 Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2019. Can I remind everyone to please turn their mobile phones and other devices for silent during the meeting? Apologies have been received from Tavish Scott and Oliver Mundell, and we are welcome to committee this morning. Alison Harris is substituting for Oliver Mundell. Agend item 1 is a decision on whether to take agenda item 8 in private today, which is consideration of our work programme. Members are content to take that in private. Thank you. Second item today is agenda item 2, consideration of a negative instrument of subordinate legislation, the St Mary's Music School aided places Scottish amendment regulations 2019 SSI 2019-144. This is a negative instrument and details are provided in paper 1. Members have any comments on this instrument? It is not a question on this instrument specifically, because this one makes relatively minor changes, but it would be useful if the committee could write to the Government to ask when the next full SSI on St Mary's is to come. This is something that comes relatively infrequently before the Parliament, and from the best that I have seen it has historically not been particularly scrutinised. It would be useful to get an indication from the Government of when the next full SSI is coming. I think that we would be content to do that. Agend item 3 is the evidence on two affirmative instruments amending the Children and Young People's Act in relation to funded childcare. Those are pieces of draft subordinate legislation that are subject to the affirmative process. Information about the instruments provided in papers 2 and 3. Those affirmative instruments have three agenda items. The first item is an opportunity for the minister to talk to the two instruments and for members to ask the minister and officials questions for clarification. We will then turn to agenda items 4 and 5 for the debate on the two motions on the instruments that are published in the agenda. I welcome to the meeting this morning by the Todd MSP, Minister for Children and Young People, Alison Cumming, Deputy Director of Early Learning and Child Care, and Nicol Mackenzie Wheddon, lawyer legal directorate of the Scottish Government. I would like to invite the minister to make an opening statement to explain the two instruments. Good morning. In partnership with local government, we have made an ambitious commitment to almost double the funded early learning and childcare entitlement for all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds from August 2020. The package of orders will provide the necessary legislative basis to underpin the work that local authorities are already doing to deliver an expanded ELC offer, which is high quality, flexible and responsive to parental demand from August 2020. The first order provides for changes to the maximum and minimum session length for the delivery of funded ELC. Those are currently set at a minimum session length of 2.5 hours and a maximum session length of 8 hours. The changes in this order will extend the maximum session length to 10 hours or less and will remove the minimum session length. Those changes will support our efforts to ensure that Scotland's ELC offer is sufficiently flexible for families. Extending the maximum session length means that families can have the option of a full 10-hour session of funded ELC, which is more closely tied to the working day. We understand that 10-hour sessions are commonplace for many families with those who can purchase the additional two hours of ELC as wraparound care. We would like to ensure that parents can access the entirety of 10-hour sessions through their funded entitlement. The order removes the minimum session length as we consider this to be unnecessary in the context of the expanded entitlement. Care Inspectorate registration requirements will continue to ensure that a high-quality service is delivered regardless of the session length. It is intended that the changes to session length will come into force on 1 August 2019. Introducing the changes ahead of the full roll-out of 1140 hours will support local authorities to provide more flexibility on session lengths and to test new models of delivery during the phasing period. The order will not place an obligation on settings to provide 10-hour sessions where they are not already offered. Local authorities should continue to ensure that funded ELC is delivered through an appropriate mix of providers and patterns of delivery within their authority area. The second order proposes that the mandatory amount of funded ELC to which eligible children are entitled is changed in legislation from 600 hours to 1140 hours. I object to parliamentary approval, which will come into force on 1 August 2020. We are 15 months away from a national roll-out of 1140 hours. I am proud that more than 11,000 children are already benefitting from early phasing of the expanded hours. Laying those orders now signals our continued commitment to deliver the expanded offer from August 2020 and our confidence in local authority readiness to fulfil their duty. We have robust joint governance arrangements to ensure that local authorities have the required capacity and capability in place and are well supported as they prepare for August 2020. We want every single one of Scotland's children to grow up in a country where they feel loved, safe, respected and able to reach their full potential. I have been heartened by the shared commitment across Parliament to our transformative policy ambition to expand the ELC entitlement to 1140 hours by 2020. I am determined and confident that, together, we will deliver for Scotland's children and their families. I welcome the instruments, including the increase from 600 funded hours to 1140 funded hours. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not arguing against that, but I just wanted to explore something around it. It is my understanding that what we are doing here is providing a universal entitlement to funded hours at early years education for every child in Scotland in the two years running up to their entry to formal education. There is a group of children who are excluded from this. That is children whose parents have chosen to defer their entry to P1 but whose birthdays fall before the end of the year. In those cases, the local authorities have the discretion to refuse this entitlement. I really want to understand why the Scottish Government is not taking this opportunity to correct that anomaly. For children with September to December birthdays, they will still continue to have an automatic right to school deferral. Let me be clear about that. Those children do have a right to school deferral. It will remain at the local authorities discretion whether or not they are entitled to additional childcare funding. I would expect local authorities to make this decision based on assessment of the child's wellbeing. Along with the parental input, parents need to be provided with accurate information and should be fully involved in the decision making process. I am not intending to change that. There is an anomaly here, because the parent's right to defer entry to P1 is not based on any judgment about the child's readiness for going to P1 apart from the parental judgment. The other entitlement, which is to early years education and nursery, is based on some kind of judgment at the discretion of the local authority. In many local authorities, by asserting one entitlement to defer, the parent is losing the other entitlement, which we do not think should be at the local authorities discretion. That is why you are bringing forward this statutory instrument. There is an inconsistency and an anomaly here, which could be readily corrected. I do not understand why the Government is not prepared to correct it. I am comfortable with the flexibility that the legislation offers. Parents absolutely have a right to defer should they choose to. We have been very clear about that. Local authorities will make the decision based on the child's wellbeing and interests in conjunction with the parents. I am comfortable with that. That means that families' ability to continue with the early years education of their child having chosen to defer depends on, firstly, where they live and secondly, on how much money they have got because some families will not be able to afford to self-fund. Are you really saying that you are comfortable with that? Are you really saying that local authorities do not make the decision in conjunction with the parents and with the child's wellbeing at their heart? My question is not for local authorities, my question is for you minister. Are you comfortable with the fact that for this group of children and their families their ability to get the entitlement that we are legislating for here today? Excuse me, let me finish. That entitlement depends on how much money the family has and whether they can afford to pay for nursery education. No, it does not. Yes, it does. No, it does not. That entitlement depends on the discretion of the local authority who will make the decision in conjunction with the parents based on the wellbeing of the child. Do you think that those children whose parents have decided to defer should continue to have access to early years education on a funded basis? I think that that is a decision for local authorities who will make that decision based on the wellbeing of the child and in conjunction with the parents. Why are we considering a statutory instrument that provides a universal entitlement at the hand of the Government and Parliament for all children except for those ones? Why are they different? Why should that be the discretion of local authorities but for other children it is not? I mean, I can only reiterate again. I believe that it is appropriate for what we have done is built in sufficient flexibility. The vast majority of children will start school at the age that they are due to start school. For those children with a January birthday, they will be entitled to automatic further funding. For those children with a birthday from August to December, their funding will be at the discretion of the local authority who will make that