 Rwy'n fawr i gael'r 29 ffgwrdd y ddechrau ymgyrch o'r gwaith a'r byd yn 2023. Mae cymdeithas i ymwybodol rwy'r Gwyrdd Magwyr, Msp a'r Llywodraeth Rennie. Yr ystafell yma ei bod yn ddweud y sefydlu i'r panel yng Nghymru a'r cyfwyrdau yn ymdweud i ymdweud yma i ymgeisio'r ymdweud ymgyrch yn y ond o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r cyflawn i'r llansgapol, ac rwy'n meddwl i'r ddechrau'r gwaith o'r rhan o'r ddigon i'r rhan o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r gwaith. Felly, rwy'n meddwl i'r ddweud, Peter Bain, rwy'n meddwl i'r ddweud o'r headteacher o'r obaith oedd o'r hwnnw, o'r tyri o'r hwnnw, o'r tyri o'r prymhwyr o'r prymhwyr o'r prymhwyr, ac rwy'n meddwl iaith o'r cymdeithas nhw i ddim yn y cwmiziwn o'r wathgrifenni i gyryd yna phenomenon oeddarsef. Felly, rwy'n meddwl i'r gorffordd amgyl chests, ac rwy'n meddwl i'r descheg, ac rwy'n meddwl i'r gwaith o'r gwaith sydd wedi eu dтиlogiaeth oedd, ac yn teimlo addyn ni, ond modd i'n gwddwiach i ddechrau. Rwy'n meddwl i ddim yn ei gwybod yn dda, ac mae gyda'n i'r gyflugafodd, ac rwy'n Ond rwy'n credu rydyn ni yw'n cyfalion sydd yn cyflwyno'n faktabodaeth a dod y maen nhw angen i'r gyrwy allan chi. Erbyn arddangos nhw'n arwag sydd gramwag, rydyn ni'n cyflwyno'n hyn o'r mhir. ond rydyn ni'n cyflwyno'n ffordd ac mae'n dditwch wedi'n gyflwyno'n fryd yn fawr mewn i'r dailugau. Tabii dim hi'n gwybod ond mewn gwir y penderfyniadau, Rydym yn dweud ar «Imperimentary Agenda». The commitment to the encouragement agenda has taken decisions that are that of knowing the young people in our care, y cydweithio i'r enw sydd yn ddatblygu atod y cyflawn. Rydyn ni'n gwybodaeth, credu, a gydweithio'n ffordd o canfodol, ac roedd eich dysgu i gydweithio gyda'r cydweithio'r mewn mwy o brifysgawdd o'r awlfyrdd yma, i gyfodill maen nhw i deillio'r gael enghraipsio'r ystod, ond ddais i'r fan gwybod, ac rwy'n cydwy'n gwybod nawr o'r cydweithio'r gwybod, ac mae'n ydych chi'n meddwl i'w iswiadau siaraddau. 190 pwg nesnicion … .. yn gwybod eu lleol. Ond rydym yn wreckw modify iawn y gronbziadau, a pwg wrth dechrau. Ond dim yn respectu trafodau wrth ddechreu'r amswneru lleol i tymoriciaddd am ymnyddio'r diwrnod, ddifonio kuilyffryd .. Those traditional subjects that we all learned when I was at school were much narrower, standardised curriculum that didn't really fit with all the young people in care. In my school, there was no tech aid, no home making noise and there was no biology. We've expanded all those and they are now seen as traditional subjects. What I did at my school and the same for Bahria, Pauline and Peter was to look at what other subjects, what other courses can we run that will suit the needs of these young people better? For instance, in my own school, we abandoned advanced higher techie because we thought the advanced engineering programme was a far better thing for them to experience. That was a project. They had to design an ROV, a computerised thing that goes underwater in the oil industry, and they had to deal with the problems that erupted. The principal teacher of techie, who led it, kept thinking and saying, I hope and pray that when they put it into the pool for the first time, it fails, because then they will have to learn how they can sort those problems. It is problem solving, working together as a team, communicating with each other, learning that they have to do some of their own learning. For instance, they had to learn how to programme in Java. They had never done that in school, so they had to go and learn that themselves. It was about making sure that they would lead on to something else that will improve. For some of the young people—I know that I am taking up too much time here—some of the young people got into university. They did not have the traditional, higher qualifications, but because they were able to talk about the experience that they had and the skills that they had, they got in. One young girl—this is my last point—went for an interview with Dyson, and they said in the last five minutes in the interview, can we talk about this project that you have talked about in your publication? She talked for 40 minutes and they offered a job. That is what I think is where we are going with this, and I am ensuring that we meet the needs of the young people, because the current system does not work. I know, Graeme, that we are going to get the opportunity for you to come into more details on that in some of the line of questioning later on. I know that it is a bit prescribed, some of this, but we are just trying to dig down on how you feel that you have that freedom right now and how it can be and the support that you have to make decisions about your schools. It is great to hear that you are making those decisions about your learners. Can I come to Barry Graeme, please? Yes, thank you very much and thanks for inviting us today. As well, like Graeme, I agree that there are lots of different models across the country, but where it works best is where you give headteachers that room to be creative and the resources and the time to be creative. I think that when you see that and you see it working at its best, there are models that are tailored to their communities. Maybe later on I will get a chance to talk about some of the things that we are doing in Dumfries and Galloway, but it is about time and the resources to make those positive changes to our curriculum that help to meet the needs of all of our young people. Do you feel, Barry, that there is—maybe on the rest of the panel members when they answer—that you are getting the capacity for making that curriculum choices as has changed or improved over the last 10 years? I think that it has become more difficult because of the tightening of resources. When you want to bring in new courses, there is a lot of training involved in that and working with other colleges to help with those things and it is the staffing to go along with that. There are very hard decisions because we have a lot of similarities with all four schools, with national fives, hires and advanced hires, but when you are trying to bring in more vocational courses that relate directly to the needs of your community, that is a bit of a challenge because of the resourcing that would go along with it. Pauline Walker Thank you very much. First of all, it is not consistent. I have the great privilege to be in a number of schools across Scotland as part of other roles that I have such as associate assessor. It is certainly not the same picture across all the local authorities in terms of freedoms to make the choices in your schools about your curriculum. In my own context, in Edinburgh we do and we do make those decisions to meet the needs of our young people, but it is constrained. First of all, by what is a measure of success nationally at the moment, that is a points gathering exercise. Hires are still considered the thing, the gold standard. We are not moving in any way towards a more inclusive curriculum for excellence, such as referring to level 6. That would allow us then to open our curriculum out more. That makes it difficult in my context because I have to be careful that I am meeting the needs of all. That includes those going on to university. Universities have not moved a lot in terms of what they will accept coming through, in terms of success for my local authority in Scottish Government, what that looks like, because it is still very traditional, in terms of the qualifications that they are looking for, and then resources. Staffing is a massive issue. The areas that we would like to develop, where we know vocational courses, would encourage success. A group of young people who are a little bit disenfranchised by what we can offer, cannot get staff. There is a huge shortage in areas such as technical, biology, maths and business. Those are all areas where we have growth in Scotland, but we cannot match that growth in our curriculum because there is a lack of staffing. We are constrained not so much at the moment by our authority in my context, but there are national considerations that are stopping us from growing. The reform needs to happen for us to take the next step, I feel. I have gone as far as I probably can in my own context within the guidelines that we have in Scottish curriculum, and the reform now needs to move us forward so that we can take those bigger steps. It is about that curriculum for equate and excellence, so we have to have our top 50 per cent performing as best we possibly can as they leave, but what about everybody else? How are those pathways going to look right through from 3 to 18? We are not quite there yet. I am different from the other four on the panel today in two respects. The first one is that I am not a school leader, so I am representing my members here. I am not going to be able to talk to you about individual settings and the work that they are doing. The second is that my area that I represent is primary nursery and ASN schools. We do a survey in AHS each year, a workload survey, and we ask members about the empowerment agenda and how they feel about each of the four dimensions in that agenda. They are curriculum improvement, staffing and resources funding. In relation to curriculum and to improvement, the vast majority—we are way up about 80 or 90 per cent of them—say that they have an adequate degree of freedom in relation to those areas of their work. Those are the words that we use in the survey, but when it comes to staffing and budgets, the picture is very different. There are well over 60 per cent of members that say that they do not have an appropriate degree of autonomy when it comes to staffing and a slightly less negative but still very negative picture in relation to funding. Some of the other answers have strayed into reform rather than directly into your question, so I will follow suit. Our members would certainly be saying that in terms of their empowerment and their freedoms in those areas in relation to curriculum and improvement, that is not where the gaps are in relation to resources and staffing, particularly around about management time within primary schools and ASN support and alternative placements. Thank you very much for that, Greg. Peter Bain, what about yourself? Thanks, convener. Nice to see everyone again. My apologies if it is a bit repetitive. Empowerment is something that the Scottish Government is keen to promote and has been for some time. We have the head teacher's charter, which is a good guide, and many of our members would like to see a recognition of promotion of that particular document. Although there is one sentence in the document that nullifies the whole document, that is the ability of local authorities to overrule every other point in the document. In terms of consistency, I am quite lucky that my local authority gives me a very high degree of autonomy and responsibility within the constraints of management circulars and local authority policies and obviously Scottish Government policy. I have the freedom to work with my local community to develop a curriculum that is appropriate for them. As you know, I have four schools, and there are four very different schools in different parts of Ireland. Open is very unique from Tyri and Lismore, for example. That flexibility and that autonomy allow us in partnership with the local community to put on courses that serve the needs of those individual areas. For example, in open, there is a high degree of courses that are linked to the hospitality and tourism industry. There are engineering courses, hairdressing courses, whereas in Tyri we use VC to access business courses, because there are a lot of independent online businesses that operate out of Tyri. That permission to do that is very welcome, but that permission is not granted across all 32 local authorities. Our members through SLS tell us that there are curricular constraints placed upon them where local authority management teams will have a strong veto on their curriculum. The problem with that is why does that veto exist, why do they use that veto? Sadly, like the last thing that I was here, it is to do with the metrics that Pauline was talking about a minute ago. There is a need by some schools, local authorities and communities to ensure that the metrics of school performance are maintained. The desire to keep hitting five plus higher figures at the expense of putting on a vast array of vocational courses that would best suit young people in particular in individual and unique communities is being put to the side to hit the five plus figures. The second constraint is to do with resources. Of course, we are all—this is just natural of the case worldwide—but we are all faced with budgetary concerns for a variety of reasons. Naturally, local authorities pruning their budgets and that comes at the expense of pruning school budgets, which in turn prune staffing at teacher level, support level and resource level beyond that. That is a difficult one to solve. The way to create a consistency, however—even if we are all pruning, there is still an issue of fairness—devolves school management. A DSM policy in the Scottish Government produces a guide for all local authorities and schools to follow is not being followed by local authorities across the country. I am lucky again because we follow DSM in its purest form and we allow what is referred to as unlimited environment, so that a head teacher has the autonomy to move money between different budgetary lines. That means that if you need to put more staffing into your support service—that is the nature of your school—you can do that. If you have less need for that but you have maybe more need to put resources into your vocational provision, you can do that. More than 50 per cent of local authorities have constrained the devolved school management guidance that the Scottish Government gives them to the point where they dictate the staffing formulas and the resource budgets, which in turn restrict the head teacher's ability to use that autonomy, to use that empowerment that was supposed to have been granted to everyone. Although I am lucky and Pauline Gray am her lucky, it is not the case that is coming back from school leader Scotland members across the board. Thank you very much for those responses. I suppose that it is a bit more of a specific question this and you may or may not all wish to answer this. How do you determine the knowledge content of the curriculum that you are presenting? How could national documentation support better integration of different types of the knowledge that you have spoken about in terms of that curriculum for excellence? Who would like to go first on that, Peter? You caught my eye, I always do that. No problem. That is a relatively easy one, based on what I have just said. It is about identifying the uniqueness of your community and talking to your community and analysing the market forces of that community and the desires of that community. To use it open again, it is clearly a tourism destination, so we are going to put on hospitality courses and there are lots of jobs in hairdressing and engineering, etc. The market forces exist for us to choose from a vast array of courses available on the SQA suite. We put courses on and we promote courses where we know that young people are going to get jobs. To try and push them into someone and there are no jobs for us, it is just not sensible. Additionally, we seek the views of young people and their parents over what their desires are. There are many people, and I will keep using open as an example, who want to go into the arts. There are a number of limited jobs in music and performing arts in open, but most of the time they would have to go down to the central belt or up to Aberdein. They might go to the Conservatoire, they might go to Aberdein, they might go to Motherwell, they might do drama, etc. We know that we have a high number of pupils who have a desire to do that and so we put courses on for that to happen as well. You blend the knowledge that you get from doing the market research of where the jobs are plus asking the families and the kids what they want to do, because we are here to deliver dreams as well as just jobs. That is how we dictate what our curriculum is. It is as simple as that. The legislation allows us to do that, provided that local authorities do not put any constraints on us. Thank you, Peter. Delivering dreams, that is how it is. I quite like that. My microphone was on as well, so Pauline, can I come to you, please? I think that within a senior phase that is a really easy answer because you are working within national guidelines on knowledge content through the SQA normally or through other course structures that you are using. There is very little choice in there. The choice that comes in comes very much from your pupil voice, so really strongly being driven by what our community is telling us they need. That has been very much about global diversity and global issues over recent years and the drive for change has been in there. Within the BGE, first to third year, it is much more open. It is very much a skills-based framework. You cannot develop skills without content and knowledge, so the decision-making has to then come about pathways. Where are those young people destined for within the senior phase, perhaps, and then looking again at local knowledge within Edinburgh, hospitality and leisure is massive, so there is a lot of drive towards there. You have got to look at recent issues such as health and wellbeing. That has been a huge concern for schools now for quite some time, so really looking at that healthy living coming right across the curriculum. It is a fairly straightforward question, in terms of documentation to support it, there are lots of national guidance out there, certainly for the senior phase. What I find within the BGE is that it is a little bit fuzzy, so it can vary from school to school. Because we collaborate, it tends not to, but I think that that is maybe where there could be more national guidance around where we should be looking within the BGE because, as I say, you cannot develop skills without content and knowledge, so what content and knowledge should there be in there, and it is much wider and skills-based within that