 Rwy'n meddwl i'r next item of business, which is a debate on motion 4920, in the name of Tavish Scott on education. I would invite all members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request to speed buttons now, and I call on Tavish Scott to speak to and to move the motion. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. On Monday, I witnessed Whiteness Primary Schools senior pupils performing Henry VIII. It says a lot about politics at the moment, but I particularly enjoyed the blood-curdling decapitations that took place in the classroom. I'm not proposing a decapitation today, but surgery is certainly needed, both on the roles that central government plays in our schools and, secondly, how Scotland sets and marks exams. This week, the Government's main education quango helped this analysis enormously. Education Scotland's chief executive published his interpretation of his own inspector's reports into Scotland's schools on quality and improvement in Scottish education 2012-16. For the record, Dr Bill Maxwell is both the chief executive of education and the chief executive of education Scotland. He retires in June, and I wish him well. The post of chief executive is responsible for what happens in the classroom and for inspecting the quality of teaching in our schools. Those two roles are not and cannot continue to be in the same organisation. If ever a report graphically illustrates that Education Scotland must be separated between policy and guidance and school inspections, it is this report. Dr Maxwell's introduction could have been written by Mr Swinney. It is a restatement of government policy, not a hard-nosed assessment of Scottish education, with recommendations for all involved. By any objective assessment, the four out of the six CFE implementation years of 2012-16, on which this report is based, have not been well managed. Yet this report makes no observations about the role of Education Scotland, the SQA or the Curriculum for Excellence Management Board. Instead, there is a tendency to blame schools for any failings. Let me cite just three examples. The report says that evidence gathered from inspection shows that schools now need to put in place better arrangements for assessing and tracking children's progress, including having a shared understanding of standards within curriculum for excellence levels. Whose fault is it that schools' understanding of the standards within curriculum for excellence levels has been problematic? The answer is given by the 2015 OECD report. It specifically questioned the complexity of the layers and dimensions of CFE. There are four capacities, 12 attributes, 24 capabilities, 1820 experiences and outcomes, 1488 in the eight curriculum areas and 332 in the three interdisciplinary areas. I could go on, especially as Education Scotland, admit to presiding over the accrual of over 20,000 pages of advice to schools. Now, why presiding officer did the inspectorate not question the effectiveness of that mountain of paper? Was it because those 20,000 pages were produced by the same office? Before the Deputy First Minister says that it is all fixed, this is what a teacher pointed out to me at the weekend. Last week, Education Scotland published six new curriculum benchmarks to add to the two drafts on literacy and numeracy that were issued last August. That brings the total of the new streamlined CFE advice to schools issued just this session to 348 pages. Those have been issued by Education Scotland to provide—of course they will. I am grateful to Mr Scott for giving me. Would he acknowledge as he goes through the information about benchmarks that the number of pages that he has cited relates to the entire curriculum experience of a young person from the age of five to the age of 16 and covers various stages across various curricular areas, not all of which will need to be relevant to the needs and the perspectives of every teacher in our schools? Yes, there is much in that argument, although it would be enormously helpful, I suspect, to teach us the length of breadth of the country if the Deputy First Minister could give clarity on the numbers rather than just the argument that he has given. That would be welcome, I suspect, for Parliament's education committee as well, but the broad point that he makes is of course correct. Those 348 pages have been issued by Education Scotland to provide that clarity. The new benchmarks on one of those areas, which are the responsibility of all teachers, health and wellbeing, are published in three categories. There are 70 pages of new reading in this single curriculum area alone. Mr Swinney has often chided me for saying that those are not for all teachers. In this particular case, they are for all teachers. My question to the Government and to Education Scotland is how does that live up to the claim that benchmarks draw together and streamline a wide range of previous assessment guidance? Perhaps the Deputy First Minister could tell Parliament how many of the 20,000 pages have now gone. Secondly, the report says that improving the consistency of learning and teaching needs to be a key priority for all secondary schools. Some teachers put it to me the other day that Education Scotland has somewhat of a brass neck saying that, given its inability to ensure curricular consistency in the implementation of curriculum for excellence. The final point that I wanted to pick up from the report is where it says that towards the end of the period covered by this report, i.e. 2016, we found that many schools were indeed revisiting the design of their S1 to S3 curriculum in the light of the experience that they had gained of developing new senior phase programmes. That so many schools are revisiting the design, Presiding Officer, is in large part to the vague and contradictory advice that they feel they have received from Education Scotland. The chief inspector said on Monday that schools do not provide all children and young people with consistently high quality learning. His report warns that unless they are tackled, we will not achieve the national ambition of excellence and equity. However, who has been the Government's quangal responsible for implementing curriculum for excellence since 2011? Education Scotland led, of course, by the chief inspector and considered the inspector's final recommendation, main recommendation. It is better implementation of curriculum for excellence, which education body has been charged by four successive SNP Cabinet education secretaries to implement CFE Education Scotland. Perhaps I can suggest to the Government that the Deputy First Minister's governance review needs to start right here with his own quango, separate implementing curriculum for excellence from evaluation, put policy and guidance into the ministerial office, have intelligent educationalists working constructively with schools encouraging school clusters and the essential links to colleges and universities with vocational courses, but make the inspection of education quite separate. The inspectorate must be an independent body of people looking objectively at the success of the education system and schools within that, not looking over their shoulders because their Education Scotland colleagues are responsible for the guidance that they are assessing. So, too, for the need for reform with the SQA, its effectiveness was questioned by Parliament's education committee because of the inherent contradiction in the multi-various roles that they are asked to carry out. It is an arm of government, a regulator, a monopoly provider of a service for which it charges money and indeed an exporter, too. So, as CFE has been introduced, the Scottish Qualifications Agency has been responsible for new exams. That should have been done in conjunction with Education Scotland and other parts of government. Why was the inevitable impact on teachers, pupils and schools not closely monitored? The reality has been an unsustainable increase in teacher workload, a breakdown in trust between the SQA and teachers and a threat, indeed, of industrial action. The SQA's chief executive, Janet Brown, said to the committee that the SQA finds communication an extremely complicated and challenging area. Teachers cite SQA websites and online sources as barely adequate, difficult and time-consuming to navigate. Communication is not difficult, it needs concerted action and attention, yes, of course, but if the SQA cannot get that right again, we suggest that the Deputy First Minister must step in. Sorting that must be a priority. The case for real reform is not just about schools and local councils, as the Government has so far described. It is about the education secretary's own quangos. He should reform the SQA and split up Education Scotland into the functions that it should be for the