 Can I welcome everybody to the fifth meeting of the Public Audit Committee in the sixth session of Parliament? Before I begin, can I remind members and guests here that the social distancing rules of the Parliament need to be adhered to and if you are moving around the room or if you are entering or leaving the committee room, please wear a face covering. The first item on our agenda is to agree to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. Are we all agreed on that? Thank you. Our second agenda item is to look at the improving outcomes for young people through school education report which was produced earlier this year. It is an opportunity for us to speak to the accountable officer in the Scottish Government, Joe Griffin, who I welcome here this morning. I think that it is your first appearance before this committee. I am sure that we shall be gentle in our approach to you in light of that. Joining us remotely are Graham Logan, who is the director of learning at the Scottish Government and Gail Gorman, who is the chief inspector of education at Education Scotland, is also joining us via video link. Also, via video link joining us is a member of the committee, Willie Coffey. Can I also remind people, because this is a hybrid meeting, if you are joining us remotely, if you enter an R in the chat box function, if you want to come in on any of the points, that would be helpful. Obviously, if people who are in the room just simply indicate to me or the clerks, then we will take you for your questions or answers. Joe, again, just to welcome to you, and I want to afford you the opportunity of making an opening statement before we get into the question session. Thank you very much, convener. I would like to thank the Public Audit Committee very much for inviting me to give evidence at the session alongside Graham Logan and Gail Gorman. As you say, convener, this marks my first committee appearance as director general for education and justice, and I am glad that this morning provides us with the opportunity to discuss a recent key review of our education system. Audit Scotland's report on improving outcomes for young people through school education outlines clearly the challenges that we face in ensuring that our education system provides fair and equal opportunities to children and young people in Scotland. I would like to thank the Auditor General for commissioning this really helpful report and I look forward to reflecting on the report's recommendations during this evidence session. The Scottish Government understands the significant impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the lives of our children and young people. Alongside our key partners in local authorities and other stakeholder groups, we are committed to doing all we can to support our young people to overcome these challenges, both through our existing measures to reduce the attainment gap and through new policy initiatives investments which we have introduced since the start of the pandemic. I would like merely to take this opportunity to record my sincere thanks and appreciation to all school-aged children and young people in Scotland, the care parents and carers for all that they have done to continue their learning and support of each other during the pandemic. I would also like to thank our education workforce, teachers, school leaders, support staff, janitors, officers and partner services working with schools also to support our children and young people. I thank the committee once again and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to answer members' questions. Thank you very much indeed for that opening statement and we will now turn to questions. One of the recurring themes in the last session of Parliament which was a cause of concern was incomplete and poor quality data. When we look at the Joint Audit Scotland Accounts Commission report into outcomes for young people in school education again it seems to crop up again that the sets of data which are available, which are measuring outcomes do appear to be incomplete and I think the expression that's used by the Auditor General is a lack of robust data. So the first question we wanted to ask you was what are you doing to address that and is that something that you are taking serious action to address? Thank you convener. The Audit Scotland critique is a fair and a reasonable one. As I interpret it, our curriculum relates to four capacities. It's a broad curriculum. So we talk about developing successful learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens and confident individuals. I think it's fair to say that most of the visibility and the narrative and the commentary relates to data around successful learners. So every year we have a result stage, a regular fixture in the calendar and there is then rightly a real focus on the academic achievement of children and young people. I think there is more that we could do to reflect the other three capacities. We do already, for example, collect health data so we regularly collect information about the wellbeing of 13 and 15 year olds as part of our information set and we publish in something called the National Improvement Framework that's an annual document that sets out our key aims and the data accompanying it, this information. We also draw on other sources of evidence such as organisations like the OECD who recently published a report showing that Scotland's young people are among the best in the world actually and an understanding of global issues and their responsibilities as citizens. We need more on health and wellbeing, not least in light of Covid. So this autumn through local authorities we'll be commissioning a health and wellbeing census and that will give us an awful lot more rich data to better understand the rounded experiences of children and young people as I say particularly through pandemic. Then looking ahead to the future, I think partly informed by this reasonable critique by Audit Scotland and also the OECD report that we got back in the summer there we do need to do more not just to collect the information but also to make it visible and to publicise that I think and part of that lies in the reform process that we're undertaking so we're currently examining how it might make sense to bring the curriculum and the assessment closer together in a single organisation and that can help us develop some of the methodologies because finally as the OECD say, some of this data is elusive. It's straightforward to measure exam results, straightforward ish to measure exam results for successful learners. Measuring confidence is something where we may need to develop the methodologies but certainly our aspiration is that we have a broader set of data that better reflects the structure of our curriculum. Thank you. I'm going to ask Joe if at any point you want to bring in either Graham or Gail and please feel free to do that. You mentioned there about the OECD and we're going to come on to ask some questions about that shortly but you also said about the extent of data collection. One of the other rather pointed conclusions in the report that we're considering this morning was something that was said in paragraph 25 of the report that bluntly said the Scottish Government's national aim is to improve outcomes for all but it has not set out by how much or by when so as well as collecting more data do you plan to address that charge that's in the report? Thank you convener. I think we have a sense of a political instruction to make demonstrable progress in reducing the poverty-related attainment gap in the short term and to eliminate it in the longer term and we in our national improvement framework have a series of measures that we track on an annual basis to be able to demonstrate whether we're achieving that or not. We have not taken the view that we should set a specific date by which the poverty-related attainment gap would be eliminated. We feel the nature of the challenge doesn't lend itself to that level of specificity. It's a highly complex process of all that Scotland have said. It relates to a number of variables, some of which happen well away from the school gates and are rooted in the community and it's the kind of complex challenge that we need for sure. We need data, we need a sense of how we're getting on and an ability to measure that but doesn't lend itself to saying by this date we'll have eliminated it completely. To elaborate on that a wee bit, I think nevertheless we are looking at whether it might be advisable to encourage local authorities more consistently to set themselves specific aims in respect of reducing the poverty-related attainment gap. In our improvement framework we currently have stretch aims at a national level but we think a more consistent adoption of local aims at local level might be something that assists local authorities in understanding their rate of progress. The Board at Scotland report actually is quite a helpful exposition of the variation that we see. I can't say too much more about that convener. The Cabinet Secretary for Education