 Y Llywyddedig wnaeth ymwneud i'r 25th gyrfaennau ymольig i'r cwm abusedus i'r Cymru, yn 2015. Fy hoff yna gan oedd yn ddewydio caiff ydych chi'n gwneud fforddau allu lawr iawn ymlaen. Mae gyrfaennau fy nghymru gyda'r awdurdur i'r Llyfrgell Mary Scanlon, Gordon MacDonald ac Mark Griffin. Fy hoff ymlaennau cyffredinol ar hyn am allwch gyrfaennau, ond mawr ar y cyrfyrdd Amrith. Os hi i'n gweithio Lyst Nyth, ??eg yn gwybod mwybod i Mary, James Dawndyn yn gwybod Iain Gray, for Gordon and Ian Gray, who is substituting for Mark. Welcome to all of you. Our first item on the agenda this morning is to take evidence on the proposed Scottish Government amendments to the Education in Scotland Bill. I make clear that the amendments have not yet been lodged, but once they have been, they will be formally dealt with by the committee. Our first panel of witnesses will cover the proposed amendments to the national improvement framework and the second panel will cover the standard for headship. We will then hear from the cabinet secretary on both those areas. I welcome this morning on our first panel, we have Susan Quinn from the EIS, Ian Ellis, MBE from the National Parent Forum of Scotland, Craig Munro, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and Professor Kate Watson from the University of Stilling. Good morning to all of you and welcome to the committee. We are going to go straight into questions, if you do not mind, and I am going to start with Chick Brody. I wonder if I may ask a question about the need for change. Clearly, the most discussed element in the framework is its proposal to create standardised national assessments. I think that if I may ask Susan first, in your paper, which was very readable, it says that discernible tension appears to exist between the competing functions of the Scottish Government with responsibility for national policy and education and local government with its statutory responsibility for delivery. Why, in your opinion, is it your opinion that you consider that a cultural shift in Scottish education is necessary? A cultural shift is necessary because we introduced curriculum for excellence 10 plus years ago, which was to have the most significant impact on the delivery of learning and teaching, the assessment of that and the outcome for leavers in Scottish education. It provided for us a framework of principles and potential practices that should have had and which can have a significant impact on the way that education is served for the young people of Scotland. We need to be in a position where now we are able to continue with that to develop the areas that are needed to continue to be developed. It has been quite clear within the work that has come out that aspects of assessment and moderation and understanding within the broad general education from early years through to the end of S3 requires some continued work, some continued practice on it, and in order to take us then into what would have been the desired outcome for the stages of the national qualifications where we move to a shift in how those look across the board rather than just a repetition of the old qualifications just with new names. I understand that, but the reason we are here is that we are looking at some changes that we think need to be changed. I just wonder what you think the reasons are for some of the anticipated benefits of the framework of whether or not they are already being delivered. The benefits of the new framework clearly will be that the national government will have a clearer oversight in their opinion of what is happening across the country. That perhaps is the one area of miss within the work of curriculum for excellence. It is obvious from the work that has gone on in the past that local authorities all have their own systems and understanding of how the broad general education, the national qualifications and improvement is taking place within their local areas. They have developed their own policies and practices around the principles of curriculum for excellence. They make use of a range of strategies taken into account a broad spectrum of assessment tools to support that, and they provide that information. I can only assume that, somewhere down the line, that information has not got to national level. I cannot comment on why that would be, but I would have thought that the introduction of the improvement framework clearly is, as Education Scotland describes, about local improvement but national accountability. Where are the discernible tensions in that area that you have clearly elucidated? Where are the tangible tensions that exist between the Scottish Government and the local authorities? As an EIS, I cannot honestly tell you, but you need to discuss that with local authorities and national government. The EIS's position on it is that, at local level, we have engaged with all aspects of this work. We support continued discussion around that, but clearly, in terms of what is there, national government must feel that they do not have the information that they require. As a representative of the EIS, I cannot comment on why that would be the issue for us around the proposals that are there, but some aspects of it then take us into realms that are a step too far. I think that that might be appropriate for me to come in at this point, Susan. Just to go back to your original question, what is the reason for that change? I think that that is where you started before you moved on with your supplementaries. I have to say that, from that point of view, I want to convey the view that we believe that it is the right time to have a national improvement framework. I would like to give some reasons why I think that it is the right thing to do in the right time, notwithstanding the issues that we have come in ground on with the EIS that have already been reflected. In relation to why it is a good time, I think that it was quite an interesting moment when Surges for Better Learning was produced by the OECD, in which we are looking at the developed nations around the world and their education systems. The difference between a good education system and a great one is pretty well brought out in that document. One of the things that it really makes clear is that what you do not do is something up here at national level that has no effect whatsoever in the classroom, or what you do not do up here at national level is do something damaging in the classroom. Within the system, the closing of the title Surges between classroom, child, teacher, school, local authority, whatever community planning partnership and national government, there has to be a situation where every bit of the system, every layer of the system, is driving improvement with the child. I think that we have some examples in Scotland where we have things happening and actually never having no practical impact or import upon children, and I would put SSLN in that category. If you want me to expand on that, I can, but what I would say is that I think that it is a good time too because I think that Scotland is in a good place. I do not think that there is a crisis. I do not think that anybody believes that in the address, and I would say that to you. I think that we are in a good place, but if we want to be a great education system, there are things that we could do better. Clearly, we have a system where we are very proud about the consensus across the educational spectrum. I think that, correct or not, that is a good example of that. I would put woods into the same category. I would put girfech into the same category. Interestingly, the girfech is not amplified sufficiently within this document, as are a number of other things that we will come to. However, it is about trying to get a compelling narrative that brings together the things that we are quite proud about and says, okay, let's see if we can actually describe in an exciting document how we can move from a good position to a great and address at the same time those things that we think are blockers to that greatness. Therefore, I put to you that I think that there are certain things within the Scottish context that could improve them, and the educational inequalities one. The variation within school is one, and so we could begin to give various things that we could begin to describe in a document that could lead to improvement, but not something that would either damage the classroom practice nor something that would lead to no effect whatsoever. I'm sure that the issue of damage will come up in the course of the conversation. Thank you. Liz Smith. Dean Veiner, the First Minister has put on record that she wants to ensure that there is good access to the relevant data. Could I ask you whether you feel that there is a distinction between data performance material and that which points to actual performance data? Is there data there already that can be used to do what is requested, or is there a subtle difference between that and actually a performance indicator when it comes to a national framework? Craig and I attended the early stakeholders meeting before the summer holidays on the improvement framework, and what came out in the room that day was that there is a significant amount of data in the system from early years through to the end of the qualification stage, that local authorities, as I said, use that data in a variety of different ways to support their schools and to provide information for the elected members at local levels. We would, within the institute, attest that there is enough data there. It's about how you then get that to work to the system, to the next step that's required in terms of national understanding. There is a raft of information that is already there in terms of teacher professional judgment and moderation exercises. There are a range of standardised assessments being used across the country to support young people within their classes and in terms of supporting local decision making. There is a wealth of information already there. As I understand it, the difficulty is how you translate that to a national understanding of progress within the system. Is the argument not that, if that data is already there and it's a rich seam of data, that there shouldn't really be a problem in terms of legislating for this? Is it not the case that there's something else that we can do to ensure that this improvement can be made without top heavy legislation? I would suggest that, in terms of legislating, it's whether or not the legislation is there to ensure that there's consistency or otherwise I don't know whether or not it's necessary to do so, but in terms of what's there, we would support any system that allows us to look at what we already have and make good use of that information. As what came out in the stakeholders meeting in June was that, although there is a wealth of information locally, that somehow isn't translating to the information that national government requires in terms of... Can I just spend a little bit more time on this? I think that it's very important. This is one of the issues in Scottish education just now. Obviously, there are concerns about standards when it comes particularly to literacy and numeracy. What, in your view, is it that is preventing the correct assessment when it comes to international correlations and when it comes to, more importantly, the correlation on schools each year on themselves? What is it that is stopping us doing a little bit better with that data? It will depend on what's happening in each of the local authorities. It will depend on what systems they have in place. Some of the things that might be stopping it are literacy time for teachers to engage in the kind of conversations that have to happen. Struggling schools with lack of teachers at this point mean that the kinds of exercises that need to take place in terms of professional dialogue between headteachers and the class teachers. There is a pressure point around whether or not that can happen effectively if the headteacher, as is the case in a whole raft of our schools, is finding themselves having to teach more than they did previously. There are problems in quite clearly where there will be issues of staff development on their data literacy and on the understanding. It will depend on whether or not local authorities continue to have the level of support service where the conversations that we had previously taken place. When I started as a headteacher in Glasgow six years ago, we had enough QIOs that we would have regular visits and they would have a conversation with me as headteacher about where we were going by the time I finished because of the cuts. We were not having those conversations, so there will be a whole range of different things that will have an impact on whether or not those conversations can take place. However, they are happening within schools to the very best where the resources are there for it. Those are the conversations that make the difference. The primary one teacher being able to have time with the early years colleagues about where the young person is at when they are coming in requires a resource of time in order for people to be able to do it. Similarly, as they go from P7 to S1, the very best of the systems in terms of transition require a resource of time in order for people to talk to each other. It does not matter then if the data is there, if people are not able to talk about it, it cannot have the impact that it needs to. That is quite a serious thing to say because it implies that the data is accurate and correct in terms of what we are wanting to assess, but for some reason we are not very good at putting that data together and allowing parents who are obviously extremely interested in it and teachers too to assess it. Do the other panellists feel that the data is good quality and that is not the problem, that the problem is that we are not able to interpret that data properly? You hit it in the head there with your last week's statement. The problem is that most parents do not see the data so we do not know how good it is. To me that is the good thing about the new framework, because we do not know that they do not tell us what the data is. The data is protected, shall we say, and it is not really shared. It is proven right across that if parents are involved in their child's education it can lead to better things, but if you do not share what they are actually doing, we get parents nights once a year, we get a report card, which you might not agree or disagree, but a lot of times it is cut in place and you cannot actually tell if it is your child who is aimed at or somebody else's child. Until we actually start sharing this data properly and actually having meaningful discussions with parents to say that this is where your child is just now, we expect your child in six months to be here, this is how you could help your children, then until we start actually sitting doing that. I am not saying that it does not happen, it does happen in bits across the country, but not enough. That is pretty serious. I think that it is clear that we do need to increase data literacy at all levels of the system. It is quite clear that, for example, we collect lots of information around test scores like PIPs and so on, but the actual understanding that is required to interpret the meaning of those tests and then to act on them is very limited. I notice that the NIF does recognise that and say that it should be addressed in terms of ITE, and we support that. To go back to our first question, do we have the data? I will speak for my own authority. It was 14 years ago when we first started standardised assessments. That was in the era of 5 to 14. We have lords' longitudinal studies of information of children's development, literacy and numeracy, as well as a range of teachers' judgments to look at, as well as other forms of assessment instruments that are there. How consistent that is across the 32 authorities is a nub of this whole issue, and that is the reason why an improvement framework is required. Do I know, as director, whether literacy is improving in 5? Yes, I do. Do I know if it is happening in a school? Yes, I do. Do I know if it is happening in a child? Yes, I do. Are we using that information as consistent and in an appropriate way as we would allow us to? No, I am sure that we can do more with it and improve, but I think that you have localised and excellent practice in classrooms, in schools and in local authorities, and we need to be aware of that. We are not looking at a broken system. I would like to add one rider. I take Ian's challenge—I think that Ian and I know each other very well—and I think that you will hear that challenge about how we can do better with parents. I would say that, in relation to some of the issues of educational inequality, it is not a divorce from health inequalities in other areas, there is some information that could be very damaging to a child. Let me give you an example. You tell a child that there is a percentile one in numeracy. Of every 100 children in Scotland, they are the bottom. I will tell you what, they will never do mathematics again in their life. There is an appropriateness of how we use information in a learning approach, which is essential. There is information that we use to check whether we are making progress, and there is other information that we use to publicly report and be held accountable for the progress that we are making for the literacy and numeracy of our children. We have to be careful about those two matters. In terms of the issues, as Craig has said, they are specific to different areas. The local authorities at this point are reporting on the progress within theirs. Yes, there might well be more that can be done. You asked what the barriers were, and that is why I have outlined them. I do not think that that is something that is significant across the country. The issue clearly has been that, for whatever reason, nationally you are not getting the picture that is wanted at this time in terms of what is happening. That is my reading of why we need something that is looking at across the system. I agree with Craig. In terms of what parents and young people otherwise have reported to them, we have to consider what will be of benefit to them. Simply to go back to saying that you are level D or E or whatever, that might give a number or a letter or otherwise to what parents think are understandable. However, it does not necessarily tell you more and what is required are the kinds of quality conversations that Ian has said happen across the country. We have to look at what is there. However, each school has to look at what is required for their set of parents. One size will not fit all in terms of parents' appointments. Some will want a particular approach and others will want something else. That is why schools respond to what will get parents from their area into the parents' appointments. That is what the challenge for schools is—engaging parents so that they want to come along in here as much as is possible about their children's progress. Some of the written submissions express significant concerns about the national assessment element. For example, the union voice stated that we believe that classroom teacher support for learning teachers and school management can provide better evidence and support for people's national standardised assessments. Neil MacKinnon in his submission considers the draft NIF to be a top-down and position-framed and suppositions drawn from the most banal cliches of global education corporate reform. Will he acknowledge the value of the Scottish Government's approach? He also considers the standardised assessments to be an act as a blunt instrument that will administer an unsophisticated political accountability process. The flip side of that is that the Scottish Government has also had some support from ADES, Aberdeenshire Council and Celsius stated that placing the framework in a statutory footing is a necessary step. It also added that we agree with the Scottish Government's analysis that limited data on the children's progress at key stages is restricting our capacity to deliver improvement. Now, taking into account what I have just said, could the panel perhaps advise or maybe express an opinion on how the national assessments could best be used to drive improvement for pupils and to inform teachers and schools approaches to learning or do the witnesses consider that they are better alternative approaches irrespective of whether and how the draft NIF is modified? The starting point from myself on the standardised test is that when the draft NIF was published, it was a draft of a national improvement framework where the only specific within it was a national once a year for key P147 and S3 of a standardised test. Everything else was that this is going to support teacher professional