benefit of education for schools and pupils. On that basis, I move the motion in my name. Thank you. I rise to move the amendment that stands in my name. This debate has to be set within the context of our determination to improve performance in Scottish education. We have a good education system with hard-working and committed teachers and early years practitioners working day in and day out to support children to succeed. It serves neither the country nor our children and young people to ignore the many positive achievements that are made. More young people are achieving excellent exam results than ever before. The number of advanced higher passes last year reached an all-time high, while the number of higher passes surpassed 150,000 for only the second time. The choice of this Government has made me more children and young people from deprived communities now leave school with at least one higher or equivalent. The proportion of young people leaving school for positive destinations also reached a record high in 2015-16. I wonder if the Deputy First Minister would recognise the work of the IPPR, who spoke about the question of positive destinations and said that we should be cautious about this as a signifier for excellence, because some of those destinations may be low-paid, zero-hours jobs with very little prospects in terms of education. Will I undertake to look at what those positive destinations are for many of our young people in our communities? The positive destinations analysis has been a recently long-term trend of assessment that has spanned over many years. Of course, in the labour market strategy, the issues that Johann Lamont appropriately raises are issues that we concentrate on to improve the quality of employment that is available within our society. The progress that I talked about within education is not an accident. At the heart of much of that progress are contributions by a range of organisations but strong contributions from Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. The OECD said in its review of the implementation of curriculum for excellence that Education Scotland has been a linchpin in providing the guidance, resources and quality assurance necessary for that change. Education Scotland has also been instrumental in taking forward my recent priorities to declutter the curriculum and reduce teacher workload, ensuring that our teachers are free to focus on providing the valuable experiences for young people. The arguments to establish the dual functions of Education Scotland in terms of inspection and curriculum and pedagogical advice were designed to ensure the findings of inspection directly influence improvement in curriculum development and vice versa. That rationale is important to consider today. Education Scotland also has a role to provide effective challenge and scrutiny to government. The publication earlier this week, which has been extensively quoted by Tavish Scott, is clear and highlighting strengths but also areas for improvement in Scottish education. As members will be aware, Dr Bill Maxwell, her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education in Scotland has announced his forthcoming retirement and I record my thanks for the significant contribution that he has made to the leadership and the improvement of education in Scotland. On the SQA, the SQA is a national education body that is quite properly within the scope of the governance review, as is Education Scotland. That is one point that I put on the record to contradict what Tavish Scott said. Education Scotland and the SQA are both within the scope of the governance review that the Scottish Government is undertaking. Having said that, I have always made clear that there will be a need for a national examinations body within Scotland. SQA has played a key role in the implementation of curriculum for excellence and it focuses on ensuring that our young people are able to rely on an agency that can give authoritative and accredited qualifications that are essential for the assessment of the performance of young people in Scotland. I acknowledge that performance by all agencies must be effective. I recognise that the SQA has made errors in the past and I have made it clear to the SQA chief executive that there is no room for error and that the SQA accepts that and is addressing that. Although we must promote all the record and the positives of organisations as I reiterate in my comments a moment ago, the Government is undertaking a governance review that takes into scope both the SQA and Education Scotland. That is why the Government amendment today proposes to seriously consider the issues that are raised by the Liberal Democrats in this debate today. The governance review is looking at the role of all the constituent parts of our education system in delivering excellence and equity in education. It is focused on promoting and developing that crucial culture of collaboration across the education system that will help to drive innovation within Scottish education. I do not want to pre-empt that consideration today, but I want to assure Parliament that the governance review will be focused on ensuring that the Scottish Government and other national bodies provide the right support to deliver the empowered and flexible education system that we want to see. It will see the empowerment of schools and assist in building their capacity to drive improvement and to increase attainment and achievement for children and young people. Our reforms will be based on the best evidence of what will work, what will empower schools that will not be a top-down prescriptive approach, but that will put young people and children right at the heart of Scottish education. We will bring forward changes that are focused on processes, not structures, that are flexible and that are able to adapt to change, that build capacity, encourage open dialogue and stakeholder involvement, take a whole system approach and harness evidence and research to inform the development of policy. The Government is committed to ensuring that we take forward a reform agenda that ensures that young people are well supported in their education in every single locality of the country. That involves looking at the roles of our education bodies, that is why the Government amendment sets out what it sets out today, but it is a approach that has to take into account the actions and the involvement of all aspects of the education system to make sure that young people in Scotland are guaranteed that they are operating within a world-class education system in Scotland. John Swydd made it abundantly clear last week in responding to a poor inspection report in Argyll Council that, when it comes to improving standards in Scottish schools, the status quo is not an option. We wholeheartedly agree with the cabinet secretary, but we do so not just on the question of new measures to change school governance or to tackle the attainment gap in terms of standardised testing, but on the question of reforming the education agencies that are in charge of our schools, the justification for which has been an important focus for the education committee in this Parliament. John Swydney also made an interesting speech on 2 June 2016, not long after when he became cabinet secretary, and he described teachers then as experiencing a mystery tour with regard to the curriculum for excellence. Again, he was right with that, but let's deal with exactly what that has meant for teachers, why it has happened and, most importantly, what should be done about it. In doing so, let me refer to the compelling evidence that is out there. The formal evidence that we heard at the education committee over several weeks—I know that John Swydney does not feel that that was particularly balanced—has to be put in the context of other evidence that we took in private, the evidence of the OECD report, the evidence from Education Scotland's own report this week, the surveys undertaken by teaching unions and professional associations, which, taken altogether, speaks on behalf of a great number of teachers and headteachers across Scotland. What is alarming, and what I hope is the reason for John Swydney's recent comments, is that the principal education agencies, SQA and Education Scotland, have allowed this situation to develop over the course of the last decade, despite all the warnings from the profession. I have to say that it was a bit rich when Education Scotland told us earlier this week that there are five areas of urgent and proven required in order to raise standards when, in the case of at least four of them—perhaps even five of them—all the problems have actually been created by the education agencies themselves, not by the teachers, not by the headteachers, but by the very people who are employed by the Scottish