 i ddweud i'r Cymru yn 2017, ac rwy'n dechrau'n ddod i'r rwyf yn ddai'r gwnaeth yn gynnig, a ddweud i'n ddweud i'n ddweud i'n ddweud i'n ddweud i'r Gw designedd gyda'r gwybodaeth. Yr unrhyw o'r cyfaint o'r ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i gydag bywyd a'r gydag bywyd yn fawr iawn i'r busnes cyfanol i ddweud i gydag bywyd, drwy'n ddweud i ddweud i'r gydag bywyd. Agenda item 2 is an evidence session with Education Scotland on its response to the committee's report on the performance and role of key educational skills bodies. I welcome to the meeting Dr Bill Maxwell, chief executive, Alan Armstrong, strategic director and Alasdair Delaney, chief operating officer of Education Scotland. I understand that Dr Maxwell wishes to make a short opening statement. We welcome very much this opportunity to discuss the work of Education Scotland further with the committee. We have given detailed consideration to the report that the committee published in January on the performance and role of the national education bodies, and I start by saying that we are committed to taking its conclusions and its recommendations fully into account as we plan to increase our impact and effectiveness in the years ahead. We provided a response to the committee's report, and I am sure that there are areas of the response that you will want to explore further today. However, I thought that it may be helpful for me to open the session by illustrating how we are continuing to develop the range of our work, and to do so just by picking out three different pieces of work from our current activities, which have come to fruition since our last appearance in front of the committee. They illustrate three distinct but complementary aspects of the role and functions that we undertake to promote improvement in the education system. Firstly, in our curricular and pedagogical support role, we are taking forward a strong programme of activity to help local authorities and their teachers to improve their understanding of standards within the new curriculum, particularly in the broad general education. That has involved a production of the well-received new benchmarks for CFE levels across the curriculum, and equally, if not more importantly, a programme of support for the use of those benchmarks and the moderation of standards across teachers and across schools. We now have a team of development officers working directly with designated local authority officers to build capacity consistently across the country, with a particular focus on assessing literacy and numeracy, and we are gathering and disseminating exemplars of good practice. Secondly, in our inspection role, we published a quality and improvement in Scottish education last month, a report that draws out trends and highlights some common strengths and weaknesses in the quality of professional practice and provision, looking across all of the areas in which we undertake inspection and evaluation work, ranging from the early years to adult learning. That report clearly illustrates how we use the unique evidence base that we build up through first-hand observation of what is happening in education establishments across the country to provide feedback to practitioners who are designed to feed into their planning for their next steps in the improvement journey. Our staff will be actively promoting dialogue about how practitioners can best address the improvement themes that the report identifies over the next few months. I had the pleasure of launching the report in an exemplar of a secondary school that is showing how that can and is being done on the ground. Thirdly, in the first part of the year, we have been developing further our central role in providing professional support for an intensive and highly targeted national improvement programme, the Scottish attainment challenge. As the pupil equity fund phase of the challenge was launched, for example, we have been working with policy colleagues to provide a series of conferences that engage directly with almost every headteacher in the country. Our team have provided professional advice to support the design and implementation of the programme, and we are playing a key role in ensuring that headteachers are supported to make evidence-based decisions about how they use the funding coming to them. That involves direct support from our attainment adviser team and from other staff, and the development of the interventions for equity online resource, which is a pathfinder area for our national improvement hub. The work that we are now taking forward with the Education and Endowment Foundation is to develop a customised Scottish version of their internationally renowned evidence toolkit. That is a brief snapshot of three dimensions in which we are continuing to strive to apply our role and functions to drive improvement for the benefit of Scottish learners. We would be very pleased to elaborate further on those developments if the committee so wished, but equally I am conscious that members will already have other specific issues that they want to pursue. With that in mind, I will conclude my opening remarks now and say that we stand ready to respond to discuss any aspect that you want to. Can I ask you, in your response to the committee, you highlight the recently published quality and improvement in Scottish education 2012 to 2016, which summarises the themes that arose from inspections in that period. In your view, what does that tell us about how well and how consistently CFE is being adopted across the country and what is being achieved? Thank you. I mentioned my opening remarks. How we see that report is very much a form of feedback to the system about what is going well and what needs more work to improve. It is a mixed picture. We see evidence of some strengths in there. We see increasingly, for example—this is evidence that comes only really through inspection—of increased motivation and engagement of young people in their learning, more active learning going on in schools across the country. We have also picked out five key themes where we feel to get fully—the full benefits of curriculum for excellence need to be taken further by schools, by local authorities and certainly with national support. Alasdair oversaw the programme of pulling together the quasi report in his direction for inspection role, and he may want to elaborate. Just to mention about what the basis for the report is, which I think is important that we understand, it is a gathering together of all of our inspection evidence over that period, but also other evaluative activity and other engagements that we have with the system. It is primarily a professional audience that it is aimed for, because the detail in there is meant to help the professional audience to engage with particular issues of strength and weakness across all sectors and all that parts of the education firmament. The five key themes are addressing the situation now, but obviously the evidence that is in this report has been fed into a variety of sources over the course of that period. What we have done is just then take a stand back at the end and look for the bigger strategic direction themes that we wanted to put into the system. It is like taking a step back and looking at an overview, rather than the continuous feedback that we have provided to relevant bodies to the system as a whole during the course of the report. In that case, I would like to move on to the members on the last myth to contribute. Dr Maxwell, can I ask you about the report that you gave back to the committee following our unanimous report about the evidence that we had heard? In that, you made it very clear that you were addressing our concerns specifically about our issues with the role and the relationship that Education Scotland had with the Scottish Government and about the implementation and evaluation of CFE. You made it very clear in sections 1 and 3 of the report that you sent back about what should happen. In other words, in section 1 and in section 3, in your report, you state six different things that ought to happen. Why did you not address what has happened and the concerns of the committee? I believe in our response. We aimed to address the concerns of the committee and explain what has happened. However, if you wish to highlight a specific area where you feel that did not occur, then I would be happy to pick up on that. Yes, absolutely. If you look at section 1, where it is about the relationship— I have six bullets in the area. Yes, you have six bullet points. These are statements of fact about the way in which the relationship should work. If you go to section 3, you will have a similar statement of what ought to happen in the way that Education Scotland interacts about the curriculum for