area. Does anyone else want to comment on that? Is that okay? There are a couple of things that I agree with what you are saying there about maybe what we might call the traditional curriculum and the knowledge and understanding that goes with that, but we also have to add to the skills that we are trying to develop in our young people to give them confidence to thrive in the 21st century, and I think that we are all then trying to tailor part of our curriculum to our local context, so in Dumfries and Galloway, I have got an orchard that was given to us by Maclew estates, so we can get young people out of their developing skills in growing apples and other fruit. We have invested in some poly tunnels. We work very closely with the local colleges. We have developed courses, national progression awards and farming. We have got something like 12 partner farmers and our pupils go out every week to a different farm, so they get a real fuel for different types of farming and a better understanding of what that means in 2023, the different types of farming, the way technology is used, the way that they now use research more than in the past, but we will also then try to link that to learning for sustainability, the whole environmental agenda and trying to make sure that there is a good understanding there of those parts of the curriculum at the same time. I think that it is how you work with your partners when we have found in Dumfries and Galloway that lots of people want to work with schools, sometimes they just do not know how to do that and how their skills can best be used. Specifically I suppose with the smaller businesses as well, they do not have the resource to do that. Can I move to questions now from Liam Kerr, please? Thank you convener and good morning panel. I will direct my initial question to Peter Bain, but if you catch my eye if you want to contribute to these. Peter, just picking up on your comments earlier about the subjects and the number and the range of them, can you help the committee to understand how schools decide on the number and range of subjects? Is that the same across Scotland? If that is done at an entirely local level, then how independent is it and how much is it dictated by resourcing the availability of specialist teachers that you alluded to earlier? The biggest constraint over the number of qualifications that any school can deliver on is the timetable. The timetable, more on anything, drives choice to a very high degree. Traditionally, across the board you may get youngsters in the BGE, so S1, S2, S3 although some schools have gone away from using the BGE and S3, but they would roughly get 13 to 15 subjects a week and they have a period of a week or a couple of periods of PE or something. That is very formulaic and within that schools will use whatever free resources or whatever partners they have etc to try and add some interdisciplinary learning or some spice or some interest or some project work to make it a bit more enjoyable rather than just funnel the kids around 13 to 15 subjects. Sadly, that is what happens in most schools in the country, so I would suggest that we should be reforming the BGE at some stage soon. However, as we move on to the certificated stage where most people have an interest in because qualifications lead us to get our university college places and our job interviews, we tend to find that in S4 that varies between a delivery of say six, seven, eight or even nine subjects depending on how many minutes you give to each period. There is still the same amount of minutes in a week, but some schools choose to limit the amount of minutes they give to each subject so that they can eke out say eight or even nine subjects. I am aware of two schools that do nine. It is mainly seven or eight across a country at the current time, so you reduce the time and how you backfill for that is you steal it from the BGE so you do less broad-gen education in you, but you are not supposed to do that. Schools across the country are doing that because there is not enough time to deliver the 160 hours per course that you need and that is an SQA directive that if you are running an SQA course it is at a national five level or a higher level for example, it is 160 hours. There is nothing you can do about that. How schools then add to that is by usually an S5 and S6, specifically an S6, where the youngsters may have acquired five qualifications at a level that is appropriate to them and their destinations, so if they are running a unit for example with them, they have got five hires on S5. We then supplement the five hires on S5 by doing a whole range of courses. For example, when we offer over 90 courses, that is across multiple levels, so that is levels one all the way through to a foundation apprenticeship level. We offer about 50 kids a foundation apprenticeship level and that is thanks to partners, so we need Skills Development Scotland support for that and we get direct funding from them to do foundation apprenticeships for example. We need the support of UHI Argyll in our local area. They provide tutors to deliver national progression awards in engineering for example, automotive and marine engineering and in cosmetology and in health and beauty. We cannot fund that all ourselves, so UHI provide that funding. Between the external funding sources from SDS and the support of UHI Argyll and from my ability to move the budget, as I said, Argyll and Bute Council give me the authority to move my budgetary lines and then I can buy tutors in them, so I buy in music tutors, in dance tutors, in engineering tutors, in piping tutors, they are all paid from the movement of money and that is what empowerment allows schools to do and allows me to deliver up to 90 subjects, but it is a combination of jigging the timetable to maximise the amount of hours that you need for each of the courses, thinking about pupil choice and deciding where in that timetable and when in that timetable that pupils can access that array of choice and they need that choice. See even the ones with five hires, that is not enough. They need the five hires or they need the five and that fives or whatever the entrance to the job or the college or the uni is, but that is not enough. The unies are asking for the experiences. Great, I keep saying to the kids, see your five hires or your five and that fives, that is one key. That key opens the door to the next question, what makes you interesting now? It is the personal statement or it is the job application that says that I volunteered in this group or I did these extra courses where I was a sports leader. So my son is trying to be a PE teacher just now and he got his five hires in S5 but it is the fitness, the football, the sports coaching, the leadership qualifications that he picked up in S6 at the expense of hires. I am going to be finished with this viewpoint because this is what is partly killing the curriculum and partly killing choice and partly killing opportunity. In my school, I allow that because my son, and he is one of many and I could pick many pathways, he did his qualifications, he got his first key. His second key is the breadth of experience that makes him more ready, more work ready or more uni ready in his case to be a PE teacher that secures his position at uni or secures a position in the job. However, by doing that, the school stats, if you do that for multiple people as I do, my school stats go like that because they have less hires that they are clocking up. So what I could do is I could go see on that extra stuff or not going to do that extra stuff because I actually need my stats to be up here. So I am going to make you do an extra higher in French or I am going to make you do an extra higher in geography on top of your history in your modern studies. I am going to make you do an extra higher in this, that and the next thing or I am going to make a lot of people are concerned about the drop in advance higher numbers. Great, there is not that many people actually need advance higher. What they need is all these wealth of experiences to help them to get the jobs and help them to get the positions at uni and help them to make their way in the life. However, there are still significant numbers of schools and local authorities going, why is your advance higher numbers going down, why is that percentage dropping, why is it in the league table, your advance higher numbers are plummeting? Why? Because few people need advance higher and everybody needs experiences and that is what we try to do. I hope that answers your question. Pauline and Graham are wanting in Liam, so they have cut my eyes just so you know. Yes, thank you and it does and I am very grateful for the answer. I will move to Pauline on the same question but I will direct a question, a short supplemental question to you as well. If the secondary changes the curriculum, if it does the sort of thing that Peter is talking about, how do you ensure that the primary schools are sufficiently dovetailing with the changes that have been made at the secondary level? First of all, in terms of the curriculum structure, the number of subjects in fourth year, fifth year and sixth year is almost a non-question, it does not matter. What you are looking for is that by the time a young person leaves, which in Scotland is quite often sixth year, they should have a totality of qualifications and experiences to enable it to be successful post school. Peter was talking about in terms of whether it is not just hires, it cannot be just hires, it does not get you anywhere anymore, but we know from 10, 20, 30 years ago that young people were highly academic without skills, we are not necessarily successful in the workplace. We need to get that balance right and that means that those experiences need to really build from all the way through from 3 to 18 and that is where we dovetail with our learning communities. I have four primaries that I am associated with in my area and we work together to look at the curriculum to see how can we build the skills all the way from nursery right through so that when our young people leave our learning community they are highly successful. We look at the results, for example, of our leavers with our primary schools to show them where their young people went to, to show the trends and patterns that they are seeing and to perhaps adjust where they need to be within the primaries to make sure that success is equitable and excellent. So there is a lot of work goes into that within schools across Scotland, so all schools in Scotland will have associated primaries where they work in that way and that is how the curriculum and its totality needs to look. You can map a young person's journey all the way through from nursery to S6 and look at how they build the skills, the knowledge and the qualifications on their way through. Now you can do that within general areas, for example, expressive arts, perhaps a maths pathway, a science pathway. You can make your decisions to ensure that those pathways are supported but then you will always have the random pathways that come out the sides and that is where we have been talking about those other experiences that need to be an offer which is why we have 90 courses on offer to allow those pathways. Thank you. I will move Graham Hutton first of all and then I will come back to Barry Graham, if I may. Graham, the initial question was around how schools decide on the number and range of subjects which I know you want to contribute to. Whilst doing that, one of the things that the committee has heard about is the Finnish system and that the Finnish system seems to have a great deal of autonomy in its decision yet at the same time its government is more prescriptive around certain aspects. Given what we have heard already and what you are about to tell us, is there more scope for consistency on what should be taught in schools, so, like the Finnish system, prescribed core subjects and a minimum time whilst allowing the flexibility that we have heard about? I think that it is difficult to say because you cannot just take the Finnish system or parts of the Finnish system and cherry pick it and put it into our system because it does not work. That is one of the problems of the Scottish system. We have adapted here and there we have bolted things on and it does not hold together. If you are taking something from Germany or Finland or what not, it has to be the whole system because the system works there. There is also the cultural aspect of what it has traditionally been used to and there is a history going back to how it got there. I think that there is something to be said for saying that certain things have to be taught in the school without any shadow, without certain subjects in a way, literacy and numeracy, for instance, and health and wellbeing. What I offered at Grove was far wider than what was actually taken up. That is, as Peter says, following the pupil voice of saying what and in your local circumstances we were moving to far more sustainability because the sustainability industry is indeed growing. The games industry is growing as well and therefore we have done ethical hacking and games design. A lot of the things that Peter said and Pauline said I totally agree with, I never really worried about my advanced higher figures because I knew I could double them quite easily if I had put in advanced higher engineering, but I did not because we did the advanced engineering programme that I talked about earlier. There were no qualifications there, but if they wanted to get a Cresta award, they got skills, experience and that led to a much more positive destination for these young people. One of my young people who was wanting to do medicine did the first key, the first door, got the five hires, but then did Fitta, which is fitness instruction training. That is what got her into medicine and unconditional because she was doing that so that she could then work out how the body worked, how the body functioned, rather than doing some other higher, which didn't really add to her cache. There is more scope. The more headteachers are able to adapt their curriculum to suit the needs of the young people in their care, the better. Obviously, there are local circumstances as well. When you are offering subjects, you really have to first of all think, what staffing have I got? For a while I couldn't really offer home economics because I was too staffed down and I couldn't get a home economics teacher for a lot of their money. I couldn't even bake one. It was difficult to offer more there, but when I was at Braveview, we set up the hairdressing salon because we knew that was where a lot of young people wanted to go. That took some resources. It took a bit of creative accounting to do it that way, to make sure that the money was there. However, it was a winner because the young people would see that there was an end. There was a goal that they could reach. We had a wee bit of flexibility there, and we took it, and I think that that is the key. I am very grateful to you all. Barry Graham. I wonder if I will address my remarks to the primary part of your question, the primary schools part of your question. I am a headteacher of an all through schools, so I am responsible for the ELC, the primary and the secondary. I think that that gives me the ability to ensure clearer lines of progression. Probably all schools across the country look at the BGE, outcomes and experiences, literacy and numeracy, but there are different approaches and sometimes that creates its own challenge when all these young people. There are maybe 20 different schools that feed into Wallace Hall. Some are part of my cluster. I have got one school that is part of the school that I am head of, and then you have other ones from other parts of the authority. They all come with a slightly different curriculum, and then you have to try and pull that together and look at how you move forward. The main way that you do that is through the outcomes and experiences, but it can work really well, even down to the level of sharing the facilities that we have that a primary would not be able to access working on things like DAYW together, sharing speakers and sharing things around that, looking at approaches to homework. Different schools have different approaches, and some are going down an approach that might be that they do not encourage everybody to do homework, whereas I have a different approach and I like them all to do that because it allows them to progress and allows me to ensure that I am raising attainment across the school. I think that there are approaches that can help to ensure that there are clearer lines of progression. I think that that helps as they go forward into the BGE, S3 and into the senior fees after that. I am very grateful to you all. It was just to continue that point. I think that working across clusters is extremely important, but primary schools operate differently for different reasons, so they are responding to their different communities. In a situation in which you have 20 schools linking to one secondary school, that is a situation that is repeated lots of times across the country. Yes, there is an absolute need for the primaries and the secondary to work together to provide coherence in the learning experiences, but those individual schools are responding to the different starting points that they might have within different communities. So, complete alignment is not always desirable or helpful, but coherence is something to strive for. Pam Duncan-Glancy, can I come over to yourself now? Thank you, convener, and good morning. Thank you for the questions that you have answered so far. The description that you have given us of education in new areas and the parts that you are responsible for sounds exciting and definitely the future that we should be gearing towards. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that we have heard so far. In your opening remarks, you said that the status quo cannot continue. Pauline Watt mentioned that it was having a significant impact on pupils from poorer backgrounds. Can you tell us what it is about the status quo that is causing the problem for people from poorer backgrounds or disadvantaged backgrounds, and what about the reforms that would change that? What we need to have in Scotland is a curriculum for equity and excellence, and we do not have that. We have a curriculum that is very much about the middle. It is geared towards young people somewhere around a top 50 per cent who perform relatively well and get the right skills and go on to be successful. What we are finding in schools is that we have an increasing number of young people for whom that does not fit their needs. They have very specific needs, and it is not necessarily what the Scottish curriculum looks like. Those young people are particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, who have potentially come from cycles of poverty for many generations, who are very disaffected by society, who see no purpose or point to education and quite often vote with their feet. More and more so because of poverty within the school, so they will come to school because we are able to offer heat, food and clothing, but they will not go to class and they will vote with their feet. The fact that they are voting with their feet in so many numbers is a cry out right across Scotland right now that we are not meeting their needs. I can see it on a daily basis because they need something different. They do need access to culture, to modern languages, to history, to modern studies and so on, but they need a purpose to see where it is going to take them in life because they really are feeling that they are coming to do things without purpose. I do not know why I am doing that, so I will not do it, so I will just walk. What we are constrained with is a curriculum that does not allow us to make changes to meet that need. We need more pathways, so we need our national curriculum to open up, to allow us to make changes that we are not having to hide from the system or if you have an inspection that you might be moved that bit aside a little, but it will be embraced that many of our young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, have the skills and ability to be successful, and it is our job to put place in courses that show them a way through and out of the poverty that they are in. That can be, for example, as simple as hairdressing. That is an incredibly financially viable pathway. It is very skilled, and many of my young people would want to do that because they know that they can then, within their community, go on and work within that area. That would hook them in to developing the skills around business, for example, because they want to run their own business and want to be self-employed. Instead, what I am having to do is provide an experiential curriculum within first to third year that does not meet their needs. Within the senior phase, quite frankly, there is so disenfranchised by that. It is very difficult to bring them on. We are working hard to make that different, but I feel constrained by the current system, even as simple as the stretch aims at the moment. I am expected to get every fourth year a level five course qualification and every fifth year a level six qualification, but those qualifications are very difficult to get in the areas that young people are interested in, so they do not. They look like they have failed. Their success is not recognised or celebrated. They feel like a second-class citizen and they disengage further from society. I firmly believe that, in terms of the reform, of course we need to keep excellence absolutely to the front and centre in Scotland, but we need that equity side now to come in and to the forefront. We do not have that right now. We are constrained to be able to do that. Resource is a big issue, because many of the courses that could meet those needs are only available for colleges. The catering qualifications within level six require a cooking kitchen. Most schools do not have that and most schools have a room with 20 cookers, so we cannot do it. They have to go out to college, but college is not in their safe space. They are not ready yet for that. They need to be within school, where we have support structures to help them to be successful. Those are easy tweaks. Where is the financial viability for these young people to get within their communities? Many do not want to leave their communities. What does that look like? How can we put structures, systems and qualifications in place to allow that to happen? I might come back to you in a second, but I will hear from Graeme. I totally agree with what Napoleon said. It is incumbent on us to try and change the system. There is too much emphasis, as Peter said, on the metrics of five plus at level five at national five and five at highest. The standing of national four, which is a very good course, is not high. Therefore, we need to change how that is looked at in comparison to national five. It does not matter, because those young people have achieved something and they have a qualification, but it does not have an exam at the end of it. That is why the ACM worked very well in many ways, because it allowed teachers to measure what the young people had done and gave them praise and recognition for what they had done. The other thing that we need to change is that we need to treat vocational and academic subjects on an equal footing. Because what a young person is doing in hairdressing—I have to give the example at the polywet—a higher hairdressing is what they have to achieve to that level. A higher physics is a different ball game altogether, but that is the level that they have to get in that subject. So each subject, whether it is higher or level six, and I much prefer level six because we keep calling the hires the gold standard, but we left the gold standard nearly 100 years ago, so we need to look at what is relevant to the 21st century rather than the 20th or 19th century. I think that these young people have to have a purpose and a sense of belonging, and there needs to be pathways that they will see as relevant that will take them to school. Why come to school? One of the things from the pandemic was, well, we did not have to come to school, but we still learned, but we learned other things. What are we actually wanting them to learn? I had a group of young people in S1, it was an article in the Times Edit about it, who really could not cope with school after the pandemic, and therefore we got them on to a course using a local company request to get them hooked into learning again through football. There were many years ago, I think, of kick-off in Dundee. It was very, very successful, but these young people were all footballers, they were all boys, I'm afraid. I had, I have to say, a skill thing, a craft thing that I could talk about as well, where the young girls who were disillusioned, who were loners who didn't want to get involved, were involved in knitting and a kind of traditional female subject, I'm afraid to say, but it was open to everybody, it wasn't there, but the football one was one that engaged these young men in improving their skills there, but not just their football skills, it was their soft skills as well, it was able to communicate better, it was about actually working together as a team. And as we came up through S2 and S3, I realised that it had to be something else for them in school, not just numeracy and literacy, but also we moved to an approach that a company called Alexander's in Dundee, which is a decorating company who do lots of training, and we got these young people in to do start getting a trade. So by the end of S3, they actually had their certificate that they could work on a building site, they couldn't work on a building site because they were 16 yet, but they already had a qualification that they were really proud of, and I'm going to get emotional here, they were really so proud of it because there was something that they achieved through school. Now they were in school half the time, they were actually out at Alexander's or they were out at the quest, so, but they were still engaging in education and that is how we have to move forward. Pauline is right about the cost of things, that was very expensive, but you know it was worthwhile because it made sure that we need to look at how we spend our money, how we use the PEF fund, how we use other funds as well, creatively, to encourage better programmes of learning for young people that are not along the traditional. We're in danger of going, people say, going back to the future, actually, I think we're going forward to the past if we don't amend and change. There's a tide in the affairs of men which taking up the flood leads to fortune. We're at that point now. Ben, can I have a supplementary just on this before you carry on? Just very briefly, Mr Hutton, thanks for sharing that inspirational story and I think it's important to emphasise, following on from what you've said that while yourself and Pauline Walker have stated that these interventions and alternatives and innovative programmes are expensive, what they create in terms of young people contributing to society and what they save in terms of the Christy principles, potentially in terms of other services is something that I think is important to keep in mind as well. I think there's more of a comment than a question from Ben Macpherson, but maybe you can address that. The more we work with partners to develop things, I think that that's one of the things I was going to say earlier with Mr Kerr's questions, is when you're building your curriculum you need to think about what external partners you can work with and I think that has grown in every school. At one point we have over 100 partners that we work with at Grove and the more you can get other people in from the community, from the city or local authority, the better that will support our young people. Thank you both for those comprehensive answers. Do you think that the current reforms will get us to where we need to be? Pauline and then Barry. I suppose that it's quite a passion for me because I get quite frustrated at the pace of change. Is the reality is that young people sitting in our schools now need this reform, not in 10, 20 years time? I really worry about what society will look like if we don't do something very quickly. We need a timetable for change. I do think that they're the right direction. They are very much looking at pathways, at looking at different measures of success. Definitely looking at assessment. Assessment right now is horrific, particularly for our most disadvantaged. ACM model absolutely showed us that these young people are intelligent, they're skilled, they're able but they cannot demonstrate it in the traditional way that we expect them to for many, many reasons. We disadvantage those who have ASN needs by our current models. I think that the current reforms are the right direction. I just think that we need to go on with it and move where we can in the quick winds and get a timetable for change in place so that we can begin to plan. Barry Graham, do you want to come in on that thread as well? Thank you for that. I agree 100 per cent with Pauline. I think that my greatest fear is that there's potential there. We've had all these reviews. Let's get a plan. Why have we not got a bit of a timeline already and we're having a bit of consultation on that and of what will work, what are the bits that we need to get right, involving teachers and head teachers and other school staff as well in that process. I think that a key part of it is it shouldn't just be designed by people that are actually not working in schools anymore. For it to be successful, we need to make sure that key stakeholders within schools are very much at the forefront of all that. For me, a biggie is to look at exams and assessment and accepting that assessments have got a bigger part to play in the future for us. Thank you. Can I just press that final point? No, I'm afraid I'm about to make a convener comment here, Pam, if you don't mind. I'm looking at the clock and I know that we've got a lot of passion in the room for what we're doing, but I'm really needing succinct or more succinct answers and perhaps the questions can be directed to individuals. I know that, Peter, you want to come in on this before I move to Michelle Thompson. I'm fine, convener. Hopefully the panel will remember my very long answers on the subject of reform the last time and if we could bear them in mind again. We'll reference those. Sorry, the smiles, the energy that's coming from this panel, it's very catching, but I've got a timeline here and I feel a bit nasty about doing that. Can I come to Michelle Thompson now? I hear you, convener. No, just picking up something that you've already laid the ground for, Peter, so I'm going to come to Polly and you first as well. It's just finishing off that thread around the level of autonomy that you have over your budget and in terms of how that then frames the sort of curriculum you can offer. What's your feeling now about the level of autonomy and you may want to reflect further on the comments that Peter's made in terms of local authorities and indeed the Scottish Government, but I'd just like to take a quick check from yourself, Polly and probably Barry and Graham as well. I think it's a mixed autonomy. For the budget that comes to me, I have complete control over how I via that budget, so if I decide to have less staffing or more staffing, that's my decision. That's in my authority, so that's very helpful in terms of making something that's relevant for me. However, there's quite a chunk of money that comes from the Scottish Government that never makes it to our schools because the decisions are made by our local authorities about how it should be spent and quite often it's on more global within the authority projects and they don't often make their way to us, so it's sometimes what the Scottish Government puts in place doesn't actually impact on the grounds because of that. Do you have the same flexibility in terms of budget pots? Yes. Barry and Graham, can you just reflect on that? Yeah, I think I get some autonomy but not enough autonomy. I'm trying to keep my answer really short. I think I would like to see more autonomy to headteachers over the money that comes into the authority, just as Pauline has just said there, to allow me to be creative. What I find is quite hard is that sometimes all the money goes to running the things that I've got to do and it's taken away that bit of creativity that should be a key part of a headteachers job. I've just tried to keep it quite short. Yeah, you're doing really well. Thank you, Graham. I agree with my colleagues. I did have autonomy within my budget. $6.5 million of that $5.5 million was for staffing so the only way you could actually make anything was to actually cut the staffing in some way but then you're constrained by the staffing figures that the authority has to put into the government because there's a limit, so that's difficult. I think in my role as general secretary now I'm hearing concerning stories of authorities where pef money is being top-slice by 10 or 15 per cent to fill in gaps in the other budget and the cost of the school day money or the curriculum money which is supposed to cover home economics, art and design, techie and drama so that young people don't have to pay any more for their food than they would. That's not going out to schools and that has been put out by the Scottish Government and it's not reaching schools at the moment, so that's a concern because we are all using, or I was, you're certainly using the pef money and the cost of school days money to make sure that we've got a bit more equity in the school. Just finishing off the thread then, in terms of going forward with what you would like to see with any reform, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth but it sounds like you would like at least the minimum level of autonomy that you've already got on that flexibility and, indeed, potentially more. Right, okay, it's good. Greg Dempster would like to come in on that thread as well, Michelle. It's just to talk about that flexibility point. I know that you're asking in a secondary context because it relates to subject choice and things as well, but we get reported back a really broad range of examples in relation to how much control heads have over their budgets from Peter's example of full ability to fire from area to area to other examples where it's only an illusion of autonomy, where even funds that are devolved to the school leader, if they want to send a member of staff on a course, they have to ask for permission, even though it's budget that has been allocated to them. So there's a double decision making. It's been referred back to the local authority to say, yes, you can make that decision with the budget that's devolved to you, so that there's a real spectrum across the country. Okay, I think that we hear that. There's another area that I wanted to introduce that the committee's interested in, and that's of artificial intelligence. I mean, it's something that we're habitually talking about, and I just want to get a sense from the panel how aware are you of the risks and opportunities that it offers in education generally, and how do you see a pathway forward for making sure that we, and who is that we, I'd appreciate your reflections, are equipped to move forward in that, should the we be local schools, should the we be local authorities, should the we be government, or is it much bigger than that? So Peter, I'll come to you first since I know you didn't contribute in the last thread. No, no, that's fine. Honestly, I felt I contributed in that subject in the last thing, so it's okay. The subject to AI is very virgin territory, and we in schools, I would think, being presumptuous speaking for many people, merely because I've chaired a couple of meetings on the subject with collaborative groups, both in SLS and an organisation called Bosch, and we have had guest speakers who are more knowledgeable about AI than I certainly am. What we would believe to be a necessary forerunner to anything we do is for government to establish a degree of expertise and guidance that would guide education nationally through and to local authorities, through and to schools, and one that incorporates an understanding of AI, not just