on eligibility for free school meals and that, in some areas of Scotland—rural and isolated areas, in particular—use of that mechanism can be difficult because of the stigma that is attached to eligibility for free meals. How does he plan to address that point?

I will respond to that in two ways. First, although the level of free school meal entitlement in an individual school might vary from year to year, which might result in a difference in pupil equity funding, I have applied some constraints to the degree of variability that can apply, because I recognise that, if schools are to make long-term commitments of the type that I encouraged them to make in my answer to Liz Smith, they need to know that the level of PEF will not vary by that much from year to year. If my memory serves me right, I think that a tolerance level of 5 per cent is applied, but if that is incorrect, I will confirm that to Mr Scott in writing.

My second point is about eligibility for free school meals, which I accept is not perfect, although it is a more finely grained measure than the Scottish index of multiple deprivation in detecting the existence of poverty. Last week, I had a discussion with the Scottish Borders Council about work that it is undertaking to look at a variety of elements of information that could provide a more finely grained measure. The Scottish Government’s statisticians will engage with the Scottish Borders Council on that mechanism. I am open to alternative mechanisms; it is just that, so far, we have not been able to develop a better and more reliable mechanism, statistically speaking, than entitlement to free school meals. I accept Mr Scott’s point that, in rural areas, people are sometimes reluctant to apply for free school meals because of the danger of stigma.

The Education and Skills Committee also heard evidence of headteachers in, I think, two local authorities using pupil equity funding to employ campus police officers. Does the education secretary feel that that is an appropriate use of the funding?

If a headteacher believes that the most appropriate Intervention that they should make is to recruit a campus police officer, I am not in a position to question their judgment on that matter. I have one caveat, which is the point that I made in answer to Fulton MacGregor’s question. It would not be possible to use the funding to employ a campus police officer if one was employed by the local authority in the previous year, because that would be replacing a service that was previously provided and funded by the local authority. However, in principle, if a headteacher believed that recruiting a campus police officer is the right step to take, I would accept the judgment of the headteacher on that question.