 Fy fawr, wrth gweld i'n gweithio i'r 7 ysgolwyddiant i'r Cymru yn 2015. Rwy'n gweithio i'n siarad i nhw'n ddiwethaf o cael eu cyfnodau alfau litres i'r twfio. Rwy'n gweithio i'r un oedd yn cymdeithasol a'r oeddennidau negatif. Maen nhw'n gweithio i'r ysgolwyddiant i'r ysgolwyddiant, dwi'n gweithio i'r ysgolwyddiant i'r un oeddennidau negatif. We have two negative instruments as set out on the agenda. Do members have any comments on either of these instruments? Siobhan? I would just like to place on record my disappointment at the first SSI 215 forward slash 97. It says that no impact assessment has been taken place because it will happen in the wider context. I think that that is disappointing. In the second one, SSI 215 forward slash 98. An impact assessment has taken place, but it has not been published yet. We are asked to pass the orders that we have not been given the full information for. I do not think that that is the right practice to be having. I would like to place that on record. Do members have any comments that they want to make at this stage? I know that the minister is not officially here yet, but I am sure that she heard the comment. I am going to move to the questions. I will take both together. Does the committee agree to make no recommendations to the Parliament on the instruments? I agree. Our next item is to take evidence on the Post-16 Education and Education Act 2013, Modification of Legislation Order 2015. I welcome Angela Constance, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, and our supporting officials from the Scottish Government. After we have taken evidence on the instruments, we will debate the motion in the name of the Cabinet Secretary, item 3. Officials are not permitted to take part or contribute in that formal debate. I invite the Cabinet Secretary to make some opening remarks. I intend to make a brief statement relating to the Post-16 Education and Education Act 2013, Modification of Legislation Order 2015, before taking some questions. As arranged, Ms McLeod will offer our second statement on draft after-care eligible needs Scotland order and the draft continuing care Scotland order, and will take your questions accordingly. The order that I am speaking to this morning, convener, is modest in its ambition. It essentially tidies up some legislation, largely as a part of the implementation of the Post-16 Scotland Act 2013. It is important that it supports our reforms of the Post-16 Education sector. In summary, it would do four things. Firstly, it would change some references in legislation to ensure that they continue to apply to publicly funded colleges and universities. By that, I simply mean colleges and universities that receive funding under the Further and Higher Education Scotland Act 2005. Secondly, the order would align the financial year of a regional board with that of an incorporated college. This change is prompted by a late but nevertheless welcome delegation by Her Majesty's Treasury, which enables an incorporated college and a regional board to have a financial year that matches the colleges' academic year of August 2 July. Thirdly, it would update two orders, the protection of charities' assets exemption Scotland order 2006 and the charity test-specified bodies Scotland order 2008, so that it lists the governing bodies of relevant colleges and universities. The first is relevant to publicly funded colleges and universities that are charities and the second is relevant to incorporated colleges. Fourthly, it would fix a few snags in the drafting of certain provisions in the Further and Higher Education Acts of 1992 and 2005, as amended by the Post-16 Education Scotland Act 2013. By taking each of those in turn, the order would insert a definition of recognised as in unions recognised by a college for collective bargaining purposes and variations of the word. It would remove a potentially confusing reference to principle in the list of people who are not eligible to be chair of a regional college and a specific exclusion in this regard is unnecessary. The legislation lists the chair and principle as separate members of the board, and this means that they cannot be the same person. It gives ministers the power to appoint a person in place of an assigned incorporated college chair in circumstances where ministers are required to remove them from office. This is relevant to where such a person is also a member of another college sector board and they are removed from that other board because of a board failure on that other board. In such circumstances, if they were a non-executive member rather than a chair of the assigned college board, ministers could appoint someone in their place, so the current lack of provision is simply anomalous. It would also remove any doubt that directions by a regional strategic body cannot be given in relation to the transfer of any staff property rights of obligations. That is what section 23N7A of the Further and Higher Education Scotland Act 2005 sought to do. It would ensure that directions under section 23N3 of the act could not be given to a college to transfer any staff, etc., or to receive any staff, etc., from a transfer. Thank you, convener, and myself or my officials will be glad to answer any questions. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Do any members wish to ask any questions, make any points, comments? No? Okay. We will move on then. As indicated, we will now move to the formal debate on the instrument, which is item 3 on our agenda. Can I invite the cabinet secretary to speak and to move the motion? Move the motion. Thank you. Any contributions from members at this stage? No? Okay. Can I put the question in that motion S4M12539 be agreed to? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Can I thank the cabinet secretary and officials for attending this morning? I will suspend it briefly to allow witness change over. Our next item is to take evidence on one negative instrument and two affirmative instruments, as noted on the agenda. I welcome Fiona McLeod, the acting minister for children and young people, and our supporting officials from the Scottish Government. After we have taken evidence on the instruments, we will debate the motions for the affirmative instrument at item 5 and consider the negative instrument at item 6. Officials, of course, are not permitted to contribute to the formal debate on the affirmative instruments. Can I invite the minister to make some opening remarks? Thank you, convener. Good morning, committee members. I am happy to make what I have to say will be a detailed statement, given the importance and concern relating to the draft aftercare eligible needs Scotland order, the related support and assistance of young people leaving care Scotland amendment regulation 2015 and the draft continuing care Scotland order before taking any questions. As the committee will be aware, our overall policy objective in all these instruments is to offer appropriate support to eligible care leavers in order to achieve a more measured transition out of care, encouraging preventative measures rather than crisis responses, and I seek your support for all three instruments. If I turn to the aftercare order first, under changes made to section 29 of the Children's Act 1995 by section 66 of the Children and Young People Act 2014, a local authority must assess a young care leaver to establish if they have eligible needs that cannot be met elsewhere. If the local authority is so satisfied, the new section 295A places the local authority under a duty to provide such advice, guidance and assistance as it considers appropriate to meet those needs. That aftercare order crucially specifies the types of support that constitute eligible needs. During the consultation on the instrument, a range of insightful views were offered by the sector and care leavers themselves on what categories of care and support were most desirable. As a result, the instrument specifies eligible needs in such a way as allows local authorities to offer an appropriate level of support to meet specific needs of individual care leavers and defines that support in such a way as to be clear and meaningful to the young people themselves. The committee will be aware that during the consultation, we proposed that the new ministerial powers in section 291B of the Children's Act 1995, as inserted by section 662A2 of the 2014 act, could be used to extend eligibility for aftercare support to a further category of young care leavers, i.e. those between their 11th and 16th birthdays that had been looked after for at least two years. That reflected unfinished policy discussion during the bill process and was included to illustrate one of the many possible categories that could be made eligible for aftercare services. Following consideration of the consultation responses, it was clear that the provision as described needed a lot more work with partners, providers and stakeholders, so that was removed from the draft order. I do not want you to think that this removal to be seen as anything other than a desire to achieve a realisable extension of that support. I understand that the committee has concerns, so let me reassure you in that regard, but I must be clear what will happen if we do not pursue that order today. First, if we do not have the order in place, there will be no provision for the types of support that constitute eligible needs for the purposes of the new section 295AA of the 1995 act. That definition is a crucial part of the jigsaw to enable the amendments to section 29 of the 1995 act, which was made by section 66 of the 2014 act to work effectively. As such, without that definition of eligible needs, we would not be able to properly implement and give full effect, as Parliament intended, to the amendments to section 29 of the 1995 act, which was made by section 66 of the 2014 act. I know that it is quite technical, convener, but I think that it is really important to get on the record why these statutory instruments are important today. Commencement of that provision would need to be delayed from 1 April. If we do not agree the SSI today, we would have to amend the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 commencement number seven order 2015 to remove the provision in that order, which brings section 66 into force on 1 April. That would mean, for example, that the upper age limit to support care leavers up to the age of 26 would not commence on 1 April this year, as planned. I am sure that no one who has been involved in any part of the development of these policies wants that to happen, so let me offer some reassurance around the order-making powers that I mentioned in section 66 of the act. On 14 January last year, Aileen Campbell, the minister, reiterated her announcement of 6 January, describing the Scottish Government's commitment to, and I quote, "...a number of measures to support care leavers." At the same time, she saw order-making powers to extend those types of support to further cohorts are formally looked after children through secondary legislation. Being the librarian, I am, I can reference you to column 3319 in the official report of the stage 2 debate at committee. Can I absolutely assure you that that commitment still stands? In fact, you may be aware that those powers are already in force and available to me as the minister to exercise by virtue of provision made in the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014, commencement number 1 and transitory provisions order 2014. Toward that, I commit to establishing the expert working group next month. This will look at defining additional cohorts of young people eligible for aftercare. It will also bring together all stakeholders to map the resource and operational requirements of any extensions, and further, the expert working group will also look at return to care. Developing those policies will be a massive undertaking as both require flexibility and consideration of capacity within the system, as well as the financial climate, but we are all aiming for the same positive outcomes for our young care leavers. If I could turn briefly to the support and assistance of young people leaving care Scotland amendment regulation 2015 as they go together, that is a negative instrument for the committee today and is also related to aftercare support. The regulations make a number of necessary technical consequential amendments to the support and assistance of young people leaving care Scotland regulations 2003. In light of the amendments made to section 29 of the 1995 act by section 66 of the 2014 act, I understand that the Delegated Person Law Reform Committee had no comment to make on that negative instrument. At this point, convener, would it help to pause and take questions on the aftercare order, or do you want me to continue and talk about the continuing care order? We had a discussion beforehand, minister, and I think that we would rather you continue to hope that we will try to have a discussion. Although there are different orders, they all cover roughly the same area of policy, so it would be easier if we did it as a winner. Turning to the continuing care order, the right continuing care will apply to all young people in foster, kinship or residential care who were born after 1 April 1999, who ceased to be looked after by a local authority after 1 April 2015, subject to some statutory exceptions. At this point, those young people will have already developed to a stage where the children's hearing is satisfied that compulsory measures can safely be lifted. We have to respect the role of the panel members in this regard. The default assumption is that continuing care is going to be a good thing for that young person, and the day-to-day experience in continuing care ought to reflect what was in place while they were looked after. The overall aim is to help to normalise the experience for young care leavers, and future orders will extend the upper age limit annually to guarantee that the initial cohort is eligible until their 21st birthday. As part of our essential need to evidence decision making and informed future policy making, this instrument describes an assessment process that complements in existing regulations relating to aftercare support. Therefore, it is familiar to young care leavers and local authorities. The existing regulations are the support and assistance of young people leaving care Scotland regulations 2003-608. The order that we have before us today was redrafted following the consultation to make sure that the assessment better reflects issues of importance to young people, covering such as their relationships, their personal identity and their life story. I am aware of concerns expressed in relation to the order regarding thresholds. However, I do not accept that the threshold has been lowered by this order. The threshold that all local authorities will have to consider when determining if continuing care should either not be provided or cease to be provided is set down in new section 26A5C and 7C of the Children's Act 1995. That is that the care would, quote, significantly adversely affect the welfare of the person, and this order does nothing to change that. The list of matters to be considered by the local authority in the schedule are designed to build up a detailed picture of the young person and their life, which, together with the other views gathered by virtue of article 7 of the order, not least those of the young person themselves, will assist a local authority in considering whether providing or continuing to provide continuing care would, and again, I say, significantly adversely affect the welfare of the person. This is the high threshold set down in section 26A of the 1995 act. I strongly believe that it could only ever be in exceptional circumstances that anything described or offered as continuing care could significantly adversely affect the welfare of the young person. We will make this exception clear in the guidance that is currently being consulted on and will supplement those provisions. Again, if the order is not commenced today, as of 1 April, there would be no right to continuing care. In conclusion, many care leavers quite understandably require support over a prolonged period. I do not believe that anywhere else in the world seeks the views and prioritises the needs of our young children and young people the way that we do in Scotland. I have absolute confidence in our care sector and wider workforce who had a crucial role in developing those outstanding policies to continue to have a truly positive impact on the lives of our children and young people. I am sure that the committee appreciates why I had to be so detailed a statement from yourself. I will now invite members to make any questions or comments that they wish to make. