 Welcome to the 23rd meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2023. My first item of business this morning is an evidence session on local government spending, on education and children's services to help us inform the committee's pre-budget scrutiny. I welcome Dr Douglas Hutchison, president of the Association of Directors of Education Scotland and Executive Director of Education from Glasgow City Council, Cary Lindsay, Executive Officer, Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and Kirsty Flanagan, Director of Finance, Argyll and Bute Council, who is representing local government directors of finance Scotland. Thank you all for joining us this morning. We do have a lot of ground to cover, so I'm going to move straight to questions from members. The first member this morning is Michelle Thomson. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. It's a question for all of the panel and perhaps arguably it's a framing one. I'm also a member of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, so I'm very interested in the specifics of how the Farity House agreement will work in terms of process. Now just a framing, the issue with Scottish Government financing is deeply affected by late decision making of the UK Government and you may have seen the recent letter from the Welsh Government complaining about the late UK autumn statement. That's also had an effect on the Scottish Government and it's been pushed back to the 22 of November making the original planned budget date of 14 December no longer realistic. So my question is, what is your understanding thus far of how the financial elements will work in terms of the flow through and late decision making and processes from the UK Government? Anyone can go first perhaps. Dr Hutchison, you might like to go first, but I know you have an interest both Carrie and Kirsty. I'd have to be honest and say it's not a question I'm particularly familiar with. I mean, I have a broad understanding of the Farity House agreement and the principles of the Farity House agreement, but my understanding is that we're still working through those and that's more likely a question that should be directed to COSLA, I suspect, who would be involved in discussions on behalf of local authorities. So I have a broad understanding of the Farity House, what the implications are, but my understanding is that we're still working through the Farity House agreement, but in terms of any late decisions from the UK Government, I'm not in a position to comment on that, I'm not sure if Kirsty is. I know I was pressed not on mute there. At the moment, as part of the Farity House agreement, we are looking at the in-year transfers and the transfers from all the portfolios, so we're interested to see how that progresses and also there is the presumption of no-ring ffensing or no direction. I'm not quite sure how the UK Government position affects that, I suppose the overall quantum of funding affects that. I think we just need to see the working out of the Farity House agreement and how that no-ring ffensing and no direction will work for the total quantum of finances that will come to Scotland. I agree that the late announcement of the funding puts extreme pressure on trying to pull together a budget at a late stage and also the one-year budgets are not helpful either. We've been pushing for multi-year budgets for some time now that would allow us to plan ahead for financial sustainability and the one-year budgets are not helpful at all. That's a commonly understood term and it came up yesterday in our finance committee that largely the UK Government have been working to a one-year budget process, which flows through to the Scottish Government as well. It sounds to me, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but in terms of where the strategic review group is in understanding the detail of both things, it's still fairly early doors because it's not just the initial budget settlement. It's in-year changes of which we've seen quite a bit that affects and will have, I imagine, or could have an impact on ring ffensing, because there's a lack of visibility and transparency of money coming through. Am I putting words in your mouth or...? No, I think that's that. Yeah, no, I would agree with that. Okay, carry the last comment from yourself. I think that most things have probably been said, but maybe just to reiterate that anything that's late in terms of discussions that need to happen at local authority level makes it challenging. If you don't know what your quantum is, you're not quite sure yet what your outcomes are in the outcomes framework for Verity House and you're not quite sure what the conditions are going to be around the actual funding, then the lateness of that always has an impact because then things are perhaps not as clear as it could be if you've got a longer lead-in time, so I think that that would be the case. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you very much, convener. Can I bring in Ben Macpherson, who's got some other questions on this, please? Thank you, convener, and good morning all. Building on what has just been asked by my colleague Michelle Thomson, thinking back to Pre-Verity House and in recent years, one of the reasons, in fact, one of the main reasons for ring ffensing and direction was because of political pressure being applied on the Scottish Government by Opposition parties and others to meet certain policy obligations that required local government to be a significant part and the main part of that delivery. So as we move post Verity House and open up the flexibility and remove the ring ffensing and direction, which I support just for clarity, in your view, what should the Scottish Government's role be if a local authority is failing to improve outcomes in an area of national priority such as education? Who are you directing that to first? Does anyone want to take that first? There has been a reference to, in some ways, that question in one of the OECD reports. I think it was the 2015 OECD report where it said that the role of Scottish Government is to set the overall strategic direction and policy direction, but delivery is at local authority and where that national comes up short is getting through the classroom door. I think that phrase might even be mentioned in the document. Where there is a failure, there are various mechanisms in the system to address that. If there is a failure in relation to education, there is legislation that the inspector can go in and inspect a local authority. For example, if it is failing and its duties in relation to education, that has rarely been used, but it is available. Equally, Audit Scotland has carried out its best value reviews, which again highlight where there are weaknesses. There are various safety mechanisms within the system that are available to Scottish ministers to direct, for example. Overall, it is the role of Government, because it is elected on a manifesto. It is right that it delivers its manifesto. We live and operate in a parliamentary democracy, which is right. It delivers its manifesto commitments. It sets the policy direction. That delivery is local. Where that delivery is failing or where a local education authority is failing, it would be appropriate for Scottish Government to intervene, and that can be done in various ways that I have outlined. In a scenario like that, I am very familiar with the best value report process and the considerations thereafter around how Government and indeed in this instance with education inspector should be engaging with the specific local authority, both at a political and an official level. It seems to be that what you have outlined would be the right course for Scottish ministers and also for parliamentary pressure to be directed. Do you want to come in? I suppose that the word failing is quite a pejorative term and probably I would say that there are different challenges for different local authorities at different points for a whole range of reasons. I think that every local authority will have improvement processes already in place. If there are things that are not reaching the targets, and I suppose that the Verity House agreement and the outcomes framework will be a way of being able to give support where that is required, if people are finding that challenge in particular areas. In ADS, we support local authorities in that way, too. If people are asking each other that we do that very much on a collaborative basis, we would support people within the local authority. I think that Education Scotland has a role within either the RICS or Education Scotland themselves to be able to do that, too. I think that we have quite good systems in place to allow that to happen. Obviously, the Scottish Government needs to look at the outcomes. Obviously, there are things that they can use, as Douglas has outlined already, if they feel that there is something more further that is required. I thank you for both your reflections. Pam Douglas, do you have a brief supplementary on this, please? Yes, I do. Thank you very much, panel, for that this morning. Given the Verity House agreement, do you have any concerns about the overall quantum available to you for education locally? Are you aware already of stretched budgets using other budgets such as PEF to plug holes that exist in core budgets across the piece? I think that we are concerned that budgets are stretched right across local government, because there just is not enough budget to do everything that we want to do. The Verity House agreement, I think that that is a positive step forward because of the relaxing of the ring-fencing and direction. If I take one of the education ring-fencing and it is the absolute teacher numbers, you could get into a situation there that is not providing value for money or efficiency, but where local authorities are in a declining school role, you are trying to maintain an absolute number. For me, it is the overall quantum of funding that needs to be looked at not just within education, and I think that the relaxing of ring-fencing might help. Obviously, we still need to keep a focus on the outcomes. I think that councils were doing that prior to bringing in the absolute teacher number. I know that we have members who are going to ask some questions on that specific topic later, Christy, so we can get into more detail then. Bill Kidd, are we okay with that response? I am just checking. I am going to move on to Bill Kidd now. I am moving on to Bill Kidd now. I am moving on to Bill Kidd now. Thank you very much. There is an education spend and its protection. Other than free school meals, as the panel gets any examples of ring-fenced or earmarked funds where the Government has not uprated its contribution in line with inflation, so the Government funding of ring-fencing and earmarked is any examples where you do not believe that this has been kept up in line with inflation? Did you say not that it is excluding free school meals? Free school meals are probably the best example of where we get an allocation to implement a policy, but it is never sustainable in the long-term. Free school meals are a perfect example, because all of us around the table know how much cost of living is now and the increase. We are looking for another example. I was just thinking about the ELC and the 1140 hours and the PVI payments. I think that that is an example where to keep that whole project going to deliver the 1140 hours, then obviously the uplift for the PVI has seemed to be necessary. I think that that is because of inflation, but the budget does not match that, so that would be another example. As was said before, we know that the situation with free school meals and whether it is kept up with ring-fencing and all that sort of thing, but it is just to find out if there are other areas such as being mentioned. That was it, basically. Sticking on that subject of early learning and that subject of terminology ring-fencing, do you get a sense that the ring-fenced grants are covering the support that ELC covers that we are actually needing and the cost of actually delivering the expanded ELC offer? So there have been some changes to the funding over the last three years in particular. I think that because the models were in place incrementally, I think that it has taken some time for local authorities to have their absolute models in place. Also because there is a bi-annual survey from parents about what is required, there are then some changes and some models are more expensive than others. For an actual quantum, it is quite difficult to continue to deliver almost a parent-led system where they are looking for particular things. I think that there have been real challenges in being able to deliver that policy agenda. In particular, if we are moving on to two-year-olds and one-year-olds, which we are not really clear about whether or not the policy is going to be implemented from the Government from that perspective, so again there would be big implications for two-year-olds and one-year-olds if that were to be the case, so there wouldn't be enough in that budget. Sticking on that too in one-year-olds before anyone else, I want to come in. The data sharing agreement has just taken between HMRC and the DWP to identify the two-year-olds that are eligible for that ELC. What progress has been made in actually reaching those families and what are the anticipated cost implications and how do you think that that is going to all get funded within that envelope that we have? Again, over the last three years we have seen a significant increase in the two-year-old uptake. Some parents, of course, of two-year-olds and one-year-olds do not want to actually take up their places. It would be helpful to see from the DWP and that is something that we have been asking for for quite some time because that did exist and happened in England and we weren't able to access that information. I think that there will be an impact definitely where there are perhaps families who weren't aware that they were able to access all of these budgets and were aligned to what were given on birth rates and what the percentage expectation of uptake would be, where now we will have a much firmer idea of the numbers and that might have a significant implication. Is that data not yet at the local authority level yet? It's just starting now. It's just starting to come through to you now. Can I move to questions from my colleague Willie Rennie now, please? I'm interested in how you view the state of the PVI sector, the private voluntary and independent sector for early learning and childcare. What do you think the pressures are? Perhaps Carrie could talk through that first. Yeah, I think it's always, I mean it's a, you know, we can't deliver 1140 hours without the PVI sector and we really value, I suppose we value because they are often much more flexible, that they can do different things because they're small organisations rather than large organisations, so I think that there's absolutely no doubt that, you know, we want to work in partnership with them. I think that there are real challenges in terms of the costs, so inflation for them, staffing costs, minimum wage, you know, there have been a range of things that they've been expected to be able to deliver and that has made it challenging for them to have business cases that stack up. The other thing with the PVI sector is that some of those organisations are very small organisations and they don't have a sustainable management committee because often the parents will change, so that becomes a real problem, that they have people who come in who don't have the experience. And now we're seeing obviously the child mind being brought into that as well and I think that, you know, with individuals to try to support them, there's a lot required from the local authority perspective to support the PVI sector to make sure that the quality is of a standard that is acceptable. And obviously now one of the recommendations is that they have to have a good or above to be able to stay in partnership with the local authority, so there's a lot required from a local authority perspective to support them. And sometimes those are hidden costs, so sometimes the PVI sector don't always see the support because it's not monetary, it's not coming through as an amount per pupil or per child, so I think that sometimes those hidden costs are not recognised as much as perhaps they could be, give you a flavour. Do you recognise the argument that there is a significant difference in the fees that are paid for council nurseries versus the PVI sector? Do you recognise that? I think it's a hard question to answer because of just some of what I've said, because there are a whole range of things that come from the local authority to the PVI sector. But does that really amount to that difference? I think they're completely different setups, they're different structures, council's not working on the same type of business case that those PVI sectors are, so I think it's a challenging question to answer in that way. The outcome seems to be that the PVI sector are losing quite significant numbers of experienced staff because they're not able to retain them because they can't pay the rates competitive with other, you know, either inside or outside the sector. And they are really worried about the future of the sector, do you not recognise that? I think that's always been said, I mean, and all the time I've been involved in any early years, just in many years. Does that make any better than that? But what I was going to go on to say is that I don't actually see that in reality as such. So, for example, modern apprenticeships, which we run through PVI sector as well as within local authorities, they often will retain their staff that way. A lot of local authorities will have agreements to be able to support the staffing to help them with the colleges to make sure that they are accessing enough staff. The way that the system is currently set up is that there are different differentials in the payment structures, absolutely. That happens in lots of times. Do you want to have a really disappointed with this response? Matthew Sweeney from COSLA before last year, he acknowledged that there was a significant difference and it was agreed right at the beginning between government and local authorities that that would happen. And I think we're seeing real threats to the sector now. The are getting staff is just keeping the experienced staff. I really worry about the integrity of the bodies now that we will get perhaps care inspectorate reports in future that indicate that we've not managed to keep up with the standards that you've indicated earlier and disappointed that you don't recognise that. I don't think I said I didn't recognise that there is a differential. I think I did say that. I think that what we are trying to do is to make sure that we're supporting the sector in a way that they can