excellence. Could I ask you very specifically why you gave us statements of fact rather than explain what had happened and address the very deep-seated concerns that you acknowledged last time you were here on 30 November 2016? Why did you not address that? I believe that those statements of fact reflect what has happened over the course of period of time in terms of the way in which the relationship has worked between Education Scotland and Government and the CFE management board. I think that that reflects how it operates. If that is the case, are you satisfied given that some of the recent educational results that we have had are really very disappointing? Are you satisfied that that relationship and the way in which Education Scotland has been operating is satisfactory? I am satisfied that we continue to play a productive, positive role in helping to improve the system and following through the structure that is outlined in the response. As we have just described in terms of the quasi report, one of those key roles is to gather evidence from the front line and feed that back into the management board to our partners in Government, local Government, with a view to identifying when improvements are best or most needing to be made and then work with them to generate activity such as the work that we are doing on the moderation of standards in literacy and numeracy, for example, which will address the areas where there are uncomfortable feedback coming back or evidence of weaknesses. We need to keep doing that. I do not think that everything will be perfectly solved. It will be a constant, on-going process of improvement. Can I just address that very point, particularly what you have just said, that you do not think that it will ever be resolved? If I was a parent, I would be very concerned about that. Can I just refer you to some of the very considerable changes that have taken place under Education Scotland? We have seen a huge volume of guidance that, over the period of the curriculum for excellence, has not only changed some of it, in fact large quantity of it has now been disbanded. We have seen the removal of unit assessments, now reinstated. We have seen the publication of what I thought were very worrying statistics in the Herald last week about the concerns over national 4 and national 5. In your own report, a couple of weeks ago, you raised very considerable concerns about broad general education. Are you not embarrassed about that situation and about the fact that, when you reply to what I think was very genuine concerns amongst this committee and unanimous concerns about this committee, all we get is a statement of the facts about how it is supposed to work? As I say, I am very happy to describe some more specific actions about contextually specific issues that have arisen that have required action and where things have not gone as one might have wished from the start. If we could take the tackling bureaucracy agenda as an example of that, for example, where it appeared over a period of time, the management board became aware and we began to see in evidence from inspections, etc., that their assessment overload was occurring to some degree, and we fed that back. It resulted in the management board setting up the assessment national qualifications group. We also then mounted our inspection of the tackling bureaucracy reports recommendations to identify which local authorities were making the most impact on reducing bureaucracy and which were not. We took action as a result of that. It is a process of continuous feedback and improvement that helps to address those issues. Dr Maxwell, the bottom line is that parents across Scotland and teachers and pupils see at the moment that we are not doing nearly as well as we should be and that many of the results—not all of them, but many of the results—are not nearly good enough. That is the concern. In our report, we highlighted the fact that we found it very difficult, indeed, to get to the level where we could understand what decisions had been taken by the curriculum for excellence board and who was responsible for making them. On the record today, can you explain where things have gone wrong in the decision-making process of the curriculum for excellence and give some assurance that you are addressing them, rather than just giving us a blueprint of how things ought to be working? We play our part as a member of the curriculum for excellence management board. Ultimately, it is set up by ministers as a vehicle for promoting a collective responsibility and development of decision making around the issues of policy relating to the development of curriculum for excellence. We play our part in that. We do not take decisions unilaterally any more than other partners within the word do. We contribute— I am embarrassed, Dr Maxwell, about the delivery of the curriculum for excellence. No. Indeed, I would point back to the OECD's assessment, which has described the process of development of curriculum for excellence. It described the management board as being fit for purpose in taking forward a collective commitment across the education system in developing the policy from high-level policy into practice at curriculum for excellence. That does not mean that every decision will have been perfectly formed first time, but it is important that the board and all the partners at it take collective responsibility for addressing the issues and responding vigorously to them where they appear. We are very keen to see that the board does that. I will finish on the point. You are not embarrassed and you feel that you have done a very good job in the circumstances. I feel that, although nothing is perfect, the curriculum for excellence management board has been a good vehicle for developing curriculum for excellence thus far, and there is more work to be done to fully realise the benefits of curriculum for excellence. It is a very major reform programme, as I am sure that the committee is well aware of that. I will let Tavish in first then, and I will speak up that. I think that we have taken the point about development. I think that the criticism that many had was about the implementation of curriculum for excellence and the management board's ability to do that. In your opening remarks, you said that Education Scotland would now have the key role—or, I think that you used the phrase, key role in providing guidance to head teachers to make decisions on the pupil's equity fund. Did I get that right? Was that what you said? We have a key role, yes, a leadership role. Has that been discussed in the curriculum for excellence management board? There is a governing mechanism for the Scottish attainment challenge. Has it been discussed in the curriculum for excellence management board? The pupil equity fund and the Scottish attainment challenge has, yes, indeed. Education Scotland is going to play a role in giving guidance to schools. Is that correct? We are in helping schools to access appropriate guidance. What does that mean? For example, the decision making—I am sure that you are familiar with the Scottish attainment challenge—is quite deliberately asking head teachers to make decisions that suit the needs of their pupils in the way that they use the equity funding coming to them, but we are very keen that they do that on the basis of evidence of what works. Of course, there is no one single solution that every school across Scotland should be using, but we provide access to that evidence. What is that evidence? Tell us how many pages are head teachers now getting of evidence before they are meant to then take an assessment of what is best for their school? Pages are entirely misleading, but we have an online— What are they getting then? Tell us exactly what they are getting. We have an online resource called the interventions equity for instance. Okay, how big is that online resource then? Any individual head teacher will go in and explore an aspect of that resource to find useful. We are getting very good feedback on that, I have to say, from head teachers who are looking for guidance. We are also looking, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, we are contracting or seeking to contract with the Education Endowment Fund, which is set up by a certain trust and provides an internationally renowned and undoubtedly access to assessment of different interventions that can be used to prove performance. There is a range of information that is now available to head teachers. Was that range of information carefully considered by the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board so that there would be a clear understanding across all the agencies, chaired of course by a civil servant of the Scottish Government, as to what would be available for head teachers? Was