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, minister. First of all, I would have to put on record a welcome for the fact that a compromise has been reached. Having received the email at 12 minutes past nine this morning, it could justifiably be termed an 11th hour compromise, but equally it is only fair to point out that I am not at all happy with what was initially proposed, nor indeed the way that it has been proposed. You are right to point out the implications of not passing the orders with the commencement date of 1 April, but in a sense those of us who had concerns about what was presented to us, I think we would be justified in thinking that we have had a gun put to our head. The Children and Young People's Act was an act on which there was not necessarily uniform agreement across the board, but I think that where we were in absolute lockstep with the Scottish Government was in the area of improvements to the treatment of and support for those who were going through the care system. I think that that was certainly built upon some compelling evidence that we got from the coalition from Who Care Scotland, Barnardo's, Aberlour, but particularly from the evidence that we got from young care leavers themselves. I think that we have been rightly congratulating ourselves ever since on that aspect of the bill, or the act in particular. We had assumed, I think, that the letter and indeed the spirit of that legislation would be honoured going forward. I appreciate that you are new to this role. Ultimately, the buck stops with you, but I have to say that I do not think that you have been well served by those advising you. That is why we are in the situation that we are in, and we have gone through the contortions that we have over recent days. Turning to the specifics, the negative instrument seems fairly straightforward, but in relation to the instrument on continuing care, I hear what you are saying about the threshold not having effectively been lowered. I find that difficult to understand. Under the Children and Young People Act, part 2, section 27, the duty to provide continuing care ceases if the person leaves the accommodation of the person's own volition, the accommodation ceases to be available or the local authority considers that continuing to provide the care would significantly adversely affect the welfare of the person. Now, there seem to be a range of options there. Again, I have heard what you have said, but at the very least, the schedule that has been attached to this order muddies the water somewhat and does seem to talk about issues that are certainly of wellbeing but are not, I would argue, strictly of welfare. The issue of the eligible person's future plans for study, training or work, the eligible person's general health, including any mental health issues, these are factors to do with wellbeing to my mind rather than welfare. I think that Aberlour and Bernardo's and Who Care state in their briefing, the order should in fact make very clear that the threshold for removing a care leaver from a placement that they want to stay in must be, for example, what their health and emotional and mental welfare is being significantly adversely affected, not simply that they have health and emotional and mental welfare issues that are not being met. I look forward to the work that is done to clarify that, but, as I say, at the very least, what is done is muddied the waters. There is a lot of stuff that you have covered already. I will bring it back in, but I mean that it's fine. I just go back to it and it was why, in my opening remarks, I tracked us back through all the different stages of legislation, because it's about the significantly adversely affected. That hasn't changed, so that goes through absolutely everything. Whenever any decision would come to be made, it would have to show that staying in care significantly adversely affected the young person. I can't think of many situations where that would be, but that's where that phrase runs through today and back to when it was first. That's what this is set out to ensure that that is always there. That's a helpful clarification. I think that what you were able to read on the record today, in addition to what we have before us, as a combination, will be helpful in interpreting it. I think that there was a problem in the way that the order was presented that gave rise to concerns. What we were seeing was a delusion that what we weren't looking at, where situations were, for example, there may be a manipulative relationship between the eligible person and whoever was providing care and that we needed local authorities to have the power in order to intervene. What looked like being created as a result of this order was something less than that. Given the advances in the continuation of care that has been delivered through this act, the perverse incentive on local authorities to potentially exploit that was one that gave rise to legitimate concern. If I could turn to the app— No, I'm sorry. Before you move on, other members weren't on this specific point. We're bundling up altogether. I welcome back to you. It's just on this very specific point about what you've just raised, Liz. It is very much on this specific point. At the time of the children and young people's bill going through this Parliament, we debated in great detail about the definitions of welfare and of wellbeing. At the time, some of the witnesses presented a case to us that it was very much easier to define welfare because it is embedded in a lot of other legislation. Well-being was slightly less well-defined. I entirely agree with the point that Mr MacArthur is making. If you don't have a specific definition for wellbeing, it is very easy for a misinterpretation of it. The genuine concern that has been given to us just now is that, because of that slightly amorphous definition, we are in a situation where local authorities are not entirely sure what they are doing and might use that as an excuse not to provide the care that I think everybody believes is the intention of that. Would you accept that this problem between defining welfare and wellbeing is a problem and it's one of the ones that the Scottish Government is into difficulty? I've got two responses to that, Ms Smith. We look at welfare and wellbeing under the general getting it right for every child, which is what the act embeds. We have to get local authorities all of us to think about everything that we are doing under that title. We are out and working on non-statutory guidance now to go with those instruments. It will be absolutely clear in the guidance what is meant by the difference between welfare and wellbeing. Forgive me, minister. There is a difference between guidance and statutory responsibilities. The concern at the moment is that local authorities are interested in what they can do on a statutory basis. They are up against very significant financial difficulties just now. The real concern that has been put quite properly by the continuing care coalition is that it is too easy for them to slip out of their responsibilities unless those definitions are tight. That is the main issue. The statutory responsibility that they take us back to is that they can only remove a child from care if continuing care would significantly affect the young person, significantly adversely affect. That is the statutory position that is tracked through all the legislation that I have outlined today. That is the statutory position. We then move on to the fact that there will be guidance to ensure that they understand what we mean by wellbeing. All of that is within the context of GERFIC. Can I follow that up? It is a concern of the committee and it has been raised with us by the coalition. I am sure that those of us who were on the committee remember in great detail the discussions that we had. It does say in the act that our local authorities duty to provide continuing care last subject to subsection 7 below. The duty to provide continuing care ceases if a, b and c, c being the one that we have just been talking about, the local authority considers that continuing to provide the care would significantly adversely affect the welfare of the person. I think that we all thought that we understood what that meant at the time that we passed it. The concern is not what it says in the act but what the interpretation of what it says in the act is. Could you give us an example of what that means in a real-life example? Would it be possible for a young person to be removed from continuing care placements on the basis of an interpretation by, for example, a local authority about particularly 7c, what actually significant adverse effect on welfare actually means? You need to turn to the schedule, the matters to be considered in the welfare assessment, so we are talking about the young person, the emotional state, their day-to-day activities, their personal safety. It is all there in the schedule at the end of the order. Can you point to exactly what we are talking about in the schedule? Yes, schedule 1, the eligible person's emotional state, 2, the person's family relationships, 3, general health, 4, schooling, 5, future plans, accommodation at 6, 7 sources of income. I am trying to actually understand what the relationship between this schedule is and this part of the act, minister. If these are the matters to be considered in the welfare assessment under the schedule, you have just read out. Is that for entrance into care? No, this is matters to be considered in the welfare assessment. Sir Liam, do you want to come in? I thought that I was being reassured there, but on the back of your question, convener, I am now re-concerned about the matters that will be taken into consideration when making a welfare assessment. Frankly, the eligible person's future plans for study, training or work, we know that teenagers go through a bit of a funk from time to time. Is a welfare assessment going to be triggered, and the elements of 6 to 7 C that the convener referred to on the basis that the plans for future study, training or work may not be all that the local authority officials would have them aspire to. I think that this is the real concern that we understand. The clarity of the provision in the act is one that we are well understood. I think that we also appreciated that there would be secondary legislation flowing from this in order to kind of detail out the way in which this would be implemented, but at the very least, and I get back to the point that I was making before, there appears to be scope for a dilution of that assessment and the trigger for 7 C through the provisions of the schedule here. As Ms Smith pointed out, with local authorities under some financial pressure, the last thing that we want to be doing is putting incentives for them to make a decision that could have long-term life changing ramifications for the individuals who are trying to serve through this act. Sorry, I am not… What am I being asked? Sorry, Liam, could you move and clarify for the minister? As I said, I thought I was reassured earlier on, given the statements about the fact that 7 C and the significant adverse effect on welfare being the provision, but what you have described again has brought in the provision set out in the schedule, which includes such things as the eligible person's future plans for study, training or work, the eligible person's schooling, skills and experience. A whole series of things that, frankly, do look like they are taking the threshold for that intervention down to one of wellbeing rather than a welfare. No, because it always goes back to significantly adversely effects. You will continue in care unless continuing in care would significantly adversely affect your welfare. That is the bottom line. What we have tried to do in the schedule is to make it clear enough in language that the young person himself can understand so that they can get involved in their welfare assessment. As I said before, I think that the problem is that this is secondary legislation that is intended to try to help and amplify, but it has ended up raising concerns because of the way in which it could be interpreted. I think that that is the concern. I agree with every comment that the committee members have made, especially the timing of this. We are given a week now, and if it is not passed, people do not get what they require. That is a poor taste, frankly, to bring to the committee at this stage. However, on the welfare assessment, it is diluting it. The confusion comes where there are no examples, so it is up to interpretation on what a young person's plan is, for instance, for future plans for study, training or work. Is that just about going to college, or is it the course that they have to be in, or how long they have been there, or how detailed does the plan have to be? If each and every local authority interprets it in a different way, then, of course, the wellbeing of that young person or child is going to be adversely affected. However, at no point are we given any examples of what that might be or clear framework. It goes back to Liz Smith's point. He cannot just have that in guidelines that are going to come into force after the first of April, whereas this is passed now, so it will come into effect if that is the case, if the committee votes on it. It will come into effect on the first of April and affect the young person's lives from that very day, but guidelines will not be issued, because you said that you are still consulting on it with whoever to make that happen. I think that that is unacceptable, and that is where the confusion arises, where there are no examples whatsoever in 1 to 8 of what that means. I will finish on point 8. The eligible person's knowledge of their rights and legal entitlements, any previous or current involvement in the legal proceedings, including criminal proceedings, as a victim witness or a large perpetrator, what does that mean? I do not know what that means. Does that mean that they understand what court is or the legal responsibilities to that? That is not clear to me, and I do not understand why that would be clear to a young person. You have said numerous times in evidence that this is about the young person and known their rights and responsibilities. I do not think that that clears it up for us and never mind the young person. I think that it is important to say that, in asking for examples, I do not think that legislation is the place to put examples in. That is not how legislation works, but I will turn to legal officer for that. The examples will be worked through in the guidelines, and the guidelines are out. We are working on that, and everybody is involved. Another official can, off the top of my head, cause local authorities, young people themselves, the care inspector are all involved in working on those guidelines. Perhaps I can turn to Mr McGlashan on the topic of what you can and can't put in legislation. I mean that I can clarify the minister's points about the matters in the schedule. They are quite similar to existing regulations that were related to aftercare in 2003, and they are part of the picture that forms the welfare assessment. Other matters in article 7 of the order include the local authority seeking and having regard to the views of the eligible person, and they may also seek the views of other people, parents of the eligible person, those who have parental responsibilities for the young person, education professionals and the young person's carer. The matters in the schedule are part of the general picture that is built up around the young person in order that the local authority can then assess whether the high threshold that is set down in the 2014 act is met or not. It is all part of an assessment process to allow the local authority to consider whether providing continuing care or continuing to provide it will significantly adversely affect the young person. I think that we understand that. It is about the way and what is put in it. I accept the point that you cannot put everything in legislation, but, as I said, you are still working on the guidelines and you wish that this order to be passed in order to be in effect next Wednesday. That is a real concern for us all sitting around this table. Just in response to that, under the order-making powers that I have explained earlier, and the fact that we are going to set up the expert working group, I am absolutely open to that. I am confident that we are sitting here today that this is the right thing to do, but if, once we put these into practice, if there is any suggestion that they are not working in the way that I think they will work, then I have the power to be able to review it and bring back amendments to you. I give you that commitment that I will do that if that is necessary, but I am convinced that what we are looking at today is the right thing to do. Just before I bring on Elizabeth Smith, can I just clarify one thing? You mentioned that you were currently consulting on guidelines. Can you tell us which guidelines you are consulting on and who you are consulting with? Guidelines for both the orders before us today, and, as I have said off the top of my head, but can I turn to make sure that I have who we are consulting with? There are non-statutory guidance on the aftercare order and the continuing care order at the moment. There are two separate documents, but they are very closely linked. They are going through an active consultation, not in the way that the statutory guidance did, which was online for corporate parenting, which is online for responses. We are doing it as a live, iterative drafting process. It is much more important for us to get the guidance right and I accept that it will not be in place on 1 April. We are consulting with the sector, the service providers. We have had a series, and we continue to have another series of events planned, which will bring in local authorities, COSLA, the clear inspectorate that the minister mentioned. We also have a series of events for young people and care leavers. If they have not already been issued, they are due to issue for events in May for including the Scottish through care and after care forum. Who cares Scotland? Obviously, they are key contacts. No, I am slightly concerned. Let me clarify this. The minister said that you are currently carrying out consultation on non-statutory guidelines. I have just asked you who you are currently consulting with. At the very end, you said that you will be inviting future tense. Members who are members of the