by the techie people, because sometimes when you talk about AI to techie people, I'm like that. What are you talking about? I'm going to get that. Somebody tell me that in layman's language. So we need employers within that. We need universities. We need colleges. We need a whole series of or a whole holistic pictures society to have that discussion and understanding, because ultimately the job of a school is to prepare our youngsters for life and work. And unless we fully understand where AI is going in life and in work, then we can't prepare them. So we seem to need to be at the forefront of the development, but also we need to be at the tail end of the discussion. Otherwise, how do we know what we're aiming for? That's quite a dichotomy. Does anyone else want to add to that, Greg? I've been involved in quite a few discussions and meetings and events that have related to AI recently. It stems from the generative AI ballooning and being all over the media and everybody being concerned that it's going to take over the world and kick us out. But the discussions that I've been involved in have all been about understanding the opportunities that can be taken from AI and how they can be used to improve the offering in schools, whether that's about helping teachers with consistency across year groups or across groups of schools in terms of how they work, or whether it's about lightnings of administrative burdens. So there was one of our keynotes at our conference last week, our annual conference, specifically about AI and education. She had some really important things to say and some really interesting things to say, but core to her message was that AI is being presented as a wild stallion rampaging through education, but actually the school leaders within their own settings have to take the reins, they have the reins. First, they need to understand a bit more about AI and its opportunities to think about how they might want to use those tools and opportunities to help to address challenges that they've identified within their schools for pupils learning and then implement that and not be swayed by all the bells and the whistles and the excitement that sits around about some of those developments. So it's about defining how you want to use the technology and taking the best advantage of it. Any final comments? I think that my worry is that it will move so fast that we'll be left behind because we take so long to do anything. I think that what we need to do is embrace, as you say, a technology that young people will be using quicker than we are. It's absolutely going to change our lives, it's going to change our working lives for the better and we need to be prepared to be innovative in schools to be at the forefront of that. So as Peter says, we need to know how to be that because it's so new, but we're going to have to take some brave decisions and embrace it so that we can learn together as a society. This is a big innovation that's going to change our lives, whatever. It's a bit like getting mobile phones, it's that big. It's really going to change. For many young people, it's going to change their jobs for the better in the low-paid area. They'll have a much better working life to come, I think, in terms of how it will move. For that reason, I think that that's why we maybe need the national stroke international guidance about those opportunities and possible risks so we can start to look at maybe things like where are we going to make the sort of marginal gains with this and what are going to be the first steps with that just to try to build the confidence of everybody that's going to be working with that. Is that a brief supplementary, Ross, or is it on this theme? On the point that you made about local authorities top-slicing your budgets, the theory behind that for local authorities, presumably, is that they can recruit quality improvement officers and others who can provide additional value to you, but it sounds like it doesn't feel like you're getting a lot of additional value from what the local authorities are spending that top-slicing on. Is that a fair way to read into that bit of your comments? Can we direct that to Pauline, as Pauline did to make that? It doesn't reach the impact in the way it could because it's too far spread. So when you have a targeted approach in schools, so the money comes to schools, you're targeted directly at the young people who you feel you can make a difference with and it makes a difference. When it's top-sliced, it's diluted and it doesn't make the same impact. Okay, thank you very much. Is that okay there? Okay, Ben Macpherson, can I come to your next? Thank you, convener. Perhaps initially I could direct this to Pauline Walker and Peter Bain, as you've commented on these issues already, but I'm happy to hear from others too. One of the key tensions that we've gone over somewhat already this morning is how to support a system where there's a great deal of freedom to enable young people to realise their potential and develop their abilities, but at the same time to have a system of accountability and all the considerations around that in a scenario where Parliament wants to comment on statistics, the media I want to write about it and commentators want to talk about it. So, you know, there's been some criticism around too much focus placed on attainment results to measure success of schools, for example the Morgan review. So, within those considerations at the moment who holds schools accountable for their performance and supports improvement and that. So, how does this work currently? And what would you like to see change so that this works perhaps differently in the future and better in the future, maybe Pauline Walker first, if that's okay? So, first of all, I'm responsible. So, as headteacher, it's a great responsibility that you have to ensure that every young person is leaving your school with what they need to go on. And so, I have to hold all my teachers, my faculties, my departments, my subjects accountable through measures of success so that I know when get first of all value for public money but also that young people have been successful as they need to be. I'm held to account by my local authority so I have a quality improvement officer who will regularly lift my results to look at sense check throughout the year and annually I have to report on how I am performing and whether I'm meeting the needs of all. That can be at the top end. I am in academic schools, I have a lot of young people who perform very strongly but I also have young people at the other end, three or four hundred who are in quintile one and I need to show that they are progressing in the same way and getting the same equitable opportunities to be successful. So, looking for example at gap data, our current measure of success is around these five national fives and five hires and so on. How do they sit there as well? There's also the inspectorate. I've recently been inspected last December. I hadn't been seen for a very long time, 17 years, but when they did come in, that is a way that my parents and my community can have assurance that the school is working in the right direction and that what I'm telling them is success is actually what national success looks like. There are lots of systems in place that hold us to account. I think that you have to be held to account. That's right and proper, but possibly our measures at the moment are counterproductive. They are making us perform to the wrong areas of success instead of perhaps looking at skills or positive destinations or even just the word higher. The fact that higher is considered a gold standard immediately makes the level 60s a second class citizen. By not changing that wording, we really are, that's inequitable straight up. There's no way other way to look at it. I think that the system works, but we need to look at what the measure of success would look like for all young people in Scotland so that our success is then celebrated. I do feel that our young people in our schools are being very successful, but don't consider themselves to be successful because society tells them they're not under the current system. Until often they leave and begin working and flourish, and I've seen that happen many times. But they should flourish in school. They shouldn't have to wait six years in a school system to then flourish when they leave. If you all cast your minds back to when you were at school and you had to write essays in English, I'm sure that you all had to do that at some point. At the end of that exercise and the teacher gave you your essay back, it was probably full of red pen or green pen if you were a hippie like me. There'd be all these comments telling you how you could get better. But you probably never looked at that. You probably looked at the number on the front of the page. Did you get 25 out of 25 or did you get 19 out of 25 or did you just miss the pass rate or whatever, and the number became all-consuming? You ignored the comments that would have actually made the number go up. That's where we are just now and have been for decades. We look at the number and that's all we care about. The five plus percentage figure that's published in The Herald and then all the other newspapers follow suit that's then shared with the parents and the local press and the elected members and the directors of education and then the heedies, the five plus percentage figure that, as Pauline referred to earlier, is really useful in gauging the academic attainment of those who are doing hires and helpful to understand how many are going to union being a success there. For the other 50 or even 60 per cent depending on what school you're in, all the youngsters that are going straight into employment and needing a wealth of different qualifications like national progression awards and foundation apprenticeships or just skills based experience that are going to get them a modern apprenticeship that's far more important than clocking up five random hires or three random hires above English and maths, for example. That's what's important. I agree with Pauline, we should absolutely have to go through scrutiny and that scrutiny comes primarily through the inspectorial and associate assessor as well, comes through the HMI and comes through the self-evaluation teams that the local authorities employ that has people coming out from various different schools and they come into your schools and they do like a mini inspection and they challenge you. What we need to do is entirely change the metric that is one that is based on measuring qualitative analysis of the success of a school in terms of youngsters going on to positive destinations and making a success of their school lives and not the random five hires. If our youngsters go through the school experience, hopefully, with the support of the partners that we've all mentioned, the local partners, SDS, et cetera, universities, if they do that and they come out the other end, better prepared for life and work and we can measure that in a qualitative way in an individual way and it is signed off by independent scrutiny, then the measure shouldn't be about five plus hires, it should be about a new benchmark that says the health and well being of the children in the school is considered to be a small paragraph, not a single word should appear and that should give credibility because it's external and it should give a degree of comfort to the community that the health and well being in the school for the young people are good, very good, I don't want to use a single word but they describe it as being something that community with team is a success. Thank you Peter, I am going to have to- And so on, so health and well being, literacy, numeracy, et cetera. Apologies Peter, I really hate interrupting witnesses but everyone is wanting to come in on these and before we move on and we're going to get you to answer, we are extending the session because obviously we've got an awful lot more to cover but I am looking for succinct responses if that's possible. Greg and then Barry, okay? Thank you Greg, sorry about that. I'll be more succinct than Peter, don't worry. I thought that Pauline painted a picture of the accountability system that sits around schools really well. Within primary schools with nurseries there's another aspect of that as well which is the care inspectorate so they get the joy of two inspectorates and I think this relates back to a recommendation from the OECD review about simplifying the institutions for clarity and coherence so our position as an association is that you have that relationship with the local authority who are charged with improving the quality of education within their area. Now headquarters teams and local authorities have diminished massively over time and their capacity to do that I think has been reduced by a significant degree but I think that our association position is that the inspection of individual schools and providing a moment in time snapshot with a summative report with the scores on the doors like Peter is talking about is not the way to improve the system once every 17 years tells you nothing other than once every 17 years and so our view is that the inspectorate should inspect local authorities capacity to know and support improvement in their schools not individual school inspections once in a blue moon and that I'm sure would result in some pretty tough messages at the local authority level about the need to invest in that capacity and it's similar to that having two inspection bodies coming in on a regular basis into nurseries classes and nursery schools is something that needs to be addressed and simplified so there's one body making the inspection of those services thank you Greg Barry Graham thank you I think we'd probably all agree attainment should be part of what's looked at you know when you look at a school but it should be achievement and participation as well we already have the national improvement framework and I welcome the the the most recent change about looking at rights looking at closing the gap looking at health and wellbeing and looking at positive destinations so we we already have within the system but you know a meeting I was at a couple of weeks ago when the national improvement framework was brought in there was greater focus on that and now we do seem to be stepping back from those other priorities and I think there are things there that maybe we should be should be using to to judge schools on very briefly Graham you know what my colleagues have said but I also think in particular what Greg said about the inspections I'm not convinced that inspection or scrutiny every 17 years actually works but I do think that the the role of the associate assessors coming in from another school who have relevant experience in what a school looks like and what that is far more valuable and their criticisms and their support far more valuable than somebody who has been out of the game you know for a long while and is a permanent inspector I'm sorry to criticise them there because they do a good job but I think it's more relevant if you get people who are in the job with finger on the pulse and know exactly what's expected and also that there is a narrative in a school's story it's not just a snapshot of what they were doing then how did they get to that point you know my own experience at brave you we have gone through inspection after inspection we were under the course for nearly three years but there was a whole story there of how we we transformed the school so it isn't just about a snapshot it's what is the story of what is what is that school and those young people and the staff and the community gone through thank you Ben I'm in the interest of time I'm going to have to move on to the next team I'm content with that just thank you for all those answers yeah thank you very much Bill Kidd please all right thank you very much um convener I just uh will try and make sure that you get some questions that are easy to answer so that you can do any harm just I'll mention before I actually having listened to everything that you've been saying I'm rather sorry that I'm not actually going to school now rather than when I actually did go to school um or I didn't always go but I should have um anyway so this is me being quick by the way um so how um listening to what's been said in terms of concerns on provision of vocational qualification routes and the lack of available staffing which I've mentioned by Peter earlier when you're looking for people to fill these posts how do teachers and head teachers um how do you look at the change of perceptions of pupils and carers um and their carers parents or whoever around the value of vocational qualifications because I mean to my knowledge um it's always been you go for your hires to get yourself on in society because that's the only way forward um but so how do you convince people if they need convincing that the vocational route is the correct route to follow at school please I think it's a very difficult thing to do you know and you're absolutely right there's a there's a perception there that academic is good and anything else is not quite as good you know and trying to get people to understand that there are lots of jobs out there and lots of pathways that they can they can take and you know I'm in Dumfries and Galloway at a rural school I often talk about the fact if you want to be a dairyman in one of the the dairies that the average salary is like 60,000 pounds you have to work very long hours you're probably doing three sets of milking a day you know you you're very busy but you get a house along with that as well so there's there are opportunities there and it's a probably for us to try and make sure that people know of that and like routes into engineering it doesn't just have to be the academic route to Strathclyde into a degree there are other pathways that can get you to that end point but starting at a different place strong argument anyway very good way of presenting things I know that Peter's looking strongly as if he wants to answer it as well my very short answer is that we are blessed by having a great deal of professionals in a variety of agencies that support us developing