judgment and otherwise. I think that that is where it is backwards around the parts that are there. As the EIS submission says, we are not against the use of standardised assessments, tests, whatever you want to call them, in terms of supporting young people's development, but we cannot see how you can move away from the issues that we have raised in terms of going back to target setting around tests that we moved away from a very short time ago. Virtually within this Government's time, we moved away from gathering national data on tests because it was counter to the principles and practices of curriculum for excellence. What we would like to see within the national improvement framework is a consideration of how you can gather the information from teachers professional judgment to inform the national position and to then consider whether or not there is a heft of a national test within that. We would argue that there is no need for that. We would argue that there is evidence within the system just now that local authorities are gathering their moderated evidence of achieving levels at the key stages that are identified within the paper, that some of them make use of standardised tests but equally some of them don't in order to do so and that they are of equal standing in their ability to report on the progress of the young people within their local authority and that had time been taken to develop what the actual nif in and of itself was going to look like rather than saying, and one part of it has to be, this national annually gathered information on tests, then we would have moved to something which could have informed better the system that we feel that Craig has articulated earlier would be there. However, having put into it that there is going to be a standardised test on an annual basis for P147 and S3, you then hit the barriers to that. We are clear that there are major issues around putting a test in place which will be for every single child. There are key educational arguments why it is not going to be helpful to the young people. There are clearly young people who will be disadvantaged by the fact that you introduce a test of this nature and we would argue that it is counter to teacher professional judgment to say that you have to use a particular assessment tool to back up your assessment judgment. We would argue that it is for local authorities to decide what their assessment policy is. If I take your question in two parts, there were original comments about what Neil MacKinnon quoted and summarising his views on the document. I would say that, from an ad-exposition on that, we are very supportive of the national improvement framework and I think that it is the right time. That does not mean to say that we have unqualified support for this document. There is a tone issue in the document, there is a compliance in it and there is a culture of compliance in it. If Ian MacKinnon is going to say something about that maybe later, but that is a feature of it and I think that there is a system speech within it which we need to think but in relation to the number of your question about whether assessment information could be used to drive further improvement or not, I regard that to being two parts. There is the test itself, what you assess and we should really assess what we value and we value literacy skills and numeracy skills of children. There is a second question, what you do with that information. It is the second part of the question that is causing the angst. Not the test, thanks so much, but how you use information to drive improvement at classroom level, at school level, at local authority level, at CPP level and at national level. There are various options about how we can do that without creating the league tables, without going back to the negative stereotypes when we reinforce that in communities, and how we do not go back to the days of a reducing staff morale on a teach-the-test. There are ways around that about how you use that information from classroom level to national level, but I can honestly say that in all the times that I have used the test and I have the opportunity of being head of education in 5th from 2007, I do not think that the test is the issue, I think that it is the use that we make of the information and I think that that is what Susan Perthittle is looking for, safeguarded within the document, and I would say that there is wisdom in that because we have seen mis use of information in the past and it has led to perverse incentives in other jurisdictions and not so long ago in their own context here in Scotland. I probably agree quite a bit with what has been said, but I personally think that parents are really welcome with that, because the majority of kids just now are already getting tested, so what is happening with that? How are we using it? I think that Craig said that the key thing is what we actually do with that information for the best of the children. I personally think that we are getting bogged down a lot on the assessment. As I said, it already happens across the country just now. I think that it is a bit of the jigsaw. I personally and I think that parents, the teacher's professional judgment plays a bigger part than me in the assessment, because your child could have an off day, I could have a spectacular day that is not right, so you could get a false result. It is also the teacher's professional judgment that will bring it back to you. It is sharing that with parents. We personally do not really want your child done excellent today, your child done poorly today. We want the context and how it was done and the only people that will give us the context is the teachers. I personally think that the teacher's professional judgment plays a bigger part in this than the actual assessment. I need to watch what I say here. I made it say something that you need not like, but the assessment to me is a small part, but we have concerns on how it will be used nationally. Even if it does not go nationally, under freedom of information act, league tables are going to come, no matter what we say. The press will be told by their editors going to find out and make a league table. I am not sure that that is correct, because if that was the case then you could do it now, and that is not what happens. They did after the parents on started producing results and the first day after it was results that even in times ran league tables in Glasgow. I am getting heads being shaped next to you, so I am going to ask them to respond to that. It is quite clearly avoidable, particularly in terms of the kind of information that is available. Obviously, league tables are easily easiest to draw up when the information is simple. If you have once a year every single child in the country between a period of time doing a test, and I use the term test carefully because I do not want us to forget that assessment is more than a single test and is more than testing of any kind, it is easy to do an FOI and get how many young people got that information. If you are looking at putting that into not happening at a single point in time, not every single child, at the professional judgment of the school or the local authority, then it is a much more challenging thing than to do. I think that there are ways and means of using teachers' professional judgment backed up by a range of assessment strategies, which is what currently happens and not put in a particular focus. Once you put a focus on a single point in time in the year, that is when the test becomes the headline. There are six ways that you could do it that would not allow it to be leading to a league table, but the danger is that the document does not make it clear as it stands. That is the problem. We are all reading the document and if it had made it very clear how we would do that, I think that there would be a lot less camera at this end of the table. Currently, we have a sample mechanism through SSLN. It is such a small sample that very few teachers in the country are aware of it. It is not even big enough to be at a local authority level. Therefore, it is doing something at a national level that is having no practical impact at classroom. You could increase that sample to be very significant, to be included right down to school-level data and local authority data. It would be a useful tool. There is one example. You could also anonymise the data under each level, so that the head teacher would be able to see what happens in the school and local authority in schools, and a national government would see what is happening at the local authority level. You could have a system where information is passing seamlessly up, but anonymised under each level. You could actually change the law. You could look at some information to be used in the SNF and in the amendment to say that here is information that we will have a public report on, and here is information that we know that we will be collected, but we will not allow it to be publicly reported on. I could keep on going. There are different models of doing it, but certainly what the consensus is round about is that there is some information that you are using for improvement purposes, and there is other information that you use for public accountability. It is in that tension that the SNF has to walk if it is going to keep the consensus across Scotland. There have also been concerns about teaching to test and when that could best be applied, whether it be at the start of the year, where teachers could use a tool to identify and understand the child as a year passes on, or could it be done as a measure of progress typically at the end of the year? There is clearly attention if you have a test that is potentially diagnostic, and the point of a diagnostic is to identify areas of gap that require additional work. There is an issue where if you then simply use that to measure end points, then you kind of go, where do I now have that information? As a teacher, I would look at a diagnostic being used earlier in the system, earlier in the process, so that we knew what we were working towards in the final stages of a level or otherwise. That is why the EIS position is that we argue that any addition of an assessment test to this framework should be at the professional judgment of the school or the local authority, because you would use it in different ways. Similarly, why would you need to test a young person that a teacher's professional judgment knows that they have achieved a level? If, as a class teacher, I have a raft of evidence that shows that, through the three years of the first level, they are achieving it in all of the breadth, understanding and use of it in wider contexts, why do I need to test them on that? It does not tell me anything more than I already have, but there are young people who perhaps might be scratching my head going, I wonder what it is they are needing. We use a range of assessments to back that up already within the system. From our point of view, it is that, how can it be diagnostic and also tell you how many have achieved a level? There is a real danger within it in terms of it becoming that support tells you that they have achieved a level, because some of the evidence, particularly in the work that we have been doing, is that, in terms of writing, we can really only pretty much standardise spelling. There are no systems for standardising the assessment of an extended piece of writing through an online test. You are then making a judgment on progress based on spelling, which is not necessarily telling you what you want to know. It is that thing of what you are looking for out of it and you will get you to use different assessment strategies to get different information. You do not use one to do everything. The number of questions being asked there, to go back to the question about testing. There is good evidence that, when combined with increased accountability, testing drives up test schools, but there is little evidence that improves the quality of learning that is taking place. There is an issue about the validity of the tests that are devised. Notice that, on page 11 of the framework, it sets out what those tests should contain. That is not really a question for Government to be saying what the test should contain, but should be a question for professionals in education. That is helpful. Professor Watson, in your evidence, you suggest that there is no articulation of the implied issues that are being addressed, but whether or not we accept that there is a problem to be addressed, I think that we should always be looking to drive up improvement. In that sense, there is probably unanimity around the table, but putting things into legislation is, as you said, Susan, a blunt instrument. I was interested in other elements of the evidence that you have provided at the committee in its current form, and that will result in heavy investment of valuable teaching and learning time and of money in a nationwide test model that will not improve outcomes for Scotland's poorest children and young people. The examples that Craig suggested that that one-size-fits-all standardised assessment is a challenge that has proved to be beyond the capability of any education system that has attempted such an approach. I think that, in the evidence again from yourself, Professor Watson, you talk about that such league tables will be unofficial. They are nonetheless likely to have considerable impact through parental influence and result in the unwanted outcomes coming to the fore. There seems to be agreement on what we don't want to happen. I think that by putting something into legislation we need to be pretty clear that avoiding that happening is something that we can achieve. I would like the views of the panel about how we ensure that that legislation does not lead to those sorts of consequences, unofficial or otherwise. Great. You finish your list that you gave earlier. Let me just take up the tease out that you are in your first few remarks there about the way that we could use that information and then we will come to the bill, as it were, later. I genuinely believe that most of the discussion here has been about standardised tests. They are a very small and limited aspect of assessment in the only measure of certain things. I do believe in them and I have been for most of my life, but that does not mean to say, I think, and I do agree with what Susan said in a wider range, but the things that they do measure, they measure quite well, but they have got to be quite well defined and we have to understand. If I go back to my own situation about eight years ago, we started to look at the teaching of phonics and the teaching of letter recognition, some aspects of fractions. Those particular tests can actually do very, very well and actually get very useful information out, but that wide range, and Susan began to exemplify in the area of writing, for example, where you can't, and you are looking at a broader range of things in teachers judgment. The conversation then becomes, well, what do you do with that information that you have, and will you use it to drive improvement? At that point, I have no problems with the concept of teaching to the test, if it is teaching to the way of phonics, but I do have a problem with teaching to the test and the general idea where you put down in front of a youngster and say, that is basically the course there, and that is what you want to do and have a very limiting feature. To the example in Fife, for example, about what you are doing, how you have used that information, how it has helped to inform not just what teachers are doing, but actually their engagement with parents. What in this bill will improve your ability to address shortcomings or inadequacies in what you are providing for pupils in schools across Fife? I think that the issue is much more about what is needed for Scotland. I think that we have got inconsistency across our schools and our local authorities, and I think that we are needing a more consistent framework with a clear dash, with a clear impetus about how we can move our system from a good to great. I think that what would help would be doing unnecessary things for me. I do not think that SSLN is helping me, and it is not adding to it, it is a waste of public money, it is not adding any contributing anything to what I am doing. I think that I would love if there was a consensus about how we could derive the system from one that is a largely good to great. I think that if the bill actually clearly spelled out what the dashboard, what the outcomes would look like and created or built on the current consensus that is already here, I have got three or four things that I am going to share with you, I think that it needs to do. It needs to set out the key actors in the system, how they are doing to drive improvement. The strategy for better learning doctrine made it very clear that it is from classroom to school to local authority to the CPP, so all the key actors in the system have their role to drive improvement. Here is an opportunity for a doctrine to set it explicitly clearly what the role is in terms of how they drive improvement within the system and how we can have a more equitable Scotland moving forward, because clearly the issue of educational inequality is one of the key drivers within the system. In terms of how you avoid unintended consequences as well, those are not described as unintended consequences when they have been identified now from the outset. In terms of how you move forward within our paper, we are clear that you are looking at a system that uses a range of assessment strategies that clearly back up teachers' professional judgment, that the decisions about what those strategies are used should be for a local authority to decide and to have set out clearly within their own policy structures. If there is an issue around that, it is for Education Scotland to ensure that every local authority has a proper assessment and moderation strategy and to be able to back that up. You are looking at investing in teachers' understanding and the data literacy stuff that is there so that we can continue to make improvements around the information that we have in the system that we have at the moment where local authorities have worked closely with schools either within their learning communities, wider clusters, investing in training all principal teachers or otherwise in the understanding of the standards and then working with that. We have seen improvements, great improvements within the understanding of the standards and therefore what is expected within the classrooms of Scotland. In terms of how you are going to make a difference to the young people, you then have to translate the understanding of where need is greatest into the appropriate resources for it. It cannot just be, oh, we know school x, there is a gap there because of deprivation. We need to then look at how we support those young people from their very, very early stage. Poverty will continue to have a problem as long as poverty is there. We can make some differences, but we need to actually use the data that we have. I am interested that we have been developing this framework for some time. Craig has annunciated some examples that would prevent a teaching to the test and league tables on the rest of it. EIS appears unconvinced certainly from the evidence that has been written, evidence provided to the committee. I cannot see how, once we put this into legislation, how we are going to avoid a situation arising, whether official or unofficial, we are going to end up in a situation in which school level information is being used in order to compare and contrast the performance of individual schools. The should already be in the system at local authority level, school level system. Our concern is about a single point in the year test, which then becomes a driver of targets, because it is simple, because it is a simple number, and that is right if you get your test. From our point of view, there is enough data in the system to identify where schools are at and how well they are doing. Local authorities do that, as Craig says, in a range of different ways. However, the point is that, as soon as you introduce a single point in the year test for every single child, that becomes, as we know historically, a driver to teaching to a test that is much, much narrower than we currently have. Okay, okay. We will cover that point a little bit. George? Good morning. I would just like to, on that point that we are seeing there, Susan has already said that there has been a range of standardised assessments throughout the country already in local authorities, and he has also said that some of them use standardised testing, as you said. However, the thing is that we have been told that 30 out of 32 local authorities use some form of standardised