will be making an announcement next month about our approach to attainment generally but that hopefully gives you some of the indications of the direction that we're following. The Government does have targets, for example, on child poverty. It does have targets on fuel poverty. Has there been any consideration given to setting targets on reducing the attainment gap and putting a timescale next to it? I might ask Graham Logan just to come in a moment and to recall the early days of developing the attainment challenge. Again, it does come back to the complexity and the variability. There are a number of things that we do to improve performance in the classroom and teaching and so on. There are a number of things that happen in the community as well. We're taking that twin-track approach very much but the nature of a young person's attainment still rests on that individual's own engagement and response to the education system, which is a highly individual thing. To state an obvious point, every year a different group of people are sitting exams or are going through the process. That's some of the philosophy that underlines why we haven't gone for a specific approach but Graham Logan will be able to elaborate more including the considerations in the early days. Thank you, Mr Logan. Thank you very much, Joe. Sorry, convener. Thank you. Good morning, colleagues. To reassure the committee from the outset of the Scottish attainment challenge, it was part of our thinking and part of the conditions that were set that schools and local authorities had to have their own success criteria, their own measures in place for the ways in which they used additional funding to close the poverty-raised attainment gap. The reason we didn't choose two or three measures at that point was because of the research on the perverse incentives that could cause. It could encourage quite a reductionist, narrow approach to this. As Mr Griffin said, we wanted to encourage people to think about learning and teaching, families and communities and to take that broad approach. We did do a consultation on the measures that we should develop in the national improvement framework. As a result of that, 11 measures for closing the poverty-raised attainment gap were developed. They include some of the traditional attainment measures, but also a participation measure and other important indicators. I think that the challenge now, in light of the Audit Scotland report, as Mr Griffin was saying, is a clearer line of sight through to school and local level and perhaps agreeing that we need more consistency on some of those core measures. Thank you. We may return to some of these themes before the session finishes, but my final question is just to simply ask do you accept all of the recommendations in the report? Yes, we do. We have also been speaking with our colleagues and local government in the system as a whole. I think that there is a collective response to a very reasonable report and we are already incorporating some of the recommendations and plan to respond to all of them in due course. Thank you. I'm now going to ask Colin Beattie if he wants to come forward with a series of questions that he's got. Thank you, Peter. Good morning. I'd like to refer you to paragraphs 136, 137 and 138 of the report, particularly in paragraph 138 where the Auditor General found that there was not a link between spending per pupil and educational attainment. Firstly, there are a number of different elements that the Auditor General has listed here. Are we satisfied that each education authority is capturing data in the same way so that it is directly comparable? I know there's always a problem about our own data, but are we satisfied that in this case we are actually capturing the same data? Thank you, Mr Beattie. Again, I may ask Grail or Graham to elaborate, but I'll make a start with that. I think that because we have the national improvement framework with the 11 key measures, there is a system that ensures consistency. The data that we're getting from local authorities on each of those measures is broadly consistent but not broadly consistent. In addition to that, there's quite a lot of variation on measures that local authorities themselves choose to collect from the schools so that they can build up their own local picture for local purposes, but in terms of the national data, the national improvement framework guarantees that consistency. As I said, I don't know if Graham or Grail would want to add anything to that. I think that's probably no. I think that's no. I'm looking again at paragraph 138 where the Auditor General has listed out a number of issues, many of which are not directly to do with tuition and so on in terms of the actual student. The one thing that is missing is the family circumstances of the individual student because, as we know, the family situation impacts heavily on the performance of that student. All those other things may affect from a financial point of view to a certain extent loading the costs and so forth, but that element which I realise is a difficult one to capture, there's no indication as to what the real impact of family circumstances are and what can be done for a joined up approach in order to help that student to make the best of his education. I think it's a really important point. I'm going to talk a bit here about big data and small data. It's a phrase used by the Finnish educationalist Pazie Selberg and what that means is that there's some data you need at a national level for sure to understand the return on an investment, the development of a strategy, but there's some data that you need at the really, really local level so an individual teacher needs to know the circumstances of the young person that they have in front of them. I think in terms of our understanding of that as a theme and as a generic issue it's really clear to us from a range of reports that we've commissioned so whether it's the equity report that we published in January around the impact of the pandemic, whether it's a report of five years of the Scottish attainment challenge which is our strategic approach or whether it's the international evidence it's really clear that the family had teachers in the course of the last fortnight one in Dundee, one in Alloa and one just outside Kilmarnock and they all told me exactly what you're saying that some of the funding that they get from the Government which in number of our schools is specifically dedicated to the head teacher to decide best how she or he thinks that money should be dedicated these are absolutely spent on things that help with family circumstances so it could be the provision of a home link worker between the school and the family to better make those connections and to support the family and supporting the learner it could be something as simple as enabling the boy or the girl to play football at the weekend which they otherwise couldn't afford to do so we are seeing through our approach to attainment means of highly flexible uses of funding that rely on head teacher judgment and teacher judgment about where that money is best dedicated and we've had really really positive feedback from head teachers about the impact of precisely taking those family circumstances into account when we think about attainment and when we think about funding I guess with all these things coming back to spending public money how do we measure that how do we evidence the impact it's making and on a local authority basis how do we do comparisons between different local authorities to measure their performance in this regard when it's so variable so we don't publish league tables in Scotland of local authorities and their performance we take the view that the risk of doing that is that it leads to oversimplify conclusions that there is a demoralisation that that can have most importantly on the teaching workforce all of whom are doing absolutely their best in difficult circumstances but the publication of a league table that then shows that you're at the bottom or near the bottom we think the kind of effect that that can have is not good Of course Mr Beattie No no of course What I'm trying to understand is are some local authorities better at this than others are they following methodology which is more successful than others how do we transfer them I will ask Gail Gorman to come in in a moment as head of improvement in Scotland but we have very good information on each local authority so that's collected by Education Scotland we have one of Education Scotland's experts embedded in every local authority in the country so all 32 and there's a two-way flow of information that that entails so data and intelligence about what's happening in that local authority back to Gail and her colleagues and the sort of central education system and then from Education Scotland the provision of expertise and also the sharing of best practice and we've done lots to try and set up this community of best practice including at regional level through these things we call regional improvement collaboratives whereby