 Good morning everyone. Welcome to the 14th meeting of education and skills committee in 2019. We have received apologies from Oliver Mundell this morning. I remind everyone to turn their mobile phones and other devices to silent for the duration of the meeting. Our first item of business is the third evidence session on the committee's subject Gydwch chi'n gweithio i'r hwnnw, bod yn ddweud ffordd trwy'r rhan o'n ffordd o'r gwaith i'r cyfle, i ard index i'r ddysguing a'r ddisguing a'r hun oesio i ddweud i'r armol yn Devinfermlyn, ac o'n Тыch chi'n edrych i'r ffordd o'r datblygaid yn gweithio. Felly, rydym yn bwysig ac wnaeth i'r ffordd o'r ddwybaith o bwysig i'r ffordd o'n ddwybaith. A wnaeth i gweithio i ddwybaith? Executive Director of Connect, Joanne Murphy, Chair of the National Parents Forum for Scotland, Linda O'Neill, Education Leader of the Centre for Excellence for looked after children in Scotland, Celsus, and Magda Wenterth, Off-the-Gearth Faranth, Coman Nam Paranth. I hope I got that reasonably. So the parents office and parents organisation of CNP. So a very warm welcome to you this morning. We're going to go straight to questions this morning. I'd like to invite Havish Scott to open. I just wanted to ask at the outset about your involvement as organisations representing parents in the construction of the BGE section and senior phase of Scottish education. It has struck the committee that one of the aspects in terms of subject choice that we've probably struggled to fully understand is the origins of how we are, where we now are. There's a debate that all my colleagues will get on to about how well it's working and lots of evidence around that that obviously the committee has been taking. Were your organisations involved in any way in the construction of the way in which education in our secondary schools now operates in terms of the split between from S1 to S3 and then S3 to S6? It's a very simple answer. No, the curriculum for excellence format was basically presented as the vision quite some years ago now, but not quite. And presented by whom? By Scottish Government and Education Scotland. Were there any forms in that early stage where you were asked to reflect on that, to give some thought to it, to consider what the unintended consequences might be? No. The national parent forum of Scotland was, in the early days, a member of the curriculum for excellence management board. I wasn't myself who attended that, was one of the previous chairs. As Eileen has said, we weren't really consulted about how, in the design of it, we were party to some of the discussions around how it would work. As we have always done in the national parent forum, we've always said that this won't work unless people share the information with parents. That has been the most major failing across the whole of the curriculum for excellence. The experience for parents is that they don't know what's happening, so they don't understand how it works. They don't know if it's good and they don't know if it's bad. They just don't know about it really at all. When you say sharing experience and sharing information, what kind of information did you ask for at that time to tell them? We always ask for information at the level for parents. Parents are interested in their children naturally that are attending school. So they need to know that the system has changed from when they were at school, because otherwise they just think that it's the same. Parents still want to hear the information that's relevant to them for their child at the stage that their child is at. If you're in primary 3, you want to know about what happens in primary 3. If you're in S4, you want to know what happens in S4. I appreciate your point. It was one of your predecessors who had that responsibility those years back. Are there any reflections on that now? In other words, do you think that information is now being shared adequately and successfully? Not adequately or successfully enough, I don't think. I think that some pockets of schools share information, but it's not widespread enough. I think that schools are busy places and they've got lots of things to do. Unfortunately, when schools in the roll-out of, for example, the new qualifications, the schools really consulted the parents of the children at that time and have kind of dwindled considerably since then. Generally, every parent that comes in all the subsequent years, they don't really know either, and they miss the big mail shot at the time. Schools need to concentrate, in my opinion, on every year, unfortunately. It's a big ask for schools to do, but until the general population has a better idea of curriculum for excellence and all the ins and outs that are different from our previous systems or even the system when I was at school, it's very difficult for a parent to understand what the differences are and what the benefits are. Do you believe that, for example, Professor Jim Scott last week in evidence to the committee said that each school should publish its approach to the curriculum as simple as that? Is that something that you would hold to be a benefit to parents? I'm sure that it would be a benefit to some parents within the school, but, again, for some of the parents, it would be over their heads. Basic information has been lost sometimes, so it's difficult to just come in at the highest level. Sometimes there's a need for more basic information across the board that you pick up as you go along for your child's whole journey in school. The other aspect of that is, and Joanna is absolutely right, that it gets a fresh cohort of parents and children every year, so there's a refresh needing doing, but one of the challenges is that, by the very nature of schools, schools will manage the message. What they present to parents as being the best choice and the best option for our school, very rarely will parents challenge that because they trust their school. The information that comes from school and the decisions that are made by senior management about how we will design curriculum in this school will rarely be challenged, and most parents will take that as being the best choice for our school. They need to constantly remessage and to have conversations about the options, rather than, this is our vision of what's best for our school. There's a new one that's missing in many schools. Just to echo what Eileen and Joanna have said about the importance of communication with parents, that's certainly something at Celsus that we would say is extremely important. When we think about looked after children, we know that they live in a variety of different settings, with a variety of different carers, so they could be living with foster carers, residential childcare workers, with kinship carers, and if they're being looked after at home, we know that very often their parents have had quite poor or difficult school experiences themselves, so that will impact on their ability or willingness or feelings around being able to engage with school. I think that it's really important to think about how we communicate information and how we involve parents. What we know from our work with parents in North Ayrshire and Renfordshire on parental engagement programmes is that parents, particularly in the transition from primary to secondary school, are telling us that they don't understand curricular structures, they don't understand the content and they actually feel quite anxious about engaging with schools. What we know is that schools need the skills and the time to be able to work with alongside parents, to build relationships and to think about how we have those meaningful conversations that become two-way rather than an imparting of information, how we actually bring parents into schools and help them to work alongside us to construct what's best for children. Now that we have the two phases to secondary school, how do you reflect on how that's working in terms of subject choice? What's your perspective on how the system is now working for parents and more importantly for pupils? Unfortunately, not across the board, but part of the issue is that there's a huge variety. In some cases, when we hear from parents, nothing's changed. We still have the old approach of 2-2-2. Youngster start making selections at the end of second year, they start working on their nationals in third year, so a kind of no change mentality because that has worked for us in the past, so very much that kind of traditional perspective. Sadly, what we end up with is a series of one-session dashes to national fives, to hires and advanced hires or whatever. That's not really what the promise had been and in fact we're still pushing many youngsters through national five who could be going straight to higher. The flexibility of curriculum for excellence in