assessment. Could the argument not be made then that, if you are going to make the teaching to the test argument, that currently there is teaching to the test at this stage? Because they all use them in different ways. I would probably argue that there is standardised tests being used in 32 out of 32 local authorities, but that some of them will not be using them at an authority-wide level. Some of them will be using them as Fife do to inform across the whole framework of their improvement work. Some schools will use them for diagnostic purposes for young people. Some will use them for, and it is not because they are used in particular ways, and they are not being set targets based on their outcome that they do not teach to the test. Teaching to the test comes when you are told that, last year, 95 per cent of your young people got x in that test. Next year, we need 97 per cent to have that outcome. The point of the use of them at the moment is that they are used at appropriate times in the year for the purposes of supporting improvement at local level. Iain is already telling us that that information does not get to the parents as well. We have been told in the attainment argument that the parents are one of the key movers in bridging that gap in attainment. If Iain is saying that his members are not actually getting that kind of quality information, not all the information, but that level of quality information that they can as one of the main partners in the whole process can make that difference, then where have we gone wrong here? I would argue that parents do not need to know the details of every single test. I know what I said about every single test. Then it is about looking at what information parents do want and do need. What parents, in my experience, want is that they want to know how well their young person is doing and what they need to do next to continue to improve? Are they happy in school? Are they doing well in school? Are they behaving in school? We need to assess what—I think that these are two separate issues. Introducing a national standardised test will not necessarily provide us with anything more or anything different to what the parents are looking for and what they are getting. It is then about the conversations. Even if you have these going on, if all you do is sit down once a year as Ian says and say, oh, they got 9 out of 10 and whatever, that is still not providing quality information for parents, so there are separate arguments around that. One of the things that Craig mentioned earlier on is how you use that information is the important thing. For me, how you use that information would be, in such a way, in the idea of the national improvement framework, is to identify where resource needs to be and to identify. If we get accused that the Scottish index of multibare deprivation is a blunt instrument in using it as a way to get resource in, would it not be a case that, with the attainment advisers that are in the local authorities, we would be able to see where we could actually get resource into and where we need it? Would the framework not help in that scenario and also help with parents and give them the opportunity to know how things are working in their local area? Who would like to answer that? There's probably more directed at Craig. I think that the framework needs to be clear on what the role is of all the key actors in the system and that includes parents. Just now it's not that, it's not that, it's not there, including Education Scotland, including local authorities. I think that the issue of resource would come into it there, because the whole teaching resource would have to come into it. I think that's what we're really saying. The document itself needs to move on in order for us to have this discussion. In relation to where that connects with that question, which was said in relation to the question about the use of the standardised data, the whole focus of this discussion has been about one little bit of this when it's become the thing. This is perhaps the danger of it all, but I really do believe that it's how you convey that information to a parent, which is the critical thing. All of us now have a service level agreement with our provider and they can't want to give us a service if we put all of that information out. There are very good reasons why you wouldn't do it, but I do accept the challenge. I think that we could do an awful lot more to involve parents, not just about receiving information, but about engaging in a learning process, which I think is the part in harnessing the talent that parents and carers have for our young folks. I think that therein lies our biggest challenge about how we do it. I want this framework to describe that and describe how we can move from a good system to what the most effective systems in the world look like. I think that it's become so dominated by one single strand, which is standard assessment, but we can't get away from it. Personally, just now, I don't feel a problem because I have that data as I did it. I can compare schools and compare classes and we can use it for improvement purposes, but I know that that's not nationally available. I think that what we're playing for is some form of a consistent framework that we can all sign up to across the country, which might be a legislative light to go back to the original question. Colin Smyth. I'd like to look a little bit more about the role of the Scottish Government. If local government has statutory responsibility for delivery and the Scottish Government has responsibility for national policy, does NIF change any of the levels of accountability in that mix? It can provide—my understanding is that it's to look at providing local information in terms of improvement but national accountability. It will provide clearly what is perceived to be a gap at this time between national and local government in terms of national government's picture of improvement across the country. The IAS's position is not that the framework in and of itself is something that we don't well, you know, isn't there and isn't going to be helpful to us across the system. Is that one single issue? I think that there is potential for it to provide you who at national level with something more than you currently have. Just to make sure that I got that correct, you believe that by national government collecting more information, that potentially changes the accountability in itself? Depends what you do with the information that you get. Generally, if at the moment the issue is that you don't have the information to then go back to local government and say, you know, why are you not doing or why is this not happening, then having more information. I mean, why—what other purpose would there be for you to have more information at a national level? Local authorities at the moment have information in a wide range of forms about the improvement process within their local area. They make use of that and, as I said earlier, if there are issues with that, then that can be addressed through education Scotland's processes or otherwise. Areas like Fife have very clear systems. There are two major tensions. One has been spoken about a lot today, the issue of the use that you make of data and the purpose that you collect information. The second one is the one that's been drawn on to the tension between who is accountable, is it national or local government. I think that it would be very helpful in the next redraft of the nif if that made it explicitly clear. What I would say is that the current act makes it clear that the local authority is responsible for the educational outcomes of its young people and that's the standard schools act 2000. I think that it's a very clear document, but I think that the synergies for better learning document, which is produced by the OECD, is really saying that, in the best systems in the world, there's a greater movement of information from classroom to school to local authority to CPP to national government and more joined up synergy between them all. That's what I think we're pleading for. We're pleading because we think that there is some dislocation and there are things happening in one bit of the system that's having no impact on the other. I've given a couple of examples of that and other examples where information is not being passed so that everybody should be able to each level the system, whether it's a child that's literacy improving, whether it's a school that's literacy improving, whether it's local authority that's literacy improving at national level. I don't think that that can be done sometimes at certain parts of particularly the broad general education area of a child's development, so I would hope that that could be addressed within the next iteration of the NIF. Kate, do you want to add something else? I think that it does imply greater accountability and it is the accountability that has the potential to distort the processes that can give rise to the unwanted outcomes. The issue is just now, as Greg said, that it's local authority that decides what happens in education. My concern is that there's a bit of a bond fighting on it, as in who will. Once this data is collected by ministers or government, what power will they have to tell authorities who's to do it? I think that there's a bit of parents where we're probably a bit concerned about what's happening here, because at the moment it's local authority just now, is government going to take it on board? How will they do it? I think that we're a bit concerned about what's happening this tier. I think that it's self-evident that the national government needs information to be able to inform its policies and get that right, but what we seem to be arguing about is the level of information that it needs. What level of information do you think the national government needs in order to best inform its policies? I think that you need to... It's basically what we've been talking about earlier, is what information you get, and I don't think that it's acceptable that you just get the assessment or the test report. You need to big a picture. You need all the bits of the basket to get the report to form a proper report and not just get a test as in a child-tested today. That report's not good enough to me. If it's going by an annual report, you need to take everything in. As I said earlier, the biggest bit has got to be teacher professional judgment, and the report has got to be a bit of everything and not just one. That's why I think we're getting bogged down on this assessment, and we need to look at the whole picture and not just the assessment. If you just want the report on the assessment, then my personal views were kidding ourselves on, because we're not going to get the true actual picture of what's actually happening at ground level. As Craig says, our education system is a very good education system. Let's make it the best, and the way to make it the best is to use every driver in this nuff and report on the whole picture and not just one individual bit of the nuff. I'll bring in a second Craig, but I want to bring Liz in, and then I'll bring you in Just one question. The whole issue here is surely what we all want is to drive up standards. I hear what you say, Mr Ellis, that there are lots of very good things about Scottish education, but we wouldn't be having this debate if we weren't doing not particularly well in some aspects of literacy in numeracy. Parents naturally want that to improve, so do all of us. The confusion and perhaps the frustration is that, as yet, we don't seem to be finding a way through the data which we all argue we have that allows us to drive up standards. Is that not the key problem? I think that part of the problem is how we use the data just now, meaning that the literacy in numeracy is down 2 per cent, but what's 2 per cent? Enough to worry everybody. If you look at the actual figures that we were talking about, we mean 2 per cent could be 2,000 kids, but what percentage are we talking about? It's not just about what we do with the data, but it's about being able to read the data properly. I agree that we all want to raise concerns, but is the education system as bad as some people are making out? I don't think so, and I don't think that parents do. If parents did, I think that we would be here virtually every other week saying that we want to come and talk to you. The question was posed, how much information should national government get? I think that the way you phrased it, Colin. The NIF, as it stands, has huge consensus around the four outcomes. That is literacy and numeracy, the idea of inequity, the gap, the whole idea of wellbeing, and the whole area of employability in positive school leavers' destinations. It at least needs to know in every area of the country how it's doing and all of that without a shadow of a doubt, otherwise it can't inform its policy development moving forward. Clarity around that and clarity around that. I would say that there's an opportunity that we have in Scotland that we have no other jurisdiction in Europe, not by default, rather not by design, but by default we have a system where every single school in the whole country uses the same system. We could, with a bit of support, from national government actually have a situation where information could seamlessly move from school, local authority to government on all of those areas that I've just mentioned in an interoperable way. To go to the final point that Liz was saying, I don't think that there's an issue about information, Liz, but there's definitely an issue about the systematic collection and use of that data across the country. Therefore, the conversations that you've been having around there are about 2 per cent difference. To some audiences they might think that there's some sort of disaster thing going on in literacy. That's relating to SSLN, but SCQF levels show a significant improvement literacy in Scotland, so it's a more holistic picture that we need with the whole information there in one area, so that we can get an overview of what literacy is like in Scotland, what literacy is like at the continuing plan in part 5, what literacy is like in a particular school in our classroom, but most importantly for a child. It's only when we get that right and we do it in such a way that it does not create perverse incentives that we'll have the nif that takes us to greatness. I think we've been getting rather bogged down in the question of the data. I would say that the danger is that we're reducing what is a very complex problem around disadvantage. We reduce it to a mantra, which is closing the gap, and if we can only close the gap then everything will be well, but that doesn't really tell us very much about the nature of the gap or define what the problem is that we're tackling. Are we just tackling the gap per se? Are we tackling the consequences of the gap? Are we tackling the causes of the gap? You could presumably close the gap by making the exams easier, but that might not actually improve and address the problem. One of the things that we think is that the whole rationale behind the nif needs to be strengthened. You will require some information around the assessment part, but if I go to the nif and the grand title that they have of their baskets, you actually require to use the information that's in all those other baskets to inform decisions around policy. There's no point in reacting to a particular point in time and not taking account of everything else. The information in the baskets that you get around teacher numbers, where teachers who are coming through at ITE are going, if they're not going into Scottish schools, how many people are getting into your next panel discussion, into headship and why and what the implications are for that. All the other parts to it are going to be as important to you in developing policy, as knowing how many young people are achieving levels. We would continue to argue that it's worthwhile that you know how many are achieving at different levels, but using teachers' professional judgment backed up by assessment information is of a quality. Rather, there's just a single point in time. Thank you very much. James Dornan. In written submission on the nif amendments, EIS said that they would have significant concerns if those plays the disinoburocratic workload burdens in headteachers, teachers and schools. Are you happy that you'd be able to drive these improvements for learners without imposing an unfair burden on teachers? Given that 30 out of 32 already do standard eye testing, where is this increased burden? The increased burden will happen if you cannot stop the current assessments tests happening. The argument around that is how would the document says the 30 out of 32 would stop using what they're using and would use this new test. There's no way to guarantee that that's the case. If what comes forward isn't something that meets the high level that Craig currently has, he would have to consider whether or not he still needed to supplement with what he had. The argument isn't around whether or not those assessments tests should be developed and used in schools to replace what they are, but how they are used and when they are used and who decides who they are used with. The other issue is that unless you are looking at the wider sense of assessment, then the assessment burdens will continue to rise. Again, it depends, although 30 out of 32 currently say that they are using them. Again, it's how they are currently using them and what will be the differences that are there. Surely everybody around this table and out there are looking for this niff that leads to greatness, as it was called earlier on. Therefore, when we get to that point, there would be no need for further assessments that are taking place just now and hopefully the assessment, the niff itself would suffice. We would argue at this point that the niff should be able to reflect what currently exists within the system in terms of the data. There is a range of assessment strategies that are in schools used to inform teachers, professional judgment at this point in time. If there is a development of a standardized assessment that can meet the curriculum for excellence criteria, then that will be something that local authorities may well move to. However, it has already been said by some local authorities that if there isn't the level that we currently have, if I can't get that information, we will continue to use some of what we are using, because we need that information within the system. It's then about how you ensure that things aren't—there isn't a doubling of it—again, the workload side of things in terms of the EIS's submission is a very, very small part within it. Our argument, quite clearly, is more about the educational rationale. We are more concerned about the implications for young people. We are more concerned about the potential for target setting driven by data that is taken out of context, because it's delivered in a particular way. Parents are quite concerned about the idea of bringing in a national standard test and that authorities continue to use what they've got. The only way around it is that what we bring in has got to be better than what's out there. That's the only way that authorities—I wouldn't blame authorities if they kept doing it—if we never had got better. That is the thing that we need to be looking at. Whatever we bring in has got to be better than what's already there. I agree with Susan, Ian and that. That's not bad, is it? I don't think that, in terms of practically doing the standard assessments for years, I don't think that it's created a teacher workload issue. It's computer adaptive, most of them, and they don't involve marking, etc. I do think that we can get around some of the problems associated with their introduction in relation to the fear that's been expressed. It's a real fear. That's why we need an absolute consensus on that. We've been pretty good in Scottish education of getting the consensus on things. If there's one fear that I have, it's the rush that we've been going through this. I say that we've waited to get it right and make sure that we've got consensus across the board. That would resolve, I think, Susan and Ian's concerns. Certainly, we're at that last point, that we do feel that it's rushed and that there should be more time taken over this to get it right. You may introduce tests in haste next year and then repent at leisure. Lost questions, but we're close to the end of time. I want to ask the summary question, which follows on just from the point that you just made, Craig, and Kate, supported. I mean, we're in a rather curious position, I guess, in the committee of taking evidence on amendments that haven't appeared before us, but which will be based on the NIF. We've heard