decision based on the welfare of the child in conjunction with the parents. So why are you picking on this group of children to exclude them? I am confident that the local authorities all over Scotland can discharge that duty appropriately. I am confident that my local authority colleagues can do that. You are comfortable with the situation where some families will be able to make that decision because they can afford to continue to pay or to begin to self-fund nursery education where other families will have to either send their child to school before they think their child is ready or will have to withdraw their child for a year from early years education. You are comfortable with that. Let me reiterate again. No, I am not asking you to reiterate. I am asking you, are you comfortable with that position? Are you comfortable with it? I am comfortable with the local authorities discharging their duties towards the children in their local authority area. I am comfortable that we can clarify the guidance and the basis for exercising discretion in a refresh of statutory guidance. I think that the system will work appropriately. So why are we imposing the 1140 hours on local authorities? Why not give them discretion as to whether they think that that is appropriate for the children or not? It is anomalous. Why are we imposing that? You call it anomalous, I call it flexible. Can I first of all associate myself with the questioning of Ian Gray that Minister there is an anomaly, and I do hope that the Government will consider its response to Mr Gray. Minister, you will recall two years ago that Audit Scotland was pretty critical of the Scottish Government's arithmetic about the funding that was required. Can I draw your attention to the second instrument where you say that you have identified an additional recurring revenue cost of £567 million per annum from 2021-22 and an additional £476 million capital cost for the four financial years from 2017-18 to 2020-21? Minister, what makes you comfortable about those particular statistics given that the previous ones were so heavily criticised by Audit Scotland? I am confident. We came to an agreement with local authorities. It was a shared decision that these were the appropriate costs, and we came to an agreement together that that was what was required to deliver the funded entitlement. Audit Scotland conducted their audit before those negotiations were complete. By the time those negotiations were complete, we had interrogated the data on both sides and we were comfortable with the decision that we came to. That is what gives me the confidence that the figures that we have agreed upon and local authorities together have jointly agreed are the appropriate figures to move forward with that. In response to that, one of the criticisms of Audit Scotland at the time was that the engagement of the stakeholders who were due to provide the service had not been fully consulted. Some of the arithmetic that they had was very different from the one that the Scottish Government had. In relation to the statistics that are in our papers today, have you got commitment from the providers that they are accurate, not just from COSLA but from those who are in the private sector who are having to deliver additional care? The funding agreement was between us and COSLA. I think that you are referring to partner provider funding rates. At the moment, you will be aware that we are working all over Scotland on improving partnership. A partner provider rates are increasing in some situations by over 50 per cent to ensure that partner providers are paid a sustainable rate. You can produce the evidence from those who are in the public-private partnership deals that the statistics that you have produced here are correct. Would it be possible for the committee to have that? I want to go back to the points that were raised by Iain Gray. Have you done any equality impact assessment on a decision that might mean that some young people ought to defer? Everyone has agreed that they should defer. We will decide not to because they cannot afford early years provision if they do defer. Can I reiterate again that the local authority makes the decision— I understand that. I am asking you why the local authority is— The presumption that you are putting to me is that a local authority would make a decision not to apply discretion in a situation where everybody has agreed that a child should defer. Why would you not give the family certainty? Have you done an equality impact assessment? How many young people might be involved in this? Why would you choose to give discretion in this element when you have decided that there should be no discretion in the other elements and simply do you accept the argument that for some families there is agreement that they should defer but by deferring they are not able then to access their entitlement to early years education? They then, as a consequence, may decide even though everybody agrees that it is the right thing to do, decide not to. This is an issue about not just the family feels the child might not be ready, it may be about disability, it may be about development issues and so on. Everybody might agree but they then do not guarantee them the same entitlement to their peers. I put it to you again with Lamont. In what situation would a local authority make a decision which was against the best interests of a child? In that situation, if everybody has agreed— Why not make it certain? Just like you might say, why would a local authority not give somebody 1100 hours? Surely they would not just give him 600. You have ensured certainty. Why not make it certain? It is not a huge group of young people. If you do not do an equality impact assessment on it, you might discover that it is quite a significant issue. It is not a huge group of young people, I agree, and I am confident—let me reiterate again—that my local authority colleagues are making those decisions appropriately. What are families to expect more than your confidence that they should expect the same entitlement that other young people might have? I think that the system at the moment provides sufficient flexibility and discretion. Local authorities make the decision based on the best interests of the child and in conjunction with parents. Can you ask what you mean by flexibility in those circumstances? Flexibility to do what? Let me reiterate again. Local authorities make the decision based on the best interests of the child, using GERFEC principles, as they do in many decisions in providing entitlement to the children in the local authority area. They make those decisions along with parental input. The way that you are framing this to me is that you are saying that routinely local authorities make poor decisions that are not based in the best interests of the children. I have confidence that my local authority colleagues are making good decisions based on the best interests of the child and working along with the parents. I cannot say any more than that. Would you be willing to do an analysis of how many young people are involved, how many defair and of them, how many get support for early years and some kind of survey, some equality impact assessment on those who may be more than happy to work with local authorities? Absolutely. I am more than happy to work with local authority colleagues to explore that. I work with COSLA to explore that. Dr Allan? I would like others to welcome the extension of the rights that are in this piece of legislation. How does that fit in with a wider question of workforce planning? The rights are only meaningful if local authorities have planned to have the workforce there to put them into practice. Is there anything being done to encourage workforce planning around the country for local authorities to be able to do some of that? It has been a great deal of work on ensuring that we have adequate workforce in August 2020 when this is due to be delivered. There has been an increase in apprenticeship availability, college courses and university courses. We are confident that we will achieve adequate workforce. We have a joint delivery board, which is co-chaired by myself and councillor Stephen McCabe from COSLA around the table. We have a number of representatives, director of education, solace, chief executive, finance personnel from local authorities. All of us are monitoring data and intelligence from every local authority area in Scotland on issues such as workforce to ensure that we are on target. We are achieving the workforce that we are expected to achieve by this phase of delivery. I have listened with interest and I appreciate that you are absolutely confident that things will work out. I would like to put to you very genuinely, for those children who do not get the extra year, how do you feel that they are receiving the best outcome? I am confident that local authority colleagues will make decisions on deferral based on the best interests of the child working with the parents. This entitlement gives people an entitlement from age 3 to two years of 1140 hours of childcare. We know that quality is vitally important to delivering the outcomes that we want to see for children. We have built in a number of quality characteristics. There is early entrance possible for children from certain families who are entitled to it. Families who claim certain benefits are entitled to this from age 2. I am confident that this package will meet the needs of children in Scotland and will improve outcomes for them. I would like to come back to you. I appreciate your confidence. Do you not envisage a situation where the parents have a very different outlook to local authorities and ultimately they just are not going to get their entitlement because parental choice will be different from local authority? Again, what you are saying to me is that you do not have confidence that local authorities can act in the interests of children along with parents. I do not share that view. What I am saying to you is that I have confidence in the parents, to be perfectly honest, and I really cannot understand how you cannot hear what the committee is saying to you and take that on board. There is not a lot