 Hello everyone. Welcome you to the first 21st meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2018. I remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on silent for the duration of the meeting. Apologies have been received from Gillian Martin and in addition Richard Lockhead is no longer a member of the committee as he has been appointed Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science. I am sure we all wish Richard well in his new role and thank him for the job that he did as a member of this committee. Claire Adamson will be substituting today for Richard. The first item of business is a decision on whether to take agendas items 3 and 4 in private and are members content to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. The next item of business is an evidence session on the education reforms. This is to explore in more detail the next steps following the cabinet secretary's announcement in June that the Scottish Government education reforms would be taken forward through collaboration and without legislation at this stage. We have two panels today and the first panel has represented from COSLA, EIS and Education Scotland. Can I welcome to this meeting Councillor Stephen McCabe, spokesperson for children and young people from COSLA, Jane O'Donnell, chief officer, children and young people team from COSLA, Larry Flanagan, general secretary EIS and Jane McManus, strategic director, scrutiny education Scotland. I should say to the panel from the outset that if you would like to respond to a question please indicate to me or the clerks and I will call you to speak. Before I invite questions from my colleagues I would like to ask a representative from each organisation to briefly set out a position on the Government's decision to progress the implementation of education reforms at this stage as opposed to introducing legislation. We are pleased that the Government has decided not to introduce legislation. We have been arguing for the best part of two years that legislation was not required. We have had detailed discussions with the Government which obviously resulted in the agreement that we reached in June. At that time there was a presumption that legislation would proceed but obviously the Government took the decision not to. We welcome that fact. We are concerned that legislation remains on the table and potentially we don't see that as necessarily an overly conducive towards partnership working but we recognise potentially why the Government has done that but certainly we feel that improvement and changes can be taken forward without the need for legislation. Okay, thank you. I think we would also welcome the fact that the legislation has been at the very least part for the next year. In most of our discussions with the Scottish Government around the consultation period we have emphasised the advice that the Scottish Government itself received from its international panel of advisers. What was required in Scottish education was cultural change rather than structural change. Our concern was that we would have legislation that was focused on structural change, which then had little impact on the classroom. Anything that doesn't impact on teaching and learning in the classroom is a waste of time and energy. I think that the approach around collaboration involving both arms of government but more particularly from our point of view involving the profession in terms of how you lead from the middle, how you create leadership at school level and how you impact on teaching and learning. The opportunity offered by collaboration rather than the diversion of political debate around structural change is welcome. From our point of view, we think that what has been set out offers a window of opportunity around changing the culture of how we deliver education in Scotland rather than focusing on the structures. Let my colleagues welcome a focus on collaboration. It is a key element in terms of creating that cultural change to support further improvement in the education system. We really look forward to working with our partners in terms of delivering on the joint agreement and that focus on collaboration and acting actually as a model to support sharing and learning and working together to ensure that we can make the changes required to achieve the best possible outcomes for our children and young people. I wonder if you could just clarify in terms of what will trigger the use of legislation? That is really a decision for the Deputy First Minister what triggers legislation. Perhaps that is a question that you need to ask him. Our understanding is that he expects to see significant progress over the next 10 months in terms of the improvement agenda. We have signed an agreement with him. We are committed to driving forward improvement, working with partners, but it will be for the Deputy First Minister to make a decision as to whether he feels that sufficient progress has been made. That means that legislation is not required. What is your definition of significant progress? I think again that is a question entirely for the Deputy First Minister. Our officers are continuing to engage with partners in Education Scotland and other professional associations in terms of developing the improvement framework. I will bring Jane in in terms of where we are with that. Fundamentally, that is a decision for the Deputy First Minister. I understand based on the statement that he made back in June that he is going to carry out some sort of independent assessment of progress. That will be part of the discussions that we have on an on-going basis as to how that assessment will be made. Before Jane comes back, can I tease out exactly what costless position is with the Government? I think that it is very important for the committee to understand that. Are you still of the view that legislation is not needed? Absolutely. That is still our view. At the end of the day, we recognise that at the time that the intention of Government was to introduce legislation. Through our discussions, we sought to influence that legislation as much as we could. That is set out in the agreement dated 28 June. At 12 hour, the Deputy First Minister decided not to introduce the legislation. That came as a surprise to us because we anticipated that legislation would be introduced. We are happy that it has not been introduced. We are not so happy that it is sitting there on the shelf. However, as far as we are concerned, the agreement with Government is set out in that document dated 28 June. We will do what we can to implement that agreement. Your view would therefore be that the work that you have briefly introduced today will be enough to ensure that that legislation is not needed. In other words, the collaboration that the whole panel has described this morning will be adequate to ensure that the Deputy First Minister does not need to trigger the use of legislation. I certainly would be hopeful. I do not think that there will be any lack of commitment in the part of Scottish local government. We would argue that this is not being forced upon us. We are committed to the improvement agenda. We represent communities of the length and breadth of Scotland. We interact with the education system and young people on a day-to-day basis. We see the difference that education can make in our children's lives. I have children at school myself. We want to see every young person get the opportunity to fulfil their potential, so we have a passionate commitment towards the improvement agenda. We believe that that culture will change as Larry referred to is better made in partnership rather than being imposed. There is often a case for legislation. We think that in this instance there is not a case for legislation partnership working in a real focus and determination to close that poverty-related attainment gap and to give young people where additional support needs the best opportunities in life. A real partnership and a focus of that is what is required, and structural change, etc., is just a distraction. No, thank you and I appreciate all that. Two head teachers said to me at home in Shetland at the weekend, but this is still hanging over us. They could still pass laws that would change, for example, introduce a head teacher's charter and back it up by law and all the rest of it. I presume that you are very well aware of, especially as you are a parent like me, of the pressure on teachers caused by, as some would see it, the threat of another law being imposed upon the top of them. Absolutely. Larry, obviously, can answer for his own member, but certainly the head teachers that I have engaged with over the last couple of years have certainly been concerned about the potential implications of legislation and how that might affect their role. I think that the Government might tell a different story in terms of their interactions with head teachers, but certainly the interactions that I have had with head teachers and my own authority would suggest that they have those concerns. I think that the onus is on us all within the education system to try and ensure that we keep a focus on our young people and on improving outcomes for our young people. You have said that you think that that is the right approach. Why, then, do you think that it has taken the best part of two years to get to this point? Again, I think that you might need to ask that question to the Deputy First Minister. We have been arguing consistently for two years as have EIS professional associations that legislation was not required. We have been through various consultations, made various submissions, and even, in a sense, as I said, on 28 June when that agreement was made and was endorsed by council leaders, there is still the expectation that legislation was to be introduced and the Government have decided not to. I would like to hope that it was as a result of the passionate way in which local government officers and elected members demonstrated their commitment apart from local government to drive forward change. I do not know that the parliamentary arithmetic might have something to do with that. That is a question that you might want to ask of the Deputy First Minister. There has been a tension between Scottish Government and local government around essentially who runs Scottish education. That political tension has been there for a number of years. I know that Scottish Government has a certain frustration that delivery across local authorities is not even, as they would see it. Equally, some of the ambitions around this reform agenda are already in practice in a number of local authorities. Across the country, we have headteacher members who are supported by the local authority around appointments, processes, for example, or around resourcing or around relieving the curriculum. If we want to change the culture to move to a situation in which the situation is more evenly spread across practice from Shetland to Dumfries, it is about how you support schools. One of the influences that has occurred most recently has been a successful establishment of the regional improvement collaboratives. There was a lot of discussion about what they might be and what they might not be. Concerned that there would just be another layer of bureaucracy, another layer of management in a system that is already heavily top-down. The early experience around the collaboratives has been much more productive. There has been a collaborative approach and a relatively light-touch approach where the collaboratives have been looking to fill out the perigodgial leadership support that local authorities have lost through austerity measures over the past decade. That might have been one of the areas where the potential for collaboration has been evidenced because the collaboratives were in effect brought in before the final decisions around the legislation. The other area that is very important, apart from lobbying within Scotland, is that the international council of education advisers have had a significant influence on the cabinet secretary's thinking, because they are world-renowned experts in collaborative practice, and their advice was quite strongly, do not legislate where you do not have to. I think that that has had some bearing on the thinking of the Scottish Government. The collaborative approach that has been laid out does offer a way forward. I have a concern around significant progress, because, frankly, if we are talking about changing the culture, the idea that we are going to do that in a year is fanciful. Changing the culture of Scottish education is a decade-long agenda. Significant progress for me is that we are all still sitting around the same table in the years time, because we are at least then collaborating on the agreed agenda. I think that it was interesting that the two high teachers who you referenced felt that they had something hanging over them, because we actually need to get rid of that idea that there are threats sitting behind the offer of friendship around collaboration. That inhibits the courage that is needed to develop collegiate and collaborative practice. It would be good if we had an early signal that the collaborative approach is working and that the legislation is not going to be required, because the idea that there is a big stick waiting there is not conducive to the idea of collaborative practice. You do not get kids to collaborate in a class by threatening them detention if they do not collaborate effectively. The big stick removal would be useful. I am just to follow up on that point. Listening to what you said, would you agree that by keeping the legislation there it does undermine confidence and trust? Why then do you think that the cabinet secretary does not trust that you are going to deliver on the agreement? I think that you are inviting me to get involved in the world of politics. The motivation is, presumably, because the cabinet secretary is keen to progress his agenda and feels that, if progress was not being made, he would want to accelerate the implementation of a number of his ideas. My view is that, if you believe in collegiate and collaborative practice, you have to create a framework to allow that to flourish. That framework is one where trust is actually taken as a given from the start of it. I do not anticipate the legislation ever coming back to the Scottish Parliament, because I think that there are enough committee partners to the agenda to make sure that it does progress. Given different nuances here and there, it is an agenda that everyone is signed up to. Frankly, we are in difficulty if all of us in Scottish education cannot collaborate on agreed objectives. My final question was just a process one. It was just to ask when the Scottish Government first approached you with the suggestion of a non-legislative solution, specifically in terms of the timescale. I think that, from our point of view, we approached them with that agenda. That was our whole submission for the last year. When did they come back to you and say that that was their preferred option? I was the first indication. In terms of suspending the bill, shortly before that announcement, we did not really have any foreknowledge of it. You signed up to an agreement to proceed on that basis. If you will hear our submission, one of our concerns was that we were not actually part of the agreement. The agreement was between COSLA and the Scottish Government, and we have raised the point that, if you do not bring the teachers on board, all that collaboration is about jurisdiction. It is not about actual practice. We were made aware of the decision not to bring forward legislation or to put legislation on the shelf shortly before the announcement was made. If you read the agreement dated 28 June, that is predicated on the fact that there would be legislation. Just following on the issue of how you measure progress, the panel has said that there are concerns that legislation is still on the table. It is almost just sitting there waiting to be brought back out if progress is not achieved. What, if any discussion has there been within the education reform joint agreement about that, will be taken forward? How you will resolve, for example, disputes? If, for example, COSLA thinks efficient progress has been made and the Government do not, or if the Government come along and say, well, we have made enough progress and COSLA do not think, has there been discussion on how you will take that forward? Following on from, obviously, the joint agreement officers have been meeting over the summer period and continued to meet to take that agenda forward, so I think it would be appropriate for Jane and Jenny to give a wee bit more detail on that. Just to clarify, from an officer's perspective, colleagues have been coming together following the announcement in June 2018. It is a very constructive area and officers are working very well. We are already discussing the importance of trying to meet that sense of what progress looks like. I