 Can I welcome everyone to the second meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2017? Can I please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item of business is a decision on whether to take a number of items of business in private. Firstly, is everyone content that item 4 of this meeting is in private? Thank you. Next week we have witnesses on widening access to higher education. Members content that the item to review the evidence on widening access is also taken in private. Thank you. The second item of business is a negative instrument on assessment requests for Gaelic medium education. Do members have any comments on this instrument? It is a point of information. Would it be possible for the committee to have an update on the numbers of pupils who are involved in Gaelic medium education and also the number of staff because we had an issue, as you know, at the last committee about that. We will ask for that information to be sent. The third item today is a session on curriculum for excellence. The focus today is on the responsibility and accountability for decision making in relation to CFE. The committee agreed to hold this session as a result of evidence from Education Scotland, the SQA and education authorities on the functioning of the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board and the implementation of its decisions. It is useful to have the Government's chair of the board, the SQA, Education Scotland and the education authorities representatives all around the table at the same time to discuss issues that we explored with organisations separately in evidence sessions last year. It is also valuable to have other board members here to convey their own independent perspective on how decision making on CFE operates in practice. I welcome to the meeting Fiona Robertson, the director of learning Scottish Government, Dr Janet Brown, chief executive Scottish qualifications authority, Dr Bill Maxwell, chief executive education Scotland, Terry Lanigan, executive officer association of directors of education in Scotland, Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the education institute of Scotland, Seamus Serson, general secretary of Scottish secondary teachers association and Joanna Murphy national parent forum of Scotland. As everyone can see, we have a large panel and I have asked members to direct their questions at individuals. We will not make much progress if everyone in the panel answers every question. If you would like to come in on a question that is not directed at you, please catch my eye and circumstances permitting I will call you in. Lastly, if there is a point that you feel ought to be made but did not get the opportunity to make it, you are very welcome to write to the committee after this session as the committee plans to undertake work on the curriculum for excellence on an on-going basis. I would like to open the session by asking Fiona Robertson, as chair of the board, for her perspective on the decision making processes, including the board's role for curriculum for excellence. Thanks very much. I am very happy to do so. Good morning everyone. The Scottish Government in Education in Scotland provided a written submission in advance of this morning's session and that paper outlines briefly the governance structures which have supported the development of curriculum for excellence. As well as the management board, this includes the curriculum for excellence implementation group and the assessment and national qualifications group. Both agreed by the management board were established in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Over the years, the management board has been supported in its work by a number of groups agreed by the board and indeed by ministers to provide advice on specific issues. As a committee is aware, the development of curriculum for excellence has been a really very significant reform in Scottish education to enrich and deepen the learning experience of children and young people and has involved all parts of the education system. The Scottish Government has, of course, led the development of policy and the broad national framework, working with education bodies, local authorities, professional associations, parents, teachers and other partners to make key decisions. The membership of the management board itself is drawn from right across the education system. As the OECD review highlighted, it has occupied a central position in the development of curriculum for excellence itself. The development of curriculum for excellence has been driven by consensus and collective responsibility, recognising that all parts of the system needed to work together to deliver from national policy right through to learning and teaching in the classroom. The management board has been an important mechanism for achieving that consensus. It's fair to say that issues are raised, strong views will come forward and conversations can be challenging, but the approach has been to work closely with the whole system to develop the broad framework and to consider issues around implementation. Notwithstanding the value of that consensus approach, the board is clear that ultimate responsibility for decision making on national education policy rests with Scottish ministers. The board may provide advice on policy and ministers may commission views on specific issues from the board. As curriculum for excellence is developed, I think that the focus of the board has shifted from design principles to the development of building the curriculum documents in 2008 and 2010 to the broad design of new qualifications, including through the qualifications governance group, and on to issues of timing and implementation through the work of the implementation group, which my colleague Bill Maxwell chairs. The board has also considered risks to implementation and broader interdependencies, in particular the development of the national improvement framework more recently. On the recommendation of the management board, ministers have agreed to provide additional support to the system at key points in the implementation phase. It might be worth it stressing a couple of points before I conclude. First, the national education bodies, of course, have their own individual responsibilities in relation to curriculum for excellence and education delivery beyond the membership of the management board. I know that you've heard evidence from both chief executives over recent months. Second, it is important to note that, while the broad framework of curriculum for excellence is set nationally, decisions about how best to implement it rest with schools, teachers and local authorities. This is one of the essential characteristics of curriculum for excellence. It places the learner at the heart of learning and gives teachers the flexibility to make decisions locally about what their learners need. The statutory responsibility for delivery of education of course rests with local government. Just to say one final thing about the management board itself and the future of the management board, the OECD highlighted that governance of curriculum for excellence had been well fitted to the task as a Scotland-wide curriculum programme. That task required consensus and managing processes so that implementation, including assessment and qualifications, would happen as smoothly as possible. There is value in moving from this national system management approach to a more strategic role with greater emphasis on the nature of teaching, learning and curriculum development in schools. However, the review also highlighted the inherent complexity of governance in every education system. I know a number of management board members would agree with the view of the OECD that I've just expressed and indeed the EIS submission to the committee does so. The Deputy First Minister has confirmed separately to this committee in December that he will consider the on-going governance of curriculum for excellence as part of the education governance review. I'd be happy to answer any further questions from the committee. Thank you very much. Before I throw it out to the other members of the committee, can I ask you what do you see as the Scottish Government's role in ensuring the changes that we've asked for on a recent report from the agencies carried out through the management board in other ways? The management board will have a role in looking at the conclusions of the report that you published earlier this week, but the individual agencies, both the SQA and Education Scotland in particular in the context of curriculum for excellence, will also wish to consider those conclusions as part of their own governance arrangements. Okay. Thank you very much. Tavish. I can ask Mr Robertson a number of questions about what the board actually does. Has this board been responsible since 2011 for the implementation of curriculum for excellence? In 2011, the CFE implementation group was established, and that's chaired by the chief executive of Education Scotland, Bill Maxwell. That has comprised the national bodies with responsibility for implementing curriculum for excellence. Notably, Education Scotland's SQA has also involved ADES and more recently the Skills Development Scotland, given the importance of the developing young workforce agenda in the senior phase. The implementation plans, the detailed reporting of curriculum for excellence has been taken forward by the implementation group, together with consideration of other issues relating to risk and indeed communications. All the national bodies have been represented on that board. Who's on it? I was asking about what it does. The implementation group. What's the implementation group's relationship to this management board that you chair? The implementation group reports to every meeting of the management board. The management board meets on a quarterly basis, and it tends to follow the meetings of the implementation group so that there's a timely report through the implementation group to the management board. I can't find a specific item on the minutes which says item number one, the implementation curriculum for excellence. You will find in the minutes at every meeting, certainly since up to 2011, that there is a report from Bill Maxwell as the chair of the implementation group on implementation issues and indeed on issues relating to communications. I can confirm that there is a report. The minutes of June 13, 2012, where ADES, Christine Pollock, particularly cites the need to consider the potential workload issues for teachers in reviewing nationally produced course materials, what happened after that? Given that this issue has come up time and time and time again ever since. What did the management board do about that? About the workload issues in particular. The management board have discussed workload issues on a number of occasions. What are your actions? I've been the chair of the management board since September 2013, so I'm afraid I can't comment on that particular meeting because I wasn't at that particular meeting. So workforce planning, workforce workload, has never raised again since and all the time you've been sharing it? No, absolutely. Workload has been raised. There have been a number of mechanisms to look at that. The work of the implementation group in terms of the CFE implementation plan and the support that Education Scotland and the SQA and others, including local authorities, can provide to the system. In 2014 and in 2015 the management board agreed to set up a reflections group on the qualifications which considered workload issues and there was a reporting mechanism through that. In my life when I run meetings I want to see actions that follow from the initial discussion about a particular issue which we know is concerning and I have done my best to read all your minutes and I struggle to find the timeline or the actions which flow on workforce workloads that teachers are raising with all of us for all these years of curriculum for excellence and then we get to evidence that we got the other day of guidance was provided to teachers in evidence from Education Scotland and I can't find in all your minutes what you did about that. I don't mean you personally, I mean your board. What your board did about that. The minutes are agreed by board members they include a number of actions but I think what I was saying to you at the start was that the detailed programme planning relating to curriculum for excellence is undertaken by the curriculum for excellence implementation group that plan that plan is agreed by the management board and indeed is circulated widely to the system and that includes measures to address workload amongst other things and that has been the focus of the implementation programme since 2011. I was around in 2012 second maybe a bit as were many other members of the panel here the issue around at that point was very much around the requirement that was clearly there for schools to develop new courses to suit the new qualifications clearly and the issue by my recollection at that time was not about it was more about the lack of or a desire for more guidance for schools at that point which resulted in a direct request as part of our deep discussions that went on through the management board and implementation group around how to support schools and teachers in that process of developing courses with the emphasis being very much on not providing a single national syllabus because curriculum for excellence is all about moving away in a sense from providing a one-size-fits-all national syllabus to develop courses that were suitable for their pupils and their local circumstances CFE gives them that freedom and at that point the outcome of all that discussion was an agreement that yet we should actually produce course materials but not but do so by brokering the exchange often we work closely with Addis on this for each of the 95N5 courses at that time Education Scotland took the lead working with other agencies and other parties around the table here in coordinating a process which is effectively supporting teachers helping their workload by giving them some ideas guidance exchanging content of course material that they might want to use in developing their