of children in this category. I have said that I am willing to look at the numbers with COSLA. We will certainly explore that with COSLA. I am willing to strengthen statutory guidance so that the factors that ought to be taken into account when the decision is made are clearer. I am happy to look at this area, but I have confidence that the local authorities act in the best interests of children. I still think that there is an anomaly and perhaps should look at that, but thank you. I think that that concludes questions. Thank you very much, minister. We move to agenda item 4, Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014, modification number one, order 2019 SSI 2019 draft debate. We are moving to the formal debate on motion S5M-17294 in the name of the minister. I remind everyone that officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debate. I invite any contributions from members of the committee. Minister, do you wish to say anything at this stage? Thank you. I now put the question to the committee. The question is that motion S5M-17294 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Agenda item 5 is the formal debate on motion S5M-17295. I ask the minister to move the motion. I invite any contributions from members. Minister, do you wish to say anything else at this stage? No. I now put the question to the committee. That motion S5M-17295 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you. The committee will report to Parliament on these instruments. Are members content for me, convener, to sign off a report to Parliament on this instrument? Thank you. That concludes consideration of subordinate legislation. I thank the minister and the officials for their attendance this morning. I will suspend the meeting for a few moments. Thank you. We now move to agenda item 6, which is our inquiry into subject choices. It is the sixth evidence session in the committee's inquiry. I welcome to the meeting Dr Janet Bown, chief executive, Dr Gil Stewart, director of qualifications and James Morgan, head of research policy standards and statistics, all from the Scottish Qualifications Authority. If the panel could indicate to me if they wish to answer any of the questions posed by the committee, I understand that Dr Brown you want a brief introductory statement. Thank you. Good morning, committee. I just wanted to give a bit of a background of where we are. SQA has been a member of the Crick and Forexence Management Board throughout the development and delivery of the programme. We are also now a part of the Scottish Education Council, which is chaired by the Deputy First Minister to discuss education matters. SQA's role in CFE was to develop new qualifications for the senior phase that would reflect the principles of CFE and build on the experiences and outcomes of the broad general education that had been introduced both in the early years and in the secondary school through the end of S3. The courses are designed to develop the knowledge and have a clear focus on understanding and skills development and also the application of those in different contexts. In addition to the national's highest and advanced highest, SQA has a wide range of other qualifications and awards at all SCQF levels, many of which can support the diverse interests and needs of young people in the senior phase. Those courses range from skills for work courses, vocational and personal development, through higher nationals to foundation apprenticeships. Teachers and learners have a wide range of options for different pathways that can be tailored to the needs of individual learners. As you know, we are now joined by the director of qualifications development who is present throughout the Crick and Forexence period and also James, who is responsible for research policy statistics and standards. We very much look forward to answering and contributing to the committee's study around subject choice. Thank you very much. I'm now going to move to questions from the committee and we begin with Ms Smith. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Dr Brown. We've had it put to us that if you take Crick and Forexence as 3 to 18, there has been some concern from previous witnesses that the broad general education, the structure of that, was designed by different people from the people who were designing the senior phase. Possibly with good intentions, given that your role is obviously to design the qualifications. With hindsight, do you think that that was wise and that there has been a disconnect between the broad general education and the senior phase? I think that the way in which the process was undertaken was to ensure that a broad general education was in place before the qualifications were started upon. That was one of the original decisions so that assessment did not lead learning. That was the fundamental premise. What SQA have done over the past few years is actually done a couple of research programmes where we've gone and interviewed schools, both headteachers, senior management teams, teachers themselves and pupils and parents, to ask how they feel about the broad general education and how they feel about the senior phase. The first study that we undertook indicated that there was not a smooth pathway from BGE into the senior phase, but the second year that we did that research, there was obviously a lot of progress that had been made. I think that, as any programme, you can learn lessons from going back and looking how you can do it better. What is happening now is that there has definitely been a much more obvious understanding of how you progress through broad general education to make sure that you are ready for entering the courses in senior phase. The courses were developed at the request of the quick and for excellence management team to build on the experiences and outcomes of BGE. National 4, for instance, was built on the assumption that entering candidates would have reached curriculum level 3 at the end of broad general education in order to be successful in national 4 and similarly to have achieved curriculum level 4 to be successful at national 5. Everyone is much more familiar with what is happening in broad general education and the requirements for the entry point for the national qualifications. I think that it is getting better. Could I just ask you to confirm then that you are very comfortable with the 3 plus 3 model because we have obviously had criticism from some witnesses that they feel that 3 plus 3 has not been as satisfactory as was previously imagined. Are you comfortable with the 3 plus 3 model? I think that what we should be talking about is what is best for the individual child and I do recognise that that is dependent on how a school can deliver that. The philosophy of broad general education going through to the end of S3 was articulated in building the curriculum 3, the document that came out from the curriculum for excellence management board. I think that it is really important to think about what is best for that individual child and you can see that one of the aims of curriculum for excellence was not only to ensure that more students reached a certain level but also to give them a broader education for a longer period of time. That is where the 3 plus 3 came from. I think that different schools do different things for different children and that is the way that curriculum for excellence should be. I think that you have put your finger right on it because obviously there is concern that the flexibility was one of the key principles underpinning curriculum for excellence and therefore in theory you could argue that different schools would have a 3 plus 3 or 3 plus 2 plus 1 or they would have 2 plus 2 plus 2. There is that option for schools to do things in different ways. The problem is that in terms of some of the evidence that has been presented to this committee now over six sessions, I think. The subject choice issue is a major concern, particularly if you look at the statistics about the considerable drop-off in the numbers in modern languages, particularly in German and French, and in some of the STEM subjects. The real issue for a lot of parents is that while the broad general education may have given them greater width and breadth than was possible before with some new subjects, as you said in your opening statement, when it comes to the core curriculum, there is a problem about the subject choice. Do you accept these concerns that there is a problem with subject choice? I think that it would be good if we could move to the discussion of subject choice broader than just nationals because I think that there are some children who benefited a lot from the old system of going through standard grades straight to highers and to advanced highers, but not all children benefited from that. I think that it is important to understand that there is a wider range of options. I think that the school has the opportunity to be able to provide that range of options these days through the partnerships that they have with other schools. I think that it is a question of thinking about the outcome of all of education, not just S4. It is about the outcome at the end of the senior phase. Is that a better point for children these days than it used to be in the old system? In that context, Dr Brenner, would you be comfortable with a local authority that takes one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to subject choice, the numbers that are being done in S4, because that is a blanket policy for some local authorities, not all? Are you comfortable with that, given what you are saying about flexibility? I have to say that that is not SQA's responsibility and I know that that... Are you comfortable with it? I think that for some children... Are you comfortable with a local authority taking it? I would like to see flexibility, which is the fundamental philosophy of CFE, if something should be tailored for the child. It should be child-centric. We know that roughly 50 per cent of schools study six subjects in S4, 40 per cent study seven, 10 per cent study eight. There is that variance nationally. There was, to some extent, a variance under standard grade as well. William