think that the group has just expanded, so it was just Scottish Government Education, Scotland and COSLA, and now we are joined by colleagues from the professional associations and trade unions and by the chief social work officer, which I think is a really valuable addition to the group and helps us get that whole child approach going forward. I am fairly confident that the people in the room are so committed to making this work that we will have those mature and sensible discussions at officer level at the earliest possible stage if we think that we are not going to get there. However, we are working in a political context and COSLA leaders and the COSLA Children's Young People Board have full oversight of our actions as officers. We will be regularly liaising with our politicians, and I think that it would be a matter of political discussion between the Deputy First Minister and, in our case, Councillor McCabe, if there was any concerns, but that would be done at the earliest possible stage because so much rests on this going well. Have there been any discussions about the criteria around what success will look like? I think that it is important going forward that everyone who is involved in this knows what the certain set of circumstances are that would be judged as success. You cannot measure something if there is nothing to measure it against. I think that, just to clarify, convener, through yourself, the group has confirmed twice now that we are fully behind the agreed principles that are set out in the joint agreement, that is on page 2 of the joint agreement, and that that will be our test. As we take forward the charter and some called the headteachers charter, I know that the AIS are keen to call it a schools charter, but it is the sense of the principles of we will be empowering headteachers and other professionals, as senior officers of the council. We will be making sure that we are focusing on the whole child and putting the children into the centre of our decision making. We will be making sure that local authorities' duties around the support that we provide to all our colleagues and to our children is in place. Those principles will be checking it against. In terms of a formal process, no, but that is not the area that we are in as officers. We are in a very collegiate collaborative place where we are talking actively about how to deliver those principles in the joint agreement. Does COSLA have a view on those principles and how you will empower people and how you will benchmark and perhaps Councillor McCabe could answer? Well, ultimately, the test will be that there are improved outcomes for young people. This is about processes, but the objective is outcomes that are about ensuring that more young people achieve their potential. Whether that be children who suffer from poverty or children with additional support needs, that is ultimately what the objective is, and to drive forward that change. As Larry said, cultural change does not happen overnight, but I think that there is evidence of cultural change happening in the schools in my area through the attainment challenge, where providing additional resources, and I have to accept where those additional resources may have come from, would be a reduction in other areas of council's budgets to finance that, but that real additional resource has brought a real focus on improvement, which has saw not just schools, but partners in the third sector, different council services, all focused on supporting children, but also supporting family and making a real difference. Certainly, the early evidence in my council is that progress is being made, and I know that Education Scotland has been inspecting attainment challenge authorities. It will be interesting to see the outcome of those inspections, but I think that there is real evidence of cultural change at that local focus level, and I think that if we can develop that and grow that change nationally. Fundamentally, at the end of the day, I think that we have to resource our education system, we have to support councils in delivering, and we talk about empowering headteachers or empowering schools. I would like to see local authorities empowered, and I think that the only way to empower local authorities is to ensure that we have the resources we need to do the job that we have been asked to do and the flexibility within the different funding streams that we have, and that is a challenge back to you as elected members of this Parliament about ensuring that we do have the resources we need to do the job that you are asking us to do. Again, perhaps Jenny wants to come in. I think that in part of the element around empowerment and what it looks like, I think that we have an education system where we see really strong practice in a number of our schools, and it will also see outstanding practice as well, so there are elements currently that we see headteachers acting on in areas where they are making decisions within their school, within their school community that are suitable to the needs of the context from that, and we see examples whereby in schools we have all the stakeholders that are involved in shaping the visions, the values and the aims of schools, and the parents and partners and children are involved in helping to shape that, so those are some features of empowerment that we see currently in our schools. I think that a key element for that is taking the building blocks of what is working really well and actually how we can share that much more widely to get. We have heard talking about consistency this morning, but so that we can get consistency across all our schools, and as a group and as being a member of the steering group, the commitment around the table to working together and working things through is really evident to ensure that we can really make the joint agreement and delivering on that successful for all the children in Scotland. Can I ask just two very brief following questions? When you talk about consistency, is there enough flexibility within the agreement that you now have to ensure that differences across the country, because not every local authority is the same? There has to be a degree of flexibility within local authorities to say, yes, we have to meet that and we have to meet that, but this is why we are not meeting that. Is there enough flexibility? I think that there is significant flexibility around how local authorities manage their schools, but there are obvious benchmarks of good practice that we would hope through the partnership to see replicated. For example, yesterday, the first meeting of the group implementation group where the professional associations were in attendance, I think that it was in North Ayrshire where through the local negotiating committee they have agreed that every school should have a consultative committee on the curriculum and on the perf spending. In terms of our ambition around democratic schools, that is a fairly simple idea. It is not commonplace across the countries. It used to be back in the 80s if the school had finance committees with representation. Just taking that idea that has been established in existing a number of local authorities and having it disseminated across the country, gives us one of our benchmarks in terms of, are we making progress? I think that in terms of the ambitions of the bill, the headteachers charter, or the schools charter, or whatever it ends up being, is a fairly obvious outcome that you would expect to be in place over the course of this year because it is a discussion around what that will articulate. The SNCT has already been asked to give advice around headteachers involvement in appointments processes because their employment law considerations are part of that. That is not going to be difficult because in a number of local authorities you already have headteachers involved in school appointments. It is about putting on the table where the best practice is and looking at how we manage to disseminate that. However, there are other areas that are going to be really difficult. The ambition around greater parental involvement, for example, has to be more than getting a few parents on your parents' council. It is about how the school engages with the home life of parents. Given some of the challenges that poverty brings to a lot of families, that is going to be a longer burn around how you put in place the resources. The homeschool link officers in every school is a step towards that, but you have to look at collaboration across social work services and children's services to ensure that you are getting a stronger interface. Having a school's council is a useful thing, but the most progress in terms of young people's learning will come through a stronger connection between parents involved in their own children's education. That requires resources to ensure that parents and teachers get the time to talk to one or another about children's progress. Some of the ease, I think—we will not be ticking a box on that in a year's time to say that we have overtaken that, but we might be able to say that we have actually established some good work in that. I think that we will be able to articulate quite quickly. Here are definite areas of progress around the ambition of the bill, and here are work streams that are in tow, but will take some time to materialise. Just finally, the EIS submission says that the education reform joint agreement fails to cite a role for professional associations. I may have picked up something that Jane O'Donnell said earlier. Can you just clarify if our staff association is involved with us or not? We were invited, around four metres ago, to nominate for the working group that is looking at the governance arrangements. We were not involved in the discussions around agreement between the local government, but we are involved now in the on-going work. We are just keen that professional associations are also involved in the pedagogical work that should be part of that, because, although, as a trade union, we have some expertise, our members and schools are essentially teachers rather than trade unions. It is harnessing their pedagogical input to the leading from the middle. We are keen to see as a main work stream in the programme. I would like to explore the head teacher's charter issue a little bit more, given the promise that it had in yesterday's programme for governments. It is still very much a priority for the government, but both EIS and COSLA at the start of the process two years ago and since then have been very clear in the issues that you had with what was originally conceived. Do you think that the direction of travel now is heading towards something more like what the EIS has outlined about a schools charter unless of the empowerment or potentially burden of the heroic individual model? Is the trajectory towards something that you would see as a positive contribution, or are we still heading towards the potential challenge of overburdening an already overburdened individual? That is a critical question for the whole process, because the role of formal leadership is really important in Scottish education. Head teachers and deputy heads and subject leaders have a critical role in curriculum development and implementation. We do in Scotland talk about leadership at all levels in school leadership. It is just when it comes to practical outcomes that we always end up talking about head teachers. In a secondary school, for example, the head teacher will be one of the extended leadership team. If we are talking about changing the culture, the head teacher is important in that dynamic, but there will be five or six other people who are critical to the culture of the school. We are very keen in primary schools where the head teacher can quite often be the only promoted person. If you do not have a collegiate approach, you are in a very lonely place, so you have to work as part of the team. We are keen that we stop talking about head teachers per se and start talking about collegiate practice in schools and democratic accountability. Head teachers, for example, in secondary, the work that the RICs are doing around leading from the middle is not about head teachers talking to head teachers. That is about an English PT liaison with another English PT around curriculum resource. Head teachers are not the subject experts in secondary schools, they are the curricular leaders. I think that when you speak to the Scottish Government they will acknowledge all of this agenda, so it is about empowering schools. In the original consultation document, the only people not cited were teachers, so we talked about head teachers, parents and pupils, but we did not actually talk about empowering teachers in that document, even though that was the general title for the programme. One of the things that the international council of education advisers have been very strong on is how you develop periological leadership at school level, because that is what makes a difference in the classroom. A point on staff is important, but it is not critical to classroom practice. Budget accountability is important, but it is not critical to classroom practice, so it has to focus on how you improve teaching in the classroom so that learning is more effective. That is where, in our view, collegiate schools and collaborative schools are much more critical than head teachers' charter, which only says what the standard for headship says anyway in the GTCS website. Is the direction of travel headed towards that from where we were roughly two years ago when consultation process has started, or do you think that the Government is still essentially focused on the approach that it had two years ago that you raised these concerns about? There has been some movement towards that broader concept. I still think that there is an over-focus on head teachers per se. Although the terms of the head teachers' charter have been refined to be something a bit more manageable around leading the curriculum, rather than turning into HR specialists, from our point of view, that is still a big agenda for us to pursue within the consultations. We obviously had concerns around the head teachers' charter and essentially the lack of checks and balances, and we consistently argued that with the Government. In terms of the agreement that we reached, we were satisfied with the progress that was made, and those checks and balances have been built into the agreement. I think that we would endorse the view of the EIS that we should have a wider focus in terms of leadership within schools. I think that that is part of the discussion that is taking place in the working group, and hopefully we can make progress in that direction. Just to go back to the point that Mary Fee made about the variance. There is also a variance between local authorities in terms of the level to which head teachers are already in power, but there is also the variance between what is and is not appropriate. I wonder if how a single charter can be tangible enough to genuinely empower head teachers, but also applicable in every situation—the difference between primary secondary special schools, the difference between urban and rural, and the difference between different levels of affluence that affect schools' functioning. Do you think that a single charter can be tangible enough to genuinely empower individuals, but also applicable enough across the board in the massive variety of school environments that we have? That will very much depend on what is eventually in the charter. From my point of view, I see the charter, however it is labelled at the end, as setting out the ambitions for collaborative practice in schools. I do not think that the charter is going to empower head teachers in a way that they currently cannot operate, because all of the things that the charter talks about doing already happens, not consistently across the country, but certainly in various local authorities. However, I think that the charter may well be a useful totem to remind us of the ambition of empowering schools and leading from the middle. We are going back to the 2001 agreement that talked about collegial practice. In 2001, we talked about collaborative practice, collegial leadership, distributed leadership, as being the hallmark that we intended to be, the hallmarks of Scottish education. When we served our members two years ago around workload and the impact of working in a collegial school, there was a direct correlation between people who thought their workload was more manageable in collegial schools, but fewer than half of our members responded saying that they thought they worked in a collegial school. That was 15 years after we set out the ambition around having collegial schools. From my point of view, the charter, if we are going to have one, is an opportunity to restate the ambition around how we want our schools to operate, rather than a subset of powers that have to be articulated. The idea that a head teacher does not