 Mae Unigedig, iawn i ti'n ei gweld o gyfle moddfredd yn organ dwarf ac mae nhw wedi'i gwyfodol byddai arferio iawn iawn iawn iawn iawn iawn i chi i i gael eich cyfliadau, a i wedi gael eich cyfan gyda'r panodol. Mae unigedig i chi i i gael eich cyfan gyda'r panodol eruherwydd i gael botwg cyfliadau gyda'r panodol yn gwneud o'r ysgolion sydd hefyd. Mae unigedig i chi i chi transcript i gael eich c lifting hwnnw i gael a'i gael eich cyfliadau arall a'r lefanydd ac erioedd wedi gyflyír ein profiad o gyvein клotech Rain Beef Unwins Fudorfind Caerdyddad um pens fiefrodd o gyfrydベśćド ar Fref!!!!! Elin Pryair y mermaid agonodd agonodd ar gyfrydd a gwnaeth gymheid gynnig o'r fежfyn pozael dod iddyn nhw i gyfrydd aeth hi ow. I'm going to move straight to questions, and members are keen to get involved in this. I'm sure, so I'm going to start with Mary Scanlon. Thank you, convener. Can I just, first of all, ask an opening question to all of you? I wonder if you can give examples of the kind of budgetary pressures that you're aware of in schools, and also if you could give an example of how this impacts on pupils' education, and perhaps Ian, if I may come to you first, because I was struck by your evidence paragraph 2.4 and 2.5, where you say that schools are increasingly expected to fundraise for essential items such as pencils and paper. So can you give us an example of schools where they have to fundraise to get their own pencils and paper in your response? I can't give you the exact schools if you're looking for the exact schools, but the big thing is because the cuts and stuff that they've got is there isn't much flexibility in the money when the school actually gets their funding, because the majority of it is towards staff costs and the upkeep of the school. So you're then looking at the priorities of getting material cost material, so it then just filters down on what's the least thing to supply, and it's pencils and papers and stuff. Can you perhaps tell us which local authority have to raise, parents have to raise money to get pencils and paper? Could you perhaps tell us or is it all local authorities? I wouldn't say it's all, but it's some. I know my own Western Barton, a couple of schools have done it, and the parent council and the PTA have actually had to raise money because of the savings that they've had to make. Western Barton, is that the only one that you're aware of? That's the one that I have. The problem is that some of these are from my reps, it's all been collated. It's just that it sends you your evidence. Western Barton, and I know I have a couple of schools that have done it, the PTA and the PTA have had to do it. I'm sure that probably Ileens get probably some more. So it's just to give an example of budgetary pressure on how they're suspecting pupils' education. It's just that when you break it all down, there's not much of the budget left that schools can actually use, and then when they actually get that and then they've actually got to make management savings on top of that, so it makes it even harder. So the budget just gets cut, they'll give it an allocation, then, well, by the way, there's another management saving you need to make on top of that, and it's just not sustainable. Sorry, convener, but it's just that what should money be spent on that it's not being spent on, you know, with the cuts that you mentioned? Pencils and paper is one. What else should be provided that it's not being provided due to these budgetary pressures? Well, just about to go into the new hires. See, there's going to be new resources needed. There's not enough funding to supply all the resources that we need for the children. I mean, when children are starting to share books by one to one and one to three, it doesn't work, and this is the big restraint we're now under. All these new resources, the money's just not there to fund the new resources that are coming out, and then to actually start looking at replacing old resources. Kids are going home with books that are taped together. The other kids from years gone by have scribbled we notes on, and it's so that there's just no money left. And you feel this may be detrimental to pupils' education in terms of approaching the new hire? Oh, definitely. It's not just the new hire, but everyone. Well, just you gave that example, thank you. Sorry, Mary, I just wanted to clear something up. Mr Bell, could you name a time when that didn't happen? What you just said. When I was at school, and it wasn't yesterday, pupils shared books one to two or even one to three. Books were taped up because the spine was broken. Previous pupils had written in all the margins. I mean, I have to be honest and say that that's what you've described as my memory of school. And it also, pupils were asked if it was possible your parents could afford it, could perhaps you buy the text for this particular play we're doing in English. It wasn't yesterday. I know it wasn't yesterday, but when I was at school 20 years ago, I had my own books and it's just the state they're getting in now that they can't even replace them. So if you even say if it was a one to two, it's now a one to three because the state of the books is just not... The thing is, the way Scottish education is and what we're wanting Scottish education to be, is that good enough for a one to three? No, no, that's not my point. I agree it's not good enough, but my point is that when I was at school, one to three sharing, parents having to raise money to supply extra books and material, old books, books being taped up was the norm. It was happening then over 30 or 40 years ago and I'm just asking you why you think that's new in any way. Because parents are now bringing it to light and saying in the other question they're saying is why should we? Is that not part of your education? Why should parents then have to supply stuff? Can I comment? We're supposed to have a system of education which is free at the point of delivery. We don't. So on two levels, we have individual parents who are having to find money to pay for materials or trips or whatever for their young people. We know that that has an impact. If you read the Children's Commissioner's report earlier this year, young people self-select, so if they are looking at subject choices and they know they come from a household where there is little money, they will not take subjects which require those additional resources. So they will avoid technical subjects and practical subjects. They will not put themselves forward for school trips because they know their parents can't afford them. So on an individual basis, we impact on families and on the education of young people. As far as parent groups are concerned, absolutely, we have been tracking for a number of years parent groups are raising funds not for frills, not for ribbons and fancy things, but for fundamental resources. IT equipment is a key one, so you know smart boards, laptops, iPads, tablets, that kind of thing. So parent groups are funding things which would normally, would have previously been included within the school's budget and that is across the board. That is all over. So at the Scottish Youth Parliament, we consult directly with young people and recently we have done a consultation and our education and lifelong learning committee has done a consultation with young people on this and we submitted a full copy of the evidence to your committee. What we found was that young people were very happy with curriculum for excellence and they liked it, but they felt that there were some issues with the implementation and they felt that teachers could have been perhaps a little bit better prepared and that there were not enough resources to coincide with the education. In terms of the content of curriculum for excellence, they have been relatively happy. We feel that perhaps the committee could look at putting a bit of thought into the resources going into it because it would be preventative spending and we feel that if this was looked at, it would benefit in the future because the more we put into education, it will come back in the future and the spending will go back into the economy. Recent auditory pressures have impacted on the implementation of curriculum for excellence? Yes, so a concern that we have is that it would appear that the spending is going to struggle over the next year and we think that maybe if we resolve those issues with resourcing now, it would benefit in the long run. Do you think that Scotland represents our membership of over 100 organisations in the voluntary and statutory sector in our local authorities? I think that the experience that we have is that the budgetary pressures on school are the impact on not on teacher numbers directly but the amount of time that teachers have to invest in partnership working with youth work practitioners to deliver the outcomes of curriculum for excellence, giving the young people the principles of breadth, progression, personalisation and choice, and youth work offers that. There are really good examples of youth work in schools programmes where those opportunities need to be there but it requires teacher time both in the planning and also in times in the delivery of that. I am a member of the audit committee, so forgive me if I am a bit of an anarch from there, but they did do a very good report, which I have no doubt you have all read on school education earlier this year. I will lump my two questions together and I will quote from the report. Some schools have achieved better attainment results than their level of deprivation would indicate, suggesting that the gap between lowest and highest performing schools cannot be wholly attributed to different levels of deprivation, so I'd be very pleased to hear your views. We had a very good debate last week in Parliament on levels of attainment, hearing your views on what we could do, and I know that the committee is doing an inquiry into deprivation, what we could do to narrow that gap. My second point is from the same report, the Audit Scotland report, it's paragraph 33, and I'll just quote again. At a council level, there is no consistent approach to tracking and monitoring the progress of pupils from primary 1 to S3. It doesn't mean that they're not being tracked, it just means there's no consistent approach and it's really to help us to understand that every pupil gets the best chance. I wonder if I could ask you to address those two points of view, other than deprivation, what affects pupils' attainment, and secondly, should we have a more consistent approach to tracking pupils, because we know that reading and maths competence levels seem to deteriorate from P1 to P2 into secondary schools. I will answer those two points. The two key things that impact on attainment for young people are parental engagement and quality of teaching. That's not rocket science, it's out there. We all know that that's the reality. We pointed out in our paper that we've got to have a clear eye on the difference between parental involvement and parental engagement. Schools can do a great deal to support parental engagement and parent groups, parent councils and PTAs can do a great deal to support parental engagement. The prize of all of that is that parents engage with their children's learning and that improves attainment. The quality of teaching and the quality of leadership within the school environment is absolutely key. The reason that you have such disparity between different schools and different areas with the same level of deprivation is the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching and the way in which the families in those communities are engaged. I think that that is a lot of it. It's not all of it, but that is a lot of it. As far as the tracking of young people is concerned, as a culture, we are obsessed with measuring the pig. We will weigh it and we will weigh it and we will weigh it and it will still weigh the same tomorrow as it weighs today. If we use assessment as a way of weighing the pig just so that we can note that down, we know that schools are struggling with the amount of paper work and the amount of bureaucracy that's already on them. We've got to be extremely cautious about putting in further measures for attainment. Teachers know that they are young people. If we have to look at ways in which attainment is measured, we have to look at working with teachers to implement something that is low-tech and low-bureaucracy so that we can do that tracking. However, I don't think that it needs to be done nationally. I think that it needs to be done locally and it needs to be done under the eyes of a vigilant local authority and a vigilant headteacher and with the co-operation of parents. I was very careful to quote from the report because I was not suggesting more testing, more bureaucracy. I was very careful and what I was asking or what I talked about and I don't want to read any more wasn't about weighing the pig, as you say. It's comparing one school with another. That's what the auditor general was saying. I'm quite concerned—I appreciate parental engagement—but I'm quite concerned about what you're saying about the quality of teaching. Is that affected by budgetary pressures? I wasn't saying that that was affected by budgetary pressures. What I'm saying is that those are the two things that give you high attaining young people. Quality of teaching and parental engagement are key factors. That is separate from budgetary pressures. Of course, budgeting has an impact on the teaching population. Of course it does. Do you have concerns about the quality of teaching? You've mentioned it quite often. I think that there are concerns about the quality of teaching. I think that all parents can cite examples in their children's schools of worries around quality of teaching. We've come a long way. I think that we've got a long way to go. I agree with a lot of what Eileen was saying. What is attainment? It's one big issue that I've got. Attainment from one school to another and attainment in a deprived area might be just the kids turning up at school. That's raising attainment because you're actually getting them in school. It could be how many national fives have people got. I think that we need to maybe look at some sort of standardisation of what actual is attainment. I don't think that it's good enough just to say to an authority what is your attainment because they can give you all different answers. It puts the destination of school leavers. That's on the attainment level. We don't specifically ask what is your destination of school leavers and get a chart. We ask how many kids get national fives, five national fives. That's only 20 per cent of the children in that year group that actually sit and get these. What would be the 80 per cent? That is where we're beginning to lose out. If we start cutting budgets, what we're talking about is of course attainment is going to drop and we're never going to get the gap because under curriculum for excellence the high flyers in the school you've got to help them so they're still going to rise and even if you're helping the bottom it's just going to move at the same level. How are you actually going to bridge that gap? It leads then on to your quality of teaching and it is we need quality teachers and there is issues with teachers across the country. The GTCS is beginning to deal with some problems and God forbid we'll see in the days that they've actually get rid of some teachers. I used to call teachers bumper because you couldn't get rid of them once you're on a job and that was them but we're now beginning to look at it and sort this out and we're beginning to get quality teachers through and the new teachers that are coming through under curriculum for excellence through the colleges you see them and it's night and day when you see some of these young teachers coming through the system and some of the ideas that they're using to bring the kids on is just really it's mind blowing and I think the big issue is if budget restraints start to kick in then I honestly think just now it's going to turn into a postcode lottery because some authorities work far better with their budgets than others and you begin to see gaps across the country. There is bits where some kids are paid more to fund them for the year than others but a lot of it's cuts and the last three years there's been cuts not a lot to education. The next three years there's going to be serious cuts to education because a lot of the authority other departments have been cut to the bone and how do they make savings in education? Now the bus trip down the road making it just statutory that's not much of a saving the only way to make serious savings in education is through staffing and school closures neither of which are acceptable to parents and if we're going to actually look at proper if you want curriculum for excellence to go on the road that we're going which is one of the could be one of the best systems in the world. I think if we pull the carpet from under this now then I think there's a good chance we'll end up back down the ladder a big step. I know Gordon MacDonald wants to come in at this point. Eileen in your opening answers to Mary's questions you said that households with little money disadvantaged children were not choosing subjects in relation to costs