coalition that we are talking about have been involved in the bill all the way through very active members such as Barnardo. Are you saying that you have currently met and have been consulting with Barnardo's and the other members of the continuing care coalition, or is that something that you intend to do in the future? It is a combination of both, but we have not met them formally around a table to discuss all aspects of this. We received quite a lot of feedback on the content of the guidance as part of the consultation on the draft instruments so that we use the evidence base. The draft instrument is one consultation. The consultation on the non-statutory guidelines is something else. I am not trying to be difficult, but I am trying to make sure that we are all clear about that. Has the continuing care coalition been involved in the non-statutory guidelines consultation that was mentioned by the minister? No, not yet. So they have not been involved in that? They have not seen the document yet. It is an on-going consultation. That opens up more questions that I have now. One of the groups that we perhaps should have on the record that we have consulted with are from Caret to Celsus. Celsus is a crucial part of drafting the guidance. In fact, I am meeting them this afternoon to go through both documents. When does the consultation start? When does it end? At what point do the coalition members get involved in it? The consultation has been on-going since autumn, since the end of last year, but it has not been a formal consultation because it is a non-statutory. They are both non-statutory. We have been doing them much more as an iterative development process because, particularly on continuing care, we were starting from effectively a blank canvas in building on existing processes for aftercare. The other part of my question was when does it conclude and when do they get involved? We would like it to be concluded in April so that we can publish the papers, but it is more important for us, with the group that we are talking to, to make sure that the guidance is absolutely perfect. At this stage, I am quite happy to be able to say to the committee that I will make sure that all the relevant bodies are brought in within the next few weeks and we sit down and we work on this with urgency. I am very much welcome what you have just said, minister, but I am genuinely now concerned—I was concerned, but I think that I am now genuinely concerned—that what I have just heard is that a non-statutory guidelines consultation started in the autumn is due to finish in April, which is about a week away. Even if it is the end of April, it is only a month away, and the continuing care for coalition, who has been heavily involved in this committee's work and the process of the bill, have not yet been spoken to part of the consultation. Can you understand the concerns that we have? Absolutely, convener, and I reiterate that I will leave here and make something happen. Minister, I can just set it in context. I think that nobody in this room is not aware of the crucial need to ensure that we are doing the best for the young people and the carers involved. That absolutely goes without saying, and I do not think that anybody is in any way has a problem with the intentions of the act. Let me be absolutely clear about that. Where I think that there is a very significant problem—I think that it has just been amplified this morning—is that when it comes to the definition of welfare, it is an easier one to pick up because it has a long-established definition within other legislation. The wellbeing one is not nearly so easy. Those schedules, which intimate some of the welfare assessments, to be quite frank, are willy. They do not give the specific guidance that is required to make sure that local authorities and any other bodies involved understand what the interpretation is, and that is the point that convener was making earlier. There is an interpretation issue here. The questioning over the last few minutes has just amplified that the actual consultation process at best has been rather spasmodic. We are asking the committee this morning to vote on something where I do not think that the complete information is available. That is quite a serious issue. I must emphasise that I am confident that those two orders do what they say they will do. I am absolutely certain that they go ahead on 1 April. I am absolutely certain that, for instance, the significantly adversely effects condition runs through everything that we do. Therefore, as of 1 April, local authorities cannot suddenly have a different way of looking at whether a child should continue in care or not. It must be about significantly adversely affecting the young person. I am confident that that will happen. Those are the right things to do on 1 April, but I am also happy to make the commitment to the committee that I will go away from here today and speed things up in terms of bringing everybody together to make sure that the guidelines that go out are understandable to everybody. Given the fact that we have your commitment, minister, which is very welcome, and the fact that we are going to put something together very quickly, how are you going to ensure that there is consistent application of the guidance? What happens if there is not across all local authorities, so that they are all consistent? There has to be consistent application of the orders, because they are legal orders, and, in statute, it tracks back through different acts 2014, 1995, et cetera, different regulations, it tracks back. Those orders today are not orders in isolation, they grow out of previous legislation, previous guidelines, previous guidance. There will be or there should be consistent application, because that is what the law is. What I am saying today is that we will make sure that the guidelines that go around it make it clear what that means. I welcome that, and certainly there should be, but I think that it is very important, given your commitment today, which, as I said, is welcome. Can I just pick up on one thing? Sorry, Mr Brody, you said that my commitment today will mean that we will quickly cobble together or put together something. As the official has said, we have been working on this for many months, so it is not about quickly putting it together, but it is about quickly making sure that everything that we are working on comes together in one place. I thought that we would have been working on it, but we are talking about 10 days, not even 10 days, 8 days. Are the guidelines that you have not talked to the coalition, are the guidelines quite clear, explicit, so that local authorities clearly understand what is expected of them? I do not think that I could do that within eight days, but I will make sure that everything that we have been working on comes together and that everybody that needs to be involved is involved. I am grateful to my colleague Liz Smith, because she sat through the committee, obviously hearing the evidence, and I came on the committee at the end of the evidence session. I have to say that I have been around this place for quite a long time, and I am sitting here with a heavy heart. I really do feel that, as Liam McArthur said, we are having a gun put to our head today. I do not feel confident in putting this forward. I just say that I had hoped, convener, that we would get clarity today. I have listened carefully, I have listened to all the questions, but, more importantly, I have listened to all the answers, and, instead of clarity, I have actually got more confusion. What really concerns me is that the continuing care order tells us that they have consulted COSLA, all the local authorities, Aberlour Trust, Barnardo's, Who Cares, etc. I do not know about COSLA, but we have a letter 12 minutes past 9 this morning from the continuing care coalition, and I have to say to two of the members from Aberlour and Barnardo who are in the audience today. They remain concerned. If they are concerned, we have no opportunity to go back to them to say, given that we know that they have not even been asked for your opinions, they have not even been consulted, we get a letter today saying they are concerned. I am very uncomfortable about this. It may be good legislation, but the implementation is rubbish. It has taken a year for us to get into this muddle. It has taken a whole 12 months to be confused and muddled. We are getting further meetings, ministers are going to go away and going to talk to people. That is great, because there is not a lot going on in the past year. We are getting further meetings, more guidelines, we get people remaining concerned, asking for secondary legislation and papers at 10 past 9 this morning. I want to put on record, I am sorry, I have put a lot of legislation through this Parliament. This is cross-party, this is not party political. My colleague Liz Smith and I support every single piece of this legislation. What we have seen this morning is poor by all standards, and I did want clarity. I have an open mind on this. I want to be supportive, but I want the third sector who care about this to have a voice, and they do not have a voice. I will put it on record, I will probably abstain. It is the best that I can do. Whatever happens, the majority in this committee is the majority. Hand on heart, this is not a good morning for legislation. If I can just respond to that, Ms Scanlon is saying that we have not involved the third sector. We have the shadow that we are looking at today as part of the order of the matters to be considered in the welfare assessment. That was consulted with the members of the coalition were part of that consultation. I was kicked off by Liam Kerr's question about the significant adverse impacts on the welfare described act. I interrupted Liam at that point. I know that you had other points to make, so I will come back to you. I think that there are some similarities. The point that a number of colleagues have made in relation to potentially creating adverse or perverse incentives on local authorities with provisions that I think radically improve the provisions for those going through the care system, which I think that all members have reconfirmed their unswerving commitment towards. I think that the concern for those of us in considering the bill at the time in relation to aftercare was that, at any stage, when you pick a point in time, be it the 16th birthday in this instance, you create the potential for a cliff edge. I think that that was acknowledged by the minister in the exchanges with us. I think that the coalition at the time illustrated the fact by saying that if we weren't careful, you would have potentially individuals in the care system for maybe 15 and a half years, then going out of the care system and not being eligible for the aftercare simply because they weren't in care at the 16th birthday. However, as we all know, individuals wax and wane in terms of the support that they need, and that's why those provisions were seen as so important. At the same time, somebody who might be three months ahead of their 16th birthday and found themselves going into care would be eligible for under the provisions of this act. It's significant after care up to the 26th birthday. I think that there was a recognition and a problem to resolve, but it was a problem that couldn't be resolved and the act had to be resolved in the orders. I think that what we've seen in a note in the policy memo coming with the order on the consultation that suggests that, in light of consultation responses, the draft provision, which would have extended eligibility for aftercare support to a further category of formerly looked after young people, is not being taken forward at this point in time until further evidence is gathered from the sector to ensure its deliverability. I don't think that any of us want to put in place something that is not deliverable. It may make us feel good in the short term, but medium term, longer term, it is in no one's interests. I think that what I'm struggling in terms of this order, which looks very, very different from the initial order that was consulted upon, which I think very much reflected the spirit, as well as the letter of what we passed in the act, is that there doesn't even seem to be an intimation of direction of travel. The coalition Abelau Bernardus and Who Cares have suggested even the prospect of tapering such that you build it back from the 16th birthday to start off with those who are 15, 14, 13, 12, 11. Over time, what you allow is a settling down of these new provisions, which are, I think, everybody would expect, a bit of a radical departure from what's there before. Without even any sign of that tapering, well, I know there are assurances that have been given in the exchange of letters with the coalition about the work that will be done over the coming months. It would have been more helpful, I think, had there been a signal within the order that at least the Government was moving in that direction, rather than what appears to be the case, that it's kind of been left in the too difficult box. I'm sure you'll appreciate the position that puts the committee in. I think that, like others, I've indicated Mary Scanlon, for example. I'm hugely supportive of the act. I think that it's one of the crowning achievements of this committee, the way that we worked with stakeholders and with the Government to deliver something that will be a massive improvement in terms of some of the most vulnerable in our society. However, I'm really concerned that, at the point of implementation, we seem to be seeing the Government stumbling in the way that it's approaching this. I can't, in all good conscience, vote for an order. I certainly won't stop it coming into being, because I think that you've articulated very well the consequences of that, and therefore we propose abstaining. However, I think that, again, we put on record my real concern at both what we've been presented with and the way in which that has happened. I think that we've managed to snatch from a victory of the legislative process, if not a defeat than something that taints the sense of achievement that we all felt. I think that I would hope that we can come out of this not feeling like that, because, like the committee, even though I wasn't involved in it, I thought that this was a fantastic piece of legislation. What it does now and what it gives us the ability to do in the future for young people, and especially care-experienced young people, is phenomenal. I hope that we can move beyond that. I quoted from the official record from when the minister was in front of the committee. The minister was absolutely clear that we would look at extending aftercare and continuing care to further cohorts of young people, but that would be over an extended period of time. We would look at that, so today I've given the commitment that the expert working group will start meeting in April to work on that, to look at it. We will look at the orders before us today, and we will extend aftercare and continuing care upwards to perhaps 26 years of age if the young person needs it. The order is extending. We are talking about extending backwards to 11 to 16-year-olds who have been in care but no longer in care on their 16th birthday. When we went out to consultation, it was about what came back from the stakeholders, from the providers and everybody saying exactly what you have been talking about, as to how we approach that. I've made the commitment today that the expert working group will meet in April and start working on a mapping exercise involving everybody, because there's nothing worse than making the promise that we'll do something if we can't deliver it, so we have to make sure that we get this right. I appreciate that. The original draft of the order may have been an ask too far in terms of deliverability, and I think that the minister, Eileen Campbell, put on record that she was looking to do this over a period. I wouldn't dispute that. What I think I'm concerned about is that there doesn't appear to have been in this order the beginnings of the step towards that. You set out a process whereby, hopefully, we will get to the point where that can be achieved. I think that what I would be looking for on the basis that the committee is going to be left in a position of passing those orders or not today is a commitment in terms of the time frame for delivery of that, and a commitment also for this committee to see sight of that. If the idea is to put that in place by the end of the calendar year, then, working back from that, we will need to see the text of that agreement in good time, rather than something that, well, it's the beginning, it's the end of the year, it may lapse over into the new year, there's no great difficulty with that. There is, frankly, and I think that with an election pending next year, while that won't stop things coming to a halt entirely, I think that it would be more than unfortunate given the position that we're in at the moment if we were to find ourselves desperately scrambling around to sign off things that one would have hoped to have been dealt with now. It would be useful to get a commit from you today, minister, about the time frame for coming back to the committee with revised wording on an order that gives us some confidence that feet will be kept to the fire once this committee session is seized. I'm quite happy to, in both senses, eyes the minister will want to be involved and kept up today on all the work that's going on with the expert working group, but I'm more than happy to make the commitment if the committee has room in its timetable to come