lead the curriculum in our schools, where does that come from? That is exactly what the standard for headship says in terms of GTS standards. That should be the norm. If it is a case of reminding people what the ambition is, the head teacher charter or A charter may be useful. However, I do not see it as being anywhere near as radical as maybe some people thought it might have been. Are you confident that teachers will have a voice in the process of developing that as it goes forward through yourself? Those concerns will be taken on board because the process will accommodate them? That is our main work stream in this programme to make sure that teachers' professional voice is enabled as part of the process. Frankly, if that does not happen, the whole thing is a pile of mints to use a Glasgow term. If teachers are not empowered, if teachers do not feel in a stronger place at the end of the process, then all that is done is tinker with structures. If we have not changed the practice, we would not have improved the learning for a single child in the country. It is not just ambition, it is a prerequisite of success that teachers are part of the process. Councillor McCabe, last year, the First Minister and John Swinney said very forcibly and unequivocally that the bill was essential in driving Scottish education forward. That was repeated in committee and in the chamber many times. What factors do you think were at play to make the cabinet secretary and the First Minister change their minds? Only the cabinet secretary and the First Minister can answer that question. I certainly would hope that they have listened to the representations that have been made, both by local government, by trade unions, by parents, by professional associations and reflected on that and came to the conclusion that this agenda could be taken forward in partnership. Councillor McCabe, you have signed an agreement with the Scottish Government. Surely there was some discussion about the reasons for the complete climb down on this issue. You must be aware of what the Scottish Government was saying as the reasons for making a big U turn. Well, the Deputy First Minister issued a public statement, along with a joint statement, along with myself at the time when the agreement was published. I believe that he made a statement to Parliament and outlined his views. You need to refer to the parliamentary record, but my understanding is that he felt that the improvement agenda could be taken forward quicker working in partnership and collaboration rather than waiting to go through a parliamentary process. Do you really need to pose that question to him? I am much more interested in what the agreement says, Councillor McCabe, and whether there is discussion. Just to pick up on the line of questioning that Mary Fee had, there must have been discussion about the belief that the improvements in Scottish education could now be taken forward without legislation. Therefore, I would hope that there had been some discussion about the criteria that would be used to measure that, because the Cabinet Secretary has kept legislation in the backroom just now. Therefore, if it is not delivered, if there is not change that we require, then presumably that will then come forward. What I am interested in is what discussions took place between COSLA and the Cabinet Secretary about the necessary reforms that were required without legislation now to ensure that there is progress. What exactly will you be measuring? What will you be telling parents in terms of whether you are succeeding? In terms of the agreement that we reached in June and the Cabinet Secretary's decision to not proceed with legislation at that stage, what the Cabinet Secretary said to me is exactly what he said in the public domain is that he would expect to see substantial progress and that would be measured. How that would be measured was not made clear at that time and that is why we have a working group of officers from government, local government and professional associations currently engaged in that process to establish what would be the criteria by which the Cabinet Secretary would decide whether he wishes to introduce legislation or not. Again, I refer him to those discussions that are on-going and again Jane can give you a bit more detail on that. Sorry, can I just establish what the timescale is for this? Parents around Scotland want to know exactly what criteria will be used to measure whether we are making progress or not. What is the timescale for this work being finished to put in place the criteria which will allow you and the Cabinet Secretary to decide whether Scotland is making progress? The decision will be the Cabinet Secretary's. I do not think that I will have a say in that particular matter. It is his decision and the Government's decision as to whether to introduce legislation. Officers are working in this working group of referred to and we would hope to bring forward a proposal within the next few months. Jane, do you want to come in? Yes, through you, convener. I think it is probably helpful to clarify that there is a process to go through whereby we are looking at the joint principles and trying to work at how that looks on the ground. I think that the contribution of our colleagues in the professional association is vital to give a sense of on-the-ground reality to that for those who are working in a policy area. We have rightly not identified what that timescale looks like without the contributions of those colleagues who have only just joined us in the meeting yesterday. I think that there is pace behind this in that there is an expectation that we will be reporting to our different politicians at national and local level on how we are getting on with that. COSLA leaders agreed fundamentally with all the principles within the joint agreement and as officers we will be held accountable to make sure that we are delivering those but making sure that they are also cognisant of important COSLA principles around not inhibiting local decision making and asymmetry where it is required in rural areas, remote areas, areas of high deprivation etc. That is the process but I think rightly we are an outcomes-based approach for children and young people and we are not going to be able to identify a difference in outcomes in 10 months and it is really important that we are just really honest about that. Officers are clear and unhonest about that. It is a process right now and if the process works parents should see in communities their headteachers approaching them with that we need to improve our parental involvement. We need to involve our pupil participation. They should hopefully see some sense of how that is changing for their headteacher if they are talking to their headteacher at pupil council. That will happen in the next 10 months but outcomes are a much longer period of time and we are all clear as officers what we are tasked with at the moment. I understand that some outcomes may take longer but can I just ask are we measuring literacy and numeracy? Are we measuring changes to the pupil equity funding? What exactly are we going to be using to measure whether that progress is better next year on this year and on the long term? What are the factors? Every parent across Scotland wants to know what it is that will be better this time next year and beyond. In addition to those high-level processes, our colleagues in education Scotland are undertaking a sense of readiness for a school empowerment and they are doing that with their school inspection timetable over the next few months. They are going to feed that into us in the working group and that gives a sense of where we are as a baseline. I do not know if Janey wants to give a sense of what that looks like from an education Scotland perspective. Some of the elements that we are looking at is that over the course of the next academic year we will be carrying out three thematic inspections around the elements of empowerment. The first one that we will be looking at is what is the current element and we are focusing that around the principles that are outlined in the joint agreement and we will be engaging with local authorities, staff and local authorities and staff in schools to get that sense of what is the current picture and what ways do they feel empowered at the moment and how they are acting on that. From this we will be able to bring that back to the steering group to say that this is a national overview of what is working well and where are the areas that we need to focus on. More importantly, it is around those examples where we are seeing really strong practice that we can share more widely so that people can learn from it to pick up the areas around, for example, parental engagement, where other schools are delivering really well in terms of reaching hard to reach parents and how do they go about that process so that across local authorities, schools we can see and learn from each other and really focus on that collaboration and that collaborative approach to that. Will our children be better able to read, write and count by this time next year? That is what it is all about for most parents across Scotland. That is what it is about in terms of raising our standards, which we all want to see. I appreciate all that you are saying about the processes, but the bottom line is, are we going to be able to raise standards in the way that we have to by not having this education bill? That is what I am wanting to know. Well, at the end of the day we would argue irrespective of whether you have the education bill or do not have the education bill. It will not make any difference in terms of that objective, but that is a long-term objective. Obviously, the real focus of the improvement agenda is to ensure that young people from impoverished backgrounds, young people with additional support needs to really get the support that they need. There has been a political debate in this country now for a number of years in this Parliament about Scottish education and people can be accused of talking down Scottish education. Fundamentally, I think that we have a good education system in Scotland, but it could be better. This is about making it better and about making sure that young people have better opportunities in life. I think that we need that. I have done it in my local law authority level. I had to say that when I became the leader of the council in 2007, we had an on-going debate around our school estate and reprovisioning and people wanted to keep schools open, people wanted to close schools to invest, etc. Whether we used PPP or did not use PPP. It was far too politicised and we lost sight of the objective, which was to improve our young people's opportunities. We brought an end to that political bickering. We agreed a plan and we have delivered that plan. That investment in our schools is providing high-quality learning environments in which young people can achieve their potential. I think that there is far too much politicisation around Scottish education. We need to cut it out and focus on our young people. This is about partnership working. It is about all of us getting together and all of us trying to make a difference. We are not going to make a difference here this morning. We are going to make a difference on the ground with everybody. We are a real focus on improvement. As I said earlier on, the evidence is there from the attainment challenge that that focus on attainment and improvement and providing the necessary resources can make a real difference. My playback to you, as elected politicians, is that when you come to set the Scottish budget next February, ensure that we have the right level of resources that we need to do the job. I am going to bring in Joanne, but can I just ask a question? No matter—in my view, you just hit the nail on the head in terms of the improvement over the next year, it is not going to matter if there is a bill in place or not, because you are working together to collaborate. Is the relationship between local authorities, education authorities, the Government and the schools better now than it was two years ago in terms of its best practice getting spread out more? Is it getting recognised more? Is the fact that you are now working—seem to be working together closer? Is that having a benefit and do you see it having a benefit in the future? I can only comment politically and obviously leave it to others to comment on a more sort of officer strategic level, but I think that relationships are improving, not just within the field of education but across the board. Hopefully, in the part of government, there is a greater recognition of the contribution that local government can make, greater respect in terms of our democratic mandate, and I think that if we can build on the partnership work in education and take that forward, I think that it can make a real difference. In the fundamental reality at the end of the day, I know that all of you in this room—I know that the Cabinet Secretary and I, I know that First Minister and the Government are absolutely committed to improving the life chances of young people in Scotland, but I have to say so am I, and so are the hundreds of thousands of councillors across Scotland. I have had the opportunity in the past year and a bit to be obviously the spokesman for Cossland, the chair of a children and young people board, and I have had the opportunity then to engage with councillors from across Scotland of all political persuasions. I believe that absolutely they are committed to trying to improve the life chances of our young people, and they are frustrated, I think, in a lot of senses that we have not got the resources to do that, that we are constantly focused on cutting back on resources, and it is nice to get additional resources through things like the attainment channels of the pupil liquidity fund, but they are only substituting for resources that have been systematically stripped out of the system over the last 10 years and are continuing to be stripped out in other areas of councillor's budget. If we believe, for example, that poverty is the principal cause of the poverty-related attainment challenge at Gap, putting money into the attainment challenge and focusing on it and putting money into pupil liquidity will to a certain extent help, but know if you are stripping money out from other parts of the system and there is not the support there to help families to lift themselves out of poverty. Parliament for that, Mr McCabe, but Mr Flanagan. The EIS has been highly critical of Education Scotland over most of its existence, but one of the elements of the new arrangements has been effected on the reboute of Education Scotland so that they are restructured to align themselves with the collaboratives, and they have, in my view, a much stronger focus on providing pedagogical support to schools. I think that she is hugely critical. In my view, education policy has been too much driven in the past period by civil servants and not enough by educationalists. Although it is not an immediate part of the governance consultation, the potential of the work around the RICS promoting the leading from the middle agenda is the most immediate step forward in terms of impact on the classroom, because it focuses on how to provide support to practitioners in the classroom and how to support practitioners in the classroom. That is how we are going to get improvements in literacy and numeracy, not by who is in charge of budget lines, although I agree with the point about increased resources, but by looking at what changes practice. Again, all the evidence that the international advisers have brought to the discussion is about what makes pedagogical improvement in the classroom. That has to be the focus if we want to deliver improved outcomes. For example, I do not want to start another discussion. If we spent half the time and energy on promoting formative assessment practice in our schools that were spent on promoting the Scottish national standardised assessments, we would have been in a much better place in terms of assessment practice in our schools, so we need to focus on pedagogical improvement if we want to deliver improvements in learning. That has been missing since the regions left, we lost advisers, and QIO networks have been stripped out because of budget concerns. That is a big part of what leading from the middle, the whole empowerment, is offering. A chance to revitalise that pedagogical support to schools, because ultimately that is what will make a difference. What strikes me about this is that you spoke about, we share this agenda where it is a collaboration in delivering the aims of the legislation. I think that Larry talked about the nuance, but it feels to me that there is actually more than nuance and difference. What the Scottish Government is saying is that we are going to get what we wanted by a different route, but both COSLA and EIS and other teaching unions did not agree with