 Good morning everybody, and can I welcome you all to the 22nd meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2014. We have received apologies from Liam McArthur and Tavys Scott will be attending us a substitute. I believe he has been slightly delayed, but he should be here shortly. Can I remind everybody, though, to make sure that they have all electronic devices switched off because they do interfere with the sound system? Our first item today is to decide whether to take item 3 in private, that is to consider our approach to scrutinising the Scottish Government draft budget for 2015-16. Our next item is to hear evidence on the new national qualifications or aims to assess the implementation of the new qualifications and look forward as the roll-out continues. We will be putting key issues to the cabinet secretary for education and lifelong learning when we hear from him next week. Today I welcome—and it's a rather large I hope that we will get you all in one room at the one time, and hopefully we will get some decent discussion on going this morning. I welcome Terry Lannigan, who represents the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland. Graham Logan from Education Scotland. Larry Flannigan from the Educational Institute of Scotland. Ken Muir from the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Jane Peckin from the National Association of School Masters and Union of Women Teachers. Dr Janet Brown from the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Richard Goring from the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association. Welcome to you all. I'm going to move straight to questions, but can I just do the usual thing, which is particularly given it's a large panel. Not everybody has to answer every question, otherwise we'll only get about two questions in this morning. Some questions will be directed at particular individuals or groups, and others, if you don't have anything particular to add, then I would prefer you didn't add it. Thank you very much. We are going to move straight to questions. Can I start the question this morning with a general question, which is to all of you? Obviously, there were a lot of issues and stresses over the last year or two in the implementation of the curriculum for excellence and new qualifications in secondary schools, but despite all of that, what is your assessment of where we are now? What is your assessment of the outcome of that difficult process and the fact that the first round of examinations have been completed? Obviously, pupils have done tremendously well in those examinations, but I would just like to hear what your assessment of is of the position that we are in now. If I start with Terry. I think that it would be very surprising, Chair, if there hadn't been a number of issues with an initiative as large and ambitious as curriculum for excellence. Obviously, a key pressure point was going to be the first set of national qualifications. As I have said in my written submission, it is to everybody's credit within the system that the first set of national qualifications and the first set of exams went so smoothly and the issuing of the certificates and the post-result service, etc. Also, as I have said in my submission, I believe that Scottish education is in a very strong position at the moment. I think that we are well placed to move forward, but that's not to ignore that there are a number of major challenges ahead. I'm sure that we'll get on to issues such as assessment, which is a genuine issue at the moment. I do think that we have the challenge of developing a true progressive, coherent 3 to 18 curriculum. I do believe that we are some distance away from that yet, but I think that everybody within the system is well placed to take forward that next challenge. I think that, at this point, we have been developing curriculum for excellence for 10 years, and international experts such as Alma Harris, who we saw at the learning festival last week, commented on just how admirable it is that we have been steadily working towards transforming learning and teaching in Scotland and that we do have a consensus, although there have been some challenges. I think that, looking at the inspection evidence, we've seen a transformation in learning and teaching in Scottish schools. 90 per cent, for example, of secondary schools inspected to have had a key strength in young people's motivation and engagement in learning, so all the effort that teachers have been putting into transforming learning and teaching is impacting very positively. We can see that. The new national qualifications are one part of that story, but we've got to commend teachers in primary, secondary, early years and so on for that collective effort. I think that, as Terry says, there are a number of challenges moving forward, and that is learning the lessons as we go, adapting the support that we provide as national agents to schools and local authorities, and that's something that we're keen to continue to do, as well as to look at reports such as the commission on developing Scotland's young workforce, which sets out some next steps for us as well. It's a point in time where a huge amount of change has been implemented. The successful impact on children and young people's learning experiences in schools is clear to us through our independent evaluation, and we look forward to continuing to work together and holding that consensus that we are going in the right direction. Thank you. Larry. Sorry to lie. Just leave it. Somebody else will deal with it. Thank you. We have to operate at manual at EIS headquarters, so you have staff to do that. Thanks very much, chair. I've just made the week three points as briefly as I can. The first is, and I think that this will be echoed by colleagues from the other teacher unions, is that an assessment of last year has to acknowledge that the workload burden that was faced by teachers in schools last year is simply unsustainable. I think it is to the credit of the profession that the qualifications were delivered and the diet was successful in terms of the young people's outcomes, but in the health and wellbeing survey that we carried out before the summer with over 7,000 respondents. Workload was an issue across all sectors, but in particular in the secondary sector, over 80 per cent of teachers said that workload was a severe cause of stress, with again over 80 per cent saying that they were extremely stressed. We think that in terms of moving forward, we have to recognise that that was an exceptional effort to deliver the qualifications, but it does need to be addressed. We have carried out a recent survey, which I will share with the committee if we only just closed it yesterday, but one of the concerns in that is that we asked, has action been taken in your workplace to address the issues of workload around the qualifications? 80 per cent of respondents said that no action has been taken in the workplace. I know that some action has been taken nationally around verification and so forth, but in terms of workplace, we seem to be getting a repeat of last year when we said that this was unsustainable. That is an absolutely key concern for the profession. The other issue that is important to highlight is that what was delivered last year was the first set of national four and national five qualifications. What was not delivered last year was the vision of the critical for excellence senior phase, and we are still quite aware and moved from that bigger picture. I would agree with Terry that, potentially around the CFE framework, we have an education system, which will be unbeatable, but what we got last year is a good bit removed from that bigger vision. A lot of work is required, I think, in terms of moving forward to make sure that we achieve some of those aims. Simple ones like reducing the burden of assessment for pupils and for staff. That clearly wasn't achieved last year because everyone's agreed that the actual fact of burden of assessment increased for all concerned, ensuring that we have breadth across the curriculum in terms of the senior phase and, most importantly, ensuring that there is time for deeper learning, because that is the key objective of all of the changes to move away from the idea that you simply pass exams to the idea that you have a process that engages you in a deeper learning experience, which better prepares you for the world in which young people are going to move into. There has been a success in terms of the delivery of the qualifications, but there are certainly issues to be addressed moving forward this year around workloads, and there are bigger issues to be addressed in terms of making sure that we achieve the ambition of the critical for excellence senior phase. I'm heartened to hear from my colleagues the degree of consensus that there is around where we are, because I think that that's reflected in the report that I produced on the experiences of the first years of the nationals 4 and 5. In terms of where we are, the points being made, we're trying to deliver, for the first time ever, an ambitious curriculum programme from 3 to 18. That's never been done before in the history of Scottish education, so as Terry suggested, it's no surprise that there were some difficulties in implementing the first year of the new national qualifications. I would suggest that that probably has been no different to the major curriculum changes that we've been introducing over the last generation in Scottish education if you go back to standard grade, for example. We had a major review of the assessment arrangements at the end of the first year of introducing standard grade, and we learned lessons from that and made changes. It was the same when we introduced higher still with intermediates and revised higher. We adjusted the assessment arrangements after that. We looked again at some of the courses as well to see that they were entirely deliverable. I think that we are very much over the hump, if you like, in terms of getting curriculum for excellence into place, but that's not to say that we've resolved all of the issues and all of the problems. I think that the reflections report makes that point very clear. There is still work that has to be done in order to achieve what I think are genuinely consensual aspirations for curriculum for excellence. As Larry himself suggested, it is internationally recognised as being a way forward to provide the best for youngsters now and in the future in Scottish education. It will come as no surprise that I will echo quite a bit of what my colleague from EIS said, but I would like to say that curriculum for excellence is a process that's on-going. I wouldn't agree with Ken that we're as far up and over the hump as potentially we could be, but if we continue to work in partnerships successfully, that's the best way to deal with it. The issue of workload is something that is increasingly concerning to members across the profession. The messages of change that are happening nationally aren't necessarily feeding down to school level. I think that teachers still feel extremely anxious about the next phase. That's not to say that it shouldn't be happening and that we shouldn't be learning from our experiences, but I think that it would be foolish to think that we're over the worst at this point. I just think that we need to be continuing to listen to the profession as well as to each other and continue to work together to take this forward successfully. Again, I would echo everything that everyone has said. In the context of, we are developing a new approach to 3218 learning, and the approach is completely different. It's new learning, it's new teaching, and it also requires a change in approach to assessment, and that was one of the fundamental principles of curriculum for excellence. That included allowing teachers to take back the ownership to be able to use their professional judgment in terms of their ability to create a culture, create a curriculum that was interesting and tailored to individuals. That flexibility in itself has been a real challenge for the entire system. One of the things that we need to do from this year is to understand how we can support that flexibility continuing, but also to provide the infrastructure to be able to allow teachers to be able to continue down that path. The critical achievement of this year is not only the qualifications, because curriculum for excellence is not only about qualifications. We talk a lot about national 1 through national 5 and higher than advanced hires, but there are a variety of other awards and qualifications that children in school should be thinking about and should be getting. That is the fundamental breadth of curriculum for excellence. A measure of the success is the ability for people within the school sector to provide that breadth of opportunity for different students, depending on the needs of those students. Ultimately, the measure is, are we giving every single student Scotland a better life chance? We have made it a really important step along the journey here, but as a system we all have to learn from what has happened this year. Each part, every single member around the table, has things that we need to reflect on, to look at, and that is part of what Ken's report has done, and to do things differently this year to be able to make sure that we can continue to fulfil the passion and ideals of what curriculum for excellence is all about. I think that we are at a very exciting time in Scottish education because we have a very exciting future ahead of us, but there are many issues that have been echoed by various people here. One of the issues is that there is still not a full understanding in secondary schools of how broad general education matches in with the senior phase. That needs to be addressed. In senior phase, there is much more accountability on teachers in terms of results and so on. I think that the mindset that that is the most important factor for teachers has to be addressed and realised that we are talking about other issues as well. It is not just about results, but that is the mindset that teachers have and have had for many years, and have been forced to acknowledge for many years, so exams, exams, exams. This year, we are obviously in a transition between national four-fives and the new higher. Roughly two thirds of subjects are presenting at the new higher, according to our surveys that we have done. I think that there is a fear of what the new higher is going to be about in terms of support and what can come from Education Scotland and the SQA to support that. Our surveys showed very little change in being confident with both Education Scotland and SQA in terms of the support that is available this year compared to last year, and I am sure that we will come back to that later. There is so much changing happening in schools at the moment. Of course, the whole senior phase, particularly, as I am talking about just now, is on top of all that, and many teachers feel totally submerged by the whole thing. Workload issues are huge. Working-time agreements in schools are not being built up to accommodate that amount of work. We have many teachers talking about 50 or 60 hours a week in terms of keeping up with what is being expected of them, so it is not all positive by any means. We are absolutely delighted at the results for national four and five, where as positive as they were. This year, we are talking higher, we are talking about the good standard, and I think that there is a lot of apprehension and anxiety about that and the fear that if things do not work out, what is going to happen. Many teachers, who in secondary schools tend to be subject-oriented, are thinking in the wider sense as well and looking at, you know, are we going to let down these pupils across the whole education system? The hope is that we will not. There is a bit more confidence about the hires than there maybe was last year about national fours and fives, probably partly because they have gone through the process to have a better understanding of what is demanded of them, but there are still major problems about materials, resources, budgets and obviously time. Thank you all very much for those opening remarks. I should have said at the beginning that I think that on behalf of the committee I can congratulate, it is the first opportunity that we have had to congratulate all of the teachers, the parents, the local authorities and of course the pupils in achieving their outstanding results that they did this year. It has been a remarkable effort on everybody's behalf to get us where we are today, despite all the issues that we are about to get into. I make those remarks on behalf of the committee that we are certainly very proud of our pupils, our teachers and everybody else involved in the system for getting us to this point. We have a number of members who want to come in, so I begin by asking George Adam to start us off. Thank you convener, good morning everyone. One of the big issues that was discussed throughout the process was the communication or perceived lack of it or with teachers with regards to the whole process. Now there's a number of submissions that have been made, SQA actually said there was a comprehensive