that practice can be shared so within a regional entity if you have a local authority that's really strong on one aspect they're able to share that with their colleagues but Gail oversees the system as a whole Mr Beattie you may be able to elaborate further if you like Okay Thank you, convener and welcome to the committee I really appreciate being here just to pick up on Mr Beattie's point around how do we monitor that and how do we learn and share best practice the inspectorate carried out a series of inspections of the nine Scottish attainment challenge authorities in 2017 and 2018 where we worked in partnership with Audit Scotland colleagues and with other directors of education to audit the work that had gone on in the Scottish attainment challenge authorities to identify best practice and also to identify areas for improvement those reports were all published in the public domain, the local authorities in general then created action plans to address the improvement agenda as we move forward and there was also a summary report so we do that work as Mr Griffin said on a regular basis we also in our school inspections which you may be aware we announced this week we're beginning to restart again during Covid we obviously paused that we pick up on the use of things like the pupil equity fund and how is that being used in schools what's effective practice and how that works and before Covid and during Covid we published a series of what we call sketch notes there are visual representation based on individual best practice models in schools, local authorities and things like CLD teams and others and quite a number of those had a focus on recovery we've published significant numbers of those over the last 18 months to demonstrate and share best practice as you were talking about across the system because we need to learn what's working well and equally the system needs to know what's not working well so that energy, time and capacity isn't wasted on that so there's the inspection side where that's there looking at themes across the whole country visiting schools talking to school leaders, teachers, parents and young people which we pulled together into a series of summary reports which then helped shape the support and the direction of travel of the targeted workforce that we now have on a regional and a local authority level who work directly with schools their practitioners themselves but they support and challenge to bring about a faster pace of improvement I think that this committee obviously looks at the public expenditure and the outcomes from that public expenditure looking at this looking at the Auditor General's report he's not really picked this up as a component part of the cost per head of pupil and I wonder why you say there's all these measures in place that there's a good practice being transferred back and forward there must be some measurement there because if there's no link between the spending per pupil and educational attainment then is the money being spent in the right place for the right purpose and I recognise some of these issues that the Auditor General's picked up technical stuff which adds to the cost but if we strip that out do we have any idea how much the outreach to pupils families and providing this wraparound approach how much that is costing and how effective it is is it being targeted in the right way is the volume of expenditure enough I'm trying to grope towards where the most effective expenditure of public funds are to achieve the outcome for people I may ask Graeme to say a word about the review of the attainment challenge which captured five years of data and learning from our approach in just a moment so we have different reporting requirements on the different streams of money so we have the attainment Scotland fund which is the overall part of money and we have clear reporting requirements on different aspects of that the one where it is quite delegated and pretty like touch in terms of reporting is what Gail referred to which is a pupil equity funding so that's a budget of £1,200 per pupil in specific parts of Scotland where deprivation suggests that that is most needed and I think we have a good sense of what the approaches are in aggregate that are effective and ineffective I don't think we could point to a particular local authority and say £1,200 per pupil in these specific ways because it's delegated so far down to the head teacher level and that level of flexibility local authorities themselves may track that expenditure but Graeme may want to say more both in terms of what five years of experience of this approach tells us and on that point about how we audit an account for the spend Thank you Mr Griffin Yes, we published at the same time as the Audit Scotland report 2016-21 progress report with the Scottish payment challenge and that highlighted the progress that had been made and highlighted head teacher professional evaluation on how the money had been used and the extent to which that had been effective and of course schools through their own school improvement plans and their standards and quality reports which they produce annually and share with parents for how they use the pupil equity funding and of course what impact that had so that's important and of course as we heard earlier there's an attainment advisor in each local authority who's looking at that who's engaging in professional dialogue who's sharing good practice there as well but I think it would be fair to say that as we review the Scottish attainment challenge we want to look at how we can strengthen further the support and the challenge and the consistency and transparency on reporting of outcomes and as Mr Griffin said the cabinet secretary is due to set out to Parliament in October how the Scottish attainment challenge has been redesigned really to build on all the learning from the last five years and look at the next five years where of course there's an increased spending commitment of £1 billion and £150 million in the last Parliament and how we can ensure we make more intense progress and better progress across the country Thank you and again we may come back to the funding question and the extent to which that's additional and so on before we finish up but I want to, you mentioned earlier on Joe, the OECD report has always got some questions relating to that Thank you, convener Good morning It seems that the OECD's report on its review of the curriculum for excellence has the potential to address many of the issues raised by the Auditor General We understand that the Scottish Government has accepted the report's recommendations in full This includes an acceptance by the Scottish Government for improved data to deliver outcomes so can you tell us in the absence of this improved data how is the Scottish Government addressing the educational outcomes of those currently in the senior phase of education who won't benefit from the future reforms Okay, thank you Ms Dowey So I think some of this goes back to the question of breadth again which I covered earlier and I won't repeat but it's about making sure that we collect data that reflects the four capacities of successful learners but I think I heard you saying how do we ensure that we've got good data for those that are in the system at the moment pending that review So I think in terms of educational attainment so the successful learners part of the curriculum I don't think I'm happy to be corrected I don't think anybody is saying that we are lacking in terms of the data that we produce on educational attainment so we have presided over by the SQA a well established system of national qualifications there are additional measures that we collect as well through the curriculum levels process so this is understanding progress on literacy and numeracy at different points of primary school and secondary school and I don't think we're hearing that there is a problem with that as currently constituted now clearly there are a couple of challenges so one is the OECD report that's not well aligned with how we think about our curriculum as I've said and the second obviously is the impact of Covid so we've had a couple of years of having to have an alternative certification model drawn up by the system which has produced a set of results which are not directly comparable with the previous years and the Auditor General's report does set that out as a challenge now that's something that every administration is grappling with in the world and it's a similar situation when you change your qualification system you can't make a direct comparison light for light but nevertheless the results that we have are a valid set of results they are what young people have achieved in those years we also have in the case of school leavers evidence of their assessments from previous years to build into that picture as well and we don't intend to somehow go in and try and play around with the data in order to try and make it more directly comparable we don't think that's a fair thing to do we don't think technically that's possible so we have a couple