what was being proposed. I am not clear, so for example, COSLA says that the critical role of local governments is that they would resist the devolution of too much power to a school. Equally, EIS said that we would not call it a headteachers charter because fundamentally change is delivered at a school level on an collegiate basis, and it misunderstands the role of the headteacher and headteachers themselves are anxious about the burdens that have been placed on them. When you go into the room with the Deputy First Minister, Cabinet Secretary for Education, and he says that we have a shared agenda, what is that agenda? Has John Swinney agreed that the headteachers charter is not appropriate? Has he agreed that there is a fundamental role for local government? I have to say to you that yesterday, the First Minister, in response to the question, simply said why would he resist what is happening because we are going to get what we wanted quicker. I suppose that I want to know what bit of the improvement agenda that you are opposed to have you been able to sustain in your agreement with John Swinney, and equally, to what extent you think that John Swinney has acknowledged very serious concerns about the impact on headteachers themselves, but also on the accountability of headteachers from the proposals that were in the legislation. Can you tell me what you understand which bits of the legislation in terms of improvement you still disagree with or other bits that you do agree with? What is the bit that has been not agreed or has caused a change in its position about the role of local authorities? The socialist position is as agreed and the document dated 28 June. The legislation sits to one side, it is gathered and dust on a shelf, as I understand. The reality is that that legislation, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. What exists is our joint agreement, and that joint agreement is a joint commitment to drive forward improvement in Scottish education and to improve outcomes for young people. We will obviously try to take that agreement forward in partnership. That is what officers are doing at this point in time to try and put the meat on the bones of the principles of that particular document. I am pleased that the trade unions and professional associations are around the table and will hopefully shape and evolve that. I certainly cause this position as we absolutely agree that headteachers have a critical role in schools, but we believe that all staff have a critical role in schools. If we can evolve the headteachers chartered into a school charter, that would be absolutely a direction of travel that we would be comfortable with. I absolutely agree that everybody has committed to improvement, but it is the means by which improvement is achieved, is the question, and basically COSLA did not agree with the means by which improvement would be achieved as identified in the legislation, and neither did the EIS. What is the journey of improvement? My view is that what is happening is that the Scottish Government is saying that the means by which we improve remain the same, but we are going to use a different vehicle for it, and that does not address the concerns that were identified, both by those who understood the importance of local government and young people's lives and all the other services around about them, or indeed the Mr Chipps notion of, you just give all the powers to headteachers and everything will be fantastic, and anybody who has worked in a school will know that it is much more complex than that. We would certainly argue in terms of the two years from when the first consultation was introduced to the 28th of June, when we obviously reached agreement with the Government, that there has been change in the Government's position. There has had naturally to be movement in terms of our position as well, but we believe that we stuck to our fundamental principles. I think that one example on which I can give more detail would be the headteachers charter, in that the original proposers we do not believe had sufficient checks and balances to ensure that headteachers remained accountable to their employers. At the end of the day, headteachers are senior local government officers, and like every local government officer, they are accountable ultimately through their line management structure to the council. We did not believe that there were sufficient checks and balances. We are now satisfied in terms of the principles outlined in the agreement that there are sufficient checks and balances, and that is why we could sign up to the agreement. If those concerns had not been addressed, we would not have reached any agreement with the Government. As I said, the legislation sits to one side at this point in time. It is not part of the discussion that might be hanging there as a bit of a threat, and that is not necessarily conducive to good partnership working. However, we are focused on the agreement on 28 June and implementing that and putting the detail behind that. That is what the officers in Education Scotland, COSLA, professional associations, trade unions and the Scottish Government are focused on at this point in time, and are working towards producing more detail. Contradiction to your view of how you improve? Fundamentally, we do not believe that the legislation is required, and we think that the legislation has been unhelpful. It is not so much whether it is required. You do not agree with the proposals that were in place in the legislation that you have already said. Therefore, any suggestion that we are getting the legislation or the aims of the legislation by different means is not true. You do not agree that the power should be devolved right down the road to schools? No, that is not true. I do not think that there is anything in the agreement dated 28 June that is different from what is in the legislation, but we do not feel that the legislation is required. The four aims of the legislation that are articulated remain the four aims of the agreement. I will come back to the headteachers' charter, but the aim to enhance pedagogical support to practitioners is an agreed agenda. The aim to enhance parental involvement in their children's education is an agreed agenda, as is the aim to enhance pupil participation. Our main concern was that if you try to do this by legislation, you will fail to get any buy-in from the education of community to this, because, once again, it will be something that is getting done to schools rather than schools being allowed to do something. Our disagreement around the legislation has primarily been around using legislation as a means to deliver the objectives. The idea of empowering schools leading from the middle, improving pedagogical practice, those are shared agendas, and we are keen to exploit the opportunity. Around the headteachers' charter, there was a more fundamental disagreement because there were variations of what does this mean. We were very clear that some of the loose talk early on around headteachers hiring and firing staff was completely unacceptable, because it was a breach of employment legislation, and it breached guidelines around equity and ensuring anti-discriminatory practice. I think that the Scottish Government's position has refined on that as it realised that, once a headteacher making appointments would be totally inappropriate in any circumstances because of all the employment legislation concerns around that, but the idea that a headteacher is involved in appointments in their school is something that a number of authorities already do. It used to be in the 80s that it was common practice, so as a principal teacher of English, I was always involved in appointing staff. Councils used to be involved in appointing staff, so the principle of being involved in appointments is not a difficult one to put forward. The practice that developed was really around teacher shortages and trying to stop schools competing with one another to get staff or to sign up the best probationers. There was a certain rationale around not having student teachers going round doing 50 interviews or 39 interviews in 39 schools in Glasgow to try and get a job, so there was a certain rationale around that. The headteachers charter, had that been legislation, it would have been potentially more problematic, although I think the proposed legislation actually establishes the principle and then refers it to the SNCT for negotiation, and that has been a change because that has been a recognition that you cannot just legislate where existing arrangements are also in place. What we have said strongest to DFM is if you want an example of how legislation doesn't help, look at a named person. A named person took a fairly simple concept, multi-agency support for young children who are vulnerable and managed to turn it into where we are now. Six years on, we still don't have legislation. Thankfully, at school level, we have the collaboration between the agencies, so our view is that if you want to deliver successfully the ambitions of empowering schools, legislation is the least effective way of doing that, and that's why we've been opposed to it all the way along. Would you then want to change it from—I mean, my understanding is that the National Parents Forum and others think that it should be called a school charter, otherwise it's just a job description? We're really keen that, in elaborating this, it becomes a school charter. We've been using the phrase democratic schools, but it's basically a reminder of what collaborative and collegiate approaches to education is, and it's as much about empowering the voice of teachers, pupils and parents as it is about empowering headteachers. That's the agenda that we'll be pursuing in the discussions, and hopefully we'll have an agreement at the end of that. I was going to ask one question. Provide some clarification, I think. We were asked why has cause I signed up to the joint agreement, and I think that if you look at maybe some of the content from Scottish Government on these policy areas two years ago to where it is now, it's quite fundamentally different. The cause of leaders were quite clear that there had to continue to be local democratic accountability for education. We secured that, in terms of regional collaboration, that would not be dictated to us but would be a way by which we would agree to collaborate, and then it would be for local authorities to decide the best partnerships to be in, that in terms of funding that local authorities would retain their role around best value and efficiency and effectiveness to support headteachers on funding, and in relation to the headteachers charter, and it's actually in the draft legislation that headteachers are empowered, but should any of their actions impede upon a local authorities statutory or contractual obligations, then we have the responsibility to intervene. Those were our red lines at the start when the content and the discussion was quite different, and I think that it's a sign of perhaps where we've got to in that partnership approach that now exists. What we have now is a lot more reflective of a whole systems approach and that's why we've signed up to it. Can I ask when Education Scotland took the view that was a good idea to draft the legislation? I think in terms of, our focus is always on what's going to achieve the best outcomes for our children and young people, in terms of what's happening in our classroom, and in terms of our focus has been very much on focusing on collaboration and collaborative working as a way of creating the culture change, as a way of where there is best practice and highly effective practice that's delivering very well for our children and young people, that we can share that much more widely across the system, and really focusing on the way that we can do that. It's not what I asked you. You asked you when you came to the view that the legislation was a hindrance rather than a help. I think in terms of my role in the group is to look at the way that we can support delivery of the joint agreement of that. Can I also ask you then, have you done an assessment of the benefits of Education Scotland increasing its staff very significantly in your document, as against looking to the resourcing schools? Barry Flanagan talked about the 80s and I talked about the 80s, and in some ways I had more support as a classroom teacher than a lot of young teachers now. I wonder whether there was an impact assessment in terms of financing of the benefits of significantly increasing the staffing of Education Scotland, as against the issues that have been flagged up by Councillor McKay Brown, resources for the core budget to deliver education in our schools? I think one of the elements in terms of our remit and our moving to looking at our delivery model going forward, it was across looking at across a staff who are carrying out different functions and looking at what we needed for our workforce in terms of how we delivered on that. Did you do an impact assessment on the benefits of what you say recruiting a significant increase in staff, as opposed to perhaps advocating for increased resources for the core business of education? Funding streams are one thing, but if the fundamentals of the number of support staff, home links teachers and additional support staff in our school are going down at the same time, did Education Scotland do an assessment in that? I think in terms of what we're looking at is our budget that's set, and I don't have that the budget figures with me at the moment. We do see it's a significant increase as if that were in itself by definition a good thing and I just wondered if there were alternatives looked at in terms of how resources might best be spent. Could you send, you said you have that information, could you send that information for us? Thank you. Do you want to go on to reasonable questions? I suppose that I'll be interested in the view of the panel around what the implications for regional improvement collaboratives are because, as argued by Larry Flanagan, you can see the compelling argument for supporting people in terms of developing their capacities in schools. I wonder whether, even with faculties at secondary school level, there's actually more need for that because individual subjects, specialisms and maybe weakened. Are you confident that the view that the regional collaboratives would become bodies that sucked up power from schools and from local authorities? Do you still have those concerns and, if so, how would we address that? Regional collaborators are not bodies, they are basically officers from councils in Education Scotland coming together to look at how we take forward the improvement agenda. They are about adding value. We don't see them replicating or replacing what happens at a local level. It's about building on that and adding value. Perhaps, as Larry suggested, replacing some of the capacity that has been lost in the system over the years, some of that capacity will come from, obviously, the Education Scotland resource that you've been talking about. The Government is providing an additional resource to local authorities through a bid process, because there's not necessarily particularly happy about that process, but that's the Government's decision and that additional resource will obviously help us augment the resources that we have because, at the moment, we are putting resources into the regional collaboratives from existing resources, so it's our existing staff that are doing that work. That's why it's important that, if we are committing resources, existing resources, we get added value out of it and we don't end up with duplication. It's about sharing good practice, it's about collaborative working in terms of delivering, maybe, particular aspects of training, et cetera, but it's very much in the early days in terms of that. I think it's too early to say whether we've achieved any positive outcome so far, but I think that, in principle, collaboration can only be a good thing. Collaboration is a good thing, but if it creates a body on a level that has a life of its own that's producing improvement plans, I wonder if you have a concern for that. Can I ask you to comment on what you would have preferred to the process that's now in place when you talked about a bidding system? In local government, we prefer an allocation process using existing mechanisms for allocating funding, so we would have preferred that we use that mechanism and each council was given an allocation of funding based on the allocation methodology and the individual councils would have aggregated that funding into their individual collaboratives. In terms of the regional collaboratives, it is a bit, as I said, added value and one of the concerns that we originally had was the proposal from government to remove the requirement for local authorities to produce their own improvement plans, so you would have the school plan, you would have the regional plan