 Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2019. Apologies have been received from Gordon MacDonald and today we have Gil Paterson as substitute at the meeting. Agenda item 1 is decisions on taking business in private. We are considered to take agenda item 3, 4 and 5 in private today and whether to take future considerations of the evidence of subject choice inquiry in private. A member can take item 3, 4 and 5 in private and content to take future consideration of the evidence and subject choices in private. Agenda item 2 is the first evidence session on committee subject choices inquiry. We will hear from two panels of witnesses today. The first panel is representatives from Education Scotland. Before we begin the formal evidence session, I take this opportunity to give a sincere vote of thanks on behalf of the committee to all those who have engaged with the committee on the inquiry so far. We have received over 1,100 survey responses from teachers and hundreds of responses from parents and young people, and those will be published over the course of the inquiry. I also personally thank those who attended the MSYP setting workshop with me on subject choices and also the young people who have been part of the lively discussions hosted by our outreach team on the inquiry. The contributions are very valuable and the time taken to make them is very much appreciated by the committee. Welcome this morning, Gail Gorman, chief executive and chief inspector of education from Education Scotland, Alan Armstrong, strategic director, Joan Mackay, assistant director and Jenny Watson, senior education officer. I say that most of the questions will be directed to you, Ms Gorman, if you could then nominate someone to take the questions if required. As we are under quite a time constraint today with a second panel, we want to get through as many of the questions as possible. Can I invite questions, beginning with Jenny Goldruth? I have just a very brief opening statement. I mentioned that. Apologies. Thank you and thank you all for the invitation to come and give evidence this morning. That is, of course, something very central to Education Scotland and something that we are working with currently. Someone once said that, in order to set sail on a journey in discovery, you first have to leave the safety of the shore, and that seems quite appropriate for this inquiry. The teenagers leaving our schools and colleges in the next couple of months have had the whole of their educational career involved in curriculum for excellence. The future that they face in the 21st century is different from what I experienced at school, and I am sure that many of you will agree with that. As a nation, we design curriculum for excellence to be flexible, to enable the education system and the children and young people within it to adapt to a very rapidly changing world and the skills that are needed to thrive in it going forward. This is still a real untapped potential of CFE, and we need to do this to set it free to enable that to happen. We should not be surprised that our young people have adapted and are reveling in their CFE experiences. They are expected to make more choices about their learning, their careers than we ever had to and are used to, and they expect more options to choose from. In an ever-changing system and world where the pace of change is unprecedented in their lifetimes, the pace of change has been unprecedented. There is much debate on the topic of subject choice. What I am clear about is that we should not lose sight of what young people are telling us and what they want from their education. It is a little surprise that many of our young people do not express concerns about not having enough qualifications. Instead, we more frequently hear complaints from them about too much focus being placed on traditional qualifications at the expense of innovative pathways through their final years at schools, the years that are in fact the preparation for the world of work. Is there still work to do in achieving this for our young people? We are still seeing too many settings where the focus is still on a one-year qualifications ladder, a drive to the next batch of national qualifications hires or advanced hires and too often in the traditional subjects that you and I may have studied. There is a wealth of courses and programmes available, same level as hires, certified by SQA but many others, and there is no doubt that we need more help to support parents, employers and many others to understand the options and changes that are available. It is not easy to change the mind-shift and the mindset of a system such as education, but collectively we need to do it. Having said that, encouraging evidence has been highlighted in our latest thematic inspection report on curriculum empowerment, published at the end of last week. The good news is that almost all headteachers and schools feel empowered to make decisions about their curriculum. Almost all are now revisiting the broad general education to plan better-aligned learning pathways between particularly the BGE and the senior phase. We also found that in secondary schools teachers are concerned about the number and the timing and changes of the SQA courses over the past few years, which have impacted on planning for progression. We have also found that schools, particularly in rural areas, although not totally solely in rural areas, continue to find it difficult to recruit teachers. Although we see schools taking creative solutions to their position, that situation can, and in some cases, limit opportunities to lead extensive curriculum improvement and, in some instances, provide a local curriculum that fully meets the needs of the children and young people that they serve. The education governance review strengthened the remit of Education Scotland and we recognise our role in now taking the sector forward to the next phase of curriculum for excellence and, indeed, developing with partners a refreshed narrative for CFE to support teachers into the next phase in a changed and changing system. We have been reorganising over the past six months. I am excited about our new regional structure, which took up its position two days ago, to support schools, local authorities and regional improvement collaboratives. We are also excited about our plans to engage with thousands of teachers in the next academic session on improvement topics, of which an innovative curriculum design is one of our highest priorities. The debate that I want us to have is about how we ensure that our young people can make the choices that they want, choices that are often from a much wider range of options than the traditional academic subjects, delivered in the traditional way that formed the mindset of many of us. The question that I have is how do we deliver the greater choice and personalisation that our young people need? The answer is a much broader one than just five, six or eight. We need to ensure that a modern curriculum for excellence is delivered. Our children and young people deserve and expect no less. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. I would like to go back to the thought about curriculum empowerment that Gaila, you spoke about in your opening statement there and the broader curriculum offer, because I do think that there is a bit of a tension between the line from the SQA and what we are being told by Education Scotland. I just want to try and get this right in my head. Every national five course is 160 hours notionally from the SQA, a maximum of 22.5 hours of class contact time every year for every class teacher. There are 38 teaching weeks in the year, so that in total is 855 hours. If you look at those hours altogether, you can only teach five subjects in a teaching year according to SQA guidelines. There is a tension between the ethos of BGE, which is meant to be until the end of S3 and what the SQA is advocating. I want to ask who takes responsibility for curriculum design. Is that being driven by local authorities? Is it Education Scotland or is it SQA? The schools design courses, the SQA set qualifications and the set standards, and their notional 160 hours for SQA-related 24 points in there is based on notional learning. That does not all have to take place with teacher contact. The schools then design courses and design the timetable around the young people in the school and the pathways that they need to move towards the qualifications. That is why we have seen schools over recent years settling on anything between 5, 6, 7 and 8, sometimes experimenting for year to year, to make sure that the young people, building on what they have learnt from S1, 2, 3 and in primary school, are ready to move into that senior phase and ready to have the right amount of learning and teaching in their S4. The other point that many schools are looking at is that they are moving away from that rather stale diet of examinations in S4 and then in S5 and then in S6. We know that increasing numbers of young people are staying on from S4. In fact, two thirds now leave from S6. The numbers moving into S5 and not leaving in S4 have moved from, I think, only about one in six young people 10 years ago stayed on into S5, neither one in nine. Those learners give the schools opportunities to design courses over more than one year. So we are seeing young people now beginning to take a mix over courses of one year or two years, sometimes stopping after a year in sitting examination, maybe in two or three subjects, after continuing with other exams right over the two years as schools design the courses. I take that point, but I suppose that my point would be that it is impossible to timetable more than five subjects in an academic year unless you start earlier. I am trying to get understanding what education Scotland advice would be to schools. Are you saying that BGE should not start until August or are you saying that you can start gathering evidence in, I suppose, the Easter term starting about this time of year? Young people move through their progression over S1, S2 and S3 at different rates. As I said, 160 hours, that notional time, is the learning to reach a qualification. It does not say that that learning has to take place after the start of S4. So you could, for example, have a very able young person in S2 who is totally inspired by a novel and really gets deep into that novel, understanding the craft of the author etc etc. That is the kind of skills and experiences that might have to be looking at national 5, perhaps even higher once in a while. The teachers do not then apply SQA qualifications to that. It is about the natural flow of learning and teaching. You would have an able violinist enable artists over S1, S2 and S3 producing really good work in aspects of their learning. That enables the school at the end of S3 and the teachers to say, where is each of the young people in here and what are their needs over the next year, two years, three years? I suppose, looking at the evidence, the Royal Geographical Society says that an obvious solution to both increase pupil choice and reduce time pressure is to make clear that subject matter can be taught in S3. That is supported by the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers, who advocate a return to the 222 model, which is obviously in direct contrast to the ethos of BGE. What is the education in Scotland's take on that? We have been quite clear about, if we are thinking about the context that we set there, about empowerment. It is about the local schools and the local community and the school leaders thinking about what is the best option for the young people that they work with and serve. Now, in some areas, that might be looking at changing the fluid nature of the senior phase. It might be starting some qualifications for some young people in S3. In fact, we have case studies that show a variety of approaches to curriculum, but if you are looking for us to say that Education Scotland says that you must all do this and this, that would be inappropriate. What we are saying is that here is some best practice. Here is where we have seen this make the right choices for young people at the right time in their community, but you have to look at your curriculum rationale and look at the learners in your school over time as well. We do not want a static curriculum because our young people are not static, they are dynamic. We want a dynamic curriculum. Our job is to say very much that here is good practice and here is why it was good practice in that context. It could be variable and it may vary over time. Here is another element of excellent practice that might have a different curriculum design. What we need is the nation to engage in that debate and to really as professionals think about what is the best option, particularly for different subjects as well, where the learning demands and the need for the teacher one-to-one interface can vary across a course as well. The qualifications are your senior phase. The learning can progress through primary school and secondary school, but the qualifications that young people take are what begins over S4, S5 and S6. The learning that takes place towards that can determine the course choices and the levels that young people then move into when they sit the qualifications over S4, S5 and S6, but we are not saying that you cannot teach any element of national five course until August of S4. That would not be appropriate. I understand that because I used to teach national qualifications, but I do have a concern about the variability across the country in terms of the offer at BGE level. Some of the evidence that we have received shows that inspection evidence showed that young people in S1 can be studying as many as 15 subjects. That is a lot of different subject areas. Do you honestly believe that the BGE is preparing our young people adequately for a move into NQ level, given that broad variability of subject offer in the BGE? Not yet, but it is a work in progress. This year alone, the increase and the requests for help and support with BGE not only in S1 to S3 but across the transition period has increased significantly from schools. That is some of the work that Jenny and I and our small team are supporting with just now. People have turned their minds to BGE and they are looking at it more holistically than before. It is important to remember that when we talk about the 13 subjects bit, that is the way that it is organised in secondary. It is 13 different bits of the curriculum. It is also important to remember that youngsters who have been going through primary and seven years of primary plus often two years of early education have already encountered a lot of what we call subjects in secondary, so they will have studied history and they will have studied chemistry and they will have studied to varying degrees before they ever come into S1. The issue in S1 is far more about the transition into the type of—the way that learning is organised, that is a basic way of computing. It is a shock to go from P7 into 13 different teachers or 13. That is the point that has been made there. It is not that the subjects necessarily are new to them. It is the way that learning is packaged. People are recognising that and there is, as I said, significant interest and focus on BGE at the moment, while also developing senior phase. That is a place where we are at, I think, nationally. Thank you for your candour. If I have got anything from your answers to Jenny Garuth, it is that education Scotland's role is, as you very fairly described this morning, not to impart firm guidance or dictate from on high. It is very much to do what? To work in partnership with the system. We are working with Scotland's educators for Scotland's young people. We are there to develop good practice, to evaluate impact on the system, to share evidence-based research and to make sure that we are creating the network that creates a professional learning community across Scotland, particularly in a changing and evolving empowered system. It is critical that that role is about that facilitation, that celebration of best practice and the challenge around where we see ineffective practice and making sure that, as a system, that is addressed. How does an education committee or an education minister assess what is happening? By definition, you have described a myriad of ways in which schools can take forward both curriculum and the teaching of that curriculum. How do we know effectively what is happening? There are a number of ways. Some of it is through thematic inspections, which we have restarted this year, particularly this year, with a focus on empowerment. We have a series of three of them, but we are also in the summer term about to conclude a thematic inspection on mathematics and the teaching of mathematics across all phases in Scotland and its successes and weaknesses. We raised some big questions about that and what we need to do as a nation around that. There are thematic inspections. There are then the individual school inspections, which we collate up into an annual report, identifying key themes. However, there is also the on-going regional work, where we are able to do a deep dive into the system and say that we think that there is an issue about, if I suggest someone, someone will think that there is an issue, but say that we chose a particular subject area, hence the mathematics review. Actually, we know that there has been a significant issue around getting teachers in mathematics, something about the pedagogy in mathematics, the quality of teaching across BG and all the way through to senior phase. Let's take an independent view of that. Let's go and touch base with across all layers in the system and evaluate and come back with findings and also next steps and questions for the system. That would then go to the theoretical system. There could be 32 different local authorities doing 32 different