survive, because I think, as I said in my earlier comment, is that it is a partnership that we need to work jointly together to deliver this. And I think that's why there have been a number of groups that have looked at what do we need to provide, and it's been really difficult to actually have a figure or an amount that is required, and whether it is just about staffing or it's about all of the other things that are offered to keep these organisations being able to deliver their services. Dr Hutchison wants to come in to respond to some of those, and I've got a little supplementary as well in this. It was really just to say, convener, in response to Mr Rennie, his disappointment. This is a discussion and an argument that probably comes up in an annual basis when local authorities are required to set the sustainable rate. And I absolutely acknowledge that there are significant differences between PVI and local authority, but part of that is in a sense historical. If we were starting from a blank sheet in terms of early years, then there would be much more equity. However, we didn't start from a blank sheet. There already were partner providers, third sector organisations, a range of organisations providing early learning and childcare, who did not have the commitments that local authorities have in relation to pension fund and various other commitments—a local government commitment to real living wage, for example. There already was a differential at the very beginning, which has almost become baked in and makes it very challenging. Those discussions and arguments come up every year. That's partly why there is this discussion about should we set a national rate in relation to the sustainable rate? You're absolutely right. It is historical and it is baked in, but the expectations on the PVI sector are almost exactly the same as those in council nurseries. They are expected to get the same service on both sides in terms of care but also education. You're right, but it doesn't make it right, and we need to work a plan to bring them closer together, don't we? Do we need to bring them closer together? That's the issue that comes up on an annual basis in terms of agreeing a sustainable rate, and that's part of the discussion about whether that should be set nationally, because that's more likely to bring them closer together, but I think it's a significant task. Can I ask specifically on the rates that local authorities pass down to the PVI sector? There is a variation across the different local authorities about what they pay for over twos and under twos, and you've already mentioned that we know that the costs of under twos in terms of ratios of staff are higher. There is a local health authority, in fact, the one that we are sitting in, the boundary of city of Edinburgh, pay the same, irrespective of the age of the child, and I'm wondering how can that be perceived to be fair to put that pressure on a PVI sector when they're not getting the additional resource that's required to support the under twos sector? I'm wondering if you want to comment on that. I think that it's difficult to comment on a particular local authority. It's not just Edinburgh where you're seeing variation. As I said earlier, in answer to Mr Rennie's question, there are different things that are offered as well as the sustainable rate, and I think that in some places they will offer teacher support, where in other places they will say that the teacher is part of the PVI sector, it's their responsibility. So there are a whole range of different ways that people make up those costs and how they make decisions. Justify the fact that they're not passing the adequate funding on to the PVI sector. Sorry, convener. It was the variation in funding. I move from a local authority with a large rural hinterland to Glasgow City Council, which doesn't have that. The cost pressures are different in terms of funding. For example, if you're providing childcare down in Ballantrae, you might only have three children, but you still need to have two members of staff, so it is proportionately more expensive in the rural areas. I didn't tend to find PVI sector making provision up a glen or down in Ballantrae. They tended to be in centres of populations, so the variations across the country are understandable. That's why there's a challenge in setting a national rate. There is a huge difference between a fairly efficient system like Glasgow, where the early years centres are largely full and largely staff. The staffing ratios are efficient compared to rural local authorities, where there's almost a bill in efficiency because you get small numbers of children but are required to have certain numbers of staff, which make it more expensive. I'm going to switch over a little bit more primary and secondary schools. When we have a look at some of the figures, I'm just wondering if you could perhaps come to Kirsty first. What factors are there that are meaning that, in real terms, the net spend on schools is planned to be higher this year than 2019-20? Why is there a planned reduction in what appears to be a planned reduction in the real-term spend between 2022-23 and the fourth year that we're in now, 2023-24? Are you able to take that one first, Kirsty? Yeah, I would have to just ask you the second question again, but the net spend on schools is higher. I suppose that we're in a time of high inflation. A big proportion of the expenditure in education—about half of the expenditure in education—is employer-related expenditure, and we've seen significant pay rises there. Not only that, we've had high levels of inflation for utilities and other costs that schools have to spend, so that's really the reasons down to the increase in spending. What was your question about the real? Why is there a planned reduction in the real-term spend between 2022-23 and 2023-24? I'm not sure if I know where the figures are in front of me of that real-term reduction. We'll follow up in writing with that one, when I think that Kirsty might be the best thing. I've got some data that sits behind this, unless Carrie wants to come in on either of those. I was just going to come in in reduction in term particularly in primary spend, but what we have seen is that there is a significant reduction in births across Scotland. Some local authorities are looking at 500, 600 less births a year over the last few years. What we've seen is that the bulge from primary is now in secondary, so the spend is higher in secondary and you can see that that is still going up, but the primary spend is coming down because there aren't as many children that are attending the schools, which makes it less efficient as well when you're trying to manage your budget in that way. Okay, thank you. Great. Can we move now to questions from my colleague Ruth Maguire, please? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I'd like to talk about particular costs, teaching costs and other staffing costs. If I can go to Kirsty Flanagan first, you mentioned the protection of teacher numbers. We've spoken before in the committee about the situation of some local authorities where pupil roll is falling yet they're expected to maintain teacher numbers in my own local authority area. We've also lost attainment challenge funding, which adds additional pressure. Can you speak a little bit about the opportunity costs of having to maintain teacher numbers and what that looks like for children and young people in schools, where that's the case? I'm not sure if I answered the opportunity cost, but what I said earlier, if we're trying to maintain the absolute teacher numbers, it is to the detriment of other services right across local government portfolio, because we're seeing an education cost increasing in education, but you'll see in most other portfolios a reduction because they have to take the burden of the cost savings due to the real-terms decrease that we're seeing in overall quantum of funding. I think that the protection of teacher numbers—I know that I have education colleagues here, and obviously we want to maintain the good schooling, but the maintaining of the actual numbers rather than the pupil-teacher ratio that we used to have—I'm not saying that that was a perfect formula, but it did recognise the school role there. I agree with Kirsty that the focus on absolute teacher numbers is a challenge. It's been done this year previously, when Mr Russell was Cabinet Secretary. There was a year where we had to focus on absolute teacher numbers and it's difficult to see the logic of it if you're in a local authority with a declining role compared to if you're in West Lothian with an increasing role in building new schools. You're almost having to falsely keep teachers that are supernumerary because you have to focus on absolute teacher numbers. I just can't—I just struggle to see the logic of it. A pupil-teacher ratio I can understand, but if you've got a falling role in your force to keep teachers, then the opportunity costs then become clear because I've been head of education or director now for 10 years and in almost every one of those 10 years would probably be the exception of the Covid years when there seem to be lots of money. I have been involved in reducing the budget in education having to find savings because the council's overall budget has reduced. If we're protecting teachers, then the burden of savings falls on others like support for learning workers, educational psychologists, home school liaison workers, technician support services. There's a range of people without whom education can't function. If we protect one group, albeit a very important and very valued group, then the burden of savings falls heavier on others within education. If that's true of education, it's true more generally of councils because education depends on other council services in order to operate. The burden of savings falls significantly more heavily on other parts of the council if education is protected. Obviously, the director of education is happy that education is protected, but I also recognise the impact that has on other services. There will hardly be a school in Scotland more than 15 or 20 years old that doesn't have some kind of backlog maintenance that goes with it. If we're reducing other council services, then we are reducing the money available for repairs and renewals of our school buildings, for example. I suppose that I'd be interested to hear what—you spoke there about Glasgow City Council reducing education budget. I know that there are other local authorities who have, even throughout those challenging times, protected the education budget. It would be good to hear what within education the money could be invested in and what that would look like for children and young people in the education system. I suppose that going back to the kind of verity house agreement side of things and the priorities for us in terms of that, it would be interesting to hear reflections on where that money might be invested and how that would benefit children and young people. I'm happy to say something on that. If you're in the luxury position of being able to maintain the education budget without having to offer lots up and you don't have teacher numbers to keep, then there are lots of things that some local authorities have done. They've kept their teacher numbers but they've also invested. If you had that flexibility, I think that a number of local authorities have done things like they've put early years officers into their primary one classes to try to look at how they support communication and socialisation after Covid, which has been quite challenging in the early years. Some people have put in staff to support attendance because, again, we've seen that the attendance of pupils has been a bit challenging since Covid. People have used that budget or if they've had extra budget to keep their teacher numbers, but it's that flexibility that it would give you to use other members of staff who are not teachers. Teachers are absolutely essential to the business of teaching and learning, but there are lots of other things that families and children and young people need support with. Another example would be that people have invested more in their counselling services, their play therapy, their art therapy, their support for our young people who are really struggling and having some difficult times in school. I suppose that it would give that type of flexibility. Generally, the pay of teachers and local government employees is subject to negotiations between COSLA, local authorities and trade unions. However, in recent years, the Scottish Government has stepped in to fund uplifts in pay. What role is there for the Scottish Government in relation to the pay of local authority workers? That's an interesting question, because we're in the negotiations for non-teaching staff at the moment. The Verity House agreement outlines that it's a negotiation for those for non-teachers with COSLA and the trade unions. However, we are seeing pressure, and we saw pressure from the Scottish Government to increase the pay. I suppose that the role of the Scottish Government is that, if they want the pay increased, we need additional funding to support that. We've only got so much money that we can put into the pay award. I know that additional funding was put into the teachers pay award last year, and we did get additional funding into our SGC negotiations, which was helpful, but it's the on-going cost of that as well. You get a one-year injection of that, but there's an inflationary aspect that gives you a bigger hit in future years. I think that your question is what role the Scottish Government plays in that. I'm not entirely sure what role it really should play in those negotiations, but I know that they have intervened in the past. Thank you. I don't know if any of the other panel members wish to come in. I move on to a supplementary question from Ben Macpherson. I'm just building on what Ruth Maguire has asked. I thought that the answer from Dr Hutchison and the elaboration from Carrie Lindsay about teacher numbers was really interesting and important. I just wanted to be absolutely clear that consideration whether that's in our public discourse or media commentary or analysis should be about pupil-teacher ratio rather than teacher numbers. Was that correct in taking that as your overarching message? That would certainly be my view. There's a logic to a pupil-teacher ratio because collectively there's a decision that we should aspire to a particular ratio, whatever that is, that makes sense. As your number of pupils declines, if you're in a falling role situation because the population in that part of the country is declining, then you don't need as many teachers. As some teachers retire, they're not replaced, for example, or leave the profession or whatever, they're not replaced. The pupil-teacher ratio is maintained, but if the focus is on absolute numbers, then you're in a declining role, so one year your numbers go down. Our primary numbers have gone down by several hundred, but our secondary numbers in Glasgow have gone up by several hundred, so it has almost netted itself off. However, if you're in a the main issue is where you're in a declining role situation, but as it was mentioned, there are things that are funded, but they're funded on a flat cash basis. For example, the strategic equity fund is flat cash. The pupil equity fund is flat cash, so if I could buy 10 teachers last year with a pay rise, I can't buy 10 teachers this year, but I'm still required to maintain teacher numbers as an absolute. That doesn't make sense. In broad terms, I focus on a pupil-teacher ratio and there's a logic to it, which people can understand. I struggle to understand the logic of absolute numbers. I just want to come in and I would agree that there is a logic to the pupil-teacher ratio over and above pupil numbers. I'm picking out the Verity House agreement where it's talking about focusing on the achievement of better outcomes. I still think that the pupil-teacher ratio is an input measure rather than focusing on the outputs and outcomes. It's better than the absolute teacher numbers, but there should be more focus on the outcomes. I'm going to bring in Willie Rennie, please. So why do we still have so many teachers on short-term contracts who want to answer? I would be interested to see the data. I'm not clear that I, as a sit here, don't know whether there are more now than there were previously. I know that in Glasgow we have around 900 who were used for supply last year, but we have about just over 300 fixed-term contracts. Those fixed-term contracts, I'm presuming, are covering maternity leave, but we have a number of supply teachers to cover short-term absences or teachers on secondment. I would have to look at year-on-year figures. I mean, I've certainly seen media reports, but I don't know what they're based on. I would need to see the data in order to come to a view on whether the reality is we have more or less now. Overall, it would be a matter for the national workforce planning group in terms of numbers going into initial teacher education, whether there are likely to be posts for them at the end of it. We have got that right sometimes, we have got that wrong sometimes. When I started off as head of education in South Ayrshire around 2014-15, I could not get a supply teacher for love and her money because the numbers going into initial teacher education had been reduced drastically due to negative headlines of unemployed teachers. The numbers going in were reduced significantly. That led to a crisis in terms of not only short-term supply, but it was really challenging at that time to get English teachers, for example. It is a matter for a national workforce planning group and they take account of a broad range of indicators, but sometimes it's too few or too many. Without the data, I couldn't answer. I agree with what Douglas said. It's hard to answer without the data. Obviously, we have a significant female population, so there are always a number of maternity waves and they are always filled with a temporary post. There are also people who might come in through the year that will come in to a post but on a temporary basis in that school. I think that sometimes there's a bit of a misnomer, maybe the right word, that people don't really understand that sometimes you're still full-time but you're temporary to that school, but then when you, at the end of that year, you then need to go into a permanent post, so people think that then there are lots of posts that are then vacant, but they're not. You're just moving people around. In that respect, people often think that when they see these posts becoming available that they're not available to them to apply for, but I do think that there are significant challenges in trying to fill particular subjects, but we know that at the moment with primary schools that we have many more primary staff than are