the young workforce is a fantastic set of or parts of an organisation who promote vocational opportunities very strongly across the country I was picking a guy Clouse Meyer who leads DYW for Education Scotland and he's out busy working with schools just now SDS and their careers advisors promoting vocational opportunities and if you have a brave head teacher who's not afraid of the metrics then they will heavily promote equity and parity of esteem and vocational qualifications rather than just as we were saying earlier pushing them through higher. Can I just quickly ask you then because I did mention that you had mentioned a difficulty in getting staff for some of the courses that you wanted to run? Yeah that's quite common and that's both the more traditional subjects in fact I think Graham mentioned this earlier home economics it's very difficult to get staff to fill those positions it's difficult to get maths teachers these days and science teachers and English teachers but yeah you have to be quite tailored in what you offer depending on who you can get so I'm quite lucky and open that I'm able to employ engineering staff, music staff, dance tutors because that's something that my area is into and there's a lot of these people about but equally we would want to do a lot more hospitality and catering and I can't find those staff in my kids are crying out for that. That makes sense well just on the back of that then last week's meeting the witnesses suggested a decision on the future of qualifications shouldn't necessarily be waiting for an agreed consensus in other words to be imposed I suppose and so it but it does have to emerge what's the panel's view on this do you think you have to be able to break the consensus approach and that people can get a bit more local power to do these things bringing Greg first I'm just looking to mix up the members on my comments are kind of as a an observer who comes along to some meetings that relate to what lots of means end up relating to qualifications there's not going to be a consensus so so decisions will have to be taken at some point because there are so many different and opposing views around about the best way forward and it's just the decision needs to be taken and take as many people as possible along in that direction. The difficult way education is everybody thinks they know how education should work because they went to school and that is the reality but so I think there has to be an expert decision that takes the views of the experts and moves us forward as a society because the reality is you wouldn't go into your dentist and tell him how to pull your teeth or indeed expect your doctor to still have the same practices they did 50 years ago we have to innovate we have to reform I think parents are scared for their children's futures and I get that I am a parent of course you don't want it to go wrong but we won't get it wrong we're a profession who are good at change we're good change agents so you know let us let us do the right thing for our young people but it does it's going to take somebody to say no this is what we're doing let's move on we won't never agree I don't I'm going to have to move to Stephanie Callahan I'm afraid Peter sorry hopefully you'll get an opportunity to come in so I used to work 20 years ago doing an education initiative project for young people that didn't attend school and I think game you mentioned about going forward to the past and actually some of that stuff was developing the young workforce was actually the stuff that was happening there and then to Pauline you mentioned about young people having purpose in deprived areas and I think that's a really really important point to take on board there about those soft skills and that engagement so my question is around you know okay we get parent rights and we get report cards that tell us how kids are working towards qualifications and their subjects and things so what I'm wondering is how is it that you actually identify young people's ambitions and check in with those pupils to make sure that they're getting opportunities to fulfil those ambitions and have that flexibility for them to then go on and pursue the careers that they're really really interested in in an inclusive way quite a big question I was going to say that's a massive question and I've only got six minutes left in this session okay and we've got another line of questioning to come in so please bear with that in mind when you're responding okay thank you peter first they all are a key person who knows them well who knows their ambitions who can talk them through you know quite often with the young people particularly from deprived areas they ask them what they want to do it's a dynneken I don't know I've no ambition so there's very skilled staff in every school who can help them find that Graham Huntton every school a secondary school has a guidance there's a questionable whether there should be guidance staff as well and primaries and I think there's a very good case for that but the guidance staff or the people support staff should know their caseload provided they don't have too many and that's another wee issue about what is the caseload should be but they should be able to see their caseload every day to speak to them get to know them there has to be as Pauline said a known person SDS involving them in every school as well so that there's a lot of guidance and careers advice and I think we've moved on from I remember my careers advisor I met for five minutes when I was in sixth year and that was totally useless and obviously guided me in the wrong direction because you know I wanted to be a pop singer and I can't sing anyway I think there's a lot more advice and a lot more on offer to our young people today to guide them and I think you know we've talked about pathways right through this certainly in my school when I was there we had a complete booklet full of pathways that would take young people forward to some sort of career but pathways that are still they converge off they can change and that's the point there has to be flexibility still but given them more help more support more advice and knowing our young people and we've talked to us right from the start you have to know your young people in your school to take them forward Peter and then Barry on this one could I just say as well Peter if you could just touch on the like the practical level maybe what we need to get rid of and what what we need to be doing I'll touch on definitely what we need to be doing and I don't agree there's no consensus I think that OECD, MUA, Wither, Hayward and Morgan are all very much singing for the same hymsheet as was your panel last week and I think that we should move quickly to an implementation stage of the SDA and part of the SDA is on the personal pathway and that would be an official measured ensuring a check-in for what you're describing. Okay that was the previous question but that's fine can I now move to questions from Ross Greer please? Thanks thanks convener quite a lot being covered already in terms of how inspections could work which then covers the new inspector aspect to reform talked about the qualifications assessments themselves but I'm interested in the panel's perspective on what the new qualifications body could actually look like in terms of governance and structures what would address the issues that are regularly cited about how the SQA operates as an organisation but also the same question essentially again for education Scotland which is not being replaced but is being reformed what organisational structural governance reforms would actually address some of the issues that you've been talking about so if I can direct the education Scotland bit to Greg in the first instance I suppose you've got less locus with the new qualifications body but I'd be interested in maybe directing it a little bit Peter in the first instance on governance structures for the NQB. Greg. You said Peter first I'm just thinking. That's possibly the most contentious one. Which is why I was looking for some time. Reforming the SQA I think that first and foremost we have to accept there has been a huge amount of criticism over the SQA that arose during the pandemic basically because of the time delays that the decisions were taken over what to do with exams and the whole profession felt that these all came too late. Now to be fair to the SQA it was quite a unique set of circumstances and so you could say we understand why these delays existed but they did come too late and that did have a negative effect on our youngsters. What we did learn from that was that the ACM model worked for the schools who were prepared for it and by that I mean that by not having exams the ability for teachers moderated by other teachers in other schools to to take youngsters through an assessment model that accurately measured their levels of performance that worked and there is a high demand for that type of assessment model in the new agency to be re-established and that's come out in a number of the reviews so that has to be a principal aim of the new organisation it's not just a reshuffling the chairs and that's the biggest challenge for the reforming of this agency we're too busy talking about who's going to lead it and what's it going to be called is it the QSA or is it the SQA and if we can get down to what are we trying to achieve rather than who is going to run it I think we'll be better placed to understand where we're going but at the moment there is no faith in the profession at all for the reform of a qualifications body because there is no clear vision and no clear ideology no clear understanding of the importance of parity of esteem and of the need to reform the whole qualification system to move to something like an SDA that's proposed by Professor Hayburn's group and until the vision is established the agency discussions is going to forever just be mired in controversy would be my view and the view of many of my colleagues. If I could use that to pose a question to others on the panel what then is the role of the profession in the new body because a lot of the criticism not just for the pandemic a lot of the criticism predates the pandemic including reports of this committee is that the current SQA has been hostile to the feedback and input of the teaching profession so what structures could the how could we structure that new organization what could the governance arrangements be that would address those concerns that at the moment teachers are not heard by respected by the body. Be something I talked about before that was greater representation in the strategic groups you know make sure that you've got headteachers and teachers directly involved so people can hear about what's happening in the ground I do fear that sometimes these decisions are made you know and people aren't directly aware of of the impact of the decisions. I was sitting there and having been involved in the national commission's working group for the last four years or a long was half the committee where SQA members who you know was see on screen and there was a lack of headteachers at one point I was the only headteacher practice and headteacher on the group talking about exams so there needs to be a wider representation of teachers headteachers and particularly the SQA coordinators I had a meeting with SQA on the last past per Friday with six deputes who are all SQA coordinators and their complaint was in the day-to-day dealings with SQA ordinary staff it's fine it's how the decisions are made and how they come through and there's a lack of transparency there and so a bigger role for SQA coordinators sorry headteachers and people who know exactly the appointees they talk about the appointees are actually in school there's thousands of appointees principal assessors deputy princess assessors and whatnot they all have a role to play as well but they could also have a role of influencing the way that SQA or the new body goes as well. Craig you want to come in to education in Scotland I don't mean to cut you off Pauline if you've got anything on the NQV thanks I think that the key thing is before you get to talk about governance talking about roles or responsibilities of the organization and being absolutely clear about what the organization is there to do the new body and it's really important that it's there and focused on supporting the profession and identifying gaps that the agency can get in and support professionals in schools and local authorities with the outputs that come from education in Scotland need to be directly useful to schools but the crucial thing is that quite often there's lots of good work already going on within education in Scotland there's not the time to engage with it or the awareness necessarily that it's there so that time to engage is an important part and also when we're thinking about organizations and governance I think that there are quite a few elements in the outline that we've had so far about the centre for teaching excellence that I'm not clear about where the separation or the differences would be between that and the agency for education the new agency coming out of education Scotland and I think there's a lot of discussion still to be had about roles responsibilities and synergies across those two bits of work on the awareness point and accepting that time pressures work code are the major concern but on that awareness point that's come up quite a few times and even not just with education Scotland a lot of the reviews that have taken place recently the feedback you get from classroom teachers is will nobody ask me for my input on that we speak to the people running the review as far as they were concerned they distributed all the material to local authorities to schools etc and it just hadn't filtered down so is there an issue with the structures that our national bodies use to communicate directly with teachers or is the issue that the structure isn't there for that enough of that direct communication and it goes through too many layers of filtering I think that the approaches that have been taken with different consultations and different reports have often been quite different but you still get those same criticisms so lots of different mechanisms have been tried so I don't have an easy answer to that one and I don't want to be quick to lay criticism or blame at those trying to communicate with the profession the message that I frequently get back is about time to engage. Barry or Pauline you were both nodding away I don't know if you want to come in on that Barry. I think that the normal way to engage with the profession is to send out our questionnaire to a busy person and it appears in their inbox and it's there and they might get it but you know sometimes they're just too busy to do that so maybe it's about recognising that's not the only research method in town isn't only I know that but it's the normal way to start that process but I think that there are other ways to maybe get focus groups together other ways of research that might give us a bit more depth to the to the messages that are coming from the profession. Pauline? Yeah I think it's also looking at I think there needs to be a change management strategy so even looking at the flow of communication here in a school there's no point asking secondary teachers in march for an opinion or anything because all they're thinking about is qualifications and yet that's often when a lot comes out because that's the cycle within local government for example in terms of bringing change management forward ready for aprils changes so they need to look at when when's the best time to ask how's the best time to ask so that you actually get the views of the system it's very local dependent mine got lots of time to do it I know other schools got none they are they've really pushed for time you have to take it from somewhere else to give them time to do it okay thank you thank you if there's time for just maybe one more if it's one and it's directed Ross and that's and then we'll have Pauline a direct at you if you don't mind yes this is somewhat arbitrary admittedly the part of the communication thing here has to be two way and ought the criticism of education Scotland has been that they've produced huge amounts of resources that teachers didn't actually ask for some of which is good others is not but it's fundamentally not what teachers were actually asking for how do we create a structure where the 12th education Scotland wherever we rename it its work is actually being directed by what teachers are saying they need that element of the communication the bottom up if you want to give it a direction what structure would we need for teachers to be able to actually be the ones directing the work of the body that's supposed to produce resources to support them it's a hard one because lots has been tried but for me you need to get practitioners together to work collaboratively across scotland and that needs to happen in a much more cohesive advanced approach than it does now even for just for a subject change you need to ask the people on the ground you're teaching it what would that look like and again it's a change management system there needs to be some sort of approach which works for all so that we don't have decisions that are being taken that have long lasting problems for example science you're national for national five separate courses can't be taught together very challenging okay thank you i am going to have to draw this morning's session to a close and i do want to thank the panel i know i've got a bit well certainly faint quite tense at this end as i'm looking at the clock so i'm really apologised that that came over i would like to thank you for your time this morning and the contributions we've had i now suspend our meeting for seven minutes to allow for a change of witnesses before we reconvene to consider our second agenda item thank you welcome back and the second item on our agenda today is an evidence session with james withers on the independent review of the skills delivery landscape and we'll move straight to questions and i was wondering if i could maybe put a bit of an opener there quite a wide one james is like so what has