of years of interrupted data as Tricia Meldren was talking about when you met the Audit Scotland team that's how we're proposing to deal with it the results are there but of course we have to recognise that in those two years a different situation and context pertain and we need to treat them with a bit of caution just another thing on a positive outcomes I'm looking for what work's been done to reduce the 4.6% of young people that leave with an unknown classification and what is class as a positive destination so at the moment is that going to a job is it getting a course is it getting a qualification and what work's been done is there any workforce planning done to make sure that courses that the young people take will actually provide a job at the end of it on the first point I'm pleased to report some progress since you heard from the Audit Scotland team which is that Skills Development Scotland who run the skill system as you know have reached an agreement with the department for work and pensions to share information about young people going on to collect universal credit so we didn't have that before which is partly what swelled the numbers that 4.6% of those for whom we didn't know the destination so our colleagues at Skills Development Scotland are really optimistic that that can further reduce that cohort of people for whom the outcome is unknown at the moment to quote Donald is a bit of an unknown we don't know by how much because we don't know but it's a really positive step forward that ought to plug that specific data gap on your other questions about positive destinations so that's defined as someone going into education, employment or training the way that we measure that again is through Skills Development Scotland and it's through a survey where they ask the cohort of people what is the activity that they most typically undertook during the course of the year we think that's methodologically the most sound way of doing that and the figures are really quite encouraging on that so 92.2% of young people in positive destinations from the last figure which is 1.1% pointed up on the previous year you also asked about people who are not going on to those successful conclusions and the risk of falling through the crack so we do also track those so quite often individual schools who really know their young people best will have examples of where they do that and they keep that close level of engagement sometimes the career service will do that as well on behalf of Skills Development Scotland and the Government also introduced in November last year the young persons guarantee which is also looking to simplify and align the different data streams so we have a clearer idea of who is going into the positive destinations that we understand so there will be a progress report on that in November and then in 2022 will be the first set of data relating to the young persons guarantee which will set out the key performance indicators that we hope to get from that which will further then illuminate the picture I hope that addresses the questions I look forward to the report Thank you I'm now going to turn to Willie Coffey who as I mentioned at the start of the meeting is joining us remotely so Willie the floor is all yours Thank you very much convener and good morning to the panel I was hoping to focus in a little bit on the Covid impact on young people its current impact and invite you to look ahead to what the future might look like Do you think that Covid has changed the way we think about education and how we will help young people to make successful transitions either into the world of worker or into further and higher education I'm thinking about the digital technology aspect of it that largely came to the rescue came to our rescue for our school pupils and allowing them to study remotely and from home so I'd appreciate the panel's views on that and looking ahead do you think that the world is going to look the same as it did before Covid and what I mean by that is that we have the right skills for the youngsters are we matching that up with what employers are wanting is there a job of work to be done by Governments on helping employers with their recruitment process so I'd be really obliged Joe Graham and Gail if he would give us a little perspective and the impact that it's had and how he might see this changing in the future Thank you Mr Coffey and I certainly will invite Graham and Gail to come in as educationalists and experts but I'll give my first best stab at it so I was very struck by a quote from the International Council of Economic Advisers who said that the pandemic had reinforced equity being a defining issue of our age so I think an awful lot of what we have seen during Covid and we have extensive evidence that we've commissioned ourselves that children and young people have told us about through YoungScot and other organisations of what the impact has been and we know that there's been a differential impact and we can talk more about that evidence and I think that to some extent reinforced the importance of a curriculum that's broadly based where we don't overly emphasise the accumulation of facts and the academic achievement but that we also concern ourselves with young people's progress in terms of their health and wellbeing and their resilience and if there was anything to test young people's resilience it's a global pandemic so I think to some extent and what we hear from our education advisers is that the steps that we took to build a progressive curriculum have put us in quite a good place in terms of the challenges that Covid throws up and we've talked a bit about the poverty-related attainment gap and a number of the measures that relate to I think also play into Covid. Will the world look the same in the future? I think the connection that young people and their families and this is crucial both need the digital skills the access to the kit and the good connections I think has brought home to us that we need to do more so the Scottish Government's programme for government there is a commitment to the provision of devices for every young person in education and there's a really progress on the number of connections that we've additional connections that we've made during the pandemic and that we now plan to do through the Scotland programme as well both to realise that shift on to digital platform generally but also to prepare ourselves for further disruption because who knows what lies ahead so I think that would be my take on it Mr Coffey I think the pandemic has exacerbated a lot of the tendencies that are already there I think our curriculum puts us in a strong place to be able to respond but Gail and Graham may wish to add any additional observations Thank you very much for that question Mr Coffey it's something that all of us in education are reflecting on and thinking about now so in terms of some of the silver linings from this horrific pandemic has been some of the changes that we've seen take place during Covid times out of the innovation and the creativity of our workforce and the freedom of our teachers and the head teachers and their families so one of the things I've been invested in for years is the use of digital technology to support learning and actually we saw that happen overnight with some bumps and starts along the road well no it wasn't consistent everywhere and it wasn't perfect but actually we know from our inspection work on remote learning during the second lockdown in particular that my goodness the learning curve was almost vertical for teachers for young people so for us we saw a very the positive side of course Mr Griffin has already outlined some of the concerns and the issues particularly to some of our deprived young people children living with issues in rural communities without connectivity but in general we saw actually self-directed learning so our young people actually strengthening their independence and their abilities to focus on self-directed learning on timetable to use gain confidence in planning in time and reflection we also saw teachers think about their method of delivery in a very different way so it changed our pedagogies the word we use for teaching and learning it changed the methodologies that we use for teaching because talking to you in a medium like this is very different than me sitting beside you in a classroom and showing you when you get stuck there was an awful lot of learning that teachers and the profession did and we supported that with some of our webinars and online support materials and others but interestingly children and young people challenged the methodologies and said actually we really like this so we had some live lessons that I know particularly parents were very keen on picking up on but actually young people said the thing they enjoyed the most was recorded learning recorded lessons because then they could go back to it and revisit it if there was an issue or a challenge or they could rewatch it with a family member or appear and try and work through the issues as well as some of the supported