 Good morning. Welcome to the 15th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2019. Today, we have received apologies from Ross Greer and Oliver Mundell, and Alison Harris has joined us to substitute for Oliver this morning. Can remind everyone to please turn their mobile phones to silent during the course of the meeting. First agenda item is the third evidence session on the committee's subject choices inquiry. I'm delighted to welcome to committee this morning Lanny Flanagan, General Secretary of the EIS, Marjorie Kerr, President of the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers, Katrina McPhee, Chair of the Gaelic Secretary of Teachers Association, Tess Watson, Field Officer for the Association of Science Education and Francisco Valdera Gill, Representative of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education of Modern Languages Subgroup. I'd just like to open by asking you just to give a little bit of flavour of, I know we have received submissions, but a little bit about what your experience of the new curriculum has been, and I'd like to open with Ms McPhee. Good morning, I'm Katrina McPhee and I'm here to represent Gaelic teachers from schools across the country, from island communities to the big cities, from smaller schools with just one Gaelic teacher to full three to 18 Gaelic schools. As such, the problems that we face are sometimes quite different. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to be here today, speaking my own language. However, since there are many here that don't have Gaelic, unfortunately, the rest of my responses will be in English so that my opinions will come across as I would like. I'll finish our summary of our position by saying that, despite the problems that we have, we are almost without exception in agreement that the narrowing of subject choices in many Scottish schools has had a profoundly negative effect on the uptake of Gaelic, especially but not exclusively that of Gaelic learners. The figures have proved this with numbers in the last five years of Gaelic learners having been reduced by 57 per cent in the last five years. It does need urgent intervention to protect Gaelic itself, Gaelic education and, most relevant today, the right of Scotland's young people to learn Gaelic in their schools. We may indeed be the smallest subject here today, but we are by no means small in terms of our importance to history, culture and identity. In that sense, we are so much more than a school subject or an option on a form. It is crucial to us today that changes are hopefully made for the better after this consultation. Buenos dias. No voy a hablar en español, don't worry, I'm not going to speak in Spanish. I was a teacher at Alquidhaig, not far from here, Spanish-French, and I work at teacher education at the University of Glasgow. I'm here representing model language teachers, but on behalf of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education, the model language group. You've already heard evidence of the detrimental effect of the narrowing of course choices of model languages. We believe that this is an unintended consequence of the policy. If you look back in 2008 at the consultation on the new qualifications this was predicted by then, back then some councils put anticipated that that could happen to model languages with the reduction of course choices in fourth year. I can cite evidence from a 2018 paper and says that EU comparisons, UK provisions for model languages, education is poor with only five percent of students studying two or more languages compared to the EU average of 51 percent. This year of statistics for 2016 and the highest percentage of students in upper secondary school, 57 percent who do not study a language. This is UK for nations, but you've already seen evidence that in Scotland 65 percent, there's been a 65 down trend in uptake of languages in S4 and I think as Catriona has said, this is about positioning ourselves as an outward nation in the light of the dangers of Brexit and this is not just the numbers of subjects that pupils take in fourth year, but this is the wider implications of building interculturality in our nation. We're not saying that we're the only subject which does that in the curriculum, but language is a more tangible expression of identity and for people to show the approach towards the other. It's really important and I'm very thankful for the committee to have invited me to represent the views of model languages teachers because their morale is low among model languages teachers. Thank you. My name is Margie Kerr. I'm president of the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers. We are an entirely voluntary, chargeable organisation with a membership of around 600 geography teachers throughout Scotland. Personally, I've been a geography teacher for 38 years and seen many changes in the curriculum during that time. I started off teaching O-grade, saw in the changes, moved to standard grade and was part of the CFE process as a member of the geography curriculum design group. I've also done a two-year secondment in Education Scotland where I was a social subjects development officer and at the moment I'm principal teacher of geography in a school in Dundee's, so I feel that I have a wide breadth of knowledge to talk about subject choice. As an organisation, when we heard about the subject choice inquiry, we did as we have done before and conducted a survey and many of you have probably read the results of our survey. It was not a good time of year for teachers as they were involved in setting and marking prelim exams, so we only had 85 responses, which is very low in terms of the response that we would normally get to a survey, but we did however feel that it was still worthwhile submitting it for your perusal. The main recommendations that we made were a return to a consistent 2-2-2 model across the country. In particular, we're concerned about the variation in the SQA exams and the removing of the assignment that takes up too much teaching, reduces learning time, causes teacher and pupil stress and is open to abuse, varies widely in level of demand. We would also like to see a requirement to keep breadth up to S4 of at least seven or eight subjects, and we are also very keen to see the teaching of subjects from S1 onwards being led by a subject specialist to ensure rigor, challenge and progression. I'm Tess Watson. I'm the field officer for Scotland for the Association of Science Education. The ASC is a large body within England with a smaller membership within Scotland. I've only been in post just over a year, so I'm still finding my feet with the ASC. I'm involved with the number of talks with other learning societies, the Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics. We regularly meet up at the Royal Society in Edinburgh to discuss strategies and advice on views for panels such as yourselves. To give you a little bit of my background, I've been working in education for 20 years now. I'm a biology teacher and I have been seconded twice. I was first seconded at Murray House to work on a project that enabled distance learning for young people who'd be travelling or went to hospital or forced children, allowing them to access their learning anytime, anywhere. I subsequently did a postgraduate degree in digital education at Murray House before returning to the classroom. My job just now gave up a permanent job in order to pursue freelance work. I am with the ASC 0.2 of a week, but that does vary. I teach on the PGD science at Murray House. This is my second year of teaching there. I also teach in schools right throughout East Lothian when I'm not at Murray House or doing Association of Science Education. To bring it down to STEM subjects, I'm obviously very passionate about STEM. It's the two biggest themes in education that I feel are STEM and sustainability. There's a lot of discussions on attracting and retaining science teachers. I will be feeding forward from the ASC. A lot of the stuff that you will hear from me today may well be duplicate to William Hardy, who I think was on the previous panel. He's with the Royal Society of Edinburgh. My understanding is that, if it was appropriate, I could give you my view with my Murray House hat or my school teacher hat. Good morning, colleagues. I'm the general secretary of the EIS. I was a classroom teacher for 33 years. I'm a PT English. I'll be speaking in Scots for the remainder of the session. I've been paying attention to the previous sessions and earlier this morning we also heard the use of the phrase, unintended consequence, which I think is true, but it was not unforeseen. Some of us have been warning that where we are now with the senior phase is well short of the ambition of CFE. That ambition, when it was articulated, was around maintaining breadth across the senior phase of the school, creating space for depth of learning, because that was one of the criticisms of our previous system that we got kids through exams, but we didn't actually give them the depth of understanding, which were linked into the skills of the 21st century that OECD were advocating jurisdiction should engage with. Also, in particular, there should be parity of esteem between vocational and inverted commas academic. If those were the three, we can have yardsticks where we are at the moment is well short of that. We are dealing with a system that is still in transition. When CFE was first developed when the senior phase in particular was being looked at, we were conscious that standard grade had actually been a well-trusted system. Interestingly, all of the professional associations in the consultation on the new qualifications advocated retaining standard grade and upgrading it, refreshing it, but that was not part of the options, so we were moving into a new qualification system. Standard grade had been introduced in the 80s as a certification for all, and one of the key issues then was that the demographic was a majority of students left school after fourth year. Standard grade was a huge success over the 20 years, but, as you have heard in previous sessions, we now have a situation where the demographic is around 90 per cent of our pupils are staying on to fifth year. The qualification system that we had in place with standard grade and intermediates in the higher still programme was a confused landscape for a lot of the students who were staying on. Quite often, students in fifth year were doing in one and in two, which was a repeat of the standard grade qualification that we already had. It was just a different way of assessing it. That was part of the drive around our system at that point. It was obsessed with qualifications, and it was obsessed with qualifications because that was the benchmark against which schools were judged. As a teacher, if you had any kind of certificate class, your primary function was to get in through the qualifications with the best result possible. The SQA had its tariff points and the inspector would come in and they would ask for your results and they would judge your school on your results. That had led to a shallower experience in terms of learning for our young people, and the senior phase was meant to open up a different approach where we were actually looking at the learning that was taking place in equal value to the outcome in terms of the qualification. That is why the idea of breadth and depth and parity of esteem became the kind of benchmark. We are absolutely not there and colleagues from the subject specialisms and particularly will articulate the threat to their subjects that the current arrangements have. I think that what we have to consider is whether we still have the same ambition around the senior phase, and if so, how do we get there? Or are we going to abandon it and go back to the old system, which was largely 2 plus 2 plus 2? However, if we go back to that, I think that we have done on this service because we will not have addressed the idea of the kind of learning that needs to take place for our young people to be equipped for the century in which they live. My last point is just to make this point. Curriculum for excellence was not meant to be a change to our qualifications. Curriculum for excellence was meant to be a pedagogical change about the way that we facilitated learning for our young people. It was predicated on the idea that young people had to have more than just qualifications, they had to have a skill set that made them resilient in another changing market in the 21st century. That is where that space for depth of learning was meant to pitch itself. Implementation of the senior phase has left us some way short of that ambition. If we are looking at subject choice, we will also have to look at those big, broader objectives and put subject choice into that particular framework. I will leave it there, because I am sure that there will be specific questions to follow. I invite members to ask questions. I will open with Ms