a lot of concerns around NIF in the course of the morning, but those are all concerns about the document that was originally published. However, there is a process on going at the moment in which that document and the framework is supposed to develop. Craig said himself that the document needs to move on to something that we can all sign up to, and Ian described this process as a bunt fight. I think that three of the panel—I'm sorry, I don't know if Professor Watson is involved—are involved in the process of the document moving on. It has to move on to the degree whereby amendments will come before the committee in a fortnight. My question is, is there any possibility whatsoever that, when those amendments come forward, that will be described in a framework around which there is consensus, which will establish clear and understandable reporting, drive improvements and won't provide an unfair burden on teachers? Is there any possibility of that whatsoever? From the IAS's point of view, if it is a framework that doesn't insist on a standardised test being administered in every single school to every single young person at a single point in time during the course of each year, at which it is then reported in terms of figures nationally, then we would be able to look at a framework that might well take us forward in education. That is our key issue around that. That's the unfortunate thing about—we've discussed that this morning—the vast majority of the conversation at this time around the development of the NIF has been that one area of an introduction of a national standardised test. That is the thing that has got teachers wakening up to their political considerations around this because it is the single area of major concern for them. That is teachers who are using standardised tests to inform their professional judgment in other ways, but that has to be considered. Beyond that, yes, with the IAS and the rest of us have been involved in the on-going conversations and we will continue to be in the next couple of weeks. It is difficult to comment on whether or not it will get us to a consensus point by the time it comes to you in a fortnight because we haven't seen any further iterations of it, but each of our agencies will be making quite clear the points of sticking for us. If they are taking account of that, it is always possible that we can move forward. However, the timescale, as has been said, is very, very tight. I think certainly that some areas of it would benefit from a bit more consideration. We are obviously working very closely with the Scottish Government all of us and I have to say that there is a definite feeling that there is a willingness to get it right. That does not mean to say that we have the confidence to answer the question that you have just given within two weeks. We have put some red lines down in the sand and we have been describing them to you. There needs to be a compelling narrative and it needs to clearly set out the purpose of enough. It needs to clearly set out the outcomes that matter. I understand for Susan's red line as she described it once. I am not sure what years are. Right. It lacks a compelling narrative. It lacks a compelling narrative. It does not clearly set out the purpose for why we are going to move from good to great. It does not present a dashboard that clearly sets out the outcomes that matter. It does not clearly set out how the information will be collected at each level in the system and between each level of the system. It does not also set out what the key actors are in the system and how they will drive improvement. Those are some of the things that I think need to be done. There are also the governance arrangements that would support it that was getting picked up in the question earlier. It is amazing that the big bit that favours us as parents is that we have actually got our own basket, so we can help influence quite a lot of it. I think that I agree with Craig with an interest in meeting yesterday. I think that it is moving in the right direction. I do not think that it is there yet. I do not think that any of us would say that it is there yet and be waiting to see the next draft. The first draft certainly was not right to say that parents will do this, will do that and what happens if they do not do it. It may dissolve a chuckle when we read that. We are interested to see where it is going, but I think that it is moving. The key factor for parents is that it has to be for the benefit of the children. As we have had the discussion this morning, if it does all come together, hopefully the way that we think it should come together, then there will be two weeks. It might be a bit tight, I think. I think that the absolute accuracy is just three weeks. Still a wee bit tight, then. I was not going to raise it, but it has been mentioned several times now. We will come to that bit at the bill at stage 2 on 7 December, so that is three weeks away. Kate, do you have anything to add to your question? No, that is the answer to the question. Sorry, nothing to add. Your answer to my question is no. Thank you very much. We are very pushed for time this morning, so I thank you all for coming along and answering questions on the national improvement framework. I am going to suspend briefly. Welcome back. I welcome to the committee this morning on the next panel, who will give their views on the proposed Scottish Government amendments on the standard for headship. I welcome to the committee to join Edward, Scottish Council of Independent Schools, Terri Lannigan, Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, Greg Demster, Association of Headteachers and Deputies in Scotland and Audrey Edwards from Shetland's Islands Council. Good morning to all of you. I am going to start with Liam McArthur. Before we get into the standard for headship, I think that there will be some concerns that the provisions in the bill are being brought forward at a time where certain local authorities are struggling to recruit to headship posts as things stand. Notably in rural and perhaps island areas. I wondered whether or not the panel had any views on the extent of that problem and any measures that are being taken or should be taken to address it on the side, the specific provision in the bill and the impact that it will have. Audrey, can I start with you? In terms of the extent of that problem for us as a local authority in a very remote and rural part of Scotland, we would find that in the past four or five years, when we advertise a headteacher post, we might at the first go have no applicants depending on the nature of the school. We might have two or three. Our greatest difficulty, which I set out in my submission, greatest difficulties are in our very remote islands, or very far-flung islands, where transport links are difficult and where you are in a school that maybe only has one or two children to teach. That is a very unique and challenging set of circumstances that, in our experience, is quite a different matter in terms of what is required for leadership management than in a large school with a large group of staff, a large group of parents and a large group of pupils. I would accept, chair, that obviously the situation is far more acute, the problem is far more acute in rural areas. However, it is certainly not a problem that is confined to rural areas. We have a similar situation, and we have an urban council, a Westin-Bartonshire council, which is my council. I have trolled back through the last few years. The situation is particularly difficult in primary recruitment. We have had several instances where the first advert has produced no applicants. Several instances where there has been only one applicant. In the last three years, we have had no primary school that has attracted more than four applicants for the post-of-head. I believe that, if that were introduced in the timescale outlined in the bill, we would very quickly be into a crisis situation in which we would be unable to recruit to the post-of-head teacher right across the country. That is not confined to my own authority or rural authorities. The Addis personal network has discussed this problem frequently over recent years, and it is a problem that virtually every local authority in the country faces. You have removed some of the distinction between the urban and rural council areas. It has been suggested that the national picture is less clear, and the statistics underline that. Beyond the anecdotal evidence of speaking to your colleagues across the country, has there been an attempt to try to capture the extent to which, when going out to advert, there are very few candidates coming forward? Yes, the Addis personal network has looked at that. There are some areas where there is less of an issue, but every local authority is finding that it is an issue. It is also a greater issue in many cases in local authorities that have denominational schools in the denominational sector, where the numbers of applicants for posts are often lower than in the non-denominational sector. It is absolutely fair to say that the issue has been fairly acute for a while, particularly in rural authorities, but it is an issue pretty much across the country now. As an association, we tried to gather data at three-yearly intervals about the number of applications for headships, the number of re-advertisements, but that information was becoming harder and harder to get because local authorities were not holding that information, some of them for more than six months. We have not gathered that information for probably about three or four years now, but over the period that we did do it, it showed a significant downward trend in the number of applications and an increase in the number of re-adverts. What I am hearing from around the country is that there are authorities—I think that that was an example from Highland not so long ago—where every headteacher post that was advertised was then re-advertised. It is quite a significant issue, and it has been longstanding. Your conclusion, presumably from that, is the same as Terry's. The introduction of the provisions as they stand in this bill will certainly not make anything easier and potentially make it more difficult—a difficult situation—even more difficult in those areas. If they are introduced in the way that simply introducing a qualification is not going to increase your supply of candidates, I absolutely agree. John Finch-Everett. I mean that we are in a slightly different case, but all the recruitment that has happened in our sector in the past three years out of about 18, 20 posts, six of them have come from outside of Scotland and all of them have come from other independent schools. There is not a recruitment issue as such, but that is because schools and their governing boards have to go literally globally to search for the appropriate candidates. There is no sense in which that would make any improvement to the situation. Obviously, if you are looking for the best candidate for a particular type of school or particular type of curriculum, then the last thing that you are going to be considering is the applicability of a particular qualification here. We could set aside the standard for headship just for a moment, given the evidence that you have given us that there is already a recruitment problem. My question is what should be done, what should the Scottish Government do, what should local authorities do differently to try and address that? A number of local authorities are trying to address the question by developing their own leadership programme, their own talent spotting programme. I think that there are a number of issues with the recruitment of headteachers, especially in the primary sector. I definitely think that there is a perception that the job is almost too difficult and certainly that it is far more difficult and far more challenging and far more lonely than the job of a deputy in a primary school for sometimes very little additional reward. I think that there are differential issues in terms of the pay scales that are causing issues here. If you are a deputy in a medium-sized school, then moving to become a head in a small school might not involve any increase in salary, but the level of responsibility that you are taking on is very significant. I think that there is a national issue there. Locally, I think that local authorities are doing their best to try to promote the post, to indicate the sort of support that headteachers would get. At the moment, I have to say that that is having limited impact and I do not think that it can be sorted in a three-year period. The answer to that question is sometimes put as school leaders need to talk up their all more. The reality is that your potential candidates for headship are all sitting within schools as well, and I am speaking from a primary context mainly. They are watching the sitting candidates, the existing headteachers, who are grappling with increasing workloads, increasing responsibilities and they are seeing very little financial incentive to go on to take that role. What needs to be done about it? There is an immediate problem that, as a committee, I have already looked at in other discussions, which is about the availability of teachers and supply teachers. School leaders in primary schools are finding themselves teaching an awful lot of the time. There was a summit in Aberdeen recently about the lack of supply of class teachers. The representative from Aberdeen City Council explained that all of his headteachers in city schools—reasonably large schools—were spending an increasingly large amount of time teaching class. There is the workload issue. A review of the expectations of school leaders in primary schools needs to be looked at. There is an issue about the bureaucracy that would come into that. The biggest thing that I hear about being an absorber of headteacher time at the moment is the named person duties in GERFEC. I will look at the bureaucracy that is associated with that. Fixing job sizing to create clear blue water between the role of depute and headteacher. If you do not have a financial incentive in place to make that step, then any other work that you do to make the role more appealing will have less benefit than it might otherwise. I think that the salary scale issue might come up later on, but, Terry, you were talking about local authorities running leadership programmes to encourage teachers to look and work towards headship. Do you not think that the standard for headship can add to that as a formal target that that kind of programme is aiming for? I think that it can. The address position is that, ultimately, we would like to see all headteachers with enhanced qualifications, and I think that that is an admirable aim. The problem is the practicality here. I do believe that making it compulsory to have the qualification is just that the timing is not right. I could point to examples of headteachers who have additional qualifications. There might be not fully effective. I could point to many examples of headteachers who do not have the SQH, who are doing a superb job in serving their community. We should not equate an additional qualification with a high-quality headteacher. Having said that, we would want all our heads to be highly qualified. Providing that qualification is the right qualification, which is linked to the job that they will be doing, it should be an aid to them doing the job that should make them more confident. However, I just do not think that that is achievable in the three-year window that the bill outlines. Audrey, do you want to add anything here? I would just agree with a lot of what Terry said. In respect of us as a local authority, we have been looking at middle-level leadership opportunities for our aspiring class teachers. We have looked at giving our aspiring class teachers opportunities to do pieces of improvement work for the local authority. As I have already said, just by the nature of our geography, we have a school estate that has many, many very small schools. In that context, you have a headteacher who has a class teaching commitment in their contract, and you have no other promoted posts in that school. You have no career ladder in terms of middle-level opportunities to be principal teachers or to be deputes. We have that gap, your class teacher, and then your next opportunity is to apply for a headteacher post. I have absolutely no difficulty at all with increasing the professionalism of our leaders of our schools. That is fundamental to the whole improvement agenda for education in Scotland and for the raising attainment agenda. I just think that there is differences and diversity in there that a one-size-fits-all qualification does not meet. I would like to look at one or two of the practical issues around that and gain your views on that. For example, appointments to the post-of-head teacher. Would you only have people with the qualification already applying for that job, or could a job be offered on the basis that it was contingent upon them gaining the qualification at some point after the appointment? That is a big unanswered question in what the Government is proposing. It has not been clear to me that there are a few questions like that that you can pose around about what if somebody has been in three or four acting posts for a long period as an acting headteacher and performed well, would you be able to appoint them? What if a headteacher had moved into an authority and was working in an education officer role or had taken some time for personal reasons to work in a deputy's role or in another country and then they would come back? What would their status be? We need some clarity about that. We are here today to comment on an amendment that you have not seen or we have not seen. It is just written in a letter, is not it, the intention for that to be brought about with very little detail. What would your preference be? What is your opinion? How would you say it worked? I think that my preference would be that there was some flexibility there to make sure that you did not put in place more and larger hurdles to getting the right people into the jobs. Would all of you agree with the comments that Greg just made? Yes, I would agree with that. The other reservation that I would have is that when you become a headteacher, the first year of being a head, I was a secondary head, and the first year of being a headteacher is the most full-on experience that I have ever had in my professional career. You are learning new things every day. If there was a requirement to immediately embark on an additional qualification, I think that that is a burden that would be very significant on the individuals concerned. I am similarly unclear as to whether the amendment will allow someone to be appointed and then get the qualification, but I do not think that it is a full solution to the issue. I think that we need to get the recruitment issues right. We need to get the workforce management right before we introduce the requirement for the qualification. The trouble for us is that, whether it was prior or opposed to appointment, there are a lot of people in a lot of schools who simply would not be able to find the appropriate people. We have additional support needs schools where the principal or the head of education or the chief executive are recruited by their governing board specifically for their professional abilities, in the particular complex set of needs. It would not make any difference whether it was for or after the likelihood of being able to achieve that while recognising all the other criteria that they needed would be very slim. I do not myself understand how it would be implemented if, after appointment, all of one of our independent governing boards of schools made an appointment having looked through all the criteria of the people necessary and with the expectations of changes in infrastructure, estates, curriculum, single sex, whatever it might be, boarding, then made what they saw to be the perfect appointment. If that person then did not subsequently achieve the standard, at least in terms of the certificate, what would then happen to them? Who would take any sanction? Especially if we have got most of our headteachers coming in who have got 20 or more years experience either as a deputy head or a head somewhere else and who will be members of heads associations that have huge amounts of mentoring and personal training. Indeed, we do our own course, which has just been accredited by the GTCS. I think that there has to be flexibility in there. We absolutely, as I said before, need to continue to increase the professionalism of our leaders of our schools who are in charge of our children and their future. However, I think that there is leadership development opportunities available in all our local