learning work which allowed them to work in a parallel way so as teachers our methodology was kind of challenged but they rose to the challenge and actually the skills that teachers and our young people have gained and in a recent conference we had last week for Scottish Learning Festival I talked about the resilience the ingenuity the creativity the responsibility that this generation have taken from this and those are actually the global competencies that OECD word skills leaders are looking for going forward so I hope the world doesn't look the same we must build back and move forward and not go back just because it was comfortable and easy so my challenge to the system in the last few months has been about how do we take the things that work really positively and listen to our young people and their families about what they really responded well to how do we build that into our programmes going forward and just to finally say I think the digital options once we have some of the rural issues around connectivity and others ironed out also allows us to address some of the curriculum challenges there have been particularly in smaller secondary schools in terms of offer, breadth and debts and access to things like advanced hires and a higher programme some of the collaborative working between schools is now happening digitally so those barriers and I hope some of the global barriers to access to a global curriculum we will see moving forward as we all as systems grapple with this Yes, absolutely, I was just going to invite you to do that Willie Yes I thank you so much for that and just looking lightly further ahead we were chatting to Ecology Scotland last week and one of the challenges we face as elected members and I think everybody faces how do we move into the world of work do you think we need to be doing more with employers to understand their needs you'll know that recruitment almost dried up during Covid and I think it would be fair to say it hasn't recovered yet but on the other hand we're hearing about numbers of vacancies right across various sectors in Scotland for employment particularly for it so do we need to do a little bit more to understand what employers needs are and to encourage and promote those needs within the education setting to assist and encourage our youngsters to make those positive directions and transitions into the world of work and beyond Thanks Mr Coffey Members will know a number of years ago I think it might have been 2010 but apologies to Ian if I've got that wrong but Sir Ian Wood undertook a report on developing the young workforce that was called and that looked exactly at the number of the issues that you're discussing now Mr Coffey in terms of how do you get a closer dialogue between young people between schools and between employers and there's a framework that's been put in place as a result of that that involves partnerships at local level that bring in some of the major employers that bring in the schools, the careers service the colleges precisely to try and align better and I think generally speaking we're seeing quite good results from that so again you would look at things like the participation rate being quite strong and labour market outcomes for young people are still quite strong although they have declined moderately in the last year I have those figures if you would like them I think looking ahead the young persons guarantee is back to the agenda to how we improve it, I think there is a premium on simplifying some of the arrangements that we have there are a number of different funding streams a number of different groups the young persons guarantee is looking to simplify that both behind the scenes and in terms of how the young person accesses that but I think the foundations we built up over a number of years are strong and that would also include for example a DYW developing the young workforce co-ordinator in every school so in every school there is someone who has a link back to that partnership with employers who's able then through the careers service to share some perspective and insight so as I say I think strong foundations, of course it can be improved but these are some of the things that we're looking to work on in the months and years ahead Thank you very much for that Thanks, convener Thanks, Willie Appreciate that We've got a further series of questions covering again the poverty gap but also looking at some of the funding aspects of it, Joe so I want to ask Craig Hoy to begin questions on that Thank you Good morning Mr Griffin Almost at a philosophical or top-line perspective what factors that you believe make the biggest difference in closing the poverty-related attainment gap and what are the key barriers to making more rapid progress because it seems here that whilst there is progress being made in some areas of the country the issue persists and is clearly a stubborn problem Thank you Mr Hoy, good morning Again I'll ask Gail to turn her comments to that as our national expert but I think as a layman I look at it in two baskets of activity so we look at the interventions that we need to make outside the school gates and some of that extends way beyond the education system around how we think about poverty more generally how we support our communities how we think about the aspirations of communities and how they look at education as well as addressing some of the material needs and so on and then we do have a strong evidence base and again it is set out every year in the national improvement framework about the kind of interventions that you can make in the school that then help to engage a young person with their learning irrespective of the background but thinking particularly about some of the poverty-related obstacles that might be in their path a lot of that goes back to this word pedagogy which is the professional skill of the teacher doing all of that what I've understood from Gail and other experts is the ability to form those relationships with the young person that takes account of their family background looks to strengthen the connection with the family background is one of the most important aspects that we have but Gail's a real expert and she can expand on this further thank you as always with these things it's a complex picture in education it's always the thing that we focus in on but teaching, learning and assessment fundamentally is the driver of improvement the quality of teaching which then drives the quality of learning and the pace of learning and the assessment of that to then identify the next gaps to move forward part of that is a greater understanding of differentiation so that you're missing the needs of all the learners in front of you and you're able to adapt your teaching learning and assessment to make sure that your teaching is targeted at the right level, at the right time for those young people behind that there's also the really effective use of performance data so how do we track pupil progress how do we track the different cohorts in our classes, in our departments and in our schools and local authorities so where we see really effective practice where we see accelerated progress there's a combination of high quality teaching learning and assessment combined with an effective use of data to drive improvement obviously part of that and driving that agenda is leadership so leadership at a school level leadership of learning in a classroom level at a school level at a local authority, RIC and national level because leadership sets the aspiration it sets the aim for our young people and it sets the culture for improvement within any establishment as we go forward of course one of the other key elements as Mr Griffin referred to there is the partnership not only with pupils but with families and the community because to enable effective teaching and learning you have to know your learners you have to know their interests you have to know their experiences and I would say one of the positive things coming out of some of the experiences of Covid was actually teachers through the work that they've done either physically going to young people's homes and delivering materials or school lunch or whatever and also through a medium like this online seeing into young people's homes seeing their family and engaging and really strengthened and we all know that teaching and learning is about relationships so those key areas of teaching and learning assessment the use of that with effective differentiation to meet individual learners needs using data and then analysing data to drive employment improvement the leadership of that is important underpinned by professional learning and partnership with children, young people and families Thanks just before I go on to my next question if you just draw attention to my register of interests that would detail that I mean East Lothian Council a member of East Lothian education committee in relation to the use of SIMD as the measure of poverty to target additional support how effective do you think this is and have you seen any deficiencies in the way that this