Lamont. Thank you very much. I have already found everything that has been said, very interesting. One of the areas that I am interested in, Larry Flanagan highlights this dilemma about fourth year. For a generation of teachers who taught non-certificate classes, who therefore got no resources, who got basically nothing, stand-agreed was a liberation and it was not really the credit kids, it was the foundation general, because these were young people who were now treated sufficiently seriously to an external examination. I hear what you are saying about the logic around how that would change, but I wonder, first of all, do you agree that there is a concern that for a lot of young people there is no external examination and therefore there are consequences in terms of the resources that goes to them? Last week we heard from on the issue of looked after children, 75 per cent of whom leave at the end of fourth year. Unless we go along with the Tory position that everybody has to stay in school until the 18th, I think that there will always be young people who want to make that choice. There are circumstances perhaps or an act of choice. How do we ensure that there is something in a system that externally validates young people who will be leaving at fourth year, that is the best of what standard grade was? How do we address that when I recognise that young people will be staying in some circumstances, staying on to sixth year, and really end up not doing terribly much in that time that is progressing and deepening their understanding? One of the things that is supposed to happen with the senior phase is that significant subject choice is supposed to happen in S3. That is not the reality, because the majority of schools still do subject choice in S2, so they are still leaning more towards standard grade post-16 qualifications than thinking about BGE in senior phase. At the point where that subject choice is supposed to happen, there is supposed to be an S3 profile. That was a hugely contested area when CFE was being developed. Some people have never heard of it, the S3 profile. What that is supposed to do is set out for the young person at age 15, a three-year pathway, irrespective of whether that young person is leaving school or not. Schools are responsible for having a pathway for young people to the age of 18. If the young person is leaving school at age 16, they might well and fourth year be out of school already and be doing college courses, but they have to have a pathway set out for them. They take them through to 18 and predicate on the idea of a positive destination. I understand the point that there is still a debate around N4 and whether there should be an external qualification, but for a lot of the young people who are leaving, that is not necessarily the qualification that best suits their career intentions. In colleges, for example, a lot of the courses that are offered, many MSQA courses, do not have external qualifications. They are internally validated within the college, and the college validation process is then moderated by MSQA. If they are doing an apprenticeship, for example, there is not an external exam around an apprenticeship. If that is the best pathway for a young person leaving school at age 16, I do not think that they should artificially have an external examination attached to it. That is not to say that I do not think that there is a debate around N4, because that has been part for the past 18 months. Within other members, there is divided opinion. A lot of people think that an external exam would give N4 added validity in the eyes of parents and pupils. I certainly think that N4 has to have at least two levels of pass, because a minimal pass, which is the current arrangement, is a general grade 4, whereas before we had general grade 3 and 4, and they were quite different. If you had a grade 4, you did an N1, if you had a grade 3, you did an N2. A threshold past N4 is not a good preparation for N5, for example. We have been arguing that there should be at least a level validation at N4. There is still a debate whether that is an external exam or whether it is through some kind of external validation of an internal process, and I think that we have to take that forward. What I would guard against is the idea that the pathway that should be there for all young people is that you get your N4 or equivalent, and then you get your N5 or equivalent, and then you get your higher and advanced higher. We support the idea that schools for the majority of pupils should be focusing on exit qualifications and working towards making sure that that depth and breadth is there around exit qualifications. It cannot be universal because a lot of young people will benefit from step-by-step approaches around qualifications, so there has to be some flexibility. The challenge that we have at the moment is that there is a whole range of practice for different reasons across the system, and there are reluctance to impose a pattern on schools because that would seem to be taking the decision out of schools hands. Unless you give some clearer direction, schools, by and large, have been attached to the qualifications pathway model, and there has been no drive from anyone to move them away from that. Education Scotland, up until its recent reboot, basically shied away from the question. For the five years that were introducing those new qualifications, you could not get a statement from Education Scotland to say that you should think about bypassing, because it had just let the system run as it had done. That is one of the reasons why we are at this crossroads. From here, we have to think about how we move forward, and I do not think that we move forward by moving back the way in terms of the standard grade practice that was there, despite the fact that that was probably our most successful qualification the last 40 years. As for the question that I am still wrestling with myself, it is the question of equity, because there was a change in schools at the point where schools had to take seriously youngsters who were doing foundation in general and had to put resources into it. The young people got to go and study leave. They might know themselves what the different abilities people had, but that sense of being part of the same experience in some ways to me was actually very important. I do not know if you share my concern that some of the evidence that we have had suggests that those who are most disadvantaged are more disadvantaged now under what is happening, whether it is intended or not, but what is happening in the process. That is why I flagged up the issue of looked-after children, because if 75 per cent of looked-after children are leaving in fourth year, that is not because all of those young people would more appropriately do a vocational course or go to college. It is because their circumstances have led them to be in a position where, no matter what their academic ability, they are not able to make that decision to stay on. Is that an issue? How do we address this challenge of the people who are going to get five fires, make it five fires anyway, and what do you do with the middle? There are all sorts of arguments about depth, but there are a group of young people who are not being served well by the process. How do we deal with that? I think that I am a bit worried. I have a concern that there is almost like an HR convenience model coming through. If you want to create space in the curriculum, those are the bits of the system that are not really addressed in the needs of all that many, but I think that it is a particularly important group that allows them to do other things. How do you manage that so that it is genuinely being driven by education or need and interest in ability, rather than some kind of management process? I think that there is an issue there. N4 is an interesting focus because it is going to cost between the expected norm. Level 3 by the end of S3 is the minimal requirement. The ambition is for most people to be at N4 equivalent CFA level 4 by the end of S3. Below N4, we have N1, N2 and N3, and they do not have external exams. The old system with access to N1, N2 and N3 did not have internal exams. Those were all designed to meet the needs of students for whom external exams were denadded pressure and could actually debar them from getting the qualification. Around N4, we have this dual target group. There are people who are doing N4 as a step stone to N5, and there are people who are doing N4 as a plateau of their school achievement and looking to then map into other qualifications. I do not diminish the debate around it because I think that it is a very real debate. I do not think that N4 is a good progression route to N5. If N4 has been used as an exit qualification for young people who are going on to different pathways, then it can be made to work. I do not think that the absence of an external exam should be the default criticism because it should be about what are the assessment needs of those young people. At the moment, we are trying to deal with a wide range of requirements around what N4 is doing. I do not think that our current model is straddling the two ambitions, which is why the discussions—I think that there is a meeting coming up in a couple of weeks to revisit N4—is quite important. For some young people, N4 is almost an incidental stepping stone, which does not prepare them well. That is why a lot of N4 candidates do not get their N5 because they do not have their borderline N4 passes rather than aspiring N5 passes. That is one of the wicked issues that we still have to resolve around how those qualifications work. On the question of a group like looked after children, what do we do about that? Yes, more young people will now stay on to sixth year, but there are young people who are disadvantaged in the system already. How do we address that question? Within the look after and accommodated children, there is a wide range of ability. The kids in there who are perfectly capable of getting higher, whether they choose to do that, are quite often left in school not necessarily because of dissatisfaction with the school but because of personal circumstances. The school has a responsibility to have a three-year path line for those young people. If N5s, for example, were an appropriate qualification for that pathway, they should be looking to ensure that those young people are going to college to achieve that. If N4s were an appropriate pass, what is their next step after N4? There is no point in saying that N4s should have an external exam if that does not make any difference to the next step for that young person. The issues around looked after and accommodated are less to do with the qualifications system and more to do with the social circumstance in which we support young people, some of whom will still be very vulnerable through to the age of 18 when they make their own decisions at 16 but when they are less supported by the system. I have a brief question on that line of questioning. We know that some pupils in less advantaged areas have only been offered a subject choice of five at higher. Can I have your view on that? Do you not think that that limits their chances, their life chances? At higher, very few schools will offer more than five higher as a subject choice because higher in the previous system and for most schools in this system is a one-year course and you cannot fit more than five times 160 hours into a school year. If schools are often six hires over one year, they are creating an impossible burden on young people. I understand why you are saying that. I did not frame the question properly. That is the senior phase limitation of their choices. It is not necessarily just for higher. That is ridiculously narrow. Six subjects in S4 are also narrow. The issue is how you overcome that. You can overcome it by going back to your two-plus-two-plus-two model or you can do what some schools are doing and planning across S4S5 as a two-year course. If you do S4S5, you have eight columns—sorry, I was at the school timetabler as well—so you may have to suffer us. You have eight columns and you can offer eight subjects. I would say not eight qualifications but eight subjects. That is one of the ways that it was intended that Britain was maintained. If you do eight subjects across two years, you have more than 160 hours to complete the course. I think that we are just into double figures on the number of schools that are doing that because most schools, primarily because the change from standard grade to S4S5 happened over a summer, most schools simply replaced standard grade with S4S5 and maintained their curriculum timetables because that was the only way that schools could cope with it and it was the only way that pupils could cope with it. We got off to a bad start in terms of looking at curricular structures. I think that it is only now that you have SQA in Education Scotland and the Scottish Government saying the same thing around