back on a fairly regular basis to update you on where we are and how we're getting with it. To finish that point, the commencement order number one that's already on the statute book will allow the minister to take forward orders when we've worked out exactly how this is feasible, practical and doable to everybody's satisfaction. Indeed, and I don't doubt that there will be those resisting this, but I would be concerned that there will be those arguing that this is still too difficult and always will be too difficult, but the policy and temp of the act needs to be honoured and therefore those who are raising those objections at some point need to recognise that the will of this Parliament is to ensure that, not just that we pass the act, but that we ensure the implementation of it in keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the act. In the spirit of the act is that the expert working group will get everybody around the table working together so that we all come to an agreement. Can I just clarify again? What is the time frame for bringing forward additional orders to extend eligibility? When are we expecting to see those? The expert working group will convene in April. I mean, this is a huge mapping exercise that we have to go through, but I'm happy to say that by the end of the year, I or the minister will hopefully, if everything works out, be able to come and talk to you about it. The intention is to bring forward the orders by the end of the calendar year? I don't think that it would be right for me to say that before the expert working group starts the mapping exercise, but we have the ability, under commencement order number one, to bring forward the orders whenever we're able to do so. That's your hope? I would hope so. At the time when we debated the bill, one of the concerns on this particular order was from COSLA as to whether there was sufficient funding and resources in place to allow it to go forward. Can the Scottish Government give a commitment that that is the case? We're just at the beginning of this process with the expert working group sitting down, so we need to map out and work out. I mean, I think that we're talking about is that 900 young people would be eligible for aftercare, how many would take it up, et cetera, so that will be part of the mapping exercise to ensure that finances are available. And at what stage might we get a commitment on that? As soon as we know the figures and I'm able to sit down and work it out. I'll take other questions, but I want to wrap this up now. It was in response to the responses you got, convener, to the question about the timeframe. I mean, I don't doubt your commitment. I think that part of the problem has possibly been that we've had a change of minister between the act and the implementing orders. Any working group will have the framework set for it in terms of the expectations of what it's to deliver. I would be more comfortable were we to get something more than just a hope that the orders we've been placed by the end of the year. As I say, once we get into 2016 with an election pending, we all know that minds start to get focused on other things, that actually what we need to see by the end of this year are orders presented to this Parliament, that command the agreement of the working group, but actually that the working group has begun its deliberations. It's sure and certain in the knowledge that what is expected is a set of orders by the end of the calendar year, because the thing is that if it's remotely vague going in, you can be sure that, as eggs as eggs, somebody is going to find a way of running down the clock if they believe that this is too difficult to achieve. Can I summarise, convener? The expert working group will begin in April. I will set a deadline of reporting to me timmiously, but definitely by the end of this calendar year. I will commit myself to keeping in touch with it on a regular basis and bringing updates to the committee as and when the committee requires it. I thank you for your time on this, minister. I think that you'll understand the importance of the committee and the reason why we have spent so much time on this, given the background. I also thank you for your offer to come back to the committee and provide us with regular updates. Can I make an invite, hopefully on behalf of the committee, that you return to this committee before the end of April and your update is on the progress of the guidance? I have concerns, I'm sure that others do. I'm sure that it would be appropriate, if you don't mind, to come back before the end of April to discuss the guidance. We now move to item 5 on our agenda, which is the formal debate on the two affirmative instruments that we just discussed. Can I invite the minister to speak to and move motion S4M-12540 on the continuing care Scotland order 2015? Formally moved. Any contributions from members? I don't want to go back over what we've just done, but if anyone wants to make a very, very, very short comment, I'm quite happy to take it. Only to say, I think, that this aspect of this piece of legislation is something about which we all felt genuinely proud because of the way in which it came about. It's prompted by an award-winning campaign from the coalition. I would hope that we can still retrieve what all of us hoped we could achieve through that legislation, but I think that this hopefully has been a lesson to you minister and to your officials about the way in which you engage with this committee. We understand the deadlines that you're working to in terms of commencement orders, but the assumption that we will simply be able to vote things through because we're right up against the commencement order has not been helpful in terms of the relationship that this committee has with the Scottish Government. However, as I say, I fully appreciate the position that we're in. I won't be able to support the orders, but neither will I wish to see them fall, but with that I'll wrap up my remarks. Any other members at this stage? Mary Scanlon? I just want to put on record that I am supportive and my party is supportive of the legislation. I do not wish to repeat what I've said before, but I am very disappointed at the lack of clarity that we've received today. The word's kicking into the long grass is what comes to mind. I don't like this and I think really could do better comes to mind. By the end of the year, it's not good enough. They've already had 12 months. They also had years in consulting, preparing and looking forward to the legislation, but a few years down the line and we've still got another nine months to wait. I thank you, convener, for suggesting to come back to committee by the end of April. I very much support that and thank you for it. I just want to explain to you why I will be abstaining today. This is not in any way an illustration that I do not favour this legislation. My party is supportive and it's only due to the lack of clarity, clear information that we've received today that I will be abstaining on behalf of my party. I would just like to say along to what you have said and also what's been said by Liam that this is an important part of the work that the committee has done. It was a perfect example of committees—in fact, I think that I'm on record—a perfect example of seeing how committees can deal with legislation and influence it. For me, I can see that there's work that we still need to get done. I'm quite happy with the idea that the minister will be returning to come back to us again with the information and working with the third sector groups. I think that there was some issues with the coalition and we've got to the stage where the continuing care coalition is not exactly static, but they feel that they can actually work on the legislation again. We don't want to be in a situation where we lose the important parts of the legislation. It is literally life-changing legislation that we're talking about here. I think that we have to make sure that we take on board everything that's happened, but we are where we are and we have to deal with the situation but not lose the important parts that we know that the legislation can do. That's the thing that we need to bear in mind when we're deciding where we're going to go forward. I will be going to support what's in front of us at the moment and to look forward to working with the minister and others to make sure that we make this work, because that's the most important thing. It's not often that we can say that we've got legislation that can change people's lives to the extent that we're talking about, but that is exactly what this is and that's the bit that we've got to remember. I'll just add a short contribution to myself. I thank those members who have spoken both in the previous agenda item and in this one. I think that I understand the concerns of the committee given the work that we have done effectively since 2011 on looking after children and, of course, moving on to our inquiries and, indeed, the children's appeal bill, which eventually became the act. We treat that matter very seriously, as I'm sure you understand, as I'm sure the Government does as well. Obviously, we all have concerns, but I very much welcome your commitment to the work that's still to be done. I very much welcome your commitment to coming back to the committee and keeping us part of the loop and engaged in this process. I also accept the fact that, in a sense, the implications of not passing those orders are far greater than the implications of passing them, if I can put it that way. Therefore, I will be voting in favour of it, but I still leave the caveat about my concerns about where we have processed, undertaken and the positions that we've been left in. I still have those concerns, but I fully accept that the commitments that you have given and, indeed, the necessity for passing those orders today. With that, I will move on and ask the minister if she has any comments or responses that she wants to make. Only further to what we have said before, I will clarify that. In producing the 2 July legislation for you today, we have consulted widely, taken into consideration views that came back from stakeholders, and that's why the orders before you today are in the shape that they are. Thank you very much, minister. Therefore, I will now put the question that motion S4M-12540 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We're not all agreed, therefore there will be a division. Can I ask for those who wish to support motion S4M-12540 to show now? Those against and those who wish to abstain? On motion S4M-12540, there were five yes, zero for no and four abstentions, therefore that is passed. Can I invite the minister therefore to speak to and move motion S4M-12541 on the aftercare eligible needs Scotland order 2015? Thank you. Do any members wish to make a contribution at this stage on this one? Nope. Okay. I'll just move straight to the vote then. That motion S4M-12541 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed, therefore there will be a division. On motion S4M-12541, those who wish to vote yes, please show. Those against, abstain. On motion S4M-12541, five for yes, no for no, none for no, I should say. And four abstentions, therefore that motion is passed. Can I thank the minister and our officials for their attendance? I ask you to just remain at the table until we deal with the next item. Our next item is to consider a negative instrument as detailed on the agenda and on which we took evidence at item 4. Do members have any comments on the instrument? Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on the instrument? That's agreed. Thank you very much. I'll now suspend briefly. Our next item is to continue our work on education attainment by discussing the role of the third sector and the private sector in improving attainment and achievement for all school pupils, particularly those whose attainment is at the lowest level. Can I thank all those who provided us with written submissions? Very interesting indeed they were. And can I welcome to the committee Susan Quinn from the Educational Institute of Scotland, Angela Morgan from Wincludham, David Watt from the Institute of Directors, Alan Watt from the Princess Trust Scotland and Susan Hunter from Youth Links Scotland. We've got a reasonably big panel so hopefully we can keep our questions and answers fairly brief and can I apologise to the panel for keeping you waiting over the previous item but perhaps you'll caught a flavour of why you've been kept a little bit longer than you originally expected to be. So apologies for that. We have about an hour to deal with this particular item on the agenda therefore I'm going to go straight to questions from members and can I start with Mary Scanlon? Thank you. I have permission from the convener to refer to the Audit Scotland report. Oh, you haven't. Yes, I do, it's on the paper. We agreed privately. Just as an opening statement, the Audit Scotland report which very much focuses on attainment, I'm sure you're all familiar with it, but some schools have achieved better attainment results and their level of deprivation would indicate suggesting the gap between lowest and highest performing schools cannot be wholly attributed to different levels of deprivation. So that's probably my first question. We all know that it's linked to deprivation, but it's not the only issue. So if it's not all about deprivation, what else? My second point is really probably my main concern. And again I quote, there has been no independent evaluation of how much council spend on education and what this delivers in terms of improved attainment and wider achievement. So we're about to spend another £100 million of taxpayer's money, but according to Audit Scotland, we don't know the link between spending and attainment. So just on those two issues, if I could ask a response. I know which issues to kick us off on the panel. If you don't volunteer, I'll pick some days. Okay, I can move on to the next question. Alan. Thank you very much, convener. I think it was very interesting to note not always linked to deprivation. For me, when I talk to young people through Princess Trust Scotland, the thing that's most striking is a lack of aspiration and a lack of hope. And very often it's a belief that if they've missed out the first time round, that chance won't come back. I think that's very much brought home when you meet, for example, a 24-year-old who's moved on to an apprenticeship through one of our programmes who thought when they left school at 16 with no qualifications that that was it. So I think for me it's about an environment, whether that's at school, at home, in college, wherever it is that keeps saying to a young person, you can progress, you can move on. So in answer to that first question, I think it's where you've got teachers, youth workers, organisers at the Princess Trust, like Includum, who are able to give people that sort of desire to move on to the next level. And you know, we see that in all sorts of different schools. It doesn't really matter. In terms of the independent evaluation, I think obviously very hard for me to comment on the specifics of the latest proposal. I haven't looked at that in a great deal of detail. And I think we need to look at things in the round. It's not just about the education spend. It's about the wraparound support. I think that that's a point that's made by a number of the written submissions. Let's look at the investment in young people in total. And sometimes it's, let's think about it as an investment. So we can actually invest in young people for a long-term future and it will cost more money sometimes to get the right result. It's not all about deprivation. The education budget is a huge budget over 32 councils. 