in the outcomes that this has resulted in Thank you Mr Hoy we were grateful to General's team for surfacing this as an issue and it is something that we are looking at as part of our review of the attainment challenge that will come back to the cabinet secretary we will talk about next month so the issue with SIMD is it covers postcode and within that postcode sometimes there can be variability sometimes in terms of street even so there is an alternative methodology which we are considering which is SILIF as the acronym so children in low income families go down to the household level and we are considering whether this is a better foundation for some of the poverty related interventions that we need to make. We haven't reached a final view on that and that will be part of the cabinet secretary's announcement but I think it's a very reasonable point for the Auditor General and his colleagues to have pointed out Okay and if I could just draw attention on page 28 of the report to Exhibit 4 in relation to the gap between the most deprived and least deprived in terms of gaining 5 or more awards at level 5 I obviously referred to Eastlothian earlier and I was aware of the problem in Eastlothian but I was slightly shocked to see it presented in such graphic terms where you see a very large gap with very low levels of attainment at SIMD 5 what cause for concern does that give you that the somewhat blunt approach of having attainment challenge councils with high deprivation throughout the council area whereas someone like Eastlothian where there's a very variable level of deprivation particularly from the east to the west of the county it strikes me that we're seeing the product of maybe a very indiscriminate and blunt system here and what I suppose to something like that you could wonder what on earth is going on with the attainment adviser there because if you look at the performance of Eastlothian it has the lowest attainment among the most deprived if not the largest the second largest attainment gap is that not of course for concern if you're looking at every child in every part of the country to show that the current system of funding to try and close the attainment gap is clearly not working in those areas where there is a very wide disparity between the most wealthy and those with the least thank you Mr Hoy again I may ask Gail to come in in a moment so partly for the reasons I referred to earlier on about not discussing individual local authorities you forgive me if I don't comment specifically on Eastlothian but to be clear we're not relaxed about variation we are absolutely determined that there should be less variation across Scotland in the years to come in respect to the poverty related attainment gap and equity and excellence overall and that's one of the reasons why we're reviewing our approach to the attainment challenge and that is specifically looking at the funding so I mentioned SIMD as opposed to SILIF that would be one example but the way that we've constructed the funds up until now I think is the source of some representation from some councils and indeed the critique that we have here in the Audit Scotland report so I think in keeping with our approach to an awful lot of what the Auditor General has brought forward we are listening we're very open to making adjustments I can't comment yet on the conclusions that we've reached that will be for the Cabinet Secretary to do but she'll be doing that very clearly in the early course I don't know if Gail would want to add anything just about what the Education Scotland approach would be where there's a council where clearly there's an issue of the kind that Mr Hoy's been illustrating Thank you so the work of not only the attainment advisers but also the wider regional teams is in supporting and working alongside the strategic leadership at the local authority so the work that has been on-going in lots of authorities I should point out that your example there obviously Mr Hoy of East Lothian they are a universal support authority so didn't have the additional target to support money or support from SAC, Scottish attainment challenge they are a universal authority currently so the work is working alongside the head of service and the director to look at their strategic planning to challenge the improvement and pace of that but also to work alongside them to analyse the data so that we can identify where are the gaps where are the challenges what are the challenges the communities in East Lothian are facing that's then reflected in their schools so I know for instance we have target support to primary schools and secondary schools in every local authority where not only the attainment advisor but my curriculum team and my curriculum experts and leadership experts work directly with teachers, with practitioners to review what they are doing to help them with the latest research and methodology and to move that forward we also work quite closely with the CyPEC, the Children and Young People's Improvement Collaborative Improvement Advisers so we work collectively with that so that we use the same methodology there's an evaluation strand particular focus goes into professional learning as I said earlier in my answer around what makes the biggest difference the leadership and professional learning of teachers so that we can help them understand the most effective methodologies what makes the biggest difference and where that learning can take place so there's a team around the local authority that we support but we work in partnership with the local authority and with the regional improvement collaborative to make sure that we see where the targeted work is see where there may be challenges due to all of the wider issues not just in school issues, all of the wider issues that our communities are facing these days and then work out a bespoke plan for every local authority that picks up on where there needs to be further support how we can draw on the national team and just support the work and challenge and support the work that's going on in local authorities going forward the work of those identified authorities and identified the gap is large or increasing that is very much the focus of our work has been for the last while focusing very much on what are those challenges how do we address them, how can we collectively as a system support that and we've developed a programme in partnership with the Association of Directors of Education Scotland called collaborative improvement which we've carried out a couple of these already and it's a bespoke quite innovative programme and the system comes together we go in and work with a local authority over a period of days or a week or so we review the work that they're doing around improvement we review the focus that it's got and then collectively come up with an action plan to then address that as a system how we can support those facing greater challenges and we're planning to do about six or eight of those during this academic year targeted obviously at authorities it's a quick question we did not want to pre-empt the cabinet secretary's announcement but just in terms of the £1 billion investment that's been announced how can we expect that to be targeted and is it the Scottish Government's view that that is sufficient in light of obviously the pandemic so it's difficult for me to answer it without pre-empting what the cabinet secretary might conclude and might announce I think what I draw your attention to is the review we published in March of the attainment challenge so that has five years of data five years of learning I think it's fair to say that our deliberations around the future of the funding and the structure and the shape are informed by that as you would expect and indeed by the Auditor General's findings here so I hope that gives something of a preview I probably couldn't do too much more without getting into trouble but I think the second part of your question just in light of the pandemic is that as sufficient? I think it relates to what we were saying earlier on about there isn't a strong correlation between spend and performance there are so many different aspects in here that we need to improve there are some where performance is really first class and others need to learn from it that I don't think it's a question of a sum of money being the right sum or the wrong sum I think it's a substantial amount of money and it's informed by the 750 million that was spent in the previous Parliament so of course there's an uplift there there are the different aspects the 450 million or so that was spent in a direct response to Covid and to some extent the funding is really really important but the kind of improvements and the actions that we need to take some of those are not financial performance in schools that Gail Gorman has talked to us about this morning some of it is about the support to the community and to the young people and their family and of course it's not the only sum of money as well there's also money going through from Ms Robison's portfolio in terms of child poverty and a