exit qualifications and looking at a three-year experience, which I think is a way forward rather than reverting to a model that was designed for a different age. Johann Lamont's question about looking after and accommodating children and them being disadvantaged in schools, I also had many hearts. I was acting there before a year for pupil support and I think that it is what Larry was saying there about the range of practice and the clear direction in every school doing what they can. There are schools that have alternative curriculums where these pupils who have a lot of social emotional problems are looked after within the school in another way to help them stay in school. He is looking at what these young people need at that time to support them. In the school where I taught we had about 200 students doing an alternative curriculum path since second year and this was done in conjunction with social work. There are places around the country that would take a different approach but an issue is and again is linked to what Larry was saying before and part of your inquiry is the multilevel teaching when you have classes of national 3, 4 and 5 and the pressures on attainment because very often pupils and management take choices of putting courses into the choice based on the attainment of those courses. Those have an impact on teachers that very often concentrate more on national 5 students where national 3 and national 4 are just maybe not so much resources put into them. Just before I went to university I had a national 4, 5, higher and advanced higher class all in the same column so there are teachers preparing for four classes for the one class so those have an effect on the children that are more disadvantaged. I know that people will come on to this question in more depth later but do you think that is a particular issue for modern languages? It has been a particular issue for modern languages since modern languages in fourth year stopped being compulsory. In the school where I taught we had seven fourth year classes in 2013, attainment was very good, 14, 15 parents got letters saying we really advise your son or your daughter to take a national 5 in French but now there's maybe one class in one column that has students from S4, S5 and S6 doing national 4, 5 or higher in the same column so the fact that there are is that dilemma in between the range of choice and what schools can do with the resources and teachers that they have so in some subjects this has an impact where you've got a lot of different levels in the in the in the same class. You sense that that's increasingly the norm so it's not just about managing shortage of teachers it's freeing up space in the curriculum so well it's now become accepted we can have multi-level in French and that just creates space elsewhere for other subject choices. I think he has in languages has come to that because he has stopped being compulsory and also because if you're only taken five six or seven subjects the one that has dropped the most in S4 65 per cent by still statistics has been modern languages so that's what you know that that's the dilemma it has as a teacher you know and there's three kids that want to do national 4 so teachers will say okay I'll take them because otherwise you know that these students are not and are not going to study the language so the issue has been the narrowing that students have less can take less less subjects. There's just a couple of things so far that have been mentioned we've talked a little bit about the national 4 course and how it's not certificated. One of the issues that we feel is that parents are not well enough educated yet on the courses that are being provided so we find that in some schools that when pupils are asked to do national 4 the parents won't accept it for the reason that there is no qualification because people have still not got sorted out in their heads how the new qualifications work they think that you have to have an examination at the end and because that's what employers want and there's still a fair bit of education I think to go on not just with teachers I think they know what they're doing but you know with parents for instance in my school we have pupils who maybe get 20% in the prelim exam and we say that they will not manage to pass a national 5 examination and yet the parents want them to sit that qualification. Would the solution therefore to give them confidence to externalise the information? I think there has to be something done about it to make it a more realistic qualification yes definitely and the other thing I wanted to say was that I mean the whole thing about the BGE and senior phase as well has was done the wrong way around and people thought it was a good idea to start in S1 and change the curriculum up the way you were changing things for 1st 2nd and 3rd year before we actually knew what the new qualifications were going to be so you didn't really know what was ahead and so that made it extremely difficult and so we are now working in a system where the people are having to change their BGE to relate to what is there in the senior phase and I think that's one of the things that is an issue and causing a problem because we just can't get away from constantly having to change things every year Miss Watson? I just want to come back to the point you raised about looks after and accommodated children. My feeling absolute gut feeling is that these youngsters are only in school for eight out of 24 hours a day and there's only so much that is as practitioners that we can do. Early intervention is the key to this. Youngsters that I've seen go through secondary school if there's been early intervention at primary school the success rate of them staying on and gaining further qualifications is far more likely. I understand that but nevertheless despite that and of course you'd want to make sure that all young people achieve their full potential but there are simply stats that show 75 per cent of young people who would have looked after end up leaving in fourth year and in order to not reinforce further the inequality that they face I suppose my question was whether the way that current curriculum is set up is compounding the problem and that is that if you have a system that's predicated and never had been there for three years and you can establish that there's a significant group of young people who will not be there for three years whether we want them to be or not, how do we not make it worse for them by having a system that doesn't acknowledge that they're going to go at the end of fourth year? I don't know how to answer that question actually because I don't have an answer on that. Except it's far beyond just the curriculum I suppose my question I think probably rehearsed it fully was just whether what we're doing is amplifying some of the inequalities when there's some things we could do to actually help to diminish it. I think if we were actually looking at you know the three-year plan for young people that would be a significant improvement on the previous system because under standard rate a lot of these kids would have left at the end of fourth year as well and as soon as they were out the door the school was finished with them. Now that shouldn't be the case now the school should actually have an interest in those young people for the next three years of their lives and try to ensure that they're on a pathway to a sustained positive destination. So I think I understand the problem you're highlighting. I don't think the qualification system is making that worse in fact I think there is potential within the system for a better arrangement than we had previously because a lot of these young people in the past wouldn't have left with high-level standard grades. They've been leaving with foundational works and as soon as we're out of school the school was finished with them. That's not supposed to be the situation now so there's at least some scope for looking at the issue more positively. Look at how schools actually do carry out the responsibility to see young people who have left. I hadn't realised that so that might be something we could investigate further. I'm quite interested in a number of things you've said, Larry. You said curriculum for excellence was not a change to qualifications. It was a change to curriculum but it didn't necessarily mean the qualifications could change although the Government chose to do that. You said standard grade was the most successful qualification for 40 years. It was kind of heartwarming for the three or four of us in the room who I think were involved in developing standard grade but I think true. You said that the EIS and other professional associations advice at the time was not to change standard grade but to refresh it, renew it and we also know that the change that has been made to qualifications and we've heard this evidence this morning and other days is having unintended consequences including potentially squeezing some subjects out of the curriculum and out of schools altogether. I understand why people want to say that we should move forwards not back but is that not a pretty powerful argument for just saying we've made a mistake here and actually we should go back to something that worked so well? Certainly at the round table that the committee held with teachers in Fife, that was generally the view that they took. I suppose it depends on whether you think in 2020 a solution from the 1980s is appropriate. We are, I think we're all on board with our young people are facing challenges beyond school in the 21st century that we didn't face when we were at school and that was what underpinned the idea of the curricular reform was the fact that we had to have you know and it's a very it's a bit clumsy to talk about 21st century skills but it was this idea that it's not enough just to have qualifications. Young people are not going to be in jobs for life they're going to have to be adaptable and resilient and our system which was predicated on qualifications it was been criticised for not delivering on that broader agenda so we had universities saying kids are coming up here with A passes and they don't know how to learn and universities running first year remedial courses to try and get kids into learning skills so that was the kind of context where we're looking at now at the time of the standard grade discussion I was still in school I was an AIS education convener I was going around doing a lot of meetings where a lot of our members were unconvinced about the whole thing and I was saying if you want to achieve the ambition of CFE if you left the qualifications as they were but changed the way that we taught we would end up closer to the ambition than if we changed the qualifications we just kept teaching the same way now we have changed the qualifications but pretty much largely in the upper secondary school still teach the same way because we're still teaching kids to get through qualifications and all of this broader agenda is getting squeezed out because if you have an N5 class doing our course in one year then you have the two term dash to N5 that we used to criticise around higher and getting through the course content in a single year is a significant challenge for teachers and pupils so you do then start not teaching to the test but you are focused on the assessment because if these kids spend a year in your class and none of them passed their N5 somebody's going to chap your door and ask you what's going on so that is why our system is still geared towards you know this qualification framework and that bigger ambition you know that there was a point made about parental issues so my old school where I left in the timetable nobody sits exams in S4 they do eight subjects across in S4 and S5 and every year there has to be a meeting with parents to explain why you're doing it and when you talk about depth of learning and breadth and the fact that kids can actually get six hires rather than five they don't need to drop art, music, languages, they don't need to just focus on their five then we've managed to persuade the parents but the majority of parental opinion still thinks in terms of their own experience which is qualifications so I'm really tempted in it to say let's just go back and pretend it didn't happen right but it has happened and actually going back to that previous system we would end up in a poorer place because one of the huge criticisms I would make of SQA was they were charged with designing in the new qualifications the best of standard grade and the best of standard grade was no one fell through the net so because kids sat at credit general general foundation across grades one to seven they all settled what got a qualification that's why it was certification for all part of the the reason why schools are reluctant to embrace the two-year courses is because you then have to make sure you put kids into the right course right qualification at the end of it otherwise you know