Government to oversee both the curriculum and the qualification system. It is exactly that failure, just as it is with the 20,000 sheets of curriculum for excellence guidance that Tavish Scott mentioned, that so frustrates the teacher profession. Let us be very clear that the curriculum for excellence was the first major reform of the Scottish education that was driven, actually implemented by civil servants in the education agencies and not actually by the teachers on the ground. Let me deal with Education Scotland and the sharp criticism that was made of it at the education committee. Let me pick out three of the most serious concerns. Why the lines of accountability for decision making are unclear, why there is an absence of good database to assess the progress made in CFE and the conflict of interest in Education Scotland's role as developer of the curriculum and independent evaluator of its inspection, something that I do not think has a comparable model in other countries. When those points were put to Education Scotland, what did the committee get back in return? We got a 10-page document in which there is no real acknowledgement of the problems or, more important, recommendations for change, but instead we got sentences like, the cycle of improvement is acknowledged widely as the Scottish approach to improvement. I do not know what that means, or commitments to have myth-busters campaign on social media. That, cabinet secretary, is something that we have to address. We got an outline of the theoretical structures within Education Scotland, but we did not get an outline of what actually happens in practice. We get an extraordinary defence of Education Scotland's role as both judge and jury when it says that this status safeguards the independence of inspection and the review function. No, it does not, and I am sure that Johann Lamont will outline her exchanges with Education Scotland, which prove exactly why not. There were some at the time who believed that the merger of LTS and HMIE, which incidentally was not voted on in committee or Parliament, was partly a cost-cutting exercise, and it seems that with fewer inspections and fewer inspectors, many of whom were seconded last year to help in local authorities, that that is a large part of the truth. It cannot be right that the cycle of inspections is getting ever longer, notwithstanding the changes to that inspection. To SQA, a body that, when it was represented at committee in November last year, faced very strong criticism from teachers, including some of the professional associations among teachers. They felt that the exam structure was weak and not sufficiently well articulated with coursework and, in some cases, with prelims. There were concerns expressed about some exams not being sufficiently rigorous, about grade-related criteria, about grade boundaries, especially the disparity across different subjects at the A-H level, about marking and the transparency of requests for marking reviews, issues that we have all heard expressed as MSP representing parents of exam candidates. We heard concerns about whether the national four and national five exams are properly structured to meet the needs of a diverse range of people, and whether that qualification network is in some ways undermining subject choice. May I sum up, Presiding Officer? With hindsight, it is very clear indeed that Education Scotland and SQA via the management board have not delivered sufficiently well alongside each other. Therefore, we have a real problem about the implementation of curriculum fractions, which we all agree is the right theme. It is on that basis that I would support the motion in the name of Tavish Scott. I call Ian Gray. No more than five minutes, please, Mr Gray. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Like Liz Smith, I have carefully studied Mr Swinney's speech last week in which he declared that the status quo in our school is not an option. I, too, agree that the status quo in our schools right now is too few teachers, too few support staff and class sizes, which are far too big. That is not a status quo that can go on. However, the status quo in our school system is also two key Government bodies, Education Scotland and the SQA, who are at best failing to deliver and, at worst, are dysfunctional. The cabinet secretary said that his governance review included Education Scotland and the SQA within his scope, and that is absolutely true. Although Tavish Scott is right, it is quite hard to find them in there, but they certainly are. Let us look at what some of the respondents to the governance review had to say about them. Here is the EIS submission on Education Scotland. The EIS has concerns over the increasingly politicised role of Education Scotland, with the role of the inspector at having been brought closer to Government. Questions remain about the independence of the inspection process and its relationship to Government policy. Concerns have emerged more recently regarding the capacity of Education Scotland to provide sound, evidence-based advice to inform Government policy. That is pretty damning, and it is reflected, too, in the submission from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. There is concern that Education Scotland's role has become increasingly politicised, with the implication that it prioritises the needs of Government over those of schools and teachers, where Education Scotland carries out the development work and has responsibility for evaluating those developments. Its independence as an evaluator needs to be questioned. That is fairly damning, but Tavish Scott pointed out that we can look to Education Scotland in its role as the school's inspectorate in Bill Maxwell's valedictory report this week, in which he points out that school provision for pupils is very variable, that 23 per cent of secondaries and 26 per cent of primaries have important weaknesses or strengths that are only just outwe weakness. Hardly a glowing report, a report that Mr Scott pointed out on himself, because Bill Maxwell reports as chief inspector on Education Scotland of what he is, of course, the chief executive. I fear he rather dams himself by his own faint praise. Then we have to ask ourselves on what he bases his assessment, because at the weekend we also discovered that last year only one in 18 schools were inspected, so one element of Education Scotland's responsibility seems to be rather disappearing. As for the SQA, we have heard in the education committee very strong evidence from teachers that they no longer trust our exam body. Here is one quote, I am afraid that my current experience of the SQA is almost entirely negative, documentation highly complex, repetitive and difficult to access. We have seen actual failures from the SQA in maths, geography and computer studies exams to name a few. The cabinet secretary spoke of the decluttering of assessments and yet right now we see the SQA making rather a hash of the change that has come about because of the cabinet secretary's decision to remove the unit assessments from national 4 and 5. Let's not forget too, the SQA's decision to push the cost of appeals on to schools and local authorities, thus leading to a massive drop in pupils who can benefit from appeals or remarts disproportionately and unfairly in the state sector. It seems clear that reform is needed, and with Education Scotland the reform is obvious, the splitting of functions with the SQA, the reform is perhaps less clear, but it has certainly suffered a loss of experienced staff, there are questions to be answered about the balance of their income-generating work and the work that they do for the Scottish exam system. We need a review of SQA, but with the certainty of reform. Although I acknowledge that the Government amendment does take seriously the issues that have been raised by the Liberal Democrats today, it is not enough to say that we will seriously consider reform. We need the Parliament to commit itself to actual reform, splitting education Scotland and changing things at SQA to make it work, and that is why we will support the Liberal Democrat motion this evening. I now move to the open speeches. We are extremely tight for time, so no leeway at all in the four minutes. I have Alex Cole-Hamilton to be followed by Gillian Martin. Last night, when I discussed the topic of this motion with my wife, a primary school teacher, of some 15 years experience, she gave me an insight into the mild disdain with which Education Scotland is held by educationists at every level within the primary and secondary education sectors. The amassing of some 20,000 pages of guidance is a source of derision in itself. Each iteration is seen as a game of spot the difference in classrooms and staff rooms around the country, with each one being examined and