authorities. One aspect of how we could move forward is to put more energy into developing those. They are more reflective because they come from within a local authority of the needs of that particular group of schools that that local authority supports. If we could have some kind of flexibility in that against the standard, that would be a useful way to progress. Would it be reasonable that a teacher might decide to undertake the standard with a view to applying for a post down the line? If so, do you consider that there is enough capacity among trainers in the market? I cannot imagine the circumstances in which somebody would voluntarily undertake it, given everything else that they are doing in terms of their PRD at the moment. The introduction of professional update by the GTCS and the introduction of the same bill of full registration for teachers in our sector would mean that they have quite a lot on their plate already. Never mind name person, never mind pastoral responsibilities, child protection or whatever else. The other trouble that we would have is that that one proposed standard does not appear to have ever reflected our sector at all. The Scottish College of Educational Leadership tells us directly that they did not consult the independent sector. We know that they did not. In designing this qualification, their quality impact assessment for the qualification of their standard never referred to the independent sector. There would be absolutely no value for somebody from the independent sector in going forward to a qualification that was never designed with them in mind in the first place. What sort of pool of applicants do you think you need for future vacancies? In other words, if to make this work, to give you enough flexibility there, how many teachers would you have to have who have the qualification to be able to effectively fill the posts as they came? I think that that is going to be a very big number because it is not just that there are 150 primary head teacher vacancies a year. I am not sure how accurate that would be, but let us just work with that. You would want not just to have 150 people coming through the system clearly because you would want to find the new post holder that is the best fit for the role. They would also have to be within the right geographical area, so you have to have the right number of candidates to create a pool of applicants for each post in every area. You are probably multiplying that 155 or 166 times, perhaps. The proposed amendment by the Scottish Government could very well add a financial burden to those who want to enter the programme and consider that there has been a lack of applicants prior to that development. Who do you think should be responsible for meeting the costs? Not the candidate. If you have a problem, people are not hammering on the door to fill those roles. If you add another lock by asking them to pay for the qualification that would allow them to apply, that is not going to have more people knocking on the door at all, so it seems to me wrong-headed to be putting that at the candidate's door. If you had a situation where you had many more applicants than you had posts, then I think that it might be a reasonable thing to ask candidates to pay for part of it. That indicates a buy-in to the process and a personal commitment to the process. If you have a situation where you are already facing severe shortages, it seems to me to be entirely wrong-headed to add a further hurdle in the way of making appointments. I would add to that a plea for our remote and rural local authorities, not just my one but other ones, where there is an added dimension to the expense of candidates participating in those types of courses. Absolutely so much of it is developed and available online, but there is a requirement for candidates at some point during the year to get together face to face, and that increases the financial burden for either the candidate if they are paying or us as a local authority if we decide to support them. That is a significant factor in how our candidates are supported and can be significant in whether they would wish to embark on something such as an end-to-hagent qualification. I add to that that at the moment that candidates are being asked to pay one third. The point that Terry made was that, in a position where there was a surplus of people wanting to take on the role, that would be a reasonable thing to do, because it would be showing commitment and so on to the programme. That has been an argument that has been put by Government for charging candidates just now. I think that you could have that commitment but refund their fee at the end. That would be another way to ensure that commitment, you pay the one third of the fee but it is refunded at the end. That would get around the issue of concern about people's commitment to the programme. Individual teachers and leaders are already spending an enormous amount of their money on their training already. We have thousands of people going through CPD courses each year, and none of them are obligatory, apart from child protection. There will be ones that schools will sometimes pay for, but in cases people will be undertaken in themselves as part of their own professional development. There will be members of professional associations such as the Headmasters Conference or something like that. A lot of them are doing this, particularly in our additional support needs sector or in the boarding sector, while undertaking 24-7 pastoral duties as well. They are making a substantial personal commitment to their profession as it is, aside from something that is being asked of them, which, as I said, they would not seek to do in advance anyway. They would probably maintain that if they put down in two sheets of paper a short application on the basis of their previous experience, that we should be more than enough. However, there may be an argument for whether applicants are oversubscribed after thinking more of the equal accessor equality issues for the likes of single parents or sole earners. I think that anything that has a financial element to it is going to discourage people in the same way that I think that it says, but the potential to discourage people on the basis of age, because younger candidates will feel less inclined to apply for a headship post on that basis. We have legal advice that suggests to us that there are very strong grounds against this on-free movement of people within the European Union, so I think that there are all sorts of potential barriers there, which will just be very hard to quantify here and now, but I think that it will make a huge difference to people in terms of their own minds applying for jobs. There is an underlying assumption in the way in which the amendment is stated that the applicants for this post will be comfortably off and will therefore easily be able to afford £1,000. That is not necessarily the case. If you are a deputy in a small school or a principal teacher who is the sole earner in the household, who has perhaps two or three children, who has a large mortgage, then your disposable income will not be large and £1,000 is a very significant issue. I have a further problem with that, and I think that it would discriminate against what could be some very good candidates who simply would not be able to afford it or who would really struggle to afford the £1,000 up front. I am interested. The panel is obviously with the provisions in relation to the GTCS registration for those in the independent sector, but the evidence that we received in relation to that was, yes, there have been probably inadequate power consultation, but generally speaking, the sector was moving in that direction. The numbers that weren't so registered were coming down pretty much by the month, and therefore what was needed was transitional arrangements that avoided a situation where unnecessary problems were being caused. Whereas listening to the evidence this morning on this provision, Tere, you have already questioned whether or not this provides some kind of gold standard guarantee of better quality provision, but actually for all the reasons you are talking about, even transitional arrangements here aren't necessarily a solution and therefore a question has to be over whether or not this should be written into the bill at all. Is that a fair assessment? I think it would. The address written submission indicates that there should be some sort of phasing in. I think it would depend on what that phasing in involved. It would depend on the timescales. It would depend on exactly how that was worded. There possibly could be some phasing of it that could work over time, provided at the same time the issues that I mentioned earlier to do with pay differentials, workload, perception of the job were also being addressed. I do, however, believe that, at the moment, the three-year period in the bill will lead us to, I think, a crisis in three or four years' time, where we will have a large number of headteachers posts across the country unfilled. That is what you said. Even with a transition, what you are talking about is introducing this at a point where there are already parts of the country where recruitment is a serious challenge. Therefore, a transition is not only going to make that more difficult in the short term, actually medium to longer term trying to get on top of this is going to be next impossible for some local authorities. I think that parts of the country is an understatement. Most of the country, there are problems with recruitment to these posts. I think that the points that Terry was making and I made earlier about the reasons for lack of application, they certainly need to be addressed. Otherwise, we are going to go to a situation where the local authorities' only response would be to be able to appoint headteachers all over the place. That is not what anybody is looking for as the intended consequence of that. The underlying reasons for lack of application certainly need to be addressed. I do not have a particular view about what timescale that would be able to be achieved in, but the sooner the better. That is an issue that has been around for a long time, the lack of applications for headship. It is absolutely right to say that creating a qualification and an obligation to have it is not going to solve that at all, it is just going to make it worse. Can you think of something that would, in the current circumstances, achieve the objective of driving up standards that everybody would find as a shared objective without providing a straight jacket of a specific qualification or requirement to have it, either at the point of assuming the role or shortly thereafter? There is another part to the continuum that the Scottish College for Educational Leadership is looking at here, which is the post-appointment period and the extended induction that is going to be looked at and developed. There is a good system in Perth and Conross Council at the moment where there are a very significant number of days given over to induction and development and support within the authority. That is not something that exists across the board. That would be a very positive development to improving support for school leaders on appointment and increasing standards to a degree, but we are quite positive about the development of that qualification. The fact that it is going to be obligatory is something that we can welcome as well, but the timescales are absolutely an issue. Check something. My understanding is that the new qualification will replace the Scottish qualification for headship. Explain to me what happens with the current headship qualification SQH. Do individual teachers apply for that and go through it? Who pays for that? How does it currently work? The current situation is that it is not a compulsory requirement, but people do apply for it. We have, in my own local authority, a small number of applicants each year. We pay for it as a local authority. That is what I was getting to. You pay for the current qualification for those who go for it. What is wrong with you paying for the new qualification? There is nothing wrong with us paying for the new qualification. The problem is the compulsion to have it before you are appointed. Sorry, but just a moment ago, in questions about the possible problems, you were relaying the issue about the terrible financial burden that there could be on certain individuals in order to apply for it. You are now saying that the current qualification you pay for it is an authority and there is no problem with us paying for the new qualification, so where is the financial burden problem that you are just relaying to? I understand that the assumption with the new qualification is that the candidate would be expected to pay a third of the cost. That is currently what is drafted as a posibility, but we are exploring this as a future amendment, so you have no problem with the local authority. It would certainly help if that element was removed. I suppose that, in answer to the earlier question about phasing in, is there any possible phasing in? I suppose that changes to the requirements would help, that would be one that would help, but I think that the thing that really is required here is that just a longer timescale, if you were to extend from 2018 to say 2022, that might allow for the other issues to do with recruitment to be addressed. In a sense that my suggestion about some sort of fear or the address suggestion about some sort of phasing is partly a phasing of the qualification but also addressing these other issues, and three years is not enough time to do that. I get the point in making about the timescale, but I will bring in the others, John and then Craig. Very briefly, in a case of all of our schools, the costs entirely matter, either by the teacher themselves or by the school. If it is met by the school, that either means that it is coming out of parental fee income or it is coming out of the coffers of Capability Scotland, International Artistic Society, Common Thread, Royal Blind, whoever. My understanding is that COSLA were entirely opposed to funding it from local authority settlement because it was a new obligation that they were being faced with, because at the moment it is not obligatory and it is penny numbers that go through in comparison to the numbers of people that would have to be funded through the new qualification for hedgehog with it becoming obligatory, so there would be an on-cost for local authorities that the Government wasn't setting out to fund. Except for what Mr Lannigan says, that certainly local authorities at the moment pay for those who go through the current qualification. The difference is in numbers. We've got normally three applicants on average for the SQA each year. However, in the course of a year, we are a small local authority, and in the course of a year, we have probably got eight to ten primary vacancies. The other issue that we need to bear in mind— I am sorry to interrupt you. Are all those vacancies filled by new headteachers? In other words, they are not people who are currently headteachers— No, some will be headteachers moving to larger schools. My understanding is that there are qualifications for new headteachers. Correct. In the last year, only one primary head in my own authority has moved from an existing post to a bigger school. However, the burden would not apply in those cases then? No, it would not apply in those cases. The other issue is the age profile of the current headteachers. My own local authority about a third of our primary heads are due to retire in the next four to five years. There is a demographic issue as well, and I gather that that is reflected across the country that we are going to have to replace a large number of primary heads over the next five years or so. Good morning. Before I ask my very brief question, I would like to leave something with you. I think that it was Charles Kettering who said that if you are still doing things the same way as you have done for some time, then you are probably doing it wrong. In the course of your answers in the last hour, each one of you has mentioned leadership, not just once but twice or three times, just to leave it with you. I wonder how much attention is given to the leadership qualities of a head, as opposed to the educational qualities. Qualification, whatever status it is and whoever pays for it, does not necessarily mean that you have good leaders, so I will leave that thought with you. Having asked that question about leadership and the desire to do the job, what aspect or what emphasis there is on financial incentives that might be offered to teachers to encourage them to apply for a headship post? The way that head teacher salaries are arrived at just now is through the job-sizing toolkit, so it measures a raft of different aspects of the job, such as pupil numbers, number of staff, free school mail entitlement, number of classes and other duties. That all goes into a black box and out the other end spews the results that tell you what the salary will be for that job. Head teachers and deputies are on the same pay-spine, so the numbers that spew out the other end often create a situation in which there is not much difference between depute and head teacher salaries. That, I think, would need to be addressed to create a financial incentive for people to pursue headship. The other aspect to it that does influence this, which has happened over the last couple of years, is that, with pension changes, there have been tiered contributions introduced. Higher earners pay a higher proportion into their pension, despite the fact that we are moving to a career average scheme rather than the final salary scheme, which was what has advantaged higher earners in the past. Flattening that contribution arrangement, tiering arrangement, would improve slightly the financial incentives that are taken on headship? That comes back to my point about leadership. We are always doing things the same way. In catering is right. If you keep doing it too often, you are wrong. Has there been any meaningful proposition to encourage the differentials, to get the leaders that we need, not necessarily from the education environment, to bring them into the educational field? Has there been any proposition put by the educational establishment to say that that is what we need to do to get the education heads that the education leaders that we need in our schools? Yes. That is what each of our schools does every time that goes to the market. That is what the independent trustees are there for. That is what they are as company directors. One of the big schools near here in Edinburgh is an independent day school. It is just appointed as its head a couple of years ago, the head of the biggest state boarding school from down south. They were not interested in anything other than was this the right person for the right job in terms of leadership? That is what the governing board's primary responsibility is. The skills training that I mentioned earlier, I was just looking at what we do over our various blocks of leadership training. It includes leadership management, coaching, leadership for learning, school development, planning, change relationships, marketing, budgets, all of those aspects. That is all part of the day job of an independent school head and no qualification for headship is going to uncover all of those areas. Leadership is absolutely primary for them. Parliament proves my point with the public sector. We do a lot of work on leadership at all levels within the system and do a significant amount of training, mentoring, coaching, all of that is done. Squatch qualification for headship is not just about the educational aspects of the job. It has got tasks and projects that are to do with developing leadership. When you talk about bringing people in from the outwith teaching, I think that the emphasis there has to be on getting people in with other experience in as teachers. It is then what you do with them in terms of leadership development as teachers once they are in the profession. At the moment, you have to have a teaching qualification in order to become a headteacher. Then we are on the same route and we are not achieving the energy. That is the situation at the moment. That has been a situation that has had broad support across the Scottish education system. Other systems have gone down different routes where people have been brought in to head up public sector schools with no teaching qualification and have been brought in for their leadership qualities. If that was to be a development, which I am not sure I would welcome, in Scottish education, that would require legislation. I put on the record two things. First, that I am GTC registered and also that I am a governor of two independent