communication of existing key documents and resources but then again the EIS then said there was a failure to communicate key messages. Now there's also a quote from Ken Cunningham, the general secretary of the school leader Scotland, the preparation consultation, there's been more than I can ever remember, the amount of effort that's gone into this, this knocks the others into the corner. Now that's quite a lot of different opinions over the whole process and it's one of the things that's been discussed at length during the process as well and I was just wondering for the future as we look to what we're going to do, how could we actually communicate with teachers, how could we improve it further? Can I start off with Larry? I think maybe you could break down the communications into two areas because one of the areas where we think there's been a failure around communication, this is partly to do with the timetable for implementation, is in relation to the big picture of what the changes to the seniors phase actually represented. I think the SSTA document or maybe the NSES refers to for example some of the confusion that exists in schools around the use of unit assessments where the unit assessments have been designed to deliver a different type of assessment from the unit assessments that were previously there for intermediate one and intermediate two but when they arrived in schools a lot of teachers saw them as being quite similar and approached them in a similar fashion but in actual fact the whole point of the unit assessments was to move to the holistic classroom evidence-based assessment that would underpin the assessment arrangements but wouldn't duplicate anything that was going to be in an external example. That is absolutely one of the key changes to assessment under curriculum for excellence but that philosophy wasn't communicated effectively to schools so that there was a lack of understanding around the changes that were desired in terms of CFE and I think that's what created a number of the issues that then had to be dealt with. On a more direct communication issue in the reflections group, one of the issues that we looked at was the fact that there's actually a great deal of information out there. One of the challenges is finding a bit of information unique and so there is an issue about everything being available on the website but nobody tuning into here are the key messages that teachers need to have in order to take forward implementation and I think they kind of recognise that and there were efforts over the course of the year to try and refine the message. We've constantly said putting something on a website is not the same as communicating to teachers so that if I was speaking to Jan about something she was saying to me, it's on the website and then you will write how do I find it or how do I know it's on the website or how do I know that's the answer to the question I've got and I think that's one of the areas where the lesson to be learned is that sometimes less is more in terms of effective communication focusing on the key issues and I think we're probably in a stronger place now than we were a year ago and of course the final backdrop to all of that is if you're in a school situation where you're teaching the pupils and you are trying to implement the changes, the time to then go and find all the information that's out there is difficult so in that kind of compressed implementation period which is again one of our criticisms that was too compressed it's really important that the focus is on what is absolutely key in terms of the delivering the new qualifications so I think I don't think that Ken Cunning was my old head teacher so far be any appointing me so far be it for me to disagree with Ken. There's been a lot of information out there but sometimes it's actually about how you access information and how you communicate more directly with teachers I think. I want to bring in Jane and Richard first because I think you were nodding vigorously there Jane. What's your view on this? Well I was nodding because I think it was our response that Larry was referring to with the confusion. I think Larry's right there is a huge amount of information out there but it's how you find what you need and the key issue is time. I think what's happened as well is that the working time agreements have not been revisited to look at how they build in enough time for teachers to go and access what they need because there's a finite number of hours in a day and I think unless things are really clearly set out teachers are just not going to be able to access what they need so I think you're right Larry we do need some system of making that easier it's not that the information is not there it's just about how you find it and what suits your specific needs. What I think we do need to have is much clearer signposting for both SQA and the Education Scotland websites so it's easier to access information in its final form I mean one of the problems is there can be conflicting information on the same websites and I think that has been improved and is improving and a lot of the criticism that's coming from teachers in our association is based on last year's experience and the hope is that that will be less of a problem this year so I think that's probably the key message there. Thanks Richard, curbing in Graham at this stage and then Janet. Thanks very much. I think you know over the course of the year we were listening to the feedback from teachers and created a new key curriculum support website which aimed to get you to what you need you know within sort of three clicks so it sat above all the online content and it was the aim of it was to get teachers to the guidance and support they need I think because of the model of curriculum for excellence which as you know is based on broad national guidance with with a lot of development work at local level a key thing was to get and support teachers to share their information and to share their resources so again over the course of the year we published kind of 135 different packages of approaches from 22 authorities in terms of course materials and then through the key curriculum support website tried to focus in and get teachers to what they need also what we've done is bring all secondary head teachers together as a group for the first time last year and that those opportunities meant that we could share key messages we could showcase the senior phase models that Larry was referring to in different approaches at local level to meeting the needs because of the nature of curriculum for excellence where it's not a one size fits all it's developed locally to meet local needs there is a lot of variance but that is intended and that's part of the the process so we've really been focusing on sharpening up and sharing key messages through the key curriculum support website starting new electronic bulletins which give the information that people need and improving signposting because we recognise that it's really important that when teachers do have time they get to what they need and they get it very quickly we've also been doing a lot of work with our partners on tackling unnecessary bureaucracy so again we've been producing case studies of how schools have reduced planning and assessment burdens to create more time there's still a lot of work to do on that but we're really keen to push the examples where schools and local authorities have been successful at reducing unnecessary bureaucracy to create more time for teaching and again we're commissioning independent research into that which we're expecting to share with the tackling bureaucracy working group in the next month or so so there is still a lot of work to do on that but a real concerted effort when we put out a joint statement with ADES on progress made to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy inspectors have been challenging it through the inspection process and it's quite interesting through our own survey of teachers through our pre-inspection questionnaire so from April 2012 to April 2014 we had 8,470 teachers surveyed through the pre-inspection process with a 73% return rate and you know about 87% of them said that they you know they were having time in school to discuss and shape the curriculum through staff discussion and working groups so in the best examples as Jane was saying the working time agreements have been amended to create that time but that's not universally the case and what we need to do showcase the best practice where bureaucracy has been reduced and that has been matched by amending the collegiate hours working agreement so that there is as much time for professional dialogue and development as possible. Okay thank you, Janet. Yes I think it's been said that the materials are out there the challenge is how can people access them how can people be signposted to them and I think everybody has learnt lessons this year we definitely learnt lessons and we and it's been said we've made some changes to the way that we've signposted on our website but the website is not the only mechanism that I think we need to use for communication I think that very very much it's about people to people discussions and it's really really important that we do get out there and we talk to people and we hear the questions that people are coming back with so we can try and address those so we do run a series of events and over the last year we've run over 390 events that are there to support teachers in terms of the implementation of the new qualifications and we'll continue to do that next year and the lessons that we've learnt from those events will implement into the new ones an additional thing that happened during the course of this year was also the fact that there was a great demand from local authorities and from teachers themselves for continuous professional development in specific subject areas and that was something else that we hadn't planned to do but we did do and we ran about 390 of those as well during the course of the year and we'll be doing those again learning lessons from last year for the new hires coming up in the future so there is a face-to-face engagement sort of one to many in terms of the events but the other aspect that we believe is very very helpful and we've got very positive feedback from schools on it is we have a dedicated curriculum for excellence liaison team that is targeted to work with individual schools and individual teachers to come to parents nights to come to the schools themselves and they undertake about 200 visits a month and that again is about providing that signposting providing that ability to give us feedback to allow us to be able to modify how we communicate and that then goes back to okay well there's lots of documents out there how do you make sure people have the appropriate access to them and yes that does end up being on the web and I think that's it's a very important tool because you can arguably keep the most current version up on the web and and people are able to be able to see what's what is the current version of anything so what we've been doing is providing targeted updates to individual teachers so specific changes for specific subjects we send those out to to that particular group we also give special updates on the changes to support materials that are there and and that we we know just sending out a blanket update is not helpful but targeting those individuals who would find those updates important is something that we're increasing increasingly doing it's we've used Ken Muir's magazine from the GTCS to be able to to highlight some of the changes and I think that the last point is to really make the web a lot clearer to to give people one one page to be able to go to that one page for one particular subject and then be able to go through that page to the appropriate materials on the web there is a significant amount of material there needs to be a significant amount of material the challenge is to make sure that it is easily tracked and easily travelled through so people get the right information okay thank you very much ge George not George call thanks very much for convener getting there eventually similar to communication i'm keen to understand how well you feel that teachers were supported in this process reading through the evidence there seems to be a a range of views and the certain indications that there was professional focus papers there was web based support materials there was subject group maps and you mentioned about the subject implementation events where there was a substantial number of teachers attended it so was it a was it a concern that across the piece there was a lack of support or was that lack of support down to individual local authorities or a down to individual schools or i mean what was the case where where was the the best practice and support from teachers and where was that areas that could have been better improved that certainly from the feedback from our members that has been one of the issues that the issue of support partly in relation to resources materials that's linked into education Scotland and and we mentioned in the in our submission that there was an agreement previously with the cabinet secretary around fully fleshed courses being made available and this was to allow people to focus in the previous year on on s3 and in fact ken was in charge of that when he was still with education scotland and i know in the early stages for example all the local authorities were on board for that but in the end around a third of local authorities didn't actually contribute to that in a national bank so there were some very good resources produced through that mechanism and i know some work was commissioned but there were also gaps and there were some areas where the the core support materials were little more than advice notes rather than the units so i know i think that there was a significant question there around that i think there was also and i mean i do acknowledge that we have a we have quite a good working relationship with sqa so you know we'll happily go to them with issues that members are raising and there is a resource issue for sqa in terms of how it can respond to the demands but one of the ideas behind the verifiers for example and i think i think sq actually touched upon this was that that was supposed to be a pool of experienced people who could grow and support schools in the different subject areas and there was an issue there because some of the verifiers themselves were still acquiring confidence around the changes but also in some areas because these are these are teachers who are you know who do this additional role and local authorities couldn't release them from their teaching duties to actually go and provide the support so there was definitely a kind of a gap there you know and i know the numbers look impressive when you say there are 390 meetings and so forth but when you think about the number of secondary schools and number of departments the question is how do these meetings impact and i one of the areas without developing it one of the the difficulties this time around in terms of the the qualifications is that we've seen over the last six seven eight years a move away from subject principal teachers to faculties in secondary schools where the faculty head is in charge of maybe two or three different areas now when higher still came in i was a principal teacher of English and i attended four or five meetings with the sqa as a principal teacher of English if you've got a faculty which covers art music and drama and you've got a faculty head with the best will in the world it's extremely difficult for that faculty head to be on top of the the detailed nuance of qualifications and in the past the subject principal teachers were the key mechanism for getting messages from education Scotland the lts or hmi or sqa taking that back into the departments and i think that that's been one of the kind of gaps that was seen this time around if i could just finish with just quoting you one of the questions we asked around the the new cfe higher this year was how would you rate the support on offer with the graduate introduction of the new cfe higher one percent said excellent four percent said good 30 percent said adequate and 65 percent are saying poor so this year for the new higher coming in so even though there might be a slightly stronger sense of confidence around the new higher based on some experience with national five people are still questioning the lack of support this year so you know it's going to echo in the point that's made error we shouldn't rest on our laurels here there are still big challenges in the year ahead especially with the higher qualification i think this is closely linked to the previous question because i think support and communication go hand in hand as a member of the cfe management board a huge there's been a huge emphasis over the last three or four years about communication and the problem the communication is that it relies on everybody in the system to be effective and i am quite clear i've been 37 years working in education that there has been no initiative in scottish education during that time where there has been more communication and or more support there