that discussed in detail prior to what you have just described to the committee being available to head teachers? The forum for that discussion primarily has been the governance mechanism for the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which involves local authorities, Solace, Coesla, etc. Is there an advisory committee for that purpose? It has not been discussed at the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board, it has been discussed at a different board, is that correct? Or at a different meeting? Both are true. The Scottish Attainment Challenge has its own governance mechanism, which gives the detailed consideration to how that goes forward, but cross-references undoubtedly are the management board are fully aware of what is happening in the Scottish Attainment Challenge. What I am trying to drive at is dark previous criticisms of a committee were about the lack of joined up work between all the different agencies, including your own, so that when information was provided to schools that had been thought through by all the agencies in whatever forum is appropriate, has that happened? It has an appropriate forum, which is the Scottish Attainment Challenge governing mechanism. We can be very clear that if we were to come back to this as a committee, SQA, local authorities, Education Scotland and all the others know exactly and have agreed exactly what is now being presented to head teachers in terms of the resource to allow them to make decisions over the pupil equity fund. Indeed, they have been involved in the governing mechanism for all of these things that is appropriate to the Scottish Attainment Challenge, so local authorities, COSLA, full members of that process. Also, I should add an academic advisor that has been appointed to the Scottish Attainment Challenge to ensure the quality of that evidence. So on Liz Smith's point that we won't have the same confusion again that we saw in the past, we can be sure that head teachers will be able to come and sit in this chair where you're sitting today and tell us that this resource has been helpful because it's been agreed and understood across all the different agencies. There's no duplication and 1,820 of this, that next thing, so that's been sorted out. And I say that we absolutely take the point which the committee has raised in a few occasions that it needs to be simple for teachers to get to a one-stop shop from where you can find good quality evidence. That's absolutely what we're seeking to do. Thank you. Please explain to me why a head teacher would have to go and get all this evidence themselves. Is it not one of the roles of Education Scotland to say that this is good practice, you've got this, the issue is about your choice about what you're going to spend the money on rather than having to go off and do the research and find new means and processes about which you can deliver on some of these questions? Yes, sorry, I've not been clear, but that's exactly what we are trying to do to give head teachers access to an easy one-stop shop online resource, which gives them access. Well, we provide that portal to the head teacher, so they don't have to go hunting around lots of different places for evidence or dig into research journals. I have to say, I am sceptical about the idea that simply by, you know, passling off a bit of money and giving it to the head teacher within a school, that creates a sense of autonomy and control on that. I'm sceptical about that, but I would have thought that it's more likely to work when the head teacher has the resource and has the ability to access advice about how he could spend that money, not a one-stop shop, but at the Education Agency in Scotland. Is that not the Education Agency's job to say that these things work? We're not going to give you stuff that doesn't work. That is absolutely what we're doing, giving them quality-assured evidence. We're very helpful to have the Education and Endowment Fund resource, which is very thoroughly tested against evidence for impact, so those are quality-assured interventions that head teachers. We are pointing them to. Select from these, there are other things, which you should steer clear of. Without laboring the point, is it not the job of Education Scotland, as the Education Agency in Scotland, to identify interventions that work and then work with local authorities and schools to implement them? Is that not their job? That is what you're saying. It is our job, and we take fully that responsibility to provide that guidance that you're asking for there, to hear our quality-assured interventions from which you can select to suit your local circumstances, because there is no one single magic bullet that will cure equity, as I'm sure the committee is well aware, but to make head teachers' job much simpler, here is access to some quality-assured interventions from which you can select. I think that the reality seems to be that what John and Tavish were looking for, the answers were there, but there seems to be some confusion about what is available. We talked about clarity, we talked about it at the last time, we're getting that again today, where it may well be that all the answers are within there, there are different points that Liz has raised that don't really come under this, but it took forever to get to the point that we could say yes, that information that you're seeking is there. There should be some clarity about that. We shouldn't have to be asking questions about where the implementation lies, like you're talking about it being the attainment fund, the attainment group. We shouldn't have to ask that, because that information should be quite readily and easily available, and if we're struggling to figure out where the responsibility lies, then how can others do it? We have to make sure that the information is clearer, it's out there, it's transparent for everybody that wants it, and also the point that was made by John there, it's clear that you're doing what education should be doing, but it took us a long time to get to that. Can I also just add that we're making great efforts to make sure that the people who really matter had teachers are clear about this, hence the series of conferences that we ran with Scottish Government, which literally gave almost every headteacher in the country all the ones who are getting pupil equity funding access to direct face-to-face day with our teams, where they were shown exactly what support is there to help them to make those decisions, and also to network, because some of it's about collaboration between schools locally. Before I move on to Colin, who's got some questions around the school inspections, as is to others. Going back to Liz's comments, clearly things are not as bad as the tone was from there, but there were a number of issues that were raised by us that were not satisfactorily responded to. I think that we all thought in the responses from Education Scotland, so hopefully we'll get more clarity as the day goes on today. I want to explore some of the issues around this new shorter visit inspection model that you've brought in. First thing, a very simple question. On page 8 of your submission on 17 March, your response you state, as part of the suite of inspections, so the new shorter visit isn't an across the board thing, I would imply from that. Can you maybe explain a little bit more about it? We have now a suite of a proportionate set of inspection models to suit different circumstances, but Alistair is the best person to elaborate on that. As part of the review over the last two years, we have been doing a lot of consultation with stakeholders. As a result of that, we agreed that we needed to have a situation where, instead of having a single inspection model for schools, for example, we had what we called a suite of models with different approaches to suit different circumstances, and that allowed us to do different things. We have a core of a full inspection model, as you would anticipate it being at establishment level. In addition to that, we have things like a short model that we've been developing, the neighbourhood model and the local thematic model that would form our suite. In addition to that, we have been exploring short notice, which is a different thing entirely about obviously just turning up under a short notice. Do you have descriptions of these? Yes, they are on our website. We have a special area of our website on the inspection review that has been up and running for that full period, where we have explored what those options are. As we have developed and revised the full model and finished certain aspects of the review, the full material is then placed available for everybody in the country to have a look at. The shorter visit inspection model implies that some