in school trips. One I was going to say what evidence is there of that and secondly the Scottish Government during the summer announced a new funding for access to education which allows schools to apply for up to £5,000 to help disadvantaged children so again you know how aware are our schools of this fund and what is the take up of that fund? That fund was actually announced at the launch of the report from the Children's Commissioner and Save the Children which identified this as an issue so identified that young people were self-selecting they were avoiding subjects which would cost their families money so we are already discarding those young people from the career choices that they want to make and that I think is fundamentally unfair. As for how aware schools are of the fund I don't know I think you have to talk to the teachers unions about that because that's a school based not focused on families but you know I think that that rests at the discretion of schools that doesn't rest with families that doesn't that doesn't impact on what's going on in the whole but if schools were aware of the funds existence they could obviously make families aware that this fund is available and would you agree that this would help offset part of the problem? I'm sure it will help I don't know if it will help enough I just don't know and I think you're going to have to get a sense from the teachers unions and the head teachers as to whether they feel that that's made sufficient impact. We've talked about the pressures on school budgets and you know we're all aware that public authorities are under a great deal of pressure financially but Audit Scotland's report about school education issued in June of this year one of their key messages on point two was that performance has improved against all 10 of the attainment measures that we examined over the last decade so how does that tie in with people's view that the budgetary pressures are having an effect on education when they've quite clearly said that it's actually improving attainment it's actually improving well I mean I think you you know you're not necessarily comparing apples with pears you know that's one thing and the means in which we measure attainment in different countries is different so you know you can't you can't simply look at attainment levels here and compare them directly with elsewhere our teaching methods are different our curricula are different and their means of measurement are different so you know I think you have to say that these are broad yes and I think that's right and I think that's a testament to hard work of schools hard work of teachers and hard work of young people you know and I don't think that there's any doubt where we are starting to move up if you like and we are to pick up one of Ian's points we are taking on board wider achievement as opposed to simply academic attainment and that is extremely important but you know local authorities yes they have been they have been cutting they have been cutting for quite some years and you see it at head office if you like because the staffing levels within education departments or whatever kind of department they are because they're all actually multifunction now the number of quality improvement officers has really dropped and you'll see that in in the that report also and parental involvement officers the number has probably remained static but the amount of time that they actually have to support parental involvement has been cut drastically so you know there are already cuts going through at head office in schools we're seeing classroom assistants language assistants business managers you know that the non-teaching staff have already been cut and parents are already saying that they are they are seeing that for young people with additional needs there is a reduced resource within schools and that that's already out there that's already happening now a lot of these kids won't appear on your attainment charts so how do we know what impact that's having other than the fact that parents are telling us and I imagine that people at the additional support needs tribunal will be getting more cases I'm heartened by that report right because I think we have raised the the barrier in Scotland and the big issue is though if the cuts that we're talking about going to come in is it can only be detrimental to the system it can't keep going because the only way is I say to save serious money at school closures and staffing and as soon as we start affecting the staffing things are going to fall because there's that much pressure on the staff just now that they can only get worse and that's my concern is we're so far with we're going through this period of critical for excellence and the new qualifications the new hires all coming in and if we start now taking tightening squeezing the grip can we actually go where everybody around here probably y'all were involved in the curriculum for excellence can we actually take it to where you've seen 10 years ago where you are going to go with curriculum for excellence why how can we possibly stop that trend now and my biggest worry is we buck that trend that 10-year trend for which we have been raising it for ourselves the the issue is is a bit attainment for all young people and youth work provides an opportunity for for some young people where the formal school system isn't the best suit for them and that they can achieve in other ways and they can progress and develop their own skills and confidence and interests and I suppose the challenge is the the school budgets are statutory there's a set of statutory measures youth work doesn't have the same preserve and status in that way and we're really conscious that local authorities are having to make tough choices between fulfilling their statutory obligations to provide school education but there's also the informal education sector of youth work and family learning which can create greater benefit for young people in the long run as a preventative spend measure. I think something the committee could consider is that there is a massive you know differentiation between the amount of spending in constituencies and local authorities and it varies quite a lot and what we are concerned about is we want to ensure that all young people in Scotland have the same level of high quality education and that you know everyone has access to these opportunities and I would agree with Susan saying that you know something that's really important to young people as they get additional opportunities so like we've been told that work experience is absolutely vital to you know their employability and things like providing different options for people's you know the system. I think something that curriculum for excellence has done really well is realise the system can't be a one-size-fits-all system anymore and we need to continue to promote more vocational opportunities and you know different pathways to college and university so that all people's you know have an opportunity to take the pathway to employability that suits them. A question to Louise before I bring in George Adam. You said that and you're quite right of course that the amount of money that's spent per pupil varies between local authorities you were criticising that I'm assuming you were that was a criticism what's your solution then to that? It wasn't such it wasn't so much as a criticism it was it was more of just something that I noticed and you know I think I don't dispute that you know there are factors that come into that like rurality and stuff but I think that we just need to make sure that you know the consistency of education isn't differentiating between local authorities and I'm not saying it does but you know the difference in spending is quite a lot I mean the lowest is 4,433 and the highest is 10,821 and you know that's a massive difference and the amount of resources that could be bought in that money could definitely have an impact on someone's education. Clearly I mean you're quite right that you point out this difference but if you're pointing out the difference you must have a destination in mind to resolve this issue I mean you're obviously raising it as an issue as a problem so I mean are you suggesting for example that there should be a statutory minimum and are you suggesting that there should be centralised budgets and what is it you're suggesting? I think like I don't have a solution I'm not the best person to provide one but I think that you know we need to maybe compare and contrast local authorities just to make sure that you know if something's working well in one local authority then you know that could be a good solution for another local authority and if they're saving money on something that's working really well and having really good impact on their education then that that would be a good solution for another local authority and it would maybe save them a bit of money or they could maybe see a situation where spending an extra little bit of money you know has an impact and provides them with better quality education so maybe just a bit of comparison between local authorities and seeing what they're getting for their moneys were. Okay thank you clearly Eileen and we want to get Eileen sorry you want to go in here I mean the local authorities have that control they are responsible for education budgets they decide on the amount of money they spend per pupil what's your view on that? Well do you know I'd like to know how it works when I started in this job I tried to find out and one of the people I spoke to who shall remain nameless said to me there's only two people who know how it works and we're under them's deed so you know there is a complete lack of transparency and I just find that unacceptable I just you know as a as a council tax payer as a parent I want to know how education is funded I want to see how much money my local authority gets I want to see how the decisions are made around how that money is spent and I fail to understand why there is such disparity between different local authorities yes of course there's going to be some difference again because of rurality or whatever but that doesn't actually answer the question when you look at the the difference in the figures it makes no sense to me and I just would like to to see the figures and understand why they are as they are because it just doesn't make any sense to me. Can I just come in on that I think part of the thing is it's good management and it's different authorities managing things differently but I would actually be more radical and say we've got 32 authorities some of them are tiny I think we need to box a bit clever and they need to actually start sharing services here and they need to start sharing education I mean to have re-authorities right next door to each other and they all to have a director, header services, QIOs does not make sense to me putting you big authorities like Glasgow and Edinburgh who have got one who have got probably more than three or four of these schools together and I think we need to start authorities need to start boxing a bit clever I know it's very hard for yourselves because the end of the day you give them the money but you can't tell them what to do with their money and I know that's a huge issue but I think we need to try to say to them what you need a wee bit clever here can you work together how can you start to share the services and I know that we've tried it in a couple but I think we need to put a wee bit of pressure. Okay thank you very much I know I said I was bringing in George but we're kind of straight into any area that Claire was interested in so I want to swap the questions we don't mind bringing in Claire at this point. There are just some issues that you've just been discussing and the Scottish Government does provide the block grant to the local authorities to make the decision how they're going to spend it and there are elements that are national bargaining like teachers wages although the other support staffs will be appointed in local agreements but the Scottish Government did use an element of pressure in terms of teacher number ratios recently I think that's come away in this budget but in the past they have used mechanisms to influence local authorities in certain areas and I just wondered if you had an opinion about where the balance of power lies in terms of who's making the decisions and whether you think that the balance is right at the moment and what influence you can have with the decision makers both at local and government level? Well I mean our submission you know we actually put forward the even more radical suggestion that we should have a real rethink about how we deliver education services you know again picking up on what Ian said we put 32 local authorities we've got an incredible amount of duplication is that the most efficient way for us to deliver education for the betterment of all of our young people and that's a question I think we need to address you know I'm not not saying it isn't but I'm asking is it you know I think we really do have to stop and think is this the best way of ensuring that all of our young people get the best possible service and the duplication between local authorities is just one part of that you know there is there is also this issue of transparency there is that there is and again we identified identified in our submission the the whole reality of what is happening at local authority level that we no longer have education departments I think we only have one education director left in Scotland so we have children and families we have leisure children and families we have justice children and that and the focus on education is being diminished and the understanding of what we're aiming for I believe is being diminished and that's that's being being further enacted by the cuts that are going on and the and the reduction in staffing within local authorities so I think there comes a point where I have to say stop you know is this really the best way to do this and we would suggest that that the time has come when we do that and so I'll just pick up on that point you mentioned the question how could we have influence in decision makers I think something we're very lucky and grateful to have in Scotland is that we've got lots of youth organisations like SYP and you know we specialise in consulting with young people and you know we've got an MSYP in every single constituency in Scotland and I think if you want to get young people's views they're a brilliant way to do it they're they're interested they specialise in consultation with young people and they can deliver the views to you and I think it's it's very valuable and it would have very good outcomes because you're going to get you'll get an opinion straight from the young person's mouth per se and I think something else that's really important is we were absolutely delighted that you introduced a training youth and women's employment budget and you know I think there's a valuable thing there that you can link the link the two together and there's key links between education and employability and you know if you can maybe get them to work together a bit it would provide you know very good links for the future because at the end of the day it's the education that's going to go on to make them employable and young people get their employability skills from schools so I think there's a there's a very key link there that's very important and I think that the committee could consider doing something with that and it would be very valuable. From our perspective we would also welcome the involvement of young people in decision making or consultation activity around local decision making and we know that within our membership there are a network of local youth voice organisations who are quite often placed within the education departments of local authorities who could provide a vehicle for meaningful dialogue around spending and we've seen around the referendum our young people engaging on a single issue topic and their ability to present solid argument and explore fact and be aware of consequences and I think education is a similar issue because it affects young people on a day to day basis and there would be no doubt there wouldn't be any shortage of ideas or creativity from young people as to how budgets could be allocated. I'm painfully aware as we drifted into the discussions of local authority reorganisation I represent the smallest local authority in Scotland which may be preserved by being surrounded by water but nonetheless one of the benefits of devolution has been as I think it was a Basque politician explained to me that the bums are closer to kick and is there a sacrifice that we that we make that we're prepared to make that while everything's going well nobody necessarily needs to to go in and and face up either to their elected member or to their education official but when that isn't the case the notion that you're having shared services with with other authorities which mean the individuals you feel you need to see are that bit further away that bit more distant from you becomes a problem and so is there a risk in quite understandably looking at where savings might be made that in a sense we dilute the sort of democratic accountability of some of these individuals