digested by senior management teams at every level in our education sector before heads are scratched and teaching staff grapple with what new revelation has contained that is different from the last. The strength of feeling in that regard is evidence to Education Committee last week. The policy function of Education Scotland belies the attempts of this Government to centralise, to control and to avoid external scrutiny in the conduct of education in this country. Leave us alone. This was the clarion call of teachers and unions at every education hustling that I have been to in my political career. Allow us the curriculum to bed in and let us get on with it, but, like a hyperactive lab technician, this Government has, through in tandem with Education Scotland, sought to tweak and product the curriculum in a desperate hope that their intervention might be the one to stem the slump in our PISA scores and our widening attainment gap. I shall. Mr Cole-Hamilton, I hear that kind of thing from teachers all the time. Leave us alone, let it bed in. Do you think that changing the governance of the structures of the educational bodies is not changing things for teachers on the ground and interviewing them with the process of leaving them alone? I thank Julian Martin for the intervention, but not when that is exactly the intervention that our teachers are asking for. The most recent example of which, of course, is the advent of national testing, which has been rejected roundly by teachers across the board who feel that they will be forced to once again teach to the test. Across the board, educationists agree that the inspection of our schools should be entirely disaggregated from the guidance-generating machinery of Education Scotland. How else could the inspection regime offer that all-important role as an independent, critical friend to the stewardship of Education Scotland in this country? Right now, we have the effect of the Scottish Government and Education Scotland marking its own homework, and that has to stop. Furthermore, if we are truly to reverse the worrying decline in education standards in this country, we must bring reform not solely to Education Scotland but to the qualification authority. We, all of us, remember the anxiety and stress that we endured to sit and passed life-qualifying exams in our teens. Imagine, then, the terror of young people who sat last year's higher geography exam, described by teachers as the worst ever and nothing like the specimen. That coming, as it did, is hot on the heels of the worst higher mass exam in living memory just a couple of years previously. The most important thing about that is the impact in schools and deprived communities, where the resilience of young people to sit to these very dramatic life-qualifying exams can take a real knock if the first question on your paper is something that you have never even been taught. The repetition of such a situation, of which has a clear and demonstrable impact on the mental health and wellbeing of young people at the critical crossroads in their lives, should serve as proof that, if anywhere needed, the structures and government of our qualification system is in dire need of reform. We see that most recently in the roll-out of, as I have mentioned, unpopular national testing. It is symptomatic of the delivery of this Government's approach, which is measurement, meddling and micromanagement. I am quite happy to support the motion in my friend and colleague's name, Tavish Scott, and ask Parliament to follow suit. I would like to concentrate my contribution today around the first part of the Liberal Democrat motion on inspections. I was very interested, as a member of the education committee, to ask questions of Education Scotland around the inspector when they appeared before this at the end of last year. The main questions around inspections in my mind came from issues around workload and stress that inspections have traditionally resulted in. We got assurances from the current chief inspector, Alastair Delaney, that the method of inspections is changing, with more emphasis on support and advice on classroom practice, and less of walking around with a clipboard making judgments based on documentation and copious written evidence, as has all been the case for many years. I must admit that I was sceptical. I know many teachers—mystical Hamilton is not the only person married to a teacher—and their experience of inspections has not always been positive. That was reflected in some of the submissions from teachers to us based on the historical inspections. However, I will take it upon myself that, when schools in my constituency are expected to go and speak to the head teachers about their experience as a result of that, I have some up-to-date evidence in my constituency that the inspections method is improving. Two of my local primary schools recently underwent inspections that the head teachers have both said have a vastly more positive experience for the schools than in the past. It is important that we monitor that and indeed check that that is indeed the trajectory. Ross Greer. I thank Gillian Martin for taking the intervention. From the evidence that we gathered as a committee, there seemed to be a real disconnect between the value that head teachers placed on inspections and the value that classroom teachers placed on them, with classroom teachers being the ones feeling that there was less value from it. Why do we think that that is the case? Gillian Martin. I have heard that kind of stuff too. I think that that is a cultural thing. I think that the inspections regime beforehand was so onerous. I will come on to speak to that in my speech. There is a disconnect between this message from the inspector that is going down of where we are there to help you to develop rather than this clipboard approach. I think that that is yet to percolate and I think that it is incumbent on the local authorities and head teachers to get that message down to classroom level. The issue that the Liberal Democrats raised about centering on conflict of interest in having the inspectorate part of Education Scotland, I am not wholly convinced. I can see what they mean from some on the face of it, but I do not think that there is a particularly pressing case for separate them to go back to two separate bodies. Education Scotland provides insight into the practical implementation of education policy through its school inspections programme and other quality assurance activities at school and at local authority level. Scotland is not alone in having that approach. Norway has a similar body that has an integrated approach to curriculum development, learning and teaching and inspection. It builds on a three-tier approach to quality assurance and puts the practitioner's self-evaluation at the heart of it, as I was right. As a former education practitioner, your self-evaluation and peer evaluation I think is one of some of the most effective ways of continuing professional development. As it stands, Education Scotland does not determine the design or the content of the curriculum that has been inspected. That is the SQA's job. Rather, Education Scotland takes that curriculum and develops it in partnership with local authorities, teachers and the inspectors. I think that the inspections are part and parcel of that development. If inspections truly are moving away from the culture of judgment and ours that has been suggested by witnesses to our committee and teaching practitioners that I have spoken to, become more of a professional development tool, I would think that separating the inspectors from Education Scotland might be a backward step for Scottish education. To be quite honest, there is probably more pressing issues about getting that message that Ross Greer has mentioned to me about getting the culture of inspections changed wholly rather than actually throwing the baby out with the bath water and going back to the HMIE-type situation. Education Scotland should serve two functions—to enrich the minds of students but also to prepare them for the modern workforce. My colleague Liz Smith said that recent evidence to the education committee had not made for happy reading, and having spent the last few days reading much of that evidence could not agree more. The effect of not getting our agencies right has a knock-on effect on the output of our education system. On Monday this week, I met with Digital Europe, the trade body that represents the tech sectors across Europe, and I was told of a major problem in a shortage of suitably skilled graduates in STEM, which will have a real knock-on effect on growing the digital economy in Scotland. In light of the fact that there is already a shortage of computer science teachers in Scotland, a number of other things worried me when I read