been sometimes since your review has been published so what assessment have you made of the response to that review so far um i first of all thank you for the invite to come today convener i've obviously spent some time with the economy committee a couple months ago so it's so good to come and see members today um how would i characterise response i think generally i'm heartened um i met both cabinet secretary and subsequently have met the minister a couple of times to discuss kind of progress around implementation of the review i think there was an early signal that they welcome the general direction within my recommendations i have landed them with a very big reform job to a very complex system um there were initial moves around announcements on skills planning going back into government which is one of the recommendations a single um funding body as well but in a sense i probably in this might sound a bit counterintuitive i'm quite heartened by the fact that some time is being taken to look at this rather than a rush out to say yet we'll agree all recommendations let's go because this is so complex there will be unintended consequences when you lift the lid on one thing you find other things for sure so i think importantly considering what i have come up with a series of recommendations for big structural reform and operational reform alongside the work that louise hayward has done which supplements the work that ken mure has done that graham smith did in careers makes sense to me but my one nervousness would be that momentum is is lost in this and the fear of anyone doing a review like this is the dreaded idea that sits on a shelf i don't get the sense that is what is happening but i think keeping up momentum will be will be critical you've mentioned you've met with some of the members of the Scottish government and they have published their principles purpose and principles document and they've said that that's their initial response to your review do you think that there's anything missing from that in terms of anything major that's missing no i think that's actually a really helpful document one of the main areas of concern i had within the whole skill system was that there is no single definition of what good looks like so i was asked to look 10 years ahead how do we build a skill system that's fit for the future my first question was well how do we know we have a skill system that's fit for the future and the reality is there's no single definition of what good looks like and what success is and in fact probably worse than that there were many different parts of the skills and learning system that had their own version of success which doesn't didn't necessarily talk to each other so i think the advantage of the purpose and principles document starts to set out some of the values that we're trying to embed within the whole learning system i mean i kind of identified within a report that whilst it was big structural form there were a few early key steps that could be delivered one of which was establishing the purpose and principles so i'm you know pleased to have seen that at worth being done thank you james we're going to move on to some questions now from ross greer that's okay thanks convener james you've said already you're kind of somewhat heartened by the fact that government haven't just rushed into a response to your recommendations part of what you recommend though is overarching is the point that this should be seen as a coherent package rather than something that can be picked and mixed from how concerned would you be if the government didn't accept your recommendations in full and how do you think that that should be managed if they do take a more selective approach to what they want to take forward so i think cherry picking elements of the review would worry me if it was driven by what might be either expedient or felt easiest to do i don't have a sense that is where government is going from my discussion with ministers but the reason that i positioned my findings as a coherent whole is because what i was seeking to do was trying to build a more coherent system and my overriding observation which surprised me in a way i was expecting to see complexity in some fragmentation but the scale of fragmentation within the system did surprise me having spent kind of nine months inside the system so my view is if you want to join up system you need to join it up and that means all the moving parts so to me having a single qualifications body without also looking at having a single funding body and crystal clear approach to who's delivering business support and a crystal clear support who has leadership on careers and crystal clear support and who has leadership over skills planning then you will remain with a fragmented system hence the need for it to to be looked at as a whole it sounds like the the most important response is the cab second the minister that has been broadly pretty warm you certainly seem optimistic about it what do you detect the response from within the system to be because part of your report is i think entirely fairly pretty critical of elements of the system and certainly of how they communicate and interact with each other and we saw you part of the discussion in the last panel is this question that overrides a lot of education reform at the moment when you have the people who this is perhaps an unfair way of putting it but you'll get what i mean the people who've been responsible for a system that is coming under has come under a lot of criticism are then responsible for changing that system if they're not bought into it if they don't accept the premise of the the need for change then you can end up with the rebranding exercises rather than the more fundamental changes required so what what response have you picked up from those who are actually involved in delivering the system as it currently stands so i think that is a very real risk that you're asking the same agents to deliver a comprehensive change you may feel criticised by what has gone before i tried to position what i'd done there's very much a forward looking exercise this wasn't really scoring anyone's homework or a performance appraisal but i came to the very clear conclusion that our skill system is not fit for the future in all honesty even if it was firing on all cylinders it couldn't possibly be fit for the future because of the scale of change that's coming i mean i started this work september of last year no one wanted to talk to me about ai it's all they want to talk to me about now so the pace of change that's coming is is remarkable i think that the response i've had from parts of the system has been mixed so generally a pretty warm welcome for the diagnosis the prescription depends on i suppose your part in the system and what is being prescribed for you i've met a lot of practitioners who are certainly have an appetite for reform and in fact i didn't need a single person in nine months who felt the system was working optimally and most called for pretty radical reform of the system but i do think it's a wise watch out that for example if skills development in scotland is to be substantially recast as i think is their potential into our careers agency a national careers and providing leadership there which i think they've got the chance to deliver a transformational impact with doing that that body needs to be in the mindset that is embracing change and not in any way hurt concerned or scarred by the fact they're losing other functions and ultimately that will be for the judgment of ministers whether in them as an example will be in the right mindset to drive that forward but i think it's a legitimate risk thanks for watching just finally and i recognize this is a somewhat different bit of work so it find you might not be across the specifics the detail of it the process and structures that's being used for education reform to the setting up new qualifications body reform in education scotland et cetera is that a similar process to what you think would be required to deliver on your recommendations or looking at what's happening in that space would you be concerned if that was the approach that we took to implementation of what you've recommended to be honest with you i'm not close enough to it my one plea would be that throughout the reform process both on education and the wider skill system and i spent again probably more time in the education system than i had planned to at the start of the process but the evidence took me there particularly in careers apprenticeships the future of the curriculum i spent some time with louise hayward and the work she was doing because there were very similar themes across the two of us my one plea would be to keep absolutely our of our focus on the customers and users of the system and i think sometimes the reform process understandably gets bogged down or disappears down rabbit holes talking to the delivery agents rather than the customer end and what i tried to do in my review and you know there were there were strengths to it there were challenges to it and i've probably succeeded in some parts and failed in others was take that whole system review stepping out of the whole thing thinking in 10 years time where do we want to be and i think that kind of mindset and approaches it's critical but the detail in the structures we set up to deliver a lot of the educational form change the devolism not that close to it thanks very much thank you and stephanie call hand can we come to you now please thank you very much convener thanks for coming along today the report states that your interpretation of success is about everybody having equitable access to learning opportunities and being able to reach those positive destinations in their working life that can help Scotland's economy to flourish i'm wondering what your views are on how we actually measure that success during the implementation period of the recommendations there is that cost of data quantitative is a bit of a mix between the two of them there so i think the answer is it's probably a mix between the two what i would say is that my definition of positive destination it is defined by the individual and not by government or society so as an example i think our universities are incredible and that they are world class but our entire education skills and learning system is still dogged by the idea that university is the golden pathway and any other pathway that isn't university is somehow a varying degree of second best i think the pressure and the culture to achieve five hires you know is deemed as the golden success in school and that leaves in many schools probably at least half of the pupil population behind and so for me that is a system that is not achieving success i think there will be metrics out there i think you know university attendance across multiple different socioeconomic groups remains a valid way of measuring things and i think higher attainment level remains a valid measure of success but it can't be the only the only game in town and i think in many ways the challenge of measuring other forms of success is that they are subjective it's a sense of wellbeing it's a sense of contribution it's a sense of hope it's a sense of personal satisfaction and economists find it very difficult to count those things you can count jobs and you can count grades but you can't count that broader sense of wellbeing or a sense that you reach a positive destination and this is a wider economic issue obviously but we need to find a way of trying to do that because at the moment what's happened is we've jettisoned a broader sense of truly measuring what might be a positive destination for an individual which might not be university it might not be a collection of grades in favour of just measuring those things and it leaves a lot of people behind and crucially it stigmatises an awful lot of learning pathways that are going to be massively important for us going forward so perhaps asking young people themselves yeah that would be that would be that would certainly be a good start i think one of the challenges for for young people and i think about this from the conversation i had last night with my son about what he's going to do he's in 60 what he does afterwards is young people at 16 17 going in 18 don't really know what necessarily how they would measure success in life or really what they want to do next so there has to be a continual monitoring of that throughout lives and one of the key issues for me within the skills work i did was the need to take an all-age focus there's an understandable focus on on young people now it's obviously critical but there's an all-age focus we need to have on on skills development and equipping people to to maximise their own potential that's really helpful thanks so just following on from that we did here last week that you know there's this real need for culture change and actually culture change takes a long time it could you know take up to 10 years so i'm wondering what you think is a reasonable timescale for that change to be embedded and if there's anything specific that you think could help to expirate that cheap culture change so i think a 10-year horizon is not unrealistic for the kind of change and the scale of reform we're talking about i go back to the point i made earlier that one of the real gaps is the lack of an agreed definition of what success looks like for our for our skills and learning system and in the absence of that i attempted to write a version of that which was that you know everyone has equitable access to the learning opportunities that they need to reach a positive destination establishing that that definition of success and ultimately a vision that all parts of the system combined to i think will be important because what i found was a system that was full of good people full of people about passion passionate about equipping people with the skills for the future but they defined success within their own particular lane so those funding universities focused on universities those funding apprenticeships purely focused on apprenticeships there wasn't a broad view of how the system worked together so establishing that vision is absolutely critical and thereafter this might be a long haul and if i was nervous about anything is is that public sector i think requires two things to reform properly well at least two things time and tolerance and public sector phone rarely has has either it's rarely given much time and there's really much political tolerance because i think the benefits of the kind of scale of reform that i think need to be seen will not be seen quickly and that can be pounced upon by those who resist change so just a very very short follow-up in that then so so do you think equipping the people right at the top of education then the top leaders with systems thinking and systems leadership skills is that something that could be a very positive influence yeah i think i think there's a dearth of systems thinking within public sector more broadly and that's entirely understandable because people are measured by the particular kpi's that sit on their desk which tend to be entirely related to the particular role that they are doing not a broader look on that i don't for example i don't see higher grades as necessarily a kpi we should be focused on that's a process point the output is what what does an individual then do with either the highest they achieve or if they don't achieve highest what do they go on to but i think what i try to take was a whole systems approach to the skills system it's not easy but i think that idea of systems thinking would be good to embed in the public sector and i think my final point would be not to necessarily presume that the public sector has the skills for broad reform that's great thanks very much thank you Stephanie call and now ben McPherson over to you please thank you convener good morning the review makes mention of other recently published reviews and you talked about your engagement with with professor hayward so it makes mention of other recently published reviews and reports on the education and skills space what are your thoughts on how the scotch government can best oversee this period of reform you know following on from previous answers about how quickly we do and move forward you talked earlier in your opening answer about how you were glad that some time is being taken to to consider implementation but there's a balance isn't there to to consider amongst all of this there is and in essence i mean this agree asked me about the response of i suppose practitioners in the system and there's a fair degree of cynicism because life feels a little bit death by review so there's some cynicism was you know what what happens after after all of this what i would say is one of the real opportunities is to find the common threads that run through myself and my fellow reviewers and you don't have to look too hard to find them actually so the need for a curriculum defined as a curriculum for equity as much as curriculum for excellence parity of esteem the need to recognise that the chase for grades is only one part of the system and that maybe boiling 13 years of education down to how much you remember for two hours in an exam hall might not be the smartest way to determine the potential of someone going forward the need to recognise that there's a whole heap of skills that traditional academic roots don't necessarily allow to flourish in individuals so i think to answer your question identifying the common themes and the stuff from graham smith's work in careers as well as professor hayward and the work that i've done and less close to the work of ken mur but those themes around parity of steam equity of access to opportunity are there and clear the other key thing for me is to provide a lot greater degree of autonomy and trust to the people on the ground that are delivering now in my sense that was about giving regions a lot greater power over funding establishing educational provision in the area ability to to work with business a lot less control free create national level a national agency telling an individual college how many apprenticeships it can have on a particular course seems