in pursuit of savings and actually what we do is we lose perhaps more than we gain I think if you look at the very large local authorities like Glasgow like Highlands or whatever I think you have to ask the parents there do they feel that they're close enough to the bums they need to kick you know and I don't know the answer to that but I suspect a lot of them do and so the contrast there between some of the tiniest local authorities and some of the biggest you know actually I'm not sure if size is the issue here has it not got to do more with how local authorities and local politicians engage with their constituents I'm not offering a perspective on that you know I'm a view but I mean I just think that you know perhaps the key to it is more about the quality rather than the quantity sorry if the quality's right then it shouldn't matter if the head or the director of education or whatever you want to call them is sitting in one authority they'll always or somebody in the other authority and as long as they're working together then it shouldn't really matter yeah as I say when everything's working nobody has a problem but it's all down to leadership and it's exact same as in schools and that's why I said earlier that the management of authorities varies across the country and it's the exact same scenarios of the leadership and the schools varies across the country and it's exact so if you get the right people and the right job then it's totally different and that's why you see the issues in schools with a way above where people would normally think they should be but it's time to lead us. It's interesting you made that point because what I was going to go on to ask was whether or not actually the way of addressing that potential democratic deficit is to have the accountability rested more within individual schools I mean what's striking is that you see differences across local authorities in terms of per head of people spending per head of people but actually there's an amazing amount of uniformity across local authorities which suggests that there's a bit of a one-size-fits-all within each local authority. Do you think there'll be advantages in having head teachers, heads of department, wherever it may be, perhaps empowered to take more decisions themselves? That was the idea behind devolved school management. If you're old enough to remember and if you look at the name of the report that David Cameron did around devolved school management and the potential there for developing leadership within schools but we've got a real issue in terms of recruiting head teachers. There is a real challenge there. Schools or local authorities are really struggling to get people to step up to take on leadership roles. Now again speak to the teaching unions and what not about that but it seems to be a combination of factors and they'll say it's terms and conditions and so on but it's not just that. There are other factors at play here and one of them is that actually as a head teacher you have very little control. You've got control of the paperclip budget. That's about the only bit of the budget you've got control of because all the rest is committed. You've got your establishment cost, your power cost, your staff cost, that's all committed before you start and you're left with you know as I say the paperclip budget. So if you're actually going to have an effective leadership in the school you actually have to give them a wee bit of authority. I'm going to reiterate my point and say I think you should get young people involved rather than head teachers. I think if you know I think head teachers probably worry that if they say the wrong thing then you know it might have an effect but I think young people will tell you exactly what they think and they'll tell you exactly what's right and what's wrong in schools and I can I can say a personal example so I've just left school I've just gone to my first year of university and they just had a review that they were probably going to shut my high school down and there was a massive backlash in the community and you know there's been huge protests and consultation and it was just a suggestion it wasn't even going ahead so I think if you if you ask people they'll tell you and all you can do is listen and I think a very good way of doing this is you know consult them with young people they'll tell you the quality of their schools and they'll be honest about it and yeah that's all I can say. I want to move on and there's something very specific. No just to add to that the approach should be putting the child at the centre and that's what the Scottish Government I've committed to and I think there's real opportunity to build locally from what children and young people need in their communities and further learning both individually and collectively. Thank you convener and I'm glad to get in before everybody answers all my questions but I'd like to talk about the solutions to and I take it personal the solutions to the budgetary challenges that we have and in a number of the things that you've submitted already I think it was the national parent forum of Scotland say that local authority strategies for engaging in parents in these discussions budget discussions are not always effective budget discussions presume a high level of understanding many parents feel they like the expertise and or time to contribute to financial debates of this nature. Now as a former councillor I would probably agree with that because I've been in an administration whose bum was kicked on a numerous occasions by various parental groups and it was mainly because of the lack of communication discussion. Now my question would be how do we manage to actually change that because I think that's a starting block at a local authority level you know how do we sit there at the early on in the budgets level you know and say this is the challenge we face how do we work together to try and make sure we can make a team what we want to do because it's not just a case of you've all agreed in your submissions of just flinging money at situations it can be targeting and also a young people you know as there's a scope for them as well because I've got a constituent who wanted to do an advanced higher modern studies only found out two weeks before he went back to school that he wasn't going to be given that opportunity so there's an opportunity for young people as well so how would you say is a very basic solution at that stage to be open and transparent to local authorities get that opportunity to sit down and talk to you can I just I'll come in on that first I I totally agree with you it's a and I think the keyword is early enough I mean authorities all know next year's going to be hard why are they not having parents meetings just now actually telling them and not just telling them but it's telling them that it's going to be hard to be saying have you get any ideas and I think it's getting into that discussion and making parents aware of the actual situation we're going to be in and I think that to me is the key factor normally what happens is you're probably well aware of they'll come to you pre their budget discussion to say here's the here's the proposed cuts and out of that you know some that are never going to be exact well because councils would never do it because the election just round the corner and it's there by when the seat is going so out of the proportion they give you there's only two or three that you would actually say we can go with so I think it's getting into the early dialogue and I need to say parents need to be upfront as well and realise the problems that the country is going through just now and education as well and they need to be upfront and saying there are issues what can we do and try to support her now as for your some of the things that they can do that you see your constitution couldn't do the advanced hire in this day and age with technology highland are already doing it for their teaching from one place to another but the country through the internet and stuff why can't somebody in Glasgow tap into that system they're already doing it why can't somebody in them freeze tap into shetland vice versa in that way we could probably offer every subject under the sun if we started being a wee bit clever if some authorities are already doing it open it up they might be a small charge but at least you'll start actually giving and get you'll actually start getting it right for every trail instead of just talking about getting it right for every trail and I think to me that is an easy one so we can actually offer the whole curriculum across the country part of your problem though is who's abroad brand with which is another issue but that's a solution I would see but get into conversations very early with your parents and be upfront with them I think that's the key factor be upfront but I mean I would agree with that I do think there is a patriarchal kind of approach and dare I say a patronising approach around topics like budgeting and so on you don't need to understand this you know this is really complicated well try me you know explain it to me and you know I come from a communications background and and the truth is you don't wait until there's a crisis to start talking you talk early and you get people on side early and actually parents need to be part of the decision making process about the design of their service not simply given a menu right these are these are these are what we're looking at choose which ones you think we can give the chop to so you know I think there are there are some really fundamental issues about the way that local authorities dare I say government deals with the public and shares information and the transparency of information and the accessibility of information but you know nothing beats talking to people and and if you get to budget time and you haven't started talking to people yet that's when you run into trouble and parents you know will get you know more and more angry at the way in which the direction in which things are going in their local authorities I can offer a bit of personal insight to this so at my school I had I had very good opportunities if I wanted to do a subject they would bend over backwards to let me do it and I had a very good quality of education but I know that this this this isn't consistent through all schools just from personal experience it varies quite a lot in my local authority and but I think like systems like that worked well for example in my school if they didn't offer a subject they would help and provide you to go to another school that could offer the subject in the local authority and you know the help of it with transport if that was an issue and I think you know methods that work very well for some schools could potentially work very well for other schools and like I was saying before I think this this opportunity for you know different local authorities within local authorities and between different local authorities it's it's going to be good to have a discussion about systems that work well and I think this is something the committee could consider that you know there needs to be that space for schools to tell them what's tell them tell each other what's going well and what's not going well so that they can build on each other's experiences. Thank you Susan. I would just like to sort of say that you know local authorities have one through significant changes and we are aware of that and the young people are feeling that in how their school's days are organised, number of subjects are studying in a day, the structure of their school week but in terms of communication you know the youth work sector has an offer to make to education authorities and and to young people and about co-ordinating that amount of time because young people don't spend their whole week in school it's a proportion of that and making sure that there are meaningful offers that develop young people's learning and their personal development beyond the school gates and we believe that youth work can be part of that solution. Where do we go with looking at the education budget locally at various local authorities? By the way I agree with Eileen when she says that we should talk a lot quicker, get you involved, parents involved in the process of literacy because we always seem to get to the burning torch stage with the parents before actually anything happens in the local authority but one thing I would actually say is well we've talked about the budget, the fact that 51% of the budget is on salaries, 18.65% is on other employees and 11% is on premises and related costs. Now where do we go? Where do we look? How do we address the challenges that we're looking at here or local authorities? Where do they go when they're looking at these challenges because the holy grail as is already quite in local authority terms is joint working. In Renfrewshire where I come from it's been talked about for 10-15 years and we're no further forward working with Glasgow City Council next door, Inverclyde, all the local authorities but where do we go? I know Clackmannanshire I think I've got the work with Stirling over a joint period. Where do we go? I know there's something like £348 million spent a year on PPP contracts that's a bit of money we could actually do with at this stage you know but where would you say if we were sitting down at your local authority and saying we're at the budget start at the budget process where would you suggest to local authorities if we should go down? I'm worried about times to look at a lot of areas to go through. We'll start with Susan this time. I'm going to be looking at what measures can take for preventive spending so looking long term around what impacts can interventions can we do now that will make a benefit in the longer term and in terms of premises and PPI a lot of community groups and within authorities are having to pay charges to use facilities that were previously there and although we see within the budget the investment in capital bill we want to make sure that community groups are not penalised for delivering their activities because they're now having to pay charges into schools. I would agree with Susan that preventive spending is a very good idea so maybe the committee could consider you know fixing the little issues that there are with curriculum for excellence and implementation so you know that's going to if we fix that now that'll run into the long run. Also making sure that we set up these links with the training in youth and women's employability budget because I think that it's vital that you know we do make this link between education and employability and you know keep continue to offer vocational options to young people and options to do extracurricular activities like volunteering. I think it's very valuable to their future and their employability. I wish I had the answer to your question. I think you know we've been doing what we've called salami slicing for a number of years now and you know as we said in our paper we actually think that the time has come to take a radical rethink to step back and say is local authority delivery of education the best way that we can do this because I'm just not sure that there's enough flex left within local authorities to really maintain the investment that we need in our schools and in our young people to get where we want to go. As Ian pointed out earlier we're in real danger of actually taking a downward dip and that's not where we want to go. I mean I'll do my usual I've got a few radicals because you're probably not like but such is life. The shared services I think we need to definitely and I probably think that's the best one to probably get down yours now. The future trust we're putting all this money into the old into the brand new schools can is there some way we can actually use the future trust money to get rid of some of those PPI and PPF or whatever you want to call them contracts and the authorities can some of that money been moved so we can alleviate some of the pressures and they'll be in my authority we have paid them like 500 million pounds over 30 years for four schools that's balkers and who'd buy a house for that to appraise that payback. Probably my next one's a wee bit like Ireland says is 32 the best way forward we seem to be rationalised everything else across the country Police Scotland so I would suggest that we get down to Scottish education and we do a way with 32 authority education to take it off their hands completely that's my radical one. Okay you didn't disappoint me. Thank you very much Colin. Thank you very much. Yes I see there's been one or two radical solutions put forward one is the centralisation of the budget or ring fencing of it and the other of course is increasing taxes which is never a popular one but is there actually space for getting better value for money from the education budget is there actually enough money in there but is it being spent the wrong places are the wrong priorities can we do better yes I think it's mean I'll go back to my authority my authority you get things 34 35 primary schools and the size of western barton bonkers absolutely bonkers but it's down to the local councils to make that decision while they actually close schools my heart says we can't close a school but when you get