Hardy from the Royal Society told committee that this was because of the 160-hour allocation driven by the SQA. Is he right? I will touch a little bit and then I will probably ask James to give you a bit more of the detail. We take children making... We take learners making an assumption of the entry point and then we understand where we are trying to take them within a given course. We then look at that in terms of how long does that take the average child to undertake. That is no different now than it used to be. What we have done is we have broadened the broad general education to enable people to take more subjects for longer, which is why it now continues into S3. James, can I talk a little bit about the detail of the 160 hours? The 160 hours is not a new term. That is something that we have seen in the legacy qualifications intermediate one, two and higher, which is essentially the DNA of the structure of the current national four, national five and higher. The 160 hours is something that we have specified, although the real measure that SQA uses as a partner of the Scottish qualifications and credit framework is the SQF credit points and level. The qualifications are actually the same size, 240 hours of learning. The 160 hours is affected directed learning in the classroom, in that environment, and there are 80 hours self-directed learning. Comparing national four, five and higher to the previous qualifications at intermediate one, two and higher, they are exactly the same. Also at standard grade, they attracted 24 SQF credit points as well. How many hours were under standard grade then? They attracted 240 hours in total, 24 SQF credit points. I think that the difference is that there was a specification of standard grade the way that it was with 160 hours, and that essentially came about in the higher still developments because they were unit based, and that's how it could be structured so clearly. I guess my point is that standard grade wasn't unit based in the same way that higher still was. What were the error allocations for standard grade within school outwith not considering that self-directed study? That's a good question. I don't have the answer to that. That was a decision made a long time ago. Those are legacy qualifications that predated the SQF. 160 hours, I think, were the volumes of standard grade. I think that some schools in reality gave a bit longer, in some instances, for maths and English, but again that was at the discretion of individual schools and local authorities. I remember standard grade dates from the 1980s, and SQF is a more recent development. There wasn't so much specificity in things like standard grade about the number of hours of learning, as there is in current day qualifications because we have the SQF in Scotland, so that brought about more standardisation. The other thing that I would add to the comments about 160 hours in one-year courses is that the whole ethos and philosophy of CFE was about a three-year senior phase on building on the broad general education. Some of the criticisms of the previous qualifications were the so-called two-term dash to higher and trying to fit higher into a very short time period. One of the things that curriculum for excellence was trying to address was the depth of learning and giving young people more opportunity for depth of learning. It was envisaged originally that the senior phase would be a three-year phase and that there would be a mixture of young people doing courses over one year, over two years. It was never envisaged that everybody would do one set of qualifications one year and another set. A much more mixed economy was envisaged that schools would, so for instance, some schools who do things like English and Maths over two years because they feel that depth of learning helps to consolidate young people's learning and is much better because Maths and English are so fundamental to all the other learning that young people do. The whole ethos and philosophy was to address some of the weaknesses of the previous system and that lack of depth of learning was perceived as a weakness of the previous system. Again, it was giving schools that flexibility and empowerment to offer different sorts of approaches that they felt met the needs of the young people, which could be different for different subjects or different year groups. I understand the ethos, but given that 50 per cent of schools are still studying seven or eight subjects, the ethos maybe has not moved on because it is impossible to timetable more than five subjects in one school year, so you therefore have to study the qualifications earlier and that goes against what the BGE was meant to be about. There is a tension there that you would accept when schools are trying to fit that 160 hours of course content into the year. I am really interested in the relationship between the SQA and Education Scotland. I should probably say that I was formally seconded to Education Scotland. Are you still based in the Optima building in Glasgow? So they are just up the stairs from you then in the same building. You do not sit very far apart. Do you meet regularly? Do you talk about these things? Do you have any input, for example, into what timetabling should look like? Maybe not in a directive kind of way, but even just to have these kind of conversations about how you can look at timetabling 160 hour qualifications in the school year. First and foremost, we do engage a lot with Education Scotland, particularly around individual subjects. We have spent a lot of time looking at that interface between BGE and the senior phase. In terms of timetabling, that is not something that SQA gets involved in at all. That is very much a matter for schools. The challenge that you probably heard from Larry Flanagan is the whole issue of when does a national qualification start? When does a national five start? Should that be done over two years? If you want to get eight subjects in, you should be doing that over two years. Every child needs to do eight subjects. It is that flexibility of timetabling that is the nature of its best done at the school level, so we do not have any engagement at all in the timetabling discussions. You tell schools how many hours they should be teaching subjects for. We give them an indication of how long the average child is likely to need to be able to get from this level of learning to that level of learning based on the courses that we undertake. That is a final question. I was looking at an article that I interviewed in the test in 2011. The idea for the curriculum for excellence development programme was that curriculum development came first and qualifications followed. The qualification will build on outcomes, so there should not be any shocks. Removing the outcome and assessment standards was meant to reduce teacher workload. I might have a concern as a former teacher about how pupils are being presented at the right levels now if that continuous assessment is not in place anymore. Teachers are very good at understanding where their young people are in relation to their learning. The most tangible way that SQA sees that is that we ask teachers to submit estimates of what they think the grade is that each young person will achieve. That tells us that there is a reasonable degree of congruence between teacher judgments and SQA judgments. They have a good understanding. It is the same courses that we have just now with the revisions, the removal of units are the same courses with the same outcomes of learning as they were previously. The courses, the content has not changed in those revisions that have happened. However, they do not have to record whether the pupil has overcome the outcomes as I understand it, whereas they did previously. However, we would expect teachers to be doing that as a matter of course. However, they do not have to anymore. They do not have to provide that information to SQA anymore. Teachers will do that during the course of a teacher process. My concern is that a pupil could drift along all year sitting at a higher level for example and then be presented for that qualification because we have removed the outcome assessment standards. Most teachers will absolutely monitor the progress of all students during the course of that teaching year. Okay, thank you. Mr Gray. A couple of points of clarification following on from Jenny Gorrie's questions. I am interested in the notion of deeper learning. That is something that has come up in evidence when we have asked other stakeholders or witnesses about the reduced number of subjects studied. They have talked about deeper study and I think it was yourself that Dr Stewart talked about that there. However, if the credit points are the same, if the notional hours are 160, they are the same for the new national courses. It is not any deeper, is it? It is not any deeper, is it? The number of hours is the same, as you say. The depth is the same, in fact. Sorry. I think that it is all about learning as a continuum. That is how we developed curriculum for excellence. It was meant to be a 3 to 18 continuum of learning. If you do fewer subjects in the future, you will be able to have deeper learning. I think that it is fundamental to helping you to move on to the next stage. I am a scientist and James is not a scientist. He could study a national 5 biology course and he could get a C and he could have a very sketchy not a deep understanding of what is going on in that course. However, I studied and I have a deep understanding at national 5 and I get an AE, but that is not important. What is important is that I am very well placed because of my depth of understanding of the biological concepts and so on and the ability to apply those so that when I move on to higher I do better. That is where the depth of learning comes in. It is about having a stronger foundation for learners to move on. We see that from Scottish Government data that they publish about the outcomes for young people by the time they get to the end of the senior phase. The outcomes in terms of the levels that young people are achieving have gone up over the period of curriculum for excellence. That to me is telling us that