 Good morning, and welcome to the 12th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. The first item on our agenda today is an evidence session for our Scottish attainment challenge inquiry, and this morning we will take evidence from representatives from local authorities and I'm delighted to be able to welcome to the committee room Ruth Benks, director of education, communities and organisational development at Emberglide Council, Gerry Lyons, head of education at Glasgow City Council, Tony McDade, executive director of education resources at South Lanarkshire Council and Mark Ratter, director of education at East Renfrewshire Council. Good morning to you all. It is wonderful. I think that this is the first time that we have had all of our witnesses in the committee room. You are making a little bit of history for us in this sixth session of the Scottish Parliament. I'd like to thank you for your time today. I'd like to begin with a very straightforward couple of questions really. We often have heard, it said, that the additional funds that have come through the attainment challenge funding have been used to plug gaps that have arisen because of cuts that would otherwise have had to be made because of the reduction in local government funding from central government. Can I get your reaction to that? Is there a case to be made that that has happened and is it still happening? Let's just start with Ruth. From my perspective, no. That hasn't been my experience. We were in at the very beginning of the attainment challenge seven years ago now and when the money came in to support the local authority, and since then the attainment challenge money has been additional and also the pupil equity funding has come up, it has allowed us to put additionality into the system. I would say so to look at some of the fantastic initiatives that we have taken. For instance, we have worked with the third sector on family support, bringing in additional teachers into the system to target the support where needed, taking teachers out to train them up to become coaching and modelling officers so that the system can keep itself improving. You are levelling up the system. From my perspective, no. The additional money has been additional to the core. It is in a context where we are aware of funding issues in the core, so we have to make sure that the entire system of core funding for schools and the additionality works hand in hand together because the attainment challenge is only a small part of the funding that we give to schools, but from my perspective it is definitely being additionality and a welcome to one. Those additional teachers have permanent contracts now? The ones who came in at the beginning will have permanent contracts. Basically, while they were brought in on temporary contracts to begin with, when they have enough service, they will have transferred to permanent contracts. We work with part of the SNCT terms and conditions. When they have two-year service, they will go to a permanent contract. What we have tried to do is to keep stability for schools so that teachers can remain in schools, but we have managed to work the two systems together, the core system and the additionality, to give as many permanent contracts as we possibly can. Jerry, have you been plugging gaps in core funding with the funds? No, not in my experience. Our approach has always been to take a holistic approach to funding. The Scottish attainment challenge fund specifically allocated over 80ft additional teachers to schools over and above their core staffing. With a view to supporting teachers, developing teachers, it was a very much a CPD model and also supporting targeted groups of young people. We did not allocate people. We allocated the money for those people to be released from class to do that additional continued professional development work with colleagues and support targeted groups of young people. On the Scottish attainment challenge, no. The pupil equity fund has very much gone to our schools, as was the intent. We have given headteachers the agency to make decisions about how they allocate that funding, and we have had no intent in plugging any gaps. Core business for us has been the business of the Scottish attainment challenge and the business of improving outcomes for our young people. That did not come to Glasgow in any shape or form differently from where we were. It has always been core business for us. The additional funding was used to develop that core business, but in terms of the full budget for Glasgow City Council education services, it is a small percentage. We very much took a holistic approach, but no. Can you use for additionality, Jerry? Is that what you are saying? Yes. It always has been. In the period of time that the Scottish attainment challenge has existed, yes. That is very clear. Tony, how about South Lanarkshire? It is similar to Jerry and Ruth, although we were not part of the Scottish attainment challenge authority programme. It was principally our PEF money that was going directly to our schools, and we had 20 schools involved in the SAC schools programme as well, which is a grant claim activity, so it is a school planning process. The only way that they were funded was if they had a plan that relates directly to the funding. That was all funded towards them. I reiterate the point as well. We need to use all the finance that is available to us, not just the SAC activity, because we are really going to try to make a difference around the poverty-related attainment gap. We made an early decision around PEF. It is devolved to schools, but there would be permanent contracts available for teachers. The reason for that is that we recognise that continuity in learning. We also realise that it is a big workforce that you get turnover, so you are able to manage that turnover. That is why you were able to put, if staff wanted or school leaders wanted an additional teacher as part of the PEF, we would try to do that as best we can through permanency, as opposed to fixed-term contracts. Let me stay with you, Tony. This is what Greg Dempster told us last week a week before. When the funding in a school and authority goes down, some of the PEF might not really be additional, depending on our definition of that. It might be used to prevent a reduction in staffing or in what is offered in the school. A school that is to lose a couple of support staff because of a change in funding or policy in the authority might use PEF to retain those staff because it knows that it needs them to make a difference and that losing them would have a negative impact. Do you recognise anything in what Greg Dempster says is bearing out the experience that you have in South Lanarkshire? In terms of the specifics, we have had additionality in our school support assistance. I think that all of us would recognise the additional pressures around children with additional support needs and trying to support them. In that very particular example, that is not the case, I can understand the core pressures. I think that that is the reality. I think that all of us would recognise that there are core pressures to our budgets. However, there has been an acute focus for all of us around closing the poverty-related attainment gap. Schools may very well prioritise certain things. When that additional budget has come in, it is very clear that that is what the money has to be used for, whether that has been the accountability through schools and how they have been improving outcomes or, indeed, for us as a local authority about looking at what schools do. I recognise that there are pressures. I think that that is real. However, I do not think that that one displaces the other. That is not the way in which we have worked with our schools. We have tried to make sure that our schools are really clear around SAC and PEF, where the spending should go. However, it could have happened. In South Lanarkshire? No. What we are saying is that, if I use the example of school support assistance, we have an increase in school support assistance to try to make sure that our children with additional support needs—the example that he has given, might you, if you are losing to school support assistance? It is an example. What might have happened is that there have been changes in practice, so I would accept that resources have allocated to something and a school continues to do that, and we as a local authority are saying that we are looking at a different focus, so I would accept that that would have happened. The school might decide, oh no, we disagree with the authority and we are going to keep the staff. It is not strictly speaking of additionality then, is it? No, it is additionality because you need to look. Things change around your priorities and about making sure that your priorities are focused about the activity, so it is not just about the resource, it is about your priority and your focus and making sure that those staff or those additional resources are used for the purposes of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. I am going to give you a break for a minute and I will come to Mark. Willie Rennie wants to come in with a supplementary element. I will make way for him now and he will come to Mark for your answer, because he is a bit longer to prepare your answer. Willie Rennie wants to follow up on the some of the temporary teachers point of view. There has been a massive growth, not just through the pandemic but before that as well, so I am curious as to how we can be absolutely sure that we are reducing the number of temporary contracts and teachers. Some are going from temporary contract to temporary contract for sometimes up to six years, so I am curious as to why and how we have managed to be so confident that we are reducing the numbers. We had a bit of a technical hitch there, Willie. Were you talking about the number of teachers on temporary contracts? Yes. How can we be so confident? I just want to know how can we be so confident that we are reducing the numbers of teachers on temporary contracts when that has been going on for years, because it said that it was the additional funding through the pandemic that resulted in a growth of temporary positions, but it was happening for years before that. How can we be confident that it is not going to creep back up again in future years? Tony, we will come back to you on that, if we might. There are probably two different things, aren't there, in terms of the temporary contract activity versus the Scottish attainment challenge, although I accept that there is a connection to some extent. For us, it has been about making sure that you need to look at your pupil-teacher ratio, you need to look at your workforce planning activity right across around configuration, around the number of classes versus the number of pupils, so that, in a sense, is taken care of. There is a formula that we would work to and what you are trying to do is to supplement through additionality such as SAC and PEF and make sure that there is a degree of permanency. There will always be some degree of temporary nature. We have, for example, area cover teachers, as we would call them, that are permanently based, so we have a permanent contract for our cover teachers. They would cover long-term maternity leaves, long-term absence, but there is a daily paid activity. If you think about it, staff get unwell for a short period of time, and sometimes that is where you would have retired teachers coming in just to cover for a day or two. For us, you need to look at how you staff your schools on a day-to-day basis. You then need to try to build on workforce planning around cover. That might be those long-term contracts. For us, those long-term contracts have been around permanency, so we would, beyond schools and class teachers, have an area cover pool that is permanent area cover teachers. We then want to move them into class posts. Therefore, it is a pretty complicated picture about how you would manage both temporary and permanent. We, of course, want permanent members of staff. The reality is that that is better for our children and young people, and it is also better for our staff. They gain a sense of knowing the community, knowing the children and young people, but there will always be a need for temporary activity given the nature of the workforce. What is the proportion of the workforce in your authority that is on a temporary contract today? I can check that figure. I would not have the exact figure. The vast majority, the vast bulk are permanent. We have a permanent area cover pool, both in secondary and primary, to ensure that we cover absence as well. Mark, I will come to you now with my original question. Maybe we will come back to teacher contracts, which you will discover is a bit of a favourite subject of the committee, because we are a bit exercised by the fact that we have the statistic of one in eight of our teachers on temporary contracts, which we think is outrageous, frankly. In terms of your original question, convener, we are not part of the Scottish attainment challenge in terms of the wider funding, so we had around about £1.4 million for schools in terms of pupil equity funding. That is absolutely additional in the sense that it goes straight to schools. The evidence from them is that they feel very empowered and feel that ownership, that ability that they speak to us about, that ability to be creative and take those decisions. That has been welcome. I think that there is that sense of ring fenced and that accountability that comes alongside that. I would recognise the comments from my colleagues that, for us, that £1.4 million represents just under 2 per cent of schools' devolved budgets. For us, it is about making sure that all the money is making that difference. I suppose that I would recognise that there has been that pressure on the core budgets over the past few years that has meant that priorities at the centre have needed to be very focused, but that additional PEF money is something that the schools have been able to take that ownership of. It is additional in the sense that it has not been used to plug any gaps that have arisen from the shifting of core funding or cuts. It would be similar to South Lanarkshire in that way that we have had to make difficult decisions at the centre, whether that is in terms of reductions with the quality improvement team or educational psychologists. However, the schools have that ability to make those decisions in terms of their devolved budgets, and they will focus on the key priorities for them. One last question from me before I bring in colleagues. Back to Ruth Rowley. How is Inverclyde going to cope with the slashing of the funding available to you? You are going to lose 47 per cent of the money that you get as a challenge authority. It is going to be gone by 2526. How are you going to cope with that? What does it mean for Inverclyde to lose all that money? We always set out knowing that this was not guaranteed funding year upon year with the Scottish attainment challenge. We started off much smaller at the beginning of the attainment challenge, and we were always challenged on what was our exit strategy. What was the sustainability for that? The money has gone up to £3.2 million in the attainment challenge for us. If you are asking me if I would like to keep the £2.8 million that we will lose, the answer is yes, I would like to. Of course I would. However, I think that we have to be pragmatic about that, and we also have to look at different funding models. Looking at poverty throughout all of Scotland and in every education authority, the original funding model did merit revision. We are one of the biggest losers in that revision. How are we going to do that? On top of the attainment challenge funding came the PEF funding. The schools were given direct money. Some of our initial attainment challenge money was to put money into schools to give them some autonomy, so people equity funding came in. Some of our Scottish attainment challenge was funding for summer activities, so we were with our literacy launch clubs. Again, that funding is coming in by other ways. Our whole family wellbeing, our proportion, our partnerships with the third sector is a worry for us. We have a very good partnership with the third sector that we could probably not keep going given the amount of money that we will end up with in 24-25. However, there are opportunities for us now to revise how that is looking at, looking at working across children's services, looking at whole family wellbeing. All the things that we have taken forward, we are now looking at revisiting and revising, again around mental health, looking at employability for parents, all things that were part of our original attainment challenge, which are now being done in slightly different ways. The regional improvement collaborative, if we look at a lot of our early work that was done around pedagogy and developing pedagogy, now we have a very good improvement in our classroom systems through the regional improvement