and, obviously, the national plan. We argue strongly that councils should retain that role in improvement planning and that the regional plan should complement the local plan, the school plan should be informed by and informed by the local plan and the local plan should then inform the regional plan and, basically, the regional plan should add value to the local plan. Government has obviously taken that on board and we will continue to produce our local plans. If it's about collaboration and best practice, is there really any need for a regional plan? Well, it's a plan for delivering that collaboration and the added value and as has been alluded to in the paper working, I'm sure that Education Scotland will confirm that the plans are all different from all the regional collaboratives. There are different approaches being taken in each of the areas and that's how it should be. Obviously, my council is part of the west collaborative and our circumstances are quite different from the northern lines, for example. In the west collaborative there are a number of councils that are attainment challenge councils, so we're obviously focused on particular aspects of improvement through that. We're not seeking to replicate that at a regional level, but there are aspects that can be co-ordinated regionally and good practice can be shared regionally as well. We're heading for the second iteration of the plan, but the original first iteration of the west plan was a fairly concise document and that's as it should be. It shouldn't be a detailed plan that replicates what we're planning to do at a local level. I think that the collaboratives present an opportunity around that agenda of pedagogical leadership, but I think that the AIS certainly had the concern that you expressed around the potential for becoming entities and becoming another layer of bureaucracy. There's a kind of watching brief on that because, although the early iterations have avoided that, there's always the potential for it to slip into that mode, particularly because, unfortunately, a number of local authorities no longer carry directors of education in the senior management teams, which we think is part of the difficulty. The education is not a discreetly led agenda in all local authorities, so you could actually see how some of us might just slip to the ricks a little bit then. We are keen that the ricks develop their current work stream, which is around collaboration on support in schools and looking at how you get some scale in some cases because some local authorities are actually quite small, so you get some scale that allows delivery of programmes to teaching staff that might otherwise be beyond a local authority, or you get some sharing of good practice. The ricks also allow some breaking down of the boundaries between schools so that it becomes easier for practitioners in one school to cross boundary into another school where they may have a shared agenda around particular pedagogical improvements. There has to be capacity in that, so there is some additional funding, but that was one of the reasons why Education Scotland has recruited additional staff because they have decentralised themselves so that they have people attached to the collaboratives in order to promote that kind of pedagogical input. However, the case that you cite around the regional improvement plans was one of the areas where we raised very serious concerns when that was articulated because we were saying how many improvement plans does a school have to comply with and when is it going to find time to actually do anything if it has got to tick all those boxes now? I think that Stephen alluded to there that effectively what is called the regional improvement plan is more a work stream around how they provide support to the local authorities and schools around the improvement plans that have been established there. The regional improvement plan does not go through the collaborative process that a school improvement plan should go through, where staff are involved in discussing school priorities. It is more, I think, how you manage the work stream, but it was a good example of growing arms and legs very quickly. If suddenly there is a regional improvement plan, which local authority staff are saying to schools that they have to comply with that, I think that we are fairly clear, although perhaps not all schools are clear, that the regional improvement plan is actually about how support is provided rather than creating work streams for schools. However, some of that, to be fair, has still been teased out and it is slightly different in different areas because the dynamics of some of the collaboratives are entirely different because of scale and particular challenges. I tried to get in on this earlier on because I was at a point in the discussion that I thought was really pertinent that it was a final theme that we were looking at today. To do with the parental and pupil participation, which you, Larry, talked a lot about, some of the issues concerning that, as had Councillor McCabe. I am really interested in how that engagement is going to work, particularly since it is not involved in the implementation process and parents are not involved in that process. How are you engaging them during your work for that? I am a substitute member of the committee, so I am not following it right the way through this. It may have been discussed in the story that it has. Even talking about parental engagement almost sends a message to some people that are in the care of young people that this might not be for them. I particularly want to know what thoughts are being put into foster carers, to kinship carers or those who may be looking after children in the third sector or in council establishments. I think that that whole area highlights the importance of looking at practice at a school level rather than looking at structural change up here, because you can do whatever you like up here, but actually if the school does not have a teacher who can spend an afternoon working with a group of parents around their child's learning or a homeschool liaison person or does not have an educational psychologist who can be brought in to support a family in crisis, all the ambitions around engaging parents come to nothing, because it has to be a resource. Particularly if you are working with parents who, for various reasons, are not inclined towards working or do not feel that they can work as effectively with the school as perhaps other parents, people who face challenges in their own lives, because all that is labour intensive. It is about having one-to-one discussions and having networks there. Again, there are lots of really good examples of schools that have worked really well with local communities to involve parents in a meaningful way. Sometimes we are having parents in the classroom, sometimes we are having classes for parents to provide support to parents around their school, supporting their children's learning. However, it is about trying to establish that in a much more coherent way. If you have children going through the school system at the moment, you probably experience a different system. If you even look at secondary schools' qualifications, people still talk about all levels. I think that a lot of parents are slightly frustrated because they would like to be more hands-on supporting their children, but it is quite difficult. Finding the time for teachers to talk to parents meaningfully, rather than 20 minutes and a parents' night once a year, or finding ways for the school to engage in parents, all of that is an agenda that has to be resourced. That is where the local authority, as a perfect approach to providing and looking at multi-agency around that, is really important. Pupil voice is also very important. We are in favour of pupil voice, but we did have a motion at our AGM raising a caution around it. Around the appointment process, for example, there are some concerns around pupils being involved in appointment processes, because appointment processes might be internal and people as employees have certain rights to confidentiality. Pupil voice has to be exercising a way that is meaningful for young people, so that they are being listened to rather than having a pupil council meeting and sending them in at the head teacher. The school uniform is still in place, even if the council doesn't want it. It has to be more about pupil voice, I think, most effectively, in terms of how do you articulate your thoughts on particular subjects on lessons? If you think that things in your school could be improved around the timetable, how do you get the information to do that? I think that it is quite easy to say these things and tick a box saying we are in favour of it. The practicalities of actually delivering it are quite time consuming and need the resource. Parent engagement is in the widest sense, so it does involve carers, foster carers, etc. We have signed up to the national joint action plan, and it is about disseminating that good practice. Yesterday, my council approved a new parental engagement strategy, and it is not simply about getting people along to parent councils. It is about how you engage parents and carers, etc. in their child's learning in the widest sense, and how you try to break down those barriers. One of the issues that I highlighted in the discussion yesterday was the fact that not many male parents engage in their children's education and what specific measures can we do to try to engage. I recognise that, obviously, lots of families have huge barriers, and how do we try to address that? It is part of the remit of Education Scotland that it will again carry out a thematic inspection and try to ensure that, obviously, that good practice has been widely disseminated. Absolutely, it is a crucial part of this agenda, engaging parents and carers in their children's education. Thank you very much in that case. That brings us to the end of the questions for this panel of witnesses. I thank you all for coming along to give evidence today. That was very useful indeed to thank you. We will take a suspend for a couple of minutes to allow your witnesses to change over before continuing. Can I reconvene the meeting and welcome John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Claire Hicks, Deputy Director, Learning Directorate and Andrew Bruce, Deputy Director, Learning Directorate of the Scottish Government. I understand that the Cabinet Secretary will make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the issues of school empowerment with the committee this morning. It forms a part of the Government's agenda to improve education and the life chances of our children and young people. We believe that the approach that is taken within the empowering schools agenda is critical to ensuring that young people are able to have access to the high-quality learning and teaching that is necessary to deliver improvements in Scottish education. We have consulted extensively on how best to empower and support our schools. We have listened carefully to education professionals, local authorities, parents and pupils who told us strongly that they support the principle of empowering schools. We took careful account of the impact and the input of the International Council of Education Advisers that legislation could create a distraction from some of the central agendas that the Government is pursuing to improve education. As a consequence, we came to the conclusion in consultation with our local authority partners after extensive joint working that we could take an alternative and quicker route to school empowerment by working jointly with local government and other partners in this respect. Our landmark agreement with local government will see meaningful school empowerment through the head teacher's charter, together with improved parental involvement and pupil participation, commencing across Scotland during this school year. We know that this collaborative approach can work. We have worked extensively with local government to reach an agreement to establish regional improvement collaboratives. The 2018-19 regional improvement plans have been delivered this week and are currently being assessed by Education Scotland. This has been achieved at pace in partnership and without new legislation. Our partners have made clear their commitment to empowering our schools right across the education system and we are committed to putting our trust into the power of partnership working. We have always recognised that legislation alone would not drive the improvements that we need that will take a balanced combination of changes to culture and practice, enhanced capacity and supporting structure. We will continue to work closely with local government, the teacher unions and other stakeholders to ensure that balanced approach is developed and implemented with pace and with purpose. We are putting in place additional resources and enhanced capacity and support to ensure that the principles of school empowerment are fully implemented. We have published the Education Bill in draft so that stakeholders can see our clear policy intention and the detailed proposals and we will carefully monitor progress during the current academic year and will return to Parliament with legislation if meaningful empowerment is not being delivered. I remain confident that the agreement that we have reached with local government provides us with an effective route to ensure the empowerment of our schools and I look forward to working with partners to deliver that agenda. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I will now write questions from members of the committee and begin with Tavish. Deputy First Minister, you again said this morning, or just now, that if there wasn't meaningful empowerment by, I guess, June of 2019, you'd reintroduce the legislation. Could you define for the committee what meaningful empowerment means? Meaningful empowerment will be progress to implement the agreement that we've reached with local government. I published that agreement back in June. I welcome the fact that the constructive dialogue that we took forward with local authorities has resulted in that agreement, which certainly addresses the policy agenda and considerations that I have brought to this debate. I will make an assessment in the latter part of this year as to whether sufficient progress has been made. I would say at the outset that I don't consider that everything has got to be achieved within 12 months. That would be unreasonable, but I have to see signs of good progress to implement that agenda that's been reached, that agreement that's been reached with local government, to inform my decision at that time. Are the signs of progress about the principles that are in the agreement, or are they about practical measures that we as a committee and multiple point teachers and parents could understand? There'll be a bit of both. It will be developing. There's some further thinking that has to go into the definition of some of the concepts within the agreement. I think one of the points that I made in my opening remarks and I made it in my parliamentary statement is that when the Government consulted on the question of school empowerment, there was pretty broad agreement about the principle and the desirability of school empowerment and the flexibility that that would bring, but there was disagreement about some of the practical propositions that the Government had put forward. Part of my rationale and taking the approach that I have taken is to essentially accept that in principle agreement about the advantages of empowerment and what that can do to improve learning and teaching within our schools, but then to work actively with partners to make sure that they agreed practical propositions address all of the inevitable practical issues that arise when we're taking forward principles of that nature. The agreement that we've reached, I think, sets out a very clear direction of travel, but it does not prescribe or define every detail of that journey and that's what essentially we need to work on with our partners and I'm very pleased with the progress that's been made over the summer in advancing that discussion. That's helpful because just as now a causer said that there had been one meeting yesterday that took place at officer level between involving Education Scotland and other partners, I assume also Scottish Government civil servants, and that was the first meeting in which the staff associations, i.e. the EIS, had been present. Would you recognise that for any of this to actually be meaningful in terms of teachers, the EIS and other staff associations must be part of that process? That's why they're there. But why weren't they there beforehand? Because I think we had to get things in the proper order. Not having the staff involved at the staff is not the proper order. If I work my way through my answer to Mr Scott, the proper order was for the Government to