terms of different pathways and moving straight through to hires rather than the assessments associated with N4 and N5 has not really been embraced across the board. Some schools certainly are doing it, but many are not. It's a patchy picture across the scope in terms of how it connects. It's true that it is patchy, but I see more and more schools moving from the 2-2-2 to the 3-3-3. More schools are not narrowing their choices as quickly as they were, more schools are offering a personalisation. It's true, but a much more broad personalisation, so they're going down. They're doing an S1, they're doing all the subjects, and then they're picking two or three out of a curricular area, for example doing geography and history in social sciences, and then narrowing it again in S3 before going into S4 and doing their actual subjects. There seems to be much more option as well for doing voluntary or extracurricular kind of things during the school day and through the timetables well in different models, I've seen. I think it's fair to say that it's not across the board, but there is optimism that it is moving across the board and there are more schools who obviously are looking at their neighbouring schools and seeing how they are doing it, because it's a big ask for a school to move. Schools are unwieldy places and I think that for a headteacher sitting thinking how am I going to move this beast in another direction must be very, you know, exasperating for them and looking at how other people are doing it must make it an easier job for them. Is it possible to define that? I mean, again last week we saw tables of the 358 state schools and state secondaries in Scotland and what's actually happening in subject choice. You've just given a very fair reflection on how you perceive that to be. Do you have any numbers that back up the general direction of travel that you very fairly illustrated this morning? I don't have any better numbers than you would have, no. We do have quite a lot of numbers now. As I say, going across the board for maybe five or six years ago there would be, there was a handful of schools. You're moving into to much larger and that much larger maybe a third and moving towards a half of schools. In my experience talking to different people going round them and are certainly starting to make the journey because you can't do it all at once. Yes, please. I know the committee are aware from previous sessions that there are concerns about the dramatic decline in the number of pupils who are continuing with Gallic learners and Gallic fluent speakers, as well as other languages. I think that there are a number of factors that are affecting that, but certainly in many schools the subject choice, the limitation of six subjects at national 5 is one of the factors that's having an impact on Gallic, especially in smaller rural schools. You have six choices of six subjects, the columns, it makes column choices very difficult. Very often, if pupils feel that there's just no option to continue with the Gallic studies and for children who have come through Gallic media education where all their teaching is through Gallic, then they're going on to secondary where they have very limited access to Gallic. It seems a huge loss that these children are leaving school with no qualifications and very often losing their Gallic language skills. There is an answer because other schools, the bigger schools, it's easier to manage this. Gallic, Glasgow, all the children do Gallic as a compulsory subject along with English and maths up until national 5, and James Gillespie's in Edinburgh is moving towards building on their curriculum through Gallic. I feel for children who have had all their teaching through the medium of Gallic for all their primary education that they should be given the opportunity to at least leave school with one qualification in Gallic. Or in a language? Or in a language. Or in a language. Yeah, the concern is about language. And how would you make that happen? Well, I would increase the subject choices to at least 7 in national 5. I think that would give more flexibility in terms of languages. I would, and there's a question about what advice children are being given, pupils are being given regarding languages at once they're making these choices. And there are probably other factors affecting, you know, uptake of languages in secondary school. I certainly think that it's concerning and something that we need to look at. There has been a focus on STEM subjects lately. Is that at the expense of languages? Miss O'Neill, do you want to come back in? No. No, that one. Okay, thank you. Just before we move to the next committee member, one of the aspects of curriculum for excellence and some of the discussion that we had with parents the other evening was around the use of school clusters where people could go and study another higher qualification not available at their own school but perhaps in a neighbouring school. And also the use of colleges to deliver some of the subjects and foundation apprenticeships as well. And also college lecturers, in some cases, come in to schools. And I just wondered if you had what your experience and what parents were telling you about that model. Parents are happy for their child to do the subject. Unfortunately, real life sometimes gets in the way. And that's, for example, in a big city, the schools can be quite near to each other, but sometimes the distances involved are not really manageable. Also, there's a cost implication to get to the school for both in financial terms, but also in actual time, you've got to get there and you've got to get back again. So you have to weigh up the pros and the cons. I can't see why in this day and age when we've got the digital means that we have, I don't see why you can't sit in your classroom in your school and link into a classroom in another school. I don't see why that's not an option. I know that e-school is rolled out across the Highlands, for example, but I don't see why that's not an option for a class. With teachers, perhaps, and certainly moving young people together if it's possible. There's also, I know in some places, a kind of territorial issue. You don't want to go to a neighbouring school. You don't want to put young people out of their comfort zone because they're learning and they can't learn if they're frightened or they don't know anyone. My own daughter wouldn't go to another school, which is about 300 yards from our house, to study an advanced tyre because she said, well, we all wear skirts at school and they don't, and I'm not going because I'm the only one wearing a skirt. That was as basic as that. Young people have to feel comfortable, so that's why we have to think about ways they can sit in their own comfort zone and learn. The matter of interest, what advanced tyre was it? It was a designer manufacturer. It wasn't about them not doing it, it was about them all wearing a skirt and them all not wearing a skirt. That's her reality of her day. It's interesting because part of what we're looking at is the unconscious bias and what dissuades young women from doing it, and that might have been something that feeds into that process as well, and I think that it's interesting just to... So thank you for sharing that. Thank you to your daughter for killing me. She'll absolutely kill me, and that's part of that is to do with me because I was the one making them wear their skirt. Ms Pryde, I've got a couple of members that do want to come in, and we'll bring you both in yet. I think that technology has its place, and if we're able to use technology, or if youngsters, particularly in the city authorities, if they're able to travel to college or another campus or whatever to study, then yes, and certainly parents once they understand what the options are and the different pathways that are open to their youngsters are generally happy to encourage them to do that. There are technological barriers. We know that in some schools, I don't know what they're built of, but they don't allow Wi-Fi, that kind of thing. So we have to address the technology and enabling our schools to use technology before that can really be a solution. It can replace face-to-face, but it can help that, I think. Our work at Sells is mainly focused on working alongside schools, local authorities, further and higher education providers to try and improve educational experiences for looked-after children, rather than directly with looked-after children themselves and their families. Our experience over the past few years is definitely that we have seen an increase in the flexibility of pathways and collaborations between schools, further and higher education institutions, workplaces, to a big extent. I think that for looked-after children, it's really important, particularly