collaborative, which will do things in a similar way. For us, there was beginning to be overlap in the system, but we have to manage the staffing out of the system. When we are talking about temporary contracts, that will out of the attainment challenge or into the system. We are looking at a four-year plan. We have the additional teachers that are coming in, recovery teaching, and we will have a natural churn in staffing. We have some temporary contracts because you cannot have such an additionality without bringing in some temporary contracts. You will have the core system with permanent. Year on year funding will bring temporary jobs in, but we hope to be able to work the teachers back into the system over the four years. You surprised me a little bit because it is almost as if you are saying that you welcome the refresh, which surprises me. I am not saying welcome the refresh. I think that it was a fair thing to do. I think that we did need to look altruistically across the whole of Scotland. I think that when we started the attainment challenge authorities, we were very much told that we were the pathfinders here to look at how to make things work, given asked to adopt, adapt, abandon initiatives. We certainly did do that. It is very helpful to see that a lot of the initiatives that the early attainment challenge authorities took forward in the early days and are now being rolled out wider. I think that I started by saying that if I could keep the £2.8 million, I would absolutely welcome that. It is a big cup for Inverclyde, but I think that it is one that we always knew could and would happen. I want to pick up on some of the questions here about change to the formula, if that is okay. We know at the moment that, prior to the pandemic that we had, what we were told was very limited progress against the Government's targets on closing the attainment gap, and that is what at Scotland's words. We know now that we have the largest-ever gap between the richest and the poorest groups after the post-pandemic, and that that gap has grown significantly. We all recognise the impact of the pandemic on that in terms of the impact that has had on the most deprived communities. I find it a little bit surprising in that to hear our colleague from Inverclyde talking about what is your exit strategy from that. Surely the exit strategy should be making sure that those kids have better attainment, rather than saying, how do we stop spending the money on it? I suppose that is a comment, but I want to explore the rationale a little bit around that. Your reduction in Inverclyde is 47 per cent by the papers that we have in front of us, and you are consistently among one of the most deprived communities and local authorities in Scotland. The East Renfrewshire colleague at the other end of the table, which is consistently one of the most affluent local authorities in Scotland, is up by 43 per cent in terms of the papers that we have in front of us and the funding. We all recognise that there is what you might call hidden poverty in those figures' mask numbers. There are people of impoverty in every community. However, do you think that we are moving away in this change from a rationale of severe multiple deprivation in communities to something that is more general? To me, that has been a kind of a founding principle of how we have dealt with poverty in Scotland over a generation, or we have talked about it at the very least, whether we have dealt with it or not as a different question. Do you think that that rationale has changed? I will start with Ruth, if that is okay. I do not think that it has. I read in the papers the different measures of poverty and using the children and low-income families. Household is a good measure of poverty. As long as you have a consistent measure of poverty across Scotland, then the money can be targeted at where it is needed most. Remember that, although we have had a big cut proportionately, we are a small authority as well. We have to look at the numbers in the authority. When we are looking at the fact that you said that the attainment challenge had made very limited progress prior to the pandemic, I think that, although the statistics were perhaps not where we would have wanted them to be, a lot of groundwork was done during that time looking at the types of holistic family learning that could happen, a lot of the children's services work, looking at the ways that authorities deliver education. Certainly what I am seeing in our schools is the opening up of the boundaries, the partnership working has really flourished, I would say. Those were not my words, those were Audit Scotland's words about the element of progress. That groundwork does not really make a difference to the kids that have gone through the process now, it may in the future, but the young people who have lost out, whose life chances have not improved, and also in your own situation, Ms Banks, the young people who are losing over the coming years that resource in terms of the teachers or classroom assistants that are in front of them, that process. Similarly, my colleague Ruth Maguire highlighted last week, in North Ayrshire, 60 posts that would be lost. In Dundee, my home city, 100 posts, a 79 per cent cut. I think that we can talk about the longitudinal side of this and the experience, but for those young people now, those are real cuts, aren't they? That is going to actually affect their experience, isn't it? If we look at the totality of the system and the learning that has taken place, I would hope that the experience of our young people will very much benefit from the work that has been done to date with the attainment challenge and taking into account the pandemic. We realised that a lot of what we learned through pre-pandemic was about building relationships, whole-family support. We suffered, and Ms Maguire suffered badly for attainment during the pandemic, because a lot of what has got us to pre-pandemic wasn't available to us during the pandemic. I am seeing a workforce that is skilled up to be able to deal with the young people. I am seeing a workforce that is imaginative and it's use of funding. The schools will still have pupil equity funding. Their ability to manage that funding has grown year upon year to absolutely look at what the evidence is saying and what the impact is. I am working with a group of head teachers who are building upon prior learning and are optimistic for the young people. I am not sure that answers my questions about the young people now, in terms of those young people who will have left school. Can I ask you one specific question before I come to Mark Ratter? Will you use PEF funding to pay for the cuts to the SAC funding? As an authority we want, what the schools will opt to do might be different. For instance, there is the opportunity for schools to use pupil equity funding for something previously SAC might have funded. Mark Ratter, on the other side of this, your increase is a fairly significant one, although it is reasonably small. It is about £2 million, but it is up 43 per cent across the piece. Will you tell us a little about how you will allocate that money in terms of how you will use that to specifically target young people in poverty? For clarity, the increase by the end of 2025-26 is about £0.6 million, so are PEF funding going up by £100,000, but that is allocated directly to schools, as we have talked about. Centrally, in terms of the strategic equity funding, East Renfrewshire will have around £530,000 by the end of the period. What we will do is, as you mentioned in your question, we are looking at that holistically alongside our existing approach. We have a very clear vision within East Renfrewshire around everyone attaining, everyone achieving through excellent experiences. That funding, £500,000 is very welcome and it will provide that additionality, but we see it very much alongside the existing money that we have for our children and young people and about making a difference for them. We have a strategy that, certainly before Covid, was making a difference in our schools. We were seeing the closing of the attainment gap. We talked about raising the bar, so more young people achieving attainment at a higher level, but also closing the gap, so those in disadvantaged groups. When we look at that through different lenses, we are seeing more of those young people achieving the levels. I guess that we will want to build on our strategy. That is what we are looking at at the moment. We are currently consulting. I spent last week in meetings with seven groups of different members of staff, as we are gathering their views on how we should be spending that money, but our priorities will be around literacy and numeracy. We have had work over the last few years that has made a real difference in terms of reading recovery and literacy strategies. We want to invest further. The money will allow us to do that in terms of numeracy, particularly in terms of staff expertise around professional learning. I had the opportunity of being part of the inspection process for the Scottish attainment challenge in Glasgow and Inverclyde. We have been able to take some of that learning, use the evidence that Education Scotland gathered to inform our own approaches and make sure that we have those evidence-based approaches in terms of our strategy for numeracy. Ruth also mentioned family learning and wellbeing. That will also be a key element of our strategy over the next three to four years. We have seen an impact in terms of Covid around children's wellbeing. That has been well trailed nationally. That will be part of our work in addressing that holistically. That probably gives you a flavour of some of the key areas. Can I come to Mr Lyons, Glasgow, for a long time one of the most deprived communities in Scotland? Does the shift away from an analysis of multiple deprivation and extreme poverty to something that is more general across the country, does that worry the local authority and yourself personally? Not really. I would be concerned in a way if there was an understanding that a focus on young people in poverty only started with the Scottish attainment challenge. It was heightened by the Scottish attainment challenge, but I have been in Glasgow for well over 20 years. It has always been a focus of us to improve outcomes for young people in poverty. For Glasgow, the Scottish attainment challenge sits within Glasgow's improvement challenge, which is about improving outcomes for all of our young people and especially improving outcomes where the gaps are. One of my points would be that the gaps are not all—we have a school with 95 per cent SIMD1 and 2. Therefore, we need to just improve everyone in that school. There is a more sophisticated process going on where we start to say, so where are the other gaps that appear? I think that we have much better at that. Dealing with this issue for Glasgow has been core business. We have made very significant strides. I would also pick up a couple of points about additionality. We will continue to focus on doing the best for all of our young people and closing the gaps that we identify for those young people that need that extra push. We will continue to work with our schools in order to do that. Additionality is also present in our schools in terms of capacity. Our teachers are better. Our staff are better. They understand the issues better than they did because of our investment in them and because of the work that has been done both by the local authority and the schools in partnership. I do not see a move away from trying to do better for young people in poverty. From a Glasgow perspective, that will never happen. We will never move away from that because it is so vitally important to us. Working with colleagues here, we are all focused on that. We always have been. I think that the more acutely focused on it now—we are now sitting here and having the conversation—I think that that is a really good thing. I agreed with what Melanesco said that there is a greater clarity about this issue than there was. There is a greater crystallising of this issue than there was. I think that it lacks a wee bit of ambition to think that that is enough because what has happened is that there is a greater understanding about what it takes to respond to it. There is a greater understanding of how you implement that and the range of interventions that it takes. That is vitally important. There is a Covid frustration around it, if that is the right phrase, in the sense that in Glasgow we had closed the gap by 3.5 percentage points in just under three years in both literacy and numeracy. Covid came along and you are then having a different issue. One of my concerns in all of that is that that is in literacy and numeracy. How do we recognise that the gap is closing? In our Duke of Edinburgh awards, in SIMD 1 and 2, we, in the case of 524 per cent of our young people, gained the Duke of Edinburgh award. It gets no recognition in this debate. It should. I think that we have got to look more widely at what it means, but certainly from a Glasgow perspective. There is no exit because there was no entry. We were already there and we will continue to be there. My last, if I can, convener, just to Mr McDade. I do not want to leave you out of the sex. My question to you then, you may have followed up some of the evidence that we had previously with colleagues from trade unions in front of us recently who described the shift as a moral, that they were aghast in terms of the shift in the funding formula. It is totally unacceptable in their view. How would your council, South Lanarkshire Council, your funding is up 8 per cent? How do you think you would cope with a cut of 79 per cent? A former headteacher from Dundee told us that they did not know how they would cope. How would you say that? Would you be able to cope with that? I think that that is challenging. I mean, let us be honest, I think that, as Ruth has described, I would probably say that it depends on the kinds of programmes and activities. One of the crucial points is that PEF continues. The PEF money is directly to schools based on FME, and that does give schools leverage. That does give schools an opportunity. That is from SAC? No, not necessarily. I am now speaking about some of the SAC challenge activity that we have not been involved in, but some of the SAC, because we have worked closely together, some of that SAC challenge activity was based around family learning and whole-school activity, and also some centralised activity within the local authority. You can look at some of the other budgets to be able to do that. The thing that I would also say is, for us, it may be just projecting forward around the change. The bulk of our money continues to be around PEF. We were involved in the SAC schools programme, so 20 of our schools were given some additional funding beyond our PEF. We would not have picked those 20 schools necessarily. Those schools were picked around a particular profile, but that did not take into account rural poverty. That did not take into account the concentration of poverty in a couple of our schools. The bulk of the money still goes through PEF, but the strategic equity fund, which is about just over £2 million for us, will be able to redirect that to a more concerted activity around 124 primary schools or, indeed, across our 22nd-grade schools. We are able to try to take some of the learning that has happened with the schools. There is obviously support of the 20 schools for the next period of time, as well as some of the work that they are doing, but the benefit collectively to some of our other schools now around the strategic equity fund does help us. My final point is that some of our schools and our rural schools do not really get any PEF, but there is rural poverty. One of our work streams sits around rural poverty and the strategic equity fund will allow us to just redirect some of that resourcing. That redirection from parts of the country where there is huge deprivation and significant challenges to those young people who are in poverty is not a case that we are seeing those kids in some of the poorest communities paying the price to help the kids who are in rural poverty. Is it right that we have that trade-off, one for the other? It is not an either or, is it? Some of those children, it is. For us, it seems to be clear around the kinds of support that we are given. What we are trying to do is to make sure that we address those issues of rural poverty. That is what some of that strategic equity fund does. It should absolutely happen, but not at the cost of it. We will maybe not agree on that. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Thanks for being here. Finding this morning's session really interesting. The convener and I and some other colleagues met with parents from some of your local authorities last week and had some direct feedback from their perspective about how the different initiatives had helped their children. We heard of how access to nurture hub had helped one girl sustain her attendance at school. We also heard good examples of really dignified support being provided to parents in need. It was good to hear that feedback from the folk who really know what is going on, I suppose, as they are supporting their children. I was interested in what Jerry Lyons said about the local authorities and teachers always being focused on poverty, and that is absolutely the case. Even from before this, I have seen in my own local authority headteachers and teachers doing things to help children break down barriers to sustain school. I want to ask about the culture change that SAC has brought on. Jerry Lyons spoke about the additional learning for professionals that has been helpful. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that for me. It is an important culture change because I think that it made explicit something that we were all working away at. It led to direct engagement around the issue probably more widely. On some of the features of that, I suppose, one of the things that we have recognised over the period of time is that there is no one thing that is going to help, that is going to make the difference here. It has got to be a whole matrix of activity, a jigsaw of activity, if you like, to make the difference. The culture has been that we are understanding that range of activity better now, so it is not a case of just improving learning and teaching and everything will be better. If you do not improve learning and teaching, things will never be better, but yes, that is part of it. Understanding poverty, understanding the impact of poverty, we know that that is really important and there has been a lot of professional development around that. Supporting families, nurture. Support for families is an entitlement. It is not something that we do just because it might be nice to people that are entitled to that support. Again, we understand what family support should look like better than we did. We understand what in-school support should look like better than we did. Nurture, for example, has grown and evolved and developed. Support for young people with additional support needs has grown and evolved and developed. The culture is made up of lots of different activity. The other thing that I would highlight is that it has allowed a much closer partnership working with community groups, which in many ways understand us better than we do. We have benefited hugely both from those groups working directly with their families, directly with their parents and their young people, but also working alongside their staff and letting their staff understand it from their perspective. All of those things come together and bring a cultural focus on this, which has been really, really positive. The other thing that I think is, I notice and it is observable the improved dialogue that I am having with headteachers and headteachers are having with their staff. What about Ruth Maguire in your class who is here but probably should be there? What are we going to do about that? They just understand that the systems are better and the dialogue is better and it is more focused. They now recognise that the time you have to target, you cannot always do. We want to be universally effective, but sometimes within that universal effectiveness you need targeted intervention. Glasgow has an approach of targeted intervention groups emerging from better use of data so that we get the intervention to the young people who need it most and then can look at what difference that has made. I hope that that answers your question in the sense that culture is made up of a lot of different features and all of those features have improved as a result, not necessarily just of the funding but of the agenda. Does that make sense? Thank you. Yes, that is helpful. One of the key things that I took from our session with the parents was that they sort of repeatedly articulated through what they were telling us that their families were understood and that it was understood what they needed, and that was a very big thing. Just for one second, that understanding of families has meant getting out to them more than them coming into us. Covid did help that reader, which is really interesting. If I can just give one way example of a parent in a school where there was one of the recovery visits saying, do you know Mr Lyon, see when you have said to a head teacher that you have run out of toilet roll and she gives you toilet roll, you do not worry too much about coming up and asking them how your boy is getting on. I think that it is that wider engagement that has been really, really powerful and which we will now build on and capitalise on and it will accelerate progress. I am absolutely convinced by that. Thank you. That is helpful. The parents that we spoke with were from Eastern Fisher and South Lanarkshire. We will come to Mark 1 for your reflections on that culture change then. Absolutely. I think that I would probably recognise and many of the changes that Jerry has just spoke about, probably ones that I would maybe add. I think that there has been a real focus in terms of that leadership, both at that strategic level, so schools really building that in to their vision values and aims. You spoke a little bit about that, building those leadership skills of their staff at all levels, so to make sure that there is that real focus on addressing poverty, supporting families well and particularly in terms of learning and teaching. I do not think that we can underestimate the difference that that makes. Jerry spoke about that earlier in terms of the numbers of children and young people in Desshouse 1 and 2. Although we have a very different profile, if we can improve the quality of learning and teaching for all the children in a particular class, then that culture change is enormous. It has been very much that investment in pedagogy and I guess the other thing rather than just repeat anything that Jerry has said. I suppose that there has been a real investment in an upskilling of the way schools and teachers and the system use data. I think that that has been something that we have learned from one another. There has been a real focus on tracking individual children and young people just as Jerry was talking about looking at the groups, making sure that staff can drill down in that way. Do you think that we are there yet? No, not at all. Some of the points in the paper that we will come on to, in terms of that culture, we are still trying to share that. As somebody involved with ADES and somebody who is chairing the performance and improvement network, we are constantly working to see if we can share those approaches that local authorities have got and that schools have got that is working well to make sure that that is continuing to improve the culture further. I think that there has been a huge focus on the cost of the school day and the work of things like the child poverty action group has made a huge impact on all of us and making sure that schools are really sensitive and have an ambition around making sure that families and children and young people are supported in their readiness to learn. It is not just about the young people in their attainment, it is about poverty of opportunity. It is about making sure that poverty of opportunity is not there, that we take away those barriers and where we can about extracurricular activity, the residential experience, the curricular costs, those are really essential. If we are genuinely, and I think that we are all clear around that activity and that mission about making sure that our children from backgrounds of deprivation have the greatest opportunities and there is not a barrier that stops them, I think that that has been a game changer within schools. I think that our schools understanding, I spoke with some children yesterday from a primary school, P6 and P7s and I asked them about the costs of residential activity or their uniforms. They said the same thing. We know if it was too much for us then we could go to the school and we could say. I was asking them, would you be confident enough to do that? Of course that is built around relationship, it is built around the sensitivity of staff being fully aware and actually knowing the individual children. I also think that it is a concert today, but schools cannot do this by themselves. I think that lots of people have said that to the committee. However, it is about council, it is about access to benefit, it is about making sure that families have a decent housing environment, it is about access to our social work department where necessary as well. We need to make sure that all those are aligned and that families are confident that they can access that support and a bit of additional help if that is required for them. Ruth, I am not leaving you out. Do you have anything that you want to say? In terms of culture as well, there is a bit about more autonomy for schools and teachers and that working together collaboration with community groups and things like that? 100 per cent and I absolutely agree with all my colleagues. We have seen a huge maturing of that whereas head teachers who are aware of the issues are now more able or feel more empowered to be able to help. The one thing that struck me is that head teachers feel not alone. Teachers feel a huge burden upon schools and it is not something that schools can solve by themselves. Over the last few years, we have seen that expand. During the pandemic, I have to say that the opportunity to work with partners was absolutely one of the positive things that will keep going. Head teachers are saying to parents what will help and being able to feel empowered to put something in that will help the individual families. There is not one size fits all, but what will make a difference to your life and those sorts of dialogues. We have also seen parents helping other parents when we are talking about cultures and things such as uniform banks where parents have been empowered by the school to help each other. We have some wonderful examples where parents have bought in the college to do employability courses in the schools. Somewhere where people feel safe and welcomed and head teachers have been able to facilitate that. I think that they have been able to use their imagination, their information and to look wider and develop those partnerships. Willie Rennie I think that that was a really helpful explanation as to how the system has evolved. The two bits that I particularly take away are the listening and the understanding and the reaching beyond the school gates into the family home. That is a significant change. I know that the committee often looks at challenges and barriers because we want to make the system better. I have two particular issues that I want to raise. One is that school leaders and head teachers are central to making that work, but we have seen quite a shortage of head teachers in recent years, including the emergence of more joint headships in some areas. I am just wondering whether that poses a challenge to the further improvement of the system. Are we able to get the right expertise when it is available for the needs of the variety of pupils that we are trying to assist? Are the specialisms there to assist the schools in meeting those needs? Jerry, you were a super head, weren't you? Not super man, super head, interchangeable? Maybe you could start with the head teacher thing. Yes, I am not sure that I recognise that characterisation of it, convener, but yes, I did have responsibility. It was the press and the journalists and I have had a conversation about it ever since. The quality of head teachers and the number of head teachers, and we have had some challenges in recruiting head teachers. Mr Rennie, you are right. To me, that is step one. One of the most important things that we can do is put quality people into our schools and into head teacher posts. In Glasgow, we have had over 50 newly appointed head teachers who have never run a school when there was not Covid. They have never done it. There is a capacity building issue there for head teachers. The empowerment agenda for head teachers is different depending on where you are. For those head teachers, we need to grow their ability to manage their own empowerment. How do they make good decisions? How do they work closely with their local authority in the right way? How do they strategically plan? How do they grow other leaders? That is a really important point. Your first point about numbers of head teachers is that we want to encourage more people to become head teachers. Yes, there have been some challenges around the legislative requirement for into headship, which is right. We should want highly qualified people. For me, there has been a bit of a time lag between people getting into headship and being ready to take on posts and the number of people that we need. There is just a bit of work to be done to improve on that. However, we need to grow them. I look at my 140 primary heads or 30 secondary heads and there is a range of readiness for what they need to do. That is okay. What we are very keen on is a key leadership strategy to develop people if they do not feel ready to be empowered as we need them to be. What do they need? What is the continuous professional development? What is the leadership strategy to help us to do that? How do we move the compass so that they see themselves as the key decision makers in the local authority? The answer is a bit challenging at the moment, but it is about the quality of the people and what we do once they are imposed to help them to get better. I think that there are huge expertise in this country. I think that we should explore more how we partner with academic institutions, with our higher education colleagues working more closely in partnership. The OECD picked up the issue about using research more effectively, but some of the best expertise is right there in our schools, between our schools, within our regional improvement collaboratives. One of the things that we have seen and I would want us to recognise is something that we should continue to grow as. Let us use the best of who we have, let us identify the best practices in the system and be strategic in how we share that and by doing that grow all of our people. I think that the expertise is there among our communities and we are making those connections more effectively. We could work in a different way sometimes with our universities and I think that that is certainly worth exploring. I hope that that answers your question. That is fine, thank you. Willie, where do you want to go now? To Ruth? You know what? That is me. I am happy. Did that answer both of your points? Did you have two points? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Okay, that is great. Just as a little supplementary to Willie's question then, Jerry, you mentioned key leadership strategy. What do you do for the new headteachers to help them to feel empowered as leaders? What do you do for them? In the same way that I answered Ms Maguire's question, we do not just do one thing. We have a very detailed induction programme for those headteachers. As part of Glasgow's improvement challenge, we have a leadership work stream and we have regular sessions with our headteachers, which will become more regular now that we can actually get them into a building together and working together. We have targeted sessions on reverting, managing data, on understanding, intervention, on how you plan on growing your community. All of those leadership areas, I can split it up, convener, into two things. We grow their technical understanding, so they need to understand the curriculum, they need to understand learning and teaching, they need to understand assessment and moderation at the level that they are at. They have a good understanding already about how we grow that, and then their leadership relationships, working with the local authority, working with parents and families. We do that through formal programmes, we do that through sessions where they work together, we do that through working with colleagues in the regional improvement collaborative as part of that leadership strategy. Then we get into their schools. The challenge team goes to all of our new headteachers and sits with them with their data, with their systems and with where they think they are with their young people and supports them in how they plan based on where they are. Again, it is that matrix of activity that grows people. We want that relationship to be clear. The other thing that we encourage is to make decisions. Do not feel as though someone is going to judge you on those decisions. We will support you, we will help you, and sometimes you are going to get it wrong. Did Emdiver tell you when you were a headteacher that you were never going to make a mistake? Yes, of course you will make mistakes. Fine, let us learn from them and let us grow. The hardest year of my career was my first year as a headteacher, but I got better. That is not what it says in the Glasgow Herald, and that is completely true. I think that we all want that for all of our headteachers and for them to continue to grow and get better. Essentially, the best schools are led by the best headteachers. Because Willie is right, one of the things that is done on a lot of us in this committee is that the leadership calibre of the headteachers is the critical factor in the performance of all range of indicators. We had some amazing stories during the time that we were interacting with teachers and with parents. The committee would probably be interested to know a lot more about the leadership development programmes that are being used and successfully deployed, and the effect of those programmes. That is a subject that we will not come back to. It is a slight risk of a tangent. It is very important to how the attainment challenge work is governed and run. We talked about the numbers, but there is some data published in tests recently about the number of deputies or others who have a significant decline in the number of people who want to actually be a headteachers. You have talked about the work that is done with headteachers. Why are people less attracted to doing the job than they were previously? It is challenging. The reality is that you have layered the last two years of the work for some of our headteachers. We were at our headteachers meeting recently, and I said that our headteachers have proven that they can do anything. It is quite remarkable that the activity that they have done over the past two years cannot do everything all of the time. We have to be realistic about the kind of workload that we put on our headteacher that there is a longevity to it as well. We need to make sure that when we are asking about priorities that we are sensitive that there is a long game to them, we are not looking immediately and saying that we must sort that by tomorrow. Jerry is quite right for all of us who have been involved in our school environment. We need breathing space. We need the ability to go up and to be confident that people who lead the authority will be sympathetic to that and will make sure that they are in the right direction. I also think that we need to try to continue to encourage our principal teachers, our school leaders and our deputy headteachers that are aspiring and making sure that they see the worth of the job. The job is a tremendous job, but the reality is that it is demanding. The trick in that is to make sure that those headteachers know that they are not making those decisions in isolation. There is a support mechanism for them, whether that be through colleagues, because that is often through peer headteacher groups, whether that be a learning network that comes formally, whether it is the local authority, the RIC. Those are the kinds of activities because then people feel that it is manageable. I think that the thing is that you need to feel that you are in control, that you know your local community, that you are in control and that you understand that, but at the same time that you are not a permanent feeling of being overwhelmed, that you need to make sure that you know where you can go and that there is a manageable workload with an aspiration, but there is realism attached. Who has grown in recent years, given that there has been a decline in the number of people who are aspiring to headcheat? Is that something that you would recognise? We have been fortunate. We have had our applications to our jobs. Some of it is rural in nature to us as well, but if I had just taken in our urban areas, we have not had as much of an issue. I think that the past two years have been challenging. I think that we have to recognise that. We cannot set that aside. I think that if you look in and people were working with our public health colleagues, all of us were working with our public health colleagues, the demands on schools around bubbles and around isolation was just extraordinary. I think that we are seeing some of that just now. I think that the inquiry is looking at how effectively the funding streams, specifically aimed at tackling the attainment issue, are being deployed. I want to explore the potential impact of one or two other Scottish Government initiatives. Ruth Pynch talked earlier about the groundwork coven being done. I want to look at the impact of physical infrastructure as well. We are now in a position where 91.6 per cent of pupils are being educated in settings that are deemed to be in good or even better condition, on the back of joint work by the Scottish Government and councils to refurbish and rebuild schools since 2007. I wonder about the extent to which that has created a foundation for us to help tackle the attainment challenge. I was struck ahead of this session when I was looking for perhaps examples of where schools had flourished. There were a couple in particular, Kilmockham Primary School in Virquide, which, on the back of a refurbishment, won a raising attainment literacy award. We have also seen some quite remarkable figures at Eastwood High School in Glasgow, where the percentage of pupils getting five or more hires increased from 17 per cent to 40 per cent. I want to explore the extent to which refurbishing the school infrastructure and the buildings will help us to take forward the challenge that we face. Ruth Pynch said that I have name checked her. I am in an incredibly unfortunate position in every school in Virquide, as I have been fully refurbished or as a brand new school. The school estate in Virquide and the earlier estate is phenomenal. Does that make a difference for the young people? Yes, it does. The young people come into buildings that are high-class buildings and it gives a sense of pride for the whole community in education. I have to say that we work with the architects. We have architects in Virquide who have looked into rebellion ways of working. They are very imaginative. They work alongside the school community, saying what will work, what breakout rooms do you need, what will your curriculum look like. Of course, as the curriculum adapts, we have schools that perhaps we would like to go back and revisit, but absolutely the infrastructure, given that sense of pride and the place, absolutely works. A school building is only as good as the community that is in it, so it does not replace that at all. It will not replace high-quality teachers. I have worked in some buildings that were awful. We had buckets for the roof and, by goodness, those teachers were brilliant as well. Again, we are very fortunate. At predates 2007, the investment in South Lanarkshire, where all our children and young people are in completely new builds or have been refurbished completely. That would include our earlier settings as well. We absolutely see that pride that we recognise. It helps by learning environment. You have breakout spaces, they are bright, they are airy. There is no greater investment than driving into a community in the new building as a school. That is a sense of where all of us are investing in our children and young people. We definitely see that. Whether it is correlation and causation, I think that there is a sophistication in that, but it is definitely better for our children and young people. We needed to replace our buildings. They were unfit in many instances. What I would say is that, because we have been fortunate as a local authority and that money has been invested, that does not mean that if you are in another local authority and your building is not quite up to speed, there is not some remarkable learning taking place, because there is some remarkable learning taking place, the buildings definitely help them. I mean, what we are saying certainly in my neck of the woods is the development of community campuses, so the school building is not Monday to Friday 9 to 5, if you like, and then it shuts. It is actually available to the community, whether it is leisure facilities or whatever, and that model will most surely assist some of these communities to develop. If I could just rewind just a wee bit, is that if that is okay and pick up the important things about ethos and value in honouring our young people and our staff, and I think that you are right, I think that all of that is important in isolation. In terms of the midst community centres, absolutely you heard parents talking about being in schools, learning, in the range of schools in Glasgow we have parent learning programmes, and if parents want to better themselves, they go to their school to do that, and the community campus allows them to do that. For our community groups, for our sports clubs, for all of those things, we want our schools to be the hub of activity in their local communities, because when they are that, people feel part of them and when people feel part of them, they get the best of them. Absolutely, the community hub development is welcome and we encourage it, and we run lots of summer schools, festivals at different times during the school year when young people are not in school, but it keeps them involved and it keeps them occupied. School holidays are not always idyllic for every young person, but if you can get into your school with a partner and you get something to eat and you do really interesting things, our schools are allowing us to do that. I would only pick up one other point, which my colleagues have said is that we are also able to use our building to improve the curricular offer, so in a whole range of ways in our schools we have barista training, we have vocational centres, we have working offices, we have working construction centres in our schools, we have, not that I've been anywhere near it and I refuse to go anywhere near it, we do have beekeeping in a number of schools east end of Glasgow where our young people have their own bee hives and are making honey, we have a micro forest in one of the schools, so it goes wider than just the building, it goes to the whole area and what opportunities that can give young people and the local community, because some of that outdoor education is being delivered by parents and they're coming in and helping and doing a bit, so all of that works around a well-designed facility but supported by strong leadership and strong people working with it. Okay, that's fine, I move just to finish conveyor Mark Rathbone, because I think Barhead High School is another school that had quite a remarkable improvement on the back of a refold. Both of those schools that you referred to today, Eastwood High School and Barhead High School, are both within East Renfrewshire, both fairly recently refurbished and I think just as colleagues have said that those new buildings and wider facilities have made a real difference in terms of that whole school ethos and I think also around that ambition. We've found NFER did some research that tracks through and looks at what are the factors that make the biggest difference in terms of supporting disadvantaged children and young people's achievement and if you pick up the whole school ethos and ambition that's two of the seven factors that they see as critical and we've spoken about some of the others this morning around learning and teaching and I think a new building can also facilitate that so within those two buildings that you talked about I think perhaps just to emphasise the vocational aspect so those buildings have got fabulous facilities in terms of sort of home economics, they can do barista training, fabulous facilities in terms of physical activity so I know within Eastwood High School they saw a huge increase in the number of children registered for free school meals taking part in their wider extracurricular activities and they were using their PEF specifically to support that but the new facilities that they had were enabling that to happen so I think you know it's that holistic approach as well as attainment that you referred to. I mean just to be clear I wasn't in any way suggesting that this was the most important thing as opposed to the ethos of the school and the quality of the teaching far from it I saw it as being complementary to the work that was being done. I totally agree. Thank you very much. Thank you, Graham. Co-caps. Thank you, convener. I've been absolutely fascinated and hooked by everything that's been said here. A lot of that resonates with the evidence that I took from head teachers a couple of weeks ago from the area, the West Area Partnership so I'll come into that. I want to talk a little bit about collective agency which obviously is part of that renewed mission and I for one having worked in the field for many years and sometimes schools in the past over decades I think have felt a bit isolated and I'm glad to see now that schools are being recognised as part of the picture to address the poverty challenge and that there has to be a multi agency approach so that is absolutely fantastic to see so regarding sort of that kind of collective agency between government that sets policies local authorities that implement those policies and then working with third sector organisations and community partners as well could you give me a little bit of a flavour of within your own authorities what kind of success stories and what also hasn't gone so well what challenges have you faced in sort of having that more sort of like you know working with partner agencies. I think we'll pick up with Mark first please. Yes, thank you. I mean I think for this one the starting point for me is around that sort of empowered approach in terms of that collective agency. It's something that within East Renfrewshire that has been part of our culture I think certainly well before the PEF funding that we had. It's very much an approach of working in partnership with our head teachers so them very much having that ownership of that improvement agenda of providing the conditions and the facilities and the support for them in order to lead that improvement and certainly when we speak to our head teachers they feel that sense of ownership they feel that the quality improvement team and the team at the centre act as that critical friend supporting in terms of that and I suppose it's very much that partnership approach around to give an example taking the areas that they would identify as areas that they want to prioritise and for improvements so if we take something like numeracy that's coming through in the discussions with our schools as an area that they want to address coming out of Covid then the authority then supporting them in terms of that professional learning and investment for the staff and that's then much more effective and efficient in terms of that approach. Also very much in terms of the curriculum I think the schools need to have that ownership of the curriculum with teachers making the decisions on the curriculum for the children and young people in front of them in that way and that's the approach we've taken within East Renfrewshire and I suppose that brings you into the other part of your question around that collective agency and that link with sort of third sector or other partners and if you were to come to East Renfrewshire and go and speak to the different schools as you got a little bit of a flavour of you would get that sense that each school is meeting the needs of the young people that they've got in front of them and making sure there's that relevance to the curriculum in terms of the young people that they have. So they're basically able to they're empowered enough and confident enough and supported enough to be able to respond to the very bespoke needs sometimes of their local school communities. I mean that did actually I have to say a couple of the head teachers at that session. I did ask them the question did they feel supported by their local authorities to be able to make quite difficult decisions you know with sort of competing demands and priorities and I have to say they did they they did feel supported so I thought that that you know it's worth passing that on to you celebrate the successes. Jerry do you have anything to add to what Mark has said? Yes I do and some of my experience is exactly the same as Mark's. Our position is definitely that the class goes so diverse. You know that you know that what works in one community will not work in another community and the people who understand that best are the people who work in the community. So our partnership with our head teachers is very much saying right well there's a direction of travel that's what we want to achieve for our young people but in your area and in your context how are you going to do that and then providing the appropriate support for each school and you'll know yourself and they need different things at different times and that's okay so we want to provide that. All of our schools would tell you that they cannot do this alone they've got no desire to do it alone and they see their partners as not an external but part of their school community and part of the people that they work very closely with and I think that's good and again we give them the agency to go and make those connections and work with those people and plan together so