things are not going to be done in that inspection. Between a full inspection model and the shorter visit, what would or would not be done in that visit? The full inspection model is looking to cover five quality indicator areas. In a shorter model, it clearly cannot achieve that full coverage within its timescale. For the national improvement framework, we are committed to providing a statistically valid sample of schools based against three of those five quality indicator gradings. That requires a certain number of those full inspection models to achieve that. The shorter model allows us to focus on, for example, themes that are arising during a year. There is a core health check in effect, if we want to put it that way, but it allows us to focus on, for example, emerging themes so that we could do that for one term and do a series of inspections on a shorter basis. We get round a larger sample, we can find out more quickly and feed back into the system things that it wants to know. It is more fluid, although what we are looking at as a core of each of those is self-evaluation and self-improvement and raising attainment and achievement. Those would be core to whatever inspection model we did. Obviously, you rely on inspections to gather information. What are the implications for the improvement function if you have shorter inspections that do not gather as much information? It is a balance between getting round a large enough sample so that we have coverage across the country versus a smaller sample looking at it in more depth. Why we approach with the menu, if you like—I know that there are just two options within the menu—is so that we can get a broad coverage plus some more in depth to back that up in certain areas. Across the piece, that gives us a better picture of how the system is performing. Your belief is that moving to the shorter inspection model will not compromise in any way your data collection and the implication on that is the improvement function that you have? It does not compromise the data collection because our statisticians have come up with a statistically valid sample that was peer reviewed by the Scottish Government's statistical department to make sure that they were comfortable with that, which then provides evidence through to the national improvement framework. Earlier on, you referred to talking to stakeholders. Which stakeholders did you involve before making the change? Two means of doing that. We have an external reference group that I mentioned previously that actually meets again next week. That involves every key stakeholder that you can think of, from national parents bodies to young people's organisations to professional associations, local government, COSLA, et cetera. It covers the full suite. That has been really supportive and helpful for us as an agency because it allows us to get a very quick idea of feedback about how people are reacting to different ideas. They have helped to guide us going forward. Specifically on consultation on proposals and ideas, we went around and did events across the whole country for teachers and for young people. We had hundreds and hundreds of teachers attending these. We took workshops in, for example, professional association conferences and ran workshops there to gather information. All that was collated and fed back to this external reference group, as were our proposals for how we take things forward. Obviously, there has been some discussion about the number of inspections you have been doing. Again, in the same document that I referred to previously on page 8, you are talking about being committed to increasing the number of school inspections. Obviously, the first thing you think when you see you have brought in a new system of shorter visit inspection models, that it is just a way to get the numbers of inspections up to tick a box. It is not where it came from, and that is genuinely not where it came from. It came from this consultation over the past two and a half years of this inspection review. There was a feeling that we needed to have more of a mixed approach. In particular, I would say that not the shorter model was the biggest focus of that. It was things like the localised thematic. I was to look at things from a learner's point of view, not from an establishment's point of view. Maybe we will come back to that, but to answer your question directly. The biggest issue about increasing inspection numbers is that we lost the number of staff due to retirement and people moving on. As I said last time at committee, these people came in in about the May of last year. It takes about nine months for them to be fully trained to do the first managing inspector role, which increases numbers. That is when they reach a point where their numbers start to increase. I was just yesterday in an inspection with one of those new colleagues who was doing their first managing inspector role. Those new staff coming in allows us to increase numbers, as well as having a shorter model. If you think about the complications of planning people, the shorter model is not short enough that would allow us to, for example, increase numbers dramatically. You are very much calling. I am going to have to cut you off there. I want to bring words back in on this issue, and then Ross has got a supplement. Thank you. Can we just get some clarity about the number of inspections and the number of inspectors? Because, if you recall, at the last meeting, there was considerable doubt as to whether the statistics that we have been provided with were accurate. Can I just be quite clear that the total number of primary plus secondary inspections currently stands at 1.19 as of 31 March? Is that correct? No, it depends if you include special in that, which we do as schools. No, the total number of primary and secondary, my understanding from SPICE, and in context with what you said in paragraph 204 in your recent statement, am I right that this is 119? No, it is 1.23, but it is within that ballpark. It is 1.23 if it is only primary and secondary. So that was the number that was completed by 31 March? Yes. Okay. On 30 November, you told us that there would be nine additional inspectors being trained. Are they through that training or not quite yet? Just right now, as I said, yesterday was the first managing inspector role for one of those, and others have been doing it at different times. So we've now got 66 plus nine, which is 75, is that correct? Well, and then we've, for example, we lost four in early years over the autumn, and I was just interviewing last week to fill in those figures. I would have to double check the figures, but it's roughly that, yes. Okay. Can I just ask for clarity again that the number of inspections, the number of school inspections since 2012-2013 has gone down? The number of primary and secondary school inspections has fallen? Yes, it has, yes. And can I also ask, in terms of the number of inspectors, that number, even if it's 66 plus the nine eventually, that number has also gone down since 2010? The number of inspectors overall went down. I don't know the period, but I think we had those figures before. Well, according to the statistics that Spice currently updated, do you agree with that? I'm sure that's the case. I don't have the figure in front of me, but I'm sure that's the case that the numbers of inspectors did go down, although now they are increasing again. Right. I know other colleagues who are going to come to this issue about inspection and the dual role, but can I just ask, why is the number of school inspections falling? Well, there are a number of reasons for that. Primarily, we spent a period where inspectors were redeployed from establishment inspection to support the implementation of curriculum for excellence, but you shouldn't take that to mean that they weren't doing evaluative activity, because a lot of what their time was doing was, for example, doing a much larger, shorter-scale visits to things like secondary schools to check where they were in terms of redesigning their curriculum in light of curriculum for excellence. So we need to be clear about the distinction about the number of establishments that we inspected versus other evaluative activity that we inspected. How many of these inspectors who were seconded off to local authorities to do that very job that you've just described, how many of them were not engaged in a full-school inspection? No, they weren't seconded off anywhere. They were working for us just that they're deployed. Well, they were working in local authorities according to some of the inspectors that I spoke to. They were working with local authorities, but they weren't seconded to a local authority. So how many of them were not involved in full-school inspection? It's not quite that