series of other measures so I imagine Audit Scotland will be tracking our progress during the Parliament I'm sure you will as well but I am encouraged as AO by the extent of the evidence that we have both that we've published and also that Education Scotland collect in the ways that we've been discussing and I imagine time will tell if a billion is the right figure or not thank you thank you I just wanted to conclude the morning session by picking up on that last area of discussion and we can't pre-empt the Cabinet Secretary either but we can reflect on the data and the recommendations made by the Audit Scotland report earlier this year and one of the things that struck me about their analysis was that whilst they said that in real terms spending on education did increase by 0.7% between 2013-14 and 2018-19 the increase wasn't reflected in all councils in fact they went on to say that in those attainment challenge councils they saw actually with the exception of Glasgow city council they saw a drop in their real terms funding for education now most people would think the attainment challenge fund was additional money to help out those local authorities that have the biggest challenges in closing the attainment gap so can you give us an explanation why that was yes of course and I'll ask Graham Logan to come in with a bit more detail but you're absolutely right that the money is intended to be additional but that's in a context of a highly devolved and delegated set of funding decisions around education that are primarily for local authorities and again the Audit Scotland report shows what a relatively small percentage the attainment challenge funding is of overall education spend and we have a system of devolved school management that allows quite a high degree of transparency at local level about decisions that local authorities are making so we have good data and good information of the risk of school spending going down through that sort of core spend and the risk of that somehow substituting or being substituted with by attainment Scotland funding but Graham can say a bit more about what we've done when we've uncovered that situation and to what extent our review of processes intends to guard against that happening in the future You've said local authorities are responsible for delivering education in the area and for the variation in education expenditure which quite rightly often reflects local factors local context and so on as well I think the latest data we've got is that spending on education in 1920 was £6 billion up from 5.6 in 1819 where I think Mr Leonard you referred to the additionality and I think what we can say to reassure the committee is where examples have come forward to our teams sometimes to the attainment advisers of perhaps attainment challenge money being used in place of other funding to continue services that were already existing we have intervened and challenged the local authority on that, we've met with senior officers to look at that and to ensure that this is additional, it is targeted and of course local authorities do sign up to grant terms and conditions, they report to us annually on how they have spent the additional Scottish attainment challenge funding and we use that to engage in dialogue with authorities to ensure as far as possible that these are additional targeted interventions for children who need them most OK, thank you, I'm sure if those local authority voices were around the table they would say that their settlements have also been reduced in the last 10 years and that might be one of the reasons why the funding hasn't gone up in the way perhaps it should have been predicted to go up, but thank you very much indeed for coming and giving your evidence this morning we really appreciate the time that you've given up and the information that you've shared with us I think there were a couple of points where you mentioned you might be able to provide us with some further detail and that would certainly be helpful we will obviously await the announcement by the cabinet secretary is that going to be after recess or before recess? I don't think we've set a specific date for you, I'm looking at Graham on the screen, is that right Graham? Do we have a date yet? Not as yet, we're expecting an announcement to be in the month of October So probably after recess will be my guess but again, thanks very much indeed to Graham and to Gail as well for joining us online and I'm sure as Mr Griffin reflected we shall see you again at some point in the future Thank you very much indeed Can I now suspend the meeting to our witnesses? Can I reconvene the meeting? We've got an important item on our agenda about the Audit Scotland report into community justice but before we get to that I just wanted to refer to the report that has been published today I think on the vaccination programme which struck me was an important piece of work pretty much a good news story reflecting on the success of the vaccination programme and I think it's exhibit 2 is a particularly striking demonstration of the extent to which the vaccination programme has reduced hospitalisations case numbers and indeed people dying from Covid-19 it's also clear from the report that there are still some obstacles built on inequalities and the level of vaccine hesitancy among some groups is greater than others both by age and ethnicity for example and I think that there will need to be some further work looking into the underlying reasons for that I don't know whether Audit Scotland will carry out or whether others will but it's clearly a challenge to which we as a society face I'm sure we will as a committee consider the report in the fullness of time in detail Auditor General I just wondered whether he wanted to make any comment on the report Many thanks, convener Yes, we look forward to briefing the committee in due course on our briefing paper on vaccinations this morning As you described, convener we've concluded that NHS in Scotland has made excellent progress in the delivery of the vaccination programme for Covid-19 we refer to evidence sources around that the drop in hospitalisations and death arising from Covid-19 since the introduction of the vaccination programme but also draw attention to the point that you ended on there convener that there is still some work to do to address vaccine hesitancy and roll out of the vaccine programme to younger people people from ethnic minority backgrounds and also to follow and track the progress that the Government is making as it rolls out future phases of the vaccine programme we've seen since that we published our report that it's now been rolled out to the 12 to 15 age group as well as the booster programme for other parts of Scottish society so we'll continue to track that and we look forward to briefing the committee in due course thank you right, thank you very much indeed and now back to the agenda I would again just welcome Steven Boyle once again for joining us on the video link we are pleased to welcome as well Anthony Clark who's the interim director of performance and we've also got on the video link Williams who's a senior auditor with Audit Scotland and once again one of our own Willie Coffey joins us on a video link too I'm going to ask the Auditor General to give us a brief introductory statement and then we've got a series of questions that we would like to ask about the community justice report thank you many thanks convener, good morning committee our briefing paper looks at the development in community justice in Scotland in recent years it focuses on sentencing data, funding and reconvictions the paper also looks at the Scottish Government's overall objectives for community justice the Government's aim is to shift sentencing towards community based options and away from prison particularly for short term sentences however we've noted that progress in shifting this balance has been slow and Scotland still in prisons it's people at a higher rate than most countries in western Europe in 2019-20 59% of people who were convicted were given community sentences that's the same proportion as in 2016-17 when the latest community justice strategy was published data also shows that people who serve community sentences are less likely to be convicted compared to those who serve a short term prison sentence in 2017-18 49% of people who were released from prison after serving a sentence of less than one year were reconvicted whereas the reconviction rate for community sentences was 30% those who have been convicted of a crime are more likely to come from deprived backgrounds or have experienced other hardships there is also a lack of published data on wider outcomes such as health or employment for people who have completed either type of sentence the paper concludes with a number of questions for the Scottish Government around the roles and responsibilities of those involved in the planning and delivery of community justice as well as in the variation of use success and cost of community justice across the country it is also important that the wider