own courses over the course of the next period and that was done for national 5 initially or the nationals 5 and 4 then moved on to higher and advanced higher as the years went on as part of a planned and agreed process to help workload but it can't have been in the agreed process to end up one more question to build but it can't have been in the agreed process to end up with 20,000 pages of guidance that's what came out of that was a range of exemplification of course materials welcomed very much by parties at the time and served a very useful purpose as schools were adapting to develop new courses it's only a small part of the overall package I think that 20,000 pages is a big part can I ask Fiona Robertson did the management board ever consider in all those minutes which I can find the fact that 20,000 pages of guidance were issued to teachers the issue of 20,000 pages is not is not something that's been explicitly raised at the management board but I think that the point that Bill has raised is important because the management board was responsive to the needs of the system at the time and so for example in March 2010 March 2012 where there was a support package provided including course materials and again in February 2014 they were warmly welcomed by all the professional association indeed had been requested by them so I have statements here from the EIS from the general secretary of school leader Scotland from the chair of the national parent forum at the time all welcoming those measures and indeed stating very clearly that those would address workload issues I think it's important to highlight that the delivery plan that was published by the Scottish Government last June makes it clear that one of the Scottish Government's priorities is to do some of that decluttering the time is now right to look at that material and to see whether it's still helpful so the work that Education Scotland have done around the materials that they've produced and have been reviewing I think is very welcome but I think it's really important to highlight that the board was responsive to the needs of the system at the time and indeed that material was welcomed If the board was responsive to the concerns that we had 20,000 whatever number of pages it is that suddenly disappeared who took that decision, was it the management board or was that decision by the cabinet secretary to declutter and remove so many bits of advice to teachers Decisions relating as I've highlighted in my opening statement decisions around the broad policy framework for excellence rest with the Scottish Government but again Mr Swinney will have and indeed had conversations with Bill Maxwell as chief executive of Education Scotland and as chief education adviser and with others in reaching the conclusion around the decluttering of the curriculum and indeed from teachers themselves I think the main concern that we have as a committee and which is very clearly explicit in our report but for some very considerable period of time there has been a great deal of advice issued to teachers and a vast majority of that guidance now appears to be redundant our concern is over that length of time that it seems as though decisions were taken about the value of this advice when in fact it wasn't actually the advice that was going to be useful and a long period of time has gone gone past and therefore parents pupils and staff have a right to ask who made the decision about issuing that guidance in the first place only to find that several years down the road it was actually redundant Well the decision at the time to produce the guidance was through a process of discussion and agreement at the management board which was subsequently agreed by ministers and indeed welcomed by members of the management board and the professional associations at the time I think that the OACD review constructive here though because the review highlighted that Scotland had been bold in its curriculum reforms but also needed to be specific and I think some of the messages and the OACD review itself suggested that some of that pairing back of materials would be helpful so as I say I think that the management board has been again responsive to the needs of the system I think that a lot of the workload and concerns that have been raised relate to the unintended and unsustainable level of assessment in the system and SQA have taken action and are taking action around that and that's been agreed through the assessment and national qualifications group so I think that the management board's responsibility has a collective responsibility given its broad membership established since 2009 has been to seek the views of those that are around the table all the teacher professional associations are around that table and to respond accordingly and to advise ministers Panagann Thanks, convener just a couple of points clearly in relation to workload that's an issue which the teacher unions have been particularly exercised about and those concerns are reiterated at numerous CFE management board meetings I would want to make the point however that if you look at the SPICE briefing almost all of the attempts that alleviate workload pressures actually came about as a consequence of almost always of direct interaction with the Scottish Government so when Michael Russell announced an additional million pound funding around the new qualifications that was after EIS had engaged with them around they need to provide support now that channeled its way back into the management board which was a conduit for making the actual formal decisions but a lot of those were bilateral the tackling bureaucracy working group which was technically a subgroup of the management board came about when Mike Russell announced at the EIS conference that he would respond to our concerns and workload by setting up this group the reflections groups were set up to call us from the unions for a review of the process of implementation so a number of those things I think as was the national qualification review group which came from the second reflections report so a number of those things were part of the management board discussions but were also part of a more direct political process around the unions making direct representation in terms of the the board itself I think it is useful to differentiate between the development phase of CFE when the board was a model of good practice in terms of collaborative approaches and did give very strong advice to ministers around the direction of travel which was almost always accepted and when we moved into implementation we took that around to qualifications because that's when a lot of the operational pressures manifested themselves and what happened in practice is that the board had an overview of the implementation process and Fiona alluded to the fact that there was nearly always an implementation group update to the board but the board itself did not micromanage any of the agencies so SQA were always very clear that it had its own governance structure it had its own publicly appointed board and it was responsible to SQA Education Scotland does not have any governance arrangement beyond its own advisory group and minister we would quite often take our concerns with the SQA or with Education Scotland directly to bilateral discussions with them because they weren't necessarily the province or the board the board had a much broader overview of progress and in relation to that there are two relevant points to finish on one is that throughout my period on the board and I think for most of the early part of implementation in terms of the implementation programme of CFE communications was always a difficult area during my period it was almost always amber in terms of the red-green amber system it was never green in a couple of times it dipped into red and there has always been a real challenge around communicating headline decisions to the schools in relation to the point around these 20,000 pages actually I think if you asked most teachers they would say I didn't know they were there you know so the we often made the point that putting something on a website is not the same as effective communication and that was a real challenge around a lot of the communication strategy and we had this discussion with the SQA as well around the changes because the biggest gap that's developed is the gap between decisions at a national level and things being published i.e. available on a website and schools and teachers finding the time to actually engage with that information and put it into effective practice and all of the problems we've got around qualifications came about because of the lack of time for schools to engage with those headline decisions and that's been a source of a great deal of the difficulties at the board in schools we've faced over the last few years thanks very much for that a couple of things to come for that one is that the communications issue was one that came up time and time again through the education it was mentioned quite strongly in the report but the other is that it may well be that there's bilateral discussions but the management board has got this overview and if there's page after page after page after page of new guidance coming in surely somebody in the management board I would suggest particularly the EIS and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland would be thinking hold on a second here this is going to impact hugely on our workforce our members our workforce in the case of directors what is happening why are we adding on and not looking at what is now redundant and that's the point I'm struggling with with the management board if they've got this overview look surely they've got an overview about not just the purpose of the new stuff that's coming in but is there now stuff that is no longer needed because as long as it's there it adds to the load of the workforce yes, yes, yes what the management board would get would be an indication from Education Scotland or SQA that they intend to publish advice on a particular area they wouldn't bring that advice to the meeting so they might indicate in response to a request around clarification on some course elements of the units they're going to publish advice now in our bilateral discussions we would quite often be saying that message isn't getting out there because people are not engaging with it and the board itself wouldn't be looking at the detail of that advice they would accept a general indication that the appropriate agency would be seeking to respond to it now that has been part of the difficulty because if you even take Education Scotland's clear and unambiguous statement from earlier in this session as soon as I saw it I said to Bill that's neither clear nor unambiguous and I said I don't think that is going to fulfil what you think it's going to do and we had a fairly robust discussion around that so there has been a lot of feedback around it Bill mentioned the creation of the units what we got from the Scottish Government was Mike Russell at the time was a commitment that they would be ready to use unit assessments in relation to national 5 and that was national 4, national 5 and that was to relieve the workload pressure and that was defaulted to Education Scotland to co-ordinate they commissioned some independent creation of the unit assessments by and large they worked through the local authorities all of whom most of whom volunteered to make a contribution many of which subsequently then didn't make that contribution we were quite skeptical about the quality of a number of those unit assessments and part of the workload pressure came because in schools people just decided to make their own units and got on with it so there was an attempt to create the units but it didn't fulfil the gap and schools started getting on with creating their own units and that's where and that was all to do with the fact that people were talking about units in a different way and we're still talking about units as they used to exist under N1 and N2 and the units in terms of the new qualifications were meant to be a different type of beast so there was a bit of a miscommunication around what people were actually looking for very briefly then does it suggest to me that information comes in a sort of almost esoteric form to the management board there seems to be no recognition of the impact that's going to have on the ground should there be more discussion around about okay, this may well affect your members this may well affect your employers this may well affect other aspects of one of the agencies or the other members of the management board can you make sure you communicate this appropriately because there's no point in somebody coming in and saying we're going to bring forward guidance and then at some stage because somebody brings it to your attention for example you think we better get moving on this and just a very brief answer for that well the key example in relation to that was around the timeline for the introduction of the qualifications because we pushed very strongly for a further years delay to allow schools time to assimilate the changes because they were significant that was the only time we actually had a vote in all the time I was on the management board and that was defeated and we pushed ahead with the timetable and we certainly did not have the time to assimilate the changes that were required around BGE and senior phase SQA a very tight timetable in terms of their production of materials they met that timetable but schools couldn't make the changes so what happened was most schools defaulted to what is the minimal change we need to make and the minimal change was we'll replace standard grade with that four and that five plus two timetable structure which means that the S3 profile doesn't exist therefore you don't use an S3 profile to create your senior phase and we ended up in a situation where people were trying to squeeze eight courses into one year and you can't do eight times 160 in a schools year, it doesn't work so we ended up with a hybrid situation based on the fact that schools had to get through the year and make sure young people didn't suffer and the fact that there was insufficient time and almost all the problems