100 million over three years could very easily be absorbed and we've got no way of measuring the spend and relating it to attainment. So it would be helpful, convener, if the panel members could give us some indication as to where they feel the money would be best invested. I want to think about it for that second. Susan, from the IS. From the IS's point of view, the key to where the money needs to be spent is in long-term projects. The difficulty you have often is that, as I'm sure my colleagues will agree here, that projects start, they see some improvements and then they spend either goes elsewhere or is prioritised elsewhere and I think that's one of the challenges we face. We know that 20-something years ago, when I started teaching that the likes of home link workers were key within areas of the city that I work in and yet because they were an easy target when it came to budget cuts in the 80s, they were lost from the system and now we see that we're beginning to consider that actually those are areas where great improvement can be made. Some of it is about how you maintain projects over an extended period of time rather than looking for quick fixes and if you're looking for that, then you go beyond it. In terms of the, if not all about deprivation, then what else? It's about the aspects of deprivation and what is considered within that and the aspirations and the reason, the aspirations of communities as well as the young people themselves within schools. It's not, if you can't see a way out of poverty because there's more to it within your own community, then you need to look at that side of it so you need to consider all angles to the deprivation and all angles to what is there. Again, it's about the ability for all young people to be able to access a wide range of opportunities and, as we heard in the previous debate, to be able where it's appropriate to target the supports that they need so that it's not about a one-size-fits-all. Not every community will require to have a particular project within their area but the projects need to be able to be sustained beyond it. Being able to track the spend on education against attainment is, I guess, for treasuries and financial departments to consider how that might be done, but I would suggest, as I on did, that it's not just about the education spend on it, that there is more involved in raising attainment in relation to deprivation and the barriers that that brings to it than just what you spend within your schools. Angela? Building on what colleagues have already talked about, I mean I can only speak from inclusion's experience which is of course partial, but nonetheless I think what we see is that each school that we work alongside is different and that difference is mainly created by the leadership of the school. So what we found is most successful is to be able to adapt our very flexible service to fit with what the school has already created in terms of the recognition of barriers to attainment for their pupils. I think the key areas have been to help to address the barriers for the child, equally important to address the barriers for the parent in their role in supporting the child and also in their role in communicating effectively with the school because this is often one of the areas that causes most difficulty for teachers and I think through doing that what we're able to do is to then help the teachers to do the best job they possibly can because of course the limits of their role are within the school day and within the school environment and I think there are two different scenarios which emerge. One is when it's known that there's a problem at home maybe because there's been a previous sibling and the problems are known but the school maybe has no control over how those problems are worked through. Equally as likely we find that we're asked to work with a family and a child when the staff know that there's something wrong but nobody's been able to get behind those closed doors and really find out what that is and I think through doing that often it's in those cases that we've been able to have the most impact because if we find that within that actually the problems are not really to do with the child they're often to do with the family mental health problems with the mum debt a housing problem and very commonly core problems with family relationships and how families communicate with each other through addressing those issues which are not education issues as such we're then able to stabilise to help the child to re-engage and to attend it's as basic as making sure the child actually gets there every day at the right time in clean clothes hopefully having had some breakfast and then support the parent in appropriate communication which then builds their confidence because very often these parents have had a very poor experience of education themselves they lack confidence they are resistant and that of course is then communicated to the child who doesn't get support they need really in the most important aspect of their life going forward. Chairman, a number of perhaps disjointed thoughts but I actually welcome the point that's made it. I think there's a tendency in this country to say that we've got an educational problem let's spend more money which is just simply not the result it doesn't actually work and if you look at a variety of places around the world that actually doesn't happen I've listened at length recently quite a lot to Graham Donaldson the former chief inspector of HMI a lot of very sage words coming from him I think and somebody I'm sure you've spoken to I certainly recommend speaking to you in a number of way fronts and there's still a bit having said that what goes into school comes out of it and there's no question that where we have managed to change that model then we should be following these examples of good practice going back further than that obviously the work that Susan Deacon and others did in the early years is still to be commended and there's no question that investing there is the place to invest even for us in the industry that we would say that recognising that's a bit of a problem because we've got a number of young people in that generation we're missing out but early years is still the way to make the longer term changes in the biggest single determinant factor whether you go to university or not as we know. I think there's an issue also about what we consider attainment and I in my view it should very much be focusing positive outcomes it should not be focused on qualifications we should stop measuring schools and qualifications but actually the positive outcome for young people's education is about life and work it is not about qualifications it really isn't about that at all and final point I very much agree with the last point and made it as a weaiders was kind of the institute of directors that the leadership is crucial and if you look at good schools all across the UK for examples a lot of good examples in London is now we're all aware of but actually if you have every single one that I've seen identified or had any association with I've seen any coverage of it's always been a very erudite focused head teacher that's really driven that forward so I think that's important and final point as well going back to Graham Donaldson talks about it quite a lot as well we tend to also talk about class sizes and numbers here of teachers there's an awful lot of evidence actually it's the quality of the teacher and not the quantity of the teacher that actually makes the difference Mr Beatty put that phone off please and I suppose my final point very much was it would be we absolutely need to focus our spending on what actually works we do from reports like that we do know some of the things that work let's focus on that and really well I think again I think that we fundamentally believe and I probably repeat it several times we should just not have the number of young people leaving without the basic life skills leaving schools that we do and it's all of our responsibility to do something about it and obviously we'll talk about how we may address that later okay thank you Susan I think for my position at Youth Think Scotland we'd be thinking of our education system as being just beyond schools and also to include learning that takes place in other settings in particular from our perspective in youth work and in terms of what else beyond deprivation I think it is as colleagues have mentioned around leadership it's that leadership's ability to seek an opportunity and that opportunity may be for youth work it may be for for working with business but it's about doing something differently and being brave to aspire so that young people can see that there is a different route for them to develop and and look at themselves as a whole person and we also need to make sure that we don't just consider young people as pupils but we consider them as young people in all aspects of their life and wherever that learning can take place because all of those factors will contribute towards their the retainment excuse me David what mentioned the London challenge I'm pleased you did because EIS are not very impressed as I'm reading about the London challenge must be treated with caution elements of the private and third sector don't fit with the structure and values at the heart of Scottish education any proposal for private sector involvement to Scottish education must be carefully evaluated so with you both on the panel today I would be keen to hear your views on that certainly the First Minister seems to welcome many aspects of the London challenge but convener might just to finish I'm also concerned that well I'll just read this out again some councils test pupils in P1357 and S2 and others less frequently but at a council level in Scotland there's no consistent approach to tracking and monitoring the progress of pupils from P1 to S2 so that's a concern it's also a concern that pupils are working at their expected level of numeracy is 0.2% of P4 pupils 2% of P7 are working at sorry not working at expected level so 98% are working at their level of numeracy in P7 when that gets to S2 two years later that falls to 65 so what's happening between primary and secondary schools that there's such a dip and that's all that we ask of the is is not against any of the proposals within the london challenge but as with everything we have caution the london challenge was a four-year project which was focused in the secondary age group of youngsters it's now finished within london there was a significant spend in terms of taking it forward and when it was transported wholesale to other cities it did not see the same impact in those areas and so it's about that caution in bringing in anything wholesale to Scotland that was designed and worked within a particular other setting of course there will be aspects within it that are for good consideration and we met only last week with the cabinet secretary to consider some of the things that are being looked at within it within the Scottish system in terms of the private sector again it's not about the wholesale dismissal of it there are again great examples and lots of work that go on within our schools but it's about the fact that it needs to be managed within the schools within the operations of local authorities and within consideration of that so it's not about wholesale dismissal of these things but also not about just thinking that a one-size-fits-all and because it worked for four years in london we can transport it to Scotland put it into a totally different setting because we are looking at early intervention at this stage and think that it will work if we just mirror exactly what's there and that's where our caution comes from. The elements don't fit with the structure and values at the heart of Scottish education but elements don't fit with the Scottish education. Well the wholesale move to academies and free schools where you within the English system are ones that we would find difficult as an option in terms of setting with the private and third sector input and that's the private and third sector input into academies and free schools. There are the consortiums of academies where they're funded and run by private sectors by private companies. There are options and difficulties around that in terms of what sits within the Scottish system. What we have here is a system which allows for a Scottish curriculum being delivered at local level so that it can meet the needs of the young people that are there. There are difficulties around the tracking systems that you talk about within the fact that they say that there's no consistent approach. As far as I can see, some local authorities have moved to take account of the new proposals around assessment and moderation within the curriculum as it has been developed and have moved away from only simply considering attainment as being the scores on the doors. That's where there are differences in terms of how they track their attainment within their own local areas. So some areas will still have use of a standardised test, but I would suggest that if that's the only aspects that they're using then they're doing exactly what we don't want them to do, which is they're setting out a system which only looks at attainment in very narrow areas but not looking at the achievement of their schools, not taking into account what is there within the wider options that show what the curriculum was designed to do. We're all in this room fiercely proud of Scottish education, but that doesn't mean that we should be coming by anopic. We gave it to the world, but sometimes the world can teach us other lessons as well. We should look at London and other examples of options where we can do things. There are examples already in Scotland where the private sector and certainly the third sector create significant opportunity in education as well and support both inside and outside school young people. It's really important to remember that as well, but we really should look for evidence for other places. For example, Sweden, which adopted a system, I probably would have advocated until I heard about it, which was devolving full-scale management to the headteachers and they've adopted OECD rankings from 50th to 20th over a 20-year period in doing that. I'm going to be cautious about what we're adopting and not adopting, but if there's evidence that other things are going on, we should certainly be looking at it. I think that the final point that I would make is that we are fiercely enthusiastic about curriculum for excellence, some reservations, but in general principle I think that it's fantastic. The reason I support it so strongly is because it's turned, I hope, secondary education away from teaching subjects to teaching young people, and I hope that we will then develop young people through that, and that everybody, no matter their level of attainment, will improve as a result. There's a lot to be done to make that actually happen, but as a former teacher myself, a long time ago, we did in secondary education focus too much on learning French as opposed to developing young people. I think that we've moved away from that. I think that it's very welcome. I think that there will be positive outcomes, but we all need to keep focusing on it. Please, please, please keep looking at the evidence and not just even, as I say, my dogma will be in the Swedish model, and I accept that it probably wasn't a good idea. Really, just to pick up following on from David's last point, an earlier point that he made about early years and investment in early years, which we'd absolutely support, but the evidence also shows that it's absolutely essential to do early intervention at all stages. We think that the opportunity for the transition between primary and secondary schools is one where particularly a focus on what's happening at home, on working with parents and children, to prepare for that, to gear them up for that major shift, one of those points where vulnerable children and young people tend to fall off the edge, really demonstrates that it's worth making. You can make an early intervention at any point, both to improve individual outcomes and to prevent worse things happening. You can only make an early intervention if you know that there's an issue that needs to be addressed. My point is that if there's no continual assessment of children from nursery, in fact I think that nurseries are doing very, very good work, I think that they're probably better, but not always getting the support that they need, but if we don't know, if we're not assessing and continually assessing and consistently assessing, we don't know where there's a problem until they leave schools, so it's all very well saying, yes, we'll put in measures, but what we heard in the Audit Committee is that many councils are buying very expensive private tests from England and there's no way of evaluation or peer comparisons or anything, so my point is that unless we know there's a problem, we can't then address it, and that's what I'm looking for, that has to be the first step, identifying who needs support and who needs a home link worker or whatever. Susan Quinoghart, you're incorrect to suggest that there's no assessment going on, but across the country and across local authorities, they use a different system for assessing attainment. Within every single establishment, within every single classroom, there is continuous assessment, and if you were to ask any teacher— There's no consistent approach is what I'm reading from your ear—about how local authorities are measuring that they know, but within every local authority, they will have their own policy for how they do that. Within every single classroom, within every single early years establishment, a whole range of assessments go on. Every teacher would be able to tell you any child who they felt were having difficulties with it. There, within Audit Scotland, is around what local authorities are measuring and how the approaches they do. They have always had a range of strategies. When we had national assessments, there were still local authorities that spent thousands and thousands of pounds on standardised tests, because it was part of a toolkit for assessing everything that's there. There is a whole range of ways of assessing what is needed and what's there, which is how we would know and how schools do know if they need to look for other approaches. It's why they do use third sector and private sectors in a whole range of different ways. What's difficult sometimes within establishments is to know what's available and what's appropriate within their area. Work can be done around that, and it's being done in terms of getting it right for every child and making sure that local solutions are available for local children. However, in terms of the knowledge and understanding of each individual child and whether or not there needs to be early intervention, schools need to know where that's needed. Schools just need to be able to know where they can access it. I should go back and say that one of the pluses of working alongside the third sector is that it's where, if we are able to do so in a manner where schools know how to access it, quite often will be the case that a family will engage with a third sector organisation in a really positive way because there's no threat of formality. If we go through social work and say that we're going to use it, because often it will be a third sector group that will be there, there will be resistance because social work is saying