simple, because it's not about a full-time person being deployed to do that 100 per cent of their time. An inspector's time has broken down into a number of days, and as a number of core days for establishment inspection, in some of that time would have been diverted, but it would have been variable for each individual, depending on what the particular issue was. So I can't give you an FT equivalent. Is there some way that that information would be available for the committee? It would be very difficult. In the view of Education Scotland, given the comments that have just been made there, do you think that the inspections, be they official inspections or the kind of evaluative inspections that you were talking about there, the number of them dropped or is there any evidence to suggest that that kind of level of inspection continued to take place? For me, the overall level of evaluative activity remained relatively unchanged over that period. Is there any evidence of that? We would have to try and identify what the scope is of that, because I think we just have to make a distinction. The establishment inspections is what people focus on. How many schools did you visit for a full inspection? It's more difficult when you start to say, so what else classifies as evaluative activity? There was an awful lot of work within other projects. It would be difficult to say that if someone was assigned to a project of a piece of work which was evaluating the implementation of the curriculum and secondary, for example, for a period of time, how much of that time was actually spent in schools doing that actual work versus writing up a report about it? We would certainly quantify what some of those other activities looked like. A classic example, relatively recently, would have been the exercise that we undertook to evaluate the tackling bureaucracy activity in each of the 32 local authorities. That was inspectors that undertook that work, HMI. Naturally, it had some knock-on impact on their availability for other work, but it was an intensive short-term piece of work. There are other examples, as you say, the field work visits, which were undertaken at key points. It may be helpful to quantify those, if that helps. You can send those sort of examples to us. Ross, you wanted to come in on a supplement. Just on some of Mr Dylunia's remarks in regards to feedback about the inspections. In our committee report, we welcomed that Education Scotland was going to try and tackle some of the misconceptions around it, but we urge you to engage directly with schools. Your response was that the media campaign was a media campaign the best way to engage directly with front-line staff who have misconceptions. It is only one aspect of our approach. We are not trying to say that the media campaign will answer all the misconceptions that people would have about inspection, but it was a good start. The media campaign has been very well received, and the amount of activity that is around that social media campaign has been very strong. We also engaged with, for example, the professional associations and others, so that they could build on that media campaign and push it out through their channels and mechanisms as well. However, that is not the end of the picture. We would continually look to do things, for example, by attending our local authority teachers' meetings or whatever to help them to understand the new processes of inspection. We do that as a matter, of course, but we are doing it more now because of the inspection review and the changes that have been taking place. On your response, you mentioned that you were using Glow to allow teachers to engage directly with the director on that. Obviously, Glow is not used consistently by teachers across the board. How are you addressing that to make sure that you are not getting a skewed sample of engagement? Again, it is only one mechanism. I was on a Glow TV, as they call it, episode quite recently, and there is another one coming up. That will only cover those who can access the mechanisms through that. However, we also, for example, I personally have given presentations to professional association conferences, run workshops. Our staff get out and about. The key people, our key lead officers, the lead inspectors, get out into local authorities and run sessions on those things so that we can get direct feedback across the country. So this is only one approach that we can take. Thanks, and just one final point, convener. What engagement have you had with learners about the inspection programme? Yes. We ran, with the help of young Scott, we ran a range of activity to try to get direct feedback from learners during the inspection process, during the inspection review process. That was really important to us, because obviously young people are the end consumer of education, and so we wanted to try to get their views. We also, as a matter of course, through inspections, of course, engage with young people in focus groups and talk to them about a whole range of things about how they feel about education in their school and education more broadly. So we continue to do that. It's a challenge. There is no easy way of saying you can access all of young people. But we are trying hard to get young people more directly involved in feedback to us about how they feel about inspection, its role and improvement. Thank you. Mr Delaney, you are the chief operating officer of Education Scotland. So that must give you a broad role over all aspects of the day-to-day running of Education Scotland. You must work very closely with Bill Maxx. Is that correct? How would you describe your role? Yes. I oversee the running of the internals of the organisation, how the organisation operates, its planning, its finances, its HR, and its obviously future direction. You are also the director of inspections. In your response to the committee, you describe that the director of inspection is distinct and separate from the chief executive, and that inspection activity through your governance mechanisms is independent. How on earth can it be distinct and separate? Are you also the chief executive operating officer? Because the inspection programmes operate through an assistant director, who is answerable to me, the complaints process feeds through me, I have a clearly defined responsibility to ensure the independence of inspection and to ensure that that is not in any way impacted upon by any external influence. And so we have a governance setup that allows that to be separately considered. But you report directly to Bill Maxx as the chief executive. That's correct. So how on earth can that be distinct and separate if you have got that direct reporting relationship? I'm completely confused at how you can say that. That's quite clear in our framework document how that operates, but the part of Alistair's job, which is around the director of inspection, you could look at it as inspection strategy and compliance, if you like. That is a clear ring fence area of his role where I don't interfere if there are complaints about the inspection process, about some alleged interference and inspection. Alistair deals with that, and I don't get involved in that. But if it's the chief operating officer over the vast bulk role, and that's a very senior position, with scope over everything that you do, answering directly to you, surely there are significant consequences if he says no to you. I mean, regardless. I mean, how on earth do you decide what hat you're wearing? I mean, how do you split your heads in two? I mean, I just have never come across an organisation that could manage a management structure like that. I think that having a regulatory role embedded within an organisation is perfectly feasible. I don't... It's never emerged as an issue, to be honest, because frankly... But you're saying it's distinct to sit on arm. I totally accept that, but you're saying that his role as chief inspector, or sorry, director of inspections is distinct and separate. It strikes me that if he has his own... With regard to the quality of inspection, too. ...in support of a chief operating officer, that's just our fiction. No, indeed. It has worked in practice very clearly, and any complaints about inspection processing in an individual case would be handled directly through our processes. Is there quite clear through Alasdair as deciding regularly? That's a good question, and you don't think there's an issue. That hasn't been an issue, so... No, indeed. You've obviously had in Education Scotland an inspection regime has had a very important role in terms of assessing how curriculum for excellence has been implemented. Can I just ask... Judging by your responses to our report, is the inspection regime the sole source of data in terms of the implement... What