at the upper end of the spectrum, to be thinking about the additional needs that they might require. If they are going to be sharing a timetable somewhere else, we know that the young people have faced significant adversity in their life, which might have an impact on their developmental stage versus their chronological age, which might mean that they might be 15 or 16. For example, if they are capable of independent travel socially and emotionally, they might struggle to share a timetable. They might need to feel very safe in the school that they are in and not hope very well when we go into a college placement or another placement for half the time. I think that thinking about the planning and the support that we put around children if we are going to have that flexibility is crucial to making sure that that is successful for them, because the additional support requirements do not cease because a young person is at the upper end of their education. I acknowledge absolutely the benefits that Joanna mentioned around young people getting the opportunity to study a subject that they might not otherwise get, particularly if it is something that they need to get to the next stage of their education. However, when we asked Education Scotland about this a couple of weeks ago, they gave an interesting response that I would like your reaction to. I highlighted to them the lost opportunities involved in travel. So young people who travel to another school might miss out on extracurricular activities at lunchtime or after school. They might miss out on other classroom teaching time, depending on how the timetable is structured. Education Scotland's response was to say that the motivation that they receive from travelling to another school and from learning in another school more than makes up for the loss of those opportunities, the extracurriculars, or potentially the class contact time at their school. I would just be interested in your response to that. I would say that it is a cost-benefit analysis, isn't it? You have to look at what is the benefit for that versus what is the cost. That is a conversation that school has to have with the young person and their parents or carers, and they make a decision based on that. So yes, there are wins, but there will be issues. I know that in the authority that I live in, for instance, the timetabling was changed so that we now have a very short lunch break, relatively speaking, which means that a lot of extracurricular activities that would normally have taken place at lunchtime have gone, which means that they are now focusing on after school, but when you are in a rural area and people are travelling, they miss out because they have to get the bus back home. Do you know that all of those decisions are not simple? There is no one answer to it, and it has to be based on what is the priority for the young person involved? I would agree with what Eileen is saying. I think that the importance of good relationships and schools having the ability and the skills to get to know their children and young people and families so that they can have the conversations about what is most appropriate for them, what is going to be of biggest benefit and what additional support is required to enable them to achieve an experience to the absolute best that they can. We know that inclusion for children that are looked after can be really difficult and they often miss out on things such as extracurricular activities, after-school activities and the importance of that social and emotional enrichment is crucially important for how they experience education. We know that, very often, the young people that we work with attain at lower levels, unfortunately, than all other pupils, and that is why that relational-based approach to have the conversations about what is going to be of the most importance and the most benefit to young people is crucial and to ensuring that they get the best out of their school experience. It is all very well seen that the motivation of the child will get them through to that class and that there will be some of our young people who are highly motivated and know that they need that subject and are desperate to do it and that will get them through. But education is for all the young people and the personalisation and choice needs to be there for kids that kind of want to do it and know that they would quite like to do it but maybe don't think about it and can't really think about doing it every day and they've got to go maybe in a higher level to have to go significant times to that school. So it would really upset their routine. We want our young people to be happy and to be confident and to have friends and to have their lunch and have all these things and sometimes making them move to another school. Sometimes that just tips the balance and they just pull back because they're at a vulnerable time of their life and they generally want to just be one of the gang. And that's unfortunate and there's lots of things wrong with that. I'm not saying there isn't, but that's the situation we're in and I think sometimes it's up to the school to try and think of having more than one person going and organising it so that it's more beneficial to the young person so that there's more of them going and there's different ways of subjects all working in the same time so that they don't feel isolated going to something themselves. In rural areas, travelling to other schools isn't going to be an option so technology is the only way to deliver any kind of equality and provision for these children who are in very small classes in small schools with a very limited curriculum sometimes. And I think we do need to develop the use of e-school other hubs that can deliver through technology to a number of schools. Helen, you wanted to... It was related to that point, it was the point that Joanna Murphy the same point that Joanna Murphy was making really about that the need for things like e-school it was without sound too pedantic it was just to make the point that you referred to as being there for the Highlands and Islands e-school just because it's based in Stornoway it's not just there for the Highlands and Islands in fact there's people in other countries using it as well so in a way I'm just making the point rather than a question that e-school and things like e-school can be used nationally not just in the Highlands. I was only making the point that it's used well there so that's you know I was giving you a compliment. But it's a shame that you know we've had the open universities been going for 50 years and in Australia you know they do all these things when people live you know significantly further away from each other than they do in Scotland and they seem to manage it all right there. Thank you very much. I'm interested in the extent to which parents and young people should have an impact or influence over the curriculum I'm kind of interested what proper engagement with parents and young people looks like not at the individual subject choice level which we might talk about in a minute but actually in terms of what the school offers I wonder if you have a view on for example should young people have a right to x number of subjects and if so what would that number be and does it matter of different schools do different things? I think part of this conversation which is very focused on subject numbers and subject choices actually we're kind of losing sight of the purpose of this we're losing sight of the purposes to give young people the opportunities they need to make the best of their futures and for some young people that will look very different to what it looks like for other youngsters so my sense is that this isn't about numbers numbers of subjects or whatever actually it's much more fundamental than that and it's about school management and families and young people sharing a vision of what they need as a school community to support their children and in some cases you will have children or young people cos they're not children anymore but young people who have a clear vision they want to go to university they want to they need these hires and actually what we design in this school should enable those youngsters to do that but that should not inhibit those youngsters who perhaps need more support or are on a different pathway so I think you know I just think that the kind of focus on numbers takes our eye off the ball which is actually it's about the young people doing the best that they can and so to me fundamentally it's about that school community and the school management and that wider community understanding what they need in that community what suits their circumstances to enable their youngsters to do what they want to do and what they're able to do How do you think the system then