the hefty. However, if there's a proposal between the partnership of the school and the home through third sector, then it's often received in a much more positive way because they don't feel threatened by it. I'm going to bring in Matt Kerr as well. Issues around measuring achievement rather than attainment and talking about young people's life and work experience and skills that they've gained outside of the school and education system. However, a lot of the evidence that we've had is pointing towards local authorities having difficulties in recognising those skills and that achievement that young people have had outside of the school. Members are able to give any opinion on how local authorities can recognise that achievement and how likely it is that schools, employers, colleges and universities start to have a greater weight to that achievement when it comes to offering young people positions. Thank you for asking that question. It's something that we're particularly interested in as many of our organisations are part of the awards network, which is a forum around supporting achievement awards. Some of those are credit rated on to SCQF and others aren't. As a sector, we're concerned that the use of insight, which is the benchmarking tool, can only cope with those awards that are SCQF credit rated. Things such as the Gvedinburgh award and the highest award in scouting are not credit rated in that way, but they are awards that are recognised by business, by employers, by universities as having real currency as an indicator of young people's skills. Something that we're particularly interested in is about empowering the young people to be able to articulate their own skills and their learning so that they are their best advocates that it's to be for themselves. We would want that the learning that the young people undertake, whether that's in the classroom or within youth work, is that the young person understands what it is that they have achieved and how they can translate that to a different audience, whether that be an employer, to their parent, to their class teacher, around what it is that they learn and what they are able to do. Young person's voice is something that's being developed very much within classrooms at this point. It's a high priority within the curriculum and being able to articulate what they're learning. One of the things that, when schools are inspected at this point, is very highly considered by the inspection teams. It's not just that they're less interested any more in the bits of paper that say what the schools say they're doing, but that the young people can articulate in the exact same way as their teachers, hopefully, can what it is that's going on within their classrooms and out with it that's having an impact in their learning. I think that Susan is right. It's about us trying to find ways to include these wider achievements within the likes of insight and, given that broader recognition to it, I think that there's also been moves. More recently, we have heard where universities are beginning to give weight not just to the qualifications that the highers and advanced highers that young people are getting, but are beginning to look for the wider conversation of what they've achieved. There is some work there that's beginning to happen, but there's an awful lot to be done around the fact that the focus on qualifications—we've seen that recently in terms of the high profile of the introduction of the first year of the new qualifications—compared to perhaps what the media were interested in in the 10-plus years of the introduction of the broad general education. I think that there's a lot to be done in terms of how we promote wider achievement to the wider Scottish society. It's just interesting that we had 350 young people with us at Hamden two weeks ago at an event that we called Welcome to Your Future. We had about 40 different employers and they'd come from the 100 or so Excel clubs that we run in schools across Scotland. What was interesting there was just giving young people access to the jobs that are out there. Here's what you will need to do those jobs. Most of the employers weren't starting from the point of view of particular qualifications. There was an attitude that they were looking for. There was a certain range of experiences that they might want to see. What I think that does is it helps young people to ask the right questions. At the moment, it is very much framed around about just putting in the qualifications and we've all written a CV. You're starting to think about what sort of person am I and trying to capture that and giving people the belief in themselves and a lot of the activity that they've taken with either youth organisations or with the Prince's Trust or some of the activities that they've done in school, if they can present that in a way that's attractive to employers, but they need to understand what it is that the employers are looking for. That's what we'll start to close that gap between people's perception that they've got no skills and nothing to offer and what employers are actually looking for. It's unfair to expect just teachers or parents to know what the jobs are. The jobs of the future will be very different. It's one of the very positive things of bringing the third sector and then groups of employers together just to show people that there are choices and opportunities for you. Colin Beattie. I'd like to expand a wee bit on some of the points that have been touched on there. We've heard various submissions that seem to indicate that there's a discrepancy between what schools and parents see as valuable and what the employers see as valuable. We touched on that just now, but it appears that, according to the submissions that we've received, that schools, further education institutions and parents seem to value much more highly the academic qualifications, whereas employers, as was touched on, are looking for social skills, attitude and a much wider approach. How can that gap be bridged? I was going to actually relate to some of the feedback that I was making on the previous point as well. First of all, it would be lovely if politicians and the media in particular didn't focus on academic league tables in terms of how they rate schools. There might be an opposite, I would suggest. There might be a literacy league table that schools that shouldn't be allowed to let young people blissfully leave until they can read, write and spell appropriately—spellings might be gone but at least read—but it's a serious issue. I mean, genuinely, I get all the time from employers, it's basic literacy. Most employers do not want, do not expect anybody, wherever they come from, school, college, university to be ready to work, to be ready to do the job, they expect them to be ready to work, and that's a quite a different thing. I'll expand on that in a minute. I also think that we need to be, as I said earlier, it's about a positive destination. I think that schools should be made to record in the way that colleges, universities, quite clearly, over a period of time what the destinations of these young people are. So they actually track them along, and I'm not talking about it, and I absolutely would at the point. Constantly, I'm now being with the IOD—it's somewhat unbelievable to me as well—12 years, and in 12 years I have never had anybody, never had anybody knock on my door and say, I can't find a graduate. It just never happened. But I have had them say, I can't find a mass spectrometer technician. I can't find an apprentice engineer. I can't find engineers of any sort. I could go on. A whole variety of trades and skills that people want. We're all concerned. We're particularly concerned about the construction trade during the recession, and there's still some challenges coming out of that as well. So absolutely, I think that we focus far too much on this country, if I'm honest, about going to university. It's not the be all and end all, and it's not necessarily the career for everybody. Many young people, many bright people, many of the best, most successful people in this country didn't go to university at all or went later in life. Jim McCall and others are examples of that. So I think that we need to change some of our traditional thinking. Education is not just about going to university. It's a lifelong experience that we can all still keep doing as well, and employers help with that once you're employed. But your basic point is absolutely, employers want somebody who literally can read, write and count very basically, who will get up in the morning and attend their workplace, who understands what working is like, which is why I think the Wood Commission and other reports about, in moment, basically you can leave school in Scotland having done one week of work experience. I mean, that's just madness. I mean, how does one week teach you anything about anything? And it depends where you get it and how you get it. So it's a massive job for us in the private sector to do as well at engaging with schools and, indeed, perhaps colleges and universities and changing the model of education that engages young people. They actually understand what it's all about and gives them the opportunity and opens the rise, as was mentioned, to the opportunities that are out there. And they're not all about academic achievement. They are about achievement, they're about doing things. And I think the other thing that relates again to last point, I think schools again, and this is happening to be fair, it's their personal record of achievement that matters. Not the number of qualifications you've got to end on that, but, you know, how, I mean, glintless, with how many days you've been off school, you know, are you, Timmyus, do you turn up in time? Are you consistent? Are you enthusiastic about things you do even if you're not good at them and so on? All these things would all want in people working beside us. And I think that school can record what kids can do, and it doesn't mean them, they need to be the brain of Britain. They just need to be consistent deliverers of that, and that really does count. And let's write that down and record achievement and attainment, in that sense, not academic achievement. And I said earlier that family relationship problems often lay at the root of many of the situations we work in, and, you know, although every situation we work with is different, there's always an issue about family relationships and difficulties. And I think that the features that are, if you like, desirable to employers are the same features that help functional families stay together. So, in effect, I think, by working with families around their own social skills, their communications, the boundaries between parents and children, and indeed self-management. And by that, I mean self-management, not just for the child, but for the parent. We can then set a bit of a grounding to find maybe that one thing that a child or young person might believe that they're good at. And I think that that has to be the stepping stone to find the talent, to find the interest, be it sport, arts, that allows them to get some praise and recognition. And I think then from that, you can build up a virtuous circle, because I think unsurprisingly, you know, children develop sort of reputation within schools for not for being difficult, for not being good. Teachers have got classes, they've got, you know, that whole group to look after. You know, and the children who are presenting difficulties then reinforce the view of them. And I think if we can break into that, what we've found again is a real shift in relationships between children and their teachers. And then teachers actually feel more confident about their skills in responding back to some of these children with difficulties, and we've found some very interesting feedback around that, the schools that we're working with. So I would absolutely agree that I think it's essential that the outcomes need to be recognised as far greater than attainment. I mean, I think the GERFEC framework gives a fantastic opportunity for that, the use of the Shinari indicators, the methodology around wellbeing web, which helps a young person to track their own progress and see how well they've developed in really important areas like anger management. And that really gives the bedrock, it's the personal skills, which really are required for living in communities, working in workplaces, and then hopefully going on to create future functional families. I'm starting with saying that schools only focus on qualifications because that's sadly what they get measured on by pretty much everybody else. And so that's why there's a whole lot of other things going on in schools, which people don't hear about in the same way, because it's not what, at this point, although we hear business wants particular aspects and whatever, it's not what's sexy in terms of the media that we're doing these things within our schools, and we do, we do certainly aspire to make sure that there's a bit more balance between what the qualifications aspect and the formal qualifications, the historic formal qualifications also are there, because that's what schools get measured on. I think that one of the things that we need to move forward with are about the range of opportunities that our young people are experiencing, and the development around the Scotland Young workforce provides us with a framework to engage in conversations to get a balance between the formal traditional academic and the vocational, because, you know, we wouldn't want to see a position where it was either or. There's a balance to be had there. People will be able to come and go within the range and have something which is tailored to them, but also some of it is about education of a wider society around what the new qualifications are about. We still focus on spelling and handwriting and things. In modern day, we have to ask, where do they sit in it? Are they 75 per cent of the priorities that they were when I was at school, or are there other things now and is there a balance to be had about it? Within that, you look at the wider range of opportunities for actual formal academic qualifications that young people are being offered where they can do maths, which is life-skill maths, but yet we hear that it's not being given the same credibility as having a maths qualification. There's an education out there around the new aspects and the developing aspects of qualifications that need to be taken account of, too, because those are the qualifications that young people that we're discussing here this morning will be engaging with. Life skills, maths and literacy work are about the day-to-day life, exactly what business we're looking for, but yet we don't give them the same academic levels, but we don't give them the same credence. There is this division between what the employer's expectation is and perhaps what the parents and schools are looking for. Are schools likely to have the infrastructure or the time to deliver the non-academic skills that the employers are looking for? They do what they do within the structures that are there, which is why we work alongside third sector and others in supporting that. We heard that class sizes aren't the answer to everything. The IAS would argue that class sizes and numbers of teachers make a difference where you're engaging with smaller groups. There needs to be opportunities for that to happen, but schools are timetabling and hopefully as we move to a situation where the full roll-out of the senior phase and the intended principles of curriculum for excellence are seen will provide space within timetables to engage in wider achievement and the wider life skills projects that need to happen. At the moment, what we've got in lots of places is just a duplication of the old system of qualifications. As we move forward and the recommendations from the reflections group on the qualifications and the work that's going through the CFE management board, should see us with a position where, properly resourced, that will free up the time to do it because you'll be taking a different approach to how the qualifications are. The University of Scotland has referred in their evidence that private schools are very good at producing carefully crafted statements with high status relevant content, whereas pupils from state schools seem to receive a lot less assistance in composing their statement. They struggle to draw it on suitable work-and-life experience, which comes back to what we were talking about previously. They also contain a lot of writing errors, I believe. How can schools best present pupils' skills and abilities to employers, colleges and universities? How can they best do that? I think that I go back to giving young people access to those opportunities and just seeing what the jobs might be. There are whole sectors out there that young people don't understand. Even the ones that they do think that they understand are things such as retail or hospitality. We've all been to a shop, we've all been to a hotel, we've all been to a restaurant, but understanding what that career involves and how that career could be structured, and therefore what I've done at school, what I've done in a youth organisation, what I've done perhaps in other third sector organisations, I've been able to reflect that. That's one element. Second is, of course, many schools and certain environments can just give people so much more support. They have had somebody who's been to that university who understands exactly what's required, so having mentors and, again, Princess Trust and other organisations have access to a large number of