schools. Mr Edward, could I just tease out something that you said in an answer to an earlier question that you do not believe that this qualification was designed around any consultation with the independent sector? Can I just be absolutely clear that there was not any consultation nor was there with any governors within the independent sector? No, none with any governors, none with any schools directly. The first communication that we had with the Scottish Government about this proposal was after the letter had been sent to the committee proposing the amendment. As I said, when we spoke to the Scottish College of Educational Leadership, they said that their impact assessment and indeed the design of the qualification itself was done before any suggestion was made that it would be applicable to our sector. Am I right in thinking that you have very serious concerns about the appointment process that could happen for some of the special schools in the independent sector, as well as the mainstream ones, where your choice of candidate could be restricted as a result of that implication? Absolutely. If the primary or sole concern was the headship qualification, then if you run a small school of six or 12 or 18 that is residential and dealing with a whole range of behavioural, emotional, social and potentially physical impairments as well, then the primary concern for the person to run that school, who is usually also the person who is managing the budget, the property, facilities, relationships with the health board and everything else, is to make sure that they understand the complex needs of the people in that school. That usually comes from a whole range of different professional qualifications in those particular needs. There would be an enormous problem for very small schools that are incredibly strapped for cash and time and resources anyway to then go out and find people who met all those criteria and at the same time had the time and the space to do the qualification of a headship. Of course, a lot of these schools will not even be teaching SQA qualifications. They may be doing ASDAN or other special needs qualifications, so it would not even be applicable in terms of the Scottish curriculum. Do you see any contradiction, perhaps a really complex issue that might arise if a governing council in any independent school decided that they wanted a particular candidate who brought the expertise that you have just described, but because that person did not have that qualification, which is an instruction from the Government, how do you think that that sits with the autonomy of a governing council? Given that we have spent an awful lot of the last 10 years in very close relationship with the charity regulator, it is extremely problematic to ask schools at all times to demonstrate their autonomy and their diversity and the importance of having scrupulous lists of charity trustees and company directors running the schools and left to do it to their own devices. However, when you go through the one primary objective that you have as a governor, which is to appoint the correct head for the school going forward, to say that you must do this with this consideration of your shoulder. As I say, if a school was switching from SQA to the international baccalaureate, or back again, or switching from single sex to co-ed, or doubling the size of their school estate, or halfing the size of their school estate, or taking on more learning support facilities, that would be the priority as much as the day-to-day teaching in the school that might be devolved to senior heads, deputy heads, and that is part of the responsibility of the head. That is the first thing that you are going to want to look at as a governor, whose responsibility to the Government and to everybody else, to the charity regulator is to make sure that the organisation, the institution, is run in a fit and proper way. Can I just finish on a point about where you believe that the Government perceives that there is a problem with headship? Why do you think that the Government is intent on introducing this particular standard of headship? Where is the problem? Well, speaking for ourselves, I genuinely don't know. There is not an issue of terms of leadership perceived or otherwise in our sector because if there is, the governing boards tend to deal with that very quickly. That's what they're there for. It goes back to the point about leadership. In terms of the overall discussion, including the discussion you were having earlier about the national improvement framework, if the absolute priority in all of this is about attainment, then the one issue that is not at fault in our schools is attainment. Indeed, when I'm called up by journalists, it's usually to justify why we're attaining too well rather than attaining too badly. I think that we have to remember Teacher Scotland's future and all that that document contained in terms of evaluating and considering the future and how to, if Scottish education, Scottish school education and how to enhance professionalism at all levels, and out of that, we have had some wonderful developments in terms of professional update and career-long professional learning standards for leadership and management. All of that is welcomed by us all. The headship qualification is another part of that big picture. The bit that we're all struggling with is that bit about it becoming mandatory. I presume to guess what the Government is thinking, but I would agree with what Audry has said that I would imagine that part of this is part of the bigger picture. Teacher Scotland's future was a very ambitious document that really tried to address levels of qualification and professional expertise and leadership at all levels within the profession from probationer teachers right through to head teachers. As I said at the start, ADES has no problem in principle with the idea of expecting head teachers to be well qualified and to have additional qualifications in time. The problem here is one of timing. I'll come back to that again, I'm afraid. I don't think that the Government is trying to address a deficit in the quality of leadership. It's about continual improvement. For that reason, we welcome their efforts to improve the quality of leadership. However, again, there is an issue of timing and there is an issue of recruitment issues already in the system that need to be addressed. Thank you very much. I thank all of you for coming along this morning. We do appreciate your time. I'm going to suspend very briefly to change the panel. I welcome back our final panel for this evidence session. I welcome to the committee this afternoon Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning and the accompanying officials. I welcome to all of you. Cabinet Secretary, I believe that you have some opening remarks that you want to give us. I very much welcome this opportunity to give evidence to the committee on our proposed stage 2 amendments to the education bill, which deal with the national improvement framework and the headship qualification. The bill, I believe, sends a strong signal nationally, as well as locally, about the value that we place in ensuring that the voice needs and ambitions of all our children are central to everything that we do. Those amendments will help to strengthen that by placing the national improvement framework in law, requiring ministers and councils to work together towards the priorities that sets out and putting in place reporting arrangements. The amendments will ensure that all new headteachers in Scotland are suitably qualified. The national improvement framework will make the links between national priorities and classroom practice. It will look at the full range of evidence and tell us how children's learning is progressing and what more needs to be done to close the attainment gap. Of course, we are currently consulting on the draft national improvement framework. We have held a series of engagements with stakeholders, including nine events across the country. Overall, it is attended by more than 1,000 teachers, parents and others. We have heard the views of around 700 children through local and online events. A full summary of our engagement convener will be published next month, but I thought that a quick run-through of some of the emerging themes might be helpful to the committee. There has been widespread support for the breadth of the framework and for the high-level priorities that it sets out. I sense that if we all work towards those priorities, we will see the improvement for children that the framework is all about. We have also heard that there is a need for more consistent evidence that tells us whether we are making progress and allows for more sharing across schools and authorities of what is making the difference to closing the attainment gap and raising attainment. There has been some concern about some aspects of the framework. I am keen to reassure people and, in particular, committee members on those. Some have worried that a narrow approach to assessment or, indeed, publishing data might create perverse incentives. We have been listening to the views and expertise through our consultation and considering what local authorities already do. We know that standardised assessment is in use in different forums across schools and across the country. Learning from the range of practice is informing our thinking about a national approach to a broad range of assessment data. Our engagement has reinforced what we already know that teacher judgment is key to the improvements for children and the success of the framework. We have said from the beginning of the process that standardised assessments should only inform teacher judgment and not replace it. A more consistent approach to a broad range of data is needed to give everyone with an interest in children's progress from parents to ministers and meaningful information to work with. Our future publications should include a range of information that shows where we are making good progress and where we might need to do more to close the gap and improve standards more generally. I turn briefly to the headship qualification, convener. Strong leadership and the best teachers are a fundamental part of improving attainment and achievement for our children and young people. The introduction of a standard for headship qualification will ensure that the quality of educational leadership in Scotland is top quality. The idea that prospective headteachers should be qualified before taking up posts is not new and has been Scottish Government policy since 2005, and the amendment will clarify what already exists in guidance. I am happy to take further questions on those two issues, convener. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. For everybody's information, we will start with the national improvement framework and then move on to the headship qualifications. I begin by asking Chick Groody to ask the first question. Good afternoon. I just asked what we have heard this morning and looking at some of the commentary that we have received, for example in the EIS in terms of the role of the Scottish Government and local authorities, whether the Government considers that a cultural shift in Scottish education is required and whether the framework makes the case, as it stands, for statutory change and the reasons why some of the anticipated benefits of the framework are not already being delivered. In essence, what we want to do, Mr Groody, is to build on the success of curriculum for excellence. I very much see the national improvement framework as part of the next phase of curriculum for excellence. We want to introduce more consistency in our approaches to raising attainment overall and closing the gap. We want to see more sharing of best practice. We want to see reports that focus on the evidence that explains how improvements are being made as opposed to just measuring what improvements are being made. We are already building on the culture that already exists within our schools and within curriculum for excellence. We want to have a level or a degree of consistency of approach. That is imperative if we are going to tackle inequality, because we know that inequality exists within classrooms, within schools, within local authorities and across the country. In terms of making the case for our three amendments and to anchor the national improvement framework in legislation, I think that they are fourfold. I think that it is important, given the shared ambition that we all have across this chamber, that we have a renewed focus on our national priorities and that we agree those national priorities as shared priorities. We do, in the Government's view, need robust permanent arrangements that will help to drive up standards. I have already spoken about the degree of consistency. I think that the planning and reporting requirements that would be dealt with by the amendments are an important part of that. It is also about decluttering the legislative landscape, if you like. We have the 2000 act, standards in school act. Some of that bears now so many years on, little resemblance to the current practice and scrutiny arrangements that are currently in local authorities. The current legislation does not support an improvement cycle that involves the annual review and reporting that is required for a national improvement framework. I am not questioning what the priorities are. Given that my colleagues will come to other points on the assessment, is it not the case that we are asking for a consistency across the country when, in fact, we need flexibility to recognise the diversity of the country? Is the NIF not leading to the Scottish Government micromanaging what is actually happening in terms of how we improve and achieve outcomes, as opposed to the targets that might be set from this? No, because I believe that consistency is not the same as conformity. You can have a degree of consistency while recognising the flexibility that curriculum for excellence offers teachers at a classroom level. There is a broad consensus. We know that from our consultation in terms of the areas that we have identified as the six drivers for improvement. The amendments that the Government will bring forward in a few weeks are essentially putting in statute that ministers have a duty to establish a national improvement framework. That national improvement framework will have to be subject to annual review. Secondly, local authorities will have to work towards delivering the priorities that are identified within the improvement framework. And that ministers, as well as education authorities, will have to publish the progress that they are making annually. That is some important anchors for the national improvement framework in terms of enabling it to operate in an effective manner. However, I would not describe any of that as micromanagement. We are enhancing, if you like, the responsibilities of both Scottish ministers and local government in terms of our responsibilities to report and account for our progress. However, there is no micromanagement. We are not changing the legal or operational responsibilities of local government to deliver education. Thank you. Cabinet Secretary, this morning we heard several times that people feel that the data is already there and it was pointed out that 30 out of 32 local authorities are using standardised tests already. Could I ask whether the Scottish Government has carried out a very detailed, comprehensive analysis of which local authorities are doing particularly well when it comes to improving literacy and numeracy levels in relation to the testing that they are using? Which ones are doing particularly well? We would certainly accept that the vast majority of local authorities are using data. We believe that there are benefits to a more consistent approach to the use of data. One of the issues or debates that was apparent to me on taking on this position is that there is a debate about how we use data sensibly to drive improvement. There is certainly the Audit Scotland report a few years back that points to a variation in performance of educational outcomes across the country. It is a report that also points to that some authorities are better than others at overcoming deprivation and that the two broad factors around that are in relation to teacher professionalism and a sensible proportionate of coherent use of data. I will ask Donor to speak a bit more. At these points, cabinet secretary, crucially, this is about raising standards. That is the whole intention that you have said at many times on the record, as has the First Minister, that that is the reason for the national framework for improvement. What I am asking is whether the Scottish Government has done very significant research into the local authorities that are using the type of testing that is proving that they are doing particularly well when it comes to raising their standards. As we come to looking at your amendments, which we have not yet seen, it would be helpful if we could have good quality evidence—qualitative as well as quantitative evidence—that proves what is working well in the system and what is identifying the specific problems that you feel are holding people back. We have had considerable dialogue with local authorities over the years. I can ask Donor to speak a bit more about the granular detail of what we know about different types of information that is made available to the Government from our partners in local government. The other point of your question was— See whether you have published that information, because I think that it would be helpful to the committee to know—if we are trying to solve a problem that clearly there is evidence for, we need to know who and where we are having some success in addressing that problem. That is what I am driving for. I mean, we are certainly going to do an interim report that will be published at the beginning of next year. That, I suppose, is in advance of the national improvement framework kicking in, and that will reflect information that we have received from local government colleagues. The purpose of legislating for a national improvement framework is so that there is consistency and a clear understanding of information that the Government can expect to receive from local authorities. Local authorities are not under any obligation to forward information of the nature that you describe. Cabinet Secretary, very shortly we are going to be asked to debate in a very short timescale amendments that you will bring forward. Would it not be helpful if we had some of the qualitative data which many people argue already exists in front of us so that we can make an informed decision about what has to go into this national improvement framework? Well, what I am saying is that local authorities do not have any obligation just now to forward data or information to the Scottish Government, and that is in part why we are where we are at. We have, I think, it is fair to say more information about some local authorities than others. We are in an effort to have information that is consistently available that points to strong arguments for the need to legislate on this area. If you do not mind, if I can ask Donna maybe to give an overview of what information we currently have access to, that might be helpful. A number of local authorities have been happy to share their information with us. I think that what we are saying is that there is no specific link to the type of test that local authorities are undertaking in terms of attainment and literacy. There are some key features of the assessments that are important. We are currently working with local authorities to develop the specification for the standardised assessment at a national level, so it is our intention that that assessment will feature the best of the best from those things. The very important thing is about the data use and how teachers and head teachers etc are doing that, so we are working up a package of support that will sit alongside that. We heard this morning that Mr Monroe was quite sure, as a director of education, that he knew exactly where improvements had been made, but we heard that parents do not feel that that is being communicated to them. Can you comment on that? That is an important point. I think that parents are right to expect a certain level of information. I know from my engagement with parents to the length and breadth of the country that that is variable. There is a broader issue about parental engagement, and the information that a parent gets about the progress of their child is very important. It varies from local authority to local authority. The Scottish Government approach to NIF has been supported in written submissions from ADS, Aberdeenshire Council and Celsys. However, significant concerns have been raised by