come to an agreement with those responsible in statute for the running of our education system, which is our local authorities. I've invested significant amounts of time in making sure that we could get to a point of agreement so that we proceed with a shared agenda with local government. In all of that process, we've obviously had input from our staff associations and professional associations on a constant basis. What I wanted to do once we got to agreement with local authorities was to ensure that we then had the professional associations involved in taking forward that agenda, and that's the process that started yesterday. No, indeed. Jane O'Donnell from COSLA has said to us just now that she—I hope I'm going to quote her reasonably accurately—that it will not be able to have accurate measures for progress within 10 months, and therefore that was her assessment as an officer working with your colleagues in other parts of the Government. Do you agree with that assessment? I think—I can understand the point that Jane O'Donnell is making, but it's not a requirement that I'm applying to the system. What I've said in my original answer to Mr Scott is that I would make a judgment based on the amount of progress that we're making in developing an agreed agenda and in principle agenda. When it comes to measuring the progress that we're making in education, the framework for measuring the progress that we want to make in education was very clearly set out when we published the national improvement framework last December, including the monitoring framework that's in place to assess the progress that we're making on improving outcomes for young people and in closing the poverty-related attainment gap. So there is a measurement framework in place to assess the progress that we're making on improving performance and in securing our objectives within Scottish education. The assessment about the progress that we're making on empowering schools will be a process in which I assess the amount of work that is able to be undertaken and to be implemented as a consequence of the partnership agreement that we've put in place, so there are two rather different things. So it is very different. How children are doing at school is very different from the empowerment agenda? No, we've got a framework in place to assess how young people are doing at school and what progress they are making. I believe the empowerment agenda contributes to that, which is why we're taking the route that we are taking to implement these measures and to do that in this fashion. Forgive me for being stupid, I'm just trying to understand how you're going to measure and therefore Parliament's going to judge how much progress is being made by next summer, because what you're effectively saying is if you don't think enough progress is being made you're going to reintroduce the legislation or introduce the legislation formally into Parliament, so we would need to know as a committee what criteria you're going to use. I would set out my rationale to Parliament once we get to that point, but I don't think it would be fair for me to prejudge the process and say that we have to get to this point by the end of June next year. I'm saying that we've got an agreement here between national and local government. I'm very pleased that we've reached that point. I welcome the commitments that have been made to the agenda by local government, and I want to make as much progress as we can on that as swiftly as we possibly can do, and that is, in my opinion, a shared objective with our local government partners. I think it would be wrong for me then to say, and it must reach this benchmark and it must reach that benchmark within this school year, I will see how much progress is able to be made and make a judgment, which I will transparently share with Parliament when the time comes. I mean, Councillor Stephen McKay obviously said to us earlier on that these questions are all matters for you rather than for him in making that judgment. What I'm just trying to understand is what are the criteria on which you'll make the judgment, because it's very difficult for us as a committee to come to any kind of objective assessment if we don't know what the criteria are. But I think it would be wrong for me to specify the criteria that I've got to. We've got an imprincipal agreement. We want to see it implemented. I understand that. And I want to see as much progress made, and there may be practical issues that we need to spend more time working on, and as we work our way through some of them, some of them may take longer than we expect. And I could say today, well, okay, you've got to reach this landmark point by the end of June of next year. And then as we go through the work, we could find some technical issues that might take us longer to work our way through, might take us four months as opposed to two months. And then that deadline becomes difficult to reach. Now, there could be a perfectly rational and reasonable argument as to why that is the case. So I don't want to prejudge that. I just want to go into this with the spirit of partnership, which has encapsulated this work, and to make as much progress as we can. And then I'll make a judgment as to whether or not I think that's enough progress has been made, whether goodwill has been deployed in that process to advance this agenda. And I'm confident that that exists within our local government partners. That's fine. But as of now, here in the first week of September, as a parliamentary committee, am I fair to say that I, as a member of that committee and as a committee, we don't know what the criteria are that this process is going to be judged by? Well, I think that what the committee can judge it all based on is on the agreement that has been formulated between national and local government. That's a principle level, that's absolute principle level. Yes, and then the committee can see that. That's been published on an open basis. And the committee, like me, can look at the progress that's been made, can ask for the evidence of what progress has been made and make a judgment as to how much progress has been made in implementing that agreement and advancing and developing that agreement. What I think would be wrong for me to do is to say, here are some milestones that you must reach within a 12-month period, because I think that that would run contrary to the spirit of joint collaborative working that we're taking forward. Okay, finally, just to lie, Flanagan of the VIS and Councillor Stephen McCabe as the lead official, lead site councillor for COSLA, both said that they think it's unhelpful to have legislation being held in reserve. They do not think that that is consistent with the very sound principle you've just annunciated around collaboration. Do you think it'd be a good idea just to drop that legislation altogether? No, I think it's there as an option that I can bring forward if necessary. I don't think they think it's an option, they think it's something rather worse than that. They said that to the committee this morning. Well, it remains for me an option that I can bring forward if sufficient progress is not made. Okay, thank you. There's a number of people wanting to bring in supplementaries, but can I ask you before you do, make them short and just one question or else wait your turn and take questions because you're cutting across other people's time? Ross, Mary and then Joanne. Thanks, convener. Deputy First Minister, you've said that you will explain your rationale to ourselves as the committee, as Parliament, in 10 months time. The school year has started. Teachers and pupils are aware that they are being judged over the next 10 months, but they don't know what they're being judged on. Is that fair? It's not a characterisation, I would accept, because it's not a judgment about schools. It's a judgment about the way in which our partners take forward the agreement that has been reached. For example, the agreement envisages the formulation of a head teacher's charter, so that's about us doing the work within the various partners involved to develop that concept and to take it forward. It doesn't involve us judging the performance of individual schools in the process. I'll introduce one question and answer and then move on. My response to Mr Scott earlier on said that there's a very clear measurement framework in place just now, which is considering and measuring the closure of the poverty-related attainment gap. That was published last December. It's not changing as a framework that's publicly known about and understood. I see across the country schools very focused on the task of closing the poverty-related attainment gap, which is the crucial measurement framework within Scottish education. If you need to come back, you can come back when you're asking your further questions. Thank you. Just very briefly to follow on the point that you made about the framework that's currently in place for measuring attainment, which is said separately from this agenda. You've just said that that's not going to change, but you've also said that this improvement agenda will have an impact on that framework. Is that to your view that throughout the year you won't revisit that framework? No, I won't, because what that framework is about is about identifying—we consulted extensively on this—about the range of factors that would give us a rounded assessment of whether the poverty-related attainment gap was closing. I see the improvement agenda as contributing helpfully and beneficially to that task, so our objectives. This is all consistent with our policy agenda to close the poverty-related attainment gap, and we have a measurement framework in place to assess how we are performing on that challenge. All of those measures and reforms contribute towards advancing that agenda, which is measured by the framework that was published last December, and which I believe, after extensive consultation, commands widespread confidence across the education system. It's very specifically on this question of how you're going to make progress in nine months, ten months time. You'll make a judgment, but you haven't set—established any criteria. How will COSLA know what they have to do in order to make sure that you don't, in ten months time, decide that there's not enough progress being made? It's pretty obvious that the Government and local Government are working well together on this agenda. I'm approaching this in a spirit of partnership to advance an agreement, which is a different approach to the one that the Government set out. Of course, I've been criticised for changing tack on that, but I've changed tack because I've listened to people. In the spirit of co-operation and partnership that we're taking forward, I'm committed to making that judgment within the same spirit that has led us to what I consider to be a really valuable agreement that advances the reform agenda in Scottish education. Quite clearly, I will set out my rationale at the end of this year about how much progress has been made. I will do that after dialogue and consultation with COSLA. I won't do it without undertaking that dialogue. I will clearly communicate to Parliament my decisions and my consideration at that time. Oliver, it's just now your question. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I wondered just off what you've said just there and the reference to the proper order of things that you made in response to Mr Scott. Do you think that you've got the approach right so far on those reforms? Yes. Usually, people try non-legislative measures and collaboration first. Why have we spent a significant amount of time looking at a piece of legislation that you now no longer feel is required? We haven't been looking at a piece of legislation because the piece of legislation— Well, that's a very important point. We've been having a debate about the policy intention of empowering schools to be more influential in designing the education of children and young people across the country. That's been the policy objective that I have been interested in. The Government has consulted about that in relation to the possibility of taking that forward through legislation. The policy intention of the Government has not changed in any way, shape or form. What we have made progress on is a dialogue with our local authority partners, which enables us to take that approach forward without the requirement to legislate and to do it in a spirit of partnership. I recognise that the concept of empowering schools is just not just created by legislation. It needs to be a change of culture within our education system, and legislation doesn't always routinely deliver a change in culture. If that's your belief and the policy intention hasn't changed, why did we not start from a point of view of creating that dialogue? Under your assessment, the time that's been spent consulting around potential legislation is time wasted, is it not? No, it's not at all. It's been very beneficial time spent, in my opinion, because what we have got is that we've had an extensive debate about how we can take forward the concept of school empowerment. As I said in my earlier answer to Mr Scott, the consultation exercises that we undertook very clearly came forward with principal support and backing for the concept of school empowerment, but a number of issues about the detail and the practicalities of how we might do that. Essentially, the conclusion that I've come to is that if there is widespread support in the education system for empowering schools, let's work together to make sure that we do the detail in a collaborative way so that this works effectively and that children and young people in Scotland feel the benefit of it swiftly within the education system, and that's why we've ended up at the position that we've ended up in. I think that's something where the Government, I quite clearly have listened to the opinions of other people. I've tried to work in partnership. We made good progress on the establishment of regional improvement collaboratives, despite the fact that there was initial resistance to some of those concepts, and I think that the benefits of that are now begun to be felt within our education system, and so with the agenda on empowering schools. I hear what you're saying, but listening this morning to the first panel, it didn't sound like progress was going to be rapid. Education Scotland effectively seemed to be talking about spending the next year working out the baseline, working out how empowered schools are at the moment. How then, when there are no defined timescales, no prescribed objectives, can we be confident that this approach will deliver results faster than legislation? I disagree with the characterisation that Mr Mundell has put on this. There is a shared agreement between national and local government about the empowerment of schools within our education system, and that involves a number of components, not least of which is the head teacher's charter, to which there is agreement between national and local government. We will take forward that agenda. I have spent some time with the committee already setting out the fact that there will be an assessment made about the amount of progress that is made, but it follows logically that if we are starting work on implementing this agreement now and the head teacher's charter will be published before the end of this year, that would not have been provided for if we had gone to legislation, because the legislation, the earliest legislation that could have been implemented conceivably, although I think that that would have been pretty ambitious, would have been autumn 2019, much more likely to be autumn 2020. However, here we are in the autumn of 2018, making progress on the implementation of this agenda already. I think that that is good for children and young people in Scotland. I understand that you are saying about implementing this agenda, but do you think that the process of implementation will be complete by the time legislation would have passed? Well, I think that that is difficult for me to prescribe at this stage, but I think that we will have made a great deal more progress on implementing— So long-term progress could potentially be slower? Wait a second. No. We will make more progress on implementing this agreement than would have been done if we had gone for a legislative approach. I think that that is something that should be welcomed, because we are advancing the agenda at a faster pace than would have been possible with legislation. Just a final question to go back a stage. I was interested in why your approach had changed. Stephen McCabe suggested that parliamentary arithmetic could have had something to do with that. Is that correct? No, on the slightest, no, because I understand that there is parliamentary support for the measures in the education bill. Indeed, I read about that in the newspapers at the weekend. Excellent. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Can I ask—I am just going to bring Liz Smith in on capacity and culture, but just on the reform process, there is a lot to talk about in June 2019—you will make a decision if legislation is required, etc. Is there any possible benefit for the Scottish Government in bringing forward legislation? Between now and June 2019, you, COSLA, the EIS have all been working together collaboratively, co-operatively, even if there are hiccups in that. Can you envisage a situation where, at that time, you would think, right, okay, we are heading the right track, we have hit some bumps, those bumps are too big, we are going to bring in legislation? I cannot envisage that situation between now and June 2019 because the agreement that we have reached with local government has been reached in good faith. I think that it has been a good process that we have been involved in. I think that we have benefited from the active involvement of local government in the formulation of our policy propositions, and I have no reason to believe that that climate will change as we move forward with the implementation of the agreement that we have reached. Mr Swinney, this time last year, both yourself and the First Minister said very forcibly on the record in various situations that the proposed bill—I stress the word bill—was absolutely critical in terms of delivering education reform. Over the course of the year, you completely changed your mind on that. You are citing the fact that the reason for the change, in your view, was the information and the feedback that you were getting from stakeholders and also what the OECD were telling you in their very important report of three years ago. That feedback was there at the time when you made the pronouncements about the bill being so vital. Can you tell us, this committee, what is it specifically that made you change your mind when that information that you say was very important in changing your mind? Was it there before you announced your desire to have a very important bill? I suppose to tell it two factors. First, it became clear to me as we consulted on the legislative proposals that there was very broad support for the principle of school empowerment right across the education system in Scotland, but there was substantial disagreement about the detail of all of that. What I wanted to make sure was that I built on the agreement that was emerging about school empowerment and essentially captured that opportunity and to take forward the reform agenda. The second thing was the fact that we had already managed to get to position on regional improvement collaboratives, which at the very beginning, which was actually one of the key issues raised by the OECD in the 2015 report, was the lack of collaboration within the education system. That was their assessment of Scottish education. The fact that we managed to make progress from original resistance to the concept of regional improvement collaboratives to active participation and co-production of the design of regional collaboratives gave me confidence that there was a route that could be taken forward that would take the education system very actively with me on this agenda. It was those two factors that weighed heavily on my mind. I was also influenced by the commentary from the International Council of Education Advisers, who have believed that the Scottish Government's education agenda is soundly focused and anchored, but they gave me cautionary advice that pursuing a legislative approach to the reforms that I was trying to take forward might not create as good an outcome as if I took forward a collaborative approach, which I had already made progress on on the regional improvement collaboratives. Those are the factors that weighed on my mind. I felt that it was important that I listened carefully to the feedback that came to me through the consultation exercises and tried to capture that input to make sure that we took forward an effective reform agenda. Mr Swinney, where is the logic in leaving the draft bill on the shelf that should be required will be drawn out again, because that does not quite fit with what you have just said? You are either in favour of a bill to make those changes or not, which is it? What I am in favour of is making the changes. That is what I am in favour of, and that is where my policy agenda has been absolutely consistent. I am in favour of empowering schools, so I fought the 2016 election on and that is what I am pursuing. The issue that we are having here is a discussion about what is the most appropriate route to do that. Originally, my view was that we had to pursue that objective through legislation. By the co-operative approach that we have been able to construct with local government, I have come to the view that there is an alternative approach that is founded in the agreement that we have reached, and that is why we have ended up where we have ended up. When you, as Cabinet Secretary, are looking at the progress that has been made, and in relation to the comment that you made earlier this morning, the key thing—and it is very much in the statement from the First Minister yesterday—about the drive to narrow the attainment gap—that is the overall arching aim of this Government. What criteria will you be looking at to decide whether or not that progress has been made? I think that we have a duty to tell parents that. I think that we have a duty to tell local authorities that, and our schools, what will you be looking at, as Cabinet Secretary, to decide whether there has been progress or not? There are two distinctive elements to this point, and I have gone through some of them in my answers to Mary Fee and to Tavish Scott already. The measurement of whether we are closing the attainment gap will be determined by the framework that we put in place last December when we published the national improvement framework. Anybody who wants to see whether we are making progress or not will be able to look at those indicators, and those indicators will demonstrate whether we are closing the gap or whether we are not. That is all out there already, and that framework will not be changing. To answer Liz Smith's direct question, what would a parent look at to decide whether the attainment gap in Scotland has been closed, they should look at the reporting on the framework that we published last December. The other distinctive part of the question is about the impact of the reforms that we are undertaking. There are a whole host of factors that will affect our ability to close the poverty-related attainment gap, but it will not just be the reform agenda, it will be what we are investing in the Scottish attainment challenge, it is what we are investing in pupil equity funding, and it is what local authorities will be doing to support individual schools. It will be what individual schools are doing to change their practice to improve the quality of learning and teaching, or to support young people to overcome the impact of adverse childhood experiences. There will be a whole host of factors that will influence whether we are closing the poverty-related attainment gap, but we have an open, transparent framework that measures whether we are doing it or whether we are not. The reform agenda, I believe, will help us to contribute to that, because it will empower the individuals that we need to empower to have the most impact on children's education in the length and breadth of Scotland. So, just as a final point, Cabinet Secretary, and I hope that this is not what is going to happen, but if there was no improvement in the basic issues with the attainment gap, if there was no improvement in literacy and numeracy standards at this time next year, what will you do in terms of the legislative process? Will you continue to go for a collaborative approach or will you reintroduce the bill as you intimated in June? That, those two questions in my mind are not directly related. The progress on closing the attainment gap will not influence my decision on whether sufficient progress is to be made on this reform agenda, because, as I said a moment ago, the closure of the poverty-related attainment gap is influenced by a whole host of different factors within Government policy, whether it is the attainment challenge, pupil equity funding, the multidisciplinary approach to tackling adverse childhood experiences, the enhancements of learning and teaching, the improvements in leadership, the role of Columba 1400—all sorts of factors will influence the closure of the poverty-related attainment gap. I certainly will not be taking a view that the progress that we make on closing the poverty-related attainment gap will lead me to take a different stance on whether we should have this should be taken forward in legislation or not. My decision on whether or not this agenda should be taken forward through legislation will be driven by how much progress is made in implementing the joint agreement that we have reached with COSLA. Just for clarification, Cabinet Secretary, and as I said, I repeat, I really hope that this does not happen, but if there was an on-going situation where the attainment gap is very stubborn, as we all know that it is, at what stage would you review whether it has been right to go for a non-legislative process? I fear that I am just going to say the same things that I have just said a moment ago, because that is exactly the same question that Liz Smith put to me. I am trying to answer it as helpfully as I can. I think that there is a whole range of factors that will affect our ability to close the poverty-related attainment gap, but, in short, if we do not see progress on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, I will not use that as a justification for turning this agreement into legislation, providing sufficient progress has been made on implementing the agreement by our joint collaborative approach with local government. Deputy First Minister, do you believe that classroom assistance and additional support needs assistance provide valuable and distinct roles to schools? Yes, I do. Why does not the teacher census supplementary data classify them as separate categories, which it has always done up until this year? They are now classed as a single category, people support assistance. Government statisticians have taken the view that the two roles essentially are contributing to the same area of activity within individual schools. Therefore, that data combined provides a more representative position of the employment of individuals as part of the school census. You have just said that those are distinct roles, and they are. There is a huge difference between those who work specifically with children who have additional support needs and those who do not. How are we able to scrutinise something like that if there is no longer a distinction in the categories of data? If I could add to that, the data is no longer published with the supplementary data for the census. It is available on request afterwards because it is no longer put through a quality assurance process, like other elements of the data. Why is that the case? On the issue of quality assurance, there have been some significant issues in ensuring that that data was of a standard that could be published by our statisticians. They have had to interrogate quite significantly some of the data that has emerged. There is a data quality issue that our statisticians have had to wrestle with. Fundamentally, they have taken the view that in trying to provide the broadest assessment of employment and the characteristics of the workforce that is better to present that information in that fashion. The Government is keen to emphasise the STEM agenda and the importance that it plays on it. Do school technicians have a role to play in advancing the STEM agenda in education? They will do, yes. School technicians are a category that has been dropped completely from the supplementary data for the teacher census. Do you believe that that is a good idea? Obviously, there are judgments made by our statisticians about what is the appropriate presentation and collection of information. It is important that we have a sense of the entire workforce. Fundamentally, there will be issues that our statisticians have wrestled with about the ability to provide quality data based on the variety of different categories and classification of support workers, which have made it difficult to put in place consistent data in some of the employment categories that Mr Greer raises. Do you believe that, to fulfil your role as the Cabinet Secretary for Education, you benefit from knowing how many technicians there are in Scottish schools? Ultimately, those issues are a matter for local authorities as they employ the staff who provide services within our individual schools. Do you believe that you should know how many technicians there are in Scottish schools? I think that we have a very broad cross-section of information about the employment of individuals within our schools. I get a significant amount of that information. Fundamentally, there are decisions about the recruitment of staff at local level that are currently taken exclusively by our local authorities, and local authorities have to make a judgment about the employment that is undertaken at that level. I am asking about the availability of the data through publications of the Scottish Government. You mentioned that those decisions are taken by the statisticians. Do they consult with those in education before making changes to the data that they collect and the data that they publish? They will do, yes. Who in education would that be? For a decision like this, are you made aware of a decision like that before it is taken? I am made aware of the decision that is taken, yes, but I do not take those decisions. Do you feel that the Government is fulfilling its obligation to open this in transparency? I want to take you through the very long saga that I have had to collect this data, but it is typically published in December. The teacher says that this time around was not published until March, the supplementary data not until July. The data that we have been discussing here, I had to request after that, and as we discussed, it was not put through a quality assurance process. I think that the reasons for all of that, if my recollection is correct, is about data quality issues that statisticians wrestled with as part of that process. It would be helpful for the committee if we could get some of the reasons for that in writing to the committee, because there seems to be a number of issues. I will clarify, first of all, on the issue of the agreement with local government. Councillor McCabe said that he did not know that the legislation was going to be shelved, so the agreement was in the context of the legislation. Has there been any change then to the agreement on the basis that we no longer have the legislation? No. Was there a particular reason why we did not like to cosily know of the plans to drop the legislation when you were forming the agreement, given that the legislation was the context in which that agreement was discussed? We formed the agreement as a consequence of some extensive discussions, and we got to agreement about the contents of the bill some time. I cannot remember exactly when. I think it was probably approved by the cosiler leaders at the end of May, if my recollection is correct. So we reached that point of agreement. I then considered what was the best way to advance the agreement. I obviously drafted a bill consistent with that agreement, and the bill that I published in draft form at the end of June contained the provisions that were the subject of the agreement with local government. I considered, in the aftermath of reaching the agreement with the cosiler, whether there was an opportunity to take this forward through a collaborative route, given that we had made progress on the regional improvement collaboratives by exactly the same route. That was the judgment that I came to. I shared that decision with Councillor McCabe before I announced it to Parliament, so I advised local government of my intention to take a different course than my parliamentary statement, but it was based on a judgment that I thought there was more progress that we could make over a swifter timescale by that voluntary agreement. It was not a collaborative decision to stop the legislation. No, it is a very important point in there. Councillor McCabe is not the author of the legislation, nor would he claim to be, so it is a decision that I would have to take. I understand that point. I am making this. The cosiler came to an agreement with you in the context of the legislation. You then decided to drop the legislation and then say that the reason you are doing that is because you have got this collaborative arrangement, but can I just clarify with you? One thing to say in favour of an improvement agenda, and I would be signed up to that. I think that what was evident