that we'll have around units might have been avoided if we'd had a different timeline around that introduction but that timeline created the real pressures on schools, created some of the decisions which were not consistent with what the aims of CFE were and led us into a situation where we're now having to revisit the qualifications to make them fit the pattern that's been developed across Scotland OK, thank you, I'm not convinced that I really got the answer about the why we didn't pick up on a workload earlier about the staff but Fiona, you wanted to come in It was really just about the particular issue around the years delay that the EIS requested it might be worth just in terms of relaying the facts around that particular area In October 2008 the management board agreed to our recommendation to recommend to ministers for an additional implementation year and that recommendation was accepted at the time subsequent discussions in April 2010 around the timing of the introduction of the new qualifications three options were discussed in that meeting one was to continue with the current plan which was new qualifications from 2013-14 the second was to dual run standard grade and the new qualifications for one or more years and the third was to delay a year and the board agreed that they should be phased in over the three-year period as agreed from 2013-14 option one and I think it's important to note that only the EIS would in disagreement request a delay for a further year I mean, Larry's right in a sense about the vote but I think it's important that at the most recent meeting the board again were asked for their views on the removal of unit assessments from the national qualifications and all agreed I don't know whether that would constitute a vote but all members were asked to provide a formal view on the removal of unit assessments so there were and continued to be robust discussions as part of the management board the implementation group set up as a vehicle in that key implementation phase to do that detail planning and assessment the management board and indeed ministers are asked to sign off the CFE implementation plan on an annual basis that includes elements around communications which are updated at every management board meeting so I think it's important that that as the CFE moved towards implementation the implementation group was set up for the management board was in a new phase of its business How does that answer the question that I was asking Larry Flanagan about how we continue to add to the workload and nobody recognised that if he kept on adding and didn't take away that it was going to impact on the staffing just Mr Lannan I don't think it would be true to say that we continue to add to the workload the 20,000 pages the way that it's been talked about it makes it sound as if every teacher would have to pull through 20,000 pages that's just not the case and as was said earlier much of the advice that came out and the guidance that came out was in direct response to requests from the profession for additional guidance the other thing that I would say is that you might get the impression from what we've heard so far that the management board and the implementation group exist in some higher plane with no connection at all to the real world of what's going on in the classroom if I can maybe illustrate the role that ADES has played in bridging that gap I was a member of the management board and the implementation group but when I was a serving director I also chaired the ADES curriculum assessment and qualifications network which met on a quarterly basis and which typically would have an excess of 20 local authorities represented at it now at every meeting of that group which I chaired for five years SQA Education Scotland and the Scottish Government were represented for the whole morning and at that meeting at those meetings what we did was we discussed directly the implementation of five implementation issues and the local authorities then went back and dealt with those issues with their schools and teachers there was also a significant amount of work going on at local authority level through LNCTs to look directly at the workload issues and to try to address locally where it was perceived that that these issues existed and part of that work and I can speak about that because I was involved in it directly was to try to cut through to get to the core of what it was that teachers needed to do so I think we need to be careful about assuming that it may well be that because in response to requests the amount of advice became unwieldy and that's what's being addressed just now and being acknowledged just now but that doesn't... the addition of additional advice doesn't mean that the workload was being increased by that Okay, there's a number of committee members who want to come in just now but if you continue to... I'll go back to the same point, if you continue to add on and you don't look at what you can take away then clearly the possibility of an increased workload is there and otherwise the cabinet secretary wouldn't have been taking the role, the task that he's taken on just now he wouldn't be saying we need to get rid of this a lot of this review because it's out of date because it's not required so I don't really think that both things stand up if the cabinet secretary says that this is required it means that it was required as the 20,000 were being built up on Daniel My line of questioning actually directly relates to what Larry Flanagan has just said and can I just thank Larry Flanagan, I think that was a very revealing a couple of responses that he gave I'm primarily concerned about the design of curriculum for excellence and how that sits with the qualification system indeed Janet Brown was at the close of her evidence, she said that the issues that we were looking at were teachers were at the result of the design and implementation and the way that the qualification system worked I think that one of the points that we looked at in committee were around narrowing and particularly around science subjects, I think that Johann Lamont and both Tavish Scott asked questions around that Tavish Scott also asked about the deliverability of 160 hours, yeah, yeah, okay on those points can I just ask Fiona Robertson were those points of design, do you accept that those points of design are the responsibility of the curriculum for excellence management board that the design principles I would obviously look back at this, the design principles were absolutely discussed at the management board and indeed there were a number of building curriculum documents in the early years of the management board including a discussion on assessment principles so the broad principles absolutely were discussed and agreed by management board, subsequently agreed by ministers and thereafter the SQA designed and developed the qualifications there was a subgroup to the management board called the qualifications governance group which did some of that detailed work and I'm sure Janet would be happy to elaborate on the work of that group so the broad principles absolutely would agreed and indeed with the formation of the assessment and national qualifications group some of that work is being revisited of that group that's not an adequate response and I'll tell you why because in response to Janet Lamont's questioning around whether or not three sciences could be taken forward by in response to Tavish Scott's questioning around whether or not the hundred and sixty hours meant that there would be a narrowing both Bill Maxwell and Janet Brown said that those decisions were the responsibility of the curriculum for excellence management board your answer does not give that clarity indeed you seem to be pointing both upwards and down stream to other bodies in response to who is responsible for these points you've highlighted three issues the broad design principles of the national qualifications issues around curriculum models which are in schools and which define what young people can choose to take at different times in their schooling and also issues around the number of subjects that young people can take the management board set out in 2011 issues relating to the articulation between the broad general education and the senior phase there was a subsequent restatement of that those issues around the articulation by Bill Maxwell as chief inspector and I think that the management board has been very clear that given the design of curriculum for excellence and the responsibility of the management board in setting the broad national framework that decisions around curriculum models are largely for local authorities and for schools and I'm sure Terry would be happy to elaborate on that there is a design point about whether or not breadth can be carried forward that breadth is a broad general design point is that your responsibility or not the breadth of the number of subjects that it is possible to take through national 4 and 5 and again at higher is that your responsibility or not I can only restate what I've just said which was that the management board provided guidance on this in 2011 and there was a restatement of that guidance in 2016 that the numbers of subjects that are available to individual students in schools is a matter for local authorities and for schools and that has been the design of curriculum for excellence over the years given the length of the school day and the length of the school year there is a practiclish about how much you can deliver now can I just ask what impact assessment was made based on the design of the qualifications whether or not that design would lead to a narrowing of the number of subjects was that an assessment that the management board made and was a subsequent assessment made after implementation there was work done by Education Scotland in 2012 to look at emerging curriculum models in schools in the run-up to the national qualifications the curriculum assessment and qualifications group which Terry referred to will also review issues around curriculum design as well in relation to the three sciences that was raised at committee in November I think Dr Maxwell highlighted that actually the number of students undertaking three sciences in one sitting has remained largely static over time so that's not been a particular issue of difference broader point here which I think is that the senior phase is a three-year senior phase and has been stated both in the 2011 management board statement and in Bill's statement from this year it's really important that we don't look at one year in isolation so I think there's some broader points that we need to consider but I think Terry might want to highlight some of the issues around the responsibilities of local authorities and indeed schools around the curriculum models and the numbers of subjects that can be taken but Bill Maxwell has provided advice on that and that has OK, OK, all right we've done with that one, thank you then watch before Terry comes in, can I ask you any comment? Yeah, I want to pick up on something that's actually come out of what Mr Flanagan was talking about there that peaked my interest with regard to local authorities you said that some local authorities didn't make a contribution to the process of review of the implementation and one of my pulling my only reservation about the evidence that we gathered being people could anonymously submit was that we have no idea of the geographical spread of some of the issues and complaints that came up so really my questions for Mr Flanagan represent the local authorities today which I mean local authorities is it a variable across Scotland and given that local authorities have got such a responsibility and implementation of curriculum for excellence are there areas in Scotland where there's just not been that engagement from local authorities and could you give me some more information maybe answering some of Mr Flanagan's points there Can I just make clear my role I represent ADES which is a member led organisation of centrally deployed education staff I don't speak for COSLA but what I would say is that there has been a very widespread engagement with the process of implementation of curriculum for excellence at local authority level and as is indicated by what I said earlier that typically at the network that I chaired we would get an excess of 20 and sometimes as many as 25 local authorities represented and that included authorities at the island authorities on many occasions so there was an engagement the example that Larry gave earlier was authorities were asked to contribute examples of good practice and there was a variable response across the country but it was a very widespread response and could I perhaps also go back to the earlier point about number of subjects and perhaps give you an example of experience when I was director in Western Bartonshire one of my secondary schools decided that they wanted to retain eight subjects in S5 and the others went for six subjects in S5 now that would look as if there was a greater restrict sorry S4 that would imply that the ones that went for the six subjects in S4 were being more restrictive however there are two aspects to that first of all in all of the schools where there were six subjects in S4 you could still take three sciences and secondly the disadvantage of the eight model was that what you had in that school was you had eight subjects in S4 and then five subjects in S5 and potentially five subjects in S6 now that meant a total over the three years potentially of 18 the ones that went for six in S4 also had six in S5 and six in S6 a total of 18 over the senior phase in addition to that the schools that chose to have the 666 model had the advantage that they could timetable S4 to S6 together and that meant that there was a wider choice of subjects more subjects became viable because you had larger numbers of youngsters who could contribute the schools that did that also reported that there was a significant positive impact on the S4 cohort because many of them were in classes with S5 and S6 and the additional maturity that that brought had a positive impact on attitude, on behaviour etc so the debate about the S4 Fiona is right you can't look at S4 