other sources are there? No, and clearly there are statistics. I mean the Scottish Government's analytical services team pulled together stats from the SQA and other sources about attainment, for example, about health and wellbeing, actually, and other aspects of curriculum for excellence which are equally important. So there is that kind of evidence. There is also... There may be research undertaken independently of government, indeed, by, for example, Mark Priestley, you've probably come across from Stirling University and others. So there are a number of different sources. So that's the Scottish Government's feedback. But in terms of Education Scotland, what are your sources of information and data points? I mean, is it... And even if it's not exclusive, is the bulk of that from the inspection regime? Yes, that is the bulk. I mean, we don't commission a large research programme, for example, the research programme for Scottish Government's run from Scottish Government, not from ourselves. Occasionally we might commission a small piece of research about a project that we've specifically commissioned, but no, we're not a major research commissioner. So our own evidence that we gather at our own hand is our primary source of first-hand evidence. But of course we also do look at the stats in form of you about trends that are appearing in SQA data and other data in the system. Through the implementation period, based on your response to us, that you adapted your approach through curriculum, practice and implementation to assess that, is that correct? Can you elaborate a little on adapt to assess? I was just using your words. Yeah, I mean, we certainly, in terms of, yes, what our inspectors were looking for clearly, we'd have, in fact Alan, you maybe want to elaborate a bit on that. Yes, each year the evidence coming through inspections and from stakeholders about where the strengths and areas for attention in curriculum corrections would also be discussed at the CFE implementation group with the main stakeholders who are responsible for the delivery. Now through that, there is a chance to see exactly what's going on and set out some activities that lead on directly from what's happening each year into the following session. Cymru, that's an important point. So you've stated that the inspection regime is independent, but you're also stating very clearly, unequivocally, that an inspection regime was changed and adapted in light of your role in the implementation of curriculum corrections. I don't understand how these two thoughts are compatible with each other. Not the inspection regime. So Maxwell, to answer that point. No, let me be clear, for example, the amount we had agreed collectively across the management board on a rollout programme effectively, if you like a six year rollout of CFE through the secondary stages, which began in 2010, as the first cohort picked up with new curriculum guidance, it made clear sense that inspectors should respect the expectations that went with the rollout. So we would be expecting to see CFE in S1 initially and in S123 and those changes rollout. So that's what we meant by adapting your role in CFE. And go on to alter the approach to inspection. I think you've just said it there. Yeah, and that's reality. I mean, there would be no sense in judging by standards ten years old of what we expect in terms of a curriculum now. We clearly have to adapt what we expect and it's right and proper. Indeed, many respects we're raising the bar as we do so. Right, but that's completely understandable. Tavish has got supplementary. That line of questioning, do inspectors assess the effectiveness of Education Scotland guidance on schools? Yes, we do. We pull. Which bit of view is we in this case? Our inspectors, as they're out in schools, evaluating what they see will bring feedback on whether or not that guidance is having sort of the desired impact or whether it's being effective in its intention. And yet, in the report that you mentioned in your opening remarks, the Quality and Improvement of Scotland Education 12 to 16, there is no mention of that what so ever. So they may have assessed it but they never produced a recommendation? The feedback we gain from inspections is fed back regularly both to ourselves and to the Water Broader Crack and Precision Implementation Group. And as a result of that, we have taken additional steps at times to emphasise, I suppose a classic example that would have been last May the statement I gave which effectively re-emphasised and clarified guidance which did not appear to be Dr Mackay, that's not what I asked. I asked why is there nothing in this how many pages of a report that mentions inspectors' findings about the effectiveness of Education Scotland's guidance and its impact on schools. And there's no recommendation in relation to that subject whatsoever. That report is written for a practitioner audience and it provides what do you not think practitioners would care about this? Practitioners would care about this, wouldn't they? Absolutely. And we have mechanisms for discussing where there's a need for additional guidance or indeed reduced and streamlined guidance as we have done. So Daniel Johnson's point is quite correct. There is a clear conflict of interest and the fact that you can't even make a recommendation about that guidance based on inspectors' own findings illustrates that, doesn't it? No, I do not accept that at all. We will. All right, thank you. We're going to move on to Joanne now. This isn't the only organisation where people wear two hats, if you like. So, I mean, we shouldn't pretend that this is unique for Education Scotland. Yes, that's why we're here, but we shouldn't pretend that it's the only place in the world that this sort of thing happens. Joanne? I mean, I do think there's an issue about the notion of collective responsibility. Can often mean that nobody's responsible and nobody's accountable. I think that's one of the frustrations, but I'm interested in... May I understand you have to make this organisation work because it's government policy that Education Scotland should have both responsibilities? I get that. That doesn't mean you have to say is the optimal model, it's the best model in terms of how we deal with their education system, but can I just clarify? You've accepted that there are fewer inspections and there are fewer inspectors since, I think, 2012. Is that right? You've also said... I do find astonishing that one of the things that you did say was that inspectors have been redeployed but it's okay because they're doing evaluation work and it transpires that evaluation work is evaluating the mess that's been made around the bureaucracy around curriculum for excellence. So the inspectorate bit of Education Scotland is assessing that in curriculum for excellence terms, how poorly it's been delivered in terms of guidance. That job would not be seen as a normal job for inspectors, surely, would it? I mean, I understand you redefining its evaluation but would you accept it's not what you would see as a normal role for an inspector? I wouldn't accept that. I think it's absolutely normal that we use inspectors to assess extent which consistent good practice is applying at a local level across the local authorities, across the schools in the country. That's partly the benefit of having a national inspectorate which looks across those boundaries. With respect, that wasn't what was described. It was described as people who were redeployed to evaluate and write a report on tackling bureaucracy which staff could have told you from day 10 probably that there was an issue with. And I wonder whether that redeployment, I mean perhaps I can ask Alice to this, that redeployment would have happened if it had been a separate body. Would a separate body that was responsible for inspections given that correction for excellence happened would have redeployed people out of its organisation to assess the scale of a problem? Again, it's the issue of the words redeployed. It's actually deployed. In other words, nobody came out of the organisation. It was just a task that we were asked to do by having done a task. Is a task normally if the inspector was a separate body? Would it be a task for an inspectorate to write a report on the accumulation of bureaucratic guidance to staff in implementing a new curriculum? I don't see it any different than asking for example in years to come the impact of the PEF money or any other initiative or thing which is going on in the system which could be a barrier to good effective learning and teaching and good outcomes for learners. So we would be interested in anything like that. But inspectors hadn't really thrown up this issue until staff had flagged up. Anyway, I suppose at my last point I'm