as has happened in hermitage kids will sit higher exams and have nothing to show because SQA did not design fall back into the system N4, N5 and higher are all discrete qualifications and if you sit their own one you could end up with nothing which is why a lot of schools like to get money in the bank in S4 get your N5 done at least you've got to fall back on let me come back to that in a second but I'm quite interested to hear what the other how tempted the rest of the panel are to say let's just go back to standard grade I wouldn't be much as though I do think it did work I agree with Larry wholeheartedly that the world is not the same and we would be doing our young people a disservice if we went back to a system where we're using different skills different abilities experiences by far so although it is tempting it would be unfair to them because they are not the young people that existed 20 years ago I'd also like to come back just now to something to that Fran had mentioned about the specific impact on languages when you're looking at dropping down to five subjects and how that is squeezing very often languages out there is another issue with that that is the word viability when across schools subjects are being told that if you don't have a threshold number of pupils that do accept a subject that that subject can no longer actually be selected and therefore it's put to one side and what you have a danger of then is that you are marginalising smaller subjects and only making sure that it's the bigger subjects with lots of uptake that are taken on and certainly for Gaelic I know there's languages as well but for Gaelic specifically we are in a critical position where we really do need every single child that wishes to take Gaelic that has that opportunity and I actually had three schools contact me in the last week talking of a concern when their schools had said that there were no threshold numbers there weren't enough numbers opting for that for Gaelic learners to take that subject now the numbers over those three schools you're looking at approximately 20 children now when we have 107 children having done N5 Gaelic last year 20 children in even three schools could make a huge difference now if we actually looked across the country if there was if there was a situation whether it's a couple of pupils here and there that could turn our situation around and it's it's wrong to ignore that and not to make sure that there's something in place to monitor schools stopping the provision of something especially like Gaelic just because they feel that the numbers aren't viable Gaelic itself unfortunately our numbers aren't great just now we don't have the luxury to wait till we have 20 people waiting to do our subject or sometimes even 10 so it does need intervention and we'd be very welcome if that happened yes miss Watson can I just also mention and I don't know if my colleagues would agree what happens or can happen is that youngsters are then shoehorned into subjects which weren't the first choices which then you have youngsters that have no enthusiasm for the subject they've been shoehorned into therefore you end up with a situation where you know it's not not positive it's it's worth noting that that doesn't happen in other schools teachers their evidence is pretty strong they would like to go back to what we had before no well not necessarily go back to the old standard grade system I think one of the things is that I mean we're now being asked to be far more creative in the classroom and we're being asked to do things like cooperative learning we're being asked to teach the pupils skills so that they're more able to be part of society lary mentioned the two term dash is very very difficult to do all these things that we're being asked to do in that time because we're trying to teach the pupils what is in the national five geography qualification but you know we're also being asked to try and do it in a different way which is the way that we want to do it so I think there is a lot of different things on the table here okay so let's go back to that two term dash because again in the the round table focus groups that we had in fight the other day I mean myself and Mr Allen sat at a table with don't know a 10 or a dozen teachers and it sounded as if every school they taught in had a different curricular structure and a lot of those were having the effects that we've been concerned about reducing the breadth of the curriculum and so on so lary you described there a model which you made the case allowed for that breadth to continue in the curriculum but with the new qualifications but the problem that we have is when education Scotland came to give evidence and they were asked about this they said well the curriculum curricular structure in the schools up to the school that's empowering schools that's so the result is that apart from a handful of schools it would appear decisions have been made which have actually narrowed the curriculum there's only a handful of schools you said maybe less than double figures who've actually found a curricular structure that makes this work and maintains the breadth so should we not have education Scotland or someone saying this is the curriculum this is how it works and this is how you have to deliver it in your school so that these unintended consequences don't happen I think education Scotland now is in a different place from where it was a couple of years ago around that kind of messaging we argued with education Scotland over the length of his existence up until his recent reboot that it was failing to lead on curriculum architecture in terms of timetable structures and that we weren't suggesting that every school should absolutely have to do the same so if you're in a scheme school in Glasgow and half your kids are leaving at the end of fourth year then having two-year courses across S4S5 is totally inappropriate and if you've got a different kind of mix then you might have to have a mixture of two-year courses and one-year courses so at Hillhead if kids were leaving at the end of fourth year they would do five subjects five qualification routes over one year because you can fit five qualification routes in and that isn't that different what used to happen because although eight standard grades was in norm lots of kids had moderated timetables and particularly looked after accommodated children often had moderated timetables to do with their attendance pattern and you know behavioural issues in certain classes so there was always flexibility within the system and if the question is in do I think you could impose a system on schools and say this is what we want and well it's really tempting right but it's it's everybody going like yeah a bit so you know get behind me saying you know it's moving in the wrong direction so you cannot say you're going to have an empowered school system with greater you know professional autonomy at school level and then dictate exactly what happens I think there has to be I mean I generally think that Scottish Government, SQA and Education Scotland collectively have not sent a coherent message around the senior phase ambitions over the last few years and we've had to spend a lot of time dealing with the fallout of the qualifications so I think the last time I was here we were talking about assessment overload both for teachers and for young people in terms of trying to do six, seven, eight N5s in one year and we've removed the units to address that although in a two-year system the units are perfectly fine but that's one of the ironies that we've taken those away. I think that there's probably a debate to be had around what is the best system and there's also scope you know so two plus two plus two is a kind of shorthand there are a lot of schools who in S3 are doing BGE and also have an eye to what the senior phase is looking at so that S3 there shouldn't be at the end of S3 you going to senior phase there should be a conscious transition across S3 preparing pupils for the senior phase and that might mean making sure that there's informed choices because I think you know science and languages in history geography have suffered from the six qualification presentation in S4. There was a debate last week in parliament around subject choice just to be clear pupils didn't actually have free choice understand a great they had to do English had to do maths had to do a science whether they liked it or not they had to do history geography modern studies whether they liked them or not the norm had to do art drama or music whether they liked it or not and then there'd be a bit of choice around second sciences so we used to be quite descriptive across standard grade around the limit of pupil choice and all of that is predicated on staffing so I don't think anyone in this panel here would defend multi-level teaching in any subject area the reason that happens is because in physics they want to run advanced higher physics so they put the kids in with a higher class because otherwise no timetable is going to timetable a class and a teacher for five pupils right or they're doing they're doing higher n5 in the same class because it's the only way they can actually get to a viable class size and that some of that is down to you know teacher availability in certain subjects home economics has been has been wiped out and not because pupils aren't choosing it because they can't get home economics teachers for loving on money and but in some cases it is down to the school having to make choices around how it allocates its staffing pro rata to the number of pupils so most timetables won't put a subject on the timetable unless there's going to be a minimum of 10 pupils in that class because otherwise they're losing staffing elsewhere and that cuts it so you know so in a grand sense all of that is about resources but that issue around resources and class size has not come about because of the senior phase because it was there before when you were looking at intermediates and you're looking at hires you still had to have viable class sizes to run them and I know Ross isn't here but his issue around schools that serve areas of multiple deprivation have fewer choices that's absolutely true but it was true before the senior phase as it is now and because the class sizes in the upper schools and those schools that stay on rate is lower in those schools so you have fewer pupils which dictates the kind of subject choice that you can offer. Good day, I'll just come in quickly just to reiterate what Lallie was saying about staffing that staffing is one of the biggest issues that concerns all our members at the moment in different ways now that there are some schools that have not replaced teachers for countless lengths of time there are children sitting not being taught by specialist Gallic teachers so that this is a huge issue that needs to be looked at other than that you're looking at the issue of staff to be trained in Gallic medium or Gallic learners teaching when we have less people coming out with Gallic as the years go on we're going to have a smaller skill set as the years progress and we need to make sure that the staffing if there are any gaps in staffing if there are any lacks of lack of teacher training this needs to be looked at so that we do have staff and that schools and authorities actually employ teachers the minute there is a gap. Good morning to the panel just to let members know I did previously in a prior life used to work with Margery care at education Scotland just for the record. Larry, I want to go back to your point about ambitions being missed around about curriculum for excellence and Margie, I note in the saga submission you speak about a return to the 222 model and I saw a tweet from Seamus Searson who's the general secretary of the SSTA last week who tweeted that it was time for two-year courses which sounds to me like a return to standard grade and Larry in your submission you talk about the IS being of the view that the structure of the senior phase is mostly unchanged and we've had that discussion already this morning. Do you think that going back in time there was perhaps a cultural resistance within the secondary teaching population to change the way that we do things from standard grade because it was thought that the time that curriculum for excellence was perhaps more suited to primary? I think that Seamus's comment is around two-year courses across S4S5 because I've had that discussion with the SSTA. There was a cultural resistance because, as I said earlier, teachers had become used to a system whereby they were validated on the basis of how well their kids did in qualifications. We've had two decades of the SQA league tables around how many higher you're getting, the transition from S4 to standard grades into higher. Our whole system was geared towards pupils achieving qualifications and then we were trying to switch to a new system and we literally went from the new qualifications arriving in school