in isolation you've got to look at the whole of the senior phase and you can continue to have the breadth of choice and also the specialism of three sciences even if you go for six subjects in S4 I'm going to bring in Mr Flanagan in a minute but can I just remind people this isn't just aimed at yourself Mr Lanagan but one of the things that come across loud and clear when and I'm sure Joanna Murphy will recognise this during the evidence session was very often and it happens with everybody we speak in the jargon that the profession uses but remember it's not just teachers and educationalists that are listening to this today so if you can, if you can speak in a way that everybody understands that would be much easier thank you very much and can we keep it brief please yep, it was just in relation to Daniel Johnson's point around the senior phase and the aims of CFE when the three key aims around the senior phase were maintaining breadth across the senior experience creating more teaching time for a greater depth of learning because one of the criticisms have been people were passing exams we didn't have the depth of learning and creating some parity of esteem between vocational and allegedly academic pathways now if you were using those three criteria where we are at the moment there's not to take any of those boxes in my view if we want to get there we have to recognise where we are and realign to achieve those objectives and part of the reason that we're not there is to do with a lack of communication around the changes that were required and it's a dilemma because at the heart of CFE is the idea and this is at the heart of the Government's review that you let decisions be taken as close to possible at school level but we're not very good in Scotland at letting people make decisions at a school level or a local authority level but with CFE there was a resistance from a number of agencies about being too directive we actually argued on a number of occasions for Education Scotland to be more directive in terms of actually giving fairly clear advice the one time they did it in relation to East Wren they get jumped on by a number of people who said you try to tell a local authority how to do his business and that was around retaining intermediates so that's been part of it difficultly because I think we could have done with a lot clearer advice around the interface between BGE and the senior phase and one of the things we didn't do was sufficiently promote the bypass model because the whole senior phase is predicated on the notion that nowadays most people stay on to S5 if not S6 standard grade was designed for a period when kids left by and large at the end of S4 and we were looking at moving the whole qualification experience up to years to create that additional space and we didn't manage to do that because we didn't have enough time to persuade schools that that was the direction to go and that's where a lot of the fracture lines have come from now in the qualification review group where this has been discussed I think there's general agreement that we still want to achieve the original ambition of the senior phase and the changes that are being looked at now with the DFM leading that the working group is how we actually realign the system because I don't think anyone would suggest that the experience of the last two or three years was the ambition of the senior phase but that's where we are and if we want to achieve the ambition we need to look at what changes need to be made moving forward and most of those are around the interface between the BGE making sure that young people actually get a three-year broad journal education they have an S3 profile which is the starting point for their senior phase experience and we'll look at actually more young people not sitting exams in S4 but actually getting more time to study for exams in S5 the real challenge there is as a nation we are thorough to assessment parents in my school which does buy my school I don't work there anymore my old school we do buy pass nobody sits exams in S4 and every year parents come and say how come we are the only school that is doing this because people don't like to be out of sync with others another not the only school but that's the question they ask because they think they're the only school because they're the only Glasgow school so there are big challenges there Thank you very much Mr Flanagan Mr Maxwell You're right to highlight that is a dilemma that has been discussed certainly during the management board about to what extent to hold true to the principle that local design of the curriculum local ownership has to exist locally in schools and local authorities and therefore the guidance that I put out again in May last year does reflect guidance that was put out at the beginning of the process it does promote ideas like bypassing as absolutely appropriate but we're not prescribing to every school you must have this exact curriculum model that would be inappropriate in my view so that is a dilemma undoubtedly management board has wrestled with throughout the process but I think held true to the principle that fundamentally what we need is schools designing curricula that meet the needs of their students locally and take full advantage of the freedoms of curriculum for excellence but we're not in the process in a position where we're prescribing in any particular year I have a couple of points that have come up so far on this question about it being we should look at it as three years fair enough I wonder if you want to comment the fact that universities don't look at it as three years in order to get into some courses in university now you have five hires in one sitting I taught in a school which made an active decision not to run five hires whether that was the right thing whether that's cool or not we can have a debate about it the consequence would be those youngsters are not even able to compete so has there been a conversation with the universities to get them to understand the direct consequence in terms of a quality of access to higher education of decisions being made and the number of subjects you can sit in school confirm that there absolutely were conversations and have been conversations about those issues Terry chaired the learner journey subgroup of the management board Can I ask what the conclusion of that conversation is you specifically said that it is reasonable that we look at this over three years a young person has to have five hires in one sitting and I'll deal with the question about equity amongst the fourth year at a later stage they're not just obsessing about youngsters who've got in the fortunate position of even competing for a university place if you cannot sit five hires in one sitting there will be some course of the university that simply cannot access I'm asking Fiona Robertson what has been the conclusion of your conversations with universities about that matter because you asserted we should look at it over three years the universities are not doing that there were discussions with the universities in particular in the lead up to the qualifications being reformed and the conversation was particularly around S4 and the number of subjects in S4 you said in response to a question the fact of the matter is we should look at this as a three year project for young people universities do not look we are rationing a university places on the basis of qualification you need five hires for certain subjects in one sitting you're telling me that it's perfectly reasonable to have the opportunity to sit five hires in one sitting I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here with respect I chaired a subgroup of the management board which was about the learner journey which engaged with universities and as a result of the work that that group did every higher education institution in Scotland came out with a statement saying that they would be supporting the new qualifications and would not discriminate against any youngster as a result of the curriculum model that their school had adopted I don't know of a school in Scotland where you can't do five hires in fifth year it is and what Fiona was talking about was about the youngster at the start of S4 planning their journey over three years wanting to do medicine or veterinary medicine or dentistry and one or two other subjects part of that three year plan will be to do five hires in S5 and I literally know of no school in Scotland where that is not possible so you can't, every young person can access five hires in fifth year that's always to be, we've always been entirely misled in that question on this issue around guidance if I reflect among practice a school teacher if I give out directions and instructions to a class and one youngster doesn't get it or maybe two or three don't get it then I can see we need to work more closely with those young people if 95% of the class says we need more advice I need more help, I need more guidance it may be that what advice I'm giving them is wrong so at what point did the implementation board realise that the generation of 20,000 pages of advice might not be about the inability of the person in the classroom to understand what you are asking of them but it was about the quality of the guidance and what was behind that guidance surely the fact that that amount of advice had been generated can't all be put down to the inability of the staff to understand it surely there must have been a trigger point where you said people were asking for advice it prompted more at what point did those requests for advice trigger something in your head that is maybe something about what you're doing or what the advice is going out rather than the person receiving it I would have thought that that would have been to me a symptom of a deeper problem I don't know if you're a Robertson has a view on that I can only repeat what I said earlier which was about the advice from a number of agencies was in response to requests from the system and indeed was welcomed I'm asking you at what point you think why do people keep asking for more advice is it something we're doing rather than something they're not understanding Bill is chair of the implementation group might want to reflect further on that but I think the curriculum framework itself this is not a highly prescriptive this is not a prescriptive curriculum so as Terry has said we're not expecting all teachers to work their way through every page of guidance the guidance is a suite of materials that can be accessed at different times by different subject specialists so I think that the issue of the volume can be a little misplaced in considering how that material is accessed so your actual position is that the 20,000 pages is legitimate that volume is it's either an inappropriate burden or it's a necessary response it can't be both you want to come in and end I would argue much of it was appropriate response at that point in time when it was requested and served a useful purpose at a period of time and then has a natural timespan for example in the very early days we were modelling learner journeys before the new curriculum model existed so there was some guidance about what new pathways through a senior phase curriculum that didn't at that point exist might look like clearly now these models can disappear as more practical examples from real life experience in schools across the country but I would say that we do take feedback when we put out advice and often we set up working groups with other partners around the table involved to help to develop the guidance we certainly did that for the big exercise around the course materials for national 5, 4, higher and advanced higher to get feedback on where these hitting the mark I won't pretend you know every piece of advice we've put out ever has absolutely hit the mark and I would say we have produced a couple of iterations where it's been clear that in the broad general education teachers are needing the more support to understand the standards of level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4 we put out some advice a year or two back which we have on the basis of feedback and intelligence and what's happening on the ground now taken out and replaced with the benchmarks which are currently being produced and about to come out which we're again assured are going to hit the mark much better so there is a degree of feedback and development that goes into this but as you say it's important we downside and remove old stuff as we replace it with material that is clearly better meeting teachers needs Just to clarify, the 20,000 pages were necessary at the centre of purpose and the decluttering, the ending bureaucracy is not actually about something being over wheeled in bureaucratic it's simply that it's been time-barred it's no longer necessary but I think it's irrespective of the characterisation of the union from Larry Flarrigan has been that this is what's happened Doctor Brown you wanted to come in I just wanted to respond to the question around if we were getting feedback what we were doing in terms of trying to understand not just providing the documentation but trying to understand whether that documentation was being valued or valuable or whether there was something else we should do I think one of the things particularly around the nature of the assessment and the qualifications we did was when we were getting feedback around teachers maybe as you point out it's not necessarily what's in the documents but it's actually what they need to know that is one of the reasons why we added understanding standards events and webinars that actually took a different approach to engaging with teachers and that was seen as much a much more positive engagement and a much better way in which the teachers could get their message and could really understand the nature of the standard OK, thank you we've taken some amount of time in this I've got another couple of people who want to come in on this subject but let's keep it brief and let's make sure that the responses are brief as well please and that we understand the subject choice a number of authorities in my own region of the north east following Education Scotland and SQA guidance took a narrow view of needing 