required at the current time, in secondary, in particular subjects, we have a real problem, so the supply staff, as Douglas said, for primary is in a really healthy position, but that does mean that those people are on temporary contracts and not on permanent contracts. In that light, do you think that we're training too many primary school teachers? I think that's for the workforce planning group, obviously, that question. I think that that is what they look at. I mean, I've been involved in education, as has Douglas for many, many years, and we have seen that when the demographic of society changes, and I think that this is probably, was a bit less obvious because I think that the pandemic has had an impact on people's size of families or when they start their families, so I think that there has been a significant shift in terms of the birthrate over the last few years, which we're now seeing to come into the organisations. You'll have received communications letters that I've received from primary school teachers who gave up other careers or have been really passionate about teaching young people, and their dreams have been torn away from them because there's either a series of short-term contracts, sometimes up to six years, and others who just can't find a job at all. We've not got it right just now, have we? I know it's a difficult balance in that, I get that, and it goes in cycles, but just now it's particularly bad, isn't it? Again, without the data in front of us to know over the last few years what that's looked like, I think anecdotally that probably are stories about people who are in exactly the situations that we talk about, but there equally be people who have got permanent jobs and who are really comfortable, but they have gone through that training. I think that for periods of time, within education, people have expected to go into supply first and then to go into permanent jobs, but I think that because of the probationer system that people... There's almost an expectation that if you've got a probationer post that you then will get a permanent job, it's a bit like a training for your permanent role, and there's maybe something that we need to do just around helping the profession to understand that that is not an automatic right then to a permanent job at the end of that, because I think that some of the people who are coming out of university, that's their belief, that's what they actually feel is a right for them. Liam Kerr, you want to come in on this, and then Bill Kidd does as well? Yes, thank you, convener. Just a very brief question on numbers and absolute numbers. Several of my colleagues and I were at a very good event last night around engineering, and arising from that, I wonder, is there a concern that when we talk about overall numbers and changes in that due to perhaps declining roles, that actually masks specific challenges such as we heard last night, the fact that there are 300 fewer English teachers, 300 fewer maths teachers, 178 fewer computer science teachers than there were in 2008, which presumably are the sort of things that we absolutely need to be focusing on if we are to have a future where we are sufficiently upskilled in STEM subjects and for things like engineering. Dr Hutchison? There may be a reason why there are fewer English teachers and maths teachers compared to 2008, and it may be population-related. It's within living memory that there were probably 59 secondary schools in Glasgow, and there are now 30 secondary schools in Glasgow because the population has shifted. Without looking at the population in 2008 and comparing it to now, it would be difficult to comment on absolute teacher numbers. However, generally, I would agree with you that there are some areas where there are concerns. Computing teachers is a real challenge. Technical teachers at the moment are another area of challenge. Home economics teachers in secondary school are difficult to find. Generally speaking, we can fill all our vacancies from our probationers, which is why they are interviewed, given a score, and then allocated. However, the two areas where we have struggled to fill all our vacancies this year would be maths and technical teachers. I do know that computing science is a challenge as is home economics, so there are some areas where the subjects are harder to fill. You are right that there are key areas in terms of STEM careers that we would want young people to be developing their skills in those areas, so there are some challenges within the overall picture. You are right. Briefly, to add to that, there are schemes to attract STEM subject teachers in so that they can get bursaries and various things. There is a real acknowledgement that that is a difficulty. We are seeing in some parts of Scotland where it is impossible to get subject specialists that people do not want to move to those particular parts of Scotland. In places such as Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen, they have really struggled to get people to move up as we would class it in Scotland. That is something that we have to consider as part of the workforce planning group about how we encourage people not just to want to be in the central belt, where it is much easier to get subjects filled, but even there it is not as easy as it used to be. If it is okay, can I just indulge in one point about what has just been said from Carrie Lindsay and Dr Hutchison? Why do you think that there is that reduction or difficulty in recruiting maths, technical and computing teachers? I presume that, if you get a STEM degree, there might be more attractive options elsewhere. That would be my guess, but I do not know. I am moving on now to free-school meal provision. My first question is about the current provision for primary 1 to primary 5. The local government put a joint submission into the Finance and Public Administration Committee to say that there was a shortfall on funding for that. Can the panel describe what that shortfall is and explain how it has been funded? I am not sure that the shortfall on funding is all around the inflationary aspects of free-school meal provision, which I touched on earlier. We are all finding in our pockets. When we go to the supermarket, things are way more expensive. When that policy commitment was given out, as with many policy commitments, we get it funded in the first year and that funding is then rolled forward and it is not inflated. That is an area of severe inflation. What are councils doing about it to meet the provision? They are having to make savings elsewhere in other service areas in order to maintain that service provision. Do you know where those savings are broadly coming from across the piece? No, it will vary across authority to authority. I could not really answer that, but one would assume that it will not be directly linked. You will not be saying that you are going to cut the roads, because I am having to meet the inflationary free-school meals that will just be across the broad range of services. Does the panel have an understanding of what the cost for extending the free-school meal provision into primary 6 and 7 will be and how the panel will think that that will be funded? We are working on that information, pulling together that information at this moment in time. We could have capital costs as well as increased revenue costs, because there might be expansions to kitchens that are required. I know that when that was talked about a couple of years ago and then it was put on delay, there was not enough funding that had been set aside for that. I do not know what we need at this moment in time. As I said, that information gathering exercise is taking place just now, but we would need to have it fully funded in order to deliver on that. Is there a risk that you might not be able to, in the timescale that the cabinet secretary said? I think that the timescale now is maybe in 2026, if I remember rightly. That depends on the funding that we get and when the funding is announced in order to plan for that, 2026 is probably doable. However, as I said, it depends on the funding. Before we were trying to deliver on that commitment, when it was supposed to come in a couple of years ago and we had not had the funding announced, there was no way that we were going to deliver on the commitment, because we could not plan in advance. As long as we have the funding confirmed, we could plan. Does the panel think that there will be any impact on the capital expenditure to make the infrastructure changes of some of the changes that might need to be made as a result of finding rack in schools? Will that impact the budget that is available? In general terms, in relation to free school mios, the expansion of free school mios also requires a capital investment. A few years ago, one of the savings that was taken when I was in my previous local authority was that we reduced the number of production kitchens, so we centralised production kitchens into particular schools and removed them from them. It was quite contentious at the time, but as we begin to roll out free school mios and the uptake is bigger again, we need those production kitchens back, so it is that kind of capital investment that is needed. If rack goes on to become an issue, it is part of the same capital budget. There are and the detail of that, but delivery of free school mios is dependent on infrastructure. I am keen to understand that if the budget is squeezed from other places, including for rack, which is not an unreasonable statement, would that risk the delivery of free school mios? It would be difficult to answer that question. All I would say is that the delivery of free school mios also requires capital investment, and, as Kirsty was saying, we can deliver the policy as long as it is funded, both in terms of capital and revenue costs. Deliver on the Scottish Government commitments that needs to be fully funded. The final question that I have in this area is, what are the outcomes arising from the expenditure and free school mios that you are seeing across the piece? Carrie, perhaps you might want to answer this one. The very short-term outcomes are that our children are fed and that they are then able to access education. I suppose that there are so many attributing factors to attainment outcomes. It would be hard to say that we were saying that in the actual outcomes for attainment for our young people, but I suppose that that is something that, over time, it is whether or not you can actually say that there is a cause-and-effect relationship with that. However, we are seeing young people who may not otherwise be receiving breakfast particularly, and we have extended quite a lot in a lot of local authorities so that breakfast provision is available in secondary schools as well as in primary schools. However, having that meal or the food that they can access during the day makes them much more ready to learn. How are the educational outcomes of the universal free school meals being monitored at a local level? Do you think that this type of universal service is something that local Government might like the Scottish Government to consider the relative cost-effectiveness of the universal provision? You have already spoken about the challenges and choices that you are making in your budgets. The measure at the moment is on inputs and not on outcomes for this particular policy. As I have said previously, it is hard to say whether the cause-and-effect on that will have actual attainment outcomes. However, the input at the moment is showing that large numbers of our children are receiving food during the day. There are also some families who do not wish to take up free school meals. That is the challenge when you have a universal provision such that there will be some families that will not access them or that might feel that they do not need to access them because they are able to provide for their children themselves. However, in terms of outcomes, I am not aware of the moment that we are recording in that way. It is more of the inputs. Stephanie Callahan wants to come in on this topic before I move to Ross Greer. Thank you very much, convener. I am switched on. I apologise. It is really interesting to have conversations around free school meals. It demonstrates really well about prioritisation. If we have children who are sitting in school and they are hungry, they are not going to be learning at their best, they are not going to be performing at their best level. I suppose that that is all about choices. Certainly, there is all the evidence there as well that universal free school meals increase the uptake of school meals among those children who need it most, and we just say stigma, etc. We are talking about further investment, we are talking about the finance behind it, and I appreciate that there are capital costs that are there as well. Surely, that would be a priority for all local authority areas. Who would like to pick up on that? Is it a priority for all local authority areas? I am happy to have a staff. I suppose that it is the amount of funding that is required to be able to deliver on a policy such as that. Are the ultimate outcomes that you will see going forward are beneficial to the other policy areas that we are trying to address? I suppose that if you think about what Peth is trying to do in the whole attainment challenge, about trying to close the attainment gap and then we look at the funding that is going to some families who might not be requiring that type of support. I am trying to put that quite carefully, but I think that any universal programme means that you cannot then have your interventions with perhaps the parts of the population that you want to give most to you to allow them to close that poverty-related attainment gap. I think that nobody would ever say that it is not a good thing to have universal food available for our children and young people. I suppose that it is the cost and then what the balance is with other policy areas that we may be able to invest in. Ross Greer, please, if we have time at the end. I would like to ask a couple of questions about additional support needs, but as a precursor to that, I think that it is relevant to go back to Michelle Thomson and Ben Macpherson's line of question around the verity house agreement. Can I just clarify with you what you believe from verity house in terms of flexibilities, removing ringfencing, etc., will be in place for the coming financial year in relation to education? Is your expectation that there will be no ringfenced pots in the coming year? I cannot remember exactly how they are phrased, but the equivalent agreements between local and national government rather than ringfenced pots in that that will take place from 24 or 5? I am not sure if that is what I expect from 24 or 25. I think that the verity house agreement is moving to that, no ringfencing or direction, and I think that for 24 or 25 we are focusing on the in-year transfers, but it would be nice if we could have it from 24 or 25, but I think that we are moving in that direction, and I think that it might be future years. If I could just press on that a little bit, because that is really helpful. In that case, what is your expectation for 24 or 5? Is it just the in-year transfer flexibility that you referenced, or are you expecting some of the currently ringfenced funds to become flexible to go into the general grant, but not all of them? We need to be careful when we talk about ringfencing, because it is directed funds as well. Sometimes that is a specific grant, and I think that it might be like the early learning childcare specific grant that could go into the general pot. For me, I would like to see a relaxation of the payments that we have to give our health and social care partnerships, and I think that teacher numbers and the absolute nature of that might be a step too quick for this 24 or 25. However, it remains to be seen. I do not know if I have not been involved in the discussions that COSLA has been having. If COSLA has been here, they might have been able to give some comment on that. On additional support needs specifically, I am interested in the first instance in the guidance that is provided to local authorities to complete your local financial returns. On ASN it is quite interesting in that some local authorities are able to detail their spend on ASN across primary secondary special, so that they can disaggregate it. Some local authorities record an ASN spend of zero outside of special schools, because they either feel that they can or the guidance is not clear enough for them, I am not sure, but whatever it is, their return says ASN spend zero, certainly for primary secondary. They have clearly integrated it into their wider spend. From your perspective, is the guidance clear enough on what is expected of you in a local financial return, specifically in relation to ASN? If you want to speak more generally about the expectation of local financial return on education spend, that would be helpful as well. I apologise. I am not going to be able to answer that question, because I do not fill out the LFR return myself, so I am not involved in that level of detail, but I can come back to that. I am aware of the LFR and the Pobie, but I tend to defer to colleagues who deal with accounts and returns, so I do not know the detail of the guidance, but in broad terms, in terms of some struggling and having theirs at zero, it will be around the complexity of what constitutes a resource for additional support needs. Without going into the detail of staged intervention, the first line is going to be the class teacher at stage 1, class teacher differentiating material and so on. Does that count as an ASN resource when the class teacher is the first person who is going to meet additional support needs? Probably not. You go along that continuum all the way up to a specialist external placement, where it is very easy to determine, but there is a great area in between what would be normal provision and what would be additional that may make that difficult. I do not know the guidance on the LFR, so I probably cannot answer. I can ask in somewhat more general terms, because I recognise that that was a very specific technical question. How would you, within 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 attention here. In the first instance, the Morgan review tells us that we need to see all education as ASN education. That needs to be so mainstream. That would then lead you towards a position where it is very hard to disaggregate that 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. There is a need for us to be confident that we are putting the right resources into this. There is obviously a tension here. How do you manage that within your local authorities so that you are confident that the resources are going to the individual children who need it, but also that you are directing resources at class and school level towards those