from the panel this morning is that some pretty fundamental things that neither cosiler nor the teachers representative agree with you on in terms of what that improvement looks like. If we look at the head teacher's charter, why are you persisting in calling it a head teacher's charter when certainly the EIS and the national parents forum want it to be something like a more collegiate school charter, which is what leadership at every level inside a school feels like. For those of us who are there, we know that the head teacher has one part of it, but we do not subscribe. Many people do not subscribe, as the union described it, because it is the hero leader model. Schools will not work on the basis of a hero leader model. Have you agreed that in looking for a charter it will not be a head teacher's charter, but it will be something slightly different from that, which is how people work together in collaboration? If we look at the agreement that has been reached between the Government and local Government and look at section 9, it sets out under the heading agreement on the head teacher's charter a number of provisions in relation to what would be in the head teacher's charter. For example, it says that head teachers are responsible for deciding how best to design their local curriculum in line with curriculum for excellence. It goes on to say that head teachers should choose the staff who work in their school with due regard to employment law and the contractual obligations of their local authority. It also goes on to say that head teachers must work collaboratively with their staff, parents, pupils and wider partners, including other schools and their local authority, on curriculum design and improving learning and teaching. At the top, it says that there is agreement on the head teacher's charter. In effect, you call it a head teacher's charter. You empower a head teacher who delivers locally, is dynamic and all the rest of it. The reality is something different from that, because both COSLA, parents and unions express concern about them. Indeed, head teachers themselves express concern about the model. I believe that head teachers should work collaboratively with staff, parents, pupils and wider partners. That is what I agree with. I have always believed that. Is it different from the model that was in the legislation? No, it is not. It is exactly the same. Of course it is, because the legislation is well to go back to my earlier answer to Johann Lamont. This agreement is the basis on which the legislation was crafted. I have always believed that head teachers must operate in the fashion that we have talked about, but I believe that head teachers must be able to exercise more flexibility and have more control than they have just now, which is why the provisions in the charter are so significant. I ask why you would resist the views of both unions and the parents forum, which felt that the idea that the authority goes to the individual head teacher is not appropriate and that it would be better to signal that it is something much more collegiate that you are looking for and call it, for example, a school's charter that would allow for accountability, and would you recognise this morning in evidence that Council McKay made it very clear that the responsibility of the head teacher and accountability to local authority would remain the same? Head teachers are employees of local authorities. At no stage have I advanced a proposition that would ever change that. Never. Nothing that I have ever said would have changed that position, so clearly a line of accountability would have had to have been maintained between a head teacher and a local authority, and I never argued to change that. What this head teacher's charter does is significantly enhance the power and the flexibility of head teachers on a uniform basis across the country. I accept that there are some schools in the country where head teachers currently choose their staff, but that is not all those cases. It is not the case in every local authority in the country. There will be shifts in the relationship between individual local authorities and their head teachers, but at no stage have I ever argued for the accountability or employment arrangement between a head teacher and a local authority to change as part of the process. I do not think that it would be reasonable if you are going to take a collaborative approach that you acknowledge that proposals in the legislation that you have now shelved were not gathering support and that you have to be open in dealing with unions and with parents and with the local authorities and saying that you need to do something slightly different from what was proposed in the legislation. Would you not at least concede that? The concern is—I can just capture it this way—that you create the impression that you are going to get the exact same results from having legislation as not having legislation, but the problem is that people regard the legislation as difficult and not necessarily appropriate to achieve the aims that we might more generally want around empowerment. Are you open to the concept that what will happen in terms of collaboration will not be what the bill was intended to deliver but maybe something better? There are a number of points that I would like to address in there. The first is that over the past couple of years, all sorts of things have been said that were my policy and tension, which were never my policy and tension. For example, I read column interest about how I was going to academise Scottish education. At no stage was I ever going to academise Scottish education, but it was put about that I was going to academise Scottish education. Holding me to account for that model might be interesting political sport, but it was never my intention. My second point is that—it falls out of the point that I made to Mr Mundell in my earlier answer. My policy and tension throughout this has been to empower schools, and the debate has been about what is the best way to go about doing that. What I was pleased about in the consultation exercises was that there was widespread support for empowering the empowerment of schools but not for some of the precise details that we put in the proposals. We have got together with local government and we have come up with an agreement that, certainly to my view, satisfies my objectives about the empowerment of schools and gives the necessary control to where I think it should rest within our education system, within our schools, with our headteachers, able to have an influence on the education of children and young people in individual schools. All of that is an illustration of the fact that the policy agenda is being achieved as a consequence of all of that. I think that that approach is being offered to Parliament openly. I gave a statement to Parliament earlier on this year. I set out the—I have published the agreement with local governments. It is there for people to see openly and transparently. From that I think it is pretty clear that the policy agenda of empowering schools is one that is going to take its course with the dialogue with local government. We are reasonable to suggest that empowerment of schools is not necessarily the same as the headteachers charter as you captured it in the legislation. It is possible to be in favour of empowerment of schools, as councillors are, as EISs, as parents are, without accepting your description of a headteachers charter. We therefore would not be at least reasonable to expect that you would be open to the idea of a more collegiate approach that would be a school charter, rather than suggesting, as we suggested yesterday in the chamber, that we will get the same thing anyway. The reason we are doing this is because we can get it more quickly. The headteachers charter, as described in the legislation, will surely be open to a different approach if you accept that other people have a different view of how empowering schools would actually look. The bill that we have brought forward is based on the agreement that we have reached with local government, which includes provision for agreement on the headteachers charter. That is an implicit part of what we have put forward. We are going round the circles here, but we are getting the same questions and obviously the same answers. George, you wanted to come in. I would just like to go on about the point that you made yourself about what the reality of the situation is with regard to what you proposed and what was reported in the column that you spoke of. I am starting to doubt whether I have been in the same room with some of my colleagues today, because when I listened to some of the representatives here from partner organisations this morning, they were actually positive. They were looking forward to the challenge. They were wanting to work with the Government to try to make sure that we can find those solutions. Was I in a completely different room, cabinet secretary, or is that the case with the organisations that you are working with? We have reached agreement with COSLA after an extensive amount of dialogue that is formulated in the text of the joint agreement that the committee will have seen. That agreement satisfies my view of the approach that we need to take to empower schools and to make sure that our headteachers are able to exercise responsibility as leaders of learning, that they are able to have much greater influence than they have today over staffing in their schools, that there is a much greater involvement for parents in the education process of young people, and that there are a whole suite of decisions that can be taken closer to children as a consequence of this agreement. I welcome the fact that we have reached that point of agreement with our local authority partners, and I think that it is a very sound basis for proceeding with this agenda. Can I just ask you about the inspection regime, because Education Scotland will carry out three new thematic inspections over the next year, and they will be looking at readiness for empowerment, curriculum leadership and parent and pupil participation. What discussions have you had to agree benchmark or criteria for Education Scotland to carry out those thematic inspections? The inspectorate acts independently of ministers, so the contribution to the discussion that has taken place has been Education Scotland, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education making their contribution to a collective process with Government and local governments saying that these are three elements of inspection that we think would be reasonable to take forward, and that is exactly what Her Majesty's Inspectorate will do. These are decisions formulated by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education, which are formulated independently of ministers. How much weight will you put on the findings of those inspections to help to develop your understanding of success next year when you evaluate how well schools have done? I look very carefully at those inspection reports. I look very carefully at every single inspection report that comes out on a weekly basis from Her Majesty's Inspectorate. I see every one of those reports on a weekly basis, whether they are about nursery classes, primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, independent schools or thematic inspections across different policy areas or individual inspections of local authority education functions. I look very carefully at every one of them on a weekly basis. Thank you very much, Mary. We will move on to the last question, which is from Tavish. I just wanted to ask one question about testing of primary one pupils, not about what you are going to do, not about whatever may come this afternoon, which I have no clue as to what is going to be said, but more about what appeared in the last couple of weeks in terms of advice to parents, which I think was of concern because it was contradictory advice. I wonder, Mr Swinney, if you could just clarify why the Government published advice that parents cannot opt out their children out of P1 tests quoting Solaar as an authority for that position when Solaar then said they had given no such view. That was at the very worst, at the very best, at a worrying difference of opinion. I will be going through some of these questions this afternoon. I am in Parliament just now, so I will answer Mr Scott's question. I hope I am not creating some discurts upstairs. I am not asking you to explain the philosophy of your position on testing. Here goes. It is the best I can see. Mr Scott said that the advice had changed or was different. I would contest that view. I think that the view has been pretty consistently expressed, which I would best try to express it as follows. There is no legislative provision for standardised assessments, but there is no legislative provision for really anything in Scottish education as opposed to children and young people who must be educated. If there is no legislative provision for standardised assessments, there cannot be a legislative right to withdraw a child from an assessment. That has been the consistent position that the Government has argued over time. There is, of course—this has been clear throughout all of the dialogue that we have had—that where a parent or a carer is concerned about the appropriateness of their child participating in assessment, they are free to raise that with individual schools. If we look at the participation rate on standardised assessments, the participation rate is about 94 per cent. I would never expect it to be 100 per cent because there will be some young people for whom it is not appropriate that they are undertaking standardised assessments. That data demonstrates that point. Finally, on the point of the Solar advice, my officials spoke to local authority lawyers and thought that they were getting a Solar position because they were speaking to the people within Solar who would be the closest to some of the issues that we were interested in around the issue of parental consent to ensure that we essentially were understanding their position. That was represented in a letter from one of my officials as a Solar position. Solar has subsequently made it clear to us that they do not offer a position of that type. It was presented in good faith, but we gave it a definition of the source of the advice that was not appropriate for that to be done. Solar presumably thought that they were giving private advice to the Government? Not so much private advice. What was happening was dialogue with people who are in the Solar organisation, but what has subsequently became clear is that Solar does not provide a collective position. That was not appropriately presented by us in that letter. I appreciate that. The Government recognises that it is incredibly sensitive for teachers and parents. Would it have been helpful to have published another letter saying what you have just said? I have done that in collaboration with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland. It does not mention Solar in the advice in that sense. I was essentially trying to present the position between the Government and the Association of Directors of Education to provide clarity, but in my statement this afternoon I will address directly the Solar issue. I want to make it clear to the committee that the situation that we found ourselves in was an inadvertent situation. I said that Tallysh was the last question, but I must clear my apologies. Just returning to the theme of the first panel, Cabinet Secretary, about the children who are in perhaps kinship care, foster care, looked after children in either third sector or council run establishments. How do we ensure that all of the people involved in that feel part of this process and do not feel excluded by it and that the voice of looked after children will be heard as loudly as other? The key question here, or the key approach here, is the focus on the whole child. Obviously, that is a central part of our approach to policy for children and young people, and I want to make sure that in all circumstances those who surround looked after children, support looked after children are able to understand all of the support that is available to them and also that those responsible for the education of looked after children take due account of some of the specific challenges that looked after children will face as a consequence of their situation and to make sure that their needs are adequately and fully met. The working arrangements that we have with local government are designed to ensure that that whole child approach is able to be taken forward in that respect. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of this public session. I thank the Cabinet Secretary and the staff for their attendance. I now close the public session. We will now move into private session. I will suspend for a moment or two to allow witnesses and the gallery to leave before continuing.