106 hours in one year rather than over two years and therefore six subjects so my question would be if the belief truly is that the curriculum for excellence is a better curriculum and therefore by its principles guidance therefore not be more likely to do eight subjects so is the management board comfortable with the guidance and advice that came from Education Scotland in the SQA at that time general guidance which I have here which was from the management board a statement from the curriculum for excellence management board in 2011 obviously was from the management board itself was fully agreed by the management board and it highlights issues including what they call issues for clarification around the timetable the range of provision the presentation for qualifications and the perceptions around potentially narrowing the curriculum around the number of subjects and finally early presentation those were all issues I understand at the time which were very live issues and the management board were seeking to clarify Bill Maxwell restated the position around a number of subjects in his statement in May 2016 and he may wish to elaborate on that further but the issue around subject choice I think it's quite important to highlight the issue around subject choice specifically was effectively a restatement of the previous statement by the management board back in 2011 and I think we've covered the issue of number of subjects in each year pretty well already but fundamentally that was the position that is the design principle and bear in mind also that part of the design principle is a broader entitlement for all young people to achieve across the broad range of the broad general education curriculum by the end of third year if you're coming back I'll make it short I appreciate the guidance that was issued in the summer of last year my understanding is that guidance said essentially that five subjects was unacceptable but never really gave any indication around about six and would you not agree that the restriction in subject choice is an unintended consequence of totally badly thought out guidelines no and the statement is built entirely on the principles that were as John has indicated established early on in the process through the design phase of the programme it allows for a broader general education up to age 15 end of third year and then a coherent three-year phase of senior phase which provides breadth and Terry's already illustrated how these new models can provide better breadth and depth towards coherent destinations in the post school you'll come in later very briefly with that answer would you not agree that if you're leaving an S4 you're leaving school and you're leaving with less qualifications than you would have had before the very young people that we're hoping to help is part of the Government's agenda of narrowing the attainment gap are the ones that we will therefore be letting down is this not an attainment gap widening measure than actually a narrowing measure if I can answer that a few young people are leaving education at the end of S4 and indeed in most schools they would be planning for young people to move on into further training, college and other destinations a key to the model of curriculum for excellence is as Larry's indicated earlier taking stock of the broad general education at the end of S3 schools should be planning for onward destinations indeed one of the key ambitions of curriculum for excellence was to create more coherent if I can use vocational and inverted commas routes for young people and do that better and that's where I think the synergy with the developing young workforce agenda is proving increasingly powerful as schools are looking at new ways of developing pathways that may not all be in school they may leave after fourth year from school but move on into apprenticeships into college training etc a couple of the witnesses want to come back in but what I'd like to do is I'd like to ask Tavish and Fulton to make their points and then come in at that stage can you make it please Tavish? Well I'll ask a question if I can read it very quickly Mr Lannigan you rightly talked about sitting five hires in fifth year Mike I think the point that dry alignment was really driving at on the Sunday one I want to ask you is but you're sitting five in your model out of six projects out of eight choices you've narrowed for those kids who've got to sit five in one year because that's what the university wants and that's the point that dry alignment was pushing you all on I know this from personal experience you're only sitting five out of six do you not accept that five out of eight gives pupils more choice as to what they may wish to do? By definition it does but it's what you lose by creating that additional choice Not for that pupil who has to sit five in one year? No I think if the planning is correct Mr Scott from what we are saying that if you plan correctly from S4 onwards then you should also remember that previously choice was made at the start of S2 so there's less maturity there there's less experience under this system there's more chance that the youngster is going to get it right and as far as the previous question was concerned about S4 leavers I would argue Mr Thompson that it's the quality of the qualifications that the small number of pupils who leave at the end of S4 the quality and the nature and the appropriateness of the qualification particularly in relation to vocational qualifications is what matters and indeed given that most leavers are from the less able group many of those were the youngsters who really struggled with the subjects and who were quite overwhelmed by the previous system On the subject of local responsibility which I think we've obviously talked about a good bit and I'm aware that Coslan here what really struck me during the evidence sessions was a kind of blame culture I think that existed certainly that was my reading of it so for example when we had Cosla or Education Scotland there was an emphasis on well a lot of the curriculum's local authorities responsibility and similarly when we had Stephanie Primrose she was putting a lot back to you know yourselves and I'm aware that Cosla's not here so this might be a bit simplistic I think my colleagues on the table have scrutinised quite well in terms of you know how decisions were made and where we're at but really what I want to know is how are you going to take things forward and as a question more for Dr Brown and Dr Maxwell how are you going to take things forward in terms of working with local authorities going forward to deal with some of the concerns that you've heard from the committee over the recent weeks and months and basically get the curriculum right as it's intended to do for the young people that you serve as I've said before in previous sessions all the agencies represented and all the skills across the country I don't think AMD would dispute that I don't think AMD has but how can you move this forward and I'll just keep it to to yourself thanks Yeah, in terms of the qualifications there's obviously been a decision ratified by the CFE management board that the units will be removed and we are currently in the process of redesigning the assessments associated with the qualifications in order to take that forward one of the things we absolutely need to do is make sure every single teacher in Scotland understands and knows about that our current mechanisms of communication are as we've seen not always reaching every teacher and so what we are currently doing is trying to understand how we can best engage with teachers to make sure that they are fully aware of what's going on. The timeframe that we have to do this in means that the level of consultation that occurred during the course of the initial construction of the qualifications is not going to be possible as we're going forward with the changes that we're making now one of the things we've been talking to the professional associations about is how we can engage with them in a more proactive way we've done that in the past in fact both the SSTA and any SQWT and DIS have very helpfully communicated to their members a lot of the changes that we have been making and one of the things we're doing is having subsequent conversations in the next couple of weeks to make sure that we try and maximise the amount of information that we can get out through as many channels as possible to make sure that teachers are aware of the changes so that it does have the impact that is intended which is to reduce the amount of work that is associated with unit assessments that is a result of the unit assessments themselves specifically asked about links with local authorities and I can reassure you partly Terry has already indicated that ADES work closely with us so we work with a curriculum network that runs across ADES certainly but equally we have an area lead officer for each of the 32 local authorities one of our staff regularly who explores with them how they're implementing various national initiatives but curriculum for excellence is clearly a key one amongst those and increasingly we're also seeing more collaboration which is a healthy thing I think across local authorities so there's a Tayside group now for example you may have heard of the Northern Alliance which is bringing together discussions across highlands and islands territory so we're working closely with them to exchange both to draw the best practice out of local authorities and make that known more widely across the country but also to support but also challenge what's happening in their schools and in certain circumstances of course we inspect schools in each of the local authorities too so we get some first-hand evidence of what's happening locally and where there are particular issues arising we will support a local authority in addressing those and that's happened in a few specific instances I'm happy to leave it at that convene further question on speech and language but I'm happy to bring that in a wee bit later if there's a... Mr Flanagan wanted to come in earlier on you find out can you make it brief please I was back to the question around a number of subjects and one of the difficulties we've had in Scottish education is moving towards the idea of it's the qualification you leave with important rather than the sequence of qualifications that you build up through a step-ladder approach which was the old system understanding the grade and higher still and there is an issue around the number of subjects studied in the senior phase but it's not really about the assessment, the qualification routes because part of that breadth was supposed to be about giving young people space to actually do a vocational course along with their firefighters or to do Duke of Edinburgh to volunteer and when you're doing six subjects in S4 and S5, you're squeezing out all that additional ambition around wider achievement which was a big part of the thinking and the key to it is what happens in S3 because in S3 is Terry alluded to there actually young people study more subjects for a year longer than they used to under the old system and that's meant to give them more choice around their senior phase pathway and whether a young person's leaving school in S4, S5 or S6 that S3 profile is a responsibility to the school to map out a three-year journey to the age of 18 for all young people whether that's directly into work or whether it's moving through college or going on directly to university. That bit of it isn't happening at the moment because of the way we've arrived at where we are and I think the qualification review group which has been chaired by the DFM will know that that has on its agenda the interface between S3 and the senior phase and if we get S3 right a number of the challenges around the senior phase will start to make more sense so the DFM has to complete that work and then I think that if we get big decisions around that and the DFM is using his authority as Cabinet Secretary to message that to the system then I think we will actually be in a much longer place to achieve their digital ambitions. OK, thank you very much. Colin we're coming back to governance we're coming back to CFE governance. You've got questions around about that. I do actually I've got a couple of questions here for Larry Flanagan and Bill Maxwell and I'm looking at the EIS submission and in it EIS is obviously not very complementary about the CFE management board and in fact in paragraph 2 the suggestion is that the CFE boards reach the end of its natural life span and that it should be replaced and I'd be interested to know firstly what would it be replaced with I thought that was very fair in our view on the CFE management board I'm absolutely clear the management board as I think I indicated earlier has been a model for collaborative practice particularly around the development phase and the issues around implementation and a lot of those implementation issues are at school and local authority level there was a reference made to COSLA I'm not here today COSLA haven't taken up a seat in the management board ever they used to send a delegate from ADES no they used to send two ADES people COSLA have been on the board for a number of years they've been on the board from the beginning in theory they never sent them they always sent two ADES people and that has a real issue it's not the truth OK, I've stand corrected then in relation to what replaces it I think there's an open discussion around that I don't think the management board should be disbanded at this stage until we have cracked the S3 and the qualifications but thereafter there does come a point where you cannot be implementing a programme 15 years after its inception we need to move forward as a system and I'm much more interested in the processes around pedagogy and how we support teacher development that's the big agenda I think once we get beyond implementation just to come back to the submission that was made it says here that EIS for the past period believes that the CFE board has reached the end of its natural life you must have a plan as to how you would like to see it reconstructed we like to see it replaced by a strategic board that's focused more upon pedagogy