manages a school in a more deprived area where disproportionately young people who will not be sitting five hires who as a consequence will have to more likely to have to travel than in a more prosperous area and more likely to be in multi-level classes in the school because how do you manage that the child who wants to do the five hires against the fact that that school can't offer what perhaps a school down the road can offer at what level is that I mean I hear what you're saying about numbers but at what level is that decision made because if a school says our community, the majority of young people in here are not going to do five hires therefore we're not going to offer five hires we're going to direct resources elsewhere we will be young people in that school who can't achieve their ambitions and I wonder whether how do you manage that because it feels to me that there's just a dilemma there for a school or for a local authority or as a general group families as opposed to individual families I wouldn't deny it's a dilemma but I think that it's not beyond us to come up with solutions for that and you know we've talked about use of technology accessing other programmes and of course SQA exams are not the only route for young people you know and again that's a kind of a bit of a fix that we have that this is about nationals and hires and advanced hires actually there are many other qualifications for young people and this was what I was alluding to earlier when I said that that actually the message that parents get is managed by the school so if the school and the school managers say this is our best route forward to focus on X or Y or Z that's what for the most part parents will will buy but one of the conversations surely is about the range of opportunities for young people you know one of the things that exercises me is that many parents get very wound up about the number of nationals a young person can take and yet we know that in fact the number of nationals you accumulate is not going to have any impact whatsoever if you want to go to university that's not the conversation actually you know we should be focusing on hires for those young people so do you know I just get a sense that we're very caught up in the rigidity which the system is caught up in of nationals hires advanced hires when actually the conversation should be a much more flexible one about the range of opportunities that's available to all of our young people and it needs to be remembered that excuse me that the senior phase is a three-year programme so more and more and more of our young people are staying on for those full three years and it's about what they leave with and it's not about what order they sit them in and what and you know if they and again the progression they do them in but parents are that's this is a completely new system for a parent there's gonna be nothing like this for parents in scotland so why would you be able to just imagine that again parents don't know this so they don't support something because they don't know about it they always I mean it's human nature to just default back to what you knew about and that worked then and that's all right but you know it didn't work then it wasn't working so we decided to change it and and so now we need to put again we need to put a lot more support into helping parents understand the system let alone it doesn't you know it doesn't matter when you sit your national fives or your hires I don't know personally of any schools that don't allow children to sit five hires there is always an option to sit if you want if the young person is able to sit five hires I believe that that every secondary school allows that but again we can't rule our system and while those young people are important we can't run our whole system around the kids that are doing five hires all that and so we have to think about all the rest of them that are doing things and are having so the options are right for them as well and that's quite you sorry just you know a growing number of parents are enrolling their children in Gallic means of education in primary school and their assumption is that that will be the the children will be able to go through Gallic medium education to the end of secondary once parents and families get to secondary they have realised that's not the case and in fact you can only sit one higher at the moment in Gallic so there's been slow progress at secondary for Gallic medium provision we need more qualifications but we we also need to increase the opportunities that children have to to continue their education in the medium that they started that education and at the moment we're not doing the best for these children they are immersed in Gallic up until secondary and then they have very little provision so their needs are not being met there are with parental engagement there's a good example just now in Edinburgh of a group of parents who are working with Edinburgh city council to develop Gallic provision at secondary and they're hoping from August this year to deliver to deliver nine subjects in the medium of Gallic which is good progress and so there are answers to this but although Gallic is a national priority very often I think local decision making at school level, local authority level is not reflecting that status I think there's certainly a role for pupil voice and parents voice and going some way to understanding how we might think collectively about how we make these decisions we know through our work in some local authorities that both the voices of children and parents and education as a whole is often missing from the child's planning process we also know that placing education prominently within a child's plan will go a long way to improving educational outcomes and experiences for children and I think if we could think about how we work alongside schools to help them get better, more confident at gathering that data gathering views of children and parents in a meaningful way and making sense of that and then how they collectively use all of that data and insight and wisdom alongside the structures and systems that they've got in place that might go some way to being able to make some decisions based on the needs of the whole population of a school or a cluster or a local authority which is rooted in what children and parents are telling us is going to be most beneficial for them I was particularly interested in some of the issues round particularly looked after children I wonder if you have or two areas that would be interesting what are the consequences for a young person who may be moving from one school to another if there's complete flexibility in the curriculum and you've got any evidence of what is happening if these decisions are made at school level the capacity of a young person to fit in quite often when they're maybe moved to short notice and there's a crisis in the family or whatever that they're not able to fit into another school curriculum and I wonder how you think that can be addressed and the second question I'd like to ask about is the impact of the decision to get rid of certification for all that is for young people that I would have taught who were perhaps looked after vulnerable foundation qualifications they might have managed to squeeze general qualifications were valued by the school because at an external exam they felt valued and there was resource going into that do you think there has been a consequence to the decision to end that kind of bridge into perhaps the higher education or to be engaged in education for some of these young people and were you consulted at all and that's one of the things we can't establish who decided it would be a good idea to make national force for example not examinable externally I think school disruption for looked after children is a very significant issue and it's something that we see in the statistics the educational outcome statistics for looked after children what they tell us is across the indicators of attainment, attendance and exclusion the more placements that a child has in a school year the less well they do compared to their peers we know as you've said that young people often have to move placement at short notice and that that can have an impact on their educational journeys in an ideal world these moves would be planned schools would be consulted and young people would be consulted in a planned way to help them settle in new placements if they do have to move school but we know that this isn't always possible for reasons around care and protection we also know that another issue is around children who are looked after outwith their own local authority and what that can often mean is that those young people are having delayed access to education due to concerns around provision for additional