where there is a higher prevalence of ASN in general, but also of specific more complex needs that require additional resource? I have been involved in additional support needs for a long time now. There is a constant tension because the legal responsibility on us is to meet every need, but the reality is, as we are discussing here today, that there is a limited resource. You need to put systems in place to make sure that the allocation of the resource is as fair and equitable as possible. However, the 2005 legislation recognised that there was going to be tension, and that is why I put in remedies that did not exist before, so there was informal mediation, dispute resolution and access to tribunal. The reason that those remedies were put into the primary legislation was because there was a recognition that there was always going to be that tension between a limited resource versus an almost limitless demand. The way that we address that is through systems and processes such as staged intervention that I was referring to. At stage 1, I would expect that a class teacher identifies that there might be issues with a child. They monitor for a while and put in place resources. At stage 2, it is flagged up at school level, so they might have an additional sport for learning teacher that will do some assessment. At stage 3, you are beginning to look external to the school's psychological service, and at stage 4, you are potentially looking at a specialist placement within the authority or external to the authority. All local authorities will have some form of staged intervention, and it is through staged intervention that we try as best we can to allocate the resource in as fair a way as we can. In terms of universal allocation, broadly speaking, the scheme of delegation devolved resources to schools would have some kind of formula in it across various authorities. There will be some kind of formula that takes account of overall population, levels of deprivation and levels of additional support need when allocating resources. Those are the systems and processes that will be in place across the country that attempt to address the really difficult challenge of allocating resources as fairly as possible, but I recognise that it is hugely contentious. My inbox—I am sure that some of your inboxes have been filled with complaints about children and young people not being allocated a specialist place when that is done by a central monitoring group, for example, who look at the broad range and say that those young people, their space for those young people, will be managed and supported within their local mainstream primary or secondary. On that last point, Doug Askin, there is a really important point there about how we are supporting kids with ASN either in mainstream or special education. Do you feel that, at the moment, this is ultimately, in some cases at least, coming down to a question of resource, that there are children who are in mainstream education because of the lack of capacity within special educational settings? I recognise that there are two points here. One is where the judgment is made that that child with additional support needs would thrive more in a mainstream setting, but there is also, certainly from what we get in our inboxes, the implication that local authorities are putting kids with more complex additional needs who would be better off in special educational settings into a mainstream setting due to a lack of resource. All of that depends on the context, but, broadly speaking, I think that local authorities aim to make decisions that are child and young person-centred and we operate in line with the presumption of mainstream that children and young people should be educated in their community, because, as soon as you take them out of their community into some specialist facility, they are not known locally, they do not make the connections, they can end up coming out of school and having no connections in the local area. We operate in line with the presumption of mainstream generally, but the point that I would make about local context, I was an inspector for five years at HMI and, in that time, mainly focusing on inspecting specialist provision. It depends on what is available locally. I visited a mainstream primary school in Campbell Town and, in that school, they were supporting children who, in many other local authorities, would be in a specialist facility, but it is Campbell Town, so there is not a special school and the travel makes it prohibitive, so they support those children in their local mainstream secondary, so it really depends on the context. Glasgow, we have a large additional source of learning estate, a legacy of the Strathclyde era probably, so the bigger centres of population may happen, so a lot of it depends on your local context. I want to carry Lindsay, do you want to come in on this? No, you're okay, sorry. One final point of question for time, can we? Briefly, yes. It's just about additional support needs support staff. ASN assistance, the job title varies massively, and that's the point of my question. A couple of years ago, the Government statisticians who compile the school staff census merged the categories of classroom assistant and ASN assistant into pupil support assistant. The predecessor committee in that session had the minute to give evidence on that, and what they essentially said was that there's now no longer enough distinction in so many settings between a general classroom assistant and somebody assigned to work specifically with kids with additional support needs, so they weren't able to give us numbers on how many ASN assistants there are. Does that present a challenge for yourselves as well, because we literally are unable to count how many support staff are working directly with children with additional needs rather than providing general support to the whole class? I think that merging of the categories would probably just consistent with practice out there. Classroom assistants of memory served me come in at the time of the Macron agreement, and things had moved on from there, and so the vast majority of them were involved in directly supporting children and young people. In a lot of local authorities, the negotiations took place so that they all went on to a single contract, because they were paid the same anyway. I think that the classroom assistant is a historical legacy from the Macron agreement, and my presumption—maybe or all—would be the vast majority are involved in supporting children and young people with additional support needs. I have a couple of questions about children's services. The first is about the promise. I would be interested to hear panel members' reflections on the practicalities of delivering local government elements of the promise in the current financial context. Just while you are thinking, I suppose that one of the issues that is live for us as a committee at the moment is the Care and Justice Scotland Bill, which obviously has implications for local government as well, so that maybe you can speak to that a little. I would like to go first, Carrie. I am happy to go first and give the bus a wee bit of time since you have been speaking there. I think that the promise everybody accepts that it is a really useful tool for us to change the way that we work in local authorities with our most vulnerable young people. I think that there was an expectation at the outset that there would be no funding or very little funding. There is some funding for particular projects, but there was not money that came through and would normally be through COSLA that came to local authorities. For me, that was the right and the wrong decision, if I can put it that way, because I think that there is an expectation that you look at all of your processes in your systems and that you do not always need money to do that. In order to be able to deliver on some of the asks, particularly within education, there is some funding through the PEF fund that supports our care experience young people. There is funding there that supports some of the implementation of the promise and the expectations for education. Across children's services, people have been working really hard at a children's services partnership level to try to make sure that they are identifying where they need to pull funds together to be able to deliver on that. However, if there had been some funding that went to all children's services partnerships to be able to support the delivery of the actions within the promise, I think that that would have been beneficial. Dr Hutchison? I would really just echo what Cary said. We are all absolutely committed to the promise and we all recognise that there is significant scope to improve outcomes for care experience children and young people. The care experience pupil equity, I do not think that it is called that care experience PEF funding, is certainly making a difference in helping them. I know that in Glasgow we have the Glasgow virtual school team who are working intensively to support better outcomes for children and young people who are care experience. We are absolutely committed to it and will find ways to deliver it regardless. There is a reduction in meal terms for the expected net spend on children and families social work services in 2023-24 when compared to 2019-20 net spend. Can you speak to what that reduction might look like in practice for children and families services and for children and families that use those services? I might go for that. I was a director until I retired recently of education and children services, so I had children and families and responsibilities, so I can say from that perspective not in my adeshal, but what we have seen is that our young people want to stay in their communities in the same way that we have talked about ASN young people that we want them to be in their communities and certainly what we saw in Fife was that our young people, when they reached age 16, if they had been away from home somewhere, they returned home. Many authorities and Fife included took the decision to be thinking about how we could support them to stay at home rather than removing them to another place where it might have been seen at that point that it was the best thing to do. We have seen significant reductions in the high-cost placements for residential care, and that is where you will see that across Scotland that people have tried really hard. I think that the promise has helped with a lot of that to try to keep brothers and sisters together and to try to make sure that we have families that are supported in their homes. There has been a shift in the way that children and families have worked in a lot of local authorities so that they are now supported in a much more preventative way, or there is family support going in as well as perhaps some of the more statutory social work support. The reduction in cost, I would hope, certainly what I saw in Fife was that it was really the reduction in the high-cost placements. It was not a reduction in what we were able to offer families. In fact, quite the reverse, we were able to use the money much more effectively to support the families and keep families together, which was of benefit to the children and young people. Thank you. Kirstie, do you have any comments on that? No, nothing, dad. Thank you, convener. Do you want to come in on that, Dr Fox? No, I was really just going to say that education and children and families social work very closely together, so any challenges for either us or for them has implications for both of us, but the whole family wellbeing fund at the moment is a great opportunity because it is focused on transformational change. Carrie was mentioning bringing young people back from expensive external placements, for example, and Glasgow has been particularly successful in that. That kind of transformational change where you get young people back in their own community with the right support is an opportunity that is provided by the whole family wellbeing fund at this point in time, I would say. Okay, that's great. Helpful. Thank you. Can I come to Liam Kerr now? Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. I would like to investigate some areas around capital expenditure. Do any of you have a view on the design of the Scottish Government's learning estate investment programme, and particularly given that, presumably, the local authorities pay the upfront costs of that? Everyone's looking to Kirsty. Yes, there is a risk that local authorities have to take with the current programme that we would have to borrow or fund upfront, and we would only get the funding if we met a number of criteria, a number of them. I don't know all the detail, the energy and things like that, so there is a risk there. I would like to think that the risk goes low if we are trying to deliver a better estate, which is what the programme is all about. It's disappointing that we haven't had the announcement of the third-year learning estate investment programme. I think that we were expecting that before Christmas, and it's been delayed and delayed. Thank you for that answer, and I was specifically looking to follow up on that exact point, Kirsty Flanagan, because, as I understand it, the third funding was meant to be allocated last year and hasn't been. What impact would that have on any capital investment programme, and, specifically and bluntly, will that affect the building of new schools? It may well, because we would have to look last year when we did the business case for the one that we applied for. It was done in September last year, and costs have moved on since then. I think that, even if an announcement was made, local authorities will have to assess whether, in the current financial climate, they are still able to deliver on what they hoped to deliver on last September. Final question from me staying in this area, Kirsty Flanagan, if I may. Into this context, as we heard from Pam Duncan Glancy earlier, we have the RAC situation. Do you have any concerns that addressing RAC may have a detrimental impact on the future leap funding? I am hearing that the RAC situation could be one source of funding. Would it have a detrimental impact? If there is a RAC issue to deal with in the current school estate, we need to deal with it as well, because the safety of the children is of importance, but it could be the detriment of building a new school estate that is probably much needed. How are local authorities preparing to deal with the RAC situation and to fund any necessary work? I have probably given you a better answer to that, because I have not been involved, because it is more my property. My colleagues have been involved, and we have only one school estate that has small elements of RAC. We were aware of that, and we are dealing with it as part of routine maintenance and putting mitigation measures in place. I know that some authorities are affected by a number of their establishments, so I think that the challenge for them financially will be huge, but I could not provide any more comment than that. I do not know whether other colleagues have information. Does anyone else want to come in on that subject? I am very grateful for your answers. I would like to thank the panel for their time today. We will now have a suspension to allow for a change of witnesses. Thank you very much. Our second item on our agenda today is an evidence session on the report of the independent review of qualifications and assessment. I welcome Professor Louise Hayward, Professor of Education, Assessment and Innovation, University of Glasgow and Chair of the independent review of qualifications and assessment. Professor Ken Muir, honorary professor at the University of the West of Scotland and member of the independent review of qualifications and assessment group. Peter Bain, headteacher from Oban High School and member of the independent review of qualifications and assessment group. Thank you all for joining us today. We will begin with a short opening statement from Professor Hayward. Professor, you have up to three minutes, please. Thank you very much for that. Thank you to the committee for taking the time to discuss the independent review with us. Also, for having taken the time to read it, we are really grateful to you for the investment of your time in that process. I think that there are five key issues that we would like to draw to your attention in particular. The first is that the report offers a longer term direction of travel for qualifications and assessment in Scotland. That is not a quick fix. That is about thinking about the future and making sure that we have a future that serves every learner well and Scotland as a nation well. Secondly, although I keep seeing this in the press, this is not the Hayward report. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a report that has engaged communities across the country who have been actively engaged in working through ideas. What you have in front of you is the thinking and the agreed position across all those different communities. That is a really important issue. The third point that we would like to make is that the vision is absolutely crucial. It is really important that we have a very clear idea about what it is that we are trying to achieve and that everything that we do should be directed towards that. The vision is not only important at the beginning of the process. We have experience in Scotland but there is also evidence that it happens internationally that often innovation begins with good ideas. Over time, what happens is that the developments in practice begin to differ from the vision. If that is not picked up quickly enough, you get to a point where a number of years down the line you have to go through the whole process again. The vision is the touchstone. Over time, as ideas develop in practice, it is important that we go back to that vision and gather evidence of what is happening in practice to make sure that we stay consistent with those key ideas. That leads us into point 4. What we have learned from the curriculum in Scotland but also internationally is that it is not enough to plan for the educational aspect of innovation. There also has to be a plan for change. The process of change has got to be carefully planned and to be effective it has to be co-constructed. Everyone involved in making it work, they all have to be involved in the process and the pace of putting ideas into practice should depend on the level of resourcing available. It is working through the ideas and being realistic about the investment that can be made as they develop. The fifth point that we would like to make is that there is no idea that is contained in the report that is not already in practice in at least one country. Many of the ideas are already in practice in some schools and colleges in Scotland, so our future is principled and practical. It is about seeking to make high-quality provision available for every learner. The colleagues that I have with me have been chosen very carefully. Kenyra is originally a geography teacher but has had a range of roles across the education system and is now working internationally. Peter Bain is a highly respected head teacher who has worked in a range of areas in Scotland, across Scotland, in leadership roles and also has leadership positions within Scottish Leaders Scotland and also within Bosch. Policy research practice, we hope that we have a range of perspectives and we are looking forward to engaging with you in discussion. Thank you. That should be an exciting session with all the experience in front of us. I thank you very much for that opening statement and for also submitting the paper that we have that was formed around those five points. Can I ask the first question before I move on to questions elsewhere? We know and we have heard a lot about that common approach that is taken in Scotland of two or three years each with externally marked exams and how that is quite rare. So what evidence have you had that that approach needs to change? I'll start and then I'll maybe pass to Peter in response to that. I think that there has been consistent evidence across a whole range of reports that there are real challenges within this idea of three consecutive years of examinations. We heard consistently from young people and from teachers deep frustration about the balance of time spent in assessment and examination processes as opposed to focusing and deepening learning and teaching. Professor Stobart in his report indicated that Scotland is almost unique in having three points of high-stake assessments, one after the other. The evidence that we had from learners was that much of their experience in the senior phase is focused on preparing for examinations. They have practised tests, past papers and prelims. In some schools, there were three prelims over the course of every year. If you think about the amount of time that is spent in rehearsal for the high-stakes exam, that led to disillusionment with young people and frustration from teachers in the way in which the senior phase was developing. Are you saying that there is a real disconnect between what the young people are doing in their senior phase and the curriculum for excellence in that focus? It is taking me back. Shivers down my spine are remembering all those things when I was in school. Professor Hoover, you might want to comment on that. Before I begin, if you do not mind, I would like to say that those are just not my personal views and that what I am about to tell you has come from a very large number of senior leaders in schools across the country. I chaired a community collaborative of school leaders on behalf of the IRG. There were 11 members who were chosen deliberately to gain access to the independent sector, to Catholic schools, to Gallic schools. They covered everywhere from the highlands and islands and down to the borders and everything in between. Each of the members were tasked with creating their own collaborative of roughly another 10 headteachers from a variety of schools taken from those wide range of communities and from, of course, their own local authorities. A living, including me, 12 could be multiplied by 10 at the minimum. Each were also tasked with discussing that with their deputies, their senior leadership teams, their principal teachers and, of course, their own school communities. So what I am about to tell you comes from across the country and not just from me. That particular issue was one of the most vocally put forward as a failing of the current system. You would be hard pressed to find a school leader, in my opinion, who does not think that a curriculum for excellence is a wonderful ideology and one to be aspired to. When it was introduced through a series of documents published by Education Scotland called Building the Curriculum, it was welcomed because of the support that it got. Building the Curriculum 3 set the vision, then Building the Curriculum 4 sought to build on that by promoting skills and experiences that would give breadth and relevance to the learning that we were providing in our schools. Shortly after that, Building the Curriculum 5 was published and Building the Curriculum 5 was about assessment models. Very quickly, schools were diverted away from development of skills and experiences that would better prepare youngsters for life after school, life straight into the workplace or the workplace after further education or higher education, and it concentrated on exams. The consequence of that pattern of behaviour, that continued pattern of behaviour, is that we continued to seek to produce statistics that showed our schools and their local authorities and indeed the country in a good like comparing five plus higher in particular, but not exclusively, year on year. The trouble that we do in that is that we continue to teach the same narrow-based subjects to try and secure our continuing pass rates so that we don't fall down whatever artificial league table we produce. That, unfortunately, has a perverse impact on our curriculums in many schools, not all many, in that by narrowing the curriculum to try and hit the five plus, we are not offering the correct pathway or the desired pathway of many youngsters who may find it more beneficial to do national progression awards or to do skills for work or merely to drop a couple of subjects because we are able to now do what is called flexible learning plans and have them with employers getting them ready for the workplace. Because of that, our headteachers, our school leaders, not just headteachers, our school leaders are frustrated by that continual focus on an exam only system and they feel that that has perpetuated down the years to get right into the point that you asked, convener, which is that if we are focusing on trying to get as many exam passes as possible rather than the acquisition of knowledge, skills and experiences, then to achieve that goal we do exams, we do prelims, schools do practice prelims. In fact, many schools do two prelims because they will do a prelim in November and then they will do another one in March because the SQA are requiring a degree of robust evidence that cannot be achieved in November because we are only two thirds of the way through a course or even one third in some courses. The whole system is designed to pass exams and not to prepare our youngsters for life after school. Thank you very much. Professor Muir, do you want to come in on that as well? Thanks, convener. As many of you know, I authored the report putting learners at the centre, which was published just over a year ago. One of the things that I did was undertake a very extensive survey of practitioners, children and young people. There were a number of messages that came back that gave significant evidence that aligns with what Louise found out in leading her review of assessment and qualifications. Concerns about the two-term dash to higher—that has been consistent in Scottish education—and the three-year back-to-back examinations that Peter suggested, even more of that. The lack of articulation between broad general education and the aspirations of curriculum for excellence and the assessment and qualification system that we have. What is perceived by many is a very heavy knowledge and understanding content-laden curriculum with the kinds of skills and competencies that are deemed to be appropriate for current and future learners, largely missing from the curriculum, and compression of time. All those things came through very significantly in my report. Again, working with Louise and her team came through very significantly for them. In my report, we have a very examination-dominated system in Scotland and I was quite concerned speaking to primary head teachers that they were making the point that the curriculum in primary schools now is being directed by what is required in secondary, which is largely driven by what the exams require. I make the point that the kind of metrics that we talk about in Scottish education as being a measure of quality, i.e. the number of hires that a young person might achieve in a single sitting in S5 is not the kind of metric that is appropriate for the future and that we have narrowed, as Louise was suggesting, a narrowing of the curriculum, largely because the main thrust for quality assurance purposes is how well young people do in examinations and how well they do in standardised assessments. We know that young people and children, even in primary, achieve much more than simply passes in examinations. One of the things that we are trying to do in this report is to look at how we change some of the mindset and some of the culture around Scottish education and, in particular, the assessment examination requirements. I have a brief supplementary from myself before I come to Willie Rennie on that. It is directly to you, Peter. If there is the flexibility that you have spoken about that is in this to do a range of things, where does the pressure lie to continue the way that we have always done it? The pressure largely lies in the way in which we report on our success. There is a societal pressure to publish, not helped by national newspapers, to publish league tables. Obviously, the Scottish Government does not publish themselves, but reporters formulate it. That impacts on parents' views on the success of the school, or otherwise, which then impacts on elected members, which impacts on directors of education and down into headteachers in schools. The publication of the artificial league table does not help. That is where a lot of the pressure comes from. However, I would argue that there are many headteachers and many local authorities who have woken up in the past five, six or seven years to this threat and are prepared to tell the full story about the success of individual schools and that it is not just about passing five hires or five national fives. They are prepared to stand up and illustrate the positive destinations that are achieved by their youngsters. If you are in a school that has a high level of employment opportunity in your area, you will find that youngsters will leave school directly and go into the workplace, and that is to be applauded. However, by doing so, it reduces the percentage of those who are able to clock up five plus. However, the success is there. We have provided an education system full of experiences, skills, development and knowledge acquisition that is getting them into a lot more apprenticeships these days and getting them into the world of work, rather than keeping them on its school and trying to clock up qualifications that will just get them into the workplace later. That is not to say—if you do not mind—that we are harming those who wish to go to university because the statistics will show us and we can see that in a programme called Insight that Schools Use for Self-Evaluation. We can see quite often that that percentage of those who are going on to university still secure the percentage pass rates and, in fact, go on and get seven, eight or nine hires if that is the journey that they wish to take. Peter, can I come to supplementary from Willie Rennie now, please? Thank you, Mr Bain, for the clarity with which you are speaking this morning. I think that it is really helpful. You mentioned insight. Is insight part of the problem? Are we measuring the right things with insight? Thank you, Mr Rennie. I think that insight, I personally—I am not speaking for the other people I mentioned earlier—I personally think that insight is a very valuable tool. It allows us to deep-dive—to use a school-y phrase—to get to the nub of how our additional support needs pupils are doing. I have a hostile school accommodation service. How are they getting on? It really allows us to go in depth and to work out what is it that we need to support to allow them to achieve the qualifications that they wish or they need. I think that it is a valuable tool. It does have one part in it, which is called breadth and depth. Unfortunately, that is the one part of insight that everybody hawns into, and many do not use it to its full capacity to deliver the best choices for our youngsters. It is a good tool. One bit is used very badly in my personal view. Bill Kidd, can we come to you now, please? Yes, thank you very much, convener. Can I ask how well understood and trusted is the current suite of qualifications that are taken in Scotland schools? Do people really understand them and trust them in depth? Over to Peter again. I am sure, but not positive, that our school leaders across the country and the teachers within them are very aware of the suite of opportunities that are available now and how they link to the Scottish credit and qualification framework, which all schools are now using extensively and are heavily promoted by Skills Development Scotland, as well as the schools and local authorities themselves. That has helped for our education communities to understand a parity of esteem. Gradually, over the past few years, our parent bodies, through the work done online and with additional meetings by a CQF framework personnel and the SDS and schools, are becoming more aware of the value of national progression awards for works, baccalaureates, foundation apprenticeships in particular have seen a large rise in uptake because of their value. That is a slow, steady and very positive progress. However, you would be right to say that not everybody fully gets it, but mind you, I have still got parents that think that we still do all levels, and we never did all levels in the first place. Just to support what Peter is saying, the difficulty with asking a question at that is that there are so many different answers and it depends who the individual is and who the area would be. One of the issues that was interesting during the review was that employers talked about the limited use that they make of the evidence coming from qualifications. Six months into the workplace and nobody will ever ask you again what qualifications you had. Similarly, universities use the qualifications as a means of deciding who will get entry to which particular course. However, if we are serious as a society about ideas of lifelong learning, we need to think about a system that is not like falling off a cliff when you leave school or college, but it transitions with you into the next stage and then you can build and grow from that. The evidence that we have around the speed of change in society suggests that learners are going to have to be flexible learners all of their lives because of the speed at which things are changing. We need a system that supports all of our learners through those processes and that what they have achieved in school or college then goes with them into the next stage of their life and they continue to build from that. The other issue that your question really interestingly raises is that perhaps as an education system we have in the past paid insufficient attention to a communication strategy and that any innovation has also to have a very clear communication strategy and not simply one that is linked to the point where the innovation is introduced but one that recognises that that communication strategy has to develop over time and be sustained so that we build up the changes in understanding across society over time. I think that you raise an interesting point about trust and confidence in the education system and when I compare the trust and confidence in the assessment and qualification system that I have in Scotland with what I see particularly in Nordic countries it is transformationally different. I think that we have a very high trust system in those countries and perhaps less so in Scotland and yet we have experts on the ground, practitioners in our schools who are well trained, who are ready to operate as experts in the system and we make very little use of that expertise within the qualifications and examination system, much less so than in many other countries in the world. Of course that was one of the reasons why we suffered the problems that we did with the two years of Covid and the examination system having to operate very, very differently. When I look at what happens in the Nordic countries they did not suffer anything like the same fragmentation and the same problems that we have faced in Scotland. I think that that demonstrates that building trust and confidence, which is similar to what we see in some other countries, is part of the culture shift that we need to make within the Scottish system. It also demonstrates that there are systems in the world where teacher expertise, teacher professional judgment and so on is used to a far greater extent than it is in Scotland just now. Thank you very much. That actually helps potentially. I'm just going to read this out because I think that it's important that it's on the record that the review comes out with a vision and the vision is that an inclusive and highly regarded qualifications and assessment system that inspires learning values the diverse achievements of every learner in Scotland and supports all learners into the next phase of their lives, socially, culturally and economically, which I think is a brilliant vision. To what degree was the current suite of qualifications used to support the vision going forward, set out in the review? How was it used to shape the vision? The current qualification system would serve aspects of the vision, but we were very clear as an independent review group that the current system does not serve all aspects of the vision. Therefore, we had to consider. You know that there were three phases of the consultation. The first phase was agreeing the vision across all of the communities that we described, getting to a point where we said, okay, this is the direction of travel that we would like for Scottish education, Scottish society. Then the second phase of the vision was around. What are the parameters? What might that begin to look like in practice? Then we consulted on that. The third phase was from the feedback that we got. We then developed a model to say, okay, this is what this might look like, and then we consulted on that. Our starting point was very clearly that our current system does not meet all aspects of that vision. Sorry, Mr Cymru. I would like to come in there. You mentioned the suite. I think that it would be a remiss not to separate the system from the suite of qualifications. In our view, the collective view of those that were involved in certainly my work, there was a clear view that the system is failing our youngsters. The suite of qualifications is not challenged. There is a wonderful array of qualifications delivered by educationalists across the country, whether that be in schools or further education, that serve the needs of our youngsters. The Scottish Qualification Authority, at the current time, oversees around a couple of hundred, the