going to appreciate McQueen's point of view there's a lot of things to be done. The first point I made was you don't have any choice but to make this work but can you cite any evidence from any external organisation other than the Scottish Government who advocate or advocated that it makes sense to bring together an organisation which is developing policy alongside the organisation that's then inspecting its impact? Which external organisation we know from our own evidence that academics have expressed grave concerns about it? I wonder if you can cite people who, before the Government decided to do it, were advocating this position? Can I start by clarifying that we don't set policy? What we do is we support the implementation of agreed policy and inspect and evaluate around that. Can I also clarify that this is not particularly new? If the 5 to 14 reforms some of us will remember or the HM inspectorate of schools at that time led the reform process very directly, the under two examples of activity very much as we have done recently around looking at how well it's implemented. It wasn't developing policy, it was firefighting. No, it was looking at the effectiveness of steps at local authority and some local authority has taken very good steps around how to reduce the load that they were requiring in terms of planning and reporting to parents and all of that and circulating good practice from that, which we have done since that time and we will follow up on that again. But that is absolutely, that would have been, I am absolutely convinced, the same under a separate inspectorate would have been doing that kind of activity and did do in the past as required by the development of our current initiative. So, one organisation, individual, academic, ahead of this organisation performed in the way it has been argued that it would be beneficial to have the agency for education Scotland being in a separate, in the same body as the inspection group. I mean, apart from the Scottish Government, was there anybody that you know of who argued for this model? If you don't. I can't name sign anyone now. I'm not suggesting that. There's a name I could put to who suggested that specifically now. That's fine, thank you. You've answered the question and we'll just leave it at El Ross. Dr Maxx will understand that you've been the chief executive of the CFE implementation group since it was created in 2011. Is that correct? Yes, it is. I notice in the recent report that's been quoted the quality and improvement in Scottish education 2012-2016 report that it was noted and a quote from it that Scottish education does not yet provide old children and young people with consistently high quality learning experiences. Unless as variability is addressed, we will not achieve the national ambition of excellence and equity for all learners. Dr Maxx, could you explain to the committee why, during this inspection period, which has clearly been under your own stewardship, we still do not see consistency across the board? Of course, a big question and we will continue to promote consistency. We have a devolved system of the management of education where local authorities run schools and schools of a degree of autonomy themselves. The answer to that lies in consistently identifying, flagging up and disseminating the most effective practice and encouraging others to adopt it and removing any obstacles that get in the way of them doing so. But education systems and I'm sure you'd accept it as a fair point are in constant improvement. None can stand still or ever reach a state of perfect perfection is probably not something that we'd realistically suggesting we're about to have. But greater consistency and spread of best practice is the key to achieving the world class status that we're looking for. In the same report, it was highlighted that 42 per cent of ELC settings, 40 per cent of primary schools and 43 per cent of special schools that were inspected, haven't implemented the CFE beyond a satisfactory level. Moreover, it was noted and again a quote from the report that colleges have made some progress with implementation of curriculum for excellence. There's more to be done. We're now five years on from the inception of the implementation group and the CFE is far from being implemented properly. Why is that? These are big structural changes. I mean if I pick up the college aspect and college, we might talk one of the themes that we highlight in our quiz report is around greater networking between schools and local colleges and other training providers to deliver effective a full range of senior phase provision. That's been helped, I think, to some degree by college regionalisation reforms. It's been helped by changes to senior phase reforms but there is some very good practice out there in some areas but we need to see that spread much more widely so that young people really are accessing an integrated offer from across the schools and local college and training provision in their areas. I don't know if there's any more you want to say about that. Change in education takes some significant time in there and whilst we're seeing a lot of change happening in the quiz report points out to these changes in terms of the ways that the schools are organising the curriculum, improving learning and teaching to actually deeply embed that in the way they're talking about in terms of the big aspirations for curriculum for excellence. That does take time to filter right across every single school. I think what the quiz report is doing is stepping back and looking at where the system is compared to where we think it should be. And as Dr Maxwell Bill pointed out there, there are a lot of strengths but just beginning to hone down on what the next areas are to really specifically focus on that will turn that tide tip the balance and put us really into the benefits that CFE is looking for. Of course, I can't handle the convener. Given when we started and where we are now would you say that this is that you're behind schedule, you're on schedule, you're ahead of schedule because you're right, it does take a long time to change education but you know where are we in the process? I accept the point. Is it reducing a very large evaluation to a fairly simple conclusion but I think I would agree that there must be some idea of what the journey was going to be like and I know that you couldn't do it smoothly but yeah and I think I'm going to agree again almost with the OECD's evaluation that we've been through a period which has been characterised by a lot of structural change for everyone in the system to get used to and that has made progress it has changed things but we're now entering a new phase well we're in a new phase now we're really driving out the benefits of those changes and ensuring that schools, colleges, whoever who have only half heartedly and there are some adapted to the new curriculum for excellence opportunities really grasp them going forward how we the issue for the whole system and for us as part of that undoubtedly how to promote and make sure that best practice gets really embedded and spread across the system so the job is certainly not done yet so you would be confident then that Education Scotland and I know it won't be you because if you're impending the time Dr Maxwell but we're in front of us in a year's time a two year's time that the corner would have noticeably have been turned Yes, I think so Thank you Yay Let me let Liz on first That's a very simple question The cabinet secretary said in the chamber in December that he was considering the reform of agencies including Education Scotland's part of the governance review Do you think that that is a good thing and what would your reform structure look like? It wouldn't be for me to comment on what the outcome of that should be but I do think that it's a good thing to a governance review such as the Government are undertaking at the moment to look at all parts of the system and how they interact together so it makes perfect sense that Education Scotland should be part of that as the other national bodies and also local authorities I think that a key issue though if I can be a little more helpful in terms of the governance review for the role of the agency will be how the role of the agency interacts with regional working because it's something we're also keen to promote across local authority boundaries there's what we're doing at the moment for example with the Tayside group if you like, Angus, President Cunroth and Dundee and the Northern Alliance you've probably heard of so looking at how we adjust what we do if Education Scotland is continuing this form to best leave our national role with regional capacity which we do think needs improved in the system the kind of role that local