support needs we don't have enough data at the moment on how many children that currently affects we know that some local authorities have significantly high numbers of children that are looked after in another local authority and other local authorities have high numbers of children that they are termed hosted and all of these factors impact on how children are able to engage with education we know too that children who have had to move placement and consequently move school are at much higher risk of exclusion on admission and that means that children are admitted to school but they go through a sort of tiered exclusion approach where they're maybe missing a subject because it's not offered on that curriculum or they're on a part time time table maybe because they've already covered a subject or it's felt that the school that they've moved to haven't got the appropriate additional support needs qualifications it's an extremely complex issue for the young people that we work with but we do see it reflected in the educational outcome indicators we know that really robust planning using perfect principles for these young people and involving the whole team around the child and incorporating children and families views does go some way to ensuring that moves are kept to a minimum and that any school move is as un-impactful as possible but I think it's certainly an area that we need to be attending to to ensure that we're ensuring equity of access for children that are in these really vulnerable situations thinking that disproportionately young people who have been looked after will leave school at the school even age? Around 72 per cent of children leave school who are looked after leave school at their statutory school if we have an exam system that's based on three years right up to sixth year and say well you may not get to do the fourth year but you can do it in sixth year we're actively then saying that there's a group of young people who will disproportionately leave at fourth year have not got that option that's not something that they'll get I wonder should do you think there should be more work done around that some of the evidence that we got last week suggested that an unintended consequence of some of curriculum for excellence was that the most vulnerable disadvantaged young people are actually fearing worse specifically because in my view part because of that I wondered whether what sort of work should we be doing in looking at what the offer is in fourth year among disadvantaged groups? I think absolutely I think there's because our young people do tend to leave school earlier than all other young people there's additional risk factors in terms of whether or not they do feel able to go on into fifth and sixth year and we do have some data from the CFE levels that illustrates that there's already a gap at P1, P4, P7 and S3 quite a significant gap across reading, writing, literacy and numeracy and talking for our looked after children which I think goes some way to explaining how they experience education but also helps us to think about what supports we need to be putting in place before children even get to fourth year to ensure that we are planning right from a very early age when we are initially spotting those concerns. Young people are presumed to have additional support needs unless assessed as otherwise but we know that not all schools routinely assess looked after children for additional support needs and when you consider the significant adversity and trauma that they've experienced my view would be that it would be quite unusual for a young person not to require some level of additional support in school to ensure that they've got equity of access to the curriculum so my view would be that planning has to take place from a very early age around education right from primary school into what young people are going to do when they reach the senior phase we know that looked after children have exactly the same aspirations as all other young people and what they tell us is that it's often us as professionals who set the bar lower they tell us that they want us to want more for them and I think you know as we've acknowledged schools have very busy environment working alongside looked after children and getting the best feeling can be very complex and that's why we need to do the things that we know work to make the biggest impact so ensuring that we've got good planning structures in place that we are routinely assessing for additional support needs that we are involving parents and carers in the most meaningful ways possible and that we understand them what children need in order to support them right through that journey and not just on that upper phase of the curriculum Thank you convener I would like to carry on my colleague's line of questioning before I do that can I just say I identify absolutely with everything Ms Wentworth saying about Gallic education I'm having a major issue in my constituency just now exactly along the line you're talking about which I'm working hard to resolve so totally identify with what you're saying Ms O'Neill can I just clarify as advocates for looked after children do you deal with schools directly or do you deal with the local authorities? Sometimes we work directly with school to support them to improve educational outcomes other times we work with local authorities our work is mainly focused on building skills and capacities of those that are working in and around education with children and families really to think about how children are experiencing education we want them to have the most positive experience possible in order to be able to attain You talked about issues around flexibility and things like not being able to take part in extracurricular things and all that stuff Do you feel that schools are doing enough to accommodate the needs of looked after children? Do you feel that they're listening to what you're saying on behalf of the children to support them properly? I think that the situation is certainly improving and I think particularly over the last few years people have become much more aware of the needs of looked after children some of the issues that they can face The feedback that we get from our education forum members is that it's a very complex issue that looked after children are very often a priority amongst priorities and that on a daily basis they're working to try and improve outcomes for a range of vulnerable learners we really recognise that schools are trying to do their best but it can be very difficult to understand what the most effective things are and what the most effective way of doing that Part of our role is to try and support people that are in those jobs and we've developed what we call our blueprint for education called looked after and learning which lists the six areas that we know make a difference in improving educational experiences and outcomes for children and it's a benchmarking and self-evaluation toolkit that schools or local authorities can use to really focus their resource on what makes the biggest difference and whilst that is looking at improving outcomes for looked after children the real benefit of it is that there's nothing that services will do within that guide that won't be of benefit to all children it's just coming at it through the lens of looked after children so we would encourage schools to be using evidence informed approaches alongside practical solutions to embed improvements within their schools and you said that more data would help the situation and for you to compare as there are much variations throughout schools geographically even I'm thinking about rural schools urban schools and schools in less affluent areas is there much variation from your knowledge? The educational outcomes statistics which are a sort of snapshot of how children are doing in education mainly focused on the school leaver population breaks the data down into local authority areas for some indicators so things like attendance, exclusion post school destinations the return of Scottish cancer numbers which helps us to understand where children are and it shows the regional variations and I think that's really important because what it does is shows the areas that things are working really well in and I think it's important to recognise that that so many schools are doing really good innovative things for our young people and also that care isn't a determinant of doing more poorly in education we know for example that children that are in foster care actually have a higher average attendance than the general school population and fewer children in foster care leave school with no qualifications than the general population which I think is really something that we can celebrate and I think what the data does allow us to