outcomes of community sentencing beyond reducing reoffending are defined and data collected to be able to assess whether those are being achieved the Scottish Government's renew, recover and transformation programme may provide an opportunity to address some of those issues and further progress the shift to a greater use of sustainable alternatives to custody but this programme is at an early stage can you follow the publication of our paper the Scottish Government has this week launched its consultation on its next national strategy for community justice and it's my intention to keep developments under review and consider further audit work in the near future my colleagues Anthony, Nicola and myself we look forward to answering the committee's questions this morning thank you thank you very much indeed can I without further ado call on Willy Coffey who's joining us via video link to ask the first question over to you Willy thanks again convener and good morning to the Auditor General and staff it's really on that point Stephen I wanted to pick off of the discussion clearly despite the success we're seeing for those who get a community sentencing as you say the numbers getting a community sentencing basically flatlined for the past four or five years can we explore with you what you think of the reasons behind that and what can we possibly do about it thank you morning Mr Coffey yeah I'll happy to start and I'm sure I'll fully invite Nicola and Anthony in turn to contribute as well we recognise I think the fundamental point that we in terms of sentencing is that the judiciary are independent and will determine the sentencing arrangements at their discretion rightly so and that's how it will happen within the country the guidance that accompanies that will be one of the factors the availability, the awareness the success of community sentences relative to prison sentences will also be factors the report touches on but there's more scope to consider given the recent volatility presumption against short sentences will be a further factor in their use across the country but one of the things that we have seen really clearly in the report is the extent of regional variation that exists across Scotland in the use of community sentencing and there will inevitably be factors behind that but what's quite stark from some of the data is the variability that I think when we refer to a number of different local authorities to illustrate that point so in calling for this building on themes that we've touched on in other aspects of our recent reporting is that the data isn't yet clear enough as to why there is this regional variation and what the intended outcomes that will be from the use of community sentencing relative to prison sentences but your point makes absolutely clear that there is this flat of the extent to which community sentences are being used in Scotland but I'll maybe pause for a minute if I may and invite Nicola just to come in and say a bit more about some of the data that we've seen to get a bit more into that variation that the Auditor General spoke about so we know that overall proportion of people getting community sentences is the same in the latest year as it was back in 1617 at 59% but looking underneath that a little bit at main crime type there are some areas where that has increased so for example in motor vehicle offences the proportion of people getting community sentences has increased and then if you look across regional variation in some council areas there has been an increase as well and there's quite a stark difference between the lowest and the highest in the use of community sentences so understanding a bit more about that variation and why that's happening for some crime types in some areas could help Scottish Government to better understand why it's not happening overall and how to overcome some of the barriers Anthony, any contribution there please? I don't have much to add Mr Coffey to the various factors that Steven and Nicker have identified in terms of things that might influence the variability of performance what I would say is that I think this has been acknowledged by Community Justice Scotland and the Scottish Government and it's an issue that's picked up in the consultation paper that Auditor General mentioned earlier we make a specific recommendation in the back of the report that more work is done to try and better understand the factors that are causing variation to making the shift from custodial sentences to community-based sentences we're hoping that that will be picked up through the consultation paper next to the Scottish Government and the Community Justice partnership Thank you very much for that back to you convener The figures in the report it strikes me are quite stark so you mentioned in your introduction Steven the figure that you come up with in the report that for those who are imprisoned for a year or less 49 per cent will be reconvicted within a year whereas for those who are put on a community sentence the reconviction rate is down to less than a third so it's 30 per cent I think is the figure you mentioned and we know that the balance has plateaued I think as an expression that's been used already a couple of years ago it dropped to 55 per cent and went up to 59 per cent community versus custodial sentences Does the Scottish Government have a target that it wishes to reach in the balance between custodial sentences and community sentences? I'm not sure I know the answer to that convener actually in terms of the team can maybe help me out in that whether there's a target that's been set and I'll maybe just check in with Nicola No, we haven't seen any evidence of a target that they're aiming to reach so I don't think that there is a target Okay Based on your own analysis do you have any sense of the reduction in those figures or the change in the balance of those figures that would deliver one of the things that I think is a matter of public policy concern which is the extent to which the capacity of Scotland's prisons is under as much pressure as it is and I know you've reported on the state of the Scottish Prison Service before Do you have a view about the extent to which there needs to be a tilting in the balance between custodial to community to relieve the pressure in the prison service? Thanks if you're happy to address all those points and in terms of that there not being a target I think probably for Government and their advisers to determine the nature of its ambition and what's achievable in setting a target One of the wider points in this paper and echoed by Community Justice Scotland and some of its commentary on it is the need for clearer data to support any measurable target and delivery of outcomes We've talked in recent weeks through some of our other work about the extent of Covid and its implications on backlogs and the delivery of public services also through the justice system as is relevant to this paper You're right that you mentioned that Audit Scotland and my predecessor prepared a section 22 report on the Scottish Prison Service in 2019 highlighting some of the challenges in capacity, funding and other factors in that organisation So as and when through the justice system reconvene a rate that we would have known pre-pandemic there is that stress and pressure that is pending and I think for the reasons that the Government's initial objectives around Community Justice were twofold so one is absolutely around the reconviction rates and that difference between community and prison and also the wider outcomes in terms of employment family connections health outcomes that are anticipated to be better through community justice but the other factor is the cost and the difference in cost between prison population and community and we look to exemplify that in the report at Exhibit 3 just an indication of the difference of a prison place of £37,000 or so per annum compared to the cost of a community payback order under £2,000 so all of these factors will be really important for consideration in the community justice sector as it looks to relaunch its next consultation for what the next strategy will be for community justice in the country but just finer then if the reconviction rate is so demonstrably better with community sentences versus custodial if the cost is considerably different if clearly the impact on the prison population and the overcrowding of prisons is so little progress being made and I think essentially what we look to do through this paper is to highlight those very issues but ultimately what we haven't looked to do in this paper and I guess we'll probably feed for our next piece of work following the consultation is to get into more of that analysis and judgment as to what's yet seen in terms of progress there are very clear issues of the scale of spending the backlog in the justice system the lack of progress around the shifting that balance of sentencing but we think probably for ourselves awaiting the conclusion of the consultation and some of the judgments that government and community justice Scotland plan