others, including the union voice, Niall MacKinnon and EIS, particularly in the national assessment, which I am sure you are aware of. How do you then think that the national assessments could best be used to drive improvement for pupils and to inform teachers and schools approaches to learning? I could characterise best the Scottish Government's position that we seek a balanced approach to the use of data. It is clear that schools, local authority, national government need a consistent level of information. I think that there are debates around what that information should consist of, but it is important that there is consistent information to drive improvement. That is the focus. We are not looking for information for information's sake. It has to be information that we are gathering for a purpose, and that purpose has to drive improvement. It is clear that what is needed at a classroom level is likely to be very different from the information that is required at a national level, but it is important that we have that. We have spoken a lot about the clear line of sight between the classroom, local and national policy making. At a local and national level, we have to be acutely aware of whether we are delivering for the individual needs of children and have to make choices on policy resources accordingly. I think that what the debate has thrown up as a result of publishing what is a draft national improvement plan is a distinction between data and information that one is for accountability and other information that is to drive improvement. As a Government, there should indeed be information that holds our actions to account. I would argue that that would be the same for our partners in local government. We have to reconcile the two that information is indeed needed for accountability purposes. First and foremost, the national improvement framework has to be driven by what is going to improve the educational outcomes of children and what is going to improve their life chances. I know that you have mentioned standardised assessment, and it is important to say that the assessment of children's progress is just one of the six drivers of improvement. In the context of curriculum for excellence, standardised assessment would be 10 per cent of the curriculum, because much of what we do relies on teacher judgment. The standardised assessment, which is absolutely clear, needs to inform teacher judgment and most certainly not replace it. I am alive to the debates in and around what information is published, how it is used and at what level. It is fair to say that there are different needs at a school level, at a local authority level and at a national level. That is what we would actively engage to resolve. There are also concerns about teaching to the test. Do you have a view of what we have done at the beginning of the year as a tool to assist teachers or have we done as a measure of progress at the end of the year? I have been very clear that the purpose of standardised assessment is to assist teachers on the front line. One of the compelling reasons to introduce a formal standardised assessment is for diagnostic purposes. I am very alive to the debate in and around the window of assessment and the debate around how having a narrow window of assessment at the end of a school year, how that may impact on the ability of a standardised assessment to be used for diagnostic purposes. In terms of practice currently across Scotland, there are some local authorities that will have a window of assessment. Some local authorities will have a few windows of assessment and others will have no window of assessment. That is the type of detail that we are currently engaged in. However, it is an aspect of the debate that we are very alive to because, as well as standardised assessment, which is just one part of a wider range of assessment, the data from that does indeed have to be used for accountability purposes of local and national government. Ultimately, we do not want that drive for accountability to impact adversely on the great gift, the potential use of standardised assessments to diagnose and inform the need for action that will improve outcomes for children. Cabinet Secretary, we heard this morning that, in terms of standardised testing and assessment, that is already going on in 30 of the 32 local authorities. There is even an argument for saying that, to some extent, it is going on across all local authorities to an extent. The provision here for national standardised testing and assessment does not make clear what the status of the activity that is currently going on will be. In relation to the standard for headship, there appears to at least be a clarity around the fact that the statutory provision that this bill will introduce replaces the qualification for headship that is currently in place in its non-statutory. We have not got that clarity here and, therefore, there are concerns among teachers that this will add to the workload of teachers over and above the concerns around lead tables and teaching to the test. What assurances can you give about the status of the current activity that schools and local authorities are undertaking? We have been clear from the outset that any introduction of a national standardised assessment system is to replace current activity. The last thing that I want to do is to add to the workload of teachers. Therefore, we are currently working very hard with the specification group in terms of pulling together the actual detail and nuts and bolts of what the standardised assessment part may look like. We want that to be of such a high standard that it has relevance to all local authorities, that it meets the needs of all local authorities, so that there is no need for duplication. One of the benefits, if you get the detail of the standardised assessment done at a national level, is that it can strip out duplication in the system. That is our ambition and that is what we are striving to do. The bill will require local authorities who, in response to the Smith question earlier, are doing very well to replace what they are doing at the moment in terms of the assessment and the way they use that to inform teaching and learning with a standardised model. You are going to be requiring local authorities to stop what they are doing at the moment and to take on doing something different that is consistent, albeit not exactly the same across the board. What the bill will require local authorities to do is to work towards the delivery of the priorities as contained within the framework. That is the six areas that are identified that are significant drivers for improvement. We have no plans to specifically legislate for a specific assessment model. We will work collegially and very hard with our partners in local government so that we have a shared understanding and a shared agreement in and around the spec of the standardised assessment so that it removes the need for there to be duplication. We want the specification to be of a high standard so that it meets all the needs of all local authorities. In terms of the question about whether that will result in lead tables or teaching to the test, we have heard from EIS again this morning that the provisions in a bill represent a blunt instrument. In the written evidence, the EIS is of the view that designing a one-size-fits-all standardised assessment for use across Scotland that would provide policy makers with a framework to positively impact on teaching and learning in the classroom is a challenge that has proved to be beyond the capacity of any education system that has attempted such an approach. What confidence can we have that ultimately we will not see a return to lead tables either official or unofficial and, as a consequence, a teaching to the test? Mr MacArthur will know that this Government has no desire whatsoever to return to crude lead tables to teach to the test to narrow down the curriculum whatsoever. This has never been about returning to high-stakes national testing of the past. However, we have heard today in evidence from the EIS and certainly in terms of our own engagement from the EIS and others that where there is considerable focus on is that window of assessment. That is one of the reasons why we are very alive to the debate in and around whether there should be a window of assessment or whether the assessment should be able to be done at any time of the year. We are, in terms of some of the media commentary around education, a move away from producing crude lead tables. I know that some newspapers still do it, but in terms of the work that we have done, for example in the senior phase and in terms of producing parent zone, that gives a good indication of the benefits of a more dashboard of information. We are currently in dialogue with our partners about producing that dashboard of information for the broad general education part of our curriculum. It may be comparatively easy if someone has the will and the time to look at every high school in Scotland and produce lead tables in and around the number of hires, three plus hires, five plus hires. However, we are talking about something quite different for 2,000-odd primary schools. If you were, for example, publishing data based on teacher judgment as to whether children had met curriculum for excellence levels, for example, I do not believe that any of that is insurmountable. It is difficult. We are in very detailed discussions, sifted through the intricacies of it all, but I stress that the standardised assessment is one part of one part of the national improvement framework and that we are looking to publish a range of information that is important for national government, local government but also to teachers and crucially for parents. I am going to ask about assessments again. Craig Monroe said earlier that it is how you use the information to drive attainment forward. He said that that was one of the most important things when you want to take a good system and make it a great educational system. Is that not the case that the kind of information that you have already said is being able to get the information to be able to get the resource into the areas that need that resource? Is that not what we are talking about when we are talking about the assessments to help the attainment officers that are in local authorities to ensure that we can get the resource to the individuals, the pupils and the families that need it? To be fair, I think that that has been the focus of debates across Parliament and across the education sector more widely. The nuances of the debate are about what information is gathered and how you use that to drive improvements. Standardised assessment is one part of that panel play or dashboard of information. I have heard Craig Monroe speak many times about how there are some aspects of the curriculum that certainly lend themselves to the use of more standardised forms of assessment in and around literacy and numeracy. We know that literacy and numeracy is the gateway to all learning, but we also know that you can assess everything in a standardised way. The Government values teacher professional judgment. As a parent, I have seen the standardised assessment done or the results of that completed with regards to my own son. I can see how that informs the teacher judgment, because when that was shared with me, when I asked, it was shared in a way that was meaningful. It was not just giving me a list of scores that came with information. It chimed with my understanding of my son's strengths and the information that I had been given on many parents' nights from teachers. Standardised assessment is one aspect that informs teacher professional judgment. We should not be afraid of it, but we need to work through the detail, and we are utterly committed to doing that. The national recruitment framework is introduced as a draft. The final version, which will be published at the start of the year, will look quite different, given the quality of the debate and the quality of informed input that we have had in and around the many issues covered by the national recruitment framework. My final point, convener—I apologise for answering the question at length—is that the legal requirement is to review the national recruitment framework on an annual basis, so it will continually be evolved and refined to the needs of our education system. A more standardised national assessment, we are looking to replace the myriad of local arrangements with something that is actually more bespoke to our own curriculum. During your answer, cabinet secretary, you brought up an important point. You said that when you asked under the current system of your own son, you asked for information, because Ian Ellis from the National Parent Forum of Scotland said that although a lot of the data is out there just now, Ian said that a lot of it has not been shared with parents at the moment, giving them the opportunity to be part of the solution when we try to work towards closing the attainment gap, and he was bringing that forward as an issue that, possibly, that might be better in the future if they get the opportunity to do all the information, but the information is relevant to them and their child. If every parent will have different requests for the information that they want for their own child or children, we should not generalise about parents, about what parents need or what parents want. In my own experience, I was informed when my son started primary 1 that the local authority in question used chem testing, and I opted to ask for the results of that in more recent times. I am always hesitant to make gross generalisations about what parents need, but parents should be informed about how teachers assess the children and if standardised assessment is part of that. Parents should be aware of that, and it is through that dialogue between parents and teachers that you establish what information parents wish or request. Of course, that is just a small and important part of a wider parental engagement agenda. I just want to clarify something that you said in your answer a moment ago that you will publish a final version at the start of the year, but in the draft national improvement framework document that we have in front of us, and our understanding was certainly the case, but it says in the annex that you will publish the national improvement framework in December. This committee will reach stage 2 and deal with the amendment on 7 December. That is the likely date that we will have to vote on that particular issue. The draft said that it would publish in December. I think that you just said a moment ago that it will be published at the start of the year. Yes, it will be published at the start of the year, convener, and I am sorry if the committee has not been kept up to date with that, or if there are inconsistencies in information given to the committee. I should have perhaps said in earlier answers that we will receive the OECD report on our broad general education at the end of the year. I believe that it is important that that is published and available to everyone, because that is part of our process in terms of informing the final version of the national improvement framework, although I stress that the national improvement framework will have to be reviewed annually. I understand why you are saying that you want to wait for that publication from the OECD. My concern is that that publication of the final version of the national improvement framework will be after the committee's consideration at stage 2 of the national improvement framework amendment. I am sure that you can understand the concern that I am raising with you. I can understand that, convener. I know that we are talking in the vacuum of committee receiving the Government's amendments, but we are talking about amendments in three areas about ministers having a duty to establish a national improvement framework. That will have to be subject to annual review. The second area that the amendments will deal with is local authorities having to work towards the delivery of priorities set out in the national improvement framework. The third area being ministers and education authorities having to publish their progress annually. Those are three quite discreet areas that the amendments will be dealing with. Secretary, I would like to look at some aspects of the role of the Scottish Government. The EIS's written submission questions whether the Scottish Government feels frustrated about the lack of access to data available at local level. It added that a discernible tension appears to exist between the competing functions of the Scottish Government and local government. Do you recognise that? I suppose that I would articulate it with a different tone. Yes, there is lack of information available to the Scottish Government. There is a lack of consistent information because reflective of the current situation is not necessarily some deliberate foible by local government, but reflective of current arrangements and current reporting arrangements that there is different practice out there. There is a generalised frustration that the lack of consistent information is important to inform aspects of local and national policy, how we use our resources and how we get better. Our first panel seemed to be a little concerned about the collecting of data. I asked a specific question about whether that affected the levels of accountability between local and national government. They were a little hesitant, but they seemed to indicate that, in certain circumstances, that could happen. Do you agree with that? In terms of the proposed amendments that I have outlined today and the national improvement framework overall, I do not think that any of that changes radically the balance of accountability or the balance of responsibilities. I would contend that the national government has a responsibility and a duty to set out national priorities. We want to ensure that those national priorities are shared priorities, but there is nothing in the amendments or the national improvement framework that changes the fact that local authority has the legal and operational duty to deliver education. Crucially, we are not asking our partners and local government to do anything that we are not going to do. We are asking them to report annually. We are going to have to report annually to Parliament. I think that scrutiny at local and national level is important. The reporting arrangements will enhance scrutiny of the Scottish Government as well as local government. That is absolutely right. I am supposed to state the obvious, convener. If the Scottish Government is to report annually on the national position to Parliament, we will, of course, need to gather information that is held at a local level. The cabinet secretary mentioned just now about an annual plan being submitted to ministers. The COSLA submission, which came in rather later, seems to be broadly supportive of this initiative, but believes that councils should not be required by law to send plans to ministers. Do you have any view on that? If local government was not required by law to submit information to the Scottish Government, that would be the position that we are currently in. I believe that there is a growing consensus that there needs to be more visible information available and consistent information available so that progress can be measured. I asked the panel where it thought that a shared agreement on the national improvement framework could be reached in time for consideration of the amendments. Really, they said no. Can I just be clear that you are also saying no, that the amendments which will be considered at stage 2 will simply say that there shall be a national improvement framework, but we will not know what it is? I am clear that we will do everything that we can to build a national consensus around the national priorities and how they are articulated and how they are implemented in the national improvement framework, which is to be published at the beginning of the year. A crucial part of the process that makes that informed process, as well as the high quality and detailed input that we have had from a range of stakeholders, is indeed the OECD report. Most people would see that as an important part of the process that we are not publishing the final national improvement framework prior to the OECD report or assessment on broad general education. That is quite distinct from the very specific amendments that will come to committee at stage 2, which are an outline. They are quite specific and really just anchor the national improvement framework in legislation and give the reporting duties. There is a whole lot of other detail in the actual national improvement framework. Of course, there is also the matter of statutory guidance, which will require