there is something that is working there that we are getting a greater depth of learning and that we are getting more young people up to a higher level of qualification. I do not really understand the point that you are making in terms of subject choice in the curriculum because you and James may have attained a different level of understanding of biology in this case, but you did not do it because you studied for more hours. You both studied for the same hours. If James studied eight subjects and I studied six subjects, he would not have had 160 hours for each subject. I would have had 160 hours learning. He will have had, if the school understands curriculum for excellence and has taught that biology course across two years. He will have, but we know from speaking to teachers that that does not always happen in every case. There was some discussion Jenny Gilruth was asking about the relationship with Education Scotland and the proximity. When Education Scotland gave evidence Jenny Gilruth asked them about the 160 hours and they said I have not got the quote in front of me but they said that the 160 hours was not all contact teaching time. Your submission explicitly says that the 160 hours is contact teaching time. Education Scotland is wrong. There is always this debate on when does learning start for a particular course. Our understanding and our expectation is that in order to cover the course content for the average child you would have to have teaching time of around 160 hours. How much of that can be undertaken during the course of a child who is very advanced through broad general education is at the discretion of the teacher. Some people will start the learning not necessarily the assessment but the learning of a national 5 course earlier than they would in going into S4 for instance. We believe that teachers are really the people who are imparting a lot of knowledge. We also believe that some students work very well on their own. It is again very tailored to the individual but our expectation is that it would take approximately 160 hours for the average student to be able to be taught the nature of the content that we have in national 5 courses. Education Scotland are wrong. There is a misinterpretation of your... I think that there can be misinterpretations of what we are trying to do. Dr Stewart, you argued about being a scientist. If you were in a school that was offering six subjects in S4 and you did English maths and your three sciences, biology, physics and chemistry, you would have deeper learning. Are you concerned at all that that would actually not be a very broad curriculum that would be English and maths and just science that you wouldn't have the facilities to do a social science and languages in the way that was previously. In other words, you have jumped from what is a much broader BGE into quite a narrow senior phase. Are you worried about that? Again, I think that those are decisions that you have to make for individual young people. If I was a young person who was very clear about I wanted to go on and do medicine or wanted to be a vet or wanted to go on and be a physicist, heaven forbid, then to me that would be an okay course of study for that young person to undertake. Remembering that that young person has had that broader, broad general education prior to that. Dr Stewart, in a school that's got the four subject option of just six, that person is constrained more heavily than somebody in a seven or an eight column structure who can do the three sciences but can also pick up a social science and a language. Do you accept that? Yes, I do accept that. My other point that I was going to make was if you have a young person who's not sure about what they want to do and many young people, as parents and so on, we know many young people are not clear when they're at school what they want to do, so I presume schools would not advise young people that are unsure about what their future career path is to go down that narrowing of their options. So they might advise them to keep a broader choice at S4. Dr Brown, can I just add? One of the other things that we think about and that many of your witnesses have also mentioned is the whole point of the two-year qualification rather than trying to do everything in S4 and the ladder point. For me, that conversation needs to be disseminated a lot wider across Scotland so if you're thinking about students who potentially are very interested in doing sciences then the option is wider and they are judged by their teachers to be very competent learners and that they are going to be successful in their particular subjects that they're thinking about. They're not doing a national 5 but going straight on to a higher allows that time period in which they can keep their curriculum broader for longer. I think that whole movement that was envisaged with CFE has not happened as quickly or as much as the people felt that it should and I think that is what we should because we don't have the treadmill of national 5 to higher to advanced higher you actually say if this child is going to be successful at higher let's allow them to have a broader curriculum during the two-year period and present them for maybe some national 5s but also some hires so it keeps that breadth but you think about that senior phase as a three-year senior phase not an individual national 4 that is not happening across the country and I think that is one of the reasons that we should debate about numbers of subjects I just wanted to clarify a point with Dr Stewart in their analogy about or a description of how much better she was at biology than her colleague I'm very poor at physics but then you said it's because you only had six subjects and he had eight does that mean that's your view that young people should only have six subjects and fourth year I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to express a view about whether six subjects in S4 is a good view or not I think it's the role of schools to work with the young people, their parents and carers in their local community to agree on an appropriate curriculum model my son followed a six course six courses in S4 and I must admit that I had some sort of personal week concerns about that but I was confident that the school knew what they were doing and I placed my confidence in the school and I think that as parents many of us do that we rely on the school to be making good or helping advising us as parents to make good choices I accept the idea and experience it myself schools been talking about flexibility and all the rest but it can be largely theoretical if you presented with a column of six choices and I've talked already in the past about one of these columns not even having anything that a young person might want but you specifically made the point that the issue was around depth of learning and you said that you were able to achieve a greater depth of learning because you were doing six subjects rather than eight. The logic of that is that schools should be doing six if the whole premise of the argument is we prefer depth and breadth in fourth year then the logic of your position is that you should be saying in your view as a qualification agency young people should be studying six subjects that was the basis of your argument and wonder if that is in fact policy and if it is what conversations have you had with Education Scotland and the Scottish Government and COSLA and local authorities about whether there's a difference can I say what I think we're talking about is the amount of time that should be given to learning a subject to the right depth is the critical point here if you're trying to get that number of subjects into one year then I think you are limiting the amount of time that's available for good learning and teaching to allow that depth so the question is how do you ensure that any student gets the right amount of supportive support learning and assessment that allows them to be confident in the subject so it's not sustainable then with respect for you to do eight subjects in fourth year if you start on the assumption that they are starting from scratch in S4 then I think it is a real challenge to be able to include eight subjects so you think it's acceptable then if they started their learning in third year what would you do when you're not in the classroom would it be acceptable to count hours from third year that is a matter for schools if schools decide to do that that is an important component but the philosophy of CFE is that you maintain that breadth in S3 so that's part of the tension so the school shouldn't be doing that then I think that's part of the tension some schools are choosing to do some specialisation in S3 not complete specialisation and other schools are not and I think that is that tension of maintaining that breadth and aspects of depth across those 16 curriculum areas versus moving into more specialisation in S3 but not the complete specialisation that you would see in S4 I just wonder how you think this tension is to be resolved whose responsibility is it it's one thing to say there's a tension you could almost argue it's a conflict how is that resolved and who is the authority to resolve it I think that goes back to the whole issue of do we really believe people should be doing qualifications in S4 S5 and S6 and that is the debate that is going on that I think you've heard from other members of the witnesses in previous sessions that says we should be talking about the whole senior phase we should be talking about two year courses we should be measuring the outcomes and the achievements and attainment of learners at the end of S6 whether they're in school or whether they're in college or whether they're in work and for me that is something that we as SQA present our data on an annual basis the data that is used is our data therefore we talk all the time about annual statistics what we should be looking at is the outcome of that Dr Allan Thank you very much and good morning I was interested in one thing that was said there about the number of subjects being what's appropriate can I just clarify are we talking here about what's appropriate for a school or what's appropriate