schools in each other's doorstep I think the head's got to come in and say what we're going through just now we really need to be a wee bit more radical thinking so I think we need to be to think cleverer as I say to me it's all down to management how can one authority be really good at it and another authority not be good at it I hate saying the word we share good practices because I don't think it's a good saying because normally what happens is if you say to somebody go and look at that good practice the first thing they go is we're never going to reach that when they want to look at it so I think we need to box a bit clever I said my radical solution is they need to share services and we need to just box a bit clever and we need to make sure we get the right people and the right jobs and that's from head teachers to teachers all the way through the best values about looking early and effective intervention and again we think that youth work can offer that in terms of reason attainment achievement progression but also school attendance for young people where formal education is a struggle and a challenge and it's not the best suit for them and making sure that the school leaders are not drawn into using their time for the most vulnerable and actually allowing youth work to do that role and work in partnership effectively. I think community engagement is something you know it's a bit of a buzz out there just now and it's we've been very poor really at engaging communities and you know I know that we get a lot of calls from parents who are very distressed because you know their local authorities looking at closing their school or their schools under threat or whatever and on a personal level you can completely identify but as Ian says if you've got two small primary schools cheap by jowl and both of those schools have been maintained all of that property is having to be maintained etc etc you know this is this is this is not a victimless crime because you know what we'll say to parents is if you think about the amount of money that's been spent you know that it's sitting on the head of each child in those two schools if you combine them think how much more money would sit on the head of each one of those children because maintaining that school maintaining that building and all that goes on around it is not efficient and you can't blame local authorities or any authority for saying actually we have to be a whole lot more efficient with the way that we deliver our service so while on a personal level yes it's painful we we do have to really be a wee bit more calculating in how we deal with these issues. So I don't want to count you off but we have to really speed up a little bit you know I'm going to come back to Colin now. Just one question on the back of that. If we accept the proposition that more money is required where do we get it from? That's your problem. I think it's all our problems. I agree about the bottom. We've not got the bus strings. It's just you probably feel aware it's just not sustainable the way we're going and we're talking a little bit about what cuts are there. If you look at the ASN thing there's huge cuts already happening in the ASN which I think these kids are our most vulnerable people in school and to actually be cutting them because it's seen as an easy cut and that's what it's seen as an easy cut. Kids that had a full one-to-one support last year are now down to like five hours this year. I don't think that should be allowed and I'm going to use the word that you don't like. I think things like that need to be ring fenced. There's certain bits of the school. I agree we shouldn't be ring fencing a lot of things but I think ASN is scandalous when we start affecting these children and taking out hours that these kids need. Can I just add to that? The impact of that will be that more children will be excluded. We already know that children who have additional needs are much more likely to be excluded than their typical peers so more children will be excluded and teachers will struggle to manage behaviour in a class where children are unsupported so you know it completely backfires and the impacts on everyone, impacts on other pupils and the impacts on the school as a whole. You're aware that the number of ASN staff has gone up by 8 per cent? Well, I know from the headteacher at my son's school that they're looking at a reduction in the number of additional support needs year on year. Overall, the number of staff in the ASN has gone up by 8 per cent. Yes, but they're looking at reductions over the next few years. I would like to see where those places are because all the places I'm hearing, it's cuts here, cuts there, they're taking ASN exiliaries away. These are the figures, the overall figures, they're up by 8 per cent. It's increased in primary schools, it has gone down in secondary schools. Well, all the evidence that I'm getting is, I don't know where you're getting the figures from but it's not evidence that I'm getting. The figures are coming from the actual number of staff employed by local authorities. Yes, but from parents that's not the feedback we're getting back from parents. Okay, but I'm just pointing out the facts but the numbers, the overall numbers have, except you're saying but the numbers don't reflect that moment. I want to move on because we've got three people still to come in. I want to take Liam and then Neil and then Jane. Thank you. I can also start by apologising for my late arrival earlier on due to flight delays. Can I take you on to the national performance framework? We've had a bit of a mixed bag by way of feedback in terms of the usefulness of the NPF in moving us towards a kind of outcomes-based policy in relation to schools and education unions seem to be slightly critical of it being, I think, one called a blunt instrument. Children in Scotland, I think I'm more positive about it but I reflect that it may wish to look at other indicators if it's to help in terms of budgeting. I just wonder whether anyone on the panel has particular views about the national performance framework, whether it does work. Even if it does, there are things that we should be picking up that might make it more effective. I think that children in Scotland point to both attainment but inequality as well, which perhaps isn't as reflected as well as it might. The youth work sector, the national performance framework, is seen as part of a suite of indicators and outcomes for the sector. YouthLink is currently supporting our membership to look at outcomes for youth work that fit and feed into the national performance framework, so we would welcome the maintaining of that structure. Are the things that it's not picking up that you're doing, I mean you were talking before, about the kind of value added that you provide particularly for those who, for whom a school setting isn't necessarily always the most comfortable, most appropriate? Yeah, and I think that comes into the unique nature and purpose of youth work. I think using our statement on the nature and purpose of youth work helps us identify some of those challenges about widening world view and really starting with where the young person is at, but the overall outcome, you know, nationally it comes forward, that works for us in terms of what we want every child or young person in Scotland to be. SIPB have a new learning programme, which ties in with that, and I know that at Young Scot they're working on a modern apprenticeship programme, and I went to an award ceremony for that last week, and all the people who'd gone into these modern apprentices had further employability, and they had gone on to jobs in which they were interested in doing, or further apprenticeships which they wanted to do. So I think like programmes that youth work provide are very valuable, and especially for, you know, furthering employability skills. I mean it's very difficult, we're in tough times at the minute, and it's very difficult to get into things like university, and I think having these opportunities is very valuable as it furthers these opportunities for young people. We haven't really addressed the national performance framework. I think for most parents it's a complete unknown. I mean, what is it? How does it work? You know they don't. It's not information that is shared with them at local authority or at school level. They're not aware of what it means or how it impacts on how services are delivered. It takes us back to the discussion that we had with Mr Adams around how transparent is the system, while the answer is not. It's opaque. I was going to ask whether we should have a clear measurement in relation to the progress being made in supporting those with additional support needs. Given the earlier confusion about actually how many additional support needs workers are actually in the field, it would suggest that there are other issues there that perhaps need addressing more urgently. I think that your national performance, most parents, and to be honest, I don't think I actually bothered with your national performance. They're more interested in what's happening in their school. But do they see that on the basis of input so that the budgets gone up, the teachers have remained the same or have increased, that the subject choices are as wide as they were the previous year, or are they looking at trends over the course of a number of years and saying that we're progressing in this area but we're not progressing in that area? Essentially, that's what the national performance framework is looking to achieve on a wider scale. I think that parents, first and foremost, are all interested in their own child and how well they're doing. What they want to do is compare what's happening in their school and the school down the road, which I don't understand and I don't even understand why they would want to look at what's happening nationally because Matthew, you only move your child because the school down the road is doing better, the school in a different authority is doing better and I don't think they will. So all their interest in what's happening at their school, how is their staff working? Has they got the staff, which is the big issue? Is it supply staff? Can they get the supply staff? That's what they're more interested in. They're not really interested. My feeling I get from parents is when they have these meetings, they don't really want to know what's happening nationally. It's locally and from local down to their school. First, I thank you for your evidence. This morning, it's certainly given us a reality check in terms of what's happening on the ground and should act as a way to call to the Scottish Government. We've talked a lot about consultation with local authorities, can I say a bit about consultation with the Scottish Government? The first sentence of the draft budget document sets out the Scottish Government spending plans and goes on to say for consultation with the people of Scotland. Obviously, the budget doesn't set individual school budgets but there are implementations for the local government block grant and also there are national policies around teacher numbers etc. To what extent your organisations have been involved in discussions around spending on schools with the Scottish Government either prior to or subsequent to the publication of the draft budget? That's easy, not at all. I'm sitting on the working group that Mr Swinney put for teachers' terms and conditions when he's to report back by 1 March. I've sat and sitting quite a normal, quite a few committees have sat in the crime files for managing board and a few of my other colleagues sitting other big committees like Gifrack, the Wood commission, the elderly beers collaborative, so we're feeding in to these. The other organisations have… I'm aware of how I've only been with the organisation at a short period of time. I'm not entirely sure but I'm sure our team can get back to you on that. And my follow-up question to that is, in what ways do you think that, given what I said earlier about the budget and the publications for spending on schools, how do you think consultation with the Scottish Government could be improved with organisations representing pupils and parents throughout the draft budget process and what would you say to the Scottish Government at the moment in terms of this draft budget and the implications that it has given everything that we've been hearing about, the budget pressures are having on classrooms and on pupils? I would say that at the end of the day the parents on behalf of their children are at the sharp end and they are the people who can give, as was said earlier, they can give a reality check as to what it feels like on a day-to-day basis in our schools, whether it's things like parents having to contribute to materials costs or their children avoiding school trips or activities because it's going to cost them money, their experience of additional support needs or language assistance not being available or subjects not being available. So they are the folk that can actually… We don't talk in a policy speak. We talk about what's actually happening to our kids in our schools, in our local communities. To me, that should be gold dust. That should be the starting point for what it's actually looking like because we can talk at policy level about this block grant and that ring fencing and whatever, but what matters to our young people for their future is what's happening in their local school, in their classroom, on a day-to-day basis. That discussion has to start there, and we made our point in the submission that the budget is largely inaccessible. That is not going to get through to your average parent. That information is opaque and simply isn't understandable to most people. I know because I struggled. I would go along with what I like saying. A bit of the interest in it will be the next three years. We've got a general election, we've got a Scottish election, we've got a local election and what surprises me every time elections go along, lots of money seem to become available and I hate to say it. Politics is going for a short-term hit and maybe we need to look at stop the short-term hits and that means the curriculum as well. Let's stop doing things that so ministers are directors of education or local councillors. It's amazing how local councillors can find a wee pet project and find money for it, yet we can't find money to put it into sustainable and I think we need to look at box a wee bit clever and stop trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, but as for the how can parents get fully involved in the budget, it actually says that you look at it and you can't understand it. You need to have a master degree and even then you'll be struggling. The views of young people and children themselves shouldn't just be replaced by parents. I think they have to happen in parallel to give the young people or the experts in their own lives the children who are in our schools today as we are discussing this. I think that working with national organisations such as ourselves and Young Scott and the Scottish Youth Parliament through facilitated dialogue would start to unpack some of these issues for young people and with young people and we would welcome that opportunity. I completely agree with that setting up forums with young people and forums with parents if you think that that's going to be helpful as well but we would completely encourage at SYP that you get in touch with the young people in your local authorities and nationally and hold events where they can broadcast their views. Thank you very much and Jane, back to the finish result. Just thinking about moving from consultation to engagement because I think there's a serious question about what both those things mean. I'm wondering if you have got any views or can give us any examples of how local authorities can engage more appropriately with communities, especially in the light of what we've heard this morning about school as part of the community, the learning that goes on outside of school. Do you think that this work should be developed more locally and who should have an input locally and who should lead on that locally? I'm thinking in particular of the deprived communities where parents might have not had such a good experience of school or where time pressures might be greater for some parents. What can a local authority do to promote those approaches? There's a role with whose work and its wider partners in community learning and development for family learning approaches that are tailored and specific to the needs of the communities in which they sit. There's examples of taking a commission approach where communities are bringing in their own evidence forward, starting with a blank page rather than a pre-written page by any agency or to consult. I think that that level of transparency and openness and it being genuine is what people welcome. Young people in particular are quite quick to distrust where they think that there's an alternative agenda, so making sure that those opportunities are equal and based on trust and respect. We take examples even nationally, things like the Young Scots Youth Commission on alcohol and their Youth Commission on tobacco shows the approach where young people can generate solutions and