much of the evidence to the education committee. For example, the national 5 higher computing exam had coding errors in it. STEM subjects and exams had become increasingly technical and facing increased scrutiny. For example, 20,000 people signed a petition complaining about the higher mass and national 5 mass exams. The Royal Society of Edinburgh expressed concern that the structure of S4 compromised subject choice, which surely must compromise opportunity as well. Any lack of confidence in the quality of, the fairness of and even the delivery of our exam systems undermines the opportunities for those coming out of those systems. In my view, exams are not just statistics, they are not just letters and scores and percentages. Exams should deliver skills and knowledge, as well as qualifications. An example of that being once again from digital Europe, who said that there is certainly a lot of people coming out with technical skills, but very few of them have business acumen to go with that. Coding and programming skills are not good enough on their own. They need management, financial and legal skills and knowledge as well. How can we expect employers to have confidence in our exam process when our teachers themselves are questioning the very process? There is clearly evidence to suggest that the relationship between teachers and the SQA is not working as well as it should. A number of people have also raised concerns about the additional workload that the curriculum for excellence has placed on teachers, and Janet Brown mentioned that in one such session. The SSTA showed that 65 per cent of respondents to a survey did not believe that guidance and support around the curriculum for excellence provides the support that is needed to build a world-class curriculum in Scotland. However, there are overarching structural problems here, too. Education Scotland is structured in a way that means that it is in charge of policy delivery, implementation and then assessing its own quality. It is not just the judge and jury that someone suggested earlier, it is also the defendant. Is there a conflict of interest here? Lindsay Paterson, the professor of education policy at Edinburgh University seems to suggest so. The Royal Society of Edinburgh is concerned about the conflict. Kerr Bloomer at Reform Scotland said that, being responsible for both development and inspection, it has created a fundamental conflict of interests. Those are the experts. Surely we must listen to them. At the Lib Den motion calls for the inspection and policy functions of Education Scotland to be separate and for a reorganisation of the SQA, and I think that there is merit in that. If education is such a priority for this Government, then I urge the Government to consider this proposal. Deputy Presiding Officer, I welcome the opportunity to take part in this education debate, albeit briefly, and I want to thank the Lib Dems for bringing this forward. I hope that the Scottish Government will commit to focusing more rigorously on education in the next period, given the very significant mandate that it has in relation to education. It is my greatest regret following the two-day debate that we had around the referendum, is the danger of the opportunity cost over the next period of the focus that it has chosen. All of Scotland's talent in local government, civil service and civic Scotland, the dangers that will be focused on an imagined future, not the real, the fundamental challenges in creating an education system now that matches our ambitions for the people of Scotland, and indeed, instead of taking the tough choices that I believe need to be taking, settling for the thing that keeps everybody happy because of a putative vote in a couple of years' time. I think that the Scottish Government needs to acknowledge fully the challenges presented to it by the evidence that the Education Committee found regarding education bodies, and much of that has already been rehearsed. Central to this is hearing what teachers and other education professionals, people working in schools, say, rather than seeking to explain away what they say. Deputy First Minister quite rightly talks about the importance of valuing staff, recognising the job that they do every day. It is the first principle of valuing them and recognising what they do is to listen to what they say about the barriers that are in front of them in them trying to do their job. That would be real respect, not as I said, to explain away what they are saying to you, but to try to understand properly why so many people across education are so exercised. There is an issue about the profound lack of clarity about the responsibility of individual education bodies and who is accountable. If you look at the evidence, you will see a lot of back passing in a world where all is responsible, ultimately none is responsible. Indeed, we are told by Education Scotland of the extent to which it has authority over policy that there are a lot of action points for discussion in the management board of curriculum for excellence. We need better action points for discussion. We need somebody to get a grip of some of that. A particular issue has already been highlighted about the dual role of Education Scotland. I recommend people looking at the exchange between myself and the head of Education Scotland in this matter, because there is a dilemma here. Education Scotland gives advice to Government in private, which is not known to the rest of us. It has a responsibility in implementing that policy, regardless of whether they thought that it was wise to have that policy in the first place, and then ultimately inspecting its impact. A role that many education academics have already said is a major weakness, and it really does need to be addressed. We get to a position where the body, which is implementing Government policy, is not then looking and testing the merits of the policy, but looking at its implementation. It is impossible to conceive of a way in which that body then says to Government that they are wrong, and all the evidence is that what they say instead is that the teachers do not understand. There is a problem in communication. Maybe sometimes there is a problem with the policy, and currently it is not clear how that message gets back, and indeed it is not clear how much confidence educational professionals would have in saying that the policy is a problem, not the degree of guidance that we have. That is a fundamental issue that the Government does need to address. There is institutional protection going on here. If you look at the instances to say that they have a problem and that they do not agree with us, there is a conservative lack of desire for change, that is not good enough. We know that people are trying to do their best, and I believe that that change in the role of Education Scotland would play a part in addressing that. Ross Greer, to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Our education agencies play an absolutely vital role in ensuring that pupils get a strong education. Their performance has a very real impact, and as members are aware, the education committee has recently been scrutinising quite substantially the performance of SQA in Education Scotland. We have listened to teachers, parents and other experts, the agencies themselves. Only this morning, we discussed the response of the agencies to our report, and, quite frankly, it has been a pretty dismal experience. It is clear that improvements urgently need to be made and that neither Education Scotland nor the SQA are willing to fully acknowledge the problems. What we have heard from teachers were significant concerns about the way those agencies function. It is clear that they do not feel that they can raise their concerns openly with either agency. Trust with the SQA in particular has completely broken down. Based on the evidence received by the committee, it is disappointing that the Government's education governance review has not focused more closely on the role that the education agencies play, although I heard the cabinet secretary's comments in that regard earlier. From the evidence that we gathered, we felt that there was a serious cause for concern with the SQA, the breakdown in trust with teachers, the errors in exam papers and an approach to feedback akin to a defensive corporate PR exercise. In fact, I believe from a freedom of information request by Ian Gray that we found that defensive corporate PR was exactly what was going on. We have heard of a geography exam described as the worst ever by teachers, a computer science exam that contained errors from back to front, which I had to pursue through this Parliament. A maths exam was said by students to be impossible. Teachers have reported excessively high work codes, created by huge amounts of complex