things, never mind 389 secondary schools in Scotland doing 389 different things. My question is how do we draw lessons as to what is happening, whether it is in geography or maths or the numbers of people who are taking language is falling? How do we learn? We have outlined how we draw those lessons. That is through the gathering of the work out in local authorities, through inspection, adding to that as well as an independent review and then collating that into a report that draws those conclusions and asks those questions of the system. We are not asked nowadays to make any judgment about, as it were, the number of young people who pass higher exams because that is a very narrow measure. It is said of the performance of schools and the performance of young people. You made the point in your opening remarks about it and Jenny Cool, who has asked about this work experience and there is another pathway and so on and so forth. If we are not going to just concentrate on that, there is now a range of measurements that are used. Does subject choice actually matter? The subject choice does matter in that we need to make sure that young people are on the right pathway for them, with more and more young people staying on it at school, with many more opportunities in their careers, with better careers advice over S1, S2 and S3. Young people's expectations are growing. The young people in S3 at the moment, who are moving into their senior phase in August, started school in August 2009-10, and the experiences and outcomes were published in April 2009. They have had CFU right the way through. The growing experience, the growing vision that the teachers have had and the growing awareness that young people have had about their future life in Scotland, the UK and well well beyond that is influencing young people's expectations. We absolutely have an expectation and a need to make sure that our senior phase provides as much course choice as possible in that variety. That is why we are seeing, even within the six or seven course choices that are in a school, that some areas—one of the columns of the column where you might choose a subject—has three or four different short courses in there. A young person can be taking three or four national qualifications by the SQA, full qualifications in the national five and lots of short courses to meet their individual needs and change that over S5 and S6 or study them over one or two years. Entirely flexible approaches. We are seeing schools, teachers and young people co-creating that kind of experience in there, but constantly changing each year as the different year groups move through the school and have different ideas. Your contention is that the survey that the committee did showed that the majority of schools surveyed important. It illustrated that only six subjects were available to 40 pupils. It does not matter too much. In some cases, that six hides the fact that some young people could be taking two or three short courses within one of those. How many would that be? Do we know? Sorry? How many would that be? We do not know that exactly. Education Scotland does not keep that. No, but out of 389 schools, how many are taking those—how many are offering those four short courses that you have just described? I would say quite a number. We know this from developing your work. I think that one of the things that I mentioned in the introduction that you referred to was about the focus that we have in Scotland on traditional academic subjects. Our young people are telling us that they want to be ready for the world of work. The world of work is very changing and very dynamic, as you well know. We see much more focus on foundation apprenticeships, modern apprenticeships, different pathways, great partnerships—genny and Joan could say a bit more about that—particularly with colleges evolving. Particularly in the last two years, there has been an acceleration of that that was not there previously. When they are given those options or that timetable, often within it, there are two or three days a week where there are options that are with FE colleges, either going out to college or children— Sure. I absolutely get a lot of that. There is a wide range of qualifications. In a way, if we only narrow the debate to is it six or five or eight or whatever, we are doing our young people a disservice, because the offer is very different to even five years ago. No, I entirely get all that, Gail. You mentioned very fairly in your opening remarks that there are teacher shortages and they are not just in rural areas, but I am acutely aware of where they are. How significant are those now in terms of the choice that is being offered in Scotland's secondary schools? It is clearly from our evidence and from the evidence that I know of the committee's sample as well, that, of course, that is an issue that every school, particularly those in rural areas—many of you know that I live in the north, particularly—are found and have found challenging. It is a challenge and we do not want that to be a reason. A school should design their curriculum to meet their learner's needs and discuss that with the community and those around them, and they need to be able to shape that with the best resources that they have. What I would say, and what is really encouraging, is that we see real innovation out of some of that hardship. Where schools are partnering with businesses, with employers, to actually make sure that they offer—Joan may be able to give you an example about computer science—where there is a real struggle out there in lots of areas for computer science teachers. We are seeing schools setting up partnerships with employers to bring real-life employment opportunities and real-life modern techniques into the classroom to help to support that learning and offer different qualifications. Yes, there is an issue. We found that ourselves. It is about how we, as a system, support and share examples where we look at innovative ways to overcome that, and some schools are doing that. It is still a minority, but we want to share that message so that it becomes the majority. I do not know if you want to mention some of the work that you and Jenny have been looking at. I had two great examples this week of one secondary school. They were short of aim computing science teachers, so they worked with their local college. In a fifth and sixth year, the pupils go to the college for HNCs, which is a great qualification for them to end up with. In another secondary school, only yesterday in West Lothian, again shortage in computing, they retrained one of their teachers with an interest, but at the same time they had created a partnership with a cyber security company in the local area that is using drones for the cyber security around the businesses there. They have co-created courses that are engaging for the young people, upskilling the staff and the school, but giving the children these great experiences, so it is a win-win through that co-creation. We are terrible people because we always want the negatives rather than the positives. Since you have chosen computer science, I am a terrible person. Alistair, on the other hand, is a wonderful person. He will not ask you any negative questions at all. Since you have chosen computer science, how many computer science vacancies are there in Scottish secondary schools at the moment? I could not give you that figure, because the figures are held by each local authority as the employing authority, so each local authority would be able to give you those figures. Yes, but you must know that it is not education Scotland's responsibility to have a good grip of what is going on across education in terms of— Not teacher numbers. You are saying that it is not your responsibility to know what is going on? No, that is not what I said. Not teacher numbers in each school. The impact of all that and making sure that schools have creative solutions where there is no computing science teacher in there—that is very important. So all the schools don't have it. Teacher numbers is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Of course, through our inspection reports, we are reporting that. As you clearly see, we reported that on Friday. That is having an impact and we have reflected that that is the noise that we are hearing across the system. Teacher numbers is the responsibility of the Scottish Government. You might be better asking them, but they are not directed at colleagues. All right, thank you very much. I want to come back on the computing science. The example that Jenny gave there, the first one, is a computing science teacher in that school. This is what is fascinating about it. Because it is such a demand for youngsters from various things like cybersecurity coding and so on, they freed up the computing science teacher from teaching the traditional subjects and qualifications. The youngsters now do HNCs, which is a higher level than they were already doing with Dunia and Angus College. The teacher is there for free to develop more courses for more youngsters to meet their needs. That is the kind of creativity. Just before we move on, I can ask about your opening statement, Ms Gorman. You said that the pupils now will have gone their whole careers through curriculum for excellence, but then went on to say that there needs to be a mindset change in society about viewing where we are with it. The debate that you wanted to have was around that issue. It is very difficult for us to choose the debates that we want to have, because very often they are influenced from outside. For the parents and pupils, they have one chance at this, and the parents are one experience. Can you understand the concerns when people hear things like schools experimenting, as Mr Armstrong said, work in progress, they need to engage more? What could have been done more to have society and parents on board with that? Obviously, there is deep concern out there about the situation. Who is responsible for having moved that mindset and who is responsible for doing it now? There is a need, as I said in my opening statement, to share what is happening with CFE. Interestingly, as part of the inspection process, we talk to the parents and the community of any school during that process. Predominantly, across the board, parents are very positive about the experiences that their children and young people are having. They hear the narrative about what is wrong, but that is not my school, that is not my child's school. There is the odd exception, of course, but it is the general narrative that we get back. I think that what has happened with CFE is that we are very guilty and some of you have reflected today in our conversations about the kind of vocabulary that we use in education, the shorthands, the CFEs, all those acronyms and different vocabulary that we use, like any profession that has a specialist for vocabulary. I do not think that we have been all that good in Scotland about articulating what is happening and what that means out there for parents and for young people. That has become better over time, but there was perhaps a missed opportunity at the beginning of CFE to publicly talk about the four capacities, for instance. Fundamentally, the world agrees with those four capacities. Educational communities around the world will look at the construction of CFE. We have a future and flexible-based curriculum. What we need to do is to be able to talk about that locally, to be able to explain to a parent of someone in S2 at the moment. Those are the different choices and there are new, different and varied qualifications that will lead to that pathway. That is a societal piece. Everyone in the system has to shift that mindset. The more that we talk about a fluid and flexible senior phase and about getting off the ladder of traditional qualifications and having to pass through one gate to get to the next, we have to look at higher education, employers and the messages that they send to the system and to parents and young people about five hires in one sitting and about the value of that traditional model. There is more to do and we are ready to develop and to take that forward. The system is now, having gone through quite a bit of confidence building, having had, as we said earlier and have touched on secondary schools, very much engaged in six years' worth of changes to qualifications. The debate that we are finding in schools is now shifted to the BGE and a very different DYW, developing the young workforce, varied qualification approach. We need to support that narrative nationally. There is lots of work going on around that and more to do, but so does the whole system. Parents generally, the voice that they want to listen to, it is not mine, it is the local school. They want to listen to parental engagements about the local school, so I know that there are lots of leadership development and work happening about community links, but more needs to be done and we picked that up in our inspection about working more closely at an earlier stage with parents in particular in curriculum design across Scotland. The convener mentioned to Ms Gorman at the start that we have had an extraordinary number of responses to this. The vast majority of which are extremely articulate, not using jargon, and making the very strong point that they believe that subject choice has been diminished. Do you agree or disagree with most of those representations? Without having seen the content of them, it would be ill-placed for me to make a comment about them specifically. Sorry, this is the committee papers that I am referring to. But having not had the individual dialogue, I would want to know about the context for each one. Our evidence-based inspection shows that we are recognising that, we are recognising that, where there are teacher shortages in particular, there has been a reduction in the curriculum, and that is sporadically around the country, but predominantly around the edges of the country. We recognise that there has been a reduction in some schools in curriculum offer, as I said earlier and in response to the first question, and that we would like to support schools to look at that innovation and to widen that more. Can I confirm that you have read all the evidence about this? Yes. Because it is not all about teacher numbers, although that is very important. Do you accept that there are serious concerns about the number of subjects that are being offered in different year groups in different schools and that the general opinion of the evidence that we have received is that that choice has been diminished? Do you accept that? I accept that the general evidence that you have submitted absolutely represents that view, yes. Right. If you are accepting that, could you explain why you think that subject choice has been diminished in Scotland? I think that one of the major factors has been teacher numbers, but also some of it has been about curriculum innovation. It has been about choice. It has been about thinking about what young people want. If we take the answer that I gave Mr Scott earlier about thinking about the wider qualifications, the wider qualifications are taking up more of the curriculum choice, and that should be seen as a positive, because young people are doing HNCs or modern apprenticeships or different pathways or wider learning, Duke of Edinburgh, salt hire awards, that whole range. It is about the definition of qualifications and subject choice. If we look at the outcomes of CFE, we are seeing that much more fluid picture and that wider landscape of qualifications. Can I just pick you up on two points about this? Many of those responses are pointing to the fact that their schools are offering fewer choices and higher and fewer advanced hire. They are also pointing to the fact that there is no facility to bypass national 5. Those qualifications matter a lot to the pupils and parents, and they matter a lot to colleges and universities. I fully understand and support the fact that there is a wider spectrum of qualifications, but when it comes to what was described by the Scottish Government as the gold standard of qualifications in hire and advanced hire, do you accept that there has been a diminished availability of many of those subjects in many schools? I think that what we have to think about here is the qualification, sorry, is the consortia arrangements that local authorities have. Sorry, I don't understand that. What do you mean by that? I'll just explain. In many local authorities, and now across a number of local authorities, because of the size of Scottish schools, in order to offer the widest range of curriculum choice, there are sometimes what are called in different areas different things, but consortia arrangements where you have maybe three schools coming together, because across them they might have 15 young people who want to do a particular hire subject, or even less than that, sometimes at advanced hire. They will timetable collectively so that the young people still get to experience that offer, but one of the schools becomes the host school. They have an offer and young people are able to take that subject. They have a shared curriculum offer across three schools, or five schools, or sometimes in a city, a city campus model, so that they are addressing and making the choice wider for young people rather than narrower. At an individual school level, the choice in some of those areas might be less, but collectively the offer to young people is wider, because it is offered across three schools, for instance, or five or six. I have to say, Ms Gorman, that I don't think that we would have had the kind of responses to our committee if that was accepted by most people. Can I just ask about this business of teacher shortages? You seem to think that that is the main problem. I fully accept that you are not responsible for the employment of teachers. That is absolutely true, but is it not your