that that works well. Agency goes beyond the head of the school and some of our most effective people are our teachers, support for learning workers, dyw co-ordinators, all of those other people in the schools who wrap around the children really really importantly and we do have some outstanding partner agencies and people working with them. In terms of a wee challenge in there and you said you know what hadn't worked early on people found that what they thought they would get from a partner agency was not necessarily what they got and that's where you need to be brave and say look this isn't working can we change it can we tweak it can we get better at it so there was a bit of that and we are growing in our understanding of how you show the impact of that work and that's always been very important for us to say right that's all well and good in terms of there's that activity that activity that activity but what is that actually meant for the young people in poverty and our schools are getting much better at that having I would say needed that development from early on in the challenge but again partnership working precluded that in Glasgow. Thank you. Ruth, did you want to add something? Just perhaps a building on the partnership working at the beginning of the attainment challenge we had an implementation group and one of the wonderful things about that group was wasn't just head teachers it was libraries third sector social work and actually the cross fertilisation of ideas was very exciting so our head teachers could take ideas maybe from the libraries and say okay we're going to explore that so and it's giving them the ability to develop that and actually for them to come back and discuss it with others as well so constantly I would say also that the partnership working again through Covid where people have had to work together to take things forward has been fantastic we've got six head teachers who knowing their different circumstances have been able to work as a group and feedback to us here's what we think will work and that's been a very exciting environment to work in I suppose that what I'm thinking of there what you've made me think of is that then there's consistency within a local authority or within learning clusters but the challenge then is the variation across 32 local authorities across Scotland so that's the dilemma in my head that I'm grappling with is that you have you know that collective agency you also have the empowerment agenda but how do you then ensure consistency across the whole of Scotland so that you know if anybody's can chip in once Tony's sort of come in with my previous bit thanks for maybe trying to take them both to me and I thought I'll just throw that in before I forget maybe in the first point it's really about schools and individual teachers knowing their own story around their children and young people and their school community and being really conscious about that strategic priority I think having a collective priority around excellence and equity I think then people completely understand that also I think really importantly and it has been touched upon about the agency of the teacher that's within a parameter though isn't it it's about making sure and maybe that answers the latter part of question as well it has to be a strategic direction none of us are saying that it's just a free for all I don't think teachers would want that as well I think teachers and school leaders would want to feel supported and there's a there's a genuine direction that comes from that I think then it's about the kinds of support teacher empowerment is about knowing as an individual teacher where I can go to for the for the support whether that be the technical support in the curriculum whether that be pastoral support and around supporting a young person or indeed supporting around additional support needs and stage intervention so that the support mechanisms are clear is it the support within the school is it within the learning community as you rightly say or indeed the local authority the regional improvement collaborative maybe just touching on that a success story of that is I would look at it from a west partnership perspective we put in west online schools I was a request early in lockdown about the digital offer for our children and young people and making sure and that was from our leaders and from our teachers as well and we Jerry led on the the west to west activity but but basically a set of pre-recorded lessons teachers put together that we were able just to try to strategically look at and so for this year even in this session we've had 98 percent of our secondary schools use that but if I hadn't over 90 percent of our primary schools even last night I saw some tweets about west to west maths because of the national 5 and higher exams and that was taken up that wasn't just teachers within the west partnership that was supported nationally as part of the digital offer so so that collective agency that came from teachers saying we're really worried about the digital offer and that was one one way in which we could do it and I suppose very specifically we need to be clear about the outcomes don't we to answer your question the second part of question we need to be clear about what are the measures that we're looking at is it the nith measures are we looking at longitudinal activity are we looking at PISA are we looking at the global competence that goes beyond simply around the attainment measures we have lots of data in the country the question is what are the measures that are important to us that help us measure the gap but also I spoke earlier about the kinds of opportunity for young people I do think it's important we try to measure that we do see it in Duke of Edinburgh we do see it in lots of the other vocational courses and the skills that young people develop we need a way of capturing that as well thank you very much Tony did anybody want to come back in on my second bit Mark maybe just to pick up a little bit around the theme around consistency obviously it's a it's a key point from sort of Audit Scotland around the variation but also when you follow that through as you mentioned the vice convener around the consistency argument and actually it's interesting their recommendations that they set out in that report I mean they had three around that one for local authorities which was around using data to understand the trends more effectively and then using evidence-based quality improvement approaches and sharing that learning and practice and the third one was working with schools as we've just been exploring and I think on those first two within Audis we've taken a lead on that we see that as you know it is important we need that ambition we need to be doing more around consistency and variation and that we've developed in partnership with Education Scotland what we've called a collaborative improvement model which is at its heart it's about sharing that effective practice it's bringing together Education Scotland colleagues it's bringing colleagues from across Audis together to support a local authority with an area that they've identified as needing improvement so the ownership still sits with the local authority in the schools there's still an empowered approach it's based on their self-evaluation but it is then supporting that improvement so as somebody that's just recently gone through that model we had a focus on numeracy in maths and where there are strategy that we'd had that was just put in place just before Covid was making a difference so were we seeing improved attainment in maths were we closing the equity gap in terms of maths and we were improving experiences for the children and young people in our classrooms and I have to say it was a really robust challenging process with colleagues from Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire involved we had colleagues from Orkney as well as HMI inspectors Education Scotland all looking at our data looking at the the evidence that we'd gathered taking part in that and then helping us shape those recommendations so to me that's one of the ways where you know that supports that understanding of the trends in the data but also supports that sharing of practice across the system and you know just maybe for noting for the committee all of the local authorities across Scotland have signed up to be part of that over a three-year period and by this summer there'll be 11 that have taken part so I think that's a positive step that we've taken as local authorities that is really welcome thank you for letting us know that did anybody else want to come in Jerry I just had one we think the collaborative improvement was what I was going to mention as well advice convener but I suppose the only bit I would add to that would be from that then comes a connection where there's support for that local authority and taking forward their action plan from other local authorities so I was involved in Fife and left an open offer to say if you're looking at X, Y and Z Glasgow's got a lot of people who are you know have made really strong developments in there and we're more than happy to provide that support so the collaborative improvement process itself is robust it's helping each other improve but then the follow-up is where we work together to bring about that improvement to lead to greater consistency and can I just ask a practical question how do you sort of monitor that and how often do you meet together I mean is this something that happens sort of infrequently or is it regularly in the calendar is it embedded in your practice that's what I'm getting at so it's in its early stages I think the intention is that it will become embedded in our practice and we would want it to become embedded in our practice because we in that case we believe that we can all help each other be better and the way the process works at the moment is there's a pretty intensive two three-day programme depending on the area of focus and that gives a detailed report and it is a pretty robust process and there's an openness about it I think it's really positive where you know mark owns it so mark saying look I want to know where it's working where it's not working and then as colleagues we're quite happy to say you may have a look at that you need to have a look at the next thing so it's in its early stages the sign-up's brilliant the people who've been involved have found a really positive experience and I think it will grow from there to become a core approach not just at local authority level but we would hope more and more at school level thank you thank you very much thank you convener thank you Ross thank you I'd very much like to follow up this line I'm interested in your approach to making sure that we're getting really robust evaluation making sure that the money is being spent on initiatives that are actually effective without putting such an administrative burden on schools that they've got staff who spend more time evaluating programmes than actually delivering better outcomes for for young people and maybe start with Ruthen on your approach to that given androquides that the length of time that you've been a challenge authority you've probably developed quite a coherent approach by this stage so and yes you're absolutely right you don't want to create a bureaucracy of this that's going to take away from the day job and it's about intelligent use of data and intelligent support and challenge as well making sure that what's being put in is actually we're seeing that transfer into the outcomes for young people so we've done it in a variety of ways we've built teams together we've had head teachers challenging each other the head teachers were very open to sharing the data and actually to sharing the improvement journey as well and so rather than one person going into a school and supporting and challenging actually we've had teams around people not dissimilar to the way the address is working so we so I think the culture we've developed in a mutual trust has been absolutely imperative to making this right there are some things that just haven't stuck you know some things that haven't worked we've had we've been fortunate to have a very good attainment adviser who again has been working with the with our schools and she uses the term adopt adapt abandon you know where if the schools are not seeing the the bang for the buck as they would say they will they will actually change tack or stop the project the as an authority we we look at that we absolutely track the data we have three or four data points during the during the year and we do all that work for the schools so basically we're using CMOS so when when the teachers are putting in their data we can then churn the data and actually help them and support them with that and then we have what is almost a jointly written pack to look at the to look at the interventions but I think I think the key to our success and we have been successful is the culture in which we've worked in so when we're asking head teachers for any information they see the value of that information as it comes back we've also been putting in regular reports to the to the Scottish government through the attainment challenge I've got one in front of me and they are they are comprehensive and we've kind of always challenged ourselves in anything we put in there has got to have a meaning you know is it taking us forward what what difference has that made and we it's also been able for us to be able to take a reflection point and say okay so have we have we increased the number of families we're working with for instance with with the third sector is that have we seen that go down has has the attendance really stuck so it's allowed us as a team to to to work together and then you look at the attainment challenge authorities where we've challenged each other as well so actually not again not dissimilar to our address where we've been able to share practice and to be able to to really be open and honest about what we have seen has worked and what we would you know what we would lie down in the ground to keep and and I would say the the one thing our head teachers would say they lie down in the ground to keep is our data data support team they find that work having been done for them in the culture of mutual trust has absolutely been for them a really supportive mechanism so so hopefully that's answered your question that was real useful particularly the point you made there about essentially schools shouldn't be afraid to try something and fail the nature of this means that we should be we should be encouraging that kind of innovation and we've certainly heard evidence in the past of of a reticence to take a risk and fail is resulting in a lack of innovation but if they're being encouraged to say you know what this this is an acceptable risk to local authorities not going to come down on you for quote unquote wasting money I think that's really healthy and if we could ask Tony just exactly that same question about how you go about it as an authority who's previously not been a challenge authority but you have had some relevant funds and we're now moving to this new model what approach you'll be taking there and I suppose that's a good point and maybe important for us that it's aligned to our school improvement plan process it shouldn't be two separate processes so because ultimately you're looking at strategic priorities from the from the school itself to the local authority then to the national priority you hope that that needs to be aligned that we're not from a that we're not asking schools except again your point about being overly bureaucratic in this we want our teachers and our school support assistants to be leading on those interventions we want to to lead on an evidence-based activity we would have a similar approach to data for example in which we would look at some of the data activity of that school help produce it for the school and so that they don't need to then go through tronches of activity around data we then have a coaching model in which those head teachers can come together they lead on many aspects of the delivery of the work that they've been doing they will come and then they will look at an evidence-based approach it might be a small test of change and and we would then have them as an equity team they would come or equity leads within our schools will come and they will specifically look at some of the interventions they would then look at the evidence behind that and we would then try to scale some of that activity out so we try to look at it both essentially as a local authority and then indeed into the schools and vice versa also from a regional improvement collaborative we would do the same as well we have head teacher networks that specifically look to try to support our our colleagues in schools with a focus around equity as well I think it's just making sure that those avenues are there and being really clear that this is not additional this is lined up mainly through the school improvement planning