people who are willing to give up their time to support young people. Again, with the assistance of schools, you can find ways to bring that extra support into the school, especially when someone either needs to make that university application or to apply for the jobs. I think that there's resource out there that we don't tap into as well as we could, but, again, my central point would just be to show young people the chances and the opportunities and I think that they will respond. We did ask young people last week when I was sitting with a group what would really get you sort of motivated. One thing was they did say that it's a very confusing alphabet of qualifications, so at the moment what did you study at school and they struggle sometimes to tell you what qualifications they got because was it an old standard grade, an MC, and they find that difficult to cope with. The second thing was they said, well, the headteacher, you know, if we actually said that if the headteachers were performance managed on the basis of how many of us got a job, that would be an interesting thing to look at. So I hate to put another layer of performance measure, but, again, it was just, as long as they felt that the leader, it goes back to this point, but if they feel that the leadership of the school is genuinely interested in that child's long term future, that will turn them on as well. Rodi, you're on this. Yeah, I mean, coming back to this business of qualifications in terms of, you know, said before I have whore targets and improved performance outcomes, I think, are the way to go. Just in achieving that, though, I mean, what role, we mentioned earlier, the role of parents, I think, including mentioned, attainment, resources need to be invested in parent-school relationships. I mean, they're not good, are they, parent-school relationships in general? I mean, I know that we might have some children that need help and things like that, but in general— It will depend on the area and it will depend on the parents. There are pockets of school— Why does it just depend on parents? Well, sometimes it will depend on the parents' attitude to school themselves. If you've had a bad experience of school, if you don't have that approach to, you know, a positive approach to it, then you're going to stay away from it. You don't want to engage and that's where, as I say, there are great opportunities for working with third sector because it can help to build that too. Schools work really, really hard to try to develop links with parents and the difficulty—there are a whole range of options difficulties on it. What I was going to say was that parental involvement and the level of engagement of parents also has the impact on Mr Beatty's question around how those who are in the private sector are able to produce better statements and things because there is definitely a link with how much of that is done in school and how much of it actually is done through families and through the work that's there. There's a lot of work to be done with that. Some of it will be generational around adding a like school, so I'm not going to go back to school. If parents only get called to school, if they're in some trouble. Some of that's about breaking down those barriers and you see loads of opportunities for sharing and celebrating success, which gets parents into schools now and gives them a much more positive experience of it. Does it come back to the situation that we just talked about in terms of qualifications that parents are also driven by those that are interested, driven by qualifications and not the wider societal outcome that we expect? Again just one other question on that. It's just the wider outcome in terms of the role of youth like in terms of, I was surprised to find the number of members that the boys brigade have when I had a meeting with them here and also the Scouts organisation and the Girl Guides. Again, who drives that? What involvement? How do we encourage parents to get involved in these type of organisations that can add the wider outcome? Particularly at the uniformed organisations, many of their volunteers come through young people having been participants in that programme themselves and they continue evolution into contributing their time to help other young people. They do start to have that better understanding of the wider skills and attributes and values that young people can develop beyond the school gates. On Friday evening, I attended the Scottish Borders Inspire Awards and that was a recognition of volunteering. There were 18,000 hours of volunteering undertaken by young people in the Scottish Borders and in that audience were parents. That was really important that parents could see that the opportunities that were available, the ones that their own child participated in, but the ones that others are and how that builds to be beyond just what has been done within school. However, some of that work was done in partnership with school and that is equally important. I want to expand on that. The role of the third sector is not just about what happens in the school as well. It is about the uniformed girls' guides, girls brigade, BBs and scouts. They all do work in the past, but things have been repackaged now and there seems to be a lot of good work happening out there that is attainment based, but they are using sport and drama and the arts as a way to try to get to the harder to reach children. Where is the role for the third sector? The third sector is effectively doing that, so where is the role with that third sector working with schools to try and get those children to make sure that we can get them into the right career path? Those opportunities require really effective partnerships locally between all the education providers that are involved, such as the school, the arts organisation and the youth organisation, so that there is a real understanding of what the needs of that cohort of young people are or that community needs and making sure that what the third sector offers is responsive to an identified need and making sure that that programme is delivered in partnership but that all the learning is recognised and valued by all the partners involved. Susan made the point in her very first comment that when you have programmes and opportunities like that, you need funding over a longer term to make them a success. For schools to commit to work in an alternative way, it has to work beyond the financial year, because the school year is different from the financial year in the first instance, so you may only have a programme for half of your school year, but you also need to be able to timetable for the year ahead so that you know that there will be a cohort of young people who could benefit from some sort of alternative curriculum or an expansion of curriculum for excellence that is delivered by a partner organisation. We have written those conditions in our response, so you can look at what it would take for those partnerships to be effective over the longer term. I think that I would heartily agree with that. I was very struck. We had the Chief Executive of the Council, which was described as a visit to one of our schools at Ranexcel clubs, which is a Princess Trust programme. It makes the space in the curriculum that people might drop a subject like French that they are maybe not seeing much benefit from. Instead, it is built into the curriculum that they do, community work that they do, personal development that they might do, work experience. He visited two Excel clubs one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The one in the morning is very chaotic and quite difficult for the teacher and the Excel adviser. The one in the afternoon was performing brilliantly as a team, a real sense of cohesion, a real sense of enjoyment and aspiration. The difference was that one was the year one club and one was the year two club. To that point, those kinds of problems must be run over a consistent period of time. Most important is that they have proper follow-on. One of the things that we are doing at the moment is following the wood commission, is to look at how we then take young people from some of those programmes into our employer-based programmes with a marks and expenses on a normal clerk, just to give them real opportunities for jobs that they can grab on to. Unless they can keep that journey moving, the dangers that people drop through the cracks at some point, and we might not see them again for three or four years, they might come from the job centre when they are 20 and they will be missing. Having long-term commitments in school, but also making sure that those next steps, when they are not the traditional academic linear route, are thought through and there are opportunities through the third sector and the private sector to move on to. I think that in terms of the behind-the-scenes work with the parents, it is really important, and we are very conscious of this, that we do not want to only be effective while we are there supporting the parents to support children into these other opportunities. Our aspiration has to be for a sustainable solution, so that is why we will look at doing things like working separately with the parent away from the child on their skills in supporting a child with their homework, for example. Otherwise, what happens is, if a service like House moves away from the home, that might not be visible because we are not so visible to the schools as some of the other services that are physically located, then all the work that has been done by the school alongside other partners can quickly collapse. Having a sustainable approach, which is the investment in the family and in the parents' skills, then in the longer term supports a young person and indeed, hopefully, their siblings following after. Two parts to it from what my colleagues have said. The first part is around the knowledge of schools, of what is out there, because some of it will depend on who within a local authority has a comprehensive list of what is available within their area and that shearing of information in that catalogue, if you like, of what is available in different areas so that schools can then target and approach it and build it into what they are planning for and try to look at that long term. The other part, particularly in secondary schools at this point, I suppose, is about how you then start to create the time for it to be within the school day. As I said earlier, part of that will be around the move to the qualification stage, the senior phase becoming a three-year senior phase, which allows for longer time to focus on everything. You are not doing your hires over a quick one-year nine-month period but you are doing it over a two-year period, which then allows for you to get a bit more depth to the knowledge and understanding of those actual qualifications but frees up a bit of time to be able to engage in wider achievement programmes that will have a different impact on your life chances. There are different parts to it. Basically, it is funny that Susan Hunter brought up the idea of working in partnership, because in Renfrewshire there is the street stuff, which is Renfrewshire Council, the local football clubs in Murrin, the police, fire and rescue and engage Renfrewshire, the third sector. It has been very successful in using street football and other street buss, a gym, and everything else. Is there any way that they deal with a lot of hard-to-reach children that are difficult for schools, difficult for everyone else to be able to engage with? It is because of the credibility of that St Murden tracksuit. Whether it be strokes to St Murden put it anywhere else or anywhere else, it will be that. Football teams can attract it. So, am I being too sensible here and too practical when I say, is there any way that we could possibly, when you are talking about the partnership working, get all these groups together and take that idea to the next level? I know that the funding is available. We already do funding in various things but there is not a way. We could get them all working together to use that as an access point to ensure that we get these young people. I think that it was mentioned by a witness a couple of weeks ago that there was a young boy that they had difficulty engaging with at school. They found out that he was a boxer. The minute that they actually dealt with him from that perspective, they found out that he was very disciplined, knew about health and nutrition and they got him on the right track again. So, is there any way that we can try and get all these, because you said that partnership working was extremely important, is there not a way that we can get a programme like that, which is happening all over the country and trying to make it larger? Does that mean that it has been far too sensible? I think that there is that but there is also about it being responsive to local needs and even more local on that than individual needs. The example that you have given of that one young person. If you were to develop a boxing programme and put it into the local authority, probably it would not work, because that was the thing that hooked and connected and created a language and a dialogue between a professional and a young person around a specific interest. I think that there is no shortage of creativity as to whatever that who-kiss is there. As Susan said about the catalogue of what they offer is, quite often the offer is not yet created, so it is not in the catalogue. It is about knowing who those professionals are that have something to offer to the lives of young people in their community and creating something with the young people that is really going to make a difference to them. However, the issue around funding of such programmes is that probably in the examples that you have met, you have said that there is no devolution of funding from the school resource into working with those young people. That funding has come in from external funders, from charitable sources, direct from Scottish Government, whatever it means, and that is the challenge that the third sector has in that sometimes there is a feeling that it is great to work in partnership with school, but they have sought that funding first and then gone chopping on the door of the school to say, we have got this money, we have got this great idea, we would like to run this with young people in your school or in our shared community. There is something about seeing the value of what those offers are and considering that as preventative spending, and Alan said earlier about investing in young people and that is what youth work does at investing in young people. David, do you have anything to add? I do not see a connection between Sturgeon and football, but I get back to my background previously, which was sport and recreation. One night, we could solve a lot of the problem that we are talking about if we are actually to take some of our health spending and put it into schools between three and five or four and six and have voluntary activities, and I am involved in all the Scottish Sports Futures. I am on the board of Scottish Sporting Futures, which deals with basketball in the same area, as well as doing a lot of good work across the country, cash for crime has come in, and that is really helpful. We really need to think differently, and I think that that can make a significant difference for outside schoolers as well as inside schools, because there is an opportunity to expose young people to that scheme, which will last with them for the rest of their life. I certainly think that sport can do that, but so can art, culture and other studies. I am sure that we are talking about outside schools as well as inside schools, funded in that sort of time. Liam McArthur, thank you very much. Just in case the wrong message goes out from the committee, it is cash for communities. The cash for crime would send out altogether the wrong message. I did notice—I was listening very hard, but I noticed that Susan did not answer the question as to whether or not George was being sensible. I move on from the role of the third sector to the status of the third sector. Maybe this is going to exploit the fact that the two Susan's are either ends of the panel here, but there is a bit of a divergence of opinion in the evidence that we have. I think that the evidence from the youth work sector, and I quote Youth Scotland, suggesting that what is becoming very clear to the youth work sector is the need for youth workers to be seen in the spirit of curriculum for excellence as equals amongst education providers. The view, by contrast, from Renfrewshire Council saying that although the third and private sectors can and do play an important part in the joint effort to raise attainment achievement, it is done so by complimenting the excellent work of teachers and going on to make the point about teachers being accountable for educational outcomes. Is this something where there is any likelihood of us seeing more of a parity of esteem between those in the youth work sector and those in the teaching profession, possibly once the senior phase of curriculum for excellence is fully bedded down, or is that either not desirable and not practical to expect? The workforce that delivers youth work is diverse, so it ranges from people who have got masters-level qualifications to volunteers who volunteer one hour a week in their local youth group. What we are trying to look at is, through our partnership with the Cllndd Standards Council, that there is now a code of ethics for youth workers and professional registration on a voluntary basis for youth workers. Those things are still