job to know where those teacher shortages are specifically in subjects and to be able to address some of the issues about subject choice, which, as I say, has been very much part of our committee evidence, to know exactly where those problems are? You hinted earlier that you didn't think that it was your responsibility to know about where the teacher shortages are. I think that that is a perception and certainly not the comments that we were trying to make. We know that we can tell the number of teachers where the issues are in two different ways. One, by the report published last week, is the thematic where there is a deep dive, and also from the range of on-going inspections. Where inspectors in a secondary school inspection think that there is tension between the availability of teachers and the offer that can be made to the young people. There are no links with other schools, there is no video conferencing or whatever to provide that offer. Then they would make that remark in inspections. All of our evidence then would—the Scottish Government is aware—we can make the Scottish Government aware as and when we think that there are particular issues geographically, whatever, and I know that many occasions have made exactly those points. It is passing that information on to the Government in terms of teacher numbers, subject teacher numbers, etc. I just finished my remarks. Does Education Scotland know how many teachers we are short in each subject, even if it is not your fault that there are these shortages? Does Education Scotland know exactly where the teacher shortages are? We do not have an audit of every school in Scotland. There is a senior phase with a piece of research that the Government is now going to commission—in fact, it has commissioned, but it is just scoping it up at the moment—that will look at the number of subjects in each school, availability of subjects, etc. That is a Government decision to do that troll across every secondary school in Scotland, so that will be coming. We know how many teachers are available nationally, and we know from the teacher census and all kinds of things that the same information that you would have and the public has. Thank you, convener. I just followed on to that because I have touched on some of the issues around rural areas. Do you have a view on what the minimum available offer should be in terms of subjects? I get the idea that there should be flexibility and schools should be able to decide up to a point, but is there a minimum in terms of delivering equity and excellence for all young people in Scotland that you would expect to see in all schools? I give a couple of practical illustrations, because I do not think that we would be in a position of saying that there is a minimum number of subjects. If we are still in this debate, we are talking about traditional subjects, and I am not sure that we are. We are basing our judgments, our help, our support on the school's rationale for what its children need and its youngsters need. Is it okay, then, that schools in my constituency that young people are unable to take the subjects that would enable them to do veterinary studies or medicine? Is that an acceptable minimum? I am going to give an illustration from Highland. I remember last time talking to Mr Mandela from Dumfries and Galloway. I will not use an example from Dumfries and Galloway today. There are not any good examples from Dumfries and Galloway. That is why I am so angry. That is your view. I am not engaging in that. We engaged in that the last time. In relation to what is going on just now, for instance, in Highland, I just wanted to give an illustration of what is happening as we speak. When I spoke earlier on a dinner submission, we mentioned that there is a natural evolving process in the senior phase, and part of that has to be about tackling where children want to study subjects that they cannot easily access directly in their own school. In Highland, last Friday, they are moving towards—I recommend that people look at it—what they are calling the Highland senior phase strategy. They are talking about 29 secondary schools plus two or three additional special needs schools, which deal with and cater for youngsters in their senior phase of learning. They have the advantage of having three college bases there and also UHI, and they are moving towards a system whereby a child in a week or a child in anvernase can see what is an offer and can access so if they want a specialist subject for whatever reason, they can access that in, for instance, digitally or in other ways, as Gail Gorman said, consortia arrangements. There is a high level of ambition around that, and they have already started that work, so I recommend that you look at that as an example. I have to look at what happens in the Highlands, but it is not for Education Scotland to look at what is happening in Dumfries and Galloway and identify that there is a serious problem, because consortia arrangements all sound very nice. Straight away, we get on to talking about cities, but my experience is that the consortia arrangements do not work well where schools are so far apart, and the reason why schools are small in rural areas is because it is not reasonable to ask pupils to travel that distance, and it wastes a huge amount of their time travelling backwards and forwards. They are far away from colleges. The other resources are not there. If we use that example that illustrates exactly what you have just talked about, the western isles are very remote and rural and small and isolated communities and learners, so the innovation of Esgall, the electronic medium that has been used to ensure that that offer that Joan talked about is particularly strong, it is engaging and ensuring that young people have as wide an offer as possible by having that digital medium, and we have to look at that in education for 21st century learners. That Esgall model is now working in eight other local authorities and has also been modelled and used as a model of best practice that authorities such as Dumfries and Galloway and other rural authorities are looking at and thinking about how that model works for them. There are individual schools in Dumfries and Galloway who are working very hard at this and achieving impact and success by making connections locally and across the local authority and outwith the local authority, which is the model Esgall and others is enabling Scotland to do. I do not deny that individual schools are working very hard. There are lots of excellent teachers and lots of staff busting it up, but my impression is that they and the pupils in these schools do not feel very well supported. Do you think genuinely that e-learning is a viable alternative and is better than having a teacher in the classroom who thinks that that is the same experience for pupils? If you look at the recent evaluation that was taken out of Esgall, it has very clear measures of impact on young people's attainment and feedback from young people themselves was extremely positive. It is done in partnership. It is not like a television screen in an empty room and just young people there. It is not done like that. There is a teacher in the room, another teacher within the room, there is facilitation, there is usually people support assistance and it is very much a collaborative and learning experience. The evaluation shows that young people felt very strongly that that was an effective model. Do you feel that it works equally well in all subjects? You have to think about where that would be appropriate. If you were talking about home economics, a practical subject, you would need to think about at what point would that be appropriate because there would be practical learning experience that children and young people need to engage with. Obviously, it is not like a ready-steady cook. You would not necessarily be doing it in that way. For some, it is absolutely appropriate. For others, for part of the learning, it would be appropriate. However, it is about the construction of the course by the teachers and the educators to make sure that young people get the best out of it. My question is how does that system allow people to do something like advanced higher chemistry? Because they do advanced higher chemistry because they have some taught sessions that are done through S-School or done through a collaborative approach, and then they have other sessions that are led and developed as workshops in the school. So you still need to qualify teachers and people present in the school to deliver those subjects? Yes, but it allows the range and the design and the number of young people to be extended, but it is currently not the issue. If all this is available and happening elsewhere, why is it not happening across the country? Because it is about system development. It is about schools moving forward on that journey, and it is much more widespread than it was a few years ago. It still needs to go further. We still want to develop that. Sometimes it is infrastructure, sometimes it is the stage in the development. Equally, it is about the learners in the school and the local school making the decision about what best makes their needs. There are still people missing out at the moment because we are on a journey and we are not there yet. That is your perception. Our evidence is shown that there is great strides being made in system change and system movement, particularly in the past two years. What we are seeing more and more is some school innovation, but a much richer discussion between local authorities and local authorities is getting a grip of this now and looking very carefully at what is available and making sure that, in situations that you are suggesting, there is advanced hair chemistry, there is a block of time with the local college to do some real practical work with the equipment that is required, etc., and it is topped up. That is what we are looking at creatively. Thank you, Mr Mundell. I have a quick supplementary question. Do you have a point here? East Skoll, which is a great thing that is described as being in the Western Isles, is headquartered in the Western Isles, but perhaps it is relevant to Mr Mundell's question. It is available and used by other local authorities. It is not a Western Isles thing, so it is open to another local authority should they need it to go in. My question is absolutely accepting what Mr Mundell is saying about the need for human interaction. If you are in a school in Argyll or Uist or somewhere where the option is to have a class in advanced hair with one person, surely having some kind of East Skoll or something like it is actually widening subject choice rather than that. That is the tension that we are sitting in just now. I am thinking of several schools who have doubled what is on offer. I am wary of using the word subject if we are still all talking about traditional subjects. In other words, what I learned at school. The range of options typically is expanding. Youngsters are making more informed and precise choices. We cannot look at that in a one-to-one correlation of an adult being there for whatever that subject or topic is. We have to get some flexibility in it and that is where the digital offer and why what East Skoll in particular is offering is exciting because it is also looking at pedagogy. It is looking at how do you teach an advanced hire in physics or whatever to a group of two children, some of whom might be sitting in Dumfries and Galloway or another two in Aberdeen. That is what is exciting about that just now. Youngsters are responding really well to that and why would they not? I understand exactly in remote communities where there are very few young people as creative as possible in order to allow them access to subjects, but I wonder if an equality impact assessment has been done in the policy in terms of which schools in a city like Glasgow would be in circumstances where they would be expected to make consortium arrangements, as opposed to those who would have access to them in their school? I am sure that the local authority, if it went to consortium arrangements— With respect, you are saying that consortium arrangements are a good thing. What is a city equality impact assessment? Have you made where those consortiums will necessarily be organised as opposed to places where they will not be organised? I will give you an example. In some parts of Glasgow, you will not be able to do five fires. If you want to do five fires or you want to aspire to do a subject university or further education that would require that group of subjects, you will have to be involved in a consortium arrangement of some sort. In another school, half a mile away, where you are already, you could argue, be advantaged, you will not have to go anywhere to do those five subjects. You can do them all within your school. What I am asking you is whether you have done an equality impact assessment on a consortium proposal that you have already said is a good thing. We would not have done an equality impact assessment because it would have been for the local authority when their design was offered. You would not do an equality impact assessment on a proposal that you are commending to us when it may in fact reveal that some young people would be obliged to go into a consortium arrangement when other young people would not. There is therefore an issue about your already disadvantaged education system and your advocating a system that will increase that disadvantage. Surely, as an agency, you would be expected to look at what the impact of the proposal that you are commending would be on young people who are already disadvantaged. That would not be our understanding because our reflections are that we already have inspected numerous schools who are part of consortia, because consortia is not a new innovation in some areas of the country that they have been around for 10 years maybe. My respect is the focus that we are having. I am asking you to address the question. I think that I clearly addressed that we would not be doing that. In an individual school, they have a consortium arrangement. It is necessary for them to offer young people a bridge above subjects. I am asking you whether you have looked at that, whether there is an equality impact on some young people when it looks as if they are having access to the same education as a young person up the road. In fact, they are not, because they are having to travel to do one hire and then come back, so they are losing time. It may be that it is a necessary proposal. I am asking you whether you have looked at whether it is a proposal. You look at individual schools, but have you ever compared one school with another? When the youngster in one school will be different from the one in another school, the consortium proposal may reinforce that. If you are commending that as an option, when in fact what it may mean is that it is increasing disadvantage to young people, is that not something that is your responsibility? The responsibility for the curriculum delivery lies at the school level. If they have changed their curriculum offer, if they have designed something that meets the needs of their learners and they can justify that and that they are able, with their community and with the support of their pupils and learners, to see that impact positively, that would be for them to do. Our role is when we inspect schools, one of our quality indicators, to look at equity. If we were to pick up through that that there was a significant impact on any particular learner group for any particular reason, that would be reported back. It is not within the school, not talking about within the school. But within the school offer, the curriculum consortium offer, if we inspect a secondary school we look at the curriculum as a whole. If children are going to two other secondary schools that would be taken into and evaluated and so therefore we would be able to pick that up there. So we have a system where we would pick that up. What would you then do? We would then report it. If it was an issue it would then be one of the areas for development. There would probably be an action for our follow-through inspection and there would be a conversation with the local authority. We have clear processes if there was a concern through inspection. With respect, you have already commended consortium arrangements. You are now saying that at no point has it occurred to the Education Scotland to assess whether, in fact, there is an equality issue here between the school. That is not what I am saying. That is your interpretation of what I am saying. Right. That is not what I am saying. So you have looked at that then. I have tried to say several times that what we would do is the local authority, if they are changing their curriculum offers, current common practice would be the local authority would take that through their education committee or their equivalent and they would do an equality impact assessment. That is the duty of where local authority responsibility for education sits. We would, in our role through inspection, as we would with any inspection, we would be looking at the quality of education that is provided for those young people, not just within the walls of the institution, but within the quality of education experiences that they have. We would report through our normal processes on that. That has not changed and that is clearly our role and our duty to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ring Mr Greeran? I want to stick with this point about consortiums. Ms Gorman, do you accept that, while they might reduce the problem, they are simply displacing it? A pupil who has to travel to another school to take up a subject is either going to miss the opportunity, for example, extracurricular activities at lunchtime or after school, or they miss part of or all of the period on either side of the one where they have gone to