do is look at the areas where things are working to find out more about that and think about how we share those messages how we understand what they're doing but also look at the areas that are struggling that do need a bit more support and help us to think about what support would be most beneficial for them thank you, that's really helpful thanks Mr Greer I'd like to return to John Lamont's line of questioning we've already covered in some ways the inequalities that exist subject choice in rural communities where there is a geographical challenge I was wondering if you have seen any particular trend in relation to the socio-economic make-up of an area are schools in more deprived areas giving young people greater restrictions on the subjects that they can choose from in your experience? Miss Pryder Ramesh gathered we couldn't say however intuitively I suspect that that can be the case yes and that's for all sorts of reasons and you've rehearsed many of the reasons at committee so difficulty in recruiting staff to more rural or more deprived areas there's a whole series of possible causes in there and it's multi-layered I suppose one of the things I would say is that those schools which have a strong focus on the league tables and the tariff points and you know numbers of passes at higher and so on they are the schools that will focus on those more traditional routes if you like and actually very often in more deprived communities the school is more focused on the outcome whether that outcome is hires or routes into university or whatever so you know there are different driving forces going on in different schools I think we've sorry convener else wants to go in on that yeah no that's fine quite a lot of the data that we've got around this has been compiled by independent academic work do you believe that there's a role for education Scotland or the correct and flexible management board here in trying to get an overview of what the situation is and if so what is that role what should they be doing in relation to subject choice at the moment I would say absolutely you know that education Scotland is the agency of government in this realm so we would expect whether they do the work themselves or whether they commission universities or whatever to conduct that research yeah you would expect education Scotland to have a firm handle on this because it's about meeting the needs of young people and that's our focus as organisations it's about how can families and carers support the outcomes for young people and we have to have a clear picture across the country to see what the various impacts are on our young people I think any new or emerging data collection in this area would be very positive to give us a more accurate idea of the national picture and I think when we're thinking about the range of data that we've got that anything new we would want to make sure already aligned or aligned to what we've already got because it helps us make more sense of the story that the data already tells us and I think if we're really clear about the purpose for collecting data and how we're intending to use it that will help us set up any new data collection methods thank you thank you cometer Dr Allen thank you very much I was interested to hear what subject choice feels like from parental perspective and particularly appreciate what you've just said about the fact that most all schools I'm sure offer the option to do five higher but be keen to hear what Ms Weintworth and Ms Murphy would say about how it as I say how it's experienced as parents particularly given that we do seem to have a situation where more people are coming out of school with more hires and I suppose my question is how early do people feel in their school career that they are if not choosing at least anticipate on what they will be doing in their fifth year for hires what's the young person's perspective and the parent's perspective of that across the board parents are not involved enough in subject choices they're not involved enough in the overall curricular development of the school and they're not involved enough in their individual children's choices part of the SDS offer is to have a parent child teacher meeting at the point that the children are making their those choices and that's very very rarely that very rarely happens and you could say that if young people don't have a problem there's no need to have this big discussion but actually we don't get to the bottom of the parents not knowing the system until the parents are involved and the young people are in school every day they generally know what's going on and they get plenty of you know they're going through the system and that's great for them but the parents are again at an age where the young people are probably at their least communicative to you not really that bothered about telling you what's going on my own experience is you get a paper back and you sign it and you send it back and that's your that's the parents kind of will fulfil all the parent gets unless there's a problem with columns and then you can't you can maybe write on the side of it that you do not want to do this and that you know or whatever and in my experience the school has negotiated things and things get moved about but I know that that's not always the case so that's what I'm driving at I know quite rightly we shouldn't be fixated with numbers but if a school is doing six subjects in fourth year is that essentially determining the hires that somebody is doing in fifth year more or less if they plan to do four or five hires? I think in in in theory it doesn't because the theory is that you should be able to pick up other subjects and you should be able to crash hires and you should be able to do you'll have enough breadth of a subject but in practice it probably does and actual you know in real young people in real schools it becomes more difficult to out of classes if there is a space in a class you can sometimes move and if there isn't you you have to find somebody else to swap with and so while I do see free choice and much more flexibility and in columns or not columns at all almost in some schools it's that's still the probably early days in that you can just pick up things that you've dropped before in reality Mr Claw? Yeah, I think it's very frustrating for parents very often because they do want to advise their children what to do but the children are under different pressures at school quite often in small rural schools so there will be some competition with classes as well thinking that you know if there's six subjects if you drop a language I don't not sure what the data is but I think anecdotally teachers say that it's very difficult to pick up a language if you don't have the continuity through fourth year so the children pupils are less likely to go back to language learning if they've not continued More true then of Gallic learners than it would be of Gallic fluent speakers qualifications or? I think it applies to both actually but if pupils have an opportunity to study other subjects through the medium of Gallic that would mitigate in a way their lack of studying Gallic as a subject because they would be maintaining some of these Gallic language schools but as we know there are at the moment very few schools where there is an opportunity to study subjects beyond first and second year if they have that through the medium of Gallic Sorry, were you? Yes So you know I think that the conversation around choices you know end of S3 going into S4 or end of S2 actually that's too late we need to be having conversations with the young person and their family carers earlier than that about their direction of travel and where they might be going and what their interests are and where their strengths are and you know that's not just me saying it that's also around policy and it's certainly the way that we understand that Skills Development Scotland are trying to work with schools to have those conversations much earlier so that there are no surprises we don't get to the end of S2 and suddenly you know there's a there's a major decision to be made and you know the reality is and you'll have seen it in our evidence paper you know parents who are invited to an evening to discuss choices after the choices are made really you know in what world is that okay it simply isn't so we need to we need to sort that out and we need to just have those conversations much earlier I think you know the continuity of language is a really interesting one and I've been in front of the committee talking about the one plus two and the same conversation about you know in primary school I learn Spanish or I learn German or whatever but I can't study that when I go to high school you know we need to read across it's not just Gaelic it's other languages