for an individual because we have had evidence given to this committee that some of which comes down on one side of that and some of which comes down on the other how about appropriate for schools or appropriate for individuals It should be appropriate for individuals but it always in practicality terms will be constrained by what school is able to deliver either itself or through its partnerships and I think that that is the key thing and we also need to recognise that some of those some of those courses will not be nationals they will be national certificates they will be development awards they will be early stage foundation apprenticeships etc which will be potentially delivered in other areas but you obviously have to balance the focus on the individual with the deliverability of anything in a particular centre Each school will have an average number of subjects that it's delivering to its S4 pupils but within that there will still be some variation obviously to meet individual needs and we can see that from the data and I think that's always been the case different young people in a school would do for example different numbers of standard grades and they may also do other programmes that sit alongside that Something else you were saying that was interesting was about the continuum of learning and I absolutely by that I can see that I can accept that but one thing that we have had a lot of evidence about is about languages that there isn't a continuum when it comes to languages in terms of the huge drop-off in the number of languages being taken and not much evidence of them being taken up again later on in schools so does the continuum that you've talked about work for languages I think that the major drop-off in languages as I think you've heard from previous witnesses probably occurred when they were no longer compulsory but what we do see is you are right we've seen a fall-off in languages and we are fiercely proud of the fact that we've got some really good language qualifications that we really want students to be learning what we are seeing is a continued strength in the higher so it's the national 5 and national 4 subject levels that have declined but higher people who really want to do languages continue to do the higher so what we have introduced is languages for life and work where you're able to do that and explore languages in a different space there is as I think it's possible to pick up languages later so I think that's partly why you're seeing maintenance of the numbers at higher rather than the numbers at national 5 are those what might be called crash hires where people are going into a higher really with perhaps little by way of contact with that language since they were in third year well yes we would call that no previous attainment and that could be somebody who's taken that language over two years and not done a national 5 or they've done it in one year at a later point they could do it in s6 I'm not a language person but from what I understand is if you have got one language it's easier to pick up a second language so the idea of being able to add hires at a later stage when you've only taken them to the end of BGE is a feasible thing to do OK, I did Latin at school and I enjoyed it I would have hesitated to do a crash higher in German on that basis but never mind what I'm really interested though is the rationale about the 3-3 structure quite rightly say that there's a mixed economy out there with approaches by different schools it was interesting when we met with teachers that there was a very mixed economy indeed in terms of how teachers responded to that or reacted to that some embraced the idea of 3-3 very enthusiastically some appeared to be dying in a ditch by way of opposition to it did you anticipate quite such a variety of approaches to the way 3-3 would be viewed? We would participate in those conversations through the CFE management board so that that is not a responsibility for SQA but absolutely we are involved in that discussion and have been involved in that discussion for a long time and I think there was very obviously that tension again between the people who wanted to widen the curriculum and broaden it out bring in different subjects and the others that were very wedded to the let's make sure that we get eight subjects in S4 and S5 and then however many in S6 so as in anything in education there is never a consensus there's always a wide variety of views and I think that was seen and continues to today Okay, thank you very much Okay, Mr Greer did you want to go back to something that Janet Brown referenced in your opening remarks at one end of the spectrum at the moment we have some quite positive outcomes in the number of young people who are leaving school with five hires at the other end of the spectrum we have seen an increase in the number of young people who are leaving with no qualifications at all why do you think that is? I think we have seen a drop-off in the numbers undertaking national 1 through national 3 and I think that that is something that we are still trying to understand the detail of because some of that is structural in terms of the way that they are operated but one of the things we really need to make sure is that candidates are entered for the levels of qualification that the teachers believe they can achieve qualifications shouldn't be just bars to jump over they should be a recognition of people's learning and if a teacher believes an individual might make a national 5 but they put them in for a 5 but they don't get good learning and they get a 4 in the current system that is a real challenge similarly if somebody should be doing a national 3 and they're doing a national 4 and they don't achieve a national 4 Scotland is one of the few places that has such a wide variety of levels of qualification that any student should get as well as the breadth of the qualifications and the nature of the learning and I think it is something that we need to be making sure that people have recognised the value of the lower SCQF level qualifications so national 3 is a valuable qualification for those individuals that get it as you say we have a qualification structure that means that really any young person should be able to leave school with qualifications it seems to be indicating that part of this issue is that there are some young people simply being put forward for a level qualification that they're not likely to meet where do you think that problem is coming from is that down to issues of misunderstanding at school level is this something where the pressure is coming from local authorities because if it's happening systematically enough for us to have seen this increase in some areas in Dumfries and Galloway it's 4.5% of young people there that's quite a significant increase from the 1% that it was previously why is that occurring where do you think the problem is beginning there is it local authority, is it school is it something structural that we can address nationally I don't think we fully we as SQA do not fully understand why that's happening and we are working with partners obviously to try and understand what the causes behind this is but I think it is important as a society that we overtly recognise the value of the lower level qualifications because there is a concern that if all we talk about is national fives and hires everything else is not valued and I think we collectively have a responsibility to recognise the value of a national one and I would challenge anyone to meet a parent who's very challenged child has achieved an SQA certification in national one to not be incredibly proud of the fact that that child has achieved that recognition and we need to recognise that as a society Could you go into a little bit more detail you're saying that you're working with partners to try and find out what's happening could you go into a bit more detail about the process here what research are you undertaking to figure out exactly why this increase has occurred James? I think one of the challenges of SQA's data and the limitations of it as well what you have to be clear about is the SQA qualification so we don't really have an overview of the whole cohort in Scotland at any one time and that's when a learner actually has entered for an SQA qualification it's effectively when we give you a visibility of that learner and that individual and I think that's one of the absolute limitations of what we can actually comment on and try and understand we see different things in terms of our data that once a certification has taken place and the causality of what's happening there is challenging for us because we only see learners once they're entered we don't know the richness of the system the richness of those individuals' lives and learning and teaching and how they actually come to SQA I accept that but if you could just lay out you've indicated that there is a process you are working with others We've been meeting with Scottish Government statistics people because they have the cohort information and with Education Scotland and discussing the nature of those sorts of results that we see and I think that's important The point that I was going to make was about the Scottish Government insight tool that Scottish Government can look nationally at what the data is telling them but schools more importantly can look at a local level at how their young people are performing and they can split that data in lots of different ways so they can look by SIMD quintiles they can try out different approaches within their schools you mentioned Dumfries and Galloway and the 4% that are not achieving I'm presuming that some of those schools in Dumfries and Galloway will be trying out different sorts of approaches for those young people to see how they can find some learning a type of learning that will engage those young people and get them back engaged in their education and help them to achieve and ultimately to get a positive destination so I think there's a lot of that work that has to go on at a local level and I think the insight tool provides a broader set of measures for schools to look at so they have the positive destination measure for school