authorities can play in supporting improvement and challenging progress in their own areas probably better done in the future I think through regional arrangements and individual local authorities they'll trying to do it separately so that's a... Dr Maxwell in a submission to this committee on the 30th of November where guidance from Education Scotland was being looked at teachers were asked by the committee does the guidance and support associated with CFE build a world class curriculum for all learners in Scotland now a huge two thirds of the respondents disagreed with that statement now combine this with the findings within the quality and improvement in Scottish education report it's rare to suggest that the implementation of CFE through the current structure of the implementation group just hasn't been effective I think the structure has got us to the point where we need to now move forward and it will require different activities going forward to fully embed the changes the structural changes that have been made the implementation group had a particular role I should say to co-ordinate between SQA ourselves college development network and some other bodies who were providing key aspects of the national support to support the transition particularly as qualifications new qualifications work through the senior phase the broad general education and senior phase years that's now moving forward we're now moving the structural changes in many respects are being made although there are still clearly refinements being made as was mentioned earlier around the national qualifications with SQA particularly leading on that that implementation group was created to make absolutely sure and apart from the group meeting we have senior accountable officers within each of the organisations we meet monthly to make sure we are joined up on the support and guidance that goes on around delivering those changes we're getting beyond the structural change phase of CFE I think now to where it's down to practice and provision at front line level that needs to be continuously enhanced and spread the best practice spread across the system as I say I look back to the inception of the implementation group in 2011 and before this committee in September the 20th of September 2011 we said my vision is of an education system that is based on a strong national consensus about the purposes of education and the commitment to ambitious levels of achievement for all which is world class in its ability to improve continuously and almost virally spread ideas about the most effective professional practice in ways that ensure that every learner gets the best quality experience suited to their individual needs Doctor Maxwell do you think that that has been achieved and if not why not one thing I can should start by saying is I do think there is still a very broad buy in to where that quote started from the overall purposes and the broad vision for what we want in Scotland from our education system and I do think that's partly because there was such a thorough process gone through early on in the life of the parliament really in 1990 through to 2004 to the national debate around the purposes of education and all of that so I do sense that and I think the parliament's played a strong role in that it has whilst there are differences about aspects of implementation and no doubt not everything has been got right perfectly at every step of that process nonetheless the vision remains constant and the general buy for stakeholders in the system is strong so I do believe that we are well placed to continue to progress to make achieve the ambition albeit we do all need to be constantly alert to making sure the real intentions of the changes are actually realised in practice and that's for us and for all partners in the process and the collective consensus behind the development of curriculum for excellence has been a powerful and I think widely recognised beyond Scotland a feature of the way this has developed okay thank you Daniel you've got a small short I'll try to make it small in your response to Ross Thompson you talk about world class status about constant improvement indeed described by yourselves as the national improvement agency for education Scotland so would you describe the PISA results for sure that we've gone from 10th 11th and 11th for science, maths and reading in 2006 to 19th 24th and 23rd is that improvement or is it something else the PISA results are disappointing put statistically certainly we moved from being above the OECD average in two areas to average on three so that's not acceptable going forward and hence it's partly why we're putting a great deal of effort into supporting the system around understanding standards and literacy and numeracy which is what PISA tends to major on but at their important skills across the curriculum so that needs to improve of course there are many statistics in the world and we also have stats showing that more young people ever rising trends and hires in positive destinations post school are at a record high in fact so there's a range of stats to take into account those were disappointing ones so on international stats we don't see improvement it's only on our internal ones that we do our internal ones are very important and the international ones are only a snapshot of certain aspects of skill at a certain age but that's not to undermine the fact that they are the only kind of benchmark we're involved in where we can compare with other countries across the world that's interesting contrast with your own data I hear what you see around statistics and it does frankly sound rather defensive but I wonder if you had reflected on what we heard from the IPPR last week talking about this issue of positive destinations has been seen as a good statistic when it doesn't define what a good positive destination is doesn't define what a good quality training or education opportunity is and I wonder are you planning to do any work on actually backing up I mean simply to say a positive destination is a job and we've said this before as a zero hours contract with no guarantees, no training and no progression is hardly a positive destination if you have reflected on the IPPR report on this particular question about positive destinations it's really for other agencies to dig more deeply into the definition of positive destinations where you can break them down into higher education, further education employment, training etc and there are trends on the ones I think we'd all accept are probably very clearly positive destinations in the higher education including some evidence that the equity gap has been shifting in a positive direction although we've got a good way to go to get fully through that excited to issue a positive destination as a rebuttal against an argument that internationally we have to do to be doing poorly you're now saying that you think that some positive destinations are positive and some aren't I don't know whether it's something that you perhaps give the committee more information on the work that you're doing in this so that we're not simply accumulating the fact that people are going into jobs as being a defence against suggestions that the standards are slipping if you're saying that there are some positive destinations which are more positive than others it would be good to see your workings in that regard can I ask the question as the responsibility of education Scotland to decide what's a positive destination I imagine Government satisfaction is working with Girls' Development Scotland With respect then you ought not to be using it as a defence against an argument in international standards We've got a problem We don't run it any more than we run PISA or many of the other sources of data but if you've been asked to reflect on data and you use another set of data to argue against it you can't then say but it's not our job to define our argument against what's been presented in terms of international standards If I was to flip that statistic the opposite of a positive destination in current terms is being out of a job and out of training and out of education in the old days there used to be a term around not in education employment or training that has reduced and I think that that has to be a good thing I wouldn't at face value Thank you for that Is there any other questions before we finish off this session? If not then can I thank Dr Max Mr Armstrong and Mr Delaney for their attendance today and in case we don't see you before you retire I wish you well for the future and whatever you decide to do but I think there may be a possibility that you'll be back sometime before you leave Thank you very much Thank you very much We now bring to the end the public part of the meeting Thank you