as well if a youngster shows a talent for whatever language in primary school then you know actually we should be ensuring that they continue that into into high school and if they wish on to qualifications given the understandable pressure there is on qualifications in fourth year and fifth year and given that a language to pick up that point there and this applies to Gaelic but other languages as well may have been dropped in third year or even in second year do we have any actual data as yet as to whether these languages are being picked up because presumably for many young people the only opportunity to do that realistically is in sixth year do we have any information about that? SQA I'm aware of but I think that the the numbers from SQA that are sitting Gaelic higher would indicate that that's not happening for the majority of pupils for whatever reason especially with Gaelic learners we've you know the numbers it's been a fully catastrophic drop in numbers and I believe that's the same for other languages so I think there are a number of factors there but I think it's certainly something that bears more investigation as to what's actually happening with language teaching at secondary level thank you I'm going to move to miss Smith thank you convener we've had it put to us various quarters that there's quite a lot of concern about multi-level teaching that youngsters in the same class are studying for different levels of SQA it's difficult to get a handle on exactly how how widespread that is but there's obviously we've had some evidence in from a couple of subject professional associations from subjects that are very concerned about this could I ask what your experience is or are you aware of a lot of parental concern about youngsters being asked to study two different levels in the same class? Only know that it happens we've never had any concerns from parents about it and actually quite the opposite we've had parents who've said that that their youngster enjoys that experience it's quite stimulating to be in with different learners working at different levels and it actually draws young people through the levels so and I know that in some rural schools it's actually the only way to work sure you know so I don't know where I suspect that the concern is from the professionals and looking at the number of teachers employed in different departments and so on rather than the actual experience of young people but I think it's the experience of young people that we need to try and gather on this one I mean one of the we had it last week from Dr Britton who felt that you know perhaps that's not ideal for the teaching profession to be asked to cope with multi-level teaching that builds a lot of pressures into that class as you rightly say it's about young people but they it was the geographers I think who said that they felt a situation where you have national five and higher and advanced higher all in the same class was something that was just not acceptable but can I just be absolutely clear you've not had any concerns about that whatsoever from any and I think it happens in rural schools in quite a few subjects but that's the only option so I think from parents' viewpoint if that's the only way that the child can study that subject and they will have national five higher and advanced higher in the same class I think it can be quite challenging timetabling these children from different year groups but my understanding is that it's fairly common and not problematic there will be small numbers in the class which will make it easier for teaching and do you think that situation if it does exist has come about because of pressures of teacher numbers or do you think there is good prior suggested that actually it's very beneficial to youngsters from a motivational angle to have different levels do you think there are educational reasons behind that multi-level teaching or do you think it's come about because of pressure of teacher numbers I suspect that for many schools it's trying to make the best opportunity for young people you know they're trying to fulfil the wishes of the youngsters by opening up those options if they went if they did not do that then some of those youngsters would not be able to study that subject you know and so it's a really stark choice and so we should think it also a bit more broadly about the two year higher so that some of those young people shouldn't necessarily need to do the national five and again that's a real jump of faith a big leap of faith for a parent or the young person because it's always about well what happens if I don't pass it you know and then I don't have anything and I suppose it's back to having the faith in the practitioner that they know what the young person is capable of and that would solve some of the some of the issues within the classes you make a very interesting point I'm very much in favour of being able to undertake a higher over a two year period in fact not necessarily actually sitting the national five on route to do that but simply bypass that if that's educationally beneficial do you have any advice to those who will be looking at the structures within the curriculum for excellence as to whether and I think again it was either in prior who mentioned at the beginning about this horrible one term dash two term dash that we have do you think there would be benefit in restructuring so that it is more possible for young people perhaps to bypass the national five and moving straight in so that in S4 and S5 they're taking two years to get it higher because again it's been put to us that universities still value the ability of youngsters to get five hires all in one sitting rather than to take them over two sittings do you have any comment on that? Like it I think it's beneficial for our young people and perhaps the universities need to think about that issue is it they could still be sitting five hires in one go over two years or they could be doing a mix and perhaps we need it needs more thought from lots of different people I think if it's about the young person getting the higher or not getting the higher then there's no argument that they should be able to do it over two years and they should be able to enjoy the time to focus on the subject and not feel as if they are just cramming the subject in like they have been since I mean they've been talking about the two year higher since I was at school and it's still not a reality and that was one of the major focuses for curriculum for excellence at the two year higher I mean I think that's absolutely correct I think it's a very strong educational argument for doing it over the two years I just wonder if the situation in schools that have gone down to six subjects within S4 whether that is as easy to allow for that situation where somebody would take over two years as it is perhaps in a situation where you had schools with eight subjects and there was greater flexibility for that Well I'm not a you know timetable expert but I know that the young people don't need to be doing all other subjects over two years on hires the whole idea was that you could be doing some national fives and some hires and there could be a mixture and you could be doing different ones over again over the three year period so that so that it was again what you came out of school with and what you actually had and again I mean it seems slightly basic to go back to the fact that we want our young people to have knowledge we want them to know what they're talking about we don't want the situation when they have left you leave for example your higher national modern studies this afternoon and you think right I never need to think about war again or whatever it happens to be and you just immediately forget everything that you've now there's no point in that and the whole move to towards skills based learning and actually being able to use your learning rather than just have a photographic memory of facts and dates and equations is was the whole point of this and so in that context I think it's very important that youngsters not only have a good base in knowledge across the general curriculum as in science, social sciences and arts as well as English and maths and that they are able to understand why they are learning something as much as what they are learning I think that you're absolutely spot on there How would you respond to a comment that Professor Lindsay Patterson made that he feels that the curriculum fractions has gone a bit too much towards the focus on the skills based side of this rather than entrenching some of that knowledge within the core curriculum he has a view that the core curriculum perhaps for some young people has been diminished at the expense of other subjects Would you accept that or not? Well I respect his position and I