mad to me you know give the greater freedom i suspect i didn't hear much of the evidence of previous panel i imagine your average head teacher would welcome greater autonomy and the ability to be more creative so there's a need i think to devolve greater power down to the individuals and put greater trust in practitioners to deliver what's appropriate in their particular setting and i think again that would be a common theme that runs through the other reviews thank you so in those areas where there is in those common themes that are shared between the reviews and amongst the reviews do you think there should be a momentum that's you talked about momentum earlier that we should we should press on and make progress and and change and implementation when it comes to those common areas common themes yeah i do and i think if you know if take my report as an example i think setting out a very clear aspiration that should be absolute clarity of responsibilities so i found the system that was incredibly complex i take great heart in it being complex because it's got an incredibly complex set of customers from different backgrounds different requirements disparation so it should be complex the problem was a lack of clarity and having multiple different agencies involved in qualifications and in funding and in business support and in careers provision makes the landscape murkier than it should be for practitioners and ultimately for customers of the system and so i think there are steps that can be done with him we're going to make the system clear we're going to have a crystal clear lead around qualifications and on funding and careers and on business advice and on skills planning but also recognising being honest that we are talking about cultural reform here as well and that means the mindset of parents as well as young people as well as businesses and the system as a whole so there are things that can be done that set the direction of travel including defining what good looks like and clarity of responsibilities and roles but also be honest to recognise there will be this will be cultural reform and it will take time and the benefits might not be visible for for some years just a couple more questions that's okay computer thank you mr well as you said earlier that public sector reform takes time and please excuse me what tolerance tolerance that is used very very wisely that common theme that we've heard amongst a number of people who've given evidence to us in recent weeks has been that the political arena needs to create the space and have the maturity tool and the tolerance to enable the change that needs to happen i don't know if you wanted to to say anything further on that because that's a responsibility that we and our colleagues share and need to be serious about yeah so i i'm politically i'm an optimist i noted there was a debate in parliament around that my review or my review was part of the debate last week i think there's a strong cross-party consensus i that i have seen and i engaged with with most of the parties certainly reached out to all parties during the process that there needs to be reform is not up for debate the how is where obviously things there will be division of opinion i mean purely as a political observation we've got some years before at least two before we might enter another scottish parliament election that feels like a window of opportunity before things get spicier from a political point of view to really harness that cross-party consensus and drive forward so i think while saying there's a longer term cultural decade long journey probably starting here there's a window of opportunity to almost try and make the momentum unstoppable and then there will need to be a sense of responsibility as to how parties position themselves before 2026 but that's where the will and just sorry convener can i just one final point that you'll have lots of options sorry lots of points mr weathers you're okay that's fine carry on i think it will this will require strong ministerial stomach too because this is big reform i've already seen parts of the system that i think we're putting their defences up i think complex systems evolve naturally of their own and they have done that and there hasn't been sufficient political ministerial direction of the system i don't think they evolve of their own they don't reform of their own and because this will be difficult because there will be lots of people that will be able to say you can't do this because it will do that it will require some real i think ministerial bravery to drive this through and hopefully that cross-party consensus can make that just i'm supposed to make that courage a little bit less fraught or perilous than it might otherwise be that's really helpful and important just just lastly some of the feedback i've received in my capacity as a constituent cmsp with regard to the review is making sure that the needs of industry and the economy in a tight labour market which is something we've discussed in different capacities in the past as a result of external factors what engagement do you think needs to happen with the business community to make sure that what they're requiring as well as young people's abilities is being nurtured and considered in this overall scenario so this really comes back to the theme in my work around regionalisation and giving greater autonomy to individual areas to drive forward the establishment of educational provision and actually just shaping the kind of frameworks and qualifications that are developed where i got to was i think the dyw network is is great i think it's got real potential i think it's still a story of unrealised potential i want you to see a network of regional employer boards established and international employers board to shape the entire help shape entire learning system and you know one of my recommendations which has proved quite i suppose controversial for those that currently perform the show which is the apprenticeship approval so the SAB which i've suggested should be wound up not because it hasn't done its job but because it has proved that you can have employers shaping a part of the system but unfortunately the apprenticeship system has been carved out from the rest put over here hasn't been mainstreamed so i've suggested wind that function down and embed the principle of employer involvement in shaping our learning framework into every single part of the the learning system not just apprenticeship so that's why i'd like to do the dyw boards resourced and taken on more responsibility to really drive that at a regional level and actually what i'd also like to see and again you know that we different views on the dyw personally i like to see the why dropped from dyw i think they've got potential actually to help shape the system for all ages not just young people and i think that there's huge potential in using that as a mechanism for business and industry to help shape the future of the whole skill system thank you thank you thank you thank you michelle thompson thank you very much thank you convenient thank you for joining us this morning you used a term earlier death by review i think i'm right do you have any concerns that your review will get lost in the multitude of other very worthwhile reviews and documents as the time by necessity is taken to to look at them yes because it's happened before and i've you know i've spoken to people that have done reviews like this i've been involved in reviews like this before and they fall by the wayside because priorities change events arise my instinct says there is enough commonality across the reviews and enough general momentum that the system has to change because of what's happening out there and changing economy and society and technology and the new industrial revolution and all of that that there is no longer a question about whether there should be reform it's just how it's done so i'd be lying if i didn't have a human fear that you do all this work and it ends up not going anywhere all i can do is take in good faith what i've been told by ministers and actually what i've heard probably from a lot of people involved in the delivery of system that there's enough in here in the work that i've done alongside the work of many others and those that came before me to to create my momentum that might be unstoppable but yeah i've certainly had dark moments where i think i might have wasted nine months of my life but um hopefully not thank you for that i'm just touching on something else we've talked to you a bit about the kind of political where we are in the political cycle and you've mentioned the the phrase time and tolerance how do you square off time and tolerance as you've already expressed against the urgency that you undeniably put across both today and in your report how do you start to square that off bearing in mind that we have a political cycle and all the other potential barriers and resistance to change it's an incredibly difficult balancing act and i'm not sure you can square it off you need to make a judgment as to whether you're willing to i suppose maybe sacrifice some progress in the short term because it's a bigger longer term dividend out there that can be that can be grasped as i say you know identified kind of five early steps that i felt government could do around developing the purpose of principles getting the new skills planning process motoring embedded in government determining a new model for funding to embed equity of access and parity of esteem do a carry out an audit of qualifications which are a mess of terminology i mean again personal but helping my son chooses six of your courses i'm it's an alphabet soup of acronyms between you know mpa's and fa's and sfg's and hires and advance hires these are all beautifully mapped out on the sqf framework levels one through to you know 10 11 how on earth we've managed to not use that framework and not refer to level six level seven and instead come up with different terms and blows my mind to be honest and that's one of the solutions sat there i think we could be embracing that establishing these employable so i think there are there steps that can be done quickly but within a overarching framework in definition of what good looks like so while we're doing individual areas of improvement or implementation there's an understanding of how that feeds into the longer term so you try and stitch together that need to the urgency of action versus a longer term game that this is that's the only mechanism i would use to stitch through together identify what you can do quickly but be crystal clear how that feeds into the broader maybe decade long journey okay thank you thank you thank you very much michelle um can i come to Pam Duncan glancing out please thank you convener um good morning i think it still is yes um and thank you for answering the question so far and the work you've put into your report um i'm going to start with questions a bit on the the same theme that we've discussed there kind of on leadership and reform and then move to funding um how do you believe the scottish government taking responsibility for skills planning can bring about the required culture change needed so i think there's important point around skills planning and i would divide it into a game of two hearts i think there is a need to and it's a difficult challenge but there's a need to identify some critical national priorities that are relevant for all parts of of scotland so some critical areas of skills planning which every part of the country will need to respond to i haven't said what they are and that we different views on that whether it's net zero green skills whether it's digital um but beyond that release the regions to do the rest so there may be two or three national priorities and we'd expect all parts of the country to respond to that and develop their version of skills uh skills plans to respond to that but beyond that release regions and my instinct was that now that we've got city region deals and we've got eight economic regional partnerships in place use them if we're trusting them with billions of to manage billions investment i think we can trust them with the skills plan that sits alongside that and free them up to determine what the plans look like so the balance between national and regional for me is that i don't think scotland is big enough to have 32 or even eight different skills frameworks i think there should be a national framework but the detail of that could then be really driven in regional areas and i don't think there's enough autonomy at that regional level at the moment so i think there's a it's a an element of leadership at national level around the two or three priorities and that's a tough call because if you get them wrong you know you'll get hammered and that's difficult saying pick three you know winners and but after that you're not jettisoning in it jettisoning everything else you can focus on individual elements so hospitality is important to Highlands and Islands, Argyll and Bute because of the tourism industry let them develop their plan on that working with businesses of colleges and others but get that balance between national and regional if that answers the question it does thank you um i appreciate that and on on the similar vein do you do you agree with university scotland for example that some of the changes you've suggested including what you've just described can happen without legislative change and what can be done to sort of um what decisions could be taken around funding work-based learning for example or upskilling and reskilling now without legislative change yes i do so i think skills planning doesn't require legislative change and i'm no legislative expert clearly to establish a single qualifications body and funding body i've suggested that a recast sds should move to be founded into legislation which isn't at the moment to deliver careers some of that will require legislation but some of the cultural pieces around levels of autonomy thresholds for authority and that releasing the regions to crack on doesn't require legislative framework in my mind anyway it's more about a way of working that changes and that could be done quite quickly you think yes and i think yeah i mean in a sense one of the things i think the first things government talked about was bringing this skill that skills planning would be brought in house and there's a lot of skills planning work happening so what i would say is there are good skills plans in place you know look at the south of scotland who have done great work with south scotland enterprise with sds with other agencies with colleges there are good plans in place don't torch them or put them in the bin they can crack on but where there needs to be greater autonomy to help deliver some of that then yes i think that could be done but it does require a real mindset and to some extent again some political bravery to release the reins a little bit and trust those on the ground to make some of those decisions and recognise that when you do that some things will go wrong they was guaranteed they will go wrong but the overall benefit will outweigh the odd case study where maybe stewardship of money hasn't been absolutely perfect thank you and i suppose that kind of links back to your point about ministerial stomach which thinks important can i move on now to ask about the role of colleges and universities and funding in that space colleges scotland have said that the skills framework that you've outlined and skills in general in scotland will lie on a strong college sector would you agree with that i would so i had worked in and around the skill system for maybe 15 20 years in quite a narrow lane of it though so from a perspective of business and i'm working for trade bodies there were large parts of the system that i didn't know in depth that i've got to know over the last nine months the college sector would be in that category i've been blown away by the potential of the college sector i spent time inside colleges and i was excited enthused came away buzzing at their potential you know rooted in their communities connected to businesses well connected to high schools delivering real practical skills and learning to individuals who the old and still existing view might have been that they somehow academically have failed because they hadn't collected a bunch of grades and the potential at college sector was phenomenal i do worry about that sector there's a burning platform there for them around finance and sustainability and i do worry that we might see a more chaotic reorganisation of that sector based on almost the law of natural selection who's most vulnerable who might fall who might not and that might need to be looked at in time but i see given where the economy is going given what businesses have told me and what i've seen about the skills that are required the college sector is an absolute jewel in our crown and the more we can do to support it and crucially embed it in the heart of regional skills planning and i met some colleges have felt they weren't around that table and the more we can do that i think that the better i think is a huge asset i share your concerns around the funding of that and what colleges also share and with universities are concerned around the fund is the university of Scotland for example have said that it's not necessarily the methodology that's the problem it's the fact that university places for scottish domicile students are chronically underfunded in scotland and their alliance on international students is becoming more and more and of course the numbers coming to scotland international are dropping does that context for universities and colleges concern you in terms of the skills for the future so i mean the whole funding piece was a really interesting area for me because i suppose it would be fair to say that when i was appointed to do this i was given a very very free hand there was an underlying message don't come back with something that's going to cost a lot more okay so now that's entirely understandable given that the kind of physical position we're in that said we spend 3.2 billion every year in this whole area which must be five to seven percent