and curriculum development rather than looking at the implementation of a specific programme because my view very strongly is that the way we're going to achieve improvements in our school is by moving away from the session around qualifications and actually looking at pedagogy and teaching practice so it's around professional development and that's the agenda that we have already started to discuss in terms of the international summoning teaching profession there have been a number of initial experiments around supporting pedagogical improvement there is already a body around initial teacher education so I think something along those lines and that's what is hinted at in the OECD report would be much more effective the issue around the CFE board and a review of it it's something we raised around two years ago with Angela Constance and clearly given the issues around qualifications that work has to be completed but once that work is completed then I do think that we've moved beyond implementation we need to look more broadly at how we support Scottish education just to pick up a second question I'm hoping Bill Maxx will come in and maybe answer the two together in paragraph 13 of your submission you said that the CFE management board never had power to recommend courses of action to the appropriate education minister and if I look at the submission from the Scottish Government and Education Scotland in paragraph 4 and 5 it seems to imply that the management board actually had quite a bit more power and I'm just wondering how that squares my view is that in the development phase where we are looking at curriculum and looking at what I would call professional issues about education Scottish Government, we're very keen to take fairly strong advice from the management board I think we moved into a phase where a lot of the implementation issues became highly politicised not least over the last couple of years where there's been a very strong focus on education and we have made a lot of direct approaches to Scottish Government because that's where we saw the decision making locus you're saying here that the management board only ever had the power to recommend that's a lot different from strong advice or whatever how does that equate how the Scottish Government Education Scotland see it and how EIS are seeing it well I think every minister will be saying that they retain the right to accept or reject the advice on the management board whether it's a strong recommendation or look one one the box talks with the Cabinet Secretary they have the decision making power it's got more power than just making a recommendation to the minister I mean it must have according to the Scottish Government it's got a lot more power than that it would be very... it doesn't in any formal sense it's entirely dependent on how the minister accepts the recommendations it's been answered Colin okay very clearly at the very start of the session by Fiona but fundamentally what the management board has is authority rather than power if you put it in that sense because clearly ultimately as Larry says the Cabinet Secretary has the ultimate power on decision making in major aspects of policy but it has a lot of authority because of the make up and the consensual the membership covering such a broad church in what is fundamentally a system where authority lies at multiple levels so it makes authoritative recommendations that the Cabinet Secretary clearly considers carefully when it comes to that What about the EIS's proposal that it's come to the end of its life span Clearly major programmes of reform go through periods as was described earlier there's a development design phase there's an implementation phase the OECD report also signalled very strongly we're moving really into a benefits realisation phase now and I think it will there's work to be finished around the qualifications again as Larry says but I think the time is coming to take a fresh look at how this guiding alliance because that has been the power of what's happened has been the strong efforts made to work with all stakeholders developing consensus wherever possible how that's maintained beyond may require different mechanisms going forward but not quite yet so you would agree that you're coming to a point where a review might be beneficial it's worthy of review and of course the Government is reviewing governance of education more generally at the moment thank you convener can I go back to this issue about subject choice because Bill Maxwell and Janet Brown both very helpfully in their own evidence to the committee made it very clear that conversations still have to be had I think is the phrase that you both used respectively in the transcript and I think conversations do still have to be had about subject choice and I'd be interested in a parental input on this as well because I think it's not just about the number of subjects that are available within your right Larry Flanagan it's over a period from S3 right up to S6 on the learner journey in that context but the other crucial context and Mr Flanagan mentioned the issue about universities every university in the land just now is making the point that subject choice is absolutely crucial not just in terms of the number but in the groupings that they can do because although we've got more Scottish Dumasild students going on to university places we have actually got more who are not getting places that are rising much faster than the availability of the places so the groupings of the subjects that you can do at different year groups is absolutely crucial and I know for a fact that you have had letters about that we've all had letters from constituents who are making the point that their sons and daughters can't always do the subjects that they want to be able to get into the relevant college or university course is this a conversation that we need to review and very quickly if I can comment on that it's certainly something we need to keep under review and look at how that's provided sometimes it's provided actually by schools collaborating together or schools working with local colleges for more minority interest subjects because young people will have different patterns sometimes that are difficult to meet in a small school or in a school that hasn't typically provided that subject in the past it's always been an issue going forward in the current curriculum but one that needs to be kept is partly why it's been helpful to the University of Scotland on the management board again as part of this they did produce a paper called Beyond the Senior Phase on the back of initial discussions around how universities are going to adapt to the new patterns of qualifications that might appear so absolutely and the whole improving the careers advice and guidance service right back into primary and broad general education plays into this agenda too because it's important young people understand the pathways that they are but with respect it's not just about universities adapting which I think they're more flexible than they used to be but it's also about schools adapting and to take up Mr Lannigan's point it's about introducing the flexibility which I agree is there in theory but it by no means is it there in practice in too many schools that's the issue that we're facing and that is part of the delivery of the curriculum for excellence I know my colleague Johann Lamont wants to talk about the S4 situation where the lack of the external assessment there there are crucial issues about whether in practice we're actually delivering what youngsters are able to pick up for the best possible opportunities that they have beyond the school where they are in my experience schools are better than they have ever been at giving that level of flexibility and I suppose if I reflect on my own experiences director over the last five years in my local authority we have extended for instance the use of consortium arrangements among schools we have extended the use of college places not just for youngsters to go to college during the school day we have extended the use of college lecturers coming into school to deliver a range of courses and I can say with absolute confidence that the youngsters that are going through certainly the schools in my area today have got a far greater degree of flexibility and choice than they had five or ten years ago I'll just finish on the comment that's good to hear but we're just getting a lot of letters from constituents whose sons and daughters feel otherwise I think it is fair to say however to deliver a system that would allow absolutely every possible choice because of the way that schools are run and because at times if you only have one or two pupils wanting to do a particular subject you simply can't run with it and I understand parents frustrations with that but at times schools simply can't deliver if there's not a sufficient number of youngsters that choose the subject That's fine Right, thank you. Gillian and Tavish had small short supplement Yeah I mean largely my main question has already been answered a lot around workload so I'm not so fussed if there's time issues there Larry Flanagan said something which absolutely just peaked my interest very much about focusing on pedagogy more than qualifications and assessment and examination led by curriculum and that very much, I agree with that I think it's long overdue and I think we need to do that however we exist in a culture that is obsessed with assessment and examination we have intense political scrutiny we have intense media you'll just have to look at the PISA results that came out to see the who-ha around that in terms of them are we looking to other countries for inspiration that are high achieving in education but have got a completely different model and I maybe want to bring in Joanna Murphy on this because obviously reaching out to parents is going to be really really important if we are to do a complete overhaul in terms of educational culture so I'd like to hear a little bit more about that really and how you see the challenges of that going forward I think it's important to remember that curriculum for excellence was essentially a pedagogical innovation and we have become over obsessed with processes around it I mean even in the SPICE document that you have it talks about CFE being introduced in secondary schools and creates a timeline which aims towards the first qualifications but in actual fact CFE was introduced to secondary schools at the same time as primary schools because all the changes were communicated around to all elements and that's part of the difficulty that everything is measured against the qualifications framework and no-one is saying that assessment is not important assessment is absolutely part and parcel of the teaching process I think if you look at some of the high performing countries in Pisa for example, like Finland actually you'll see very strong echoes of what some of the things that they are doing in curriculum for excellence particularly around the focus on teacher quality and professional development I think the difficulty is that we would be bogged down in procedures around qualifications to the detriment of that much more productive workstream and I think if we can get past this qualifications issue and get them bedded in that then opens the door around looking at perigodgy as a main driver for the improvements and that's not about governance, that's about processes and attitudes from school leaders from education leaders across the country interestingly because Bill's sitting there Finland don't have an inspectorate and they seem to do fine and they also have exit qualifications young people sit exams in Finland and they are leaving school and the rest of the time is geared towards building so I think there are definitely lessons we can learn from that The committee is not suggesting for a second that somebody's made unemployed We met last year very helpful We're already looking for a job Sorry, Jolene Ewan I think Mr Lannigan wanted to come in Just to say, I think it's worth finding ourselves that the OECD report indicated that all of the building blocks are there within Scottish education to be a world leading system and in fact Pasi Salberg from Finland addressed the ADES annual conference in November and made it very clear that he thought that Scotland was exactly in the right place to be a world leader and the same was said by Andy Hargreaves these are two of the personal advisers to the Scottish Government at the moment and they were exceptionally complimentary about where we're going They made it clear that we haven't got everything in place yet and the recommendations in the OECD report they're all being taken forward by the various bodies to try to address where we're perhaps not delivering but they are very clear that all of the leading systems are doing exactly what Scotland has done over recent years Okay Thank you very much Tavish and then Ross Thomson Very quickly, convener, and I apologise to Llywydd Flanagan about the obsession about process but can I ask following Colin Beattie's points about governance I wonder if I can ask Fiona Robison did the management board, as a matter of course after every meeting, make a series of recommendations to the Cabinet Secretary of the day The process around the management board ministers will have made aware of the course of events of discussions at the management board depending on the nature of the discussion at the management board would depend on the nature of the advice that was provided to ministers but it's already been highlighted during the course of the discussion there have been a number of very clear ministerial decisions as a result of advice from the management board It would be possible to finish the committee with some of that which is now clearly in the past but some illustrations of where a clear recommendation and then presumably sent a minute to the Cabinet Secretary saying Minister, Cabinet Secretary, we need you to do X or we recommend you do X I think the timeline that's been provided by SPICE highlights a number of those key decisions that asking you if you'd furnish our committee with evidence that illustrates the point you've just very fairly made to the committee