recommendations to themselves in the Parliament and Government as to what some of the solutions and ideas might be and maybe there's scope to do that for education. Bringing the depth of experience and range of experience that young people have across Scotland, as Louise has identified, depending on what school you go to, you will have a different experience of education. We need to make sure that there's an opportunity to hear all those voices and the voices of young people where formal education hasn't been the best route for them. I would just add on to that that youth councils and youth forums are very valuable tools. When you're getting that engagement, we need to be very careful that we don't just target the ideal pupil and that we need to have discussions with pupils from all kinds of forms of education. People who are leaving school in fourth year to go off to college and people who are involved in more vocational education and people who are getting the top attainment and getting all the hires on going on to university. We need to consider all the spectrum and make sure that all of them are getting their opportunity to have a say on the matters. I would agree with a lot of what's being said that it has to be at community level. Many years ago, communities had their churches and schools, and now they've got their schools for the most part, if they're lucky. A lot of that can start in schools and a lot of the discussion with young people and their parents. It's got to be grounded in their lived experience, not set as an agenda from local authority or central government. It's got to be about what their lives are now. Probably the only chance for engagement is through the school, because that's the only way you'll get it. It's been probably all being at events. You hold an event for people and they'll only come A if they want to. It's the harder ones that you want to engage with and you can never engage with. This happens right across the country. You can go into any school and they'll tell you the parents that they want to see as the parents that they never see. The only way of probably getting round that is to go through the schools and especially use the youngsters in the schools, because they'll bring their parents. Their parents will come to see them, their parents will bring their friends, their grandparents and to me that's the only way you'll get into proper engagement. I wonder whether any of the witnesses wish to comment on a statement made by the Association of Directors of Education that, due to sensitivities involved, the reality is that draft budgets are now kept largely confidential. There's been some reference to that already this morning, but that was a statement that they made. Does anybody want to comment on that? Is there an alternative process going on behind closed doors? Because they're all fiert, basically, isn't it? Because at local authority level we're on election cycles and local politicians have their eyes constantly on whether they're going to get in next time round. That's why a lot of the time budgets are kept close to the chest until the lighted torch time and then you see it time and time again local authority councillors backing off from making the tough choices, from making the tough decisions. Weston Barton, we've seen it at other local authorities, we've seen it as well, because they're looking at when's their election coming up. It's quite interesting that, again, I'm going back to Weston Barton, that we've changed the politicians lately, the different party took control and the party previously were very upfront and shown new budgets. The budgets were in December, you've seen them. They weren't obviously finalised until February-March. Now they appear in March and that's it, so it's actually taken to me what was a big step forward, has now taken a big step back, and it is. You hear things, your director will tell you things that the public shouldn't tell you, and this is happening across the country. They're trying to be upfront, but their hands are fairly tied with politicians. Bear in mind the people who are hearing that are the folk who are on their local representative group. It's not every parent, it certainly isn't. It's the few that sit on groups or committees or whatever, so this message is not getting out to parents whose kids are in the schools. I think we've got an absolute duty to make sure that this information isn't confidential. People can't tell you what's good and what's bad, if they don't know that it's going to be cut. The backlash will be when people find out the services are being cut and I think that's when it'll become clear what services really matter in the local communities. Like I say, it's vital that we don't keep this information confidential because young people are going through that system and have to disagree that, you know, schools are the only way to engage with them. I think from my experience through SIP and through my local youth council, there are people who are struggling in the system who are readily available to tell anyone their opinions on education and how they think improvements could be made, but we need to make that information available to them on what's going to be cut because if something valuable is going to get cut and they don't know about it, it'll just go and there'll be no there'll be no conversation about it. Okay, thank you. Susan Yng Nguyen, Dad. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you very much for that. Can I thank you all for coming along this morning? You've obviously raised a number of very useful and important and interesting matters that I'm sure members will be interested to raise with the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Secretary when he comes to committee next week. So thank you very much for coming along and I'll briefly suspend. Can I welcome our second panel of witnesses this morning? We have Larry Flanagan from the Educational Institute of Scotland, Jane Peckham from the National Association of School Masters Union of Women Teachers, Jim Tullis from the School Leaders of Scotland and Fiona Deall from the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association. So thank you to you all for coming along, and also thank you very much for your written evidence, which you've sent in in advance. That's been very helpful. Again, I'm going to start with the second panel of witnesses with Mary Scanlon. Thank you very much, convener. I wonder if I can just ask an opening question around the type of budgetary pressures that you feel are having the greatest impact on pupils' education. Given that our first session ran over quite a bit, I wonder if you could also, in your response, advise us whether you think that primary school budgets are keeping on track with the increase in pupil numbers and a word about additional support needs, because although staff have gone up by about seven or eight per cent, I've actually seen figures to say that the projected increase in additional support was over 70 per cent. So if you wouldn't mind just a general question, but if you could relate it to primary school budgets increasing in line with pupil numbers, and given that there are more pupils with additional support needs, is that being addressed? Thank you. I don't mind who goes first. The single largest item of expenditure in terms of school budgets relates to school staffing. If you're looking at where the pressure is, it relates to teacher numbers, support staff numbers, and admin support in terms of schools. I think that's where the greatest pressure is. It's clear from the evidence that, if you look at primary schools, staff numbers are not increasing in line with the increases in terms of pupil increase. In secondary schools, again, if you look at the evidence that we have provided, there has been a significant drop in the number of secondary teachers employed over the past five years. The past three years, we've had an agreement since 2011 around maintaining pupil staff ratios, but in actual fact the percentage of pupils dropping in the number of pupils at secondary school is less than the percentage drop in the number of teaching staff. What that does is it creates a pressure towards bigger class sizes. It creates a pressure towards rationalisation of timetable choices. It creates the kind of workload pressure that I alluded to the last time I spoke here in terms of the national four, national five qualifications. That becomes intense to the point where our teacher will be indicated that nearly 70 per cent of teachers indicate that they're stressed all the time. The reason that's important beyond concern about the teachers themselves is that that is the learning environment of young people. I fully understand the budgets with pressures that are on, but the idea that cutting education budgets doesn't impact upon the service being delivered is just fanciful because, in a whole range of ways, it does impact, and the last point I'll make, convener, is particularly in relation to additional support needs. I was quite interested, I caught the tail end of the last session and it's discussed around pupil support assistance. It's just undoubtedly the case that over the last few years, not simply the last three years, that one of the issues that has been central to pressure in schools has been the policy of mainstreaming pupils with additional support needs, particularly pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. We have a very strong feeling from our members that, while we support that presumption of mainstreaming, it has to be resourced properly, and it's not been. Even if there is a marginal increase in secondary schools, primary schools and additional support, it does not match the need that is actually there. I spoke at a work-word campaign meeting in Glasgow fortnight ago when one of the teachers got up and said that she'd been an EIS member for over 20 years, and it's the first time she's come to a meeting. The reason she was calling was because, since the start of term in her school, she'd found three members of staff in tiers, and these were members of staff who are capable teachers. The reason for her has been the inclusion—and these are infant classes—of pupils who previously would have been in a special needs school, who have been put into these classes, and the teachers can't cope with the disruption that has been caused. I think that that's an issue for those individual pupils, and it's also an issue for the rest of the class. We haven't got time to develop a bit, but that is a result of the budget pressures, because special needs schools are expensive and labour-intensive, and if you mainstream kids, you get a cost-saving, but you're not providing the best education possible, so those cuts are hurting, particularly in relation to additional support needs. I echo much of what Larry said. In reverse, I'll start with the additional support needs. It's not a question of whether the budget's increased. It's how it's distributed when it's then implemented, and that's what's causing the difficulty, because different areas are using different strategies to manage the budget that they have. Although there are support staff provided for particularly working with children with additional support needs, they're very often diverted to other roles and duties within the school or within that area. Another example of that is the cut in qualified teachers in the nursery and the attempt to cover the very laudable aim of 600 hours for children, and no one would disagree with that. The difficulty is that they're not employing enough teachers to cover that, and it doesn't fit with the teachers' contractual week, so our members are reporting that support staff who are employed to work with them to support the ASN children in their classrooms are being diverted to cover the spaces and the gaps in the nursery, so the budget isn't affected in terms of the number of people employed, but the effect is actually on what they're then tasked to do, and the difficulty, although support staff are not in our membership, is that they very often aren't able to say, actually, no, that's not what my role is, and I see a need, therefore I'll go and I'll help out and all the rest of it, and I think it has to be recognised that still throughout a lot of the documents they talk about efficiency savings, I mean, there are none now, there are no more to be made, everything now is a cut, and that has to be recognised, and I think that the transparency and openness is required. I was concerned to hear at the last session there about some kind of inability to share budgeting openly, and that would cause us great concern. I think that the pressures are huge, it's recognised that there is a finite amount of money to work with, but I think that there has to be a lot more done in looking at the best use of that money. Thank you, chair. I would not disagree with any of the points that are made either in the papers, the submissions from my colleagues to my left here and what they have said, but I would like to comment from a perhaps a slightly different angle bearing in mind that my organisation I represent. First thing to say and answer to your question, a very general answer to your question, and one of the young people picked up at the last time here, is that the experience in education of young people across Scotland will be dependent very much on where you are and which part of the country you are in. We, as an organisation for some time now, have been hammering on at this inequality of funding across the country. We have no great concern with the removal of ring-fencing of funding, and if you're going to look at the opportunity of flexibility of approach across the country to meet needs across the country, yes, that is a laudable aim. However, it is a laudable aim that is perhaps sustainable during a time when there are not budget cuts. When you start to look at budget cuts and you start to look at ring-fencing of money, ring-fencing of money, whatever else it did, gave a certain importance to the things that the money was ring-fenced for. If you look towards flexibility of approach, then everything is there to be cut. I come back to your question on support staff and non-teaching support staff within school. It is, to an extent, an easy hit, and we are all suffering from that. Other aspects of this are related very much to the capacity of leadership across the country. That's not just within schools but within local authorities. If you then say there is a budget there, it's an entire budget which the chief executive of a local authority will then look at, then the cuts can be made indiscriminately and the cuts within education, within educational leadership, are now starting to have a direct impact on the quality of experience within the classroom. It changes exactly with what Larry Flanagan said in terms of workload, workload pressure and stress. Now, if you look at Scottish education just now, and forgive me for giving me a lecture, the three great pillars of Scottish education, I've got to say, are coming together well. We now have, are we getting towards having a curriculum there which is a curriculum designed to meet the needs of young people across Scotland in their local environments. Teachers across Scotland have laboured long and laboured hard to put that in place. Now, we are moving into a stage where get it right for every child and the children and young people acting, the implications of that within schools are going to start to bear upon staff and have an implication in terms of workload and in terms of what staff are doing. If that implication means that the young people who are supposed to be supported through get it right for every child and through the children and young people act are not going to be supported because you're removing the leadership and the management capacity, then you don't need me to tell you the pressures that are going to come within that. If we then start to say that the profession is looking at professional update and will be involved in professional, is involved in professional update, and the way in which we reprofessionalise Scottish teaching, the pressures which come on there, again if we do not have a capacity to say within the local authority, within the school, this is the way in which this has been managed, this is the way in which this will be led, I come back to answering your original question that says, the experience of young people who are supposed to benefit from the impact of these things is going to be diminished. Again I would echo what's been said so far, the biggest cost to running the education budget is obviously staff, and I think wherever staff could be cut, they have been cut. That includes QIOs, who did often offer huge amounts of support to schools, but as we've said in our statement, they would do things like carry out investigations through discipline, grievance and so on. They've disappeared, which means that the pressure is backed on to HR to find other suitable people to allocate these duties to. We're finding that our members, through it could be an allegation that was completely unfounded, they're having to wait months and months and months before they have an outcome from that. That obviously adds pressure and stress and can mean that sometimes people are on suspension, precautionary suspension at