may be have been issues at times and signposting people towards the appropriate support but as has been said the material is definitely there and i do believe that it is this it's the responsibility obviously of the national organizations to ensure that that information and support is there it's then the responsibility of local authorities to ensure that that is disseminated effectively to schools it then becomes the responsibility of head teachers and it then becomes the responsibility of principal teachers and faculty heads the issue about i mean i don't think that we should be using this to fight old battles about the the merits are not of faculty heads but in a in a school which operates a an effective system of distributive leadership it is not necessary for the faculty head to attend the support meetings in all subjects they can delegate that to others as long as they have overall management responsibility if there had been a major failure in communication and in the support available then we would not have seen the results from the first set of national qualifications which we did and i'm just the end on that note thanks very much convener i think you know we've obviously provided the course notes and materials written by teachers for other teachers that larry described and are very open and welcome any feedback on any that could be refined or changed or improved further and in fact this year we are revising that suite we've published as agreed with the cfe management board and implementation group course materials for all the new hire courses and again listening to feedback we also produced route maps through the material because what teachers wanted was to know well which documents do you need to look at and in which order so they gave a kind of route map through the sequence that teachers would need to go through in order to move towards the new courses so i think in the paper that we've provided we give one example of the sciences and you can see the extent of support there as well as web-based materials local meetings joint events with professional associations and the sqa it outlines the huge range of national support that was provided and of course it's worth remembering that that support is agreed by all the partners through the curriculum for excellence management board and annually through the implementation plan so there's discussion and agreement about what support is required in the year ahead and then that's delivered as well as possible by by all concerned i think what we've learned in the last year or so is some of the support that was most valuable as as colleagues have outlined is that dialogue so we're extending our programme of visits to individual secondary schools where inspectors and senior officers enter a dialogue about the curriculum because remember the curriculums built at individual school level so between august and december we're visiting another 50 individual secondary schools to have that discussion about where they've reached what they need next to provide that tailored support because we continue to offer as well as all the genetic support tailored support to any individual secondary school or department that needs it and with the the course materials and the sport materials there's a very fine balance to be struck because teachers don't want prescription remember a curriculum for excellence was to give them more autonomy and more professional freedom but they do want practical support so it's a balance to be struck in the nature of the materials to provide that practical support to provide examples from other schools and other local authorities which we're doing but not to actually prescribe you must do this and so on so we've got to all as we've agreed hold on to the principles of curriculum for excellence which are built around that thank you richard did you want to come in here teachers don't want prescription but they want to know what they're doing they want clear guidelines they want teachers have been developed over the years the vast majority of secondary teachers particularly have got a content they've got syllabus they've got you know all that stuff there for them and suddenly they're having to reinvent a lot of this themselves and that's an experience that they've not gone through in the past so so in order to change that i think that's going to take time i think it's brought to head last year and this year and possibly next year that an awful lot is having to be done for the first time and they don't have the clear hooks on which to to hold on to it as they're doing that so there is a real anxiety about that we're talking about support our figures we had about 1500 responses which is a really high proportion of our membership and we looked at satisfaction with education of scotland sqa local authority of their own and also their own school and although all of these improved slightly they were still very very high um they were still in the you know 80 dissatisfaction was the kind of figure we're talking about in some cases 90 so teachers are not happy with the way things are at the moment they feel the needs more support they need more examples of things to look at and model their own practice around they need more practice papers so they can see what's likely to be asked of their pupils at the end of the day they need the assurance that things aren't going to change halfway through the session there are many people who had to have done something had taught something and then the rules changed and they had to redo it which is totally time wasting and dispiriting they need examples of assessments that they can have as well what i would say is that the results we got last year which were very commendable are probably in spite of the lack of support and it's more a tribute to the sheer industry and determination of teachers to get through the course to make the best of what they had and let you think about that thank you orchard Janet yeah can i develop a little bit of on the point that larry made about the the verification process because that's one of the really key changes in the in the approach to assessment in curriculum and what we've done is in partnership with the curriculum for excellence management board and all members of it we agreed that we would train nominees from every local authority and actually train more than we needed to actually deploy to be able to understand the nature of the assessments the nature of the the work that they were going to have to be doing that they would come in they would be trained they would then be used as verifiers to actually verify the internal assessment that was ongoing in schools and the plan was then to have those nominees go back into the system and have them train their their fellow teachers on on the nature of the assessment the nature of the changes etc as has been said some first year is always hard for everyone and some of the people were not confident in terms of being able to to take that next stage we got very positive feedback on the training that we that we provided and people actually really believed they fully understood the nature of the change in the assessment methodology what we need to do is take the best practice examples that exist across Scotland where some local authorities have used their nominees in a very constructed way that they've had a mechanism by which they will pull them together they will talk amongst themselves in terms of subject areas they will they will hold twilight sessions for teachers to be able to share their understanding and share their knowledge that is a mechanism that we all agreed would happen and I think the first year is always difficult the second year will be better the second year includes hires and I think that will be more proactive in terms of support as well one of the things that we learned in the first year was that teachers were starting to understand the standards they were getting more comfortable with them they they were able to demonstrate that they could assess to standard so we changed the methods by which we were undertaking verification for the second two rounds of last year for the last round of last year and we've changed how we're approaching verification this year so the first session of our quality assurance process which is currently on the way is actually doing understanding standards trainings for all of those nominees so that they are fully confident on what the standards are what the assessment methodology is so they can then go back and share that with their with their colleagues within the school sector and I think it's taking advantage of that that's very very important that the only other thing I would like to add to what we've said before is it is really important that teachers do know what's changed and do know what's the same so they can use what they've been doing historically so the idea of publishing points of change for the new topics whether it's national five national four or whether it's for the new hires we have published these are the points of change these are the points of stability from one set of qualifications to a new set so it gives the teachers a framework in which they can actually target those areas that they need to potentially understand a little more in terms of the big changes taking place particularly for the new hires as they come in okay thank you I'm going to bring in Jane because I know she's got supplementary at this point thanks given the amount of financial commitments and indeed other commitments that were made to the implementation of the new qualifications can education Scotland or the SQA justify the fact that teachers are feeling so unsupported and are they confident that there will be an improvement in that will that improve in the years to come I think we have provided very good support as has been said it's more support than has ever been provided for any change in education in Scotland I think the challenge is to make sure people can access it that people can use it that people can ask questions that there that there is communication so I think I think the support is there and it's it is always difficult the first year of any change for anyone especially in education because teachers care so passionately about the future of their students it is very very difficult and I think a lot of what we've seen this year is as a result of that passion that teachers hold and as they move forward they become more confident I think the support will be more easily accessible to them yes and I would agree with Janet I think you know there was continually a process of listening and changing providing further support all the commitments for support that were agreed by all the partners through the management board and the implementation group were delivered in addition there was a lot further support given so the route maps through assessment I referred to was part of the the additional support package that was provided there and again it's been about signalling to teachers where there's examples of good practice and making sure they can access support both from the local and national materials I think moving forward looking at the the new hire again there was a you know the government and agencies and so on listened to the voice of teachers and it was there for a phasing in of the new hire and we know that this year there'll be a mixed picture of uptake and it's quite we've been analysing the subjects where there's less uptake of the new hire and providing additional support for those subject areas so that's computing science job physics chemistry and biology so again we're tailoring additional support in those subject areas where there's most changes in content to provide support for teachers so that there is a full package of support there which is available in subject areas and also tailored support to those who need it and as I said the most successful types of support we found as well as the materials was actually going into individual schools and having dialogue and you know by February of 2015 we'll have been in about 177 of the secondary schools to offer that dialogue and that discussion and see where they are and what they need next. To make the point convener, Graham referred to commitments being delivered in full and the commitment was made for course materials to be the new national four and five qualifications to be developed nationally and distributed to schools well in advance of the commencement of the new qualifications in 2013-14 and yet the EIS are still saying that course materials were less than fully fleshed out so there's obviously still a difference of opinion about what these commitments meant in practice. We've said to the EIS and we have a lot of dialogue with them we're keen to know which specific subjects, which specific materials they think could be of better quality because as I say they were commissioned and written by teachers for other teachers they've been one of the most successful aspects of our online service. I mean that area of our website has had 83,000 visits at the point of August 14 so they have been extensively accessed by secondary teachers. The secure area and glow had over 22,000 unique visits so the material has been very extensively used we've had a lot of positive feedback what we need to know if there are concerns about individuals is which subjects how could they be refined how could we be improved and we'll continue to engage with teachers who write these for us to work with them to provide further improvements there. Just two quick points convener on the issue of resource. I do want to challenge the notion that Terry and Janet have suggested that this has been the best resource of our curriculum development now. I suppose technically that might be true if you think about the scale of curriculum for excellence it's a three to 18 programme so it's touching every single aspect of education so in terms of scale it probably does tip the balance in terms of overall expenditure but if you look back at other developments like standard grade which was about a two-year course SES4 and even higher still which was about a fairly narrow range of qualifications proportionately I would say this has not been resourced to the kind of accolade that we're hearing. Terry was a teacher in the 80s as was I and you had standard grade units come out your ears just about everybody in the west of Scotland spent a week at CML producing course materials so and there was a much much greater phasing period for both higher still and for standard grade and that's been one of the challenges because the single biggest resource that has been missing is time for teachers to actually assimilate the material and have that professional dialogue around implementation and that time has been squeezed because we've been working to a timetable which we've always challenged in terms of implementation for this particular group of S4 pupils so you know and I realise we're not going to agree on this but you know we would challenge the issue of resources but more particularly the key issue for us is the time for people to actually have the dialogue in schools. What specifically, what specific subjects, what specific points are less than you would want them to be in terms of the subjects? He made those specific points the moment ago. What's the answer to that question? Well I understood we've actually shared most of this with Education Scotland already because there have certainly been some subject areas where people have been expressed very clearly that what they got was a set of guidance notes rather than fleshed out courses. Off the top of my head, a computancy might be one that rings a bell, my own subject English there were issues around some of the material there but I'm quite happy to go back and have a dialogue with Graham around specific issues. As Larry said earlier, convener, I was in Education Scotland at the time and was responsible for creating the 95 sets of course materials for national 4, national 5. I think there were a number of issues. One was that in some of those courses there were a range of options where it simply wasn't possible to get materials produced because individual schools or individual departments weren't doing those so there were certainly some areas where the options weren't covered. I think the other thing that needs to be borne in mind is that whilst Larry referred to standard grade and higher still and the packages are fully fleshed out materials, in many schools these were actually never used because teachers either had resources themselves that they wished to use or materials that they had used in previous courses that they felt were more appropriate for their own particular circumstances. So I think the issue really was twofold. One was I think there was a difference in expectation of what fully fleshed out materials looked like and I think for some teachers that was to receive the packages that they received under higher still which is I say to the end of higher still remained in packed cellophane wrappers on their shelves but I think the other issue and it came through in discussing particularly with teachers for the reflections report the extent to which individual departments and local authorities were prepared to share materials and resources. I was very aware in my