leavers they have the measures about literacy and numeracy and we've seen improvements in literacy and numeracy they also have measures about the highest level not just SQA qualifications but other types of qualifications as well so they measure things like ASDA and Duke of Edinburgh Princess Trust and so on so they will have all of that data Scottish Government has all that data at a national level but also schools will have that at a local level and they will be able to try out different approaches for different groups of young people and then see what impact that has and really by looking at what's working for young people because one of the underpinnings of the original building the curriculum 3 document was an OECD report about equity and quality in Scottish education and they talked very eloquently about the strengths of the Scottish system but they also talked about some of the inequity being within school and that is primarily one of our focus and through the CFE work that we're all engaged in is to bring up the young people at that time so I haven't got an answer for you but I think there are measurement tools at a local level which schools can use to help address and try out different approaches because one of the things that OECD said was many young people particularly high achievers are motivated where they want to get to so I want to get to university so I'm motivated to work hard and to achieve in order to get to university but the bit that they talked about that Scotland didn't quite have right which was a way back in 2009 was those young people that don't have that external motivation they're not clear about what they want to do they've maybe not found anything that they're really good at so far at school and so they talked about it's the curriculum itself that you've got to motivate those young people with you've got to find something that really engages with those young people whether it's a vocational area or it's something like the Duke of Edinburgh or Asdan that gets them back engaged in education that gets them to be a bit successful in something and then that motivates them to kind of move on to the next level so that's what the OECD was challenging Scotland to do and I think that's what collectively across all our schools and local authorities people are trying to do in lots of different ways Absolutely When we look at the data we see it's not a uniform trend so obviously there are issues that need to be identified in local areas but there is a trend here nationally this number has increased so I suppose my final question is I accept that you don't have an answer this morning you have identified that you are working with the Government, with partners or with Education Scotland and local authorities when will you be able to come back to us and say why you as the qualifications authority believe there are more young people leaving with no qualifications I think that the question is how can our how can SQA's data help make that given answer to that question the responsibility for understanding what's happening in the system is collective, I agree we should be part of that but SQA's responsibility is to provide the data that we have to be able to add to the data that others have in terms of understanding the answer to that question so I would say that we collectively as a group of stakeholders should be working together to get that answer for you When will you be able to make your contribution to that SQA's data? I accept that there is collective responsibility this committee has been through that on a number of occasions trying to figure out where responsibility for quick confracks on lies in its many forms but the reality is that you are the qualifications authority there are more young people in Scotland leaving school with no qualifications than before you have a significant amount of responsibility in this area, I'm not saying that the fault lies necessarily with decisions taken by the SQA but you have clear responsibility in the realm of qualifications to make your contribution to us collectively figuring out the answer what is causing this problem My view is that we need to be doing that over the next year or so because we need to understand what's happening this summer because that's another set of data that's going to come in we have seen, as I said earlier that there's been a change in the approach to broad general education over the past few years we should be seeing that coming through in the summer so we need to monitor that we also need to make sure that we understand what's happening at a cohort level not just at an entries level because that's a key piece here you may have noticed in the press I think a couple of days ago down south there is this this pattern of people removing children from being entered for qualifications to maintain the attainment we do not believe that that is happening in Scotland we do not want that to happen in Scotland but we need to understand what measure, as well as the entries measure Very specific on that point Dr Brown, that might not be happening as commonly in Scotland as it is down south it is absolutely happening in Scotland I can say from the 30th of my cousin experienced that this year until his entire class were not put forward for a qualification that decision was taken in February and it was only reversed towards the end of March after the intervention of parents and local elected members so there are schools in Scotland that accept that it's not at the level in England but it is absolutely happening That's why it's really really important that, especially given that data that we look at cohort not just at entries Absolutely, thank you A couple of quick supplementaries Ms Mackay Thank you, good morning To follow up on Ross Greer's line of questioning about data our briefing tells us that the SQA holds a rich set of data and Dr Allan Britton told committee that we have very little research evidence about the impact of the different models schools have been left to try things out so my question is do you think that you've been proactive enough in following up via your data and understand its collective attainment levels and just to feed back to how these models are performing Have you been lasing with local authorities on a regular basis or do you feel you've got a rich set of data what are you how does that actually work for you Our data does not contain any information on the curriculum models that are undertaken in schools so as I mentioned earlier in relation to Dr Allan's question whether someone has crashed a subject at higher or whether someone has taken that over two years so whether it is one year or two years for a higher we don't have that information I understand that, so what sort of data do you have then? We have the data of the attainment based on an entry at a particular time so we know the age and stage of that individual but we don't know the curriculum model that that individual has undertaken so it needs to be collected our data can be used by local authorities and by individual schools who know what their curriculum model is they can see whether a change in their curriculum model has had negative or negative impact on the attainment of their students we don't have that curriculum model information and we cannot do that analysis Should you not be requesting that? Should it not be fed back to you so that you can see the bigger picture? I think that that goes back to this is going to sound like it's not our problem but it is our problem because we are part of the system but it escalates responsibility within the education system is to provide qualifications to provide the data on attainment on an annual basis for those qualifications that can be used by the system to understand how the system is working and how to improve it and our information should be used by people who understand what the curriculum models are in schools to understand whether that has been a positive or a negative change in the level of attainment so we need to be part of that conversation but SQA does not have a remit that says go off and measure the difference in the attainment of a 3 plus 3 versus a 2 plus 2 plus 2 and that will also depend on individual children because one child may benefit with a 3 plus 3 another child might benefit from a 2 plus 2 plus 2 okay thank you Mr Gray I was delighted Dr Bryant here talking about the importance of value of qualifications because in my view far too often in this debate we're told that young people who get 5 hires are still getting 5 hires so always well with the world and I personally don't think that's good enough but in talking about data this inquiry was really generated in part by data produced by people like Professor Scott which showed a reduction in subjects being studied at S4 a significant reduction in both enrolment and attainment at levels 4 and 5 in the new exams compared to previous standard grade exams and in fact the data in your tables rather tells the same story the numbers might be marginally different but huge drop-off in both enrolment and attainment at levels 4 and 5 given what you've just said do you not think that your data shows that there are cohort of young people here who are being failed by the system of which you're part at the moment? I think that if we go back to what CFE was trying to achieve CFE was trying to achieve not just people getting pieces of paper and qualifications but people actually having the ability to apply that learning in different contexts to have a comfort level with that learning that would enable them to be successful in the future and more successful in their future destinations and in order to do that there was the philosophy that said we should be measuring their attainment at the end of S6 when they're 18 whether they're in school or in college or in work and I think the total number of qualifications someone achieves when you go to a university universities in Scotland they ask how many national 5s you've got they ask you about your hire once you've overtaken one level you get to the next level and that's what's important it's rare for a company to go back and ask what the hires somebody did it's their degree so the question that