another school to study. It might reduce the problem because it has given them the opportunity to study that subject. It has caused them to miss out on other opportunities. Mr Greeran, where we find local authorities who are looking very closely at those consortium arrangements, they are taking those matters into account. The evidence that we have from young people—I have spoken to many young people who are involved in those—is that the motivation that they receive from going to that different school or whatever and being involved in the activities in that other school can more than compensate. Hold on, Mr Armstrong. You are saying that the motivation from going to another school to get a subject that, if they had simply been a pupil at that other school, they would have had availability of in the first place, the motivation compensates for the fact that they will have missed out on the opportunity to take part in either an extracurricular activity, a band of football team whatever at lunchtime or the opportunity to fill a period in their timetable with other study. No, I can see it happening in two different ways. I can see them still being able to attend various activities in their own school, in the times that they are not in a different school, or I can also see them as I can see them joining in a different school. I suggest that you please do not again suggest that the motivation that they get from it getting the subject to another school compensates for this. If the school football team in their year group practices on a Thursday lunchtime, but they have to travel on a Thursday lunchtime to another school to get their subject, they cannot participate in that school football team. That would be true with any other extracurricular activity, it would be true with anything that they are missing out of in the timetable. Can you not just concede that having to travel to another school to take up a subject reduces their opportunity to do something else? I accept that it is fantastic that they get the opportunity to take up that subject, but can you not see that other opportunities are lost? Surely that is just a statement of fact. There may be opportunities that are lost if we are visiting a school or inspecting a school, and that kind of issue comes through the questionnaires from young people that they are missing out, or that they certainly come through discussions with inspectors in there, or discussions that I have had that they have not come up, but they may have come up in other schools in there, then that would be noted in there as actually back to this equality impact that young people are missing out on Duke of Edinburgh because it is on on a Thursday afternoon and they are at the college. What is the school doing about it? Absolutely. If it was a fundamental issue in there, we would expect the school to address it and actually to be aware of it when they are designing it. That is part of, again, some of the work that we are moving into that Joan may wish to discuss with some other local authorities, where they are actually looking at the whole offer across a local authority as more of a local authority or regional type of offer, to make sure that anything like this where a young person may feel they are being missed out is catered for. If it is an issue at the moment and I have not come across it, if it is an issue and we pick it up, then we would certainly flag it. However, when we are working now in the future and we are beginning to build up more work in schools, as Gail noted at the start, we would certainly be aware of those issues. To move to the wider point, what work has Education Scotland done to evaluate the impact of deprivation on subject choice and availability? Every inspection that we look at looks at the curriculum offer, the uptake in the curriculum and the achievement of young people in the context of that school. Where they feel that the learning pathways of young people are not being met, either because the curriculum offer in that school is not right, some people's needs just are not reflected, or indeed there are not the links with other schools to provide it, or links to anything else, then that would be noted. I get how the overall infection programme works and I get how you would identify those issues within an individual school. I will not be able to answer your initial question. The Scottish attainment challenge, we have attainment advisers in all 32 local authorities who are working directly with individual schools and working with them on their plans. As part of the Scottish attainment challenge work, we report regularly. It used to be quarterly, it is now biannual, on the detail of every local authority and the schools and what they are doing to close the equity gap. They are looking at the offer, the approach, their use of a variety of approaches, local authority, people equity fund and others. We are looking and directly reporting on that on a regular basis. Can you tell me now what impact does deprivation have on subject choice in our schools? Our evidence is showing that the deprivation factor has not been as significant as perhaps we would have went in with an initial hypothesis. It is about the range and quality and often in relation particularly to SAC local authorities, Scottish attainment challenge authorities and funded schools. Because of the additional resource that they have, they have been able to continue to offer and, quite innovatively in many cases, offer quite a wide range of a curriculum offer and its variety and experiences within it, very rounded and strong offer on the basis of that. What we are finding is that sometimes it is areas in which they are not challenge authorities or they are not receiving significant funding for people equity fund, that sometimes that is more of a factor in terms of the curriculum offer and what they are able to do. Geography and demographics still always play a part, so sometimes the ability to recruit teachers as we started the discussion on that. The Times newspaper education correspondent did some work on that and found that in areas where a school will have more than three quarters of its pupils living in an area of deprivation, the average offer at higher levels is 17 subjects. In an area where less than one in four of the children at the school are living in an area of deprivation, the average offer at higher levels is 23 subjects. What is your response to that? We need to delve down into that more deeply, school by school. The point is, how appropriate is the offer? Mr Armstrong, hold on. They put those numbers out 18 months ago, so you have had 18 months to delve into that. How appropriate is the offer in each school to the young people that are there at any time? What is the full range on offer in there? Yes, there is a large catalogue of SQA hires, but there are many more courses at the same level as higher. There are short courses, qualifications and awards that young people can build up. Rather than just looking at it through that one lens, you have to look carefully at the entire offer. That is part of the research that the Government is bringing to commission, which is to look much more deeply, not just at what might be seen as one awarding body or indeed one group of subjects, but what is the entirety of the offer being available. We know in the past few years that the number of skills-based qualifications, courses and awards has more than doubled in Scotland up to 50,000 last year. Many schools in all kinds of areas are offering those kinds of courses. We would be interested in getting underneath those statistics and looking much more broadly at the young people and whether the short courses, full courses they are on, match what they require. That can change every year. Does Education Scotland accept that, if I were a pupil choosing hires in a school in Scotland in one of its most deprived communities, I would have on average six less hires offered to me than an equivalent pupil in an area that is certainly not deprived? No, we would not accept that. That is the fact that that article was based on and that research was based on. Our experience and our evidence is showing us that there are other factors and that, to use that one indicator, would be unfair to the system. That one indicator is very relevant if I want the hires that I need to get into university courses. I accept absolutely the points that you made about the expansion of non-traditional subjects, the expansion of other qualifications and other opportunities at apprenticeships, but if we are to get more working-class Scottish pupils into university, they need hires. However, the school that they go to, the area that they live in, how deprived it is clearly has a significant impact on the number of hires that are available to them. Does Education Scotland accept that? That is not our experience. I am telling you that that is the reality. I can only tell you what our evidence tells you. Our evidence is not indicating that. Education Scotland has looked into the higher availability in our schools based on the level of deprivation in the area and have found that there are no significant differences between our most and least deprived communities. As a nation, are we seeing that differential? I clearly said that looking through our evidence reports around the Scottish attainment challenge, where our most deprived schools are clustered, that that is not the evidence that we are currently seeing. We are seeing sporadic pockets of choices but are based on a variety of factors that we have already articulated through our earlier answers. The committee would benefit from you supplying the evidence that contradicts what the times is telling us. There seems to be a pretty simple set of FOI requests from 32 councils, so I think that we would find it very benefit... The Scottish attainment challenge reports are in the public domain? I do not think that the Scottish attainment challenge reports contradict what I am telling you about the availability of higher subject choice, but I do not think that we are going to get any further forward with this. We have been talking quite a lot about breadth of choice, and I wanted to come back to ask a couple of questions about outcomes and attainment, and to ask for clarification on a couple of paragraphs in your written evidence. In paragraph 4 of the written evidence, I was talking about the changes to senior phase, and it says that that might well mean young people taking fewer qualifications. It goes on to say that we should be comfortable with these changes as it enables schools and partners to prepare young people with 21st century learning knowledge and skills. Now that reflects some of the evidence that you have given Gail today. Can I be very clear then that what this is saying is that young people doing fewer qualifications is not an unintended consequence of curricular change. It is an objective of that curricular change. Yes, it is part of the design within senior phase. Young people experience not just qualifications, but a whole range of leadership volunteering, a wider experience that helps them for their lives. Good, but pupils coming out with fewer exam passes is a deliberate outcome of the curriculum. We are measuring attainment differently. We are measuring young people's attainment achievement on the point of exit from the senior phase when they are 18 years old. Wherever that learning has taken place within 18-year-old nowadays, we are not looking at the figures year on year so much as what is it that young people are exiting with and those statistics are going up both in terms of the qualifications that they have and of the standard. Back in the day, building the curriculum 3 guidance that came out to school some time ago clearly articulates that and talks about a changed and a different set of qualifications and about an exit point rather than measuring at S4. That certainly was part of the architecture of the design of CFE was to get that variety and range to reflect individual needs. Okay, but that's not happening, is it, because the evidence to the committee show that for those who exit with national level qualifications, they are coming out with fewer qualifications. Indeed, if you look at the percentage of young people who leave school with no formal qualifications in the last two years, that percentage has increased year on year. It's a small number, but it's going in the wrong direction. But, again, behind those statistics are the range of courses that young people are taking, short courses and long courses, not all of which may appear in statistics, in the current set of statistics. No, but I'm sorry, Mr Armstrong, but a moment ago you said that young people were coming out with more qualifications. That's not true for that cohort of young people who leave with national qualifications rather than higher. Yes, but it's the range of qualifications that they have that it's the latest and best qualification. Those short courses are not recognised qualifications. They are recognised, but they could be very bespoke qualifications for certain young people for whom national 4, national 5 and national 3 are not appropriate. There could be skills-based courses, community-based qualifications. You're talking about it. There could be salt air awards. They could be working in the community awards for young people with very particular requirements. Okay. One of the other things that the evidence that the committee has received would appear to indicate is that the changes that we're talking about have led to a number of subjects being squeezed out of the curriculum languages, in particular computer science, which we've spoken about as well today. Perhaps you could explain how a change which has that effect is going to prepare young people with 21st century learning, knowledge and skills for modern life. Yes, in two different ways. One is that the senior phase, sorry, the broader education was purposely designed as providing a much higher platform of learning and a platform of expectations of learning by the age of S3. It was designed as what you might call the educated young Scot. The experience and outcomes that young people are entitled to experience right up to the age of 15 take them to a higher level than would have been the case under the previous system. Over the S4 to S6, many schools are looking at that as one group of young people. For areas such as modern languages, young people in fourth year can be working with young people in fifth year. However, there's also, within modern languages— Sorry, just for my own understanding, are you saying that it doesn't matter that languages are squeezed out of the senior phase because the level of achievement in language in S12 and S3 is now greater than ever was? In two ways. There's a stronger experience of modern languages up to S3, but languages start in primary 1 now as well under the Government's 1 plus 2 languages initiative, and then another language comes in 5. It doesn't matter that young people can't study languages because they've been squeezed out of the senior phase curriculum because they've been studied in the early years. Not all young people studied a language at one time anyway, but nowadays they do start off at the end of S3 with a much stronger understanding, but again there are a mixed range of course options over S4 or S6. A young person may not study in S4, but he can pick it up in S5 or S6, or indeed there are many short courses available for young people to pick up language learning or other subject learning over their S4, S5, S6. I'm conscious of the time, and I do want to ask about another paragraph in the evidence. Paragraph 9 is about promoting young people's mental wellbeing. It says that it talks about an increase in stress in mental health issues for young people, and then it says that there is no doubt that large numbers of examinations in year on year examinations over S4 to S6 are a cause for stress in many young people. Is that paragraph saying that a reduction in the number of subjects that people study towards formal examinations is in part being delivered in order to reduce stress and improve mental health? Is that the purpose of that change? I think that the issue is that we have quite a lot of engagement with a learner panel that's newly set up and talking to young people, and we've been doing some work with Young Scott and others across the year of young people. Actually, the persistent narrative that the young people—and I'm sure that those giving evidence to you may also articulate this—is that they are coming under huge pressure that they put on themselves, some of it, and some of the societal pressure and anxiety around a whole host of things, but in particular they are quite anxious and rightly about their own success, about examinations, about the workload across particularly key year groups. One of the things that CFE should be delivering in its senior phase is a phasing of that, and it's actually thinking that if we get away from that ladder and a gate from national 5 to higher, to advanced higher, and actually you've got a young person who's really gifted in a particular area or just has a strength in mathematics, actually don't necessarily need to do the national 5. They could go in at higher and they could do that and not have that subject at S4 or equally take out a few, so they're only doing four subjects and then pick up another two the next year or another two etc. It's about that fluid and flexibility and the ability for schools to identify that and to help to take out some of the additional stressors that are in the system when young people and teenagers are actually coming through quite a lot of changes anyway, so schools are working and working really closely with their own learner panels and schools to think about what they can do to reduce that and how we as a system can make sure we don't add further pressure to young people's mental health. We want them to have health and