post-easter for implementation in August. No-one spent any time actually trying to discuss with schools what the change was. The whole focus of schools was on how we minimise the change that is required to deliver new qualifications and ensure that pupils aren't disadvantaged by being the first cohort. I described the model that we had in Hillhead. At one point, over half the schools in Glasgow were asking me to come out and speak to them about that model. In the end, we were the only school that did it because the timetable was such that the only way that schools could cope was by and large to stick with their current curriculum architecture and just change the qualifications. And teachers worked really, really hard over those first three years to make sure that young people weren't disadvantaged because when we introduced higher still, we did have young people being disadvantaged by the change. Collectively, we didn't take the time to actually get the message out into schools, which is why this point was made earlier around BGE coming in. I saw in one of the space reports when CFE was introduced in 2010, and you were going, no, it wasn't. That was when the qualifications changed. CFE was introduced well before that, but people still associate CFE in the secondary school as—I had changed how I talked more higher because of CFE long before the qualifications changed, but we really missed an opportunity. Now, why did that happen? So I don't want to follow out with any, but it was because of the political noise around the qualifications. We were pressing Mike Russell, who was the Cabinet Secretary of Time, for a year's delay in introducing the qualifications. There had already been a year's delay a couple of years before that. To put it bluntly, Mike got a kicking around the previous delay about why we were delaying those reforms. The CFE management board, with the exception of myself, unanimously recommended that we should proceed with the timetable. SQA said that it had delivered the qualifications, which it had. They were there on the shelf. None of the political parties would support a delay. Tavish flirted with it, but, in the end, it didn't go with it. There was no political will to delay, so schools then had to cope with it. That's goodbye, standard grade, hello, N4N5, and it's honestly only now that there's been a bit of heat taken out of the system that we're actually starting to address that missed opportunity. That's why I think we are at a stage where we all need to decide whether we still have those big ambitions and how we should move forward towards that. We made a mistake collectively as a system. We made a mistake and we went to use the N4N5. That has created some of the issues that are now being faced around subject choice restrictions, which weren't built into the system. That's why I said that they were unintended but they weren't unforeseen. People talk about 160 hours of notional. If you're a timetailer in a school, 160 hours is not notional. If I timetable a maths higher class and give them 100 hours, they'll be a delegation at my door saying that we can't deliver this in 100 hours. 160 hours is what's needed to deliver a course. You can't even fix six times 160 in one year. The only reason some schools are doing that is because they're starting them in the middle of May. Kids finish their exams one day and start their new course the next day. It's the only way they can technically suggest a six times 160. We've got a situation that is clearly unsatisfactory in what we need to decide, which was the gist of Lizzie's motion last week. How we move forward from where we are and kicking one another over how we've got here isn't going to be that helpful. We just really need to think about what is the next step and how do we get there. Sorry, I'm sounding very preachy this morning. I'm going to bring in Dr Allan. Can I ask about one of the things that you raised there, Ms McPhee? I can ask if you can separate out a couple of different things. You were talking about impacts of subject choice on Gaelic as Gaelic learners and Gaelic fluent speakers, but you were also talking about the impact on education more widely through the medium of Gaelic. What impact are you drawing or do you find in the issues around subject choice for Gaelic medium education specifically? Are you looking at Gaelic as a fluent language or Gaelic subjects through the medium of Gaelic? That is what we need there in terms of staffing. We need people who are willing to teach their subject because it's few and far in the ground. There are a number of schools that offer Gaelic medium and it is tremendously successful and it also adds to the fluency of children who are doing Gaelic medium, but it almost works in partnership that the more children that have the opportunity to study geography, history, modern studies, maths and sciences through the medium of Gaelic, then that obviously is going to increase fluency and is going to increase things all round. There is a huge dearth of teachers that are willing, not only able but willing to teach their subject through Gaelic and therefore that's got another impact that there is no question that we're going to have large numbers opting to do those subjects, but we need to start somewhere small. Glasgow Gaelic schools started small and have done a tremendous job, but we need to allow those things to happen rather than wait for the huge numbers to come because they won't come. That's why we have that issue on option farms or in schools that the options is having a strangling effect on the language in Gaelic learners and in Gaelic medium, although they are quite different. It is having probably more of an effect on Gaelic learners than it is on Gaelic medium because in Gaelic medium you have more of an investment by, whether it be parents, the children themselves to see things through, although some decide not to see things through and that's another issue, but with Gaelic learners that is an option, much like modern languages, whether it's French or German, that they opt and if something is not in a form then they're not going to choose that if it only appears once in a form or their numbers aren't large enough. Does that answer the question? It does. I spoke when you're talking about options and forms from the Rhanar eccentric position that when I was in second year at school I drew an extra column on my choices and wrote Gaelic in but it wasn't available, but I suppose what I'm also driving at is, you mentioned almost a workforce planning issue there. How quickly do you think there would be a visible impact on some of the problems that you've described with that workforce planning for the future, for the availability of Gaelic medium teachers? Were there not something about this acute problem that we're facing just now around Gaelic? Do you see it almost instant? We need more teachers, but there are teachers out there, there are teachers that are available for jobs if they were advertised. What we don't have is people that are perhaps, especially in the more remote areas, tend to suffer more because if there's people off on sickness or illness there's not so much supply cover there, but there are people who have been making a tremendous effort to boost teacher training and numbers coming out and that has seen a turnaround. So we do have teachers out there. What we need to have is to have them in classes with children in front of them actually teaching until that happens then they can't impart their knowledge and have the Gaelic developing in that way there. So it could be instantaneous if everything worked together and things worked to plan and you have a teacher in front of every class, every child that wants to learn Gaelic. Thank you, and this is perhaps a question for you, but certainly one for Mr Valdir Agil. You talked about the fact that we clearly can't go back to the past, but you did point to concerns that you had about, I think, without putting words in your mouth, concerns you had about the lack of compulsory nature of languages in school. So where does the solution lie in your view? Are you advocating something around subject choice or are you advocating something around compulsory subjects or where does the solution lie? I think I wouldn't advocate for compulsion. I think making place in the curriculum for it to happen. So if the course choices were not five, six, a modern language could still be a viable solution for many students who want to study it. Also thinking that if we want to continue that breath in the senior phase, we need to think that if all of our European counterparts, 95%, they do study a modern language in the equivalent of a senior phase and our students don't. So if we still want to say that the senior phase has breath, modern languages needs to be there. For me, there's two big issues. It's a lack of understanding, although it's very clear in policy, CFE, principles and practice paper, CFR, a European level of the role of modern languages, the role that is placed for literacy. To me, that is not totally understood by the profession. I work in teacher education. I also work with teachers delivering the one plus two, and I can see that there are schools in Glasgow that are most deprived of the ones that tend not to do the modern language, and that's a double whammy for children because the 4,000 words in English come from French, and it's through the learning of a language that our students are exposed to that. So for me, there's the issue of the literacy. And also, Larian Cachon, I have talked about the lack of alignment of curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, this is not only an issue for Scotland, this is an issue for every nation, so it's not just us, but thinking about qualifications in the senior phase, if I look at France, if I look at Spain, they are teaching languages through content language integrated learning. IDL is one of the contexts of learning for CFE, but once we get into the senior phase, that's forgotten. So the IDL happens in first to third year, maybe, maybe not, but once we go there, it's not happening. There's no reason why the modern language could not be part of another qualification. There's no reason why it cannot be part of science or geography of art of any other subject. So SQA, I also have an SQA hat because I'm the principal assessor for higher Spanish. So SQA has done this for the bacaloreal, where students, but it's taken by a very minority of students, but we could build on that and think that there are other ways of enabling young people from S4 to S6 to take a language. There's a job to be done, but there are other ways if the curriculum in S4 cannot be changed. Finally, for yourself, one issue that's been raised in the past with us or certainly been raised publicly is about the question of whether people who drop a language in second or third year are then taking it up in fifth or sixth year and what are the issues around that? I think there is a notion in the four nations of the UK that people are just bad at languages. There's also the difficulty or the thought myth that a language is more difficult than another subject. It is not, but whether we like it or not, that is a myth that people live with and that makes them not take the subject. So the reality is that if students do not follow it up, some of them might come back, but they don't. There's no reason why the students, in 2011 and 2012, there were 28,000 students doing standard great French. We've got 6,000, 7,000 now. There's no reason why these students could not come back in S5 and S6 to do a national five or a higher, but they don't. Unless something is done in the system to try to get these students back, it's not happening. So the reality is that once it's dropped, fewer students come back to do it, although it's not to say that they cannot come back. And certainly that assumption that you have to have a national, that progression of national four or five, higher or advanced higher, there are students who can crash a higher course without having done a national five, but this doesn't happen very often. So I think there's work to be done in schools to convince the population and manage the expectations that languages can be done, but the system has not allowed for it either, so it's a combination of both, I think. I'm just interested in the question of pupils who drop a language in the second or third year, so that shouldn't happen. People are not supposed to drop in languages until they get to the senior fates. One of the debates around the six subject choices in S4 is that, up until the end of S3, pupils should be studying 11, 12, 13 subjects. So if they're going to eight subjects that understand a grade, they're supposed to maintain all those subjects across S1, 2 and 3. With some refinement in science, for example, they might move from general science to looking at specific physics or chemistry, so some refinement is allowed in S2. Languages is one of the subjects that shouldn't be getting dropped, so