I have for the committee is what is the level of attainment that we're actually measuring in Scotland is it what children what learners have achieved at the age of 18 and does it matter whether they've got a national 5 and a hire in French or does it matter that they've attained a deep understanding of higher French but we're back to talking about those young people who achieve hires there are a group of young people for whom national 4, national 5 or indeed lower levels you gave an example yourself earlier on will be what they achieve in school are we not failing that cohort of young people they are coming out with fewer qualifications at the level of achievement than they did in 2011-12-13 I think that the issue there is that differentiation of the cohort so I did make the mistake of mentioning the hires but if you look at the progression of children of learners who are coming out of S4 and moving into more vocational courses that are much more suited to them they may have attained a national 5 but did they actually learn of a standard grade general are we at a point where they're actually pursuing a much more positive life path for them my question is do we have the data which allows us to interrogate that question because I don't think we do I don't think we do either I think that Scottish Government through the insight data would have a more complete picture of because it includes not just SQA qualifications but vocational courses vocational qualifications to demonstrate to us whether they will have more information one last very to the point question we're talking about the value of lower level qualifications a number of the submissions to the committee have said categorically that the national 4 the national 4 qualification is considered worthless and I'm not paraphrasing worthless is what they say we'd like you to respond to that we have just done a credibility survey which is totally random run by an external organisation where they met people on the street and they made telephone calls randomly we've got data that actually shows that for national 4 those for young people for potential candidates and for mature candidates for national 4 though the percentage you felt that there was a low credibility for national 4 was around 18% the highest percentage of low credibility of national 4 was among teachers which is 37% employers was 15% I think we need to address the credibility of national 4 because it is a very valuable qualification yes there is no external examination but there are no external examinations in high national certificates high national diplomas and it is also about ensuring that those learners who achieve certification at national 4 have actually achieved the learning and the knowledge and the skills that are demonstrated in national 4 so my view is we really need to make sure that national 4 is designed specifically for those students who would be going on to courses that do not have examinations and where examinations are not best suited to be able to capture their abilities so I think there is a huge challenge with regard to the credibility of national 4 but I think we really really really need to address that coming in Ms Harris yes thank you good morning committee I would just like to address the subject of multilevel teaching now first I appreciate that it has always existed it is now commonplace and Larry Flanagan of the EIS described it as an explosion I just want to ask your views on was this part of the consideration when implementing the curriculum for excellence senior phase or was it actually planned for because the evidence that's being suggested to committee is really suggesting that it just really is an unintended consequence so what would your views be on that I think there are there are two things to meet multi-age teaching where you have children who are in national 4 S5 and S6 learning the same level is something that I think was understood I think multilevel teaching where you're teaching national 4, 5 and higher in the same class was probably an unintended consequence and has come about as a result of the environment in which curriculum for excellence has been introduced that's super thank you that's what I wanted to know I want to go back to this question of equity and fairness and you made the point yourself down south where the young people are not allowed to take exams or they're taking off the role in order to prevent any sense of affecting the status of the school I suppose what's your view on the equity in downgrading for some young people the qualification they get in fourth year from the past so in the past kids at general not this foundation but general children at the external exam that established a level of attainment which is now under that 4 which is not assessed externally and is a pass or fail I mean would you accept that that is a form of derolding that we're reducing the amount of time and attention that the system gives to those particular young people do you want to cover that the original design of national 3 and national 4 was done through an open consultation with the public and overseen by the curriculum for excellence management board and the reason that as I understand it that it was decided that national 3 and national 4 should be internally assessed and externally quality assured by SQA was because young people at that level often don't do particularly well with external exams and from a kind of insider view within SQA looking at how young people performed at foundation in general and external exams I think you could quite clearly see that so the original rationale for national 3 and national 4 being internally assessed was from an equity point of view and from a perspective of it was more appropriate for those young people to have their qualifications internally assessed and the other thing that I would say is we did a piece of field work I think it was 2 or 3 years ago and we had focus groups and we specifically targeted or asked for young people who were doing national 4 or a mix of national 4 and national 5 and young people themselves do not have issues with national 4 being internally assessed they saw that as a positive they didn't see it as a negative they didn't see it as kind of low credibility but what we do see is that there's much more of a mixed view from teachers and senior managers within schools so the original rationale for national 4 being was one that was meant to be it was if you like an equity issue to me Joanne it was trying to come up with a form of assessment that would be if you could point us to that decision the committee was unable to get anybody to say we were responsible for making this decision so if you could point us to that that would be excellent because frankly nobody has ever said before there was any rationale to it everybody said somebody else must have made that decision I profoundly disagree with it but it would be useful if we could see that and I think in terms of equity then we know that resource follows qualifications that's the reality and we may want to look at uptake of national 4 in that regard but I presume what you've said you're not regarding it as something you would want to see externally examined but that might be something we can look at further at the last point because I'm conscious of time on this question of equity so we're told that the qualifications are over three years we're also told that 75% of looked after young people will leave school in fourth year so we've built a curriculum system which will perhaps amplify inequality for some young people do you accept that's a problem? I think for me the one thing we need to make sure is that we ensure that young people who do leave school at the end of S4 have what they need to be successful in where they're going to go and that where they go and we also make sure that they are continuing their learning because some people yes, I recognise that that's a really high percentage for looked after young people but there are other young people as well so for everyone who leaves at the end of S4 we need to make sure that as they leave school they have the right knowledge and skills and learning that is recognised in the most appropriate way that might be national qualifications with respect to what you've already said the system works over three years I'm saying to you as a particular disadvantaged group of young people who disproportionately leave at the end of fourth year so they do not have a curriculum system that's meeting their needs I'm presuming on John that locally schools would know who those looked after young people are and they would put in place appropriate learning arrangements for those young people although if they could do that they would encourage them to stay on at school this is not an issue about ability this is not an issue about circumstance and I wonder do you at least accept as an issue here that young people because of their circumstances not their ability are leaving school disproportionately at the end of fourth year in a system that's designed for you to stay there till sixth year how do we address that? the thing for me is we should stop thinking about the senior phase merely as being in school we need to think about where those young people are going whether they're going to college whether they're going to work environment and how do we make sure that their learning continues there and that that learning is planned for and that we take responsibility as a society for that because we do think about the senior phase as being all in school and it's not all in school for everyone and it shouldn't be all in school for everyone I think that concludes questions from the committee this morning the panel for the attendance this morning can I pay a particular thanks to Dr Brown, this is likely to be your last appearance certainly in this role at committee and we would like to thank you for your service and wish you all the best for your retirement life thank you that concludes the public session for this week and next week will be our final session on the inquiry it's 29th of May and we will take evidence from the cabinet secretary and I'll now suspend for a few minutes as we move into private session