process and that strategic priority is clear for all of us thanks if I can move this on slightly or maybe come to yourself mark on this point it would be impossible for us as a committee to scrutinise in detail what every local authority in every school is spending this money on and we shouldn't do that because every local authority has its own elected representatives who are responsible for scrutiny at that local level so I wonder if you could maybe give us an example of what what does that look like in any strength for sure what kind of reports are you preparing for counselors what scrutiny is is provided at that level absolutely I mean if you take a sort of annual cycle we would the start of the year take to our education committee our local improvement plan that would be part of that consultation process taking elected members views and then also parents head teachers and so on as you form in the plan and we would also then take at the end of the year the standards and quality report which would we would exactly as Tony was saying we wouldn't sort of separate the two we would make sure that there was clear evidence of the progress in terms of closing the attainment gap and raising attainment more widely related to our strategic priorities but what we've also done I think because of the I guess to make sure there is that clear accountability we we took pre-covid a regular report in terms of the pupil equity funding and the progress that our schools were making around that 1.4 million I felt it was important that elected members were able to see the difference that it was making and also that it was a way of sharing that practice and we also took a regular report on the national improvement framework and on the progress that we were making with those four at the time four priorities and I'm now going forward the five priorities so over the year then that would give elected members that kind of clear picture of the progress that our schools were doing and we supplement that with sort of a range of presentations so that again they're able to understand some of the difference that it might make in that specific context of individual schools and so on and really try and bring some of that to light I suppose as colleagues this morning have talked about when they've been meeting with parents and head teachers and teachers. Thanks and finally Jerry I wonder if you could comment a bit on some of the new guidance that's come out recently around providing annual reports on how the money's spent for parent two parent councils for example because I think on one level that provides a really healthy level of not local scrutiny but accountability and engagement but there's perhaps a danger that it creates false expectations that you can within the space of a year do something totally transformational on what are really embedded societal problems. How are you planning in Glasgow going about getting that balance right of giving parent councils information that they deserve to have but getting the expectations right around what that means in terms of annual reporting? Absolutely and the way you've characterised that is really helpful actually. We would always and right from the very start of the Scottish Attainment Challenge we did expect our head teachers to report to their parent councils into their parent group about the work that we're doing. I would probably say to you that there's a process before that which is a process of consultation and discussion about how are we going to allocate the funding, what are we going to do, what difference do we hope it makes so if you take it almost as a cyclical approach in Glasgow that parents and parent groups and parent councils and parent focus groups are involved as our young people invite this is the money this is what we think we're going to do is there anything you would like us to do that we're not planned on and get views then regular updates on how things are going and then that kind of gathering at the end and I'm very comfortable with that because I think it's important that parents feel engaged and if they don't I think we're getting it wrong but I think our head teachers want that level of engagement with them so I want that cyclical approach I want our parents to be involved but I suppose it goes back to something that Mark said and probably is characterised different parent groups will need different kinds of support and will want different kinds of information head teachers know that better head teachers are the ones that work with those people and therefore it's head for head teachers to say right for this group that's the right information to give them for that group it's not and we'll give them something different but I think if you take a cyclical approach to it whether involved at the start and at the end you get away from that what would you mean you've only done x y and z to yeah we knew that's what we were trying to achieve how have we done that and what happens next excellent thanks for that thank you thank you Ross Stephanie thank you very much convener it's been fantastic actually to hear from you all today and certainly my experience has been we've been out we've been speaking to head teachers etc as well there that they've been really confident in their own expertise you know they've talked really enthusiastically about the work that they're doing the positive work they're doing and how they can build on it and I can say as well I've also seen it parent councils just at my own children's parent councils for example that real shift into talking about wellbeing all the time it's not anymore it's not about you know going on a little school trip there or doing the school fare it's really really central in the cost of the school day report that was mentioned earlier by the child poverty action group I think has been massive in that the toolkit that they gave parent councils so it was just to really mention that there now I found it really interesting the way that you've been talking about you know the initial funding allowing that exploration laying the ground work being able to trial all different approaches to learn from them to produce the evidence on them to be able to measure them better there and I'm really interested particularly in how local authorities are measuring progress with health and wellbeing so I appreciate that on the ground within our schools it's very very clear the improvements that it's making to our children and young people but it's about you know how do we actually measure that on the ground how do we make sure that those measurements are cutting across different schools different local authority areas and then at a national level so that when we're looking at things as well you know we can look at are we investing money in the right places here what is it that we need how do we make sure that we're given this every support that we can and if I can start perhaps with perhaps Ruth and sorry Ruth and Jerry first of all since you guys were part of it and then bring in Tony and Mark thanks so health and wellbeing is a huge priority and always has been in Inverclyde just because we realised that if the children are not ready to learn or in a state to learn then they're not going to learn so actually you've got to get that right first it's a difficult one to track because young people in their own mental health or health and wellbeing will have different stages so it's not as easy as saying you've passed an exam so it's a journey for everybody and everybody will be at a different point in the journey what the types of things we've have looked at we've had a big focus on attendance in Inverclyde because we have a gap a poverty related attainment gap in attendance and actually in Inverclyde our attendance was lower than we would like it to be so we just asked the question why would that be what is stopping young people coming to school which leads us on to a lot of the inputs we've put into mental health I would have to say if we look at then the the inputs and the capacity and I will keep I'll start with mental health and perhaps go wider I think that's been one where our teachers our young people our parents our school leaders and especially coming out of the pandemic having a huge focus on on the inputs we can give to young people for mental health and it's got to be a suite of inputs as well so we're looking at whole family community health mental health different inputs at different times knowing that those relationships with the teachers themselves are very important to our young people it's not always about having another councillor in a school I was at an Easter school the other day and there was one of our home and economics teachers was making it was just put the soup into into the we pots to put into the into the freezer and there was two young boys just talking away to her talking away to her about their expectations and it was just a lovely session to listen to so it's that relationship and building the capacity of our teachers to be able to to deal with the the health and wellbeing of our young people we also need to look at the whole family health and wellbeing as well certainly through through our work with binados when we're looking at families that are sometimes quite stressed attendance was sometimes lower because the family the family was hitting a difficult time and actually it wasn't the young person's mental health but it was perhaps mom's mental health that was that was stopping the attendance so a lot of work around holistic support for for mental health and wellbeing we also have to be we also have asked our schools to to look at the ranges of activities on offer and to look at particularly attendance we have you know like the others we we've put a lot we've doubled our input for Duke of Edinburgh coming out of the pandemic because we want the young people people to be out there we want them to have those experiences that they've missed but we we do track the people who are who are attending that making sure it's not just the same people lots of times and actually it's across the board so our our schools are increasingly becoming becoming good at looking at the inputs they have for for different types of health health and wellbeing initiatives for instance after school clubs but also looking at the attendance and they're now beginning to look at the perhaps the young people who are who are not attending anything and then to to put in bespoke opportunities for those Glasgow from the very from Glasgow's improvement challenge had a focus on health and wellbeing and the development of health and wellbeing some of the ways that we can see that we've had positive impact every year our sports team have gathered statistics of increased participation in sports clubs in schools and they produce a lovely infographic on the numbers that are taking part what they're taking part in and the increase over a period of time so that's been very positive our nurture programmes have supported young people with those attachment issues to be in school and to feel safe in school and that's not about a base that's about a nurturing environment and nurturing principles and Glasgow has had huge success in that we've reduced exclusions since 2015 the percentage of primary pupils has been excluded being excluded has dropped by 59.1 per cent and for cent group pupils a drop of 58.3 per cent and there's been an 87 percent reduction in exclusion so our young people are spending more time in school and that's a good thing the mental health challenges are significant and more significant since Covid and I think it's really important that we focus on promoting positive mental health promoting wellbeing rather than reacting to poor mental health and poor wellbeing although we need to do that effectively so you know positive programmes nurture trained staff as mental health first aiders we've got mental health first aiders trained across all of our schools the counselling input has been really really important but has also helped people improve their own capacity so that's important as well the diet the breakfast clubs and given and feeding our young people and make sure they're ready to work has been very effective and lots of our schools have run classes for parents on how to cook well on a budget which is just so practical but really really important so all of those things I think are there and are happening I suppose one of the things that I would raise is as we move forward is I think there is room for us to do some very targeted research on what would a set of indicators for mental health be that we can all agree and that we can all find a way maybe measuring isn't the right word but of exemplifying and I don't think we've got that across the country yet I don't think attendance and exclusion is sufficient so what does that look like and what evidence can we provide to show that our young people are developing in their wellbeing and growing in terms of mental health and all aspects of their health so I think there is something to be done there that's probably just building on what Jerry and Ruth have said as well that we would look at some of those similar activities I'm acutely aware that schools will look at uptake into activity so beyond the classroom how are young people engaging in their the extra offer and I do think that that becomes incredibly important there are obviously maybe from the national perspective we do have the healthy living survey that healthy living survey will look at free school meal uptake and the offer around physical education and physical activity are we looking at the two periods in two hours which is the ambition that's set with that so we collect that data on a yearly basis obviously we have the growing up in Scotland survey that again looks at physical and mental health and wellbeing childcare education and employment involvement in offending and risky behaviour so there's some really important things that that growing up in Scotland survey will give us and already helps us direct around for example speech and language as well development especially in the early years and around the early intervention activity and also for us some of the activity around motivational behaviour so we're trying to find a way of how do you measure pupil engagement that's quite tricky I think that sits with the young person I think that sits with the pupil on the young person and how you manage to how they self-report and what what's their expectation of their own wellbeing and making sure so that's I think that's done very very well at school level the difficulty is as Jerry said is translating that into a consistent national picture I should perhaps mention actually that I'm a currently councillor at Southlandshire council on my very last day today so I should probably mention that thanks mark maybe just to add to what colleagues have said I suppose it's getting that balance between those local measures that schools will use that will you know provide that very rich picture of the health and wellbeing of the the children in their school and then that sort of system level data and that's probably the bit that as Jerry is saying with there's fewer consistent measures so obviously we make like others use of attendance we also sample all our schools with a sort of questionnaire where again we've built in some of those themes into that so you know it'll it'll ask the children whether the school is supporting them and helping them become more confident and so it picks up some of the sort I guess wider purposes of education that's going back to the sort of four capacities which I think is important and so that gives us a sample across East Renfrewshire but again it wouldn't be consistent across all 32 local authorities it's back to that kind of theme we were looking at earlier and I suppose the other mesh measure that I would kind of see as probably important or related to this would be around the sort of participation measure or measure of school leaver destinations because although that's not strictly speaking about health and wellbeing I do think it gives you a good indication of the curriculum that has been provided and whether that curriculum is meeting the children's needs and enabling them to go on successfully post school in that way that's great thanks very much I'm a weird of time so I will pause there thank you Stephanie and Bob Doris thank you can be a really important line of question from councillor Callaghan for a day anyway and I suppose that is the final contributor from from the committee might I step back and look at some of the evidence we've received so far over the last few sessions so Angela Bradley from the IS told us we should look at achievement as much as attainment. Jim Fulis told us that he would suggest that attainment is too narrow a focus and in that context we measure what we measure and I might start with with Mr Lyons being on Glasgow I mentioned what to give some Glasgow data get Mr Lyons' reflections on that but then if the other witnesses could come in convener and maybe flesh out what their experience is in their area so Mr