number varies, but there are around a couple of hundred courses that they oversee, and there is only one qualification body that we use to tease out a wealth of qualifications that are best suited for our youngsters, particularly going into vocational and professional environments. What was criticised in relation to the suite, however, which is why the interdisciplinary learning part of the Scottish Diploma of Achievement came to be is that as much as we have all those professionals providing discrete educational experiences and knowledge, they were not tying up. In real life, we do not just talk history. We talk history when we are discussing economics, we talk history in terms of our family tree, we talk geography in terms of geopolitics, or where do we want to go on our holidays. There is the main criticism with the suite, it is not its breadth, it is the fact that we do not talk to each other, and so I would hope that the new qualifications awarding body would seek to develop interdisciplinary understanding and courses that would better allow our youngsters to see the relevance of all those important topics, and if they see more relevance and they see why it can be used going forward, they might buy into an even greater number and pass their assessments, not necessarily the exams, but the assessments as they go forward. That was end, Professor. To that, Mr Kidd, I think that it is really important to remember that this is not just about qualifications, this is about achievements, and young people and children from early years all the way through primary and into secondary make achievements in their learning that, currently, with the matrix that we use in the system, which is largely about performance and standard nationalised assessments and examinations, those achievements, which in some cases are very significant, particularly for children who are presenting with an additional support need or a learning disability. Currently, we do not openly recognise and value those in the way that we value qualifications, and part of the vision is trying to recognise and find a mechanism for recognising those wider achievements that young people make, which is one of the reasons why the personal pathway is an important element of the diploma that is being proposed. Hence, in the vision that is supporting all learners into the next phase of their lives, socially, culturally and economically, it is not just about examinations and qualifications. There is also one important thing in the vision that is inspiring learning and the kinds of opportunities. Young people commonly talk to us about the fact that they want to make a difference to the world. They want opportunities to use the knowledge that they are developing in the subject areas. They recognise that the subject knowledge is important, but they want to be able to think about how they can use that knowledge in order to improve society. That would give them an opportunity to do that. What is interesting is that those are exactly the kinds of qualities. Often, we talk about knowledge and skills as if they are separate. You cannot develop skills without knowledge, and there is no point in having knowledge unless you can think about how you use it. In that context, those are the kinds of things that employers were suggesting were absolutely crucial for the future of each young person. The universities were arguing that it is the combination of knowledge and skills that is really important. Both in the workplace and in colleges and universities, many of the approaches that we are proposing within the Scottish Diplom of Achievement are already in place. We are looking to develop approaches to learning, achievement and progression that will better support learners into the next phase of their lives. That sounds quite inspiring. Thank you very much for that scene setting. Can I move to some questions now from Liam Kerr, please? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Just a couple of quick questions at this stage on the process of the review group. So Professor Haywood, the review was based on what was called an integrity model of change. Can you tell the committee how the work that you undertook and the final report reflect that integrity model, please? Okay. The integrity model of change is somebody who has spent her entire life trying to demystify and remove jargon from assessment. It does sound awfully jargon. But actually it is very simple. It was an empirical model that was developed from work originally in Scotland around a programme called Assessments for Learning. Assessments for Learning was described by the then education minister as a quiet revolution in Scottish education, i.e., it made differences in what teachers were doing in classrooms, that other previous innovations had not had that kind of level of impact. School inspectors were going into schools saying that they didn't come across a teacher or a school who hadn't heard about this. That's quite unusual for that kind of innovation. So as part of that, at the end of it, we interviewed, as a piece of research, we interviewed learners and teachers and local and national policy makers and all the people who were involved in the process. When we analysed the evidence, three things mattered. The first thing was education integrity. People had to have a clear vision. You need to be clear about what you're doing and you also have to be clear that it's going to make a positive difference to children's learning or to young people's learning. That's the education integrity bit. Within the review, we then began working with the Scottish Youth Parliament and the Children's Parliament towards developing a vision, which we would believe is in line with UNCRC. That was the first bit and that's how that bit. The second bit is called personal and professional integrity. That means that all of the people who have a role to play in making the innovation work have to be involved from the beginning in its development, so they think through the issues as they develop. The model that we developed, which was the matrix model, where we had those for whom qualifications matter most—that's learners and as appropriate parents or carers—and then the second group of people, those who were involved in the design, the development and those who offer qualifications. The third set of communities, those who use qualifications. All of those people matter if qualifications are going to be effective and credible in the system. On the other side of the matrix, to make sure that the programme was as well informed as it possibly could, we had a number of research communities where we brought together national and international experts in different fields, in curriculum, in assessment qualifications, in process of change, in equity and in policy alignment. That was the personal and professional integrity bit. The systemic integrity will be reflected, I hope, in the recommendations, that innovation is a little like the back, if you take the back from an old-fashioned watch and you see all those little cogs turning. If any one of those cogs stops, then the watch doesn't work. You need, for example, an initial teacher education to be involved as people are coming into the profession from the beginning. Those are the expectations that they have. You need school inspectors when they go into schools to be looking for the evidence of the Scottish Diplom of Achievement. All of those bits together, you need to make sure that the data being gathered reflects the key ideas in the Scottish Diplom of Achievement. That's the systemic integrity bit. That was the model on which the whole development was based. I understand that. I thank you for the detail. On the second part of that, the personal and professional integrity, you talked about the second part of that matrix. The cabinet secretary has said that, before taking forward any reform in the qualifications, she needs to hear from teachers specifically, particularly secondary teachers, who she says will be key in driving forward any changes. How did your review ensure that it's heard from those teachers? What did that group broadly tell you, and how did those discussions impact on the final output? That's a really interesting question. In addition to all of the independent review group with all the community collaborative groups that you've heard about, we also set up a process whereby, for each of the three phases of the consultation, we developed packages of materials that were sent out to every school and college in the country. What we learned through that process was that we assumed that it would therefore get to every teacher in the country. What we discovered was that, although that was a really good approach in theory, in practice it was patchy. It got blocked at different points in the system. I'll ask Peter in a second to talk about examples of where it worked, or indeed, Ken, to talk about examples of where it worked very well, but we became conscious of the fact that, via social media in particular, I was getting feedback from teachers saying that nobody's asked me, and then you start to realise that it was getting through into some areas, but in other areas it didn't seem to be working terribly effectively. I think that there's learning to be done. I think that the cabinet secretary's position of where she is saying, I really would like to hear from every teacher in the country, is a really important part of the process. It is important to have those conversations, because everyone should be involved in the process. From the model that we developed, there's learning to be done about how those systems work in practice. As a group, we would argue that, if we're talking about changing culture, we need ways of engaging at scale with key people within the education system. I think that there's learning to be done from the approach that we undertook, but I think that the model and the means of involving people in this process for the innovation to be successful, we need to continue that process. This is cultural change. This is about not all of the meetings of the independent review group were uncontentious. We had really interesting and sometimes quite heated debates about issues, but our position was either you work those issues through as the programme's developing, or you're going to have to pick up the problems later. It's a process by which you deal in a principled way, but also in an essential practical way with the future. We would argue that, for cultural change to be developed, those processes have to continue where everyone has a voice and everyone's voice is part of coming through to agreed positions. Peter, do you want to come in? The Professor Hayward was suggesting that you may want to. Some of the discussions that we had in these meetings for just over a year were interesting indeed, but I'm glad to say that, during the beginning, Professor Hayward said that it's not the Hayward review, and at each stage and after each of the meetings that we had over just over a year, after every meeting there was the question presented by a lady that basically said, do we agree, are we content to move forward as a collective position? The universities were there, the trade unions were there, the school leaders were there, the youngsters were there, etc. That was always measured as we went. I think that that example of experience of when we all gathered together and we talked about each stage in that journey, we came to a consensus through communication and the acquisition of understanding. I think that herein lies the problem that Mr Kerr has alluded to that all these teachers are saying, I don't know anything about this and I'm not sure about this and I don't like it, etc. I have to say in the year that I spent doing that and subsequently since because I do get the opportunity to go and speak to other local authorities and other schools and other groups on the subject just because I was in these discussions, when I hold a session, even if it's just a couple of hours, with a group of school leaders or a group of teachers or whoever, when you talk it through and they understand the background to some of the recommendations, they go, I'll sign up for that, yeah, I'll agree to that. I did the one just last week for School Leader Scotland where all the local authorities were represented and the first question and it's on the PowerPoint that got issued to all schools as well, you know, do you support the Scottish Diplomate of Achievement in principle? In everyone bar 2 said yes because we had had a discussion and they understood it. If you just go to a teacher call, they're going to go, no, because they fear naturally and justifiably about workload in particular. This is something new. Anybody does, no matter what your occupation is, if you suggest something new they're always going to say, but I'm already too busy. But if you talk through what is it that we could give up or what is it that we could change or what is it that we could adapt to create the time to make the system the opportunities better, then they go, eh, as long as I get time, as long as I get some money, as long as I get some resources, I'll sign up for that. I think that that's where we are just now. I mentioned the 11 head teachers, their groups of 10, all their school communities. See if you go to these schools. They're okay with the SDA, the Scottish Diplomate of Achievement. They wish to accept it in principle, but they still want to know the devil in the detail. They want to move into a planning for implementation stage, but they accept it in principle. The teachers or the schools who did not engage and do not understand it, they're the ones who are more vocally saying, hold on a minute, and so because there's a fair few of them, it's quite natural that the cabinet secretary has taken poison, you know, measure twice, cut once. No harm will be done. They'll come to the agreement that everybody else does once they understand it. That is a good idea that needs teased out. Thank you. Thank you. Ben Macpherson has a short supplementary on this. That is just the main question if that's okay, Conviera, because it's related to this point. Thanks, panel. I think back to, I was in the first year or second year of Higher Still and the implementation of NAPS and that initial culture change, and then the position of course work and continuous assessment altered in the years ahead. I think that speaks to your point at the beginning, Professor, about the need for continually emphasising the vision through the practical implementation. So thinking ahead to the process of implementing the SDA and the points that Peter Baines just made, how important following on from that consultation with teachers in the short term, but as we enter the implementation phase and considerations around workload and buy-in, teacher training and continuous professional development seem to me to be really crucial in making this work. I just wondered if you had any reflections on that. Yes. I suppose because I was using one word there because I can't emphasise that strongly enough. We like concise answers. We like positive strong answers. It was that the countries where they make greatest progress in terms of supporting learners' achievements are those who invest in their teachers. It is really important to invest in the professionalism of teachers in Scotland. One of the interesting things that we found in the review is how many creative and frustrated teachers there are in Scotland, who all teachers care deeply about the learners with whom they work. Many of them were expressed frustration about the fact that they believe that the current system in the senior phase drives them into fairly predictable behaviours where they are involved in a lot of rehearsal with learners, rather than having excited them about learning and having passion for what they are doing. It is interesting that, in the schools that we have been in— Ken may have some really good examples of that—where they have been involved in the project learning approach, the level of enthusiasm from learners and the level of enthusiasm for teachers is incredible. People have to be supported through that. The system also has to recognise that, if that is the way forward, at the beginning of the initial teacher education, teachers will be introduced to those ideas as what it is to be a teacher. They will expect to work in subject areas, but they will also expect to work across subject areas. They will expect to be involved in project learning. They will expect to be involved in conversations with learners about their personal pathway. Through that process, you build capacity. For teachers who are already in post, we use the term teacher as if there is a single teacher. The truth is that teachers in very different circumstances have very different stages in their own thinking. We need to be supportive of people. We start from where they are and we support them through into the process, but I could not agree with you more strongly that those things are really important. Given the changes that were made in the first period of the implementation of higher stills, will it be important to learn from that process to have a consistent and stable position for a good period in order to properly embed the implementation of curriculum for excellence in that next important phase? Without doubt, okay. I will let you respond as well. Your questions relate back to what Mr Kerr was talking about. We genuinely need to learn as a system some of the lessons from the implementation of the introduction of curriculum for excellence. It is questionable how successful we were in doing that. Professional learning and engagement of all staff in the philosophy around any reform or change is absolutely critical. That is where I think the cabinet secretary's survey might be quite helpful, particularly to touch on those schools to begin to think about what that reform could look like, so that they are at least at the starting blocks, if you like, in thinking about the reform. More specifically in relation to some of the things that are happening out there, as Peter said earlier, there are a lot of elements in the diploma that are already happening out there, particularly the project learning, which we see as a very interdisciplinary approach to learning and to providing young people with problem-solving challenges so that they are bringing their knowledge and experience from a range of subjects and disciplines. If you take, for example, what is happening just now, Ms Thomson, in your constituency, with fuel change, the fall cut-based organisation that is offering an SCQF level 6 qualification over this year. Over 600 students across 21 local authorities in Scotland are undertaking the kind of project learning that we are anticipating as part of the Scottish Diploma of Achievement. You have also got organisations such as the Vardy Foundation that are offering a Gen Plus experience to students in about six local authorities