home for months and end, which is a cost to the authority. People support, through the removal of people support, as Larry said, through behaviour, can mean that there's an increase in violent incidents also because of teacher stress. It's very difficult to deal with these incidents in the class. When you're referring, you find that the people you're referring to are busy with other things that maybe in the past somebody else took up the reins of. We're very concerned at a time when there are huge changes through national qualifications and so on. People are full of good intentions, but even the patience and the goodwill of the most obliging teachers is being stretched. They've got standards, they've set themselves, they've got a way they want to teach the pupils and they're finding that all the resources are being pulled away, not only the staffing resources to support them but the physical resources, books and so on, things they want to do, they just can't do. Thank you. If members could keep their questions short and the answers reasonably short and if somebody's already covered it, I would be a appreciate if you don't go back over the same ground. I'll lump a few points in, but you can choose what you want to answer. It was just the previous panel that mentioned that the two main issues in attainment were parental engagement and the quality of teaching. The A&L is the chair of the National Parent Forum for Scotland said that—I don't know what to put words in his mouth—we need to get better at dealing with teachers who do or don't perform well enough. I hope that I put that right. Larrie, in your evidence, you say that there are 4,000 fewer teachers between 2007 and 2014. Also, the school estate, according to the Audit Scotland report, 18 per cent of the school estate in poor or bad condition, has no consistent approach to tracking and monitoring progress from pupils from P1 to S3. Do we really know enough about—can we compare like with like? Also, the Audit Scotland report has no independent evaluation of how much councils spend on education and what that delivers in terms of improved attainment and wider achievement. I think that I will probably just leave it there, but those are the issues that are concerning me, apart from centrally employed teachers who are up by 400 and teachers in preschool education down by 12 per cent. I am trying to make sense of all those figures and looking at attainment as well. Audit Scotland got it wrong because they found it impossible to look at the spend and what that delivers in terms of attainment. Is there some magic bullet there that we perhaps do not know about? I will just leave it there for you to choose. Those are my main concerns, so whatever. I am sure that it is. I am trying to think what bit to answer. In terms of attainment, it is quite difficult to identify the spend and how the attainment comes about because the way a school is run can make huge differences and the support of parents can make huge differences. I think that it is quite difficult to say what is making the difference. I will not rehearse what I have already said, but the experience across the country being different just depending on the way in which things are targeted within individual local authorities has been a problem for some time. In terms of local accountability, we were quite pleased that Audit Scotland was doing the report in the first place, because it is the first time that they have looked in-depth. I know from meetings with them that they often struggle to get the information. Part of the issue is that, because of the lack of ring fencing, it is difficult to identify how much was spent in a period of time on education. I know from having looked at the report that even the local authority found it difficult at times to specifically give figures. I wonder whether there is a need for a bit more of a central overview. A lot of what Jim suggested around the postcode lottery could be prevented around that. I think that there needs to be a more national accountability type of regime reinstated, if you like. There used to be a poster that was popular in schools in the late 80s through the 90s, which said that not everything that counts can be measured, and not having it measured counts or something like that. You get the idea that it was the notion that we were focused on targets constantly. It was the notion that there was more to education than just measuring targets. One of the difficulties that Audit Scotland reported is that it goes with what it can measure, and it struggles with the nuance of how it would deliver education, which is always a difficulty. However, there are things that would bring some rational approach to how we deliver education. We mentioned already teacher numbers. One of the things that the EIS has called for is the national minimum teaching standard, so that there is a basic teaching number in relation to pupils that has to be applied across local authorities. If local authorities want to enhance that, that would be a local decision, but in the same way that we have national pay and conditions, we think that there should be a national staffing standard. If you look at local authorities, one of the variable factors is the staffing ratio that they use, the staffing formula that they use to judge how many staff they need to deliver a curriculum, and it can vary quite significantly, and that is a direct relation to teacher numbers. The reference to the quality of teachers—Scotland's education has never been better served by the quality of teachers—has been developed by the General Teaching Council for Scotland. There is a framework there for teacher competence, and there are clear professional standards where, if a teacher is in breach of them, there are procedures in place. However, I would confidently say that we have never had a better qualified or more committed staff across the country than we have at the present. I hope to make it early on and to answer the question about teacher quality. It is not just to do with the fact that the General Teaching Council has put this into place, but to do with the psyche within the Scottish teaching profession. We have now had more than 12 years of NQTs coming into the profession, trained in a certain way, viewing the job in a certain way, and today, the whole notion of professional update is just a natural extension of the way in which they have been brought into the profession. Gordon, do you want to come in here? It is a very quick question. I asked this question of the earlier panel, and it was suggested by them that I asked herself. So, it is straightforward anyway. The Scottish Government during the summer introduced the Access to Education Fund to specifically help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, and I am just wondering about what is the level of awareness in schools about that fund and what is the uptake in your view? I am not sure that the level of awareness was that high. I know that we did try to raise the profile of it, but I think that the timescale came to us quite late. I am sure that an email went out and they literally had a couple of weeks to get bids in, so I think that I would have been concerned about maybe the timescale of the announcement and when the actual bids were due in. Yeah, the time was not good. The time was not helpful. There are a number of initiatives on the go in terms of closing the attainment gap, the school improvement partnership, which had funding of, I think, £1 million over a three-year, and these are all worthwhile projects. I have just finished reading the report, which is based on the evaluation of the London challenge, which is credited with a huge increase in performance of London schools. It was resourced by literally billions of pounds, billions of pounds. Whilst we would never oppose any of these initiatives around tackling the impact of poverty, we are just papering over the cracks, because unless you invest the type of resource that you saw in the London challenge, you are not going to get that kind of systematic change, which is necessary to address the levels of poverty that we have in Scottish society. 20 per cent of kids at schools coming from what is defined as absolute poverty. There is a huge barrier there. I do not think that our current funding formula in terms of local authorities is adequately waiting to the issue of poverty in terms of councils. Back when I was a councillor back when I had Strathclyde region, I think there was a much greater attempt then to redistribute money to areas of priority treatment, as they were referred to then. Since we have gone to unitary authorities, I do not think the impact of poverty in particular areas has been a sufficient factor in how the local government funding is distributed. The other thing that I think is important is that previously breakfast clubs were a really good way of getting kids into school early in the morning and getting them ready for learning. An awful lot of them have disappeared too because of cuts in staffing. I would like to talk about the solutions to the budgetary challenges that we face. I think that any ASUWT sum up perfectly when they say that the draft budget of the Scottish Government is in the context of Westminster Government's flawed economic strategy of ideological driven cuts to funding. I could not agree more with that, but some of the things that we discussed previously with the previous panel were the local authorities. As a former councillor, I am only too aware that if you make a mistake or make an error in judgment, when you are dealing with the education budget, it will come back and bite you because the parents and teachers will tell you exactly. Surely I have learned from that the engagement with teachers, parents and pupils is probably the best four-way forward with the budgetary side of things, but we have heard from some of the parents groups that that is not happening at a local level. I would have said probably that that would be the way forward to ensure that, what do you need? How, as the professionals that are delivering education, what in this challenging time do you need the tools to do the job correctly? How do you feel that is happening across the nation? Is it happening? Or just like the parents groups and the youth representatives saying that it probably is not? I think that there are a few different challenges in there. For example, I heard the cabinet secretary when he was here a few weeks ago saying that he wished to maintain teacher numbers. In fact, he would expand them if it was possible. That was welcome, but we now have a working group that is looking at setting aside the national agreement on protecting teacher numbers. The COSLA paper makes very clear that their agenda is around what they regard as local flexibility, which is just another way of saying that they want the door open so that they can push it cutting teacher numbers. We are all happy to discuss those issues, but we are not going to agree to them. The national agreement on teacher numbers was part of a very significant settlement in 2011 that saw cuts to teachers' conditions, and we have certainly seen the wage restraints since then. We welcome negotiations, but there are certain red lines. We are very clear that if you reduce teacher numbers, you will have an impact on the services that are being delivered. There is a lot of comment around a quote that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers, but you have to factor in there also the number. Teacher numbers is an area where we are very clear. The other issue in the COSLA paper is about consultation. One of the things that flow in there is a reduction in the primary week, which is what happened, the idea that was developed in Renfisher. Yes, that is where I was bitten and I feel that way. Again, there are severe financial pressures on every level of government, but going to part-time education for our primary pupils is not the answer to it. One of the issues that does not get discussed is around how you raise additional funding, because public sector services are based on taxation. I think that there is a huge debate around the council tax freeze. We do not have a position on it. It was a political decision to offer the council tax freeze, but it is a source of income that has been denied to local authorities. I know that the Scottish Government subvent that decision, but the money that they use for the subvention is money that could be used elsewhere. It is an area that has to be debated. There is a huge debate going on around what powers the Scottish Government is going to have, but there is only purpose in having those powers if you use them. The Scottish Government already has the power to vary the tax, but the Scottish Executive has never used it. The Scottish Government does not use it. If we want to have the local services that are important to us, then they have to be funded. That is a debate that needs to open up a little bit. On the importance of education, part of our consultation, as you rightly said, was that there is a recognition that it is not just an issue because of the Scottish Government. It is being created by the Westminster team, but that is not a get-out for the Scottish Government. I think that we need to be clear on that. Maybe that is back to my point about ring fencing. There needs to be a bigger look at what else is being spent. I facetiously refer to it as the fluffy stuff. Education is one of the most important things. It should have the most amount of money, including health and other things, but how much are councils spending on things that are not actually necessary? To come back to the engagement with parents, we did a survey that was not Scotland specific. It was the rest of the UK because it was in particular focused on the issues that they had with their own education crisis. It was about the cost of education to parents. I took part in it because I am an employee just out of interest. I had not realised that the cost of my daughter's education to me in the past year has been more than £1,000. That is an unsustainable figure for any parent regardless of income, but I think that there needs to be a recognition that a lot of parents are funding things that should be being funded from education. Musician tuition, for instance, there is another ad hoc arrangement that some authorities provide free. We have to pay for it in my council, and all of those things have a knock-on effect. Technically, that is a saving, but where has the money gone that parents are now contributing to? It is not going into education, it has been used elsewhere. We need to look at re-addressing the focus in some way. John Lennon, you cannot, regardless of what system it is, whether it is education, health or any other system that is public or funded, keep putting increasing demands on to it and expect those demands to be met by the same or a decreasing sum of money to do it. If you go to any teacher and ask them what would you need to be able to do this, they will tell you. It has been the same ever since I came into teaching, I need time or I need money, and essentially both come down to money. You cannot keep putting into the system more and more demands on people and expecting the quality and the outcome to keep going up if you do not support them and sustain them and be able to do that. Coming back to your local authority and local authority funding, I think I started off by saying I have got no great organization, I have got no great complaint over the whole notion of doing away with ring ffencing. I know, working in Dundee, that five miles up the road in Angus, the demands on education in Angus are going to be different from the demands in education within Dundee. Hence, the local authorities have got to have some sort of flexibility, some sort of regular room to be able to meet and address the demands that are specific to their area, very different across a local authority boundary. Surely there must be some kind of look at saying, okay, within Scotland there is a set of parameters there which says within these parameters the service must be delivered and your local authority have got the opportunity to be able to deliver something which better meets the needs of the young people in your area rather than having it tied down into separate compartments where we all know when we got to the end of the financial area to justify things and shift it around so you could get it spent. That was obviously daft as well. Let's look at parameters within the funding formula, within the staffing formula, which lets local authorities and schools better meet the needs of their own pupils. I must say that we feel exactly the same. Although the central government clearly allocates a certain amount of money to the Scottish Government, the Scottish Government does have some choices it can make itself, but I feel that in professional associations we feel that we are defending our members' conditions of service at every turn. Teachers are quite often seen as a barrier and as a cost rather than as people who go out there to teach children and are trying to do the right thing. I know that speaking to teachers can seem expensive, but they are very well educated, well-meaning, well-intentioned, people who give a huge amount of their own time and, including their own money, we know that teachers