not today but in writing afterwards I can look at what can be provided to the committee separately Thank you very much, Ross It's a supplementary following on the line of questioning from Liz Smith If you had a choice of eight subjects and you decided that you wanted to go to university to study science just as an example so you choose the five subjects that you need for that particular course and because you've got eight you then have that flexibility to change so for whatever reason you decide by S5 that going and studying science is not for you to have that flexibility to make some change under six subjects does that not make it impossible for you to change route if that's something that you wish to do? I think the issue is when you're making those choices if you look at the S3 profile you're delaying the choice for a further year so young people and their parents will have a better basis for making that decision because one they're older you tend to be doing it around January of second year so you've been in secondary schools for a year and a half and you then do your eight subjects and then that would normally after two years go down to five if you have a bypass system in place and you have eight subject column eight choices across two years you've actually got the best of both worlds because you can actually create that additional flexibility around it there's not a huge number of young people looking to do three sciences that's not your highest demand in relation to timetabling and it does come back to the point Terry was hinting at in relation to Lizzie's question timetable options are resource led you need to have the teachers and you need to have demand the days when schools could run classes for five, six, seven pupils are long gone so any timetabler will basically say if you haven't got at least ten picking as an option, it's not even getting looked at and the school's effect and this has to do with budget pressure schools have had to cut their cloth so schools that maybe had a bit of flexibility in the past around running an additional science course or additional languages course to meet relatively small demand that option quite often is off the table now and that's for a school timetabler or a head teacher looking at the options that's a very real pressure that has to be factored in OK, thank you very much Richard Thank you I think in the interest of brevity I'll just address my question to maybe Terry Lannigan unless anyone over this side of the table wants to come in in terms of delivering the curriculum around Scotland some local authorities at the moment are struggling to attract education to new teachers so there's a shortage of teachers and that I know in some areas could potentially jeopardise the delivery of the curriculum from August 2017 onwards because the teachers are not there they have to review what can be delivered it's been put to me by some people in the education sector that if Education Scotland's split between the scrutiny role and the development role and the development role was devolved by regions of local authorities or whatever that would help in a more local basis address some of those challenges I just want to know Terry Lannigan has had that feedback from his directors of education and if any others want to come in from this side of the table over here I think there are arguments foreign against the splitting of the two functions of Education Scotland I can't think that it would help the recruitment of teachers we are in a difficult position at the moment that we are in certain parts of the country in north-east in particular is really struggling to fill posts and that is a challenge for the system and that's about a number of issues workforce management issues which have to be dealt with at a national level there are also issues to do with drop out rates in some of the courses both at the university but also the teacher education university courses which have to be looked at I can't see the relevance of the role of Education Scotland to the attraction of teachers you're focusing on the attraction of teachers I'm saying as a result of a lack of teachers there may have to be changes made to curriculum locally that happens at present that sometimes as a result of the difficulty in recruiting for instance there's an issue at the moment with computing science teachers and curriculum has to be adapted locally just now but I wouldn't see the division of Education Scotland and the devolving of that to a local level helping with recruitment okay right thank you very much Joanne thank you very much we did in previous education committee sessions try to establish it's a process thing for me and this is this question of when national 4 became something that was internally assessed because we know it in the beginning we were told that there would be an expectation that basically there were external exams at all levels where they're currently used for certification and they talked about the inclusive nature of the standard grades and by the following year we need to make national 4 simply to be assessed by internally now I have to say that the first time in all of these sessions we've had a coherent explanation of what some of the thinking round of that might be and I think Larry Flanagan has explained very helpfully the idea of qualification shifting further up the school year because more young people stay on certainly when I was still teaching very few kids and stayed on for a sixth year simply as one children did at the time they got to sixth year but I'm interested in the process because we weren't able to establish when that decision was made and who made it and I wonder whether Education Scotland or SQA can clarify when that decision was made that there was a group as Fiona highlighted at the beginning at different times during the course of the development process different groups were formed by the CFE management board and there was a qualifications governance group that was formed to specifically look at agreeing the process for signing off the design principles of the new qualifications and to agree the design principles themselves the membership of that group was very broad and wide ranging it had representation from the professional associations from the then LTS a part of Education Scotland from the college sector from ADEAS, from school leader Scotland and from SQA it was that group that discussed and worked through the design principles and agreed that national 4 given the nature of national 4 being potentially the exit qualification for those candidates who might be going on to college courses and that internal assessment was the most appropriate assessment to be put in place for national 4 the national 4 internal assessment would however be quality assured by SQA to ensure that there was a national standard applied and that is what was recommended to the CFE management board which then accepted that and then passed that up to ministers to approve explain how useful it is to have a qualification that is neither externally examined and is only passed or failed in terms of giving more information about a young person I am troubled and I have been interested to know what the EIS view on this was and I am happy to be corrected on it but my own experience was that where a conference there was non-certificate courses no funding followed that within schools even though there should have been because it was not externally assessed and constrained and young people did not have the same kind of quality of course that standard grade brought in and in the early days in this it is clear that it regards that the initial proposal was that there would be external qualification examination for anything that had been certificate in that way and I do not see that it feels a kind of pakeness round that decision to move from that yes it should be externally examined to not only should it be internally assessed but it should be a pass or fail so I wonder what consideration was given in that regard I think that there's two issues the national 4 is certificated there are lots of qualifications that many awarding bodies but externally assessed that's what it says the proposal for the replacement to standard grade at this stage included an external exam quote at all levels where they are currently and that was the original point there was then a group set up which had a very broad church within it in terms of the membership that actively discussed the value of internal versus external assessment but the importance of assuring standards through quality assurance and there was a very detailed conversation I'm sure Larry will come in on this the point I was trying to make was that there are internally assessed externally quality assured qualifications delivered across all jurisdictions all of the Scottish qualifications in the vocational space have internally assessed units that are highly valued by both parents, both students and within employers the national 4 was seen as fitting into that space why was it only a pass or fail the pass or fail I think was a different discussion that was also one of the recommendations that came out of the qualifications governance group again if you look at S3 the ambition around the broader education was that level 3 in CFE was the minimum on the title of young people so that's basically literacy in the innocent the aspiration of S1 to S3 was that most young people would get to CFE level 4 which is the top end of the experiences and outcomes which equates to a standard grade 4 pass so the qualifications were based on the idea that most young people at the end of S3 when they're doing their S3 profile would hopefully be achieving level 4 across most areas and therefore their natural targets in terms of qualifications the qualifications group was actually looking at the idea of 2 year and exit qualifications would be either national 5 or higher and there was a lot of discussion around whether or not there should be an exam in fact the initial discussion was national 5 wasn't going to have an external exam and Fiona Hyslop ruled that out and said that that would be a step too far and probably giving the experience around national 4 that would probably have been a good judgement but the discussion in that group was around moving to a candidate finish system and exit qualifications the colleges Scotland made a very very strong argument around not having external examination for national 4 because national 4 was a progression into college courses and within the college courses their default position was that all their units by and unless they were doing SQA related but their units closer to their courses were internally assessed and validated by colleges so there was a very strong argument that for the group of pupils it was anticipated that national 4 would be their exit qualification from school that was a more appropriate pathway bearing in mind that again the anticipation was that a good number of these pupils would actually be doing a mixture of school and college based placements so that part of the CFE programme was that they were doing their fourth year in colleges rather than in schools now that hasn't been realised and in practice what has happened because N4, N5 came in together replacing general and credit standard grade there has been a huge over presentation around N4 mainly because schools aren't confident about CFE levels 3 and 4 in S3 because they have not been doing them because they have made the subject choice in S2 the discussion around the qualification review group is that N4 has not worked in the way that it has been used we have certainly raised that we think that there needs to be to give it credibility and address some of the concerns around it there now needs to be some level of external assessment validation and that that's part of the discussion is now taking place whether that can be done through an exam or whether it can be done through an externally mapped added value unit that discussion hasn't taken place but the issue around it and the recognition that for a number of young people who are doing it at N4 and N4 is their their top level the qualification doesn't carry the same status that we hoped it would it isn't seen in the way it was intended so there are issues to be addressed around that it's really helpful because you described the cabinet secretary with N5 being a step too far but for this particular group they have neither got effective rig around its third year profile nor have they necessarily got access to college in fourth year and because some of them will go to college we're not allowing an external examination for some young people who would be able to show to the world attend a school, it was a good attender I achieved certain things across the stage which did stand a grade maybe it's well out of date but it did provide that for a particular group of young people can I just ask on the back of that if the convener will permit me that there's clearly a lot of issues here around curriculum for excellence things that need to be revisited precise for the reasons you describe we've been told in our budget consideration that curriculum for excellence has now reached a level of maturity that allows Education Scotland and SQA's budget to be cut and I think SQA is by something like half is it the view of the unions and indeed of Education Scotland and SQA that we have reached that maturity that can justify that decision well I think in relation to the changes that have been agreed around N5 and higher and advanced higher there's clearly a work stream still live there we press very strongly for SQA to introduce the changes the removal of the units for higher and that five both next year and SQA said that they couldn't achieve that and in my view that's largely the resource driven because they don't have the same number of staff and they can't afford the same number of secondies out of schools and also there's a pressure on schools not letting people out anyway so there's an issue there I think around N4 well it depends on somebody saying what the decision is but clearly there's liable to be a work stream there also which I think has to be funded because at the moment I'm not on the SQA board but at the moment I'm assuming that there isn't a funding