think there are probably cases where that's correct but as an employer I you want your employees to be able to take their knowledge of practical tasks and do the job it might not matter that they know all the capitals of the world essentially but you want them to be able to take I would like you to do these things and in which of our order you like and come out with them at the end of the week and there was a great part of the focus and the movement into curriculum for excellence was that our young people were not skills based enough and were moving into the workplace and weren't able to actually manage and actually do their jobs and so school is more than just learning facts school is about knowledge but it's also about the social aspects it's about meeting your friends you're becoming lifelong partners with people and sometimes in this cram to doing hires all of the rest of it's lost there is no point in our young people having as we hear and having a mental health crisis in our young people because they just need to sit and learn things and it might say it was ever this it might it was like that when I was sitting my hires but I didn't have all the same social media and different issues that were going on at the time that our young people do now and we need to collectively look after them and schools they're in school for a for a significant part of their their day and so part of that has to be looking after the young people and not forcing them to doing some of the things like we do that make them do a higher in as you say two terms thank you that's extremely helpful thank you okay miss glorious I'd just like to follow up Liz Smith's line of questioning with regard to timetabling John Murphy because I think you hit on an issue there with regard to how do you actually design a timetable to meet the needs of all learners when you've got kids doing perhaps a two-year higher you might have some national fives in that class and you're having to timetable for an entire senior face which is very different than what happened under standard grade in the previous structure are you aware therefore and this isn't just a question in general to the panel of schools giving pupils free choice as opposed to that very regimented column structure which can lead to kids missing out yeah there are schools that do give the free choice and inevitably you have to have a column somewhere because you can't just all turn up but whenever you feel like it but I know of schools that use the young people say what subjects you want to do they all write it down and then the schools goes away and sort it out other schools have the columns in place but a much much wider choice of subjects within the columns so and much more flexibility they know two or three different options and lots of schools now have columns where you can do any of the above kind of thing in two or three of the columns so that there's a greater flexibility so it's not just the two it was always that you could do two sciences but you could never do you know two or three are subjects or two or three social sciences and that's and if it seems to me that sometimes in Scottish education or any education let's not just blame Scotland that we take what our young people like doing what they're good at and then we make them do something else all together and the flexibility in the column choices is now seems to me to be to be welcome and hopefully other schools will be able to go to their their neighbouring schools and see what they are doing and focus on that so that they can make the transition more easily thank you miss Pryde I agree with that and there are schools who are successfully doing that and of course it's about prioritising and for young people they have to think and prioritise what their top choices are and so on but those schools start with that and work back as opposed to the traditional thing which was the poor soul in school who did the timetabling and shut themselves in the room for a week to try and work this out according to resource according to staffing whatever actually we flip that and we start with what our young people are saying they want to do and they might not always get what they want because life's like that you know and that's part of resilience but actually we should be starting with where our skills are and where our strengths are and not as Joanna says actually kind of knowing that but still pushing them down another road thank you did you want to come in miss Pryde I comment about you know column choices that still there are too many schools who are using columns and whether poor children are only having six subjects we're back to this it's too restrictive I think for them to just to enable them to have a wide enough choice of subjects at that early level where it it took you know pupils will not be clear as to what they're going to do when at higher level in their education or where their destinations are and they need I think more flexibility for more pupils throughout Scotland not just the few schools that are managing to do it thank you Mr Gray I wanted to follow up Liz Smith's line of questioning around the possibilities of studying for higher without sitting a national five in that subject first and we had some discussion there of the advantages that you can have there two years to study for the higher and so on but there have been instances Helensburg I think is the one that springs to mind where a school has used that model quite extensively and parents and the panel are in a sense representing parents have proven extremely unhappy with that approach to their their children's education so I just I mean the panel were very positive about that as approach but I think if I was the the head teacher of that school I would say well I will very well for you to sit and say that but I tried to do that and had a parents rebellion on my hand so parents don't actually support that Mr Pryde because we did some work with that school at the time and actually do you know it always comes back to relationships and communication and so you know if a school management makes a decision that that's the way that we're going but does that in isolation without actually having the conversations with parents about what's the best route here and you know hearing parents then that's what you end up with and it was a very sad situation but it was primarily a relationship and a communications issue Ms Pryde we echo that and also we should remember that it's not all our it's not one or the other we should be mixing the young people's personalisation and choice means that they get personalising and choosing so they don't it's not everybody goes and does five hires over two years it should be a mixture and the subjects that the young person has the aptitude to do and over they should be allowed to do that and it's and then if they're not they don't want to do that in the higher and they don't you know there should be flexibility and again lots of lots of issues get blown up because they're not communicated well and it's just this is this is the way it's going to be and if anybody challenges that then a campaign is set up around it that was a a distressing situation for the young people and the parents in that particular school and there's lots of kind of things that go on around that in different schools but it it boils down to the more that you know about what's happening in the school the less contentious it's going to be and there's less flare-ups that will be okay that was prior I can I can again I can win due on this point we know what we know and we as parents are from a previous generation and our experience of school is entirely different therefore our experience we take that when we look at our child's school and we think well we didn't do that that's not how it worked for us and so you know there's a lot of work to be done to to help parents understand the opportunities and agree a route forward so not impose but agree a route forward for our school and our community and also if your main source of information about what's happening in your child's school is through the tabloid press and you don't have anything from you know then that's the decision sometimes that's where it all comes from you know if this sometimes the education system neglects sending the information out and leaving a vacuum and so time and time again you see where somebody doesn't have is not in possession of all the actual facts and just has some weird idea about what might be happening in their school and we can see all too often how that works out I think that's concludes our question this morning can I thank you all for your attendance it's been very helpful and also for the submissions that have come to to the committee through our deliberations on that we're going to move into private session