previous existence with the responsibility for creating those national four-five materials that there were courses being developed in individual schools some of them very high quality which individual teachers themselves weren't prepared to put into a national pot and indeed as we said earlier there were a number of local authorities that chose not to participate in this exercise of trying to bring together a collation of resources which in themselves would have increased quite significantly amount of material that was available to teachers themselves so I think there is more behind that than simply the fact that there were there were inadequate resources. I wouldn't bring in Tavish Scott at this point and can I welcome Tavish to I think it's the first meeting that you've attended of the education and culture committee can I just ask have you got anything relevant to declare with me? I can be a first apologies for being late no idea on having children in school it seems somewhat relevant to this. Can I ask just one supplementary on this area following Jane Baxter's question? I was reading the RSE submission on a plane coming down this morning from home and it says in the context of the management board's short life working group that that proposes many actions to address but quote there is little discernible priority among the long list of actions I wonder if the panel has any reflections on whether that matters or not moving forward. Who wants to? Graham? Just to say that through the curriculum for excellence implementation group we've been working on an addendum to the implementation plan for this year to absolutely take account of most immediately the short term actions for what we need to learn this year so we've been collaborating with partners the SKA, the national parent forum for Scotland to populate that addendum with the actions that need to happen to achieve the recommendations in the report and the timescale for that and that draft addendum is now being circulated to members of the implementation group and other stakeholders including those here yesterday and we would hope that over the course of the next week or so that will actually be published so there's been dialogue between national partners on how we actually prioritise those actions as we said earlier quite a number of them are already in place and are already moving forward but probably one of the the biggest issues about how we continue to support schools to reduce the amount of assessment that's taking places in there so there's a draft addendum to the implementation plan for this year which will be published shortly to outline exactly how we'll work together to achieve those recommendations. Terry? To go back to the previous question and Larry's reference to standard reading higher still I have no doubt that there was I remember some of the support that was given whether it was effective support at that time or not is I think open to question and as has been said a lot of the stuff remained on the shelves and one of the things I suppose it goes back to a point that Richard made earlier which is about the nature of the support for developments in curriculum for excellence part of what curriculum for excellence is about is about changing the culture in Scottish education the whole system including teachers identified that in 5 to 14 in standard grade and indeed in higher still there was far too high a level of prescription and I think that one of the the issues for teachers is that perhaps in some cases they have expected something which they didn't get but they didn't get it for good reason because the sort of support that people want that people should be looking for at the moment is support which allows the the teacher and the department to develop the course in a way that's appropriate to the young people that they serve and one thing I think that's important in any new implementation I think that the times that teachers have complained most about workload have been the introduction of higher of higher still the introduction of standard grade and now this first year last year of national qualifications one of the key things that's missing inevitably by definition in the first year of any implementation is one of the most powerful pieces of support for teachers which is sample scripts of youngsters that have actually completed the course now by definition you can't have that in the first year of a new set of qualifications by next by this year we have that and I think that that is one of the key things that will increase the confidence of the profession and convince people that they do understand the standard. Ken? Yeah I think although the report the reflections report contains 36 specific actions for this coming this academic session and a further 19 longer term I chose to write them in sufficient detail that there was no doubt as to what was required from the various national bodies that could support the moving forward of the curriculum for excellence initiative and I think that it may look like a long list of things that still need to be done but I would go back to what was being echoed earlier by colleagues I think the system itself has learned a lot from that and I would suggest that if those short term and longer term actions are implemented then we'll certainly be much more successful than perhaps we have been in some aspects of delivering nationals four five in year one. The working group was fairly clear that some of the immediate action required would be about addressing the workload concerns and you know the verification changes for example do directly look at that issue. I think we're also we were collectively conscious of not wishing to create any additional instability by making too many changes just as people were starting to get to grips with it but there are certainly some which are I think more urgent than others. We have long argued that there's a design flaw basically between higher and national five in that there is an insufficient fallback from higher to national five for students particularly those students who are bypassing lower level qualifications and not necessarily sitting exams in S4 which again is one of the concepts that should develop as the education system becomes more comfortable with the bigger notions so I think the I don't think there's an immediate concern about the fact that there's a timeline around some longer scale changes as long as we are addressing the issues you know I think that was important that they're not just in there as window dressing these are actually actions that need to be required to support the system and that I think would be beneficial. I'm really tempted to get into an argument with Terry but I'll resist it. I mean I've very much taken that point and Mr Flanagan's point but presumably you can see that 36 actions are quite a lot of actions someone in some bit of this system has to make a judgment about which of those 36 is going to be implemented first, second, third and all the way down. You can't expect presumably a head of faculty or a head teacher to make a choice that all 36 are equally important and I just want to gauge how you expect the system to cope with so many recommendations. A lot of them are actually interlinked so on can't be discreet when implemented. I can't go hand in hand with all this. Yeah I mean I think if you look at the list they are very properly in my opinion assigned to the different aspects of the system that they apply to and so you don't have 36 for one particular area of the system and I think that's why it's manageable because I think what Ken's group did was identify the particular things that the SQA needed to do, that Education Scotland needed to do, that schools needed to do, that local authorities needed to do as a high priority for this year to make sure that this year is a successful year. So I don't think we should look at 36, it is very much around what do we need to focus on, what does local authorities need to focus on, what do the schools and the teachers need to focus on and I think that those are manageable and it is very important that we coordinate across the different parts of the system though so it's not individual sets of actions, it's keeping that partnership going making sure that we work together for the benefit of the learners because some of the things that we need to do we need a reflection from local authorities and we need a reflection from the teachers and the school leadership so it's about making sure that the overall is delivered but I don't think it's a list of 36 for everyone. Yeah, I think there are 36 specific bullets but I would draw a committee's attention to what I think is the most significant one beyond those which is realising the aspiration of curriculum for excellence, I think we still have some way to go in terms of teachers and in some cases head teachers understanding of the basic philosophy of what curriculum for excellence is trying to achieve and I think that will be as demanding, in fact I would suggest more demanding than some of the specific action points that have been allocated to individual national bodies. Okay, thank you. Claire, did you have a very short supplementary question about obviously culture change has been mentioned and that's probably one of the biggest challenges in any organisation is tackling culture change and Larry you mentioned it earlier in the discussion in this area and also Richard, you mentioned that correct me if I'm wrong but what took from it was a lot of the stress that teachers are experiencing is not having confidence so it's in terms of that culture change going forward. I would like to gauge from you where the responsibility for that lies if you like. Is it any more SQA in Education Scotland can do? Is it now down to local authorities or is it actually at school level? How is that going to be fixed? I think that the benefit that Scotland has is that our education system is partnership and each bit of the education system is absolutely essential to ensure that we do the right thing for learners so I don't think that we all have a part to play in that. SQA has a part to play in it, I think the local authorities do, the teachers do and the goal needs to be that we talk it through, we really understand where the sort of pinch points are for one for better word and that we do give teachers the confidence they need because the teachers are passionate about what they're trying to do. We need to do as much as possible to give them that confidence and I do think that the confidence level has increased as a result of going through national 1 through national 5 and I think this year is yes a high stakes year because it is the higher year so we really need to make sure that each one of us, each part of the system does play our part in making sure that we support teachers and give them that confidence and what one of the reasons we're doing the understanding standards work that we are doing now for the next, it started last week and it will continue for the next few weeks is to provide a group of people who are more confident, who can then share that confidence with their fellow teachers and provide the information that these people have been given to teachers through the website. A very brief point, Terry. I'll go with what Janet said about the responsibility of everyone. Culture change cannot come solely from the top or from national bodies, it has to be something that everybody buys into and I think local authorities and schools have got a very important role to play in that and if we go back to what said in my opening remarks, the challenge of creating a true 3 to 18 curriculum part of that is about the way that we structure within local authorities how we develop things so we have largely abandoned the idea of the school cluster which is the secondary school and the primary school and we now meet and plan in learning communities which goes all the way through from 3 to 18 that sort of action is the sort of thing that can begin to change culture because it changes the way that people see their colleagues and see the way that they have to operate. I'm conscious of the time that we have to try and move on up. Can I just say, if everybody's got additional points that we don't catch today, if you just email them to us, that would be very grateful to receive. Obviously, we've got the cabinet secretary next week. I've got a very specific question though about to the SQA, Janet. It's about assessment. Obviously, there are a number of comments made in the run-up to the qualifications such as the late arrival of relevant guidance was one of the criticisms that was made, a point about the fact that the N4 added value assessment was being taken not by just those on borderline cases but in some areas by almost all N5 students. Of course, people were taken eight rather than the intended five or six, a number of points with that. Accepting all of that has the SQA on taking on board some of those criticisms and how are you going to respond to that moving forward into the second year of those qualifications and obviously the new hire? One of the things that we've done is that there will be no more changes to any documentation for this year. The final information for mandatory documents was the end of the last session, so we will not be changing anything. We took the feedback that said, please don't change anything else. The challenge, of course, is that if you're trying to be responsive and you find out that people are saying that this is a challenge, then we want to be able to respond to that. There is always that delicate balance between how much do you respond and how much do you lock down. We definitely have taken the view that the documentation and the nature of the courses needs to stay stable, that we need to understand it and that we need to be looking forward for that. In terms of the nature of the assessment, I think that one of the things that we absolutely need to make sure we do is communicate as we are doing through the understanding standards work for the next three years, a real understanding and a real engagement with the teaching profession to make sure that they can get that level of confidence that they need. From the point of view of final course documentation for national five, that was finalised pretty early, but we did take feedback and it is that balance. If people are telling you that there needs to be a change, we need to be able to respond to that. We need to make it clear when we have made those changes and whether that change is mandatory or whether it's for information. That is something that, again, needs to be clear. Are the SQA promising effectively greater stability and clarity going into next year? Yes. That is part of our action from the— Are we in question now? That is part of the action from the reflections group, is that SQA does make our documentation clearer. One of the things that we've done, and actually I think that if you look at the documentation that's come out recently, it is clear. But Larry, I asked it for a reason. The reason is, given that statement, that is the intention going forward in the next year. Would that provide not only your members, but also the members of the other two unions represented here, more confidence given some of the survey results from all the organisations? We welcome the changes to verification, and we welcome Janet's statement there that there have been no further changes, because I think that, around the higher, that's absolutely crucial. We are almost in October, so those courses have been run since June. We can't anticipate being able to cope with any changes, so on. I think that that will increase confidence. Richard mentioned the confidence levels around the higher. That was one of the questions that we asked. How confident people are with regard to the implementation of the new higher now? The figure was 57 per cent indicated a degree of confidence, and 44 per cent indicated a lack of confidence now. I know that that sounds quite negative, but that's the best results we've had around the end of the qualifications. It's progress, but I think that the fact that there's still a lack of confidence amongst a significant cohort of teachers around the higher, and some of that will be a nervous response, because people are well aware of the importance of the higher. It does indicate that we are making progress, but there are still challenges there. Janet wants to come back in on this very briefly, then I'll bring in Mary. Just a very quick point, as we said earlier, until you have exemplification, I think that teachers are always going to be uncomfortable, and we won't have that for the highest issue. Mary. Can I just say that I remember in the first session of Parliament, and Tavish would remember this up to 2003, Peter Peacock was then talking about curriculum for excellence. I wasn't on the education committee, but I did obviously pick up and hear quite a lot that's going on. It is quite shocking, really, that 80 per cent of teachers are extremely stressed in the implementation of that. The workload, according to Larry, is unsustainable, and I appreciate that. Given the lead-in time, I think that it is quite shocking. My questions are, I understand that, for higher still in the standard grades, that they were piloted. I