and inconsistent documentation, which neither Education Scotland nor the SQA have kept any sufficient control over. One physics teacher cited 81 pages of guidance, spread across five different documents available through different parts of the goal website. Guidance has been updated several times already for courses that have only been running for a few years. We cannot say that this is an acceptable situation for our teachers. The SQA's response to the committee's report has been far from adequate. I described it this morning as defensive, filled with platitude and simply restating its structures and processes, as other members have already mentioned, not addressing the concerns that the committee raised. They have committed themselves to further engagement with teachers and to review some of their working practices, but they have not yet substantially addressed the causes of many of those problems. Far more needs to be done to repair the trust between SQA and teachers. As Tavish Scott's motion highlights, concerns have also been raised repeatedly about the dual role of Education Scotland in both developing curriculum for excellence and inspecting its implementation in schools. A majority of teachers responding to the committee told us that they felt that inspections added either nothing or little to their school's performance, that they do not grasp the realities of the school, as measures are taken to simply improve appearances. It is like the story about the Queen believing everywhere smells of fresh paint. That stands in pretty stark contrast to Education Scotland's own review, which stated that headteachers overwhelmingly value inspections, which is the point that I made in intervention to Gillian Martin's speech. It appears that the further from the classroom you are, the more you value the inspections. That is not good enough. Concerning the Education Scotland's primary response to those concerns was to launch a media campaign to, in its words, correct any misconceptions about inspections. We need to ensure that school inspections have the confidence of all teachers in the classroom, not just headteachers. I believe that there is a strong case to split the functions of Education Scotland, and that it should be further explored for the reasons that Tavish Scott outlined. However, I have no interest in last-minute theatrics in the debate. The Greens will be supporting the Government amendment, because we believe that it should be further explored, but we do not believe that it is an absolute commitment that we should make yet. We will hold the Government to its commitment to seriously consider the proposal, because solving the real issues with Education Scotland cannot be kicked into the long grass, and we will not allow the Government to do that. The last contribution in the open debate is Fulton MacGregor. Fulton MacGregor, I apologise for my host voice. I have the flu that is going around, or, as I referred to, as I have been told by my partner several times this week, the man flu. She apparently had it a couple of weeks ago and was neither up nor down, so that says it all. As has been said many times, there are improvements to be made to the Scottish education system, and the Government's review is a key part of making those improvements. The OECD is right when they say that schools and communities should be at the heart of our education system, and I welcome the Government's response launching this review. I am pleased to hear the level of contribution already to the review with the number of responses received today, and I would encourage everyone to get involved and put forward their own view. The review will consider the role of every part of the education system, including national agencies, and we are committed to ensuring that young people and parents have confidence in all parts of the system. Decisions about a child's learning should absolutely be made as close as possible to the child by the people closest to the child. That review is about getting it right for every child, and at the heart of the review is the presumption that as many decisions as possible be taken at school level, a decentralisation right to the heart of our communities. It is for this reason that the Government's pupil equity fund is a welcome step in the right direction, putting money into the hands of head teachers to invest in raising attainment based on the needs of their pupils. My own local authority has garnered some media attention lately. It has had an investment of almost £9 million, but rather than support head teachers and allowing them to invest as they see fit, the Labour council there has already instructed all schools to hand over a large portion of the money to the local authority for paying staff costs. That has been well documented, as it has said, and it is completely unacceptable. It will once again call on the council to reverse this outrageous cash grab. I am delighted by what member for party that is putting education first and working day in, day out to raise attainment for the most disadvantaged in our society. I do not know why Labour and the Tories seem to find that funny, but bear together is obviously reforming just now, so fair enough. My constituency—well, I will tell you that it is not funny, but I want to know that there is not a lot of time—my constituency has some of the most deprived areas in Scotland, according to the IMD. It was an area that voted yes in the referendum, you mentioned the referendum, and it is an area that wants change, an area that wants to see everybody doing better. The investment that is made by this Government to help young people is very welcomed by the schools, some of which have got 50 per cent over the SNP threshold. I do not have time. Education Scotland already runs independently of Government by supporting a review of the process, as has been said, and is mentioned by Ross Greer among others in place to ensure that things are being done as well as they can be. The SQA has had its problems, and they should be addressed, but we should support them as they attempt to make the improvements necessary to improve attainment. They are already committed to working closely with teachers to develop new qualifications. They are also reviewing their approach to engagement and communication with teachers and will work to ensure that its relationship with the profession reflects mutual trust and support as enjoyed with teachers throughout the history of the organisation. Presiding Officer, I have said that before during debates, as have others, but I feel that it is a point worth reinforcing. While aiming to improve education in Scotland, we must all support those who work in our schools, striving to provide quality education for our young people. We have a lot to be proud of in Scotland. More of our population is educated beyond school level than that of any other European country. Young people from the most deprived areas are now more likely to participate in higher education than they were 10 years ago. A higher number of young people leave school to positive destinations than ever before. Those are just some of the positives that we should all welcome. I put on record again my appreciation to teachers and assistants involved in this. We now move to the closing speeches. I call Daniel Johnson up to four minutes, please. As many speakers have mentioned, John Swinney in a recent speech said that the status quo is not an option. Not only do I think that he is right, I would go further than that. I do not think that the status quo is ever an option. I think that we need to constantly renew and modernise our public services to respond to changing public demand and needs. I think that that is especially true of education, but what we must do when we have reform is to have vision and evidence that leads to prescription. Vision about what the world should look like and evidence of why change is needed and why the reforms proposed will improve it. Unfortunately, the emphasis to date has focused on particular structural reforms. That has been without evidence and without particular explanation. I appreciate the change in emphasis that we have today and the acknowledgement that we have to look at those bodies and institutions. More importantly, we have to have an acknowledgement that the status quo that we have in education is a status quo created by the SNP Government. It is the reforms that have led to the burden that has been created for teachers who have had to make sense of curriculum fractions and to make it work. It is the reforms to the qualifications that teachers have struggled to make work. It is the changes that have led teachers to feel unsupported and struggling with the guidance and help that has been provided. It is the SQA in Education Scotland that has been central to those reforms