wellbeing. This sentence says that there is no doubt that large numbers of examinations and year and year examinations over S4 or S6 are a cause for stressing many young people and I just wonder, apart from the dialogue you've had with learner panels, what the evidence is for that sentence? That has mainly been the evidence from those discussions, from the individual pupil discussions that happened during inspections and from the experience of things such as events that we all attend around the year of young people around school celebration events where young people will often engage with the wider team and talk to us, as well as the teacher panel. The teacher panel articulates that one of the major priorities, as do unions, is to focus in and repeat that this has come from their evidence, that mental health and wellbeing of young people has been affected and is affected by the stress that comes through an examination diet sometimes quite tightly to the channel. Clinical evidence around mental health to support that? No, not in the way that we have articulated there. To follow on from Ian Gray's line of questioning briefly, was the fall in the take-up of languages anticipated when the senior phase was designed? A comment here on the falling languages, my understanding is that there has been a falling languages generally across the UK, and that is the trend. Some of that is due to the point that I am trying to make to young people's own choices. I can say that today as a parent trying to convince young people to do that. Young people have an attitude to language now that partly it is because they have done sometimes French for a long time and the view is that I have done enough of that now, I know enough of that and it is not a choice for qualification. That plays into it hugely. I have not got any statistical evidence to prove that to you, but that is the conversation that goes on from young people. Does that concern Education Scotland? Any loss of any option is a concern, so I think that we want to keep all of that in play. Can I also ask how it interacts with the STEM strategy, because there clearly are problems there and how the design of the senior phase is compatible? What do you see as the problems with the STEM strategy? What do you see as the problems? Clearly, we are encouraging people that there is a wider issue around STEM and obviously there is a huge push to get more people into that. Do you think that the senior phase encourages people? I encourage people into STEM or conflicts with languages. If I can come back to the kind of comment that I made earlier on, STEM, by its very nature, just the fact that you have these three or four subjects that coalesce around making up STEM and what STEM is, is providing a lot of impetus in the system just now, all the debate and the conversation on what has already taken place in the kind of very short year that we have had since the strategy was launched. It brings together that focus on what is going on in BGE right through from primary onwards around interdisciplinary learning or project-based learning, so getting people to see STEM, that the science is working together with maths and so on. I think that what we are seeing is that STEM, the strategy and the work that is going on, has provided an energy in the system, which comes back to what I said earlier on about the requests for further help with BGE and the planning and designing of that. At the moment, we are looking at that as a very positive move forward. Is it translating into the senior phase? Is it active in the senior phase? What we are seeing is an uptake of such a much wider range of opportunities in STEM, particularly in the sciences. Rather than perhaps looking at higher physics, higher chemistry, national five physics or chemistry, young people have options around about fish industries. The application of science in different areas is allowing those pathways to grow quite a bit, so we are seeing different kinds of STEM opportunities opening up in there. We have mentioned already cyber security being an area that young people find very interesting, and they can see the potential in work from that. We are seeing it manifesting itself in the breadth of choice that schools are beginning to offer. An example comes to mind, because we were working with the school growth academy and it has for I think two years, it is into its third year, it had offered advanced higher engineering science, I think that is what it is called, engineering science. Two or three years ago in consultation with parents in the youngsters, their view was that the advanced higher wasn't given the youngsters what they were wanting or what they were needing because of conversations they were having with employers and universities. They have created an interdisciplinary approach, a project-based learning approach where youngsters do in their sixth year an engineering project. The results of that are something that we want to share more widely with other schools, but they have been pretty impactful for young people. The feedback from that is something that we are going to explore and develop a bit further. I want to say in the outset that the panel knows that I am supportive of the CFE and the flexibility that goes along with it. They probably also anticipate that I am going to ask about languages and then focus in on Gaelic. However, on the former, just looking at languages in general, can it possibly be a good thing for Scotland that the number of formal qualifications in languages declined by 18 per cent in fourth year between 2014 and 2018? It is a concern, as Joan Articulate wants, for our young people to be global citizens and we want them to be able to communicate in order to do that. I think that that is something that, up post the SQA examination diet and the results that we have been looking at in terms of Education Scotland and working with our partners across the sector in developing language learning. The statistic that you quoted there is the S4 drop, and I think that we just need to reflect that there will be young people who will pick that up particularly in S5, given the comments that Joan said earlier. Is there evidence that a significant number of people are doing what you have just said on picking up languages in S5, given what you said about the fact that people, in many cases, think that they have had enough of languages and thought of that? I do not have the evidence for that. I know that that is the conversations that young people have. You know that they will drop it now and they will pick it up later. I think that it is an interesting thing to find out if they do pick it up later, because there is a perception that there are certain qualifications that they can pick up later and crash or do them in higher stages. I do not have the data to support that. One of the critical moffern in senior phase that we need to be looking at more is what are the options. If young people do not wish to do full qualification, what are the short courses that prepare them for what they might be doing and thinking about doing in the next stage of their learner journey up to 24th through the whole learner journey approach? Our schools are aware enough, our teachers are aware enough, our teachers are ready to offer a much better variety of opportunities for young people in the senior phase. I suppose that that leads into another question. You have said there about when it comes to languages that one of the driving forces in this is that choice is the choice that young people themselves are making and how again to come back to this point that some young people in third year feel that they have learned enough about certain things. I as a grumpy 14-year-old felt that I had done quite enough of several subjects at school, thank you very much. The school kind of saved me from myself by making sure that I did take a variety of subjects in third and fourth year. I am just slightly concerned as to whether we are looking for the gaelic here for lessy fare. I think that it is comical you. Are we completely lessy fare here about what people are doing in third and fourth year? As I say, I support what CFE is doing, I support this flexibility, I understand that when it comes to languages there are languages for life I think they are called in all manner of other courses. Are we completely agnostic about the fact that there has been almost a 20 per cent drop in formal qualifications in fourth-year languages? No, I do not think that we are agnostic about that. We are seeing here that we need a bit more work to understand why it is that youngsters are choosing to drop languages for other things. I do not think that that is down to the number of column choices. I think that it is much wider than that. Certainly what we are picking up in all of our conversations with youngsters is far more questioning about the purpose of learning and why they are doing something. There is that belief that they can pick it up from wherever the internet is. I suppose that we all had in being degrees. In the broad-genar education children are still being asked to study a language right up until the end of third year. That would still be the normal ask. At that point, why do they choose not to take a qualification in it? That probably bears more examination and question around what is going on there. We know of individual departments who are far more active in making the language whatever it is, French, Spanish, applicable, purposeful. I do not want to quote any schools just now because I am not secure enough of the facts and I would not want to land them in it. Schools have been very more hands-on, applying the learning and applying the language in real situations. That is more attractive to young people. On Gaelic specifically in that case, the decline for the number of people taking either fluent or learner Gaelic national 5 has been much more extreme. I do not have the figure in front of me, but it is much more extreme than the figure that I quoted for language. It is probably between twice and three times as extreme. That is surely at odds with the increase in the number of people going through primary school entirely in the medium of Gaelic, the increase of interest in Gaelic. Have you done any study into what unusual factors can possibly drive such an extreme drop in the number of people doing those two subjects in Gaelic? Is everybody looking at me because of me? I am not looking at you, but I am trying to look at you. I think we have always known as you have been a struggle to get, you know, there is an increasing number of youngsters now coming through GME and that is great to see, but equally there is the issue of do we get enough subject teachers and is there a wide enough variety of subjects in Gaelic medium at the other end? That is an ongoing issue about where you get the staffing to support. I am not talking about staffing. I am talking about schools that have Gaelic teachers where there has been a decline in the number of young people taking Gaelic. I am probably not close enough to Mr Allen to give an answer to that. I will check my notes, but I do not think that I can give you a direct answer to that at the moment. In that case, can I ask about again related to Gaelic regional improvement collaborative, since this was mentioned earlier on in another context. Education Scotland is making appointments to those in doing so, given its Gaelic strategy and so on. Does it fully recognise the distinction between Gaelic as a subject, as we have just talked about just now, and Gaelic medium education and is part of its strategy trying to overcome this situation that seems to have arisen with Gaelic as a subject in the curriculum in secondary? The colleague who has been assigned to one of the regional collaboratives is very much working on the basis of the density of schools that are offering Gaelic. That decision has been based on where the need is greatest. We should see some impact from that. I am looking for a one more dancer, hopefully, or as close to as we can get. From what you have said about broad general education and up to third year, does that mean that you are content that schools are still following a 2 plus 2 plus 2 model of curriculum for excellence? Almost a word, one more dancer. Yes, in the context of shaping the curriculum to meet the needs of the community and young people. As we said earlier, there are a variety of approaches to the delivery of the curriculum and that journey, and people are in different places around it. So there are still schools doing 2 plus 2 plus 2, is that me? It is not that easy to explain. The point is that it is 3 plus 3. Qualifications do not start until S4, S4 to S6, but, as we explained earlier in response to Ms Gail Ruth there, the learning for some qualifications starts in the primary school. It is the same as the learning for your driving test can start when you are young and you are learning about observations on the road and what traffic lights mean etc etc. However, there could be situations in which pupils are stopping languages far earlier than third year. They should be achieved. Their entitlement is to experience all those experiences and outcomes up to the third curriculum level, over primary to S3. A quick supplementary question, Mr Paterson. It is very apt to be differential in terms of attainment. In my constituency, it is too separate and too different to councils. In one area, it is a challenged area, one area is a well-off area and the difference in choices is quite stark. So it is a chicken and egg question. You were saying about the pupils' choice. So if there are no teachers available, how does that work? Is it because there is a lack of particular teachers in a given area? Is it driven by the school or by the local authority? In my constituency, it is quite stark, the differential between the two. Local authorities employ the teachers and the range of teachers. So the cause of choice is because of lack of teachers in your view and specialist teachers? It is variable. That is particularly a factor in more rural areas, but it is also a factor in other areas, as I am sure you have heard from the individual evidence that is there. Sometimes it is about subjects. We have mentioned computer science. I do not want there to be really great computer science teachers out there as well, but there are certain areas at certain types where the flow of teachers from the initial teacher training into the system is very limited in some subject areas in Scotland. Sometimes it is that, sometimes it is geographical at a whole range of factors. Again, if you look at the numbers and if you compare my area, it is very similar to Glasgow in the situation there. I do not think that it is a coincidence anyway that where you have an area that is challenged, deprived and an area that is affluent, there is a differential. There is something happening there and it is something that I think we should be looking at very carefully. It seems to me that it is a lack of specialist teachers or teachers in particular subjects that causes this to kick in in the first place. Or the requirements and the wishes of the young people for the range of options that they wish to pursue in their senior phase. One follows the other. That is what we are looking at. That is the chicken and egg question that I am trying to raise. If there is no teacher there, then it ends. It does not get started if there is no teacher there. Although, as I said, schools are looking at much more creative ways to make sure that the young people, from S1 to S3, experience all the curriculum areas that they should. That would be our expectation in every inspection that young people experience the full entitlement up to the end of S3. You have that offer. Obviously, Education Scotland is a role in inspecting, but it is also a role in informing and shaping education policy. I would hope that it has a role in understanding how inequality can be reinforced by the education system. The suggestion that inequality comes because young people choose it is probably a bit of misrepresentation of what happens. I ask you specifically around an issue that has been flagged up anecdotally to me, but also in evidence, which is the number of subjects that are taught in bi and tri level classes. Do you have an analysis of where those bi and tri level classes are in the system? Again, no. We could not have classroom by classroom information at that kind of level. You would not know whether, disproportionately, young people have access to a number of levels. You would not know whether, in some schools or in some areas or in some communities, you are more likely, for example, to be taught higher physics in a tri level class than in other communities. We would not have a national overview of that. No. If we see it, we do see that in many schools, in our primary school, there is a range of learning needs as well. Where we do see that, it is a quality of learning teaching that really matters. Do you think that it is the same thing to be taught higher physics in a class with 20 other people doing higher physics as supposed to be in a class with somebody doing national 4, national 5 and advanced higher alongside you? Potentially, the learning experience in bi level tri level teaching can be very good. I have no doubt about that. Is it the same thing? Have you done an equality and impact assessment on a young person doing higher physics in a class with 20 peers also doing higher physics as opposed to a tri level class? Certainly, tri level classes have been going for a long, long time in small schools where they have always had S4 to S6 sometimes in the same class. Is it more or less? I would not know that. Do you know whether there is an increased frequency or not? I would not know the national overview of that. We do not have teacher numbers in every school and class information. Right, so we do not know that. Is an assessment done then on where geographically I accept