stream around that because SQA have a relatively small co-staff a lot of this development work is done by getting teachers out of school you are subject to experts so I wouldn't necessarily be calling for on the confidence budget because I might come back to bite me I think there has to be a funding stream there around ensuring that this work is completed I think a lot of the other stuff around senior phase and articulation a lot of that is around process so that isn't necessarily got a huge cost attached to it but there's about alignment of local authority and school decision making around process so in that sense I think the big spending commitments around some of the areas that are limited Right, right, right Like a cheese Like a cheese The Tacklingbury Roxie report was an indicator that things hadn't gone right in implementation across 3 to 15 because you wouldn't have to set up a working group to tackle bureaucracy if that bureaucracy hadn't been created The Tacklingbury Roxie report which everyone around the table was involved in came forward with really good recommendations and then a year later had to issue a second report because it hadn't been implemented and some of these are still operational issues around school reporting formats around online tracking systems so there is still an agenda to be addressed there but I think in terms of the ambitions and the curriculum elements the guidance around decluttering has been really useful the focus on literacy and numeracy has been really useful I'm not convinced we need any more benchmarks but that's another discussion but I think we are at a stage where we should be looking towards realising the benefits of these changes because the all-the-ground work is there I think that Terry alluded to the OEC report the building blocks are all there we now need to make sure that they gel together ok, thank you very much for that can I just ask then given that all the bodies who would be involved in the operational matters and the main are on the board how did you come up with the report and then we couldn't implement it it kind of takes us back to the discussion we had at the very beginning the CFE management board does not run 32 local authorities and I can cite some very good practice some individual local authorities who have done a lot of work around modelling senior phase architecture and around curriculum and there are others it might be back to the point that Fulton MacGregor made or somebody asked a question about the support that might be coming from Disaggregating Education Scotland local authorities across the country have seen because of austerity pressures their QIO networks have been absolutely diminished disappeared in some areas so a lot of the pedagogical support that used to come at a local authority level has been subject to the cuts process particularly where teacher numbers were being protected and that was part of the education budget that could be hit and there is a gap there I think and I think there is genuine benefit looking at Disaggregating some of the functions of Education Scotland into regional networks that are closer to the ground in terms of local authorities and give them something extra why would you come up with a report where you know it can't be achieved which report can't be achieved Mr Lannigan said he doesn't represent local authorities but he is but he is here representing the director of education who is in every local authority so clearly you have got some kind of overarching local authority role in terms of education so why would you come up with a report and then knowing at the time because of financial pressures that it wasn't going to be achievable firstly I don't think that that was what happened the report was compiled and indeed many of the recommendations of that report were carried through at local authority level and in the last school session Education Scotland conducted a review of tackling bureaucracy across the 32 local authorities and the majority of local authorities were came out with a very positive report that through the LNCT particularly, but other devices that they had worked hard and had succeeded in reducing bureaucracy so it's not true to say that none of the recommendations were carried through and I'm sure the EIS would acknowledge that and indeed Larry has said that there are some very good examples at local level okay, right, thank you I'd like to move on to Ross Greer now thanks, convener I appreciate that there's a wide range of stakeholders involved in the management board and teacher and parent input certainly seems to be there but the gap that occurs to me is in direct learner input so I'd like to pose the question to Fiona Robertson what expectation is there at the management board of learner involvement in the decisions made or the recommendations made to ministers I think that's an important point the breadth of membership of the management board and the fact that the teaching profession and indeed the leadership in education is represented I think doesn't prevent the learner voice coming through we've also we also have a number, we try where possible to have meetings within schools and as part of the discussion we've extended the meetings so that there are discussions with learners and with teachers within that context as well both the SQA and Education Scotland also have their own mechanisms for ensuring that there's a learner voice through that process and some of the wider work that the Government takes forward involves children's parliament youngscot etc so there's a broad range so while the learner voice is not formally part of young people are not formally part of the governance if you like of CFE in terms of formal representation on the board I think there are a number of mechanisms to use to ensure to ensure that that voice is heard there was some work done with children in Scotland you know around this and some really good work and of course through the national parent forum as well I think the learner as well as the parent voice that the learner voice comes through really quite strongly there too I mean I do appreciate that and I know certainly from experience that the teachers unions are often very affected in representing learners as well but there's a difference between someone else advocating on the learner's behalf and actually having learners as part of the process I know from previous evidence sessions Janet Brown has laid out SQA's consultation with the learners particularly around I think national 4 was the example given but I'm wondering in terms of the membership of the management board would you be able to explain how the membership is comprised and who ultimately makes that decision the membership is conveyed through ministers so ministers have determined the membership of the management board over time and indeed invitations to serve on the management board are expressed on behalf of ministers and the composition of the management board as it currently stands has largely been in place since 2009 with some additional representation I think as I mentioned at the start of the meeting to reflect the importance of the developing young workforce agenda on the senior phase I think that there is certainly I think the potential for a place for learners I know the local authorities that have learners on their education committees have certainly seen a significant improvement there on a broader point I was wondering if you'd be able to let us know has there been any independent evaluations of the workings of the management board I think that the OACD review met met with the management board also received material as part of its work from management board members and others so I think some of the issues around the management board were taken forward as part of that report and of course the the education governance review which is just closed also considers issues pertaining to the management board and broader issues as well so I think that the OACD review is important in expressing that statement and the statement that I made at the start of the meeting around the centrality of the management board around the development of curriculum for excellence but also that piece around that Larry in particular has expressed around potentially a shift going forward that does sound like essentially no but other reviews have touched on it I think that's a fair reflection I'm just turning to Mr Searson and Ms Murphy Larry Flanagan had laid out a potential successor body to the management board I was wondering if you had any thoughts on what its future is or the future of an alternative body In terms of the SSTA we haven't been a party to the management board for a whole of the period and we were removed at one stage so we only got back into the body back in September 2015 so that's why I've reserved some of the comments on some of the detail on those but as far as we are concerned there is a need for a body a strategic body to look at education policy not necessarily CFE management board but there needs to be a body that brings all the stakeholders together and looks at all those issues my concern is that it is a body that makes it doesn't make the big decisions and one of the things that we are concerned about as far as secondary teachers are concerned is that we are one voice in a number of voices there and it doesn't really give the prominence of the profession in some of the decision making because if you take for example the issues of workload and the changes to the national qualifications the unions pursued those matters outside of the CFE management board and I feel that that's one of the things that we have raised even the national qualifications working group which was established in January 2016 we welcome that and we hope that changes will be made but we were there's only three teacher unions on that panel and we were the voice in the wilderness asking for some immediate change and I think that's one of the things that USA in terms of the future we need to make sure that we've got the people that are doing the job and as regards the implementation group there's no teacher unions at all involved in that group and they're the ones that are doing the job and I feel that this is where some of the messages need to come back so it really is about having a voice for the teacher the profession in the group but it is also important to have the people around the table that are doing the work and sometimes the groups are very big and when any sort of working group is very difficult to manage when you've got a large range of people that in terms of the future I think there is a need for a strategic board the CFE element of it I do think isn't finished yet because the national qualifications need to be resolved and they will be resolved but I think there's also a major shift that needs to come into that is that the teacher profession needs to be trusted to make the decisions and that would reduce some of the workload and unfortunately that's one of the problems that we've got to overcome added to the other issue is when we've got a recruitment crisis and I feel that that's something that's been underestimated some of the things that teachers are having to do where they're spitting classes to make sure that the youngsters get a bit of coverage for their qualifications I think those are the elements that I'm missing from the real discussion is actually what is going on inside the schools at the moment so I hope that gives a little bit of a steer where we're coming from Forgive me if I don't articulate this in some ways on my colleagues here I think I should say at this point that I am a parent I'm not an educational specialist I'm here representing other parents who again bring their children and good faith to schools and trust the good work of the classroom teachers day in, day out as a volunteer and as parents again also volunteers the whole process I think it's also the whole process often passes us by I think it's telling that at 5 past 12 we finally get round to talking to parents we were kind of mentioned in passing a couple of times but again it goes on to pressing other pressing and obviously important matters this is not a battle between parents and everyone else but I think that parents have a lot to give to this they have been very well represented on the management board since almost it started but in very many other parts of the education system we get brought in just at the end just to rubber stamp or we're told what's happening or even worse we're not really told what's happening I hate to say beat it out of your children but almost cajole out of your we shouldn't work they're the conduit to many of the decisions obviously and naturally they're in school they're the ones that are sitting the exams there's not been a lot of talk of primary they're the ones in primary 1 going in and learning to read and write through the system and how curriculum for excellence has really really changed the way that the young people at that age go in and experience the world around them and the school system my own experience with my own daughters is that one has went through the system entirely in the old the old system and one the middle one's done a bit of both and one at the end has gone through the whole new curriculum for excellence experience and so I can see it from all of the point of views I don't want to bring obviously it's not fair to highlight them in this but I can see the process I can see the differences that have been made particularly in primary school and having had a daughter in the first cohort to go through S45 and 6 I could see as a parent how difficult it was for the young people how the schools struggled to cope for the young people and the teachers but also how the parents were very often left behind and didn't really get included because again there's an add-on it's time it's money and it's trying to get the parents involved in a time that suits the schools and the actual parents that have to go along Okay, Saudi Ross, on your word Can I just say that you could have participated at any time during the we weren't banning you from talking until the end I can answer you It's nice to see you again Okay, thank you very much for that lengthy session it was very useful for the committee Thank you