on-going dialogue, engagement and on-going opportunities to build that national consensus. I do not think that we are far apart. I do not think that stakeholders are far apart. In terms of stakeholders and how far apart they are, the EIS, when asked earlier today, if they thought that they would be able to reach shared agreement on the national improvement framework, said that only if it had removed from it the proposal for a single-diet national standardised assessment of P1, P4, P7 and S3. Earlier on, in your evidence, she said that you were alive to that debate. Does that mean that it is your intention to remove that from the national improvement framework? I think that our position on the value of standardised assessment as part of the overall process that informs teacher judgment as part of a range of data that is available for assessment purposes, as it indicated earlier. It is only 10 per cent of our curriculum. What I said earlier was that I was alive to the debate around the window of assessment and the links between having a narrow window of assessment and how that links with perverse incentives. Is your intention to meet the EIS's requirement to reach a shared agreement? It is our desire to reach a shared agreement with all stakeholders involved. There is broad agreement and the agreement that we have on the overall high-level purpose of a national improvement framework and how the six drivers of improvement are at the right place. I am asking specifically about the national standardised assessment. We are seeking agreement with the EIS, COSLA and parents groups. We want that to be a shared endeavour not just for the Government to be setting out the national priorities, but for those national priorities to be seen as shared priorities. Mr MacArthur asked about the impact of the new national standardised assessment replacing what already happens in different local authorities and at the hand of different teachers. In response to him, you said, we are not intending to legislate for the national standard assessment to happen. Are you suggesting that there will be a national standardised assessment but it will be optional and local authorities can choose to take part or not? No, because the obligation on local authorities will be to deliver to the outcomes within the national improvement framework. So there will be obligatory for all local authorities in all schools to pursue the national standardised assessment that is contained in the net? It will be obligatory for local authorities to work towards delivering the priorities that are contained in the national improvement framework. Children's assessment of children's progress is that, but that is quite different from anchoring the specific specification, if you like, of a standardised assessment. It is also not an answer to my question. If the net contains national standardised assessments, will it be obligatory for those to be applied in every school in Scotland? Your answer to Mr MacArthur was ambiguous. Your answer to me was ambiguous. I am not being unambiguous. I am trying to say that we do not need to legislate for standardised assessment in the manner in which you suggest. Because it will still happen everywhere in any case? Because we are building that shared agreement and there will be compelling practical reasons for local authorities to opt for the standardised assessment. We are aiming high here to deliver something that meets the needs of local authorities. I am sorry, so they will have the choice, but the specifications will be so good that they will all choose to do it, rather than they will be obliged to do it. What I am saying, Mr Gray, is that local authorities will have a duty to deliver education that is in keeping with the national improvement framework. I do not see a need to legislate for a specification for a standardised national assessment, but we will expect local authorities to deliver in the spirit and practice of the national improvement framework, and they will have a duty to do so on a range of issues. I am not sure that I understand the answer, but it is as it is. I am not sure that I understand the answer, cabinet secretary. Just for clarity, could a local authority in working towards the outcomes that you have described carry on doing what it is doing at the moment, because in its view that is working towards the aims that you have described? If we have consensus, there is no need to use some of the blunt instruments as suggested by others. There is, of course, the opportunity for statutory guidance. There will be statutory guidance, and we will be working hard with colleagues about the detail that goes into that statutory guidance. In the business of building consensus here, as opposed to creating an inflexibility by legislating for a specific specification of standardised assessment. Is your expectation that local authorities will stop doing what they are currently doing? Yes, it is. It is my expectation. Okay, thank you very much for that. I am going to move on now to the questions on the headship qualifications. I am going to begin with Liam McArthur. I think that we started with the last panel just setting the scene before turning to the provisions in the bill. I think that we are all aware of issues. I have to say that I thought primarily in rural and remote parts of the country, but I think that the previous panel suggested that that was a more widespread problem affecting councils in urban and rural areas in terms of headship recruitment. We heard a number of examples where openings in particular primary schools were often attracting no applicants or a very limited number of applicants. In the context of the provisions being brought forward in this bill, we were interested to understand what Scottish Government is doing to respond to that particular challenge, what local authorities are doing, probably what both are doing jointly. Would you be able to shed some light on what is being done to address a problem, as I say, which appears to affect local authorities across the country? In terms of the vacancies of headteachers across the country, the most latest or up-to-date information that I have seen is 3.6 per cent. It is fair to say that around a third of vacancies appear to be located in particular parts of the country, so about 35 per cent of current vacancies would be Aberdeenshire Highland. We accept that the situation is more acute in some parts of the country than others. A vacancy rate of around 3 per cent would not be unknown or abnormal. In broad terms, we recognise that becoming a headteacher is a personally and professionally demanding role. The standard for headship is a way to support the demands that are placed on headteachers. We see it as part of the solution—it is not the whole solution—in terms of recruitment issues for headteachers in parts of the country, but we would see it as a sensible way forward. It has also been Scottish Government policies since 2005 that headteachers should have the appropriate qualification. I do not think that any of the previous panel thought that the standard for headship was part of the solution to the problem that we currently face. In the sense that the discussion was about how to accommodate those provisions in circumstances that are already quite challenging. We talk about a vacancy rate of about 3 per cent. We have heard of acting headships being appointed to bridge a gap. We have heard from the situation in Western Bartonshire, where the age profile is such that, within the next four to five years, around a third of current heads are likely to retire, a demographic that I do not suppose is radically different from other parts of the country. Against that background, it would be reassuring to hear something suggesting that, rather than layering on additional responsibilities, which are statutory rather than the choice and discretion of individual schools and individual local authorities, there was more of a concerted effort to try and address a problem of recruitment. Both things can operate in tandem. We are currently working with the Addis and others in and around the range of issues that impact on the recruitment of headteachers. There is a complexity to it. No doubt you will have heard evidence about issues in and around salary and job sizing. However, there is a clear credible case for headteachers having a specific qualification for what is a personally and professionally very demanding role. We expect classroom teachers to have a prerequisite of qualifications. That is building on the work that is done in terms of teaching Scotland's future. Across the education system, we are having a debate about how we increase the professionalisation of early years workers. That is very much in tandem with increasing professionalism and crucially supporting leadership within the cohort of headteachers. While I am acknowledging that there is more to be done in terms of alleviating recruitment difficulties that exist in particular parts of the country, that is not an argument against a headship qualification. It has been policy since 2005. 1,000 headteachers already have the existing qualification. There are 1,600 people with the existing qualification. Ultimately, the Scottish Government does not employ headteachers, we are not the employers. Nonetheless, we will seek to work with others to assist in recruitment difficulties. Just on that point, against that backdrop, the concern being expressed was that the speed at which those provisions would come in over three years. The argument that was made was that pushing that out even to 2020-22 may allow enough of an opportunity for those changes to bedding. Is that a change that you would be willing to consider? I mean, we are always willing to consider ideas and suggestions in terms of the state sector. I mean, this has been government policy since 2005. There are many headteachers already in the system with the existing qualification. There will have to be regulation making powers, because there is an acknowledgement in terms of the independent sector that we may have to look at a day post-2018 for the requirement to kick in for the independent sector, given that they currently have to work through the issues in and around ensuring that all their teachers are GTCS registered as well. We are alert to some of the issues and complexities. Colin Beattie I would like to look at one or two of the more practical issues around the appointments. Specifically about the appointments, will it be necessary for prospective headteachers to hold the standard before they are appointed to a post? Will they be given the opportunity to qualify perhaps within a certain period afterwards? It is our intention if it was a permanent appointment that before a permanent appointment of a headteacher could be made that they would have to have the standard for headship, where local authorities are making temporary provisions or acting up provisions, there could be some flexibility in and around that which may assist with some of the recruitment issues that Mr MacArthur has alluded to earlier. But anyone applying for a post as headteacher would require to have the standard already, the qualification already? If it was a permanent appointment, yes. In connection with training, could any teacher decide to take the standard and get the qualification in advance, but the view to maybe applying for a headteachers post later down the line? I think that that certainly happens just now because there are more people with the existing qualification than there are people employed as headteachers with the qualification. So there are 1,600 people with the existing headteacher qualification, 1,000 of them are in headteacher posts. John Pitland? The Scottish Government proposed amendment could very well add a financial burden and perhaps equality issues of access, especially for single parents, sole earners and possible candidates living in different parts of Scotland for those who want to enter the programme. Greg Demster from the previous panel said that financial burden should definitely not fall on the candidate. Who do you think should be responsible for meeting those costs considering there was a lack of applicants prior to this development and because of the apparent inadequate financial incentives to take on heads up? The first cohort for the new qualification, there are nearly 140 people participating in that and coming from 31 local authorities, so I think that that is a very encouraging take up rate. The Scottish Government is prepared to meet the cost, two thirds of the cost. We would have preferred to have done that in partnership with local government and had a three-way sharing of costs, but we are committed to this process. We did not want debates about who contributes to being a barrier, so we have made that commitment that we will meet two thirds of the cost. In terms of the longer term, we obviously need to go through a spending review and we will continue to have that dialogue with local government partners. It is fair to acknowledge that some local authorities meet the cost and therefore there is no additional financial burden on participants in some areas of the country, but I can appreciate how that would be iniquitous and it would be an area that we would want to revisit. I should also say that there is evidence to show that individuals investing some of their own income themselves in a qualification does improve completion rates, but I do appreciate that different things operating in different ways in different parts of the country may appear iniquitous to some. Do you not then think that there is a disadvantage for those people who may want to go up the career ladder and they cannot afford it? There is a disadvantage here? How do you support that? I think that that is what I have acknowledged, Mr Perler, that the Scottish Government is indeed supporting individuals to participate in this qualification by meeting two thirds of the cost. Some local authorities step up to the plate and make a financial contribution as well. I think that Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Cairnross councils have been examples of that. We have made a substantial commitment by meeting two thirds of the cost. I appreciate that that may in itself not be desirable to everybody. There will be many arguments that people will present that say that either the local government and the Scottish Government should be meeting the cost in full. You suggested there that local authorities who are already paying part cost in the existing qualification could then do the same for the new qualification. The previous panel seemed to have fears that it had to be the individual who paid that third of the cost. Are you saying that there would be no issue with the local authority stepping up to pay that third of the cost for somebody within their employ? There would not be any issue with that at all. My answer to Mr Perland is that I acknowledge that there is a wide variation of local practice, but Aberdeenshire, Perth and Cairnross councils are paying the individual contribution. The independent sector has expressed some concern not about the fact that there is to be increasing professional qualification, which I think that it has demonstrated already that there is increasing GTCS on that basis, but it has concern about the issue, which, as was evidence this morning, could restrict the pool of people that it may wish to appoint to head teacher posts, particularly in special schools that have very significant specialisms that are required. Do you think that it is the Government's right to tell governing boards what categories of people they could and could not appoint in the independent sector? One of the reasons that we may well certainly look at a delayed implementation date for the independent sector is to enable the GTCS to be able to establish equivalency procedures so that, if there were head teacher candidates coming from abroad where they could demonstrate skills, experience and qualification that was equivalent to the standard for headship, that there was a process by which that could be recognised. I do not think that it is unreasonable for baseline standards in terms of whether it is a national improvement framework, whether it is in terms of registered teachers or the qualifications that are required to be a head teacher, that those standards are available to the benefit of children and parents across both the independent sector. They are not arguing that at all. They are arguing a technical point that it is a governing council in the independent sector who appoints a head teacher, and that would be a restrictive policy in terms of the categories of people that we might be able to apply. The policy is with regard to ensuring that the qualifications or the equivalent qualifications are appropriate. I do not think that that is reasonable, but we are not appointing or choosing candidates. The governing council is. The implication from the GTCS is the fact that you might be restricting people from abroad, and the legal advice seems to indicate that. Would you consider an amendment in the area that might give some indication that you recognise that the independent sector has a different governing roles? The independent sector is already subject to registration and inspection processes, whether that is from Education Scotland or the care inspectorate. I am not sure whether I am really grasping what Liz Smith's specific concern is. It is exactly the same as the independent sector put to us this morning that the governing council in an independent school is by law the ones who have the authority and who they appoint. If they are restricted in the categories of people that they can appoint, then there is a serious problem, because the Government is then influencing a body that often has charitable status. I am not sure that you are entitled to do that. I do not think that we are interfering with the legal responsibilities of board members, but where regulation can clarify matters, I think that that is always helpful. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, and your officials for coming along this morning. You have evidence on the two proposed amendments, and I will suspend briefly. Our next item is to consider subordinate legislation, as listed on the agenda. Do members have any general comments that they want to make on the instrument? Lou MacArthur. Obviously, the subordinate legislation committee has looked at this, and it is compliant with powers under the 1992 act. As I said, when the statement was made to Parliament, this is not a comfortable position. I do not suppose that the minister is not a comfortable position for the Parliament to find itself in. Obviously, the task force has been established, but I think that this is an issue that we will need to return to in due course. I do not know when the task force is due to report back, but there have to be lessons learned in this that a nuclear option has been proposed here. Establishing what kind of checks and balances there are leading up to that point where the minister felt she had no option to take this decision would be useful for this committee to be exploring. Religious to support Lou MacArthur's point, it seems to me that the subordinate legislation committee has considered this. It is not clear that there is any great benefit in trying to reverse what has happened, but it is such a serious matter, both for the sector, for the college and for the individuals who were involved. It seems to me that the obligation on the committee is that it looks at what has happened here in more detail, at the very least, to learn what lessons might be applied in the future. The committee should commit to making sure that it does that. I agree with both those comments. Given that we have the task force, my understanding is that it will be published in the new year. We think that the timetable is. I think that it is very important that we go over this and certainly learn the lessons that can be. I would suggest to the committee, if it is agreeable, that we return to this in the new year in the context of the task force's publication. I look at it then. Are members agreeable to that? In terms of the instrument itself, there are two issues. There is the general question, which we will come to in a moment. In terms of the committee's standing orders under rule 10.3a, it requires that we look at the interpretation and legislative reform of Scotland Act 2010. I want to ask the committee, in light of the committee's standing order 10.3a, that requires the committee to consider whether the reasons given for breaching the 28-day rule are acceptable in the circumstances. Do the committee agree that they are reasonable? Finally, does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on the instrument? That is agreed. Thank you very much for that. I close the meeting.