rural remote fragile communities to understand that and also understand that schools make some individual choices? If you are talking about a young person in Glasgow, depending on which school they go to, they are more or less likely to be in a tri level class or a class where everybody is doing the one subject. Do you have any assessment of whether that makes any difference or not to that young person's learning? We would, when we are in school, do an inspection. Yes, we would have that at that time. You would not extrapolate that from a policy that says that we would think that it would be better for a young person to be—or for the teacher or whosoever—it would be better in terms of outcomes for the young person to be taught in a class where they are only doing one level. No, we do not have that level of analysis. You would not assess that? No. And you would not, in terms of educational policy, have a view on that? What happens in the classroom is really what matters in there because you could have a policy, but even if you had one person, one teacher, one cohort of pupils in there, if the teaching could still not be as good as having a tri level teaching— With respect to the standard, that is the inspection rule. I am asking you about education policy. Does Education Scotland have a view in a perfect world whether there is a consequence to a young person being taught in a tri level class as opposed to a one-level class? No. You have no view on that in an education policy. Because our inspection evidence— I am not asking you about inspection. If you would let me finish, our inspection evidence drives—the research base should drive our advice and our policy. That is absolutely—we have to be clear and articulate about that. We do not have a substantial body of evidence for our secondary inspection that shows that that is either a hindrance or a success, because we do inspect and we are respecting—we have a back catalogue of a number of inspections— that if that was coming up on a repeating factor as a significant issue, of course we would be reporting on that and we would be then talking about that and raising that as an issue with a variety of partners and stakeholders, including policy makers. We do not have anything coming out on a recurrent basis from our inspections that shows that that is either acutally successful in a model that should be developed in some subjects but not in others or conversely is having a negative effect. If we did, of course, we would take that forward. Would it be worth you doing the research? Ask a physics teacher how easy it is to teach at tri levels as opposed to one level? I accept that there is a quality of the teachers involved in this, but, surely, logic would tell you that some teachers are doing extremely well, despite the circumstances in which they find themselves. It seems evident to me that there are young people in some parts of Glasgow who will be obliged to do their higher physics with, if not in a consortium, away in another school with a consequence for that, but even inside the school are not getting the same experience as a child in another school. I am asking you whether it is something that you would at least look at in terms of equality impact. If you are already disadvantaged in your learning and you are there in learning, so even in a school with a big sixth year, say a fifth year, doing higher physics, so you might even have those who are aspiring to do the very highest medium and the lowest class all doing higher. In another school, you are in with 20 other young people, some of whom are doing one qualification and some of them are doing something else. Are you willing to look at the research, what the impact that is on the teacher, on a young person's wellbeing and the outcomes for them of those two different circumstances? We are always listening to the sector, we are always having conversations, we have just rearranged ourselves to be able to do that on a more regular basis. From the autumn term, we are going to have big conversations on important educational issues with teachers. We are co-constructing the agenda for those going forward across the summer term. If that is something that the profession feels that they want to talk about and engage with, of course we will. That is our role. It could be part of those big conversations, but we are engaging with the profession around what are the big topics that they wish to grapple with going forward. One of which is curriculum design, which we really need to spend some time having practitioners really collectively think about the future and offer across the country and locally for their young people. Another one is about how professional learning and professional leadership developed across Scotland, where those decisions would be evaluated at a local level and driven forward. We will certainly commit to asking in those conversations, is that a subject that people want to engage in and have a conversation about, and if they do we would certainly do that because we want to facilitate addressing some of those big issues in Scottish education. I am interested in establishing how many of those tri-level classes exist and in what subjects because teachers will also tell you that, even from my recollection while I was still teaching, general science, standard grade science at general foundation level, was a completely different beast from doing physics or chemistry or biology as a subject. There were completely different subjects and that applies in other subjects as well. I wonder whether you would look at that, but I would urge you, regardless of whether anybody raises it with you or not, if you are committed to equality in education, to at least examine whether we disproportionately have tri-level classes in poor and disadvantaged communities and an assessment of the consequence of that for those young people and for the teachers who are trying to do that with them, and an assessment of what clustering of subjects are coming under this by tri-level. Is it disproportionately languages? Is it disproportionately science and are there consequences to that as well? I think that that ends questions from the committee. I thank you all for your attendance at committee today. I am going to suspend until 14 minutes past. Just a quick comfort bake if people could be back in their seats and that will allow the panel to get in place as well. Good morning and can I welcome our second panel of representatives from Highlands and Islands Enterprise and hiring further education providers. Thank you very much for your patience. We were on a little bit on in our first session this morning, but you are very welcome this morning. Can I welcome Alasdair Sim, director of University Scotland. Scott Harrison, associate director of Learning Journey, City of Glasgow College, representing Colleges Scotland and Morvan Cameron, the head of universities, education and skills, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and also Dr Marcelli Nicolodge, vice principal and director of studies at Solmore Autistic. Thank you. I will move straight to questions. Can I go to Ms Mackay first? Can I direct my first question to Alasdair Sim? You heard the evidence that we took this morning. You have obviously seen the committee papers where there is considerable concern about the reduction in the availability of a vast majority of subjects. There is a lot of concern about that. As things stand just now, Mr Sim, are you aware of discussions within the university sector about the implications of that? It is obviously something that we are dealing with as one of the factors in the landscape and how we respond to that. From conversations that I have had around the sector at the moment, there is concern that some students in some schools, particularly in more deprived areas, are not having the range of opportunities that you would expect them to have at national five, higher and advanced higher, and that their opportunities for progression are being diminished by that. Your evidence is clear on that, for instance, that the 18 per cent fall in modern languages at SQF level five. Those are issues of concern. I think that when you are looking at it from a higher education perspective, part of the issue is what do you do to address that potential reduction of opportunity for learners in the senior phase? A lot of things are going on. Your evidence cites that the Glasgow Caledonia Advanced Higher Sub as an opportunity to increase opportunity for people from schools that cannot offer the full curriculum that you might expect. For instance, there are access to professions programmes at various universities that are running to enable people to come in and actually build up the academic knowledge that they need to succeed in a demanding programme if they have not had the opportunity to gain that at university programmes like Heriot-Watt's Scholar programme or Open Universities, Young Applicants of Schools programme to open up online a wider range of learning opportunities. I think that our response is to recognise that there is an issue that particularly learners from the less privileged backgrounds may not have as rich an access to opportunities for qualifications as you might hope to have. We are having to respond creatively in ways that enable opportunity for people from who it may have been restricted at school level. Are you aware, within the evidence that you just mentioned, of modern languages? Are you aware of particular difficulties in other subjects? I think that your evidence cites some focus groups at Glasgow Caledonia University looking at access to science subjects. There appear to be schools in which it is difficult to study three sciences at advanced higher. Again, there are plenty of choices. You can make a university that does not require you to have three sciences but nonetheless, for instance, in pathways to medicine and the access programmes to medicine that are being designed, there is a conscious effort by universities to say that there may be some people of real ability who have not had the breadth of curricular opportunity at school but who could be great doctors, great vets or whatever, and we need to do a bit of retroengineering to make sure that at university we are creating access pathways that enable them to realise their full potential. Can I just pursue that point, Mr Simpson, because I think that that is a very important one? Is there evidence within the sector that the first-year courses in universities are having to be tailored to address a growing number of youngsters who may be coming in to the university sector without perhaps some of the qualifications that previous generations might have had in particular areas? Having to spend a bit more of first-year, perhaps imparting the knowledge and the skills that you would have done in the past, is that fair? I do not think that I am seeing that as a norm. I may not be deeply pedagogically qualified to comment, but I do not think that I am seeing that as a norm. I think that what I am seeing more is that there are exceptions for instance pathways for professions programmes, access to medicine programmes, the academy model at green market, where in recognition of not everyone having the full range of opportunity at school, the university is getting more engaged in creating a breadth of opportunity so that people of real potential, whatever their background, are able to succeed at university. Can I finish on the point of advanced hires, where quite clearly we know from the statistics that have been compiled by various bodies that the availability of advanced hires is pretty patchy actually. Particularly, there are concerns, Mr Greer raised this issue in the previous session about some of the more deprived communities. There are hubs that can deal with some of that up to a point, but there are other areas where it is virtually impossible for a youngster to be able to do an advanced hire because not just their school, but their area, cannot provide that. Is that a matter of concern for you about the squeeze on advanced hires? I think that one would wish to see a quality of opportunity wherever one lives, but I think that the way that universities respond to this is that the higher remains essentially the core qualification for university entry. You could not make advanced hired a normal core qualification for university entry for reasons that include the fact that so many students do not have the capacity to study a wide range of advanced hires. Despite it being very well recognised, it is one of the best qualifications that Scotland does. It is a really excellent exam, but we have a system that at school level really enables most students to be able to study a reasonable range of hires, but it does not support a wide range of students to be able to study three advanced hires. I think that when we looked in the learning journey review of the proportion of learners getting three advanced hires that was tiny, it was about 2.6 per cent of school leavers. I wonder if you could tell us to what extent the widening of education providers in the senior phase at school—we heard about collaboration with colleges, etc. from the previous panel—is improving the outcomes for young people. Are there not vocational courses such as foundation apprenticeships and such? Have displaced entries to the national four and national three qualifications and if there is an impact on that? Do you have any comment on that? I do not have any specific data on that. I can tell you that we are expanding our offer. For example, in the Glasgow region, we are going to be offering a level four or five pre-foundation apprenticeship next year in construction, automotive and hospitality. I could not comment from schools if that is displacing, but there is more on offer for pupils in schools. In your view, that is obviously improving outcomes for young people. Is that something that is going to keep on growing? Is it something that is going to be brought forward? I believe so because this is a pilot that ran in a couple of schools the year previous. Now we are adding it to the three Glasgow regional colleges. There are also some level six pilots that are going to be running next year. At my college, we are not going to be doing that for the first year, so I cannot comment on that, but I would say that it is expanding. You are talking about Glasgow colleges. Is that happening throughout Scotland? Do you know? Or is it up to each individual college to introduce those courses? I could only comment on our region. I do not want to speak out of turn. If I could just add that at Solmaroth Steig, the National Centre for Gatlamage and Culture, we are offering two foundation apprenticeships next year. We are offering one this year to senior five and senior six pupils. Through the medium of Gaelic, which is what we do, that is widening the choice of pupils in our local school and petri, for example, currently, to have a Gaelic medium subject in the senior phase. In the school that currently offers three subjects through the medium of Gaelic in the senior phase. Did you say that you are currently doing that, or are you planning to? We are currently offering one foundation apprenticeship in children and young people, and we will be offering two, the second one in creative digital media as of next year. What is the take-up on the Gaelic one? We have this year nine pupils in Petrie and in Procton high schools, engaged in our foundation apprenticeship. For us, that is a really good take-up. That is a good take-up. That is what you were anticipating. That is beyond what we were anticipating. It is great to have diverse routes to attainment, because young people of any age have got very diverse aspirations and talents. We welcome that growth. For instance, universities are offering more graduate-level apprenticeships that are getting closer and closer with colleges in making sure that articulation policies from HN to university study are working effectively. That all helps to provide multiple routes for learners with multiple aspirations and talents. One thing that would concern me is that we are not heading towards a situation where schools in a privileged area have a good range of advanced hires. That route is easy. Schools in a less privileged area have more sort of DIYW provision and more of a sense that we can give opportunities through that route, but not so much through the route through hires and advanced hires. I think that they are all valuable, and I just do not think that where you are at school should determine which of those routes is open to you. We were exploring that with Education Scotland, because we think that that is very important, but we are still to get some definite answers on that. That is a follow-on from that. A lot of the evidence that we heard from Education Scotland about the changes to the senior phase were about flexibility and personalisation, and they were telling us that we had to get away from the old-fashioned mindset of doing what would have been standard grades in national exams and then your hires in S5 and maybe advanced higher in S6, so that students might skip stages in certain subjects. They might do some hires in one year and other hires in another year and all that. What I want to ask really, and I guess that it is for Alasdair Simpson in particular, does that not mean that universities will have to look at their entry qualifications, because achieving your qualifications at a single sitting is still an element of requirement, at least for some institutions. It might be the case if schools are developing the way that we have heard described. I could be a very able young person in a school that is not particularly deprived or anything like that, but because of the way that curriculum is designed, I simply cannot do all the hires that I need for the course that I want to do in a single sitting. Are the universities looking at addressing that? That is absolutely fair. How I