There were some laudable messages and policies in the anti-poverty summit called by first minister Humza Yousaf this week.
But the only one likely to have cut through to casual observers of Scottish politics is that the government has rowed back on its commitment to free school meals.
Or has it?
What’s in no doubt is that the overriding picture is one of confusion and a government that has not been consistent or organised in its messaging.
First, on Wednesday, Yousaf appeared to perform a U-turn on free school meals; then, a day later, his deputy, Shona Robison, seemed to do a U-turn on the U-turn. (I’m not sure there’s any consensus on what alphabetic or geometric term we apply to that level of policy rejigging.)
First, though, some context: Yousaf’s message on Wednesday should not have come as a huge surprise.
After incrementally rolling out free school meals to P1-5 over a number of years, the next step of taking in P6-7s had been stalling for some time, as Tes Scotland has documented on a number of occasions.
It was meant to happen by August 2022, but even before Yousaf came to power it was clear that it would not happen before August 2024 - if at all, given the dire budgetary messaging from both local and national government. Certainly, in the government priorities document published in April soon after Yousaf became first minister, there was only a non-specific commitment to “expanded free school meal provision”.
What Yousaf did was take things a step further: rather than letting the expansion of universal free school meals wither quietly on the vine, he made it more explicit that the policy may be ditched in favour of a more targeted approach. We checked with the government that this was the case, and there was no objection to how the issue had been reported.
For whatever reason, however, on BBC Radio Scotland the next day, deputy first minister Shona Robison was saying that the policy of free school meals for all primary children, including P6-7s, would go ahead by 2024. She appeared to fine-tune Yousaf’s message about targeted approaches, to suggest that this only applied to secondary schools.
Even on that front, just last week education secretary Jenny Gilruth said the government was “committed to delivering a pilot of universal free school meals in secondary schools”. Yesterday, however, Robison said the secondary sector is “where the issue and question of targeting comes in”: the deputy minister pondered whether policy might be “better targeted to support, for example, breakfast clubs or pre-clubs”.
So, is all that clear? You’d be forgiven if it takes you a while to process, as the government’s messaging has been muddled and shifting.
Whatever the policy is now, and however it is changed in the weeks and months to come, the government has signalled that it is broadly shifting away from universal to targeted approaches. That message is out there now and speculation will mount about whether it applies to other policies, too - what, for example, is the future of the grand plan for every pupil to get a free laptop or mobile device?
Robison appeared to be trying to stuff the cat back in the bag yesterday - when the cat had already hopped into the back of a postman’s van and ended up five towns away.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