now that are allowing them to develop some of the skills and what are generally referred to as the meta-skills of things like building resilience, leadership, co-operation and collaboration, problem-solving activities of the kind that all the international research shows is the kind of experiences from education that current and future generations of young people are going to need if they are going to deal with the kind of challenges that they will face not just in school but throughout their lives. There are a good number of things happening there, but I think that learning some of the lessons where we did not get it quite right in introducing curriculum for excellence, sharing the philosophy, developing the understanding and critically ensuring that teacher education programmes in Scotland and the continued professional development that teachers require is provided up front as part of the reform process. I am doing my convener role here and I have my eye on the clock. We are getting some really great responses from the panel but I am going to have to ask you to try and curtail and keep them as concise as possible. We have still got an awful lot of questions to go through and I am really sorry to put it that because we are getting some really good responses. We are going to move to some looking at the recommendations and I am bringing in initially Pam Duncan-Glancy, please. Thank you for answering the question so far and for the information that you have given us in advance. I am really struck by the importance that you are all rightly placing on the role of teachers and also the point about some felt blocked. Professor Muir, your point about the distance of teachers from decision makers and how that is having an impact. On that basis, how could we ensure that all three elements of the diploma are applied consistently across schools and are manageable for schools to assess? If I start with that and then I will hand over to colleagues, it is a really important question. The answer lies in the collaborative approach that we have been describing. That this is not about one or two people in a darkened room producing things that then go out to the world. This is about groups of schools working together with local and national agencies so that by being involved in the development of the next phase you are actually building capacity across the country. You also need to target what it is you are looking at. You need to be very clear about that. If you are looking for consistency across the country, you design a system that will explore consistency across the country. Again, it is back to being very clear about what it is that you are setting out to achieve. Designing approaches that work with people and recognising that different parts of the country will have different needs. Allowing the flexibility but building the national standards so that there is a shared understanding across the country and that we build a sense of fairness there. Are the current structures that exist fit to do that? I think that there is no reason why we do not develop structures to do that. Once we are very clear about what it is that we are seeking to achieve, we look at the structures to make sure that they facilitate those processes. One of the dangers with any innovation is that people think that once you have agreed the vision you can then forget it and get into the practice. When, in fact, we really need to change the way that we think and that it is constantly about why, why are we doing this and then it is the fault that I remember when. Building that in, so therefore, once you are clear about the why, then it is how do we make this happen and how can the agencies come in to support that. For example, linking a point—this is the last long answer that I will give, convener, I promise—linking it into the point that you made, which is that teachers should not all be starting from a blank sheet of paper. There are things, for example, that make sense to do collectively. If we take the project learning as an example of that, we have examples in the system already that we can begin to build from. However, as part of that process, we should have national agencies, curriculum and assessment qualifications working collaboratively with groups of schools to develop examples of what project learning might look like, so that schools can then take and adapt into their own circumstances. For those schools who are already doing that, they can build on what they are doing for schools where some of those practices are more innovative than they can build from examples rather than have everybody starting from the blank sheet of paper. I think that that is something that we learned from Hirstel. Just to point out that not all three elements that are being proposed in the diploma are assessed. Obviously, the programmes of learning are akin to what we currently have at SCQF levels 6 and 7 at higher and advanced higher. The project learning that we are talking about is an evaluation teacher assessment with some kind of moderation, which is a pass-fail. Critically, the personal pathway is not assessed, but it is an important part of the proposed diploma because in that is a record of the kinds of achievements that young people make through the learning experience. It helps to change some of the culture and mindset that exists just now that learning only really becomes important when you choose your subjects in setting their third year in school. It is giving due recognition to the learning that takes place in early years and primary and building on that throughout their school career. I want to move on to the subject that you have covered a little bit about interdisciplinary work. To what degree do pupils already get opportunities to do that? Why do you think that the progress that we should make on it has been a bit slower than expected? I will start this and then I will hand over to Peter. The reality just now is that some pupils and some students do and some students do not. As an independent review panel, we are keen to establish that that really is not good enough and that every learner in the country has opportunities to develop skills that are identified to use the knowledge through skills in order to make sure that they are well supported into the next phase. If I go back to that old-fashioned watch idea, just now there are parts of the system that, for example, when students are in initial teacher education, much of their time—quite rightly because that is the way that the parameters are set just now—is set within individual subjects. They are supported for that particular role, but not in every institution across the country. Are they supported into working in ways that cross disciplines? For that interdisciplinary approach to take place, people need to be supported to develop the skills that will allow them to do that. It is one example of the way in which, if one particular cog is not moving, you see the result in what happens in practice. We are so busy—schools are generally so busy—trying to put as many hours and minutes in all our efforts into passing the exams to prove that we are doing well and that the youngsters leave with a suite of qualifications that are viewed as good, albeit that there could be alternative, better alternatives for them. It is not that doing exams is bad necessarily. They are good if they acquire them, but they are bad if they weren't the right choices in the first place. Because we are spending so much time doing that, many of the times we are only doing anter-display learning, because the HMI is going to come in and assess us on it. Do you have any concerns that the Government is not going to take your recommendations on exams? Once the Cabinet Secretary has gone through that second tier of listening, I would be hopeful that the bit of the profession that has not spoken positively about the SDA will support it, and therefore that the Cabinet Secretary and the Scottish Government will take forward the recommendations once they hear from everybody. I have one final very brief point. Do you think that the vision that you have just described can be delivered within the classroom environment that we have right now—clashroom numbers, non-contact time? Do you think that teachers can do that just now, or will that need to change? I think that as Professor Hayward said earlier that we need a systemic change, and that begins by supporting teachers, not just through initial teacher education, which I think is fabulous these days, producing great teachers coming out of that, but through the career and professional development that needs to happen in schools for those teachers who are currently in the system. If we understand what we are trying to achieve and we put in place robust support packages, I am pretty confident that we could do that, and the time will come from a review of the examination system. If we are not just doing exams and practice exams and practice prelands and we trust teacher judgment based on the increased development of teachers' understanding of standards, all that time spent teaching to the test constantly could be transferred over to developing the skills and developing the opportunities for our young people. On that line of questioning falls nicely to our next questioner, Stephanie Callaghan. Yes, it does. Thank you very much, convener. Just before I go on to that part of it, just quite a short question here. When I was looking at recommendation 6, we have got that point that all three elements need to be covered, so the progress, the projects and the personal one as well, and that the diploma will not be awarded if all three are not covered as well, so I was just a little bit concerned about any risks that there might be around that, particularly with, for example, perhaps a pupil who does not have a parent who is particularly supportive or has not had very great support from teachers and may be missing out on that element. I think the reason why we said that was if what we are proposing in the report is accepted as the way forward, then those three elements are fundamentally the drivers for some of the mindset and cultural shift that the system actually requires. Now, and that's very much why we have said that the three elements need to be there because we see each of them as having an important role in changing from what we currently have, which is a very examination driven system, to something that recognises wider achievement and better prepares children and young people for the uncertainties of the future. More about ensuring that that part of that happens then, if you like. It's very much designed to emphasise some of the things that we've been talking about this morning that need to be in place in order to make it happen. I suppose that we're moving to the practicalities of delivering the change. We've heard about people speaking about culture in this country as well. The three Rs is such a huge thing and it's something that we very much pride ourselves on. It's in the fabric of all of us. We all talk about education and have a real pride in it, but a lot of people really don't like change. I'm really interested, Peter, you spoke earlier about the fact that all the teachers that you've spoken to have really come on board with it, as well as young people, parents, educators and employers. I suppose that it's about how to make sure that those remaining people come on board then. How do we deliver that practically on the ground and create that space to develop the structures that do need to change and happen in their classrooms? I suppose that there's a mention of the media and the press as well. How do we offer a bit of protection against being an attack on that and the fact that it's not the definitive qualifications that we can tick off at ABRC, but making sure that we open up and see the wider circle of it? Thank you, Ms Gallan. Communication. Those that I said that the Scottish Diploma of Achievement are a good idea have only said that once we've talked it through and they understand it and they understand how it all fits together. In order to give it resilience, we need to keep going with the collaborative approach using all the stakeholders, as the independent review group did in the initial work. If we continue to talk to our parent bodies and our youngsters and, of course, those in the schools and colleges, and ask their views as we tease out—I mentioned the phrase planning for implementation. That's not a formal phrase, it's just my way of trying to describe how we should move forward. We need to plan for implementation. If we think that the principles are good, then the SDA is worth moving forward with in its entirety, which most people ask to speak to after the discussion. In planning for implementation, we need to keep stakeholder engagement involved, and, as Louie said, we need to not just put a bunch of people in a room and then come up with a bunch of papers. If we do that, we can positively go out to the media, whether they publish what we are finding or not, depending on the individual paper. However, if we continue to promote collaboration—positive, practical, achievable aims in that implementation—then the communities will buy into it as they have the initial idea. Professor Hayward is so long to respond to your question. Thank you very much. I think also that we need to be creative and think about the ways in which we engage with people. I was struck by work that I was doing in Ireland where, when they introduced work where there was a significant change, they developed a video that was on television and in cinemas. It was a story of Orla and it was a cartoon where the young person went through the system, and it began from, why are we doing this and what will it actually look like for your child? I also think that we need to be creative in the way that we begin to engage with communities and think about who we are trying to engage in the process and the kinds of ways in which we are most likely to get to people. I think that we have long moved beyond the position where we believe that the letter going home in the school bag is an effective way of communicating. I think that we need to think about those things more carefully. I think that that creativity also comes into the ideas of professional learning. For some people, professional learning is still the course that they go to or the event that they attend. I re-framing that to say that the professional learning is about the role that you play in taking the ideas forward working with others so that, as teachers build their expertise, they can then share that expertise with other teachers. What you are doing is building capacity in the system at the same time as developing the ideas. That is a very short one on the end of it. Will part of that be possibly talking about the fact that there might forcibly be a decrease in the number of nap fives or higher subjects because young people are actually going in a direction that is much more suitable for them? Would that play quite a part in that? That is absolutely right. I think that we have to recognise that I cannot remember who said it. I think that it was Peter who said that some parents are still talking about O levels. Those of us who are steeped in education are sometimes in danger of making assumptions about where the outside world is in relation to that. I think that that links also to your question about to what extent do people understand the system. I think that we have a responsibility in terms of that. To tackle some of the issues head on, when parents talking with the parental group, what are the issues that parents are likely to be concerned about, and then use that as the basis for thinking about how we communicate. Again, we develop our communication strategy with people that identifies the issues that matter to them, and then we match the communication strategy to that. It is a more sophisticated way of looking at that communication strategy. In many schools across the country, in order to ensure that they keep up the historical percentage of, say, national 5 pass rates, they will produce packs of materials for youngsters who are not engaging as fully as they would wish or we would wish, and we get them through qualifications, through spooning, feeding them. That happens in every local authority, I would argue, not in every school, but across the country, it happens, as possibly I better put it. If the head teacher is brave enough to see a reduction in the number or the percentage of national 5 passes and trade that off for ensuring that a large number of youngsters get experiences that will allow them to go straight into a job, whether that would be an apprenticeship or a job in the local economy, that is worth seeing your percentage or your number of that five passes going down, because instead of just putting them in a room and making them go through worksheets to get them to pass basic qualifications, those youngsters are going into the workplace better prepared, more work ready and the employers are a lot happier, and so is the kids. I would be interested in your reaction to Fiona Robertson's comments last week at the committee. In particular, she said that she warned about unintended consequences, particularly around equity and the personal pathway element that she went on. It would be important that such an SDA could benefit all learners, whatever their pathway, and particularly around equity and the personal pathway element. I would quite like your response to that. That is the very reason that the SDA that we are proposing has those three elements in it. We need a different kind of recognition of achievement than we currently have just now, which is heavily dominated by examination performance. It is very easy to set out a list of risks in changing any system. My own personal view is that the bigger risk for us now is not changing the system, because we know that there are significant issues with it as it is currently set up, and we know that the kind of environment in which current children and young people and future generations are going into is going to be radically different from what we have just now. The thinking behind the three elements is to try to ensure that young people are as well placed as they can be to deal with the kind of problems and issues and challenges that Scottish society and global society face for the future. In order to do that, we need transformation in the curriculum that we offer and how we assess and evaluate the performance and achievements of young people as a result. I suppose that she is setting up that there is a tension between the choice between those particular people going down a particular path and others, and that a choice might have to be made as to whose interests are put first. Have we modelled—ultimately, this is about the timetable—can we get the timetable to work? We are reducing teacher contact time. We have extra elements that are going to be brought into the timetable. Have you modelled it? I