and is also culpable for the faults that need to be looked at. That is why this debate is so important today and why I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing it forward. With the Government's amendment date, I hope that they consider and listen because the issues that have been revealed through the education committee's work but also the wider discussions are important and need to be addressed. In the four minutes that I have, I do not pretend to be able to cover off everything that is said, but I think that my summary of what the speakers have been saying is summarised in four key headings. First of all, we have clear issues around responsiveness and transparency from both bodies, as Liz Smith put it, that those agencies frankly have not been listening and that has led to, as Ian Gray put, a lack of trust. When the bodies that we are talking about are the ones responsible for both devising and implementing the curriculum and for administering our qualifications, that lack of trust is absolutely critical and dire. Secondly, there is a real issue around guidance and support from both of those agencies that is supplied to teachers. That has led to increased workload, and I think that Tavish Scott did an excellent job of illustrating just the sheer complexity. I think that it is ironic that the SQA in its defence has said that IT has made this much more complicated. It must be the only organisation in the world to complain that IT makes communication more difficult, not less. We have issues around design and coherence and implication, and that has seen the complexity in terms of the translation from broad general education into the senior face. As Lindsay Paterson set out very well in his evidence to the committee, that has led to an inherent narrowing of the curriculum, narrowing the number of subjects that pupils and students take through to S4. In an education system that has prided itself with his words, that is of serious concern. Fourthly, measurement and tracking of success, as the OECD pointed out, is simply not the evidence-based to establish how well curriculum for excellence has taken hold. If you need to understand why Education Scotland must have its functions split apart, in its response to the education committee that we were going through, it pointed to its own inspection regime as being the measure as to whether or not curriculum for excellence had been a success or not. That is quite simply not plausible to completely gloss over the lack of data and to point to its own functions is simply not satisfactory. That is why we need those agencies to be reformed. That is why we need the Government to have a frank acknowledgement of where we are with curriculum for excellence and to acknowledge its role and the evidence when it considers its reforms. Ross Thomson, up to four minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing forward this debate today when improving educational standards is supposed to be the defining mission of the Government. It is right that we have a frank debate about the real issues in education and thoroughly scrutinise the role of education agencies. Since the start of this Parliament, the Education and Skills Committee in undertaking a deep dive of the performance of the education agencies has brought together some stark and compelling evidence. What is so deeply worrying is the huge gap of distrust that exists between our teachers and the principal agencies of Education Scotland and SQA. Plagued by bureaucracy and inconsistency, the current system is not fit for purpose and needs reform. Beyond committee evidence, I know from speaking to teachers in my own region, as we all will, that there are very real concerns about the complications of guidance, the weight of workload, the lack of flexibility, the lack of clarity. I hope that the Government in answering this debate will answer Tavish Scott's point about how many pages of the guidance have gone. One local teacher in my region wrote to me to say, and I quote, "...and more depressingly, this simply adds to our workload, and I have to say I am rapidly despairing of hearing any common sense on the whole issue of CFE and how it in any way meets its supposed aims. Sorry to keep saying it, but we are facing a further downturn in attainment and it really saddens me to see the situation we are in and the failure to address the real issues." Indeed, on guidance, the OECD examined this and found that it contained an almost like curriculum for excellence, Christmas Carol, with 12 attributes, 10 aims, eight curriculum areas, seven principles, six entitlements, five levels, four capabilities, all we need next is two turtle doves in a partridge in a pear tree. Deputy Presiding Officer, in just over six months, support for the Scottish Government's handling of education has fallen another five points, with 56 per cent of people believing that the SMP is not handling education well. That is truly a deeply troubling state of affairs. In opening for those benches, Liz Smith highlighted inspections. Inspections provide a necessary and informative way to ensure that the system is weighted and runs effectively. Education Scotland stated in its letter on 16 December 2016 that anticipates conducting between 115 and 120 inspections in the current financial year. Nonetheless, the number of school inspections will be lower than in 2012-13. Indeed, Government statistics show that there has been a 70 per cent drop in the number of inspections taking place since 2004-05. Yesterday, I obtained figures on school inspections from my own region from Spice. Those figures show that, since 2009-10, numbers of inspections have fallen by 57 per cent in Aberdeenshire from 26 to 11, with only five in the past three years, fallen by 80 per cent in Aberdeenshire, with just two completed this year, fallen by 75 per cent in Dundee and have fallen to zero in Angus where no inspections took place. As Tavish Scott said in opening, education Scotland is responsible for what happens in the classroom and the quality of teaching in our schools. It is a body that assesses its own performance. I listened carefully to Julian Martin, but I am sure that she would agree that it is equivalent to a pupil sitting in their exam being handed it back in order to mark their own performance. It is an inherent conflict of interest. No, I am not even in the last minute. Time and time again, this Government comes to Parliament to tell us of their defining mission, which is education. Fulton MacGregor says that they discuss it day in and day out, but, given that education has only been discussed in committee time and being debated in Opposition time and that we spent two days of Government time debating independence, I would seriously challenge that assertion. We most certainly know that ministers can talk the talk, but they need to seriously prove that they can walk the walk. It is time for reform, it is time for action and that is why we will be supporting the motion in the name of Tavish Scott. I call John Swinney up to five minutes please. Presiding Officer, I want to address a number of the issues that have been raised in the debate today. The first one that I want to address is the point that was raised by Alex Cole-Hamilton about external scrutiny of education in Scotland. The Government invited the OECD, who are renowned across the globe as the strongest interrogators of the performance of education systems in the world, to review curriculum for excellence and the implementation of curriculum for excellence, and they did that. They essentially confirmed that curriculum for excellence was a strong, effective and appropriate reform for Scotland to have undertaken. They identified a range of improvements that were required to make sure that curriculum for excellence could generate the type of benefit and value for people in Scotland as a consequence of the bold decision to implement that. That is the agenda that I am pursuing on a relentless basis, which underpinned the address that I made at Queen Margaret University last week and which I intend to stick to, because I have sought external validation of our approach and external challenge. I accept the scale of that challenge, and I am now proceeding to address that. One of the other challenges that I face in taking forward that agenda—I do not think that that will be a revelation to anyone in the chamber today—is that not everybody in education agrees with each other about what is the right thing to do. Therefore, the debate that has been marshaled today, with all sorts of opinions set out by members of Parliament today, many of the points put forward, but we have vigorously contested by other commentators outside this Parliament and in the education system. I do not say that to criticise anyone. I simply to say that I have to reflect the