would carry out a single sitting requirement now is very much an exception, rodden or norm. As a matter of generality, universities recognise that the flexibility of a senior phase means that people may well be accumulating qualifications over a number of years. I think that there are some courses, many of them from your evidence that you have seen particularly in medicine, for instance, where essentially the rationale is that the course is one that requires extreme academic rigor and that we are looking for the learner to demonstrate extreme academic rigor of having undertaken a substantial diet of exams in one year, or if we spread them over two years, saying that we actually need to achieve slightly better grades over two years than if we had done them in one sitting. I am not going to say that it is unfair. I can see why they are doing that. However, as a generality, the principles of Scottish university entry are to look at the qualifications attained over a senior phase rather than in a single sitting. The related question, I suppose, would be—I alluded to this a little bit in response to Liz Smith—the degree to which the universities—again, Education Scotland argued that our old-fashioned failure to change our mindset away from traditional qualifications did not recognise a range of short courses, vocational courses, salt-hire, prize, jucfen, etc. Are the universities looking at any formal way of recognising that kind of attainment alongside hires as part of entry qualifications? Certainly looking at a wider range of attainment, for instance, for courses where the content is relevant, I think that a majority of universities are now looking at the foundation apprenticeship as an entrance qualification broadly equivalent to hire. I think that when you get into things like Duke of Edinburgh and so on, what have you attained outside the formal curriculum, you get into some quite tricky territory of social capital because there are many learners who have had a home background that has enabled them to do Duke of Edinburgh rally project, whatever, to get easy access to internships that can demonstrate professional expertise. This is one of the things that we are thinking through, as I think how is a personal statement used for admissions purposes? A personal statement that shows that you are committed to learning, committed to your subject is fine. A personal statement that is used in a social capital divisive way to say, actually, I have had a privileged upbringing, I have got my goal, Duke of Edinburgh, I have had an internship in a law firm, I think that it is socially divisive. You have to be quite careful about how you recognise those wider achievements. Have you looked at all? I do not know very much about this, but I believe in Wales they have the Welsh baccalaureate, which is a very different thing from the Scottish baccalaureate, which tries to do some of that broader recognition of attainment. I do not know if you have ever looked at that system. My first job in 1989 in government was looking at a baccalaureate model, and I think that at that stage it was considered a bit politically difficult. I do not think that it has really come back. It is going to see that it has changed. I think that Wales has a different one. It is a more qualification that encompasses some of these less formal things. I can really see the merits of that. There is an international baccalaureate that is used by a number of schools. I think that recognising a breadth of attainment is a really good thing to do. One of the things that we are trying to do at university level is that we are not just teaching a subject. We are consciously trying to develop a set of attributes about analytical ability, team working, confidence, resilience, etc. I think that it is right that schools also are trying to develop a wider set of attributes than simply subject knowledge without detriment to subject knowledge. If those things can be captured in the way that gives everyone the equality of opportunity, then there is a wealth there. I was just commenting earlier that there are some ways of capturing experience outside the curriculum that can be a bit socially divisive. I will clarify on that. The evidence from Education Scotland—I know that you are in for part of the session as an observer, Mr Sim—was that the curriculum for excellence is more than just a subject. The curriculum for excellence includes all those additional short courses, such as Duke of Edinburgh and all those things, but, if I am interpreted it right, you still see subject choices as a minimum and those as differentiators in addition to someone's experience. Would that be right? What I am trying to say is that your ability to present a good range of qualifications is core to university entry. One of the good things about curriculum for excellence is that it resonates very strongly with what we are trying to do at university. You are, through the experience of curriculum for excellence, developing those broader attributes as well as subject knowledge. That is helping to create people who have rounded expertise as well as subject knowledge, so I mean entirely supportive of that intention. One of the things that became evident in the last session as well is that we have very good statistics on standard-grade, higher-grade, advanced-high qualifications, or NAP-5s and NAP-4s, as they would be now, sorry, going back to an older time. However, while we have statistics on those qualifications, we do not seem to be capturing something that Education Scotland would say is core to the curriculum. Does that cause your concerns and be able to assess going forward? I guess that this comes into how you look at the whole set of information that you have in the application to university. You have the information on the exams, you have the personal statement, you have the reference from the school or a previous education provider. You may have evidence of socioeconomic disadvantage that you are taking into account as well. It is not mechanistic. We are looking at a set of information about the individual and whether, of course, the individual is applied for is going to be a good choice for them. Obviously, there are some things in that that are more abstract qualities that are harder to capture, but I think that it is an admission system that is broader than simply a mechanistic look at what you have attained in terms of exam level. I just wanted to add my two cents from my personal experience not to detract from universities, but I have worked with students from a wide range of levels and backgrounds, additional support needs, adult returners who may have no or outdated qualifications, quite a wide range of high achievers at school. We have to remember that curriculum for excellence is about skills for learning, life and work as we all know. Not everyone is going to go to university, so when we have widening access alternative awards and qualifications, you mentioned Duke of Edinburgh or short courses or national threes, fours, fives, I think it is important that we recognise those and that they might not necessarily be using those to go on to university but to go on to further education, employment or training, and I value those when I am looking at a student's application just as much as I would a higher or advanced higher. Thank you, convener. The committee, as well as having responsibility for Gaelic in schools, has responsibility for Gaelic as a language and its future as a language. I am keen to know what the people who are in the panel today, particularly, probably, Marceline Theologian, feel about the recent picture of Gaelic as a subject, both learners and fluent Gaelic in fourth year. Thank you very much, Dr Allan. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here today and to contribute evidence to you. I just like to pick up on some of the points raised at the last session when you were looking for the figures and just to draw some figures to the tension of those present that we have actually seen, according to Professor Jim Scott's figures, a decline on 57 per cent of pupils sitting at three to fives in Gaelic for learners and of 17.3 per cent for fluent speakers. In that six, a decline in 27 per cent for Gaelic for learners and a marginal increase for Gaelic for fluent speakers. If we look at the attainment figures, according to what I have looked at, we have seen a decrease of 40 per cent in Gaelic higher for learners, a decrease of 40 per cent of pupils studying for Gaelic learners, and that is since 2012. The decreases are quite stark in the number of particularly Gaelic learners who are undertaking qualifications within the school and the senior phase. This is incredibly worrying for us. I am speaking on behalf of Sombr Osteig, the National Centre for Gaelic Language and Culture, who is an academic partner of the University of the Highlands and Islands. At Sombr Osteig, together with our colleagues at College of Castile, Loose Castle College in Stornoway, we train the future Gaelic medium teachers, the future Gaelic medium broadcasters, and those who are working in public policy and affairs for Gaelic. We believe that this narrowing in the curriculum is having a very adverse effect on the number of pupils who have the choice to study Gaelic. We heard earlier today in the previous session about the choice of pupils. One of our concerns is whether pupils have an informed choice. We welcome the fact that there is flexibility in this curriculum for excellence, but also how informed are pupil choices and the choices that they make? To what extent are pupils having to make choice between Gaelic and other subjects such as assigned subjects and other, if you like, facilitating subjects when they go into secondary 4? That is of concern to us. Also, to pick up on a previous point, perhaps they have the opportunity to study, for example, a Gaelic national 5 later on in the senior phase. I have the figures from this year looking at the school. We have done some research with schools and what we see is that there are very few pupils who are learning Gaelic who go on to study for a national 5 in S5 and S6. That is because, for learning language, continuity is so important, so if we want to promote and increase the number of Gaelic speakers through the Gaelic learner education Scotland, we need that continuity of learning. You have anticipated one or two of my questions. That is a very helpful and full answer. In that case, on one point that came up in the last panel, are we talking about a situation that is driven by teacher shortage in schools or is this all about the structure of columns and the choices that people are asked to make? I think that it is important to be reminded that Gaelic education is a minority language education. It has very distinct needs and it is a national priority. The reason we have such success in our Gaelic medium education Scotland, such growth in the 80s, is because of the collaboration between local authorities and national government in response to parental demand for Gaelic medium education. I believe that we still need that level of prioritisation at a national level. I think that we need to look at a broad range of factors that may be influencing the trend. I do not have the actual evidence, but our consultation with schools and pupils suggests to us that teacher shortages are only one important factor, but that competing columns in the school timetable is another important factor. We also need to think about going back to the issue of informed choices and what information are pupils receiving when they make those choices about Gaelic, for example. I think that a national approach is needed to ensure that we are informing pupils of their choices when they choose Gaelic as a subject at school, for example, as a qualification and what are the opportunities in the workplace with Gaelic, for example. The opportunities are great, but we cannot meet the demand in the Gaelic labour market for pupils with high-level language skills. Given that, although you have mentioned there that teacher shortage is only one factor in the choices that young people are making, you have also pointed to the fact that there will be or that there already is a shortage of people to fill places in Gaelic essential jobs, not leased teaching. I suppose that this one is as much for Alasdair Simpson as it is for yourself. What are the implications for higher education institutions, whether that is Salma Rostec or universities, if the people coming out of school with Gaelic qualifications have suddenly declined? I am honestly not going to pretend to a great expertise on this front, but clearly we are part of an educational pipeline. If people are not coming out of school with the knowledge that will enable them to do a particular degree course—whether it is initial teacher education in Gaelic or whatever—then that opportunity is lost to them. There are plenty of things that you can start first-time at university. Very few people, for instance, have done higher psychology. They make choose to go on and do psychology at university. There are plenty of courses that are designed to take someone who has a really good breadth of education and introduce them to a new subject and take them on, but there are also real difficulties in taking them on for certain courses if they simply do not have the prior educational attainment. The consequence is that the implications are very serious for us. If we are to fill the ambitions as a nation that we have in delivering Gaelic media and education in terms of growing Gaelic media and education in the secondary phase and the senior phase, and if we are serious about maintaining what is still a very fragile minority language community, then we need to seriously consider how we might increase resources and prioritise Gaelic as a subject within the school curriculum. At the stage now, we have ways in which we want to be as flexible as possible. We have different degree programmes available to any young person or adult who wishes to become a Gaelic teacher. At Somerostig, we offer a four-year BA programme. We have a Gaelic degree programme at Edinburgh University, which Somerostig contributes to. It is a five-year programme that enables students with very little Gaelic to become qualified over the course of five years to become Gaelic medium teachers. We have those options available. The numbers are still small and they are insufficient to meet the demand and the predicted demand for Gaelic medium teachers. It is an issue of, I would say, of grave concern. I think that it goes back to my point about considering the special case that we need to make for Gaelic as a minority language. We heard earlier about what we aspire in Scotland for. Our pupils to become global citizens will also be Scottish citizens. We want to increase the number of pupils who have a choice to study Gaelic within the school curriculum and to increase the number of teachers who are able to deliver that curriculum, particularly within the senior phase. In terms of health and wellness enterprise and the work and the importance of Gaelic to our region, we would be concerned about the drop in numbers and the valuable pipeline that we have coming through the system to support the opportunities for Gaelic employment in the region. I was following on from the issue about the range of choices that some young people have as against others and the consequences for their choices at a later stage. I wonder whether there has been any analysis of that. I think that the figures show that more young people from more deprived backgrounds are now going on to higher education. Do we have figures on the proportions going via college to university and whether the youngsters from poorer backgrounds are disproportionately represented there, but also in what courses they are succeeding in getting into? Theoretically, we could be in a level playing field, but disproportionately young people from poorer backgrounds are not accessing law, medicine or whatever. I wonder whether there has been any analysis done of that. I couldn't give you all the figures off the top of my head, but illustratively, I think that now about 16 per cent of entrants to higher education universities are coming from the most deprived 20 per cent postcodes. I think that the figure for people doing higher education at college level is a bit over 20 per cent. There is similarity but there is also a gap. I think that there is still a pattern that, if you are from a more socioeconomically deprived background, you are slightly more likely to go to college than to university at a higher education level. Obviously, that is a good viable route for many people and one that we are very supportive of growing. The commissioner on widening access published a paper where he looked at admission to various subject levels and attainment in those subject levels. I would have to look that out and send it back to the committee just to give the quantified evidence of who is going into what subject. I think that one thing that I did note and again I would have to go back and look for evidence of this is that the fastest growing success rate of applicants to do medicine is from the most deprived backgrounds. There has been a really remarkable success over the past few years in the increase in proportion of students coming into medicine from the most deprived backgrounds. I would have to go back and look at the data on that and send that. There may be progress in that because there has been active initiatives to do that, although there is an issue about the extent to which SIMD represents. It may be a category where young people are from very poor backgrounds. I do not necessarily live in those communities, but I accept that. Is there a work done around if our contention is that there is a limiting of choice, there is a limiting of subjects in our schools and my contention to be tested is that that disproportionate affects poorer communities? I