Lyons first of all in Glasgow congratulation 3.5% reduction in three years improvement rather than three years for literacy numeracy is a great achievement but there's other indicators which I think I've been interested to know your views and what we should capture routinely across the country as part of the attainment challenge and what we shouldn't so for example in Glasgow positive destinations for school leavers was 96.3% record levels in Glasgow above the Scottish average and I should point out convener St Rock's in my constituency we visited every young person had a positive destination an area that certain learners would deprivation looks like I'm sure you'll agree Mr Lyons will also so convener it's important to put this on the record in this context that 71% of young people in Glasgow into higher and further education in fact with record levels of entrance into higher education in Glasgow so there are two things that as politicians have a debate about are we addressing the attainment challenge sufficiently we look at literacy and numeracy as absolutely important as that is I'm just wondering if we need an agreeable dashboard of measures that we'll just take a step back Mr Lyons and say let's chart this as well to see how successful this attainment challenge has been and I should reflect one final bit of evidence convener and that was the teachers from the west partnership that we met at St Rock secondary also said they wanted to make sure we acknowledge that we celebrate and we champion the excellent achievement that's already taking place because sometimes that's lost within the political debate so Mr Lyons what would that dashboard of success look like what measures would you like to see and any reflections but I've just said then we'll bring in other witnesses after that yep so great to end on a Glasgow MSP turn all the data so that is brilliant I believe I agree with you I think we need a wider dashboard of measures and I think I would like us to use the measures that we have in a more sophisticated way than we currently do I think we should continue to look at attainment measures my view would be that I would like those attainment measures to be published and analysed as young people leave school not at the different stasting points along so let's focus on exit so where are young people at the end of their school journey so I would like a greater focus on that and I would also like to see within the attainment context that the discussion about how we assess young people how we they get a chance to show their learning and show their levels of attainment which has already been discussed I don't think there's a more important discussion in Scottish education in the moment than that one and I would hope we could be much more creative in how we allow young people to demonstrate their learning and demonstrate their attainment so I would like the attainment measures to continue but I would like to see them at exit point I would like to see the way we we assess to change so that young people can show their learning in a range of different ways I would like us to be continue to focus on literacy and numeracy because it's such a foundational skill but actually and I think our primaries do suffer from this a wee bit that we also celebrate attainment across all the curricular areas and I know that's incredibly difficult to do well but let's not minimise attainment in the arts and in in STEM and in technologies. Some of our schools do brilliant work on that but they don't get the credit because my bilitis numeracy is still not quite where it would be so wider basket of measures particularly in primary schools I agree with both the other two contributors you referred to that we should have a celebration of achievement and that part of the dashboard should be achievement again I think we need to do a bit of work on well what does that mean what does that mean you celebrate number of kids I get Duke of Edinburgh or John Muir award or whatever or do you look at it more roundly than that so I think we should have achievement I think we should absolutely have a great focus on positive destinations and continuing focus on positive destinations because that's actually a big bit of the future look and you know I'm in that destination figure that you developed for Glasgow within the most deprived areas of Glasgow that quintile 97% of young people in that SIMD1 and 2 went on to a positive destination so there's something there that should be celebrated and you have celebrated today so thank you for that so for me achievement attainment positive destinations some way of celebrating health and wellbeing but I'm not sure what that looks like and I do think we should commission someone to get that right and the last bit I completely agree with there is so much excellent work going on in Scottish education there is so much brilliant work being done by our schools by our staff and by our communities let's get that out there front and use that as the basis for improvement rather than what sometimes is the case which is that we find the things that aren't working and spend all our time talking about them because we miss so much by doing that does that answer your question I think last question and and a bit after that as we almost align so thank you very much I should put on the record attainment challenge started in 2015 and peff started in 2017 so convener when I mentioned positive destinations that's not just good work from the teachers looking at that cohort is the leave school that's work done by teachers over a number of years that attainment challenge has been running we shouldn't miss that out as well absolutely and things it might be worth looking at actually is you don't get positive destinations if you don't have a really good 3t 18 journey so the work of our earlier centres the work of our primary schools are part of the celebration of positive destinations and is there something about how we show the development of young people and their career readiness if that's the right word and make that part of the dashboard of measures as well please don't come back and say how do we do that because I'll have to say no sure I think we'll be upset because we're running out of time other witnesses will want to give their story from their local authority as well thank you very much you're always very helpful with banks just to build on what Jerry saying absolutely looking at the lead the levers and the journey up to up to the leaving date making sure that we're looking at the positive destinations the participation measures in Inverclyde we have we we know what happens to all of our young people so we have 100% of our known destinations so we don't let anybody slip through the net and that's important to us because if if somebody's not in a positive destination we want to know what happened what could could we've done better but also what can we do to support beyond school absolutely think about the the the celebration of the talent within the school and what the teachers do on top of the literacy and numeracy day job each of those teachers brings out nurtures the talents and brings out the the absolute gifts our young people have and you know the the tennis players the football players the musicians the actors they're all in our schools at the moment and actually we're we're developing them and it's that rich curriculum that helps that so so nothing much to add to Jerry I'm conscious might be reflected across all four witnesses anything like that to a dashboard of achievement that we can monitor over over a period of time would be welcome in any any response tonally mcdade I do think we we obviously do have the attainment measures around the nif and the national improvement framework and those measures are there you know there are there are living measures and they do help us with literacy and numeracy and they they definitely help us look at that gap and I would agree about the wider attainment I think we've got better at it if you look at we've now not just basing our evidence at senior school level as pupils leave around the number of hires we're able to look at sqf levels and look at comparable work and I do think we need to extend that to to look at the range and whether it be obviously we can look at foundation apprenticeships but lots of young people will maybe look at a training provider or a college activity I think that should be part of the suite of measures of activity that we look at that that's really crucial I also think we need to be careful that we try to measure everything and then suddenly it's not of worth to us it's about what currency is well for that young person we talk a lot about the capacities I think with the original move of curriculum for excellence we spoke about pupil a pupil profile that captured that pupils learning as they move from broad genital education into senior phase for the pupil had responsibility for that that really we could build on that as a young person leaves school and that could then be seen as worth as they move into employment or so that it's not just a personal statement that everybody knows the number of words and it becomes a mechanistic activity that you can really capture the richness of the school experience but we need to make sure that we do that that it's not bureaucratic and it then doesn't just become tokenistic so I think we have to try to make sure that we capture the flavour of a young person's journey in school and if we can use that the young person can then use it as they move forward as well thank you and finally Matt Ratter thank you I'll be brief I think the the point around capturing attainment for 3 to 18 is important so for me curriculum for excellence attainment in primary would be one of the sort of key set around that dashboard if you like colleagues have mentioned some of the other points I wonder whether there's a kind of discussion we just need to have as a country around I mean I welcome the new approach around the core plus so certain ones that we agree that are absolutely important and I guess that's the discussion that needs to be had what what goes into that core set and then which of those beyond that in terms of achievement or the questions around health and wellbeing are sitting in the the plus where there are good systems at a local level or a school level but they're not necessarily reported all the way up to a Scottish government level and I guess that's probably some of that debate and it probably brings us into the sort of some of the recommendations that are sitting in sort of chemios report that's been recently published very helpful no further questions giving a really helpful evidence thank you all forward thank you Bob Doris and that brings us to the end of this part of our meeting I'd like to thank Ruth Binks, Jaya Lyons, Tony McDade and Mark Ratter for their invaluable help to the committee in the pursuit of our inquiry and wish you all a pleasant rest of the day and at this point we'll have a short suspension to allow our witnesses to leave the committee room thank you welcome back the next on our agenda is consideration of public petitions and we're first going to consider PE 1548 national guidance unrestraint and seclusion in schools lodged by Beth Morrison this petition is calling on the Scottish parliament to urge the Scottish government to one introduce national guidance on the use of restraint and seclusion in all schools this guidance should support the principles of last resort where it is deemed necessary restraint should be the minimum required to deal with the agreed risk for the minimum amount of time appropriate supervision of the child at all times including during time out or seclusion reducing the use of solitary exclusion and limiting the time it is used for for example maximum time limits no use of restraints that are cruel humiliating painful and unnecessary or not in line with trained techniques accountability of teaching and support staff for their actions that should include recording every instant leading to the use of seclusion restraint and monitoring of this by the local authority regular training for staff in how to avoid the use of restraint and where restraint is unavoidable training in appropriate restraint techniques by the British institute of learning disability accredited providers and no use of restraint by untrained staff the second point of the petitioners petition is to appoint a specific agency either education Scotland or possibly the care inspectorate to monitor the support and care given in non-educational areas including the evaluation of the use of restraint and seclusion of children with special needs in local authority voluntary sector or private special schools so our papers outline the work undertaken on the petition by both the public petitions committee and the session five education and skills committee in december 2019 the deputy first minister and then cabinet secretary for education and skills confirmed that and i quote the scolish government will produce new national guidance that will provide a clear human rights based policy on physical intervention and seclusion in scolish schools end of quote a working group whose membership included a petitioner was established in early 2020 to develop and agree the new guidance and although progress was delayed by the pandemic in correspondence dated to 16 of febru 2021 the deputy first minister indicated that the guidance would be finalised later in 2021 but as yet this guidance has not been published can i ask members for any comments on the petition yes grim day thank you convener i should acknowledge that the petitioner is a constituent of mine i very much commend her doggedness in this area and the constructive suggestions she's brought forward we wouldn't be at this progress stage without that clearly Covid has understand the way intervened in the progress of this i think it would be appropriate to write to the cabinet secretary seeking an understanding of where matters rest at the moment yeah and perhaps to ask for some timescales in terms of when we can't expect the guidance that was developed by the working group yes Ruth McGuire thanks convener yeah i think this is a really important topic and i would i would agree with grim day and yourself that in the first instance we should write to the cabinet secretary and ask for an update on when we'll see that human rights based policy and guidance think is important for pupils, parents and indeed teachers thank you are there any other comments everyone has agreed so we're agreed that to write to the cabinet secretary to ask for an update on anticipated timescales for the guidance being developed by the working group we're content with that yes we're content next petition is pe 1668 improve literacy standards in schools through research informed reading instructions lodged by ann glennie the petition is urging the Scottish government to one provide national guidance support and professional learning for teachers and research informed reading instruction specifically systemic synthetic phonics and two ensure teacher training instructions train new teachers in research informed reading instruction specifically systemic synthetic phonics now our papers provide an outline of the action taken by the public petitions committee and the education and skills committee during session five on this petition the session five education and skills committee was undertaking an inquiry into initial teacher education and the early phase of teaching ahead of the formal evidence sessions for this inquiry the committee agreed to take evidence from the petitioner to allow the broader issues raised by the petition to be explored and for the session to include a focus on any issues that could inform the inquiry the session set for the 18th of march 2020 did not take place as a result of the Covid pandemic and the committee was unable to restart its inquiry on ite oing to other work undertook scrutinising the response to the pandemic do members have any comments on this petition yes deputy governor yeah i suppose from an educationalist point of view i think that you need to consider this very carefully directing methodology and pedagogy is a tricky area and that from what i can see that's what this is asking for for us to go down a certain route over 30 years i've actually i have taught synthetic phonics but i've also taught the other ones and at the moment what they're trying to do in teaching initial education whether they're doing it well enough or not i'm not commenting but it is to actually use a variety of those approaches um there are flaws to synthetic phonics which is a technical thing because it doesn't uh there's sort of issues about pronunciation there's issues about uh sort of neurodiversity and how those kids come into uh it doesn't solve the issue of dyslexia and i'm wondering if that's all behind this i mean obviously i wasn't there at the previous session but that all of that has come to me so i'm just as much as i would love to get stuck into this i'm just wondering what our role is is our role to be