sometimes buy their own resources. They want to have a certain standard in the classrooms and they will back it up with their own money in a time when they have lost probably 16 per cent in terms of real pay over the past six or seven years. I mentioned in the last panel as well from a local authority point of view that the Holy Grail was shared services, but coming from Renfrewshire, the Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and Inverclyde, we have not managed to get it working. Now surely in education there must be a way that local authorities that are working so close together delivering a very similar service, there must be a way that they should be able to deliver the service by doing that. It can't obviously be rocket science, but for some reason local authorities seem to be making a lot of hard work. I admit the time that I was in the administration that it was going well and then all of a sudden it became difficult to share some of these services. What would be your opinions on that? Obviously that is what local authority management would say is the Holy Grail on the way forward or the way forward. I think that there has been very poor progress in terms of shared services, but one of the issues I think is around the different corporate identities of different local authorities. In a couple of the experiments where there has been an attempt to look at shared services or even one where there is a shared director, the difficulty was the political context in which that person had to operate. In a sense the two sets of masters in terms of, especially when one of the councils involved ended up with a different political leadership from the other. There are some practical difficulties around that agenda. In a lot of areas one of the challenges for local authorities is understanding that teachers have national conditions of service, national pay bargaining, which does not apply to most other local authority workers. Because of the statutory nature of the education service there are things which corporate directors cannot do in education, which I think some of them find is a frustration because one of the agendas in the bigger authorities like Glasgow that we are constantly fighting is the corporate approach to education, which is largely predicated on cost savings, but actually ends up with a poorer service. If you look at supply teachers, for example, as a perfect example, in order to run a supply service to schools you need to be in tune with schools. If you try and run it just as a personnel function you end up not meeting the demands of the schools. I agree with you that there is still great potential around the shared services agenda, but the difficulty does not lie, I think, in terms of the teachers in the classroom. The difficulties lie in terms of the political machines of the local authorities because that is where they disagree. That is where the obstacles appear to appear, if you know what I mean. Okay. Neil Findlay. Sorry, Neil Bibby. I apologize. There is no offence taken there at all. Can I ask about workload issues and teacher numbers? I think that if all these concerns about teacher workload, I think that EIS referred to the workload crisis. NASUWT has talked about a ticking time bomb in relation to workload issues. Larry has already mentioned what the education secretary said last time he was at the committee in terms of his statement about wanting to maintain and if possible increase teacher numbers. We had the budget and obviously this is the budget scrutiny today. We had the budget a couple of days after that and Mr Swinney did not mention anything specifically about teacher numbers in his statement and I have questioned him on that at the time. We have obviously mentioned what has happened since the budget. Can I ask you, is there still an expectation from yourself that there should be an increase in teacher numbers following the cabinet secretary's statement? We have talked about, we have seen statistics around several thousand fewer teachers over the past number of years since 2007. Is there a figure? I appreciate that there are other issues around workload, around bureaucracy etc but obviously teacher numbers are a critical issue. Is there a number of additional teachers that are needed in our education system to help to address that workload crisis that has been discussed? I will start along with Jim. I will come back to something that you mentioned already. I am quite sure that my colleagues around me will pick up teacher workload crisis. I want to pick up school leader workload crisis and school leader number crisis. Over the past six or seven years there has been a significant reduction in leadership capacity in schools. A time when workload capacity is increasing enormously. There is a huge issue around about career progression and senior leadership within schools. People are looking at it and saying, do I want to take on a head teacher's job, a deputy's job if that is what it is going to involve? My organisation has got a quite significant concern around that. We come back to the whole notion of guidance teachers for example and the way in which they are being expected to operate within the new structures that are coming along. Again, an increasing pressure with a declining number of people within guidance structures within schools. Leadership capacity is a major issue. It is exacerbated by the removal of leadership capacity at the centre within local authorities. Removal of education officers and curriculum support officers and so on pushes that back on to schools to be done. It is a major and increasing issue. The whole notion of the job-sizing toolkit and the inappropriateness of the job-sizing toolkit to support senior leaders in the way in which they are paid in relation to the workload that they take on is an on-going and increasingly overbearing issue within leadership in Scotland. In terms of teacher numbers, one of the biggest advantages would be if we had a better supply of supply teachers. It has been extremely difficult to encourage people to put their name on the list. The pay is not as good for a couple of days. The jobs that are advertised tend to be temporary. Nobody is going to give up a permanent job to go for a couple of days a week to a particular school. The knock-on effect of that is that things like CPD—your career-long professional learning—does not happen. You may be booked on a course to bring up your subject knowledge. There is nobody to cover your class, so what choice do you make? You stay in the school and you give up your professional learning. In order to allow the capacity for staff to maintain their professional update and to maintain the standards that we want, we need to encourage people into teaching by making sure that it is a profession that looks attractive, that does not look as stressful as it looks at the moment and that there are good career opportunities. The change in the structure through doing away with subject-specific principal teachers has had a knock-on effect. You could have a newly qualified teacher going into school now who does not have a subject-specific line manager. It is very difficult to develop that if you happen to be a one-person department. The structure does not encourage that movement upwards, either. In terms of budget, we need to have another look at what is available in the support that is given in that department. The cuts in leadership and middle management have had a massive impact on teacher workload. Where they are taking away the principal teacher role or where there is a shared headship scenario in rural areas or whatever, which is not a concept that we are against, but the workload that would have normally been done by that person falls to the class teacher and increases their workload. They are not being paid for it, either. I find it very difficult to sit here and give you a number, Neil, because it would probably be completely outwith the realms of possibility. It is about the redistribution of the posts that are available, and that varies council to council, depending on their situation. Where a council can say that we have x amount of teachers, the real impact is in what type of teachers they have, what roles the teachers have, how much provision they have for support staff and supply staff. It is a whole ream of things rolled into one that has the impact. The agreement that was reached in 2011 around teacher numbers was that teacher numbers would be maintained in line with pupil numbers. There was a mechanism that was put in place by the Scottish Government, whereby if local authorities did not maintain their specific number of teachers, there would be a clawback of roughly £40,000 for everyone one hour below that. Now, there was some flexibility around different authorities, how you produced overall figure, but that direct connection has actually ensured that over the three years, or over the two years that it has operated so far, teacher numbers have been largely maintained. Some authorities have gone up a little bit, some have gone down, and we will know this December whether it has been maintained for this current year. What was proposed in the budget was that that penalty would be suspended for 2015-16, but it is predicated upon discussions involving the teacher trade unions around the causes agenda for an outcomes-based system of measuring education delivery. We are prepared to have those discussions. We are very clear that, and it is almost back to the Audit Scotland, there are some things that you should be able to measure that are useful benchmarks. From our point of view, teacher numbers are one of the benchmarks in terms of education spending. There should be an increase in the primary numbers because of the increase in role. If that increase is not there, it means that you have bigger classes, and the impact that that has on teaching and learning. There might be expected to be a decrease in secondary, but one of the difficulties with secondary staffing is that you have to maintain a level of staff to deliver curriculum choice so that it can be complicated in terms of how it has worked out. I welcome the cabinet secretary's commitment on teacher numbers, and we are very clear that, from an EIS point of view, that is one of the witness tests in terms of the acceptability of the budget that we have agreement on maintenance of teacher numbers, at least in line with pupil roles. In terms of an increase in primary teachers, is there a number that you think that the Scottish Government should be looking at in terms of an increase in teacher numbers for primary schools, given the increase in primary school roles? No, and again, it relates to one of the issues around the budget discussions is that there has been a request that local negotiating committees have a look at this issue because it does—the necessary increase will relate to local circumstances. So, if you are in a rural situation, you might be able to increase pupil by 10 in a rural school without requiring another teacher because of the class sizes. In an urban setting, an increase of three might mean that you have to have a second stream class, so there are a lot of detail there that do make it difficult. I mean, anyone who has been involved in workforce planning for teachers will know that the difficulty of coming up with a formula actually deals with all the nuances. Again, that is why we think that a minimum staff and standard across the country is a useful starting point for how local authorities then look at the nuance of their area. I am just looking at—we have touched on national and local decision making, and we have sort of skittered around ring ffensing and so on. It is true that the Scottish Government provides the block grant to local authorities, but within that a great deal of the budget is actually decided nationally, i.e. the teacher salaries. To what extent do you think the Scottish Government should really be intervening at local level in schools? We always have this feeling that local government locally is best at delivering that service, and yet we already know parts of it are dealt with nationally in terms of costings and so on. Do you think that the Scottish Government should influence local authorities more than they do now in terms of the spin? I think that it is a $64,000 question wheel. I think that the primary role of government in terms of education is around policy, so that we have a coherent curriculum framework across the country. We have always taken the view that there is an appropriate role for local authorities in terms of the democratic process and accountability. I think that there probably is a debate around—and it is almost back to the shared services—that there probably will be a debate now about what level that local democratic role should be exercised. There seems to be a little point in having local councils if they do not have any decision-making powers. We think that local authorities are a key part of the decision-making process. That is not to say that we agree with the decisions that they are making, but we think that they have the right to make them. The whole notion of a local authority is to be there to be able to judge the needs of the local community and to be accountable for the way in which these needs are met is crucial to the democratic process. Yes, central government gives a steer. Yes, central government sets the policy and just do the nature of things in that they are in charge of the national finance. The large chunk of what is paid for is teacher salaries. Yes, central government has got that sort of impact as well, but there must be the opportunity for local authorities, with the schools in that local authority, with the various other agencies in that local authority, to start to work together to provide a service that meets the needs of the pupils who attend the schools in that local authority. You would oppose ring ffencing in order to keep that flexibility locally that local authorities can determine local needs? I think what I've suggested earlier on in relation to a set of parameters, Larry's already mentioned it in relation to staffing. It's not beyond having a set of parameters, do away with not having ring ffencing as such which was very, very restrictive. Don't have the complete flexibility which allows the smoke and mirrors which were spoken about when the parents body were sitting here earlier on, but a set of parameters within which local authority can operate and within which local authority can be held accountable I think would be a useful way forward. A good example of ring ffencing was that there used to be additional money came from Scottish Government around English's additional language and that money was specifically for that national priority around supporting English at EAL. It meant in Glasgow, for example, that Glasgow funded to the tune of six million additional EAL services. It had a core funding from Scottish Government and when the staffing compliments were being worked out in schools, that Scottish Government element was untouchable because it was ring ffenced to that service. One of the things that's happened with the removal of ring ffencing is that that additional funding is now just part of the local authority budget and one of the consequences has been a cut in the EAL staff in Glasgow City Council. I think that in certain areas ring ffencing is desirable and is an acceptable mechanism for Scottish Government to use, where it is driving a particular policy issue. The other thing to mention is that although some of the teachers' salaries, for example, are negotiated nationally, they are negotiated in the SNCT, which is a tri-partite body, so COSLA is one third of that body. It's not the unions and the Scottish Government and the local Government in a tri-partite negotiation, so it's more than just a two-way process in terms of Scottish Government down the way. Wouldn't outcome agreements really be the litmus test as to whether the money being spent is effective, as opposed to ring ffencing, which just holds a certain sum of money available? I think that outcome agreements are just smoking mirrors. There was a question earlier about the national priorities. The worry that I have around outcome agreements is that they can be so nebulous, that they don't actually mean anything. That is the agenda that COSLA has set up for the forthcoming discussions. When I first heard about it, my response was, what does it mean by that? Nobody could quite tell me what it means. We'll engage in the dialogue, but sometimes I think that's just a way of masking a different agenda. If I could just touch back. Obviously, we're asking about ring ffencing and the whole budget situation. Warrie You did mention the council tax fees earlier on, but COSLA have been quite clear in their submission about looking at things holistically. Given that the council tax is only 10.8 per cent of funding for local government, and given that the Scottish Government contribution to that means that, for instance, the last time I was involved with North Lanarkshire looking at it, just to stand still, that would be a 6 per cent increase for everyone on their council tax. So it's actually raised money for it. You're talking about levels of maybe a 10 per cent increase in council tax. So the other thing that's come up today is a quarter of