of the the parliament of government's entire budget so i don't think the problem is under investment in this whole area but i think there is duplication and the inefficiencies in the system that said you know you can't ignore the fact that you've got a line of university principles and staff and college principles staff that are worried about funding and i think there's more that can be done to release some of the shackles i think university should be free to determine for example how much of their provision they want to put into full-time education versus delivering graduate apprenticeships and delivering degree apprenticeships through a you know through not just not full-time education but a kind of earn and learn approach and at the moment graduate apprenticeships are kind of capped every year their funding is uncertain they separated off into a different kind of system why don't we trust universities be able to use that funding as they so wish so i think that elements could be released but i think like probably every sector of the learning education system probably every sector of the economy funding is a is a concern going forward and then just one final question on the duplication what duplication in the system did you notice so i think it's it comes back to the lack of clarity that you had multiple different agencies involved in qualifications development in funding of itself in the development of somewhat of the educational frameworks if you are a business at the moment and you're interested in workforce development it can be difficult to know whether you go to business gateway local enterprise job center plus skills development scotland so i think there is naturally duplication in the system not born of any bad intent but of a system that's been allowed to evolve or a system that is fragmented and doesn't collaborate as tightly as it could and through a lack of political direction to shape the system thank you very much do you want a supplementary on this Stephanie Callanan thank you convener so just going back to something that you said earlier James about you know you have to accept that things can go wrong when you're talking about handing that power down regionally there as well and it just makes me think right away about politically ministerial accountability for it as well and i'm just wondering what your thoughts are around that is there a kind of i suppose like aeroplanes when they crash you know it's a team going in there to look at why that actually happened i'm wondering if there's anything from your business background that you could say that's the kind of direction of it that the accountability wouldn't be an issue i think it's just i mean business culture versus political culture obviously is often very different you know you speak to most business schools and they talk about permission to make mistakes you learn more from your mistakes and you do your successes and it might be incredibly naive to say that in any way you know we could achieve a system politically that would allow for that certainly if i was the accountable officer for a major agency you know i would certainly live in a perpetual fear of terror that something goes wrong that i'm in front of the audit committee or a committee being scrutinised as to why did money over here not deliver what it was supposed to or you know worse to end up in the wrong place and that's just that that's just a way of life i think my observation would be that overall the benefits that will be achieved by putting greater trust into the people that are actually delivering things on the ground and that are connected into business and college and universities will far outweigh the problem but obviously we live in a place where there's more political and media scrutiny on the bits that go wrong so i might just be incredibly naive thank you stephanie now thank you can we move to Liam Kerr now please yes thanks convenient good morning mr withers on a similar topic actually one of your structural recommendations was the establishment of a single funding body which would cover the sds the sfc and potentially sas and the rationale for doing that was i think he said there was a fragmented system at the moment which is impacting the ability of providers to deliver so what are the risks as you see them then of not going forward with a single funding body so i'll use apprenticeships probably as an example um that i think is an incredibly part incredibly important part of the whole learning system i think that in order to establish apprenticeships as that critical part of our learning system it required a distinct focus i think it required distinct funding and it probably required distinct agency ownership to establish it i think is exactly those things that are now holding it back so as long as apprenticeships for example remain carved out from our whole wider learning system and i put over here where the separate agency with separate funding separate kpi's uncertain annual funding it will remain separate from the system and it will not be mainstreamed so dividing university college and funding into one agency in sfc an apprenticeship and training funding into sds to me crystallises a false divide between what we call at the moment education and vocation the idea that education delivers learning and vocation delivers skills where in reality the position is much more nuanced education clearly delivers skills for the workplace workplace and vocational routes clearly deliver broader learning on problem solving innovation and other things as well so my view i suppose glibly is if you want to join if you want to join up system you need to join it up and having funding brought together into into one place makes sense there are there are real risks in that though so one of the risks i would identify is that unless you have a culture that recognises the enormous value of apprenticeships for example putting that inside a body that maybe has hitherto largely looked after university funding is one large part there's a risk that you could dilute the focus on that so the timing of it is critical again my view was on balance that in order to properly mainstream apprenticeships as an example then it needs to be absolutely plugged into the mainstream of funding qualification development curriculum development and and careers provision as well but the might that might be and i haven't stipulated my rapport but it might be that you need some safeguards in there that there are certain thresholds of funding that have to be ring fenced for you know certain parts of the system but overall i felt that by joining it up you're more likely to end up with a joined up system i'm grateful for the detail another risk that the committee has been alerted to is in so university scotland made a very useful submission to us and in that submission university scotland has suggested that if with a single funding body there could be a risk to the university's status to the ons classification and indeed their autonomy with that move to a single funding body which of course would have exactly the opposite effect in in terms of restricting their ability to respond to the needs were you aware of that as a risk when you made your recommendation and if so why did you why did you nevertheless make the recommendation and if not does that cause you to reflect on whether that's the right recommendation going forward yeah so my understanding is that the creation of a single funding body in of itself does not present that risk it is more about what the status of that body is so ndpb or not i deliberately didn't get into what the governance status of that of that body should be in part because it looked like a bit like a rabbit hole and it was incredibly complex so i walked i walked from that and the only body that i made a specific recommendation on in terms of what their legislative or governance status should be was the future of skills development in scotland for two reasons one i was asked to do it specifically in the terms of reference and secondly i felt that the really quite unusual status of sds is a public company limited by guarantee rather than something established in statute or as an executive agency ndpb didn't feel appropriate for a body that's about delivering ultimately a public service and to be accountable to ministers and i didn't take a view on what the governance status should be of the new funding body but hopefully it would be taken as as read that i wouldn't certainly want that body set up in any way with jeopardised on it on s relationship or the status of universities themselves so if that requires it to be an ndpb i mean i'll leave that to others who are better versed in public sector models for agencies but if that's what it requires then that's what it's what it requires but i don't think that that is the argument itself that you shouldn't bring funding together on the one body very grateful thank you very much Liam Kerr and can we move to Bill Kidd please thank you yes thank you convener and thank you mr withers for an interesting background and for the review of course on the back of what you've just been talking about the review did suggest setting national priorities it didn't actually set them itself but it did suggest that these are important so you might not want what you've said you might not necessarily want to point the finger at who the should actually be taking responsibility to do that but what are your thoughts on how these priorities couldn't should be divided and and what should be taken into account to please okay so i think this recommendation as much as anything really lands government with a with a difficult one and everyone agrees with prioritisation until you're not a priority and so this will be challenging and not least for different sectors of industry i used to work in food and drink the idea food and drink wouldn't be a priority would be a declaration of war to businesses in my in my old sector and i think it needs to be done on on the number so who should who should make the decision is is one question obviously we have a national strategy for economic transformation and an end set delivery board i think they have a pivotal role but one of the reasons that i recommend in not only the establishment of a network of regional employer boards but also a national employer board is to help inform that so i think it needs to be informed by business i also think it needs to be informed by third sector and other groups but it will it will come down to a political call really as to as to how you establish those priorities and for how long does a priority remain a priority my observation on end sets is that the long having a longer term 10 year horizon for economic ambition is a very very good thing my criticism would be it sort of prioritises everything that currently exists and everything that's coming down the line we're coming down the line which doesn't feel like prioritisation so i think there's a need to really define what are the areas of Scotland's competitive advantage and i would add alongside business voice insight and foresight in where the economy is going but identifying where does Scotland have competitive advantage competitive strength where does it have competitive opportunity and what are the areas of significant change that are going to affect other four corners of of scotland so whilst i haven't been brave enough myself in asking other people to be brave i haven't been brave enough myself and identifying what they are you know the transition to net zero i would probably use an example of maybe something that would be that would be in there but at the moment what we have is lots and lots of reference to green skills i don't know what they are in order and i haven't known no one's really actually drilled in to say what to what they are well just on the back of that then government for instance should is normally people's idea about who takes eventual responsibility and many things but do you think that that should be led along a path of working with other organisations and groups in society who have experience of the green skills elements and of the business elements and working together on some sort of way of bringing responsibility together across a board before it is then put into policy yeah i think there's a real strength to doing that so if i just quickly think about my experience in food and drink government used to write the industry strategy of food and drink which didn't make any sense to me you know government have their role it doesn't strike me their best place to write a strategy for any industry so but that can be quite easy for industry to allow to happen because when things go wrong it's government's fault there's no ownership of it and so i do think that there's an important principle about industry and business taking ownership of their own strategic direction and how you embed that kind of structure into data government work i suppose is something governments wrestle with and you have advisory boards and you have steering groups and the stakeholder groups by the dozen that help inform that but i think it is a valuable part of the the approach the other thing i think that is really important is the need to compare approaches with other countries compared to nations you know we're very obviously patently not the only small country trying to work out how to transition to net zero so i think that relationship with other EU countries are more broad than that certainly when i did my work i looked at germany and switzerland and singapore ireland in terms of skills systems elsewhere and i think again in food and drink most of the good things that that were done and most of the successes were ideas taken from elsewhere that's very helpful thank you very much indeed for that thank you thank you mr well as you mentioned at the very outset about how at the beginning of your review process ai wasn't anything people were talking about but now it's all people are talking about so i'm curious as you know your as your review is sitting there how adaptable is it to the real pace of change that we're see happening externally so i would probably use that to justify why i didn't pick my winners in terms of priorities because it does it does move at a rapid at a rapid rate for me what i was hoping to do and hopeful has made some contribution towards is thinking about how you build a system which can then pivot absorb to whatever the priorities or opportunities or challenges might be of particularity so one of the free and you know i i tried to follow evidence in the work that was done between myself and the kind of secretariat that supported me and it was clear within that that people wanted a system that was more agile and flexible now that's easy to say and it is really difficult to deliver but having a system which particularly puts greater autonomy and ownership on places regions to determine what's right for them allows them to pivot into as an opportunity you know a big inward investment is made in an area a company lands it needs a particular skills requirement free up that system to allow them to work more agile and regionally they will work more agile than i think they can nationally so my hope would be that in taking a whole system approach and building a system you build something a machine in a sense that can build an agility flexibility and can be free to move with changing priorities and changing opportunities no thank you for that i suppose we've i wondered if there's anything that you were hoping to be able to present to us this morning that you've not had the chance to say i know that's a bit of a an open question there but i don't think so i think that the kind of culture of reform we have touched on yeah to be honest i think we've kind of covered most of most of the areas i do think that i think was the focus on your first panel i do see the educational reform and reform of curriculum what's happening in schools is absolutely integral to the broader skills piece i mean it's obviously cliched to say it all you know it started it started as young as possible but the whole parity of steam piece and equity of learning opportunity is the ballgame in all in all of this and culturally practically and financially the system doesn't embed that it serves to smaller proportion of both the pupil population and the wider population of the country and you know a system that does that in a country like scotland whose working age population is shrinking on s thinks our population will shrink faster than any other part of the uk the immigration situation is different now we are out of the european union the need to make the most of the skills and potential of the population we've got requires us to reform the education system as well as the post school skills and learning environment so i do think that the two go hand in hand and i think that there's a lot of good in certainly what professor haywood's proposing but i could certainly relate to in what i've seen so what do you think that the scottish government should do next so i go back to stabbing the vision for what good looks like that needs to be the north star so we're clear where we're headed i think it needs to i caught the end of the last panel which said you're never going to achieve consensus so give up on that and be bold and take some decisions in the certain probability there will be people that will be very upset and nervous about that in my experience the people who will be upset nervous discombobulated by that will not be customers of the system that will be people that are involved in the delivery of the system care less about them would be my message to to government so i think keep the momentum up and try momentum unstoppable and that means setting that that vision and start putting in some of the early steps and i've identified five that i think that could be done to try and make it much more difficult to reverse out of reform than it is just to carry it on no that's super thank you very much james and i'd like to thank you for your contribution this today obviously this concludes the public part of our proceedings and the committee will now consider its final agenda items in private i'll suspend the meeting to allow Mr withers to leave thank you very much