directing the way that we teach reading and rolling that out because that's what this is looking for and i'm not sure that is our role so i'm not sure that the politician should be involved any other comments thank you for that co-cab is stefany thank you convener i was just going to agree and say that you know mandating local authorities head teachers and teachers to teach in a specific way is quite concerning i do have neurodiverse children myself too there and it's that it's that wider that having that having that wider range of options to actually be able to to work with what is going to be best for particular children so it's about being able to to work with children as individuals thanks so yes michael thanks convener i'm conscious that we have received some evidence i think through the ken mur report around initial teacher education and discussions around that that perhaps um the reforms that were put in place um almost the generation ago and that they have been replicated elsewhere and we've not kept up to date on that so um i think wonder whether maybe later in the session i know we've got a very full work programme for the kind of the next year at least i think but perhaps later in the session it might be something that we would return to given the after we've been through the legislative process and maybe the petition would be or at least the the subjects dealt with in the petition might be addressed in in a future inquiry on that basis um i know that that's not something we see on the kind of the immediate horizon but i'm sure it would come up if there was another discussion about initial teacher education which i think the committee may wish to do at some point i think there would be grounds to do so i think it's only fair to say though that in terms of expectations of the petitioner we're not going to get to this specific aspect of education policy anytime that i can see in a year at least because of the nature of the inquiries we've got under way at the kemure stuff you've mentioned and then on top of that we've got a growing number of legislative requirements which which will take up our time as well. Does anyone want to make an effort? Yes Ruth? I'm notwithstanding you know our obvious interest in initial teacher training i wonder with this petition if you know based on what was in particular co-cub stewards laid out there that the right thing to do might be to actually close the petition right agree on did you want to come in no any other cause bob doris just briefly i mean if what michael marr is suggestion is that if at some point during the lifetime of our parliamentary session this committee is looking at a body of work or this could be embedded as part of another inquiry that's on going i think that's what the last committee had agreed they would do and they found the opportunity obviously we don't have the opportunity in this session i suppose never say never is the point but mr marr is making but the point the convener is making is about giving a false expectation this might happen anything soon so i would agree that we should close the petition but our knowledge of the petitioners wider issues that they would seek to have raised doesn't disappear with the closure of the petition and if there is another inquiry that happens that we can tack these questions on to by all means but at this stage rather than have it drag on with the ability to fulfil petitioners expectations of a degree closing it's probably the best thing to do yeah i i tend to agree with what you said i'll come bring michael back in a minute but i think to be fair to the petitioner we're not likely to get to this in the immediate as i say i can't completely see over the brow of the hill but i really don't see us getting into this policy area in the work of the committee over the next year at least and therefore i think i think the best thing to do is to be completely on the level and say we should close the petition but should we get to the subject of initial teacher education that we obviously would have a institutional memory of of this petition and and revisit it at that time but i'll turn to michael because i'm content with that convener i think that sounds like the reasonable approach but the committee is pretty clear right well are we content to close this particular petition thank you we are content our last sorry our next petition is on agenda is pe 1692 inquiry into the human rights impact of girffwick policy and data processing i'm not a great fan of all these acronyms i've got to say i have to keep reminding myself what they all stand for and it was lot this petition was lodged by leslie scott and allison prius on behalf of times trust and uh scottish home education forum the petition is calling on the scottish government to initiate an independent public inquiry into the impact on human rights of the routine gathering and sharing of citizens personal information on which it's getting it right for every child girffwick policy relies our papers explain that in january 2020 the deputy first minister and the then cabinet secretary of education and skills explained that his officials were in the early stages of developing a package of products based on shared principles around house services should handle sensitive personal information to ensure that children young people and their parents could be assured that their rights are being respected at that time the deputy first minister expected to publish these materials at the end of 2020 however progress was delayed by the pandemic responding to a request for an update the deputy first minister indicated in febru 2021 that the guidance would be finalised later in 2021 as yet this guidance has not been published so can i ask members on their comments i mean clearly i'm not a fan of acronyms the the subject matter of personal data is a very much a critical issue in the minds of many people including the petitioner who would like to make any comment on this yes michael i thought there was a clear direction of travel from the government in terms of their intent to respond i think it would be reasonable to write to the to the government and ask what progress has been made made on that we understand the delays but if they're going to make a response who would be good to see it yes i think i can see lots more ahead so are we content to write to the cabinet secretary and ask for an update on these the timescales because clearly they need to be updated yes we're all agreed and our last petition being considered today is pe1747 adequate funding to support children with additional support needs in all scottish schools lodged by allison tomson the petition is calling for the scottish government to provide adequate funding to support children with additional support needs in all scottish schools primary secondary and special our papers outline the action taken on the petition by the session five public petitions and its decision to refer the petition to the education and skills committee in its legacy report the session five committee explained that it did undertake work on the additional support for learning following referral of petition pe1747 including taking evidence from angela morgan on her additional support for learning review report at its 18 november 2020 meeting and looking at additional support needs as part of its pre-budget scrutiny however the committee stated that given time constraints it was unable to fully consider the petition can i ask members for any comments on the petition michael thanks convener i mean i i think this is a subject that comes up on a week by week basis in our committee it came up again today you know in the evidence we received regarding this is the attainment challenge i think it's an underlying issue in the performance of our education system across scotland and but you know pertaining to some of the most vulnerable young people i think it would be good to see this more firmly on our work program in the foreseeable future given how often it comes up and the representations that i have i have to say as a member i think that this is something that should come more to the fore in our work program and if we can find space for that i do recognise that that is a busy work program and that we have to try and find the space to do it but it's a recurring theme week by week and all the evidence i think that we receive that this is a particular challenge for local authorities and for families so i would be keen that we try and find some space for it i recognise that may not be in the next coming weeks but how we deal with that i would i would take suggestions on that but i would be very keen to see us do something about this okay well that's a very clear position i mean that to some extent that this is a issue is a silver thread that runs through so many other different issues that we consider as part of our work program so it's not completely out there is an issue as you've rightly pointed out it's a consideration that has kept coming back up in terms of the committee and its work. I do agree with what you're saying i do think it's important though we've been taking evidence about Covid and again just a view from inside the profession additional support needs that is a term that is very specific and it does cover either not diagnosed yet or diagnosed difficulties and barriers to learning so the evidence that we've been taking and yes additional needs has come up time and time again but that has been needs i think my opinion based on sort of like you know people suffering young children suffering because of Covid so there are two different things we have to remember that i'm just saying to you you know it's i don't disagree with what you're saying i'm just correcting a you know an idea in your head you cannot conflate the two there are now also experts that are starting to put in you know like for instance parents are saying i think my child is autistic and i want them to assessed for that whereas actually what the early years in particular are finding is that the professionals are saying actually in our professional opinion they're not hitting those markers it's because they have suffered due to lack of stimulus and they actually need a bit of speech and language therapy right so that that's i hope that gives you an example of there is a difference so with this this is concerning additional support needs as per you know the legislation and those quite tight parameters so it's just to put that I'm good Graham first then come back to you Michael perhaps a question convener as much as an observation i totally get Michael's point about the representations that we have as members we might disagree a bit the extent to which responsibility for this lies with local authorities as opposed to you know additional funding from from the Scottish government i guess my question is convener what form would the committee looking at this take because i don't envisage particularly given our workload a specific inquiry into it i'm just not clear how we would take this for that's not to say that we shouldn't but i you know i think we need to be have at least an idea of what form we're interested in this would take before we could come to the decision as to what to do well as much as anything else just to directly answer that as much as anything else this is about funding so i mean we've got a budget cycle coming up again not well in fact almost as soon as we get back from the summer we could consider this particular issue in the context of our pre-budget scrutiny for example it's a pretty fair comment it's a pretty fair issue to address as a committee with witnesses including the cabinet secretary in in the course of that process we could keep the petition open to take us to that point and then possibly review it again it does that answer your that with respect suggests that we fundamentally accept that this is an issue of national government funding i'm not sure that i entirely agree with that well the government does have the as you well know as a former minister the government does have the capacity to bring fence funds for certain things that they pass along to local government they do that without making a party a political party they do that rather deftly this particular government so i think it is something that the government could very much do so i'll come back to michael and then back to coca partly to give the deputy committee a reassurance that i'm not confused as to the picture i have in my mind in terms of the evidence we've received you know the additional support needs issues have come up in the covaid context but they've come up in a variety of other contexts for instance the institutional reviews that we're looking at talking about education scotland they've come up in the evidence there they came up again in the evidence today i think it's actually something as the convener rightly put it's a silver thread that's running through much of the evidence we've seen in the different work of this committee over the last year so it's not particular to covaid although there has been a clear impact from covaid on young people from additional support needs that brings me to i think that the point is you know i would see this in a broader context i think actually we do need to look at it and the funding of this and how the funding is allocated is one part of that question you know it's clear implementation of the morgan review how appropriately has that been done are we maintaining that are we are we meeting the kind of the aspirations that were set out there so that a broader inquiry in that i think would be very appropriate it's something i hear all the time and i think that there's a there's a real need for it thank you i'm sorry big apart cold cabs yes you are yeah i have no difficulty with just picking up from where the previous committee was because they were going to consider it that was their next step was to consider it as part of the pre-budget scrutiny so i don't have an issue with that all right that's helpful thank you very much um bob doris and then ruth creikie community i hope this is a helpful contribution i think we're all agreed that we'll keep the petition open but i think we're in danger of rehearsing what we're discussing maybe during our work program chat um and i think there is much or little work on this as we deem appropriate and we will reflect on how we can best take that forward budget scrutiny would seem an obvious hook to to hang it on to but no we'll all want to reflect on that if what we're just saved for the moment is we won't close the petition that's what we're saying if we could pick up the cudgels again it will work program absolutely the cudgels will still be there to be picked up ruth yeah i think hearing obviously there is um a great deal of interest in this it's an important topic but i wonder if maybe one of our private business planning discussions is the place to sort of fully thrash out if you like where it's where it's going to go i would agree with keeping it open but i think we want to with with a full work program we want to be sure we give this the attention it deserves does it fit into something else or does it need something separate can we give it you know the proper attention it deserves so i would propose that the next time we're having our we keep it open and the next time that we're having those discussions in private that we we go into that there get ruth has summed up things pretty nicely there co cab yeah ruth said exactly what i was going to say thank you for that um because it was a bit about uh i mean you know i have no issue with it but i was mindful of the impact on our work program um and what would we give up uh in order to give this justice as well because it does deserve justice um so yeah i agree with uh it's a fair it's a fair point but i think ruth's summary captures i think the sentiment i think of everyone that's spoken steffan do you want to add something yeah not disagreeing with ruth at all absolutely i bang on the money there i think just to highlight as well you know there is the fact that we've got over 30 percent of our children do have additional support needs so just to actually mention that in the discussion but absolutely agree with a good point which highlights so many parents and so many families which highlights the the concerns of the of the petitioner and um and as you say it does i like it's highlighted by the concern of the petitioner which of course um is why we're having this discussion so i think we are can we have decided to to keep the petition open and to consider further uh this matter at a a future discussion on our work program thank you for that are we content with that outcome yes we're content and that brings the public part of today's meeting to an end i will now suspend the meeting and can i ask members to reconvene on microsoft teams in a few minutes well actually i think maybe there isn't anyone to convene when i come to think of it but anyway this will allow us to consider our final items in private and for those of you who are watching our proceedings uh very good morning