fact that there are different and disparate views, and I have to chart a course through them to try to address those issues. I simply want to ask Mr Swinney on the issue of separating the inspection and other functions of Education Scotland, who he can pray an aid in support of the current position. Part of the exercise that I am going through to determine those issues at the present moment, but I come back to the rationale that I set out in my original commentary, which was that the thinking behind the linking of the inspectorate function to the policy function was to ensure that what we learnt in inspection informed policy and what we learnt in policy informed inspection. If I put to Mr Gray the alternative scenario of having a separate policy function from an inspection function, the teaching profession, perhaps, would be uncertain about where the guidance and the certainty about the direction of education came from. Did it come from the policy function or did it come from the inspection function? If they represented different perspectives in that respect, if they were not cross-fertilised by that opinion, the teaching profession could have uncertainty. That is one of the issues that I am wrestling with, as I consider those issues. A number of members raised issues, John Lamont raised issues about whether we were listening to the staff, Liz Smith raised issues about my comments about the education system being a mystery tour for the profession. Those are the reasons why the curriculum guidance was issued in August of last year to what I think has been a pretty strong and positive reaction from the teaching profession. That is why the benchmarks have been put out so that it is crystal clear to everybody at every level in the education system what levels we are trying to get young people to achieve, crucially, because that will end up at the end of the broad general education as the foundation for the senior phase of education, which is the crucial interaction between the work of education Scotland and the work of the SQA in ensuring that the learning that is undertaken in the broad general education is able to establish the strong foundations for the senior phase. Would the cabinet secretary accept that one of the reasons why the very recent changes that he has made is because teachers feel that they have been involved in those changes and that some of the other issues about curriculum for excellence over the other years is because it has been driven by Government and by the agencies and they were not listening to teachers. I have taken entirely the opposite view because what struck me as I looked into those issues is that there was an endless amount of criticism that was undertaken in the formulation of guidance. If I am exposed to any criticism just now, and I would accept that there is a danger I might be, I have not carried out as much consultation on the benchmarks that have been put out into the education system as was the case in the consultation on the previous guidance. That is a risk that I have taken because I want to give early and swift clarity to the system to enable those judgments to be made. The Government amendment is designed to be helpful today to ensure that we can have a debate about the proper role and functions of Education Scotland and the SQA. They are part of the governance review. They always have been. They were part of it from day one and I am happy to confirm that to Parliament. The Government will conclude the exercise and I will come back to Parliament in June with the next steps that we intend to take forward on our journey to reform. John Swinwell will well remember that, before the 1997 general election, Gordon Brown wholly opposed the separation of the Bank of England from the previous position where it was very much part of the Government with the Chancellor in effect setting interest rates. I remember before that general election that loyal backbenchers were sent out into the TV studios to run down or at least to disagree with the argument for independence of the Bank of England. If I remember rightly the day after the general election, Gordon Brown declared rightly that the Bank of England was going to become absolutely independent from government. He was quite right on that. I just get the sense that, in fairness to the Deputy First Minister, he has listened to this argument. He has deployed a few backbenchers today to make the opposite case and that is fair enough. Gillian Martin and Ross Greer are amongst them. What John Swinney very sensibly did was to both make the case that these bodies are within his governance review and also to leave the door open. I listened very carefully to his point about dual functions and the arguments that I, frankly, do not remember from all those years past about the rationale for merging the organisations. However, I would just ask him in the coming months, before he gets to the June statement that he is, I am sure, going to make to Parliament to that point, on governance, to reflect on the evidence, because the evidence that has been presented from all corners of the chamber this afternoon, I believe, is pretty strong and pretty powerful. It just finishes his point. It is pretty powerful for the separation of the two functions in relation to Education Scotland and to the reform of the SQA. Ian Gray. At my age, I struggle with my recollections as well, but it is not the case that these two bodies were really murdered in order to meet a commitment to reduce the number of government bodies rather than for any sound educational reason. I would be happy to go back to that. I suspect that we should probably ask the Deputy First Minister—I recall that he was very much the Minister driving that reform of organisations at that time—two other points to make about the Deputy First Minister's remarks. The first is that we all find something in the OECD report, Deputy Presiding Officer, because what the OECD said very clearly in 2015 was about the need to streamline the enormous amount of guidance that was in schools. I have said before that the Deputy First Minister has begun to address that, although I set out some numbers today that she illustrated, there is still much to be done. However, I think that it is important to recognise what the OECD said on both sides of the argument about both the development and the implementation of curriculum for excellence. On the broader debate that we have had this afternoon, a number of colleagues from across the chamber have looked at the concerns that have been expressed around the SQA, both in terms of evidence to the committee and have been stark in their arguments as to the need for change because of those multi-various roles that the SQA plays. I believe that Johann Lamont's argument about the clarity of accountability is perhaps the most powerful argument of the law. That is in the Minister's interests. John Swinney just rehearsed with Ian Gray in the intervention a moment or two ago about where policy sits and where the inspection sits. That is absolutely right. That is the central argument that we are having here today. However, the clarity of accountability that Johann Lamont raised in her remarks earlier on is the one that the Education Committee of this Parliament was so exercised by because when they asked the curriculum management board to explain exactly that, they were all responsible for everything and no one was responsible for anything. That is exactly the charge that needs to be met. John Swinney Just for absolute completeness, Mr Scott put on the record that when I appeared in front of the committee, I accepted ministerial responsibility for everything. Tavish Scott Well, indeed, the ministerial responsibility for everything. Therefore, this debate is about helping the minister to clarify the roles that his own agencies should have. That is what we are seeking to do. Finally, the importance of the evidence that we would ask the cabinet secretary to bear in mind is around the points that Ian Gray made about the EIS and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in response to the need for the inspection process to be separate. That, I think, is the answer to Gillian Martin's reasonable arguments about the culture of inspection in our schools. If the EIS, on behalf of the teachers, is arguing that that inspection process is too close to Government, I would suggest that that is the very evidence that the cabinet secretary is looking for in order to make a fundamental change in this area. It is on that basis that we hope that he will take the advice that has been offered, the evidence that is clearly in front of him, and make the changes when the time comes. Tavish Scott That concludes the debate in education. It is time to move on to the next item of business. A moment please for change round of seats.