across S1 and S2 and 3, the experience and outcomes apply across the board, except for where there's some degree of specialism with a view to the senior fates. So we should actually have, whether it's French or Spanish or whatever, all pupils experiencing that, at least up to the end of S3, which should be level 3, level 4. An idea is that at the end of S3, pupils should have sufficient grounding that somewhere in the senior phase they can revisit the subject and have at least a foundation there. If I could just come in quickly with the fact that what Fran was saying there about young people dropping, especially Gallic learners, does happen, and it's obvious that they can come in at any point. There's quite a few more pupils that had been doing Gallic medium or Gallic affluent that do actually come back in at the later school time. The point that I wanted to make link to what Larry was saying as well, though, is that what we have is a very, very assistance across the nation. It's quite different, and that's the problem. We have some schools that allow pupils to opt after S2, some that do that, but they're still officially doing the BGE, some that carry on with the whole BGE until the end of S3. Other schools that actually allow early presentation where you have pupils actually doing their N5 exam at the end of S3, which is great for them. They only allow that to happen if the young people are able to do so, but it means that we have a system that is so varied across the country. As they then opt for the senior phase, it's not a level playing field. Can I just add in one point the experience that I've had within the last couple of years in a school where a science teacher was off long-term sick? There are no temporary science teachers out there to come in and cover, so that timetable is essentially the BGE classes, because the accredited classes must be seen by the chemists. The BGE timetable had all the third-year cohort on it, and the uptake for the third-year cohort chemistry going into fourth year was something like—I don't even think that they had enough to run a class of 20 because of the experience that the youngsters have had through no fault of their own, not the department's fault. It's just circumstantial with regard to science teachers. There's not enough of that. I'm going to move to Mr Scott. Thank you. If there's any consultation in front of just go, my son's nine-year-old class can all pronounce the Christian names and the surnames of the Barcelona first team immaculately as they were doing last night, although they all can sing, you'll never walk alone, but not in Spanish. Tess, I wanted to ask you just in general terms, or if you've got specific data that would be helpful in terms of your organisation, this is about narrowing choice. We'll take all the rest of the panel's observations about the wider themes of what's going on, but do you have a sense of what's happening in terms of the teaching of science in the senior phase, what the implications of narrowing choice are? Is that impacting on the choices and therefore the future direction of young people who, as you rightly said, you have a passion for making sure can take science? I think that there's definitely impact there. There is absolutely, I mean the specific school, I don't want to go into names, but the department are fantastic. The youngsters that have the subject specialists, so that's a biology class at accredited stages, they'll have a biologist of its chemistry, they'll have a chemistry teacher of physics and so on. Subject specialist has to be. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question here, but the BGE in physics and chemistry, and it's not just, this is quite prevalent in a number of schools, where because they can't get a subject specialist in the BGE first year to third year, go on to a non-subject specialist, or if there's no science teacher it would be just general cover, and that experience is directly affecting the pickup of subjects across, well, it was chemistry, the particular example I was thinking of. Lest girls and boys are able to go into the senior phase now, who want to take our science discipline, then some years back, has that narrowing of choice made it more difficult to pursue a science career? Yes, absolutely, probably more so with maths, physics and technologies. I think that very sensible kind of collegiate cross-party support for STEM subjects and particularly more women into science and so on so forth, we're failing because why? We've not got enough teachers or what's your prognosis as the main problem? I don't think everyone will agree with me on this, but I think that the shortage of teachers and attracting and retaining individuals in the profession, a figure just out of my head, last year I had 13 PEGD biology students at Murray House who have all successfully gone on to their NQT year, five of them, once they've done their NQT year, are off to hit the international circuit, and I think that that's probably quite telling. This is probably not for a discussion today, but a lot of the conversations I into in the staff room would be to opt for a four-day week with longer hours, but again I think that's probably another debate, if there's any primary teachers. I'm very interested in this take about 2-2-2 versus what we now have. It's not necessarily that. Do you think that there are other pressures there as to why we don't have enough? Why have we got teacher shortages in your disciplines? Why have we got teacher shortages? Well, I've had two mature students leave the PEGD programme this year, and they were incredibly capable—very capable—not for them. The pressures, having to conform, it just wasn't for them, and I think that that is quite telling. My honest truth here, if I was to go and do a PEGDE without the experience I've got now, having had two young children, there's no way I could cope with that course. It's very intense, it's very successful, and it prepares the students for the profession as best we can. Our evaluations have been good, but it's just indicative of the profession. Teachers are tired. Thank you for that. Now, can I just ask you—you've made considerable much this morning of the need to—I'm not trying to put words in your mouth—but you've argued in favour, in effect, of moving forward, not going back. I get that. There must be two or three aspects to that argument, which we should see as a committee. What are the two or three aspects—or maybe there's more, but—two or three aspects to improving the situation so that just this narrow focus that we've had in this inquiry on subject choice starts to become addressed? How do we make sure that rationale for the senior phase that you've articulated in your opening remarks is enhanced? I think that the starting point would be to decide whether or not we still believe in the ambition of breadth and depth and parity of esteem. If those are the outcomes that we desire, we then have to think, how do we achieve that? We don't achieve it if the bulk of our system is on a step ladder of qualifications. I can imagine for a pupil doing six subjects at N5, with the two-term dash and the focus on the qualification, to be followed by five of those six subjects in S5. It's not a great learning experience. The message there is all about the qualifications. It is a big jump for Scottish education to start talking about exit qualifications, and it will be quite a contested area. I know that a lot of our members would sympathise with the idea that we should have certification in S4, and we should look at starting the courses earlier. I just think that that boat is sailed. If we look at where we are, we can recognise that that is not a good learning experience for young people and start to think about how we move it forward. I will go back to Joanne's point earlier. There will be young people in our system for whom getting qualifications and doing a step and ladder approach is entirely the way that they should do it, so that they are getting success early. I ask for quite a lot of flexibility in our system, which is what the Empowering Schools agenda is meant to be about. I think that what has been missing is a clearer articulation around the objective of the senior phase and what we want to see involved in it. It is appalling that we have young people who, beyond S3, are not being exposed to language. How that can be equipped with young people for the modern world is beyond me. I am not saying that we have to make it compulsory, but we have to have a strong message around schools that are accommodating or meeting the needs of young people will clearly address the importance of language in the 21st century. I think that there have to be messages there, and then schools can look at what has been asked to do. Stand agraed maid it compulsory, so they had to do a certain range of subjects. Rather than saying that it should be compulsory, we should be saying that this is what we expect our system to deliver for young people. If you are doing a variation on that, that is fine, but justifying it in terms of the needs of your pupils. It would be great if we could get a consensus around those objectives and then say to the system that this is what we want you to deliver. It requires buy-in from all organisations, including SQA. SQA, if they come here, will offer a vast array of qualifications beyond just N5, N6, which is true. If you go into colleges, you will see that those have been deployed in colleges. Not so much in schools yet, unless there is a college school link-up, but I think that we have to explore that. Languages can be done in more ways than just doing an N5 or a higher. Crash Course in Spanish in six years used to be one of the most popular choices, because young people wanted to acquire that particular language because it suited their holiday aspirations. It was a valid interest. I think that some of the things that we offer do not necessarily have to be linked to qualifications, but that is where we are at the moment. I think that we are reaffirming the objectives and creating the legitimate demands around the core areas that we think should be in the curriculum. Beyond that, saying to schools that this is what we expect to deliver and have your story there if you are doing something different—I think that schools have an narrative about why they are doing something different—that is fine. We want to get away from—this is a big change because there is reference made to early presentation. When we started doing CFE in secondary school, we had a huge movement towards kids starting qualifications in S2 and sitting their standard grades in S3. A kid who was at school for six years spent five years doing qualifications in one year getting used to the big school. We are trying to move totally away from that. That means putting the focus on qualifications at the exit point and thinking in those terms. I still think that SQA could do more to ensure that there is better fallback in the system. That is one of the barriers that the safety nets are not there to make sure that nobody is disadvantaged. That is an area that I do not want to advocate more. It changes my SQA, but that is certainly an area that needs to be looked at. We have talked a lot today about curriculum architecture and course choice, but one of the things that we have not touched on, which we feel quite strongly about in geography, is that the way that schools are organised now. One of the things that our members are quite passionate about is the loss of principal teachers of geography. Many local authorities have gone over as a cost-cutting exercise to faculties. Some faculties are social subjects, in which you might have history, geography, modern studies, RMP, all in on faculty, and the head of faculty is not your subject. If we say that it is not geography because that is what I am, instinctively you are not going to give the time to geography as you are to history or modern studies, whatever your actual subject is. Sometimes we find then that there are, if the head of faculty has history, there are more history teachers because that is what becomes more popular. There is a pushing out of some of the subjects. You may end up, you talked about having a non-specialist. Some schools then go over to integrated social subjects, which is again something that we do not advocate. We feel that teachers should be teaching, if they are a geography teacher, their subject, which is geography. Again, if you have only got one geography teacher in the faculty and five history teachers or whatever it is, that is what you have to do. I am also interested to hear about the fact that the STEM subjects are struggling for teachers because one of the things that we also feel is that we have tried for a number of years to have geography included in STEM because geography is partly a science subject. There are two parts to geography. There is human geography and physical geography, and we have not been allowed to be part of that. In the new regional improvement