our pupils are living in poverty at the moment, the 16 per cent drop in teacher numbers. Do you not have to look at it in the whole and what impact that would have on teachers, on parents, in terms of increasing the council tax? Given that up until now, Sam Den Bandy has saved £690 on council tax because of the fees that was brought in by the Government. I'm not advocating that the council tax fees should end. I'm saying that there needs to be a debate around the taxation. I just use that as an example of something that exists. We'd like to have a policy on it because we understand why it was introduced, but it's the point that if you're going to fund public services, the money has to come from somewhere. I don't think you can escape the fact that at the end of the day some form of taxation is that source. I'm not necessarily saying the council tax fees is the issue. I just use it as an illustration. I think I pull up to declare our interest. I have two family members, a current secondary school teacher and a former head secondary school teacher, both union members. Just to share my money because I'm not sure I'm not going to be that specific. In terms of the point you were making earlier, Larry, about the difference in 2014-15 with the removal of the sanctions, obviously there are discussions ongoing and you've made clear where you stand on that. But in light of what the Cabinet Secretary told the committee three or four weeks back, what is your expectation that that teacher pupil ratio will remain as agreed back in 2010-11? Is there a risk that without the sanctions, was the sanctions in place, the thing that kept everybody honest? Have you any fears at all that, with the removal of that, there is a risk that those numbers will not keep track of pupil numbers? I think that there are two key areas there. One is that there has been a five-month period set for discussions. Those discussions will also be parallel to the discussions in the SNCT on teachers' pay claim and in the context of our workload campaign in CFE. There will be quite a lot of detailed discussions around that. I would hope that we would have a game in place at the end of it, which still saw protection around teacher numbers. At the TUC Congress this year, Mark Carney was invited to be a speaker, but one of his observations was that living standards have fallen in terms of the response to austerity, but it was almost as if people have accepted that in order to protect job numbers. And certainly from the other point of view, that protection around job numbers is the only thing that mitigates against the fall in living standards, so it is an important area for us. The other side of it is that, although we have this protection around the 2011 teacher numbers, Jane referred to the error that there is not much more to cut. Those teacher numbers we would argue are basically what you need to deliver the statutory requirements of the education service. There might be a real additional savings through cutting teacher numbers. It is difficult to identify where that is, unless it is in individual authorities, because the numbers already deliver a service that is creaking under the pressure of workload and growing class sanity. It might almost be a false war in the sense that those numbers might not be able to change very much. In terms of teacher numbers, the effect in secondary schools is that because of the subject choices, subjects can be put in a particular way where it is difficult for pupils to choose them, and that is what we are finding. Subjects are dropping off the end, which means that maybe the school can say, well, we do not need that teacher anymore, because in fact nobody was choosing the subject. However, if we want pupils to have a broad education and lots of choices, we have to sometimes maintain classes where there may not be a huge number, but it is necessary in order to maintain the pupils' education to give them these choices. Can I move on to the solutions that George and Colin were touching on earlier? If there were any easy solutions, to some extent we might not even need to invite you here to give us some answers, but we have heard Larry talking about the council tax, then Claire explaining how this was very difficult and would not be terribly pleasant. In terms of shared services, there are issues around democratic deficits at a local level. In terms of trying to maintain some national parameters, that builds rigidity into the system, does not necessarily allow local authorities or individual headteachers in their senior staff to adapt a degree of flexibility to meet their local needs. In terms of ring fencing, I take your point about Glasgow Live, but with ring fencing, places like Orkney were being presented with small pots of money that were good for absolutely nothing, but because they were ring fencing they couldn't be deployed in more creative ways, so there are swings and roundabouts with it, and I appreciate that they are different for different councils. Given all of that, can you perhaps guide us in some direction in terms of the sorts of recommendations that we could be making through this inquiry to say that there aren't going to be huge new pots of funding found, or if you can identify where perhaps we should be looking to say there are areas where we're just not getting the bang for the buck or there's areas where in terms of the centrality to educational attainment and achievement, the money would be better spent elsewhere, that would allow us to go back to the government and say none of this is easy, but these are the areas where you ought to be refocusing efforts. I think that part of the answer to that is to go back to the point that I made before, where I think that more in-depth look at specific spend on certain items locally, and is there an area where you could use the money better to take forward increasing the provision of education, and I'm not entirely sure that that's been done consistently. I think that there has to be an open and honest exchange about the budgets and expenditure, and, as I said, I was concerned to hear that doesn't happen. I don't think that we have magic answers either, apart from ones that just wouldn't be achievable, but my feeling is that there is money being spent on things that aren't necessarily a priority, maybe just because it's always happened or it's something, isn't it? I just think that it needs to be re-looked at. If you're only getting a finite amount, then it has to be really carefully distributed and focused on that. Is there an issue where you touched on instrument tuition now or not? I'm in the fortunate position that local authority in the area that I represent has and continues to cover the costs of that. I know that they're in a minority in that respect, but in a sense, at a local level, those different priorities are going to be taken, they're going to be assessed presumably on the basis of what in that local authority area they feel they need to invest in order of priority and where they think there is a stomach for charging for certain things and they put forward those proposals and are held accountable to them. Sorry, can I come back? What's the comparison then in the authority that cuts that provision to the one that can still provide it? Where is the saving being made for the one that can still provide it to allow them to provide it free? Of course, maybe there needs to be more interaction between different authorities on what are their successes. What is it they've managed to retain without cutting? I know that I'm not naive enough to think that that's simple to do because of the different natures of authorities, but if one area is able to continue provision of that and another area is not, then you're getting into an inequality of access to education that's available to young people in Scotland and again it comes back to the postcode lottery. It's interesting to say that on the previous panel again we're emphasising where there can be shared learning and shared experience. One would have thought that, given the process that all local authorities have had to go through over the last few years, that dialogue between them would have been happening as a matter of course. Everybody's been struggling. Your argument isn't. I'm not convinced it is. In which case are there exemplars, are there local authorities that we should be holding up as examples of where, despite a range of factors, they are exceeding expectations? They're delivering and not necessarily with massively more resources than anywhere else? I just want to back with that question. There's another angle to the same question. You mentioned a couple of times now about, earlier on you said, look authority spending on fluffy services and just a moment to go about in terms of spending on areas which are maybe of less priority. Could you give us examples of what these areas of less priority or fluffy services are? Fluffy is the wrong terminology, it's just my own personal one. I mean if you think across authorities even about what do they spend on projects for the arts? What do they spend on the types of wheelie bins they provide to the people that live there? Each authority's got a different arrangement for that. What's the cost implication? Are they taking teaching jobs and redistributing them to support staff in order to make cuts there? It's about the exchange of what they're doing and the importance of what they're doing. I mean leafletting that you get through the door from the council about certain things, is there a need for that? I know that that's not all directly interlinked but I just think the whole wider funding as you need to be looked at and if we cannot afford to do something and I know it's been done and that's my point about there aren't any more efficiencies to be made. It is cuts now and maybe that has to be the honest responses. We're not looking at efficiencies, we are cutting. I just think it needs to come back to Liam's point. I don't think that there's an open exchange across authorities in different scenarios where we've been seeking advice on the way that notice pay is made in different authorities. There's a massive varying level of responses from local authorities as to whether they'll share information or not and so may that there is work for them to do but that's not for us to do. Two points, the SCC in its consultations with the finance secretary has consistently identified the small business grant that government gives as something which doesn't create any jobs and is a pot of money which could be used to support public services. The SCC would probably have an internal disagreement about where you redirect it to but I would certainly be arguing for Scottish education. So there are macro decisions that are made around the amount of money that's spent. There's been a commitment this year around the Woods commission which we welcome because there's no point in having the commission if you're not going to resource it but then again there's been a decision taken to support that particular thing. Now there are projects on the go in Scottish education which are worthwhile but you have to say are they realisable, one plus two language initiative? Nobody has any disagreement with it in real terms. Has it got any chance of succeeding in the next five, ten years? Absolutely not because a level of resource that's required to turn that into a reality is flying in the face of a discussion that we're having here around the context of which Scottish schools are operating. I'm now five minutes late for a meeting on attacking bureaucracy working group and one of the points we've been saying in that group is that schools have to pick their priorities and do those priorities well and it might mean not doing something that you actually would like to do and you see as worthwhile but you just certainly don't have the time to do it and I think there is an issue around your work. We tick all the boxes in terms of where we're going forward but we can't afford to fund them all properly so we fund them a little bit so we've ticked all the boxes and maybe we should just focus on the key things and the last point convener is I think there is a debate around again back to the shared services agenda. Do we really need 32 education directors across the country? Thank you. I'm going to bring in Jane and the final question. We'll get everybody to answer and if there's anything you need to pick up then please do so. I asked the previous panel to comment on the statement from ADES that due to sensitivities involved the reality is that draft budgets are now kept largely confidential and the members of that panel made reference to being all about elections and local authorities and governments keep things quite close to their chest and then pull rabbits out the hat when it comes close to an election. Do you think there's any ways that we can broaden out that accountability? Obviously that is an accountability through elections but are there other ways that those involved in school education could be held accountable perhaps more at local level and are there other stakeholders that need to be involved or is it teachers that cause that in councils? Who else should be involved in that mix? I'd have to be honest to say that at a local level, even at a national level from an EIS point of view, we do feel that we are consulted on these major issues and we do have a contribution to make. I think some of the sensitivity goes down to a local level and it's where a possibility becomes a probability just because it's been articulated. The education directed used to be very good when looking at their budget cut options or throwing up stuff that was totally unacceptable just to make sure it was totally unacceptable. The danger they've got now is that if they put anything up it might actually happen. I can understand the level of caution because representing workers in the public sector, you don't want to see budget cuts being presented which are going to unsettle people in the workplace. That is a difficult way but I think that there's just a real challenge for local authorities in terms of how they communicate with different representative groups. If you are a representative group, there's an illness on you to act in good faith. It's your confidential information that's shared with you. That's the basis that's shared with you. I do think that just putting everything into the public domain isn't necessarily the best way of conducting what can be quite sensitive of difficult negotiations. I would echo that, Larry, because I think that it depends on the level of understanding of the group that you would be presenting it to. We do get obviously involved in the local information exchange. If that was rolled out to every householder in whatever area, are they going to understand the nuances of the decisions that are being made and is it relevant to what they need to know? I think that the level of engagement that exists is adequate but I think that as long as it's an open exchange and not, you know, the rabbit-out-the-hat analogy I think is potentially true in terms of elections but it's more fluff, I like a bit of fluff, but I'm not sure that's the deliberate agenda at all times. I just think, you know, if the question is asked, I think that's what I'm trying to say, if the question is asked through whatever means then the answer should be given. I think that the difficulty sometimes is, the speed at which the response comes makes it difficult in the long term. Jim? I don't do fluffy. I could have guessed that. Just to come back, it's perhaps taken a wee bit of meeting the bones of Larry's point. It's perhaps not the best choice of words from Addis and it could have been phrased in a different way, I would suggest. But if you get to a situation now within the discussions which are happening in relation to cuts, it's not perhaps the best way to go about things to throw everything into the public domain. If, for example, you start to look at the school estate and the closure of schools and the delicacy with which that has got to be done, it's just one example of, you know, let's look carefully at what we are going to do and let's look carefully at the way in which we're going to share that with people. As I say, I don't think the wording was perhaps the best in the world. I think that the difficulty about holding people to account is again, believe it or not, to do with workload. I think that there's a lot of people who could contribute an awful lot, but by the time they come to code to a meeting, they don't have the time, the energy, they've got other commitments and so on. Quite often what happens, I think, is those that have the loudest, more articulate voices are the ones that are listened to. Quite often that's why the decisions are made because somebody is right in front of the councillor who's got the priority. Thank you. Thank you all very much for coming along this morning and thank you very much for your written evidence in advance of today. Obviously, you'll know that we will continue our budget deliberations next week. We'll hear from evidence from COSLA and ADIS and, of course, from the Scottish Government and Cabinet Secretary for here next week. And I'm delighted, Larry, that you can now go to your meeting on bureaucracy. That concludes our business for today and I close the meeting.