know that you are still at high principal level, but have you modelled it to see how it could look and what the compromises would be? Yes. It is modelled in a variety of schools right across the country. There are lots of examples where headteachers have come together and shared existing good practice of the way in which I mentioned that brave headteachers are prepared to see a drop in their percentages. They are doing that because they are facilitating and encouraging partnerships with other organisations, whether that is out or bound or Ocean Youth Trust or perhaps local businesses and employers who are providing experiences best suited for the young people. By doing that, that needs to be recorded somewhere, because they are not passing their hires rather than their fives. The personal pathway element of the SDA would allow some recognition of partnership working acquisition of skills and experiences, and that still needs teased out to exactly how that would work. However, in principle, we do that just now, right across the country. We share those experiences on a normal weekly basis. I could give you practical examples if you want to contact me. Thank you. I am sorry, Professor Hayward. Just very briefly, because the issue of equity was one that we took incredibly seriously, as you will see in the report. There are some aspects of education where we are concerned with fairness and others where almost we are prepared to turn a blind eye. For example, we have an industry of tutors in Scotland who prepare learners for examinations. Is that an issue of fairness? There are issues around that, but I think that we need to begin to explore them. However, the other thing that we asked ourselves is a committee. We had a very, very serious discussion around equity. We realised that the qualification system, the assessment system, does not cause the inequity, but it does shine a light on it. We had an option. Either we had lifted up a stone, we either put the stone back down, or we addressed it. We then started conversations around what it means to have an education in Scotland and to what every learner should be entitled to. In terms of the personal pathway, we made it very clear that that is not about the number of the location of experiences, but it is about that every learner should have experiences that allow them to talk about the kinds of things that they are engaged in. We decided not to put the stone back down, but to shine a light on it and to say what it is to have an education in Scotland and that those three parts of the experience are entitlements for every learner. Michelle Thomson, thank you very much for waiting patiently. Can we bring yourself in now, please? Thank you for a very engaging session thus far. I want to ask about artificial intelligence. They say that AI is like quantum physics. If you claim you understand it, you are merely proving you do not. Professor Harwood, I note your recommendation, 12, for the Scottish Government to establish a cross-sector commission urgently. Do you agree that it is vital that industry and academics, as well as practitioners and Government, are involved in that? What key themes, briefly, would you like to evaluate? Is there, in your opinion, a risk that some of the realised issues around AI, particularly in cheating, could push people back into the teaching to the exam to alleviate said cheating rather than the much wider perspective that you have outlined throughout the course this morning? That is a really interesting question. Of course, artificial intelligence came out of the blue, in a sense, in midway through the review. I think that all countries just now are struggling to decide how to respond to artificial intelligence. You will know from the report that there were two fundamental views, one that said that we should go back to tests and examinations because, at least, we should control those. Another view that came initially through the international baccalaureate that said, the learners with whom we are working are going to have to live with artificial intelligence. We have a responsibility to make sure that they are able to cope with that. I think that it may change the nature of tasks. For example, it becomes fundamentally important that learners are able to discern the difference between what is fake and what is real, and that is for all of us. Those are not edges that are on the margins, but are going to become fundamental skills. For example, it may change the nature of assessment tasks. There may be a task where, as an example, you would ask young people to perhaps generate a response using artificial intelligence, but the task would be for them to critique it to identify what is some element of dependable evidence within that and where is the false news. Those are skills that we have to develop. I think that it will change the nature of assessment tasks, but I think that those approaches are going to be fundamental to what it is to be an educated citizen in the mid to late 21st century. Those are the issues that the Government has to work on. I totally support your view that this is not an issue for education alone, it is again about bringing together the collective. Next week, there is a meeting of countries from the independent education assessment network where we are coming together to look at what is happening in relation to artificial intelligence from across the 12 nations. Learning is yes within the country, but also learning beyond the country, because ultimately we have to deal with artificial intelligence. As we follow up on that point, do you think that the fact that you even had those two kind of fast sets indicates at still a relatively low level, regardless of where we are, whether it is Government or the wider practitioners, of exactly what both the threats and the opportunities are of artificial intelligence? Absolutely. I also think therefore that we need to involve in those discussions. Those who are at the leading edge—the people who have been involved in developing the process—need to be part of the discussion. As well as being able to make sure that young people can consider sources and what is truth, is there also a need to make sure that our young people have the knowledge and skills to use AI and be able to utilise its opportunities? That is something that we need to talk more about. That is a very important point, absolutely. I also think that the same is true with teachers. If I reflect back into that, from what I read about artificial intelligence, there are significant opportunities, for example, for artificial intelligence to support with the reduction of some of the more bureaucratic tasks that teachers engage in just now, but that will only happen if teachers are supported to develop those skills and approaches. It is identifying what the potential is and then making sure that the support mechanisms are in place to ensure that that potential is realised. I am incredibly enthusiastic about the whole package or reform that you have proposed here, but 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 some of those alternative methods could be in terms of what continuous assessment might look like. To illustrate what the options are and to pick Ken's subject, if I am five years from a 16-year-old taking geography, what could that assessment look like? If not the high-stakes, end-of-term exam model, what might that experience be? What are the options available? To make it clear, we are not advocating the end of exams. What we are saying is that you need a broad range of approaches to assessment. An exam can be one part of that, but it is to broaden that I am going to hand over to Ken as the expert geographer to respond to your question. In geography, over the years, it is a subject area that has set some of the direction of travel through investigations and assignments that have been part and parcel of the examination system. Where they have tended to fall down has been in regard to the time that that takes to engage in some of those activities. Looking to the future, part of what I would see for example a geography curriculum comprising would not just be so-called pure geography, but engagement and offering opportunities for children to engage in some of the interdisciplinary learning that we are proposing through the project learning element of the SDA. Much more on-going assessment and evaluation by children and young people of the skills that they themselves are developing, because I think that one of the criticisms that I certainly came across from students and practitioners when I was doing my report was that the opportunity to develop the kinds of skills and competencies that are felt necessary for the future were not necessarily there within the curriculum. That is one of the reasons why the project learning element is so important. It gives the opportunity of developing meta-skills, working in collaboration and such like that. I would see that as being much more part of the curriculum, given that we are talking about potentially a two-year period over which to gain an SCQF level 6, for example, a higher. Young people themselves will, through the personal pathway, identify their development and expertise in some of those skills and competencies that currently the system does not necessarily include, and the curriculum does not necessarily include as formally as we feel it is necessary for the future. As Lee has said, we are not advocating the end of examinations. The programmes of learning are fundamentally what we see just now, but it is about how a subject area, not just geography, but any subject area, offers the opportunities to develop the other two elements of the SDA. You have mentioned some of the potentially new elements. Touching on what you said at the start of your answer, will that also be about recognising work that has already taken place? For example, you mentioned some of the assessment project work that is already happening in geography, but it 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 for what actually makes up the collective assessment for their final grade? I think that that would address some of the perfectly legitimate concerns that teachers have around work code, for example, that this is not just about adding new stuff. It is about recognising some of the good work that is going on, but it is not currently making up what decides the grade, what goes on that SDA certificate at the end of the year? As I said earlier, that is not a situation where all three elements are examined. That is an important part of the cultural shift that we are trying to generate through the SDA. Part of the answer to that goes back to something that I said earlier about some of the activities that schools are already engaging in that demonstrate how the likes of project learning and the personal pathway can be developed. If you look at what the Vardy Foundation is doing, for example with Gen Plus, there is a perfectly good digital e-portfolio that is being developed as part of that, which encourages the young people who are engaged in that programme to reflect on their own learning and to evaluate where they are in terms of skills development and to use that to plan for the next steps in learning. There are elements already in the system that I think could be built upon. It is about building the confidence of teachers, which is where the whole professional learning CPD angle comes back in. It is about building teachers' confidence that, even though many of them in secondary see themselves very much as subject experts, part of that cultural shift is about how teachers prepare young people for a very different kind of world in which they are going to be living. Although the subject element is important, so too are the other elements that they recognise as learners how they are developing and having a say in that as part of their learning journey. I think that we were also struck in the discussions that we had with young people about the weakness of the evidence space for the decisions that they were taking about the next stage in their lives. We heard things like, well, I am going to do X at college because I was not a subject at school, so it would be new. My dad did that, so I am going to do the same. The personal pathway is also about trying to encourage the conversations that allow learners to take better decisions about the kinds of next steps that they take in their own journeys. I am going back to the SQA on how that is taken forward and what specific proposals are adopted for taking forward your recommendations. If I could ask a two-part question, because one part is a bit provocative and you might not want to answer it, how credible can that be if the SQA in its current form takes a lead on making those decisions on what the new models of assessment might look like and what the balance of assessment might be? The general question, if you want to sidestep that, though I dare not to. Who should Government involve in the next step for making those quite specific decisions within each course about what the models of assessment are based on your recommendations? Those are tricky questions. Do you want to start with us? I am quite happy to offer my view on it. In Scotland, we have a single awarding body that sets the examinations and so on. In Scotland, as I said earlier, we have a heavily examination-driven system, which includes the curriculum. If you ask many teachers who are responsible for the curriculum in secondary schools in Scotland, they will say that it is basically the qualifications body. Personally, I do not think that that is healthy because there is a huge amount of expertise at the grass-roots level that needs to be used much more effectively in determining what the curriculum looks like and how it changes and when it changes. The curriculum is simply not amended when decisions are taken to change the examinations. I would be hopeful—I hint at that in my report—that the proposal to create a new qualifications and awarding body would be one that is sympathetic to what we are proposing in the SDA and that the activities and the engagement of that body with the wider system is at a high level in order that the young people can benefit from the wider range of achievements and not just the examination results but the wider range of achievements that the education system in Scotland currently offers and arguably could offer much more consistently and in a better way in the future. You deserve a lot of credit, Professor Muir, for being one of the driving forces behind the organisational reform that has now taken place. Realistically, we are probably three to four years away from having that new qualifications body established, bedded in and operational. I presume that you would not want us to wait until we have the new body, hopefully with its new culture, before engaging in implementation of those recommendations. That leaves us with the question of the current SQA and its role in taking that forward. As I understand it, the Government is already moving forward on the introduction of a new qualifications and assessment body. I think that the culture that that body has is going to be very significant in ensuring the success or otherwise of what we are proposing in the SDA. Can I bring in Liam Kerr with the final question, looking at time? If we do get time up, I have one. Thank you, convener. Qualifications, as they are, are key to monitoring how the system is performing. Professor Haywood, can a Scottish diploma of achievement meaningfully allow for similar metrics to be gathered? Yes, because I would argue that it will give a broader range of evidence that will allow policy makers to consider the system. I think that, to make reference to a point that Peter raised earlier, it would give the evidence in relation to every learner rather than to only a number of learners. It is a more comprehensive basis of evidence. One of the issues that we raised in the report—forgive me—is outside our remit, but one of the issues that we raised was a suggestion that, in future, Scotland may wish to reconsider the idea of having a national survey and that national surveys can give bodies like that very specific information related to specific questions. It has the advantage that, because the evidence that is gathered does not identify individual schools, it does not get the negative washback effects that Peter was describing. In the longer term, I think that, although I think that the diploma will give the committees a broader evidence base on which to take decisions, but in the longer term, I think that thinking about alternative ways of providing evidence for policy communities would be worth serious consideration. An examination system provides an objective benchmark against which people can be assessed that perhaps might not be there, arguably, with some kind of continuous assessment. How could you ensure a parity of assessment process in a continuous assessment framework, where perhaps a different or more subjective means of assessment by the assessors might be applied? Time for more than one panel member to answer. Can I make one comment? The research evidence suggests that we overestimate the dependability of external assessment and we underestimate the dependability of teacher assessment. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, but there are cultural issues there that we need to address and that is part of a communication strategy. Exams. There is nothing wrong with assessment. Teachers need assessment because without assessment, we are unable to determine whether they are working through the agreed programming work and the acquisition skills and knowledge that we need them to do. Teachers do assessment all the time. What is crucial to make that work in a continuous assessment model is more time and moderation. The people who mark the exam papers are teachers who are working in a variety schools. They come together once a year. There would be nothing to say that a new qualifications agency did not spend as much time doing exams but spent a partial amount of time doing moderation activities where existing teachers carry out the same type of activity, but across the year, that would benefit a number of youngsters who cannot cope by being put in a big hall. I want to try to bring Stephanie Callhan in. I just promise me that this is going to be a brief supplementary. I am really looking for a yes or no answer here. Is this thing about, would it be fair to say that this is about a bit of a shift away from quantitative data and actually looking more at qualitative data that comes from teachers, the pupils, their experiences to get a better balance? Is that a fair comment? It's a balance. Managed to get everybody in. As ever, we come to a screeching halt when we could carry on the conversation for quite some time and I really do want to thank the panel for their time today. The public part of our meeting is now concluded and will consider our final agenda item in private.