collaboratives, for instance, there are going to be people who are development officers in literacy, numeracy, STEM, ICT. There are also the two plus one languages. Social subjects get nothing. Social subjects have been completely pushed to the side and left out. We have now in Education Scotland one person who is supposedly developing the whole of the social subjects curriculum for the whole of Scotland. We definitely feel that we are being marginalised not just by course choice, but by the way that the system is operating at the moment. Can I just comment with colleagues here? With my initial teacher education heart as well, I would say that Marjorie is saying that not having principal teachers has an effect on the support some student teachers get when they are out in placement. The idea of having better safety nets in the system for modern languages exists for national 4 and national 5 and still has not helped the case of modern languages. Even if that was there, something more radical and I like your idea of reaffirming objectives and what is expected. I am part of a research group in Wales looking at the national qualifications and assessment and the question that we started when we started working with teachers is what do we want an educated Welsh person to look like by the time they are leaving school when they are 16. Yes, there will be some students who leave at 16. There are others that leave at 18, but I would say that a modern language should be part of that. It shouldn't be just something that as more minority are doing and also research so that minority who is doing modern languages is also linked to social status of the students doing the language, so that is more dangerous for our future as a nation as well. Also, going back to Dr Allan's question, with the OnePlus 2 policy, it was envisaged in 2010 or 2011 that the OnePlus 2 policy and it is written in the policy could have an effect on the uptake of modern languages and that has not been realised and it was thought back then of thinking of asking future teachers to have the equivalent of a higher to entry into the teaching profession. We asked for a higher English and national five months. Other European counterparts do ask for their initial teacher education courses for students to have the equivalent of a higher, a CFRB in a language. That had to be dropped and not to say that it could happen in the future, but the way things are going were further away from the realisation of that because of what is happening in the senior phase. Ms Watson, you want? Just to say that I completely echo Marjorie and Francisco's comments there, in particular with the restructuring of jobs and the way that the schools have their hierarchy. When I started teaching, each science had a principal teacher and your principal teacher was biology, physics and chemistry. You would usually have an assistant principal teacher in science in school, which was a fantastic little post dealing with first and second year science at the time in schools. That then moved to the curriculum leaders posts. There were a lot of unrest in a lot of schools because, inevitably, if you had three principal teachers, they would be on conserved salary, but one of them would inevitably get the science job. To echo what Francisco said, I think that I must have been in around 40 schools within two years. The support that student teachers get is very varied. For young people in their career, it is not a particularly positive outlook for them. It is them learning about a profession that is hands-on in their first placements, either being given the placements that are late by the student placement system with the general teaching council or they have not been allocated a mentor. The two things that we are recurring creates a lot of anxiety for me because I get worried for them. I think that that might be something to look at. Thank you. Mr Flanagan, you said something very interesting earlier about the very few number of schools that are using the fourth and the fifth year very much as a two-year progression. Can I be clear about what happens in those schools? At the end of S3, young people will make a decision about whether they are going to do a two-year hire and sit in S5 or whether they take a national five-course or other courses. Is that a correct understanding of what happens in those schools? I may vary from school to school. I am familiar with the one that I am now ahead with. The final decision around S5 higher would normally be made at the end of S4. Initially, they would go in based on their S3 CFE outcomes. They would go in to a straight S5 course or S5 stroke higher course. One of the things that the school is keen to do is, over the course of S4, evidence what is the best qualification for the young person to go to. One of the things that they did, for example, was to introduce an S4 mini-exam diet so that there was concrete evidence there to persuade parents as to what qualifications should sit. The school errs in the side of caution so that they do not do aspirational presentations. They are presented for the qualification that the school is confident that they will get. So far, no one has fallen through the net. The parent might come up and say that they want them to do higher. The school is quite firm in saying that there is no evidence that the person can achieve the higher so that they will be doing the N5. As two other questions about that model, is it correct that, if youngsters do a national five qualification, they could put together their fifth and sixth year to do a higher over two years? Yes, there is a lot of flexibility in the system so because it is across three years, although the norm for most pupils from S3 would be to do a two-year course. Because you are also catering for a sixth year, some of whom will have hires, you will also be running one-year courses at N5 and higher. You could have an S4 pupil in with S6 pupils in a one-year course. So, say that you had a particularly brilliant student who wanted to do hires in S4, then, within your timetable, you would have those options there so that the, although the bulk of pupils will be looking at two-year courses, it is not an absolute given depending on the potential ability of the student. So, on your courses, they are part of the mix in terms of the three years of the senior phase. And did I pick you up correctly when you said that in these few schools they are offering a column structure of seven and or eight subjects? Most of them use an eight column structure, which is the old standard grade structure. Generally speaking, it is five or six qualification routes, and then in the other two columns you would have things like college courses, short module courses, alternative qualifications such as DLV or Princess Trust, and things such as IDL projects or community link-up. The bridge is not around eight qualifications, but it is around a much broader experience in modern apprenticeship cells. Assuming that we are trying to move on to take the good aspects of the change, the actual philosophy behind curriculum for excellence, which all political parties have bought into, and ensuring that there is that breadth, but also that we are trying to make things more flexible and to increase the subject choice availability so that we do not discriminate against languages or STEM, do you believe that the model in these few schools is worth looking at to improve the situation and to avoid what seems to me as a complete disconnect in many schools between BGE and the senior phase? Is that model something that we should be looking at as improving the system? I think that looking at two-year courses is absolutely the way forward. I do not think that it has to be a prescriptive arrangement because, depending on your pupil cohort, you might have to have a mixed economy around that. So, there are quite a number of schools that offer two-year courses for straight-higher candidates, and they bypass N5, but they do not offer it for all pupils. It can be a mixed economy, and I think that this is why the Empowering Schools agenda is important. You have to tailor it to the needs of your particular pupils. If you are a scheme school in Glasgow, you might not be often bypassed, but maybe you will. Under the old system, Govern High used to mix all its post S3 pupils into short one-year courses, and it was all focused on maximising the qualifications for those young people, most of whom are going to leave either at 16 in the summer or at 16 at Christmas. It had a particular model for the pupils in the community that we serve. I entirely accept that. I think that that flexibility is right, but it seems that that system that the schools are operating offers a greater choice within the core subjects, not to discriminate against pupils who feel that they have to drop science or languages, because in the six-subject scenario, that is obviously by the evidence that we have had at this committee, what is happening? Frankly, there are only two choices. Either you do S3, S4, and you then maintain eight columns across those two years, or you look at eight columns across S4, S5. Because if we are going to have S4 presentations as a norm, we are not going to get beyond the six subjects. Those ones that are doing S7 or S8 are either treating S3 or S4, but that is about all the problems around the two-term dash and it is all about assessment. Subjects like geography, history, sciences and languages will be squeezed out if you go down to five or six choices early in the programme. That is why I favour the two years across S4 and S5, because that is where our pupils are physically now, staying on arrangement. If we think across S4 and S5, we can retain subject choice in a much more meaningful way than the kind of hybrid we have got at the moment, which was just born out of the practical need to make the changes without damaging the pupils' potential outcomes. I just think that it manages to achieve a lot of the objectives that I think we all agree with, that you are allowing greater choice and greater individual attention within the curriculum, which is not always the case in some of the restricted scenarios that we have. I think that that is perhaps where we should be going. It is the finished system, so... I am sure that some of you will be familiar, but the national five qualification is that you can sit units only and you will still be accredited for that on your final certificate. Moved to Ms Harris. Good morning, thank you. A couple of weeks ago, I asked the panel whether courses were capable of sustaining multi-level teaching whilst maintaining strong educational standards. The answer was really a resounding no, and I know that we have discussed that and touched on this already this morning, but I really would like to put that the same question to yourselves, especially in light of the evidence from the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and also what we have heard from Fransisco this morning, where we are discussing teachers having to teach national four, five, higher and advanced higher in one class. What would you say to that, please? The SQA qualifications are not aligned to be taught that way. In geography, if you have, for instance, national five and higher, your higher kids are the ones who are going to get your attention, so you would spend most of the time teaching them, and then you have to make up individual booklets perhaps for the national five pupils so that they can work on the parts of the course that are not aligned. We find particularly that our national five pupils are definitely disadvantaged if they end up in a higher class because the courses do not match up. I'm going to be a little bit controversial. Now, in languages, the qualifications who align, you're teaching, listening, talking, reading and writing, and you can differentiate by level of outcome, so it can happen. Is it for the, and there are, and there are advantages of having higher or advanced higher students in the same class. That was the rationale of some schools putting S4, S5 and S6 students together with the socio-constructivism idea of learners learning from each other. However, it requires a level of preparation that at the time teachers do not have. It requires a lot more pedagogical knowledge and understanding in languages how to make that work, and I would say that in the majority of cases it does not work because once some students get the N3 or N4 qualifications in, we tick the box and then we concentrate more on the students who are going to have the exam in May. We send a totally wrong message to the students in that class that are doing the national three and four, so for languages it could work, but it is not always for the best of the students. If I could just come in and echo what Fran is saying there, that it adds to workload, it adds to planning. Unfortunately, most of the Gallic teachers, especially in remote areas, have to accept that because they want to teach children. If somebody wants to