may be wrong, but I understand that. Tell me if I'm right, and tell me why there was no piloting of course notes, practice papers, et cetera, for the national force in fives. My second point is the RSE paper, and the question is on over-assessment. Has the over-assessment led to, and I quote from the RSE paragraph 17, it would appear that the widespread reduction in the number of subjects studied in S4 is not the result of any conscious policy decision, but is the unintended consequence of national guidance. Because there's so much focus on over-assessment, has that led to a reduction in subjects? My final point is that, from my understanding in the early years of this, and I'm going back 12, almost 14 years, that it wasn't all about assessment, that it was all about interdisciplinary learning and what you picked up in one subject, you were able to take that skills and apply it to another subject, and yet all we've heard from the minute we started at 10 o'clock is exams, exams, exams, assessment, over-assessment, practice papers. We've actually heard nothing of what I understood that CFE was about, which was about learning one subject and applying it to another. My third point is, have we simply changed one form of assessment for another with all its problems, or have we actually, I think, Ken Muir said that the most important thing was to take on the principle of CFE, but in all this focus on assessment, has the whole ethos of CFE been lost? Because we're certainly not talking about it. Members are entitled to ask the questions they wish to. There's a lot in there, but I'll start with Terry. I think that you've put your finger on an extremely important point, and a point that I guess is certainly concerned about. One of the aims of CFE was to look at the totality of a child's education and the totality of a young person's experience in school, and I believe that there are some extremely exciting developments, as far as that's concerned, and I could take you into any school in Western Barchonshire and show you in practice what is going on that you would not have seen before the introduction of CFE. There is always a risk when we introduce exams into the system that society as a whole obsesses on the exams, and I do believe that there is a major risk here in us losing sight of the big picture and of what we have achieved in CFE overall, which I think is considerable. The over-assessment question is the responsibility of everybody in the system, and that includes individual teachers, because I do believe that there are some structural things in the system, like the requirement to do the value-added unit for all national five pupils, which is just not the spirit of the development at all, like the number of subjects that you study in S4, but there are also individual responsibilities, and Janet makes reference in her submission to the idea of teachers embracing the idea of a more holistic approach to assessment, which would in itself reduce the assessment burden. There's no doubt that there has been stress in the system this year. I don't think even Larry would claim that his survey represents 80% of all teachers, his statistics represent the percentage of people who responded to the survey, and perhaps by definition you are more likely to respond to a survey if you are unhappy or if you are feeling that level of stress. He hasn't said how many did report, percentage of his members did respond to it. We must respond to the idea that teachers are under stress. We must find ways within the system to reduce the workload. I think that everybody around the table acknowledges that that is a significant issue, and teachers themselves have a responsibility to take on board the lessons that have been put out there from SQA about some of the stuff that's coming into SQA, which is simply unnecessary and is leading to some of the stress. First of all, in relation to the timescale, secondary schools largely started to engage with Crickland for Excellence when the last year's S4 was in S1. A timetable created around that group of pupils would be the first to set the new qualifications. We actually argued against the notion of a timetable, but that's the kind of way it's developed over the next four or five years, which isn't, I don't think, a particularly long run-in for such a major change to our qualification system. One of the reasons that we argued for a delay to the qualifications timetable was so that the pedagogical changes around Crickland for Excellence would bed in across S1 to S3, because that has been one of the difficulties that this year a number of pupils who sat their national four, national five last year theoretically came through CFE, broad general education, but in practice they didn't because in too many schools they made subject choices in S2 and basically had an equivalent of a standard grade course towards national four, national five. That's one of the areas where I think there will be changes this year and people will be more confident when moving towards the kind of models that do actually see a broad general education as the starting point for your post-15 career path, so that the S3 profile should be the reference point, that's the prior attainment across S1 S3, that should be the reference point for your senior phase, and that's where you can look at things like my path. So I think all of that will start to develop in close to the system. I don't accept the point that Terry and Janet have made around you can't provide exemplification until you've got live material. When I was a higher English examiner, every paper was trialled a couple of years before it came into use, so you can generate models of pupils' answers through practice papers, which you can then feed into the system. Why did that not happen? Because the timetable was too compressed. There should be no difficulty in creating some pupil-led answers in relation to higher practice papers, which can then be used to create the exemplification, because I think that that is one of the big areas. I think that the timetable has squeezed out the pilot approach, but alongside that, I think that more could be done to address that particular issue. The last point is that I'm slightly concerned about a couple of things that Terry said there, because our health and wellbeing survey was answered by 7,500 teachers. It was carried out by an independent research company that said that it had a validity rating of 99.1%, which is probably higher than any of the recent polls that we've all been obsessing about in terms of its validity. Within that, the teacher workload and stress levels are quite clearly documented in relation to in the secondary sector, the qualifications. One of the good things going forward for the higher is that the Cabinet Secretary of State allows teachers and schools to make professional decisions around their readiness for the new higher. That has taken a bit of heat out of the situation, because where people didn't feel they were comfortable in moving forward to the new higher, they're stuck with the old higher, and it's a higher as a higher. In the IDF's submission, that has been moaned that we haven't gone full tilt for the implementation of the new higher this year. That concerns me, because that doesn't seem to be taken on board the fact that you need to give teachers control of this process in order for it to be level as effectively as possible. I think that there are a lot of issues around the timescale and the compression that is created, and it's back to the issue that I mentioned before. The key resource is having time for professional dialogue at a school level. I'll bring you back in, Terry, but very briefly. Can I just say to everybody that we're going to have to shorten the answers, because we're rapidly running out of time and not going through some of the subjects that want to do it, so I can have Ken, and then Graham, and then Janet, and then Terry. Just two points, convener. I mean, I think one, I referred to earlier, the fact that this is the first time ever in Scottish educational history that we've tried to change the whole 3 to 18 curriculum at one time, and I think one of the reasons perhaps why there wasn't piloting unlike standard grade and higher still was simply the fact that those were by size chunks of the 3 to 18 curriculum, and what we're trying to do is to get that seamless learning, or a notion of seamless learning throughout the whole of primary and secondary. So that is why it has been around for a while, and it's only, as Larry suggested in the last couple of years, that it's really come into the radar of secondary teachers with the looming examinations. I think that the question I've also pointed to, I think, what is an issue, and that is that we still have a number of schools, as I've suggested in the report, who have to think seriously about what an S1 to S3 broad general education is about, and what an S4 to S6 senior phase is about, and what the articulation between those two actually is, and that one of the reasons, certainly in some schools, why there was additional pressure was the continuation of eight subjects, as opposed to looking at how you can create a curriculum, particularly in the senior phase that delivers the aspirations of curriculum for excellence, and recognises the wider achievement that the curriculum can offer, as opposed to simply important, though it is, passing examinations. I'll go back to Ms Callan's point about how we lost TFE. I mean, absolutely not. As I said at the start, there's been a transformation in learning and teaching in Scottish schools. If you look at the inspection evidence and the key strengths from secondary schools in this year, we've seen the key strengths most commonly in the inspections are young people who want to learn and achieve, the support of learning environment, pride in the school, leadership of the head teacher, the broad range of achievements, greater range of wider achievements than young people have had the opportunity to gain before. It's been a challenging year, and yes, there have been issues with assessment, but undoubtedly our curriculum focuses on the experiences and the outcomes and the experiences of young people in Scottish schools as being transformed, and that's the independent evidence to support that. In terms of the BGE, we recognise that that is something that needs further developed. Most secondary schools this year are looking again at the nature of S1 to S3, and we've produced a toolkit for improving the curriculum learning from the best practice in schools across Scotland that's really clear and concise, and it's been very well received. We're also doing the same at primary level, because I think it's important to remember that it's not just about the senior phase. We've seen huge amounts of progress in the primary sector with CFE. At the moment, we're in the process of seeing what's the primary head teachers over a course of national events. We'll have seen about 800 by next week. Again, we're looking at progression within the primary curriculum, and there's a new toolkit to learn from all the best practice that we've seen to date to take it to that next stage to achieve what we all want to achieve, which is a seamless 3 to 18 curriculum for Scottish young people. I just want to make a point that hasn't been answered yet. That is why there's been a widespread reduction in the number of subjects studied, so I wonder if the remaining witnesses would mind addressing that. Can I leave that one for a little while? I'd like to address the one that you brought up about interdisciplinary learning, because I think that one of the things that we were trying to do in terms of defining and developing the new qualifications was to enable teachers to be able to teach their subjects in different environments and to be able to take advantage of interdisciplinary learning. One of the things that we've done in terms of the internal assessments and the course assessments is allow pupils to be able to learn through projects, through assignments, through problem-solving and even portfolio work to be able to put together a wide variety of different contexts in which they're learning that allow flexibility and interdisciplinary learning that is at the core of CFE. That's very critical. The over-assessment was less about the number of subjects and more about the added value unit. Again, it was the first year because there is a concern in teachers on making sure that they do the right things for their students. There was a huge variety in the number of presentations for the added value unit for national 4, which varied across the country very significantly. That is something that the system will learn from. If we talk to teachers this year, they have learned from last year, and we'll see a lower presentation for the added value unit for pupils who do not need to take the added value unit. First of all, there are two points that Larry was making. Can I reassure committee that I am not suggesting that stress levels and workload within the teaching profession are not an issue? I have acknowledged repeatedly that that is a significant issue that we have to address. Secondly, the paragraph that Larry refers to in the ADES submission does not be moan the fact that there is a mixed economy of hires. It acknowledges that that is the fact. It acknowledges the reasons for that, but it indicates that the profession needs a period of stability. We will only achieve full stability in order to be able to reflect when we are operating to a single set of qualifications. I would have thought that the EIS would welcome that day when we can stand back and look at that. With regard to Ms Scanlon's question about the number of courses that has been taken in S4, I think that one of the things that CFE did was re-emphasise one of the strengths of Scottish education, which is the broad general education, and redefined that. That goes from three to fifteen, but it also placed a greater responsibility and a greater emphasis on the depth of learning. Most schools and most local authorities took the view that if the depth of learning was going to be improved, then the number of subjects would reduce in S4. That allows, for instance, for schools to timetable S4 to S6 as a single entity. That has some interesting consequences. Within my own local authority, Western Bartonshire, we have a couple of schools that have already done that, and that means that if you timetable S4 to S6 together, you can have S4 to S6 in the same classes, so that one school in an area of significant deprivation presented two S4 pupils for higher physics and they both get A passes. Under the previous system, that would not have been possible, so it is to allow that flexibility and to allow that depth of learning, which feeds in to post-school learning as well. I am keen to move on, because we have not enough time. I have a couple of questions on workload issues and support issues. The first one is, why was the verification process scheduled to be carried out so near to the end of the course? Clearly, that caused a great deal of anxiety among teachers. In terms of support, why did the implementation go ahead without adequate number of practice papers, according to teachers? I also know that that is caused concern among parents and pupils as well. In terms of the verification that is very close to the end of the course, that verification was actually a course assessment verification, so the students had to have studied the entire course to be able to undertake the course assessment, and that is what the verification was about. The timing was determined by the fact that it needed to be at the end of the course, so I think that is a critical component. As we have looked at the sampling, based on the information that we got from last year's verification process quality assurance process, we are able to adjust our sampling methodology because we are seeing an increased number of schools that are operating at standard, and therefore we can reduce the sampling mechanism. We have looked at that to try and address some of the workloads, but the timing has to be there from the point of view of the course assessment. In terms of practice papers, what we have done is provided a practice paper for national 5. We have committed to providing an additional higher practice paper this year. The writing of a practice paper is extremely complex because it needs to reflect exactly what the students will actually see when they sit down for an examination, so it is a very complex activity. However, what we have done in addition to that commitment to providing an additional one is that we have highlighted from past papers the questions that teachers can use that are relevant, again part of the points of stability, points of change components. Teachers have more of a suite of questions that they can use as part of their internal assessment to get pupils ready for the examinations. I would like to ask primarily the teaching unions how easy or difficult it has been to get the voices of teachers heard during the implementation process against the possible pressure from the Scottish Government and others to implement the timetable, as promised. Another one has been raised by the teaching unions that teachers need more time. Is it the case that we also need more teachers? I think that the very fact that we have a committee like this means that we are much closer to Government and to decisions than in many other parts of the United Kingdom, so I think that it is relatively easy to make our voice heard from that point of view. Whether it is listened to is another matter, but certainly I think that we have the platform in which we can do that. In terms of time, as you know, schools operate with working time agreement, which allocates hours every year, and that divides them up into various activities within the school. We as a union have tried to encourage our school representatives to increase the time available within that for the introduction, particularly in the senior phase of collecting for excellence, but also in the broad general education phase. It has been a reluctance to allow that time to be made available, so it has pushed a lot more time into teachers' own time. The working time agreements have to be much more realistic. I think that head teachers need to be given the authority and the power not to put everything into that but to create freedoms, particularly over the next two years, to allow the development of this. The other thing that we have to think about is that it is not just looking forward. We also have to look back. Teachers this year are obviously focusing in almost all cases on presenting the new hire or getting ready for the new hire next year and also the new advance hire next year. Very little time is available to look back at what happened with national 4 and 5. Many teachers feel that that needs to be improved, that needs to be modified, that needs to be closer in line with expectations, particularly if it is difficult due to verification and so on. That time has actually been ignored at the moment, so there is a huge amount of time required. I do not think that that time is being made available, and yes, more teachers would always be good. If that was not a leading question, Larry, that would not have been. In terms of the voice of the profession, being part of the management board has certainly allowed us to take forward the views of the profession. In fact, that is where the bureaucracy working group came from, was our unions bringing forward physical examples of just how ridiculous the level of bureaucracy was. That is a positive. Like Richard, I am not sure that it is always listened to, and part of what is concerning me this morning is that we talk about all the levels of support that are available, but if there is still such a high percentage of teachers expressing concern, that has to be paid attention to, whether it is because they do not know that the support is there or whether it is just because they feel unsupported. I think that it is a genuinely important issue to be focused on. In terms of time, where do you get time from? One of the groups that we have not actually spoken about this morning is supply teachers and the whole gamut of issues around supply cover to allow people out. The supply teachers are a group because they very largely feel out of the loop. They are the people who are going to bring in the ability to release time in order to take things forward. I do not want to be the voice to do them all the time, and I feel like I am on those things. I suppose that is the role of the union sometimes. We have always supported right from the beginning this curriculum change. We think that it is a fantastic way to move forward for Scottish education, but it is not in its own little bubble, and all those other issues impact on that. The real concern about not listening to the voice of the profession is that the success of last year, as you have acknowledged, was largely due to the commitment of teachers. They are just not going to keep on doing this. I cannot urge you to see that more clearly. They are underpaid. They do not have the supply support. The physical national support needs to be more clearly laid out for them, but unless things are moving forward and we are moving forward together, it is not going to continue in that way. When I speak in further Scotland, I always make great play of the fact that we have a social dialogue around education in Scotland, which is absent in other parts of these islands. I think that we do have a number of platforms where we can express the opinion of the profession and the number of robust partnerships. Where there are two difficulties around that is that we have national policy in terms of Scottish Parliament, but we have responsibility for implementation in terms of local authorities. I think that sometimes there is a little bit of a gap. We engage in national discussions with quite often some of the issues that we have concerns around are to do with how individual education authorities are approaching an issue. We do not have an effective working relationship with the Causeless Education Committee, for example. In a sense, it defaults to IDEs in a lot of areas when we do meet with IDEs, but IDEs do not control their individual authorities. They are a professional network. That is one of the areas where there is a little bit of a gap. The other thing that we have been fairly clear about is that we think that SQA has to be more accountable to the system. That was a big focus of discussion at our AGM this year. We have written to the cabinet secretary with a number of suggestions. It is important that SQA has an independence in one sense in relation to its credibility in terms of being custodian of the standards. We think that there should be greater direct links between professional voice and the operations of SQA. On the second point, we have a body of evidence that we are going to be taking to the tackling bureaucracy working group, which is reconvening shortly under the convenership of Alasdair Allan at the school's minister. Around how working-time agreements and school improvement plans have to be realistic in terms of how they assess the amount of work that is required. I was speaking to my former headteacher in a Glasgow secondary school, who is a good EIS member, and he told me that he had stood up on the first in-service day at the start of term with a school improvement plan on the projector, and he just picked out four things and said, these are suspended until further notice because this year we are focused on delivering the new qualifications. We had a two-year qualifications route, so nobody in S4 sat qualifications. That was quite a dramatic move. I double-checked it with a couple of colleagues in case he was just spinning me a line, but he did actually do it. That is the sort of thing that needs to be done. There needs to be a real realistic assessment of if this time is needed in order to ensure that this programme is delivered, identify the time and put other things to the side. I have been saying this at our workload campaign meetings, unless you actually stop doing something, you will never reduce workload. If you keep trying to do everything, it is an endless piece of string. I think that the tackling bureaucracy working group in the reconvenience will have a number of issues to consider there in terms of how we address some of the workload concerns. I want to explore a little bit more about workload. Clearly, there is a general acceptance that the development of curriculum for excellence did result in increased workload for teachers. I would just like to find out how confident you feel that this workload will ease as curriculum for excellence settles in, or, as I seem to interpret what EIS is saying, that possibly some of that workload now is integral to the curriculum for excellence approach. I believe that the workload will ease. I said earlier that the first year of the introduction of any new set of national qualifications has been a time when teachers have experienced significant workload, and I was a teacher during the introduction of the first two of those. I do not think that there is anything inherent in CFE, which means that workload is greater. I believe that a lot of the workload issues are to do with two things, assessment, and I think that we have covered that really about the number of different elements that mean that there is over-assessment in the system at the moment, which is incidentally an issue for the workload of young people as well as for teachers. Secondly, a lack of confidence in the standard, and as the confidence grows, and I think that there are strong signs, as Janet has said, that the confidence of the profession is growing in understanding the standard, then that means that you have to do less checking, you have to become more comfortable with the materials that you are using, and it becomes part of your daily work. So I do believe that the workload will reduce, and I also believe, to go back to a point that was made earlier, that ultimately one of the effects of CFE will be that teaching will actually become a much more rewarding job because you will be dealing with a greater degree of flexibility, and you will be dealing with the whole child. I do agree with what Ms Scanlon says that it would be a big mistake if we obsessed solely on the exams, and let's not forget that half the profession are in primary schools, they are not in secondary schools. I do believe that the workload will go down, and if I talk about assessment, I think that the understanding of assessment methodology, the understanding of the standards, once people get more comfortable with that, people will stop using individual pieces of evidence to justify individual outcomes. It will be much more about using the material that is generated through learning and submitting that to us to actually prove that this is the level of the learning that we're getting to. That's what the purpose of verification is, is to make sure that the teachers are assessing to standard. If they show us material that they're using on a regular basis, that can add huge value both in terms of the fact that they'll be doing that on a regular basis within the learning, and it will be also useful for us in terms of verification. I think that the confidence in the nature of the assessment is one thing that will improve, but I also think that the confidence of teachers and their willingness to share their information with each other will also increase, and by increasing sharing, you actually stop having each individual teacher having to do it completely individually. This year, for instance, we did offer a prior verification process, which actually allows teachers to submit some of their assessments. We look at it and say, yeah, that's standard, you're allowed to use that, that is something that we've been offering. We ask each of those teachers if they'll allow us to share that with other teachers, and not all teachers will allow us to do that. Part of that is about lack of confidence. Once teachers get confident, you'll start being, it's a bit like the point that Graham made, will build up a much bigger bank of information that teachers will be able to assess both in terms of assessment and in terms of support materials. That in itself will reduce the workload for teachers. The OECD published a major report a couple of weeks ago called Education at a Glance, and it highlighted the fact that Scottish teachers are amongst the most class-committed teachers across Western Europe, on average, 150 hours more than their colleagues in England. That's a situation that is effectively deregulated. So I think there is a bigger issue around workload than simply looking at the workload related to the national qualifications that have been introduced. I quoted a figure earlier of 84% in terms of secondary teachers or secondary members indicating dissatisfaction with workload levels. The figure in primary is 76%. The figure in nursery is 65%, and in special 62%. So there are particular pressures around workload in relation to last year's experience around national qualifications, but workload is a much bigger issue than simply about the qualifications. I do agree that, as people become more familiar with the qualifications, some of the introductory workload pressures will ease. From our point of view, there is a much bigger concern there. Part of the concern relates to a point that Terry made there, because the implementation of curriculum for excellence is supposed to create a working environment where teachers are able to flourish as professionals. When Terry and I were both on the CFA management board, some people occasionally used the word fun in relation to education, and that's a big picture. In terms of our health and well-being survey, one of the last questions that we asked was, would you recommend teaching as a career to other people? Only one in two teachers who responded to the survey said that they would recommend it as a career. To me, that is hugely concerning, because I think that teaching is a fabulous career, and we should aspire to have the best candidates going into the teaching profession. However, your best advert for that should be your current teachers. If one in two is saying that, because of a variety of different pressures, they wouldn't even recommend it as a career, that should bring some alarm bells. Briefly, in response to Mr Beattie's question, we have two reports in the system just now. We have the previously published tackling bureaucracy report, and we have the reflections report. I would suggest to the committee that they should have confidence in the future that not only will curriculum for excellence be fully implemented, but that workload will reduce if the recommendations in both of those reports are taken forward and taken seriously. We are actively monitoring progress with the tackling bureaucracy report. As I said, we are currently in the midst of being in front of 800 primary heads, showcasing how other head teachers have reduced the amount of planning, freed up time for teaching and reduced the amount of assessment. The inspection advice note this year talks about consolidating where we are. It talks about what schools are actively doing to reduce bureaucracies. Again, like other colleagues, I think that the workload will go down. If you look at any system in the world when you introduce a new curriculum or new qualifications, teacher workload does increase. However, what we have to do moving forward collectively is continue to minimise the amount of time teachers are spending on tasks away from teaching and learning. We have commissioned some independent research into the tackling bureaucracy report, our area lead officers are asking directors of education what is being done around this. We have also launched new progression frameworks in each curriculum area, which look at the absolute steps of learning in each area. Again, that is an attempt to reduce the amount of time spent planning and assessing, because we do not want to see big bulky folders of planning that takes teachers away from improving learning and teaching. We will continue to work with partners to take that forward and continue to showcase examples of where that has been actively taken forward. Just a final point to say is that we have agreed to set up new curriculum, learning, teaching and assessment forums for each curriculum area, which will keep the curriculum under constant review. Those include teacher professionalisation, specialist interest groups and others, so that we have an on-going dialogue about how we can refine and further improve the guidance on the curriculum and how we can make content changes in an accumulative way to manage workload for teachers moving forward. I just want to ask a quick question about the process of compiling the report of the working group on the first year of the new national qualifications. I note from the evidence that the EIS said that, with the support of most of the recommendations, it has a number of concerns based on their view that the analysis was neither deep nor critical enough to get to the core of the problems. The NASWT said that, in order to reach a consensus, the myriad of concerns raised by the unions, including workload, were emitted from the final report. Would either of you have comments to make about where and how those concerns might be taken forward now? The key concern was that the analysis did not reflect what we thought were the problems. For example, there was an agreement that there was an element of over-assessment in the system last year, although I do not think that people should be blamed for that, because the over-assessment was around ensuring that no young person fell through the gap. What we would like to see in the report was an explanation as to why that over-assessment took place. Our analysis was that a good part of it came from the fact that communication had been poor, so there was a lack of understanding. That then goes back to who's responsibility was to communicate the big messages. There certainly was no agreement in the working group around that. We would point the finger to some extent to the SQA and the CFE management board, the SQA had their own view on that. The final report was an attempt, in the case of Ken's part, to balance the books. We would have liked to have seen the teachers' perspective included in the report, even if it was rebutted. Even if it simply said that the teacher unions had this view and the SQA responded by saying that. The readership of schools looking at it would have at least allowed people to see that their views had been represented in the report. Interestingly, Ken may not like this, because the report has been distributed through the General Teaching Council magazine. In our survey, 65 per cent of people said that they hadn't seen the report. It tells you how many people open their magazine. We thought it would have been useful, even if we couldn't agree to have reflected the two sites. Although we absolutely accept that there was a unanimous agreement around the recommendations moving forward, in a sense that is a progressive agenda. Given that the pressures that the teacher run last year, the report could have reflected some of that a bit more thoroughly than it does. I know that there has been some attempt to acknowledge it. I think that some of the details of the issues that we had brought back appeared on first reading to be glossed over rather than further explored and detailed. Initially, our concern was that teachers reading it would not have perceived just how much we were raising the concerns that they were bringing. Although I think that it was useful to have the report agreed and the recommendations brought out so that we can move forward on having them implemented, like EIS, many of our members had not had sight of the report nor had they of the bureaucracy report, so that was an issue for us in terms of continuing to raise it. However, it makes me wonder why, if each teacher was meant to receive a copy of it, why they did not actually read it, particularly as we are revisiting the bureaucracy one a year on. That is a concern. It was not about the fact that the group did not address the issues, but it was about the detail that finally appeared in the report. Given that criticism of teachers not getting sight of the report, I don't know whether Ken would want to comment on that. I think that the purpose of using the Teaching Scotland magazine as a vehicle for getting it out to all teachers was that GTCS is the only organisation that can mail directly to all 75,000 registered teachers, so there was a feeling that it was important that teachers got this as early in the new term as possible, given that the short-term actions were required for the session that had just begun. Specifically, in relation to the working group, I made a number of points very clear at the very first meeting, and I was looking to produce a report that was akin to the tackling bureaucracy report, because it was relatively short and relatively sharp. It was a report that would have as much consensus as possible, and as Larry and Jane have suggested, it was very difficult to get a consensus around the reflections. I think that to have portrayed that in the report would have led to a much lengthier report. I was certainly very keen and I was indeed adamant that there would be no blame apportioned through the report itself. I think that it is also worthwhile reflecting on the fact that, although there is an attempt to do a synthesis of the reflections, the individual action points themselves tell a story about what some of the reflections were in the report. I took the view that, through that vehicle, we are more likely to arrive at actions that are going to lead to significant change in improvement than had we dwelt on the reflections of the previous year. I was looking to produce a report that was very much forward-looking in order to move the system forward, as opposed to perhaps dwell overly on what had happened in the last year. Thank you. That is very helpful. Can I just, for absolute clarity, the report was emailed out or posted out to every single teacher? It was posted to all registered teachers, all 75 registered teachers, so that included primary— 75,000? 75,000, sorry. 75,000 would be a bit low. 75,000, sorry. 75,000 who are registered with GTCS. It was posted out to the GTCS magazine, not separately. We have also emailed all our secondary members with a hyperlink to the report, which clearly hasn't been activated by a significant number. We want to acknowledge that communication is a challenging business. Okay. Thank you for that, Neil. We've obviously heard concerns about workload pressures and the impact on implementing the new hires, particularly about teachers' ability to develop and implement the new hires, as well as making any possible amendments to national ones to fives. I apologise if this has already been covered. I don't think that it has, but has the need for development time been factored into working-time agreements? It was supposed to have been, but our anecdotal, I have to say, because we haven't surveyed since previous one, is that, at the moment, very few working-time agreements are being changed, and that's what's causing the problems. Weston Bartonshire, but yes, is the answer that has been built on. Well, that's interesting. I was about to say that the issue around working-time agreements is that they're school-based agreements, so it's for the union representative in the school to negotiate with the senior management in the school, and then there's, there's, you've got a sampling by LNCTs to make sure that they're compliant with the broad parameters, but I think they recognise that working-time agreements are imperfect tools in terms of controlling workloads. The Takenbyrox report has looked at that and said, you know, working-time agreements need to reflect the real time demands, and I think there's a, there's still a learning curve there in terms of people actually, instead of, because in a lot of schools they just get nodded through, they need to actually be a genuine negotiation, a genuine evaluation of what time is actually required, and it's only if you evaluate the real time that you can create a programme that matches the time available. If you just do everything in theory, we'll work on that, and see it just becomes an endless agenda. Okay, Richard. And something to say that, as you said, Larry, the working-time agreement is made up by an agreement between management and the school reps within the school. We have situations, I can name schools none other than the Western Bartonshire I may add, where a head teacher has come and says, that's the working-time agreement for next year, and there's been no movement on that, and it's had to go to local groups to try and come to some resolution of that. Time is included in it for development time in the vast majority of cases, but I would say probably not anything like enough. That should change year on year. Some working-time agreements are the same every single year, and they're just signed off. It's almost a case of, right, just sign this and we'll just go on with it, and it can make life very difficult for reps within a school if they have to be challenging this every single year. In terms of the new hire as well, I think you mentioned earlier the SSTU done a survey where two thirds of pupils will sit in courses in new hires next year, and one third will be the existing hire. I was just going to ask the rest of the panel what is your understanding of the level of which teachers are proceeding with the new hire versus maintaining courses in existing hires. Again, I can speak from my own authority's point of view, but also from the curriculum assessment qualifications network at ADES, which I chair, because we have actually discussed this. I think the picture is basically that there are two issues. There are certain curricular areas where there has been such a significant amount of change in the courses that a large number of departments are not proceeding to the new hire. In my own authority, for instance, none of the science departments are going to the new hire, so physics, chemistry, biology, human biology—an issue as well with computing science. In both cases, I think that that is a recognition of how out of date the previous courses were and how radical the changes to the curriculum had to be in order to make those courses relevant. The second level of issue really is where you have a situation in a particular department where there has been a staffing issue, where perhaps there has been a series of changes in staffing or there has been long-term absence in the part of the principal teacher. On those cases, on a subject-by-subject basis, they have requested and have been granted leave to postpone implementation for a year. That is the process that we have undertaken. We did a thorough survey, and I think this was reflected in most local authorities, a thorough survey of the level of readiness, where there was a general consensus, then people did not go ahead across the authority, and then other cases were dealt with on an individual basis. However, the majority are going with the new hire. To echo that, we have been engaged with every local authority in discussion around this to monitor levels of uptake. As we would expect, there is a mixed picture that is in line with the cabinet secretary outlined in terms of adopting the new hire this year or into next. There is a mixed picture across the country. Schools are negotiating with discussing with parents and with local authority officers the reasons for that, around the reasons that Terry outlined. The important thing to say is that the hire remains the gold standard. There will be no differentiation on the certificates and so on between which hire you did. I do not have the same currency. I agree, but it is fascinating. Given the time, I think that there are some specific points, Mr Ribby is quite right to ask them. When he asked, is it two thirds to a third, or is it not? What figure would you put on in terms of new hire and old hire? It varies from local authority from 100 per cent down to a third, I would say, so it varies across its local authority. Will you put all the local authorities together as a national figure? I think that we will know the exact levels of uptake around November time when the SQ gets the exact data. In terms of entries, we will not know until November who has been entered for which hire. We can handle whichever way schools decide to go. The final entry figures come out a little bit later than that, but we will get a clear indication in November. It is important to recognise that it will not be a local authority by local authority, it is subject by subject. There is only one local authority where, from our point of view, there has been an on-going issue, which it will not name, although it is a city of LACCES, so that narrows the down a bit. By and large, we think that the agreement has worked well. What has been quite interesting is the consistency across the local authorities as to which subjects people have concerns about. The same subjects have come up in different areas. It does beg a little bit a question around the national five experience in those subject areas, but that is another discussion question. Clare Adamson Earlier, Mary Scanlon asked about the original aspirations of CFE. If I could put this question in context of the wider community and parents and carers, do you think that the aspirations have been effectively communicated to parents? Do you think that moving forward that the two-plus-two-plus-two model will move to a three-plus-three model across the country? Given the paper from the Royal Society, is there still a perception that reducing the number of subjects studied is a disadvantage to students? Because of those pressures from outside and because of those perceptions, do you see going forward that we may end up with local authority variations in those areas, and therefore geographic variations in implementation? Clare Adamson I think that the first point to make is that, with the broad general education, all young people have studied all the curriculum areas at the end of Sd to a higher level than ever before. The idea is that they can take subjects at different points, and there is greater flexibility and choice than there has ever been before for young people to choose the right combination of qualifications and wider achievements, so that, by the time they leave the senior phase, they have a better package of skills, achievements and qualifications overall. As we said earlier, reduction in subjects in S4 is to allow that deeper learning, and it means that they can pick them up at other points as well. That is a really important point to say. Secondly, in terms of parents, nationally we have been collaborating a lot with the national parent forum. We have produced leaflets and guidance for parents, the nationals on a nutshell, the revision materials, for example, on Easter, which were very well received. Parents' biggest source of information, of course, is their own school and their own teachers, so it is important that we continue to work with schools and teachers to build the confidence and make sure that the right messages are getting to parents, because we want young people and parents to have a dialogue so that each young person gets the most out of the senior phase they can, because there is greater scope for them to have more choice and more flexibility than they have had in the past. I think that the direction of travel is positive. As parents' experience of the qualification system is the new qualifications, this kind of comparison with what used to be there will disappear, although I still get people talking about the row grades, so there is always that kind of that. I think that where the big area opens up for us is in relation to the 15 to 18 journey of those pupils who previously would not be engaged with the qualification framework, because in fact that group of youngsters were supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the CFE senior phase, and that will be complemented by the work from the Woods commission. However, I think that the area that has been least developed to date, because the focus has been on the qualification pathways. When you start thinking about that, that group of pupils and how you can narrow the gap between vocational and academic and give them parity, that is when you start to look at senior phase models that are geared to the needs of the local communities. I am not least concerned that there will be a variety of post-15 experience, because schools serve different communities. There will not be a variety across authorities, but within authorities there will be a variety of different models. We have been a little bit fixated on eight standard grades as a benchmark. My old school only ever did seven, because we had an afternoon where we did activities. The narrowing down to five or six was probably the wrong word to use narrowing, because the whole intention is that the senior phase is supposed to have a breadth of experience, which is beyond simply your subjects and your qualifications, but might involve community volunteering. All of those things are there in the mix, and that is what we have all been talking about in terms of the big aspiration around the senior phase. It is still a long way off, but the framework is there for us to move towards it, I think. Just a brief comment. I am aware of the changes to the curriculum through the work that I do, but as a parent of an 11-year-old who has just started high school, I have had absolutely no information on what to expect. That concerns me, because I know that the information is there. I will not name the authority, but it does concern me, because I go to the meetings at the school and I go to the familiarised yourself with the high school and all the rest. I do not know whether there is already this assumption that, because my daughter's first year, it is all going to be fine, and they have been focusing on those who are going through the qualifications now. However, as a parent of a child who is going through the new system, as opposed to having had two that are in their 20s who went through the old system, it does concern me if the information is not getting to parents. I think that we will all share that. Can I just say that I agree entirely with Larry's analysis of the current situation and of the challenges that we have got moving forward about it? I think that communication with parents is crucial and is a difficult issue, and we have to maybe become more imaginative about that. One of the key reasons why it is so important is that parents have to see the advantages of the new curriculum to their child, and their child might not be academic in the traditional sense. The challenges of the Wood Commission—I think that the Wood Commission did Scottish Society a great favour by shining a bright light into some of the darker corners, both of education but also of industry. I am on the programme board for the Wood Commission. I think there is a fantastic opportunity for Scottish Society to really open up education so that a 3 to 18 curriculum becomes meaningful for every child in Scotland, not just for those that go on to do hires. Ultimately, I suppose the last part of your question. I think we will have achieved the aims of curriculum for excellence, where everybody sees it as a 3 to 18 curriculum rather than a broad general education and then the senior phase. As far as the senior phase is concerned, you have to look at it as a single entity and the qualifications and experiences that young people pick up throughout