in their infancy compared to the teaching profession. It is about making sure that those initiatives are invested in so that our workforce can feel confident and empowered that they are of equal value in the life of a young person in terms of contributing to their education. It is not about the code of youth workers' third sector complementing. That is exactly what we want to be doing. We want to add value to the experiences that a young person has in their life. It is not about a competition, but it is about knowing that what youth work does has a value, a monetary value and a social value, and making sure that professionals—whether that is a teacher, a social worker or otherwise—recognise that youth work has a place in that. Is the answer to that, then, maybe the point that you were making, Susan, about sustaining these partnerships over time? The parity of esteem comes from the fact that this is seen as a genuine partnership, rather than something that is reached for on an ad hoc basis as resources are allowed. I think that sustainability of partnerships is where they grow and they do strength and you do get an understanding of how, rather than parachuting somebody in for one afternoon a week for six weeks because that is what the funding allows for, and then they disappear from the life of the school. That parachuting in and of itself can create a body of work for the school, which means that the impact is limited in the longer term. However, if you can create and sustain partnerships, what happens is that people begin to work together, they complement each other and they can build down what is the best they are. What you do not want is a situation where young people are engaging with youth work colleagues but then going into class and going, I am not going to engage with the teacher because they are the teacher. It has to be a situation where the educational professionals are able to work alongside and not simply separate bodies to it. Some of that is about sustaining projects. We have seen situations where the rights of the sense over sectarianism projects within the city of Glasgow has gone on for a number of years now. The same workers are going into the schools on an annual basis, so they get to know the young people who are coming through, they have an expectation that they are going through. However, where it is quick hits and vanish, there is nothing to be sustained. In some cases, it can actually be a workload issue that is not borne out by the positives to it. It is about sustaining projects that are there. I am presuming that the other benefit of getting back to the line of question is being pursued by others. The way in which the private sector recognises what has been achieved through that wider attainment is easier to do if they can see a visibility over a period of work in the partnership delivers. That is true. I think that the point was well made earlier on, but some kids struggle to write their attainment stories and what they do outside of school and perhaps in projects in school with others is really important as well. In articulating that, it is really important. We have seen last year in Scotland the impact of volunteer at a very high level. That profile is quite good. I hope that it spills and lasts that legacy. For young people to understand how important it is to do that. A massive international worldwide project depended on the volunteers and life of it depends on volunteer effort as well. If you show that bit of extra effort and you can reflect it in your personal statements, then employers will buy into that. What you do, and I have got another involvement in reserve forces, is the same type of thing. You are a special person if you do that and take that sort of commitment on as well as your day job. It is the same for young people. They all have challenging young lives through puberty, but if they are doing action volunteering and showing other things, it is absolutely recognised by employers without a doubt. It distinguishes you from the crowd and makes you much more employable. I think that I have got from the panel that there has to be a move away from a total focus on academic qualifications. In terms of vocational education, what should be the role of the private sector in our schools? Given that only 27 per cent of employers take on a young person straight from school and only 13 per cent of employers take on an apprentice, how would that help to address the low level of school leaver employment? Those figures reflect a number of issues, and one of them is still, in my view, not enough engagement. In the private sector and all that, in many aspects of Scottish civic life and education is certainly one of them as well. We really need to engage at a local level within all schools, colleges and universities significantly employers. I think that that is a two-way thing. I do think that employers are coming in and talking about work experiences. In my view, I deal with younger employees as well about how it is to work and what they do and things like that. I think that the point was well made earlier on about the complexities of work, particularly with technology and the changing patterns of work and the fact that most of us will not have a career for life and all that. There are massive changes that young people are quite complex for all of us to understand and certainly for them before they get into workplace. There is that bit of educating the young people, but there is also a bit of educating the employees. That is why I think that work placements are fantastic. If you go to a higher level in a certain age, you go to colleges and universities, it is quite astonishing the number of young people who get jobs through being placed and doing a placement through university and in engineering and then not working that factory. There is not enough of employers seeing how good the young people are. I think that they tend to read some of the stuff that they read in the media, which tends to be pretty negative in young people if they are honest about it as well. There is also a bit of that going on as well. There are some challenges that we have talked earlier on about employability, job readiness, understanding, workplaces. I have heard a report of a young person falling asleep during a job interview, which is not a way to get a job. There are some real challenges out there with some youngsters, but if we can get that exchange better, I really do feel that it is fundamentally wrong. It is really funny and interesting that, for example, looking through the Government's response to the re-commission, we have got this fantastic group about implementing curriculum for excellence. There is nobody from the private sector represented in that at all. I know that it is largely happening in schools, but what about this workplace? Who engages with that? There is no connection, and that could go through hordes of committees that we have in Scotland in a whole variety of sectors. The private sector is just that employers are not engaged, and they are not largely engaged in schools and they expect them to know about young people. Not all employers have children or might have older children and so on. We need to get that engagement. If we did that in both ways, both in terms of getting employers into schools and getting young people out of schools and into workplaces much more in a much wider work placement scheme, it would be beneficial in both parties. I think that they would see some gems and they would start employing them in better figures than you have reflected. It is not a good reflection to accept that completely. Yes, Alan. I spoke to a large employer who said that they had forgotten how to employ young people. They had recently engaged with that to start bringing young people back into the workforce, and their own workforce had loved it because they had become buddies and mentors to young people. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago, everybody expected to have the young person joining them through the early stage of their careers, so they saw a huge engagement thing for their own employees. Quite often, if you just give young people a chance—this is one of the roles of the third sector—it can be to de-risk things for the employer. Last Wednesday, Marks and Spencers in Princess Street in Argyllstruth in Glasgow took on 15 young people who probably would not have made it through the standard Marks and Spencers entry process, but we would take them through a programme that we developed with the employer over four weeks. They had some work experience, and they had done some of the life skills training and worked on polishing up the skills that they did have. Marks and Spencers were happy to take every single one of them. They would not have been obvious employees if they had gone back. For a lot of employers, it is asking them to look under the bonnet a bit more. In cities such as Glasgow, where 130 young people are not working just now, let us go into those pools of talent, because talent is not a problem. A lot of those young people can be brought into the workforce with the right support, and it is really tough for employers. It is a big ask to take somebody who does not fit your standard criteria. They have all developed some fantastic apprenticeship schemes, but it is bolting the front-end on how do you select, how do you bring people that maybe do not come from the traditional background that you used to bring into your workforce? That is where the third sector schools and a whole range of other people can help them at that part of the journey. Just on that point that you raised, you are referring to large companies that bring youngsters on board, and they have employees that mentor them. The vast majority of Scottish enterprises are very small, so how do you engage the small employer? Again, what we have tended to find is that a number of our programmes might have a large employer as the host, or we have designed it roundabout the host. Then what we will do is that they might take 50 or 60 per cent of the young people, and we will work with the other young people to find them opportunities. The Glasgow restaurant tours have been fantastic with our Get Into Cooking programme in Glasgow. We have run it through the city of Glasgow college. A whole range of restaurants that are employing one or two people at a time will give young people a chance because they can see where they have come from, they understand the background of the course, and they can look in over the course of the four or five weeks. It is not a quick interview, and I am taking a big chance. I think that that is how you engage the smaller employers. Can you de-risk it for them? I am involved at those kinds of levels. There is a third part to David's, which is that demystifying what the new curriculum and qualifications are, because often you get a taxi home at night and you say, what do you do when you go on a teacher and they go, oh, I've got all grades and you're going well, that's one, two, whatever number of qualification systems back, and there's not an understanding here. Unless you are engaging within the schools and things, those are the kinds of projects that we see going on locally within lots of communities. It's about getting a consistency and promoting that as a way forward. In particular, in the senior phase, where you're looking at leaving destinations and leaving points, I say for a third time, move into a senior phase that's over three years that creates space for young people to do that within their timetable, rather than it being bolted on at the end of the school day or whatever when they want to go and do what young people do. There's something about that, but you also see lots of projects that are going on in primary schools where the classes are going out to visit the local shops and different things as part of other projects, which then gets them known in the area and starts to build those community links. Those kinds of projects need to be promoted more widely. Okay. If we are to get more businesses involved, whether it's to do mentoring or act as role models or to provide work experience and highlight the importance of social skills and attitude and life skills, etc, how do we do that so that it complements the work of teachers and that it doesn't create a bit of a friction in them? Do it locally. Do you allow for local discussions on it? Do you allow for learning communities of schools to consider what their local needs are, to look to the third sector and the private sector communities work within their areas to see what is there and what are the likely destinations for young people within it, rather than imposing projects that say that every school has got to have Marks and Spencer's, because in Strunrar there is no Marks and Spencer's, so young people are not going to be moving in. It's about local solutions. I think that it is very much local. I would say this, but I think that schools should be engaging very actively with their local business organisations very often in the FSB, because as your point is absolutely valid, we are talking about very small enterprises in many parts of Scotland. I think that that is a thing that we tend to miss. I take Allan's point as there are some good ways of doing that. That tends again to be focused on the larger areas of population. I think that when we get out into places like Strunar and Ireland, there is a real challenge. We have to want to get ahead of teachers sitting on their own table and actually getting engaged with business people who can then call upon to come into schools to engage with young people, to advise young people on to give them work placements and that sort of exchange that I'm talking about as well. I think that it's really important. I know that teachers have got a lot in their plate, but it's a vitally important thing. I would also say the other thing that I've never found in all my time with IOD, I've never once asked anybody to engage with young people and they've said no. They just don't do that. They are genuinely interested in the next generation and, bluntly, they said no, they wouldn't want them anyway, but it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. The wood commission reports come up on a number of times in the evidence that you've given this morning, but regarding the third sector and the role that you play, there's only two specific recommendations in the wood report about that and there's a statement about employers and their role in education and that seems to be it. I'm just wondering, do you think that the wood report has given enough prominence to the third sector and employers? What the wood commission does is set out an aspiration for a whole education system, and I think that the third sector, particularly in the youth part, because we would see ourselves as part of the education system, would perhaps see ourselves in some of those other recommendations more widely, if that makes sense. I've already had significant discussions with the Government about employers in a wider scale getting involved. There is a national group that has already been established to employer engagement and they're going to look to do that across the country, which I think is very welcome, and to sort the follow-up in what we're talking about, so there will be a, hopefully, private sector-led group of employers working with colleges, working with local authorities to implement the wood commission in a very real way. So if they do build in from day one as we get the work done, this real strong link, particularly around work placement and building the pension, has just been talked about. So I'm optimistic that you're right, and maybe not as many mentions might have seen, but we already are, and to fear to the Government that they're already discussing with us and others, how we actually get that implemented, and that's the most important thing. So that's, for me, very welcome. Just to say, if you look at the evidence that we've been funded by the Government, but also by the Wood Foundation, it's enough put together a joint package to help us engage with more schools and just give them some of those employment opportunities or options. So we'll be starting that programme over the course of the next few weeks and months, and we very much hope to engage with more and more local authorities, just to show them here is a way to do it. Now, to take the point earlier, it will be very different in the Borders and the West Nals from how we would do that in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Dundee. So I think that that would be one of the things we'll want to explore, is how we can sort of customise that to the needs of specific local authorities. Yes, thank you. Briefly to say that the young people we work with into their late teens and early 20s, who we are supporting into look at training and employment options, because they've had difficult lives and difficult relationships, they still need support around those issues, and many of them are becoming parents themselves. So I think just to reinforce that what's happening around the young person in terms of their whole system, if you like, and their community support also needs to be considered for successful involvement in employment. Thank you very much. That concludes the questions from the members of the committee. Once again, I apologise for starting a bit later than I think you'd been indicated we would start, but we very much appreciate you coming along this morning and for the written submissions you've given and other organisations given to the inquiry on educational attainments. That's the end of today's meeting, so therefore I formally close the meeting.