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I have been reflecting on some of the evidence that the committee has taken. As I said in my opening statement, most teachers in Scotland are not trained in restraint practices, which I think that we need to be very careful about. In most mainstream settings, those practices would not be used ordinarily. However, as the committee heard from Lynne Binnie, ADES’s evidence suggested that the practice was mostly used in early learning and childcare and primary settings and in specialist settings. To my mind, we do not yet have a national picture. During evidence sessions, Mr Briggs quoted statistics from the Care Inspectorate, but that covers settings only in which the Care Inspectorate operates. At the moment, we do not have the national picture for education services, because we do not gather the data. The review is extremely important, as it will provide us with a clearer understanding of what is going on in which settings and which staff are using or not using those practices.

The teaching unions are very keen to point out to me that many teachers do not want to be trained in restraint practices. Certainly, from when I undertook my teacher training many years ago, I know that most people in education will not engage in restraint, but in a specialist education facility, such as an ASN unit or some ELC settings, there may be a member of staff who has been trained in those types of approaches. It is quite a unique approach in Scotland that exists in our education system—although it is not unique to Scotland. We need to be mindful not to set hares running about where we are with restraint because, in my experience, it is not used commonly in mainstream settings.

However, we do not yet have the evidence base. To answer Mr Adams’ point about individual incidents, we need the evidence base to inform and to help to support the next steps.

I share Mr Briggs’s concerns—the issues at Dundee university should have been known to Government long before they were. I reassure the committee that I have put those issues to the SFC. The Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill is currently a bill before Parliament, and members may want to consider the issues that it concerns more broadly in respect of the role of the SFC and the powers it may have as an organisation in the future.

There are.

It is fair to say that there continue to be issues in relation to the court, but that is a matter for the management team, and the university itself, to engage with.

The issues in relation to the court speak to the governance issues to which Pamela Gillies referred. That is for the committee to consider; it needs to be mindful of those aspects. Part of the challenge that Pamela Gillies spoke about was that the court was not working in the way that it should have done in order to provide challenge to decisions that were made previously. I am sure that the committee will want to explore those things, but I will, of course, explore them further with the SFC later to give me reassurance in that regard.

Richard Maconachie has been attending a number of court meetings with observer status for the SFC, so I am sure that I will engage with the SFC further on that this week.

I think that there were issues with membership. There were issues with trade union engagement as well, and issues with papers being shared late. That is off the top of my head, convener.

Yes.

Of course we can—and we may yet do so.

That concern was put to the committee by Mike Corbett of the NASUWT, and I heard again from him last week that better reporting, which the convener has called for and which I support, might put children in danger to some extent. Those are issues that we would need to consider in the round. I was quite taken by Mike Corbett’s point, and we would need to be mindful of it. I am sure that there are ways in which we could work with local government to provide more reassurance around that, but it should not be the case that we are not informing parents about things for fear of other things happening. There might be something in the mix in relation to how we work with schools and parents in individual circumstances where there might be a concern at home about that type of behaviour.

They could be in that situation, but they might not have had training and might be reticent. It is difficult for me to comment on individual examples but, in my experience, teachers are very reticent ever to involve themselves physically in any debates that may ensue in school, because—responding to the points that the convener made at the start of the evidence session—they are fearful of what may happen as a result. That is also part of the trade unions’ position. We need to be careful about that.

The bill stipulates an approach that does not mandate training, although it does provide for a national list of providers, which we are supportive of. We have provided further detail in that regard in our guidance. I think that the approach that Mr Johnson has taken is the right one, and we will work with him further on training. The training that is required of staff can take a number of days, as I understand it—I think that the committee took evidence on that. We are talking about staff going out of school for quite a long time. We need to think about the costs that that will incur in terms of school budgets and what it might mean for people being out of school and for staff cover. All those things will need to be resolved at stage 2.

To my mind, training on restraint is not something that all teachers will want to take part in. In fact, many teachers will not want to be part of it, because it is for teachers who work in specialist provision or perhaps in ELC.

I am always sympathetic to having more money provided to my budget. I have seen the evidence from the EIS and the NASUWT. That is a routine ask from the trade unions—that will not surprise the committee. I accept that pressures on our schools in relation to additional support needs have increased, particularly in recent years. Last year’s budget included £28 million of extra money for additional support needs, which complements the additional £1 billion of spend in the previous financial year.

There is extra money going into the system, but I am sympathetic to the points about resourcing. We need to consider those issues with regard to the financial memorandum. We have raised some challenges in relation to inflation, which has not been accounted for and which I know that the committee will be keen to consider. We need to look at that. If we are looking at a need for extra resourcing, we must consider where that will come from. Of course, we are approaching the budget, so, if members have views on where extra money for education should come from, I am all ears and will engage on a cross-party basis, because I would be supportive of more funding coming to the education portfolio.