come, you'll take them in because you're not going to refuse them, but it shouldn't be done for reasons of budget, that's the thing. With very careful planning it might work, but it is a huge amount of work and it's really not a polished ball. Certainly for languages it can work, but it's not something that we would advise. The advice would be no, try not to accept that at all, but when you're faced with that with somebody at your door who wants to do the language then you let them in, so it happens unfortunately, but it's not what we would like to see. Ms Watson? In the sciences, the continuity of the courses has improved since intermediate one and two, the intermediate one and two were completely separate courses, but my experience with bi-level teaching is, as we've said, the workload, preparing the resources. You're literally spinning two plates at one time. The biggest problem that I've actually encountered is this shoe horning of students into the class. They don't actually want to be there, they're maybe the national fours, and that then has an impact on the children that do want to be there. It's money, it's tight, and that's the way it is. I don't know how you deal with that other than recruit more teachers. Very few periological advantages to multi-level qualification teaching, but to separate that out from mixability teaching in the BGE, because that would be the single and cheapest way of narrowing the attainment gap to have more effective multi-mixability teaching. The challenge in the qualification routes is that, particularly in content-heavy subjects, you don't have the skills crossover that you might have in language or even in English. You actually have content that has to be covered, so you are effectively running two courses in the same classroom with two cohorts or three cohorts of teachers. It does create a workload agenda for teachers just to be able to cope, but inevitably it also alters the dynamic in the classroom because you're given one set of pupils some work to do whilst you teach the other set, and vice versa. If you don't have an even balance, the majority will see themselves as the class, and the minority will feel that they're being tucked in at the end. It's maybe slightly different at advanced higher, because at advanced higher, one of the outcomes is that there's more independent learning in the part of the student. I would run an advanced higher English class in my higher English class because, by and large, they're working on their own, and it's not teacher-led learning. However, if I were to cite one of the single biggest complaints of being fired from members around the senior phase, it's been the explosion in multi-level classes with all the attendant problems that it brings. A lot of it is workload, but a lot of it is around the manageability of the class and the fact that, by and large, it is a poor experience for all the students in the classroom, so I don't think that anyone would advocate it. It's simply a pragmatic response to the limited resources that schools have to run the courses. You're saying the same thing as the other panel, but I understand what you're saying with regard to languages. The thingy might be one thing, but the practical aspects of it are not... It wouldn't be the choice of most teachers, but if you've got two students who want to do it, you're not going to say no to them because you're thinking of them. I wouldn't be the choice. I was going to go on and ask you about the impact of teacher staffing levels and whether that did have an impact on the frequency of using multi-level classes, but I think that you've really all answered that without having to ask any further on that. If I could just ask you further, do you see a growing need for using multi-level classes the way things are currently with teacher staffing? I don't prefer it, but it should never be a need. On the question of explosion of multi-level classes, first of all, to what extent is that a response to necessity, or it's becoming an opportunity for some head teachers? Larry Flanagan talked about scheme schools, which is maybe a term that I would recognise from the past law lot of the schools. It's maybe just about disadvantage. I think that there is a challenge in a school where there's a small top end, although more youngsters are staying on in my day. I want to ask about this explosion of multi-level things briefly. Are head teachers taking the opportunity to corral smaller subjects into a place where they have to have multi-level classes, which then frees up other bits? Head teachers who really don't see why you should be sitting with a class of 10 when somebody else is sitting with a class of 20 or 30. Is there an opportunistic thing there that is driving geographies to modern studies together and then, if one of them doesn't survive, doesn't really matter and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or is it driven by just the reality that there are not enough teachers in STEM? Are you concerned that the former may be driving a lot of the decisions around the curriculum? I think that one of the unfortunate aspects of CFE is that it has been introduced at a time of significant austerity. Some of the issues that people associate with CFE are actually to do with budgets. I think that 99.9 per cent of head teachers would be happy to run classes if they had the staff there. However, most local authorities have cut their staffing formulas over the period of austerity, so most staff and foreigners operate on the basis of that core staffing and then a multiple of the number of pupils with some additions around deprivation. If you have fewer teachers, you are going to be trying to cut your cloth. If you are keen to retain certain subjects, and it doesn't always come from the head teachers, sometimes it will come from where there still exist subject PTs. A physics PT might say, I will run these two courses because they want to offer the options, but in a lot of schools there will be only one or two physics teachers. I think that there is very much a pragmatic response to primarily the financial pressures that have been in the system for the last few years. There is a very specific issue, I think, about the recruitment and retention of teachers in maths and sciences, because a lot of the graduates in those areas have had better career prospects outwith teaching. The pay element that we have addressed, there are still issues around workload and so forth that undermine teaching as an attractive profession. If we want to stop the graduates going into the international market where they get better resources and better pay, we need to still address some of those outstanding issues. I want to look at that in terms of equity. Way back in the day, I was not at Golden Castle and Hill, but we had principal teachers of geography, we had principal teachers of German, and we could see why, rationally, from a budgeting point of view, we wanted to collapse those together. Is there a danger that in some schools, which are already disadvantaged, that collapse is more extreme? Absolutely. What do you do about the young person who is more than capable of doing five hires? Is more than capable of coping with a spread of academic subjects but is in a school that you described as way? There are other pressures because young people are disadvantaged. How do you do that? Is equity the one that really disturbs me? The solutions that you need to get five hires, if you are living in some areas in Glasgow, will be to go to a college or to a consortium and are not new to accept that, but that is not a solution that is required in some schools where, in fact, there are 30 youngsters who are working A-level in higher and in another class that is working. Again, it is not new, but what is the response to that in terms of equity? You end up in a school where you do not get the brids because the head teacher is making their judgment about what they consider to be more important, whether you get to do geography or history, but also your fewer young people who are going to be operating at your level of ability? First of all, I think that faculties have been a disaster for subjects in the secondary school, and yet there are still some councils, Dundee, who think that they are a good thing and are about to introduce them. We are looking at clear pathways, I think that the report is due out shortly, which is looking at recreating some posts around pedagogical leadership so that subjects have champions within schools, which I think is important in relation to their place in the curriculum. On the equity issue, we have to ensure that schools that serve areas of multiple deprivation have the additional finance that they need to offer the same range of options as other schools. It does not mean that they can offer everything because no school can offer everything, but they should not be curtailing the pupil choices simply because they do not have the resources for the extra teachers. If it means that they are running smaller classes because of the size of the school, we should be looking to support that. One of the issues around PEF funding, which is factored on supporting schools seven areas of multiple deprivation, is that that does not really impact significantly in terms of their ability for major staffing. There is quite a lot that has gone on in additional support for learning needs or additional PSAs, but to put in two or three extra teachers would be a law that would be beyond PEF funding for most schools. That is where we go back to the days of the regions. One of the things that Strathclyde region was quite good at doing was directing resources to areas of deprivation so that they were able to maintain a full range of options. That is a challenge because the regions had an economy of scale that the 32 authorities do not have, but I think that the deprivation factor in the way that schools are staffed has to be enhanced to ensure that the equity issue can be addressed. Can I just ask on that, then, that it is a model of areas of priority treatment, but PEF money rather than being used for extras would have explicitly been directed towards more teaching and staffing resources in schools of deprivation? I would actually take it away from the PEF funding because of the nature of that. I think that councils should be looking at their staffing formulas and what waiting they give to deprivation in how the staff are schools. It is about core funding for the school in terms of its staffing structure. I do not think that PEF—I know that we have a commitment for the next couple of years, but I do not think that PEF is not core funding. I do not think that a school should be reliant on PEF for what should be a core service. I suppose that what I meant was that if the Government wants to direct resource towards needing that way, it would be better to stop the PEF process, but to say that this is core funding has to be actively used within deprived communities. Do I think that the Government should ring-fence funding for education and tell the councils that it might take the fifth in that one? The funding streams that they are accessing, because currently they have this money that is badged as PEF and is instability and cannot be used for core business, which they might easily direct towards core budgets and local authorities with expectation, if not compulsion, to be spent in education? Not that long ago, we had a major fight, and we got the Scottish Government to commit to protecting teacher numbers. The ring-fenced the money for teacher numbers and then had a major fight with COSLA, who were unhappy at the ring-fencing that had been put in place. Without that ring-fencing, we would have lost teachers. There is a big political debate in there between local government and their autonomy around their own budgets and the funding for education. I do not think that there is an easy solution to that, because I think that councils should be in charge of their staffing formulas, but I think that the funding that they get should be sufficient to make sure that they can address the issues of deprivation in their staffing arrangements. It is digressed a bit more into funding, which I was not going into there, but you were asking about the solutions to schools for the baby there are, just one or two teachers. This is a particular problem in smaller schools when you have certainly just one teacher in a department and one route that has been taken. It is a new one, but it is looking at the virtual learning academy when pupils, if it is smaller numbers, they can pick up with other schools that are delivering at the same time. That has been a solution for a number of schools. I am not an expert on how viable it is across the board, but it certainly has been a solution for a number. Can I thank all the panel members for their attendance at the committee this morning? It is very helpful. The next session on the inquiry will be on 15 May, and I now suspend for a few minutes before we move to private session.