that period rather than fixating, as I think the Royal Society did, on S4 as a single part of that. I think that it is always a challenge to communicate to parents. Parents who are interested, it is easy to communicate with. I think that the challenge is to communicate to those parents that are probably the ones that we really need to communicate to, which are the ones that are not as engaged in their child's education as we would like them to be. I think that that is one point that we should not lose focus on. I think that we forget about the fact that we also need to engage with employers, because part of curriculum for excellence is changing the nature of what children leave school with, whether that is a different pattern of traditional qualifications, national qualifications or whether it is the inclusion of vocational qualifications that they have taken within the school or within school-college partnerships or that they have engaged with employers on. It is important that we really focus on how we make sure that everyone values the achievements of young people at an SCQF level, which is a given level, whether it is a vocational qualification or whether it is a national academic qualification. I think that there are some really excellent examples of school-college partnerships that are in existence where pupils are going from school to college and they are starting on a vocational pathway right now. They are getting SCQF level 5 and 6 qualifications and we need both parents and employers to recognise the value of those things. We are very proud to be able to deliver all of those qualifications. It is really quite concerning sometimes when we talk about SQA qualifications only as nationals. There is a huge breadth of qualifications that are available for all sorts of skills and knowledge that we need to take advantage of and really make sure that kids' undertaking curriculum for excellence have the ability to do what they want to do and to be able to get credit for what they can do and employers recognise it. Two quick questions, one from Mary and one from Tanish. It is very quick because my question has been touched on by Messrs Lannigan and Flannigan in the last few minutes. It really is about moving forward to the Wood Commission and we have heard all about exams and assessment all morning. It really is that group that would benefit from developing Scotland's young workforce, which I put on the record that every party in this Parliament is signed up to. We want to see it working. What I do not want to see is to wait ten years for it to develop. I hear words like Janet has just said that we need to take advantage of and I heard Terry saying that there are opportunities there. My concern is that all that focus on assessment and so on is that we are not quite there yet with dovetailing education and the Wood Commission and given that the focus next year seems to be all about the higher. That is why I focused earlier on the interdisciplinary learning because my understanding from the early years that it would not just help pupils to get higher in national 4s and 5s, but it would prepare them for the workplace. That is what I feel we are losing today. I appreciate that some have mentioned it, convener, but what I would really like to know is what is happening moving forward and with the further education colleges because I know that this is a big change and there are opportunities within the college as well as the schools. It was just to put that under a good point. In the course of the last year, we published not only national qualification results, but also the awards that kids were getting where they were developing employability skills, where they were doing skills for work courses. It is already in the schools that the issue is ramping up the pace of it. I think that the relationships between the colleges and schools and the school-college partnerships that they have been developing is something that we need to extend. That is a good basis for the introduction of the Developing Scotland's Young Workforce recommendations. I think that you are right to highlight the importance of moving this agenda forward. In fact, I have been extremely impressed by the pace of what has happened so far. The report was published on June 6. The first meeting of the programme board was before the end of June. It has already met three times. It has got very broad representation from across Scottish society, not just the education system. I have been very impressed by the fact that the people from industry that are on the programme board accept and understand the fact that this is part of curriculum for excellence. They also accept that teachers cannot deliver this alone. It has to be a societal thing that involves employers. The other thing is that the aims, the goals of the Wood Commission final report are extremely ambitious in looking to reduce significantly the level of youth unemployment. Within three years, every secondary school is having a partnership with industry. There is an urgency here, but I have been impressed by the way in which the Government appears to have taken forward this agenda urgently. I think that you are right that this is the agenda that will really deliver for all Scotland's young people, not just for those who want to do higher. I echo that. We are working with partners to develop detailed implementation plans, because curriculum for excellence is about skills for learning, life and work. We want to shine the light on the work element of that. We have been raising awareness with all schools at the moment through the headteacher conferences. In our inspection advice note for this year, we are looking to see how schools are beginning to take that forward. There is a real strong sense of momentum in realising the aspirations for all young people. We are looking at it not just in terms of the senior phase and the new pathways involving colleges. We are looking at the broad general education as well in saying how we can get that focus on careers, management skills and skills for work for younger children as well. There is a strong national partnership emerging around that and clear, detailed implementation plans that we are working with that will be launched shortly. I think that it is important that we have a joined up approach in relation to CFE and the Woods commission. In fact, we spent a lot of our time when we met with Sunin Woods urging him not to reinvent the wheel because the senior phase was already on the stocks and it was how he complimented that. It is an exciting agenda going forward. Here is the thing. School college liaison budgets have been slashed over the last three years. The capacity of schools to work with colleges in relation to delivery of skills-based courses in schools has been undermined because of austerity measures across the country. There is a big agenda here about getting business involved and getting a resource through that, but we need to have an alignment between the policy ambition and the practice of resorcent. Otherwise, we end up with unfulfilled potential. I still think that the focus is academic and not vocational. We were talking in a parliamentary committee 14 years ago about parity of esteem, and here we are today. I think that you have all said very good things, but we are a long way away from getting this right. Is it the case that by August next year, when my, for example, S3 pupils or S4 pupils in that particular secondary school in Scotland, they will have clear routes into vocational, college and other options if they want it at the start of S4 in every school across Scotland by next August? The detailed implementation plan is not yet finalised, so we will not be able to answer that at this point. We certainly are developing a five-year plan. All the partners are to take us forward with a clear set of milestones and actions for each year. As I say over the course of the next couple of weeks, we will hear that response, but there is an absolute consensus around this agenda, and there is a real determination to tackle that, both the equity issue and the different pathways. Within Curriculum for Excellence, there is the room for those pathways to be tailored to young people's needs as much as possible. At the moment, secondary school would say that they have links with employers, but what we want to see is co-design and to see employers as consumers of education, so much greater engagement. We are working hard with everybody to develop that implementation plan, which will give dates around the kinds of things that you are looking for. The answer to the specific question about the S3 S4 pupil is that it depends what school that pupil is attending. One of the features of that—I thought that the striking features of the final report from the Wood Commission—was that there are probably very few of the 39 recommendations where you could not go to somewhere in Scotland and find it being implemented just now. The challenge for Scottish education and Scottish society is to spread out the best practice across all schools, all colleges and all employers. It is not going to happen overnight when you see the figure that only a very small minority of employers recruit directly from education. A very small minority of employers currently have links to education. All of that is in the final report. It is not going to happen overnight, and the timescales that the final report sets—some of them call for immediate action, some of them look at, for instance, the partnership agreement between secondary schools has got a three-year timescale, but the main timescales in the final report are 2020. That is an indication that there is a lot of work to be done, but there is also a lot of good practice out there on which to base that work. The option that you outlined in theory should have been there last year for the senior phase. It should have been there this year, so at the risk of agreeing too often, I would agree with Terry that it will be dependent upon what senior phase model schools have and what local resources have in terms of existing college links or existing business links. The answer would be, it is unlikely to be a universal provision across the board next year, but hopefully we will be moving towards a critical mass in terms of that being seen as the type of pathway that schools should be looking at. I have gone through a lot this morning, but one of the things that has not been—strangely, one of the things that has not been discussed are the pupils themselves, to any great extent. I just wondered if you could tell the committee what actions you have taken to seek the opinion or feedback from the pupils who have just gone through the latest part of the curriculum for excellent development. Again, although I am speaking today for ADES, I can only give an example from my own local authority. So what we are doing at the moment in Weston-Bartonshire is two things. We have issued questionnaires to the current S5 to pupils and parents asking them about their perception of the S4 experience and the first round of national qualifications. We are also convening focus groups of staff, pupils and parents to tease out some of the broad questions within the questionnaire to try to get a bit more depth to that. We want to learn from the first year's experience and to improve the experience for young people going forward. I think that there is evidence that it is not just teachers who have suffered from assessment overload in the last year. I think that some young people have also felt that, and we have a duty to try to make sure that that is reduced going forward. Inspection programme, there is a pre-inspection questionnaire for young people. We are in the process of analysing the data for last year, which will be available shortly. However, we ask about our young people enjoying learning at school in the previous year. 90 per cent agreed or strongly agreed, 92 per cent agreed that we are getting on well with their schoolwork. We monitor young people's views on education very carefully through those questionnaires, which represent a sample of schools in different areas and sizes and so on. We monitor that very closely, and we will continue to do so. We have two areas in terms of feedback. One is that in the course of last year, we had significant feedback from pastoral care staff, acknowledging or recording increased levels of stress among young people who are going through S4. There are always some young people who are stressed out by assessment processes, but there was significant workload burden and related stress, especially in schools in which they were trying to do seven or eight subjects across a one-year course. The other is just the feedback from our subject teachers that, post Christmas, some young people were looking at assessments almost on a daily basis in terms of doing seven or eight subjects, and a number of subjects can't do the unit assessments end on. They have to do them holistically after you've caught a sufficient part of the course. One of the phrases that was used was that we used to be concerned about a two-term dash to hire. We've now got a two-term dash to national five. There was a significant issue for young people in terms of the assessment regime that was there last year, and some of that might be addressed through the use of more holistic assessment, but there were certainly pressures on young people last year. I would like the committee to know that we canvast the views of pupils as part of the reflections report. A number of the folk that were on the working group spoke specifically as they died to groups of youngsters, and I think there were two main messages came out. One was, as Larry suggested, the period from January until Easter holidays was a period of, in some cases, continual assessment and reassessment, very often for the very best of reasons that teachers want to give the youngsters the best opportunity to actually pass the unit assessments in there for pass the examination. I think the other thing that came through was that they themselves, like many teachers, were still getting used to the wider range of assessment approaches, whether that be portfolios or projects or whatever. Again, it's been a learning experience for them. I have to say that I did come across some youngsters myself who actually quite enjoyed the unit assessments and the regularity of the unit assessments and the regularity of feedback that they got from that on-going assessment. Although it was very much the case that most felt a burden of assessment and reassessment, there were a few who actually quite enjoyed it perversely. At the time that the reflections group was beginning, we raised the point of maybe having focus groups. Again, it was widened out through various organisations. That's as much as we've done in actual fact, except from hearing the messages back from members about their own particular year groups. In terms of assessing pupils' opinion, we haven't taken that forward. In terms of SQA, we have something called MySQL, which is a web-based engagement with SQA, which learners tend to like to engage with. That facilitates us on an on-going basis to get fairly open feedback from learners on what they're feeling about the courses, definitely around exam time. We get a significant number of pieces of feedback. We also monitor student room and other activities, particularly around the qualifications period and results time. Another area that we get feedback is from the liaison team itself as they go into schools and as they get feedback from pupils on what they're finding. However, one of the things we need to do—and we are going to be doing between now and 2017—is actually looking at monitoring and evaluating how the new courses have gone. One component of that will be talking to pupils who have undertaken the courses. This is something that we need to take the time to really understand the detailed implications of. That is a piece of work that we're initiating pretty soon to be able to not only understand this year but understand what's happening last year, understand what's happening this year and understand what's happening next year. We get a full understanding from different groups, including students, as to how they felt about the qualifications. Similar to Larry, our experience comes through pupil support and guidance teachers, rather than pupils themselves. I say that the two areas that we are aware of are that spring period when there has been, certainly last year, there seemed to be an overload of assessment for pupils and the society of stress and so on. Also, the perception among certainly some guidance staff that the leap in some subjects between national 5 and higher could be really quite a difficult leap. Concerns that some pupils might not be able to make that step. Can I thank all of you very much for your attendance today? Obviously, a number of those points we will raise with the Cabinet Secretary next week. However, as I said earlier, if there are any particular points that are going through the long session, we can't cover everything. Just send us an email and we'll hopefully try to include those in our discussions with the Cabinet Secretary next Tuesday. That concludes the public part of our meeting, and we're now moving into private session.