am just interested whether that then starts feeding through into where young people from poorer backgrounds end up in the higher education system. I will go back and look at evidence on that man. I think that there is evidence that there is a bit of a difference in subject choice, or what subject one ends up in. Again, I think that it is chopped down by the SIMD indicator, which, as he recognises, is not entirely adequate, but it is illustratively useful. While there has been progress and a lot of work put in by higher education institutions to get people from the most challenged backgrounds into the most selective courses, I am not going to pretend that it is a work that is yet complete or that there aren't challenges, because of people from schools in the more challenged backgrounds and not having access to the range of qualifications that some of their more privileged peers have. I will look at the evidence on where people are going. Just finally, for example, if there is evidence that fewer and fewer young people are taking languages disproportionately from poorer communities that are less likely to take languages, is that playing itself through in terms of, A, the number of graduates in languages out of our universities and our education more generally? Is that decreasing? Of that cohort, I suppose, the question is where are these young people coming from? Of the cohort, if we can look at the information as to what the SIMD proportion is of people going into different subject areas, that will broadly tell us. I do not think that we are yet seeing that we are not able to fill the places on modern languages courses, but I think that that more reflects the fact that we are in a cap system. There is only a fixed number of places available for Scottish Dumbartine students, so there are more qualified applicants for the courses than there are places. Even if you saw a diminishment of applicants, and I do not know, but I could not give you a figure on that off the top of my head, even if there were diminishment of applicants, there would probably still be a sufficient pool of well-qualified applicants to fill the places. People to assess where those who are successful are coming from and whether they are there for that. It is playing out through in terms of access to particular courses, like languages, maybe disproportionately affecting poorer communities. I would genuinely have to look and see what is available on that. I think that at the aggregate level across all subjects, what we have seen is that the year-on-year of recent years, the success rate of applicants from the most challenging backgrounds has gone up faster than the success rate of applicants from the more privileged backgrounds. John Lamont points about the university sector and its requirements on access and widening access, with the point that you have just made about the cap on the number of places for Scottish students with narrowing choice in secondary and senior degrees fees. Are all those three things meaning—sorry, I have a better question. How are Scottish universities assessing students from Scotland for a particular application for a particular course, as opposed to students who come from outwith Scotland, given all those factors that you have just mentioned? Is it having an impact, as was the obvious question? Because you are dealing with a system of fixed numbers, in a sense, you are dealing with different pools of applicants. You have to fill your Scottish places. You want to fill your Scottish places. It is intrinsic to the mission of the institution that we are doing something for for the society that we are located in. You are looking to fill those with the best qualified students. You have described already the ways in which, through looking at the exams, looking at contextual information, looking at the personal statement, the reference from the school, you are trying to make a fair decision for each student. You are also trying to attract the very best students you can from the rest of the UK, from the EU, from international, but particularly when you look at the rest of the UK and international students, the recruitment of great students from those backgrounds is not something that is done to the detriment of the opportunity that we can provide for Scottish students. Basically, if we did not fill our Scottish student numbers, A would be, I think, betraying our mission and B would be fine. You have made the very fair point that actually we are all for our Scottish student numbers, aren't we? Well, you tell me, in most courses also you have just mentioned languages and said that Scottish universities are not potentially fulfilling their cohort on students from Scotland for those courses. No, no, I think that we are. What we are saying is that there are more applicants than there are places. So that bit is not the problem, is it? Obviously, if there are more places for Scottish students, we could take on more qualified students, but we would be concerned if that were done at the cost of the resource per student. In the context of this inquiry, which is about narrowing choice, is narrowing choice having an impact on the decisions that universities are being asked to make about the relative merits of a candidate from Scotland, as opposed to a candidate from outwith Scotland? I do not think so, because I do not think that we are considering those relative merits. I think that we are saying that here are the places that we have available for our SFC-funded students. Now, let us make sure that we are applying those places fairly in a way that recognises potential and that we are, you know, to our committee. No, that is fair. That is entirely fair. Just one last question, if I may convene it. That was your point that you made earlier on, I think, to Liz Smith, about Scottish students possibly taking the range of courses over two years rather than one. Edinburgh asks—I am just picking, Edinburgh asks—five aes at one sitting for law. You cannot really get past that, can you? I think that that is—I mean, it is an exception. I think how would you justify that? I mean, essentially— I am not planning to go to Edinburgh, I am just saying that is what they are asking—it is not. Some students in the Scottish schools will not be able to do those five aes at one sitting. I think that you should have the opportunity to say, look, where at school it does a broad—a senior phase that does not enable to do that, so it needs special consideration. I think that just setting it at norm in a way of its rationing, again, coming back to that point, that there are many more applicants than there are places, you set the bar quite high also recognising, in fact, is a course of high level of intellectual demand, but I do think that there is also an onus on a system to recognise that not every school has got a senior phase that supports students to make those choices and has to retain an openness to the qualifications that students are able to present who have come from a school with a senior phase that has deliberately built their qualifications over a number of years. I wonder if you would commit to undertaking the same exercise in terms of rurality and look at where students are coming from for some of those courses, because certainly my sort of anecdote is speaking to some of your members, particularly within veterinary studies and some aspects of medicine, because I know that there are good programmes in place, but those tend to attach themselves to particular schools rather than to sort of whole local authority areas. Certainly from the evidence that we heard from Education Scotland earlier, one of the few things that they seem to recognise that there is an issue with, but they did seem to acknowledge that there was an harrowing of subject choice in more rural areas. Is that a pattern that you see already, and would you be prepared to look at that? I do not think that we would particularly be the source of information on the subject choice at rural levels. I recognise what you are saying, from the evidence that you have already seen, that there is a potential restriction of subject choices at schools that just do not have the cohort of students to necessarily enable them to be able to resource the breadth of higher and advanced higher that we might have. I think that there is an equity issue in there. I do not honestly know if there is a good information source that could tell me the reality background of the people who are coming into highly selective courses. If there is, I will ask the funding council if there is something that would help us with that, but I honestly do not know if there is. I would think that you would be able to look at the number within medicine, law, veterinary studies and some other very competitive courses. The actual schools that young people are coming from and which local authorities they are in might not give you the best data, the most robust data, but I think that there will be a very strong trend there. When you are looking at courses such as law at Edinburgh that are requiring five A's in a single sitting, there are certain schools that will not have sent people to do that course for a number of years, because there are no pupils leaving their school who are able to do that because of what is available on the timetable. I think that there might be a pattern that I would be interested in any data that you were able to. I do not think that we have got data on that. It may have to be collectatory institutions and we just have to look at what we can do to the proportion on that, but I accept the issue. I will add that from the perspective of Hylins Islands Enterprise. We did some research looking into the attitudes and aspirations of our young people. As you would imagine, youth out migration is a big problem for us in the Hylins Islands so we are very keen to keep close to what the issues are so that we can respond to them appropriately. The recent piece of research that we did in 2018 did ask a particular question about young people's view on the selection of the choice opportunities that are available to them. 71 per cent of the 3,100 respondeers talked about that they are being relatively happy with good or very good provision. However, when you get into rural areas, it differentiates slightly and you get a dropping to about 50 per cent in some of the fragile areas. Of course, we did not go deeper than that, but to ask the question as to what is behind that, I suspect that our view on that would be much more to do with the lack of teachers and the recruitment difficulties of teachers, as opposed to and small rural schools, where to give the breadth of coverage is just really, really difficult to do, give or take the fact that there is some new technology coming in to try and help with that. However, I think that we do feel that it is just a reflection of what young people's views were of the choice that is available to them. That is really interesting. Thank you very much. I have been interested in Mr Harrison's views and your experience of where collaboration between schools and colleges has increased over recent years. Certainly from what I have seen, there are a huge number of fantastic examples where schools get a lot of added value out of further collaboration with colleges, both bringing college lecturers into the school perhaps to offer extra subjects and where pupils get the opportunity to go to college. However, there seems to be a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that is building now of further collaboration between schools and colleges, essentially being forced by shortages of teachers in specific subject areas and inability of the school to offer something that it would otherwise want to offer. I have been interested in your experience of how often that is the case, any examples that you have seen of it and if there are particular areas where that collaboration has been forced by a shortage rather than a desire to offer more? Thank you for that question. At City, we work with over 62 secondary schools in over four local authorities geographically. Obviously, we can work with different regions. We do have close partnerships. We have the Glasgow regional vocational partnership where it is an operational group, but it is where we meet with the Glasgow City Council and with schools to just work more closely and more collaboratively. One area that I can give an example is, I believe, that there is a shortage of homic teachers and we at City are very strong with professional cookery, so we constantly have a high demand in that area and work to support that, because many schools cannot offer that. We have in our numbers here a high number—that is our highest number—in the hospitality and leisure faculty of applications. One thing that I would like to take the opportunity to say is that I think we could improve upon teachers coming into colleges to see what we do and what we have to offer, but vice versa, lecturers going into schools to see what they might not have even been in a school before. I think that that has to come from a more strategic leadership level with head teachers and directors of faculties liaising and making that happen through CPD. I think that the home economics example is interesting, because that is one that we are certainly very aware of—a really acute shortage of teachers there. At what point does that go from an opportunity to a challenge for a college? If there is increasing demand from the schools and local areas for further collaboration, it is simply because they cannot recruit teachers to offer that subject. Are there specific areas, for example, maybe home economics, where that is becoming a challenge for the college because you cannot meet the demand that is essentially being displaced from the school sector while also meeting the obligations that you already have? Yes, of course. It is supply and demand, is it not? We only have so many staff in that area of professional cookery. We only have so many kitchens and baking facilities—that is not my area of expertise in the kitchen—and there is only so much availability. Once you get to that threshold, you know that we are not able to offer more. We do try to be creative, so the city is open four evenings a week. They are open on Saturdays, so we do try to be creative with that. Staff are also going into schools. Another example is higher psychology. There is a very high demand for that, so we have teachers going into schools to deliver psychology, cooking, PSD, sport and leisure. It is quite a wide range, but there is only so much that you can do in a day. Can I ask a quick final question? Mr Harris, I think that you have got the best option to do it. When we were working on developing the Young Workforce, everything was about parity of esteem of vocational and different routes into the workplace as opposed to a traditional further and higher education, as it was. We heard a bit today about curricular development being done by the schools, in particular to meet the needs of their area. I think that the word appropriate was used several times by Education Scotland. If you are in Edinburgh and you have access to fintech, collaborators or oil and gas in the north-east, you have opportunities there for many more things that perhaps post-industrial areas are still suffering from degrees of deprivation, such as parts of Asia and Mal, the area in North Lanarkshire. Is there a danger that we are not giving a parity of opportunity to people across the country, just because of the specific appropriate decisions that are being taken by schools at a local level? That is just my own personal opinion. I will preface it by saying that. Yes, I think that there is a danger of parity of esteem, because Edinburgh and Glasgow have opportunities that perhaps in the borders or Highlands and Islands or more remote or more deprived areas may not have. Budget is quite often what I hear from schools is that we just do not have the money, so that could be for the teachers or teacher training or transportation to get students to other schools or even to colleges. I think that we would be lying if we said in some areas that there was not a lack of that parity of esteem. We have to continue to work collaboratively, because we all want the same end goal, and that is for students to have choice and to have a good education. Ms Cameron, do you want to comment from the Highlands and Islands perspective on challenges, particularly in your area? Yes, I guess that everything is a bit more difficult in terms of the distance from the industries. We have a huge number of industries up in the Highlands and Islands, and I am aware not in specific details that the UHI and its 13 accurate partners are working closely and increasing them more closely with the school systems in their local territory to try and find collaborative solutions to filling the gaps of some delivery and some of the education offers. Highlands itself, along with partners in the Highlands Council and others, have created a science skills academy to try and add additional inspirational science support. What we cannot do is step in and fill the gap of science teachers that are not available within the Highlands Council, for instance. We are keen to come in with the additionality of what more can we do to try and support and augment what they are supposed to be delivering. At the end of the day, you are looking at an area where there are much more challenges around logistics of getting young people to different places and businesses that are not reaching out to small islands and so on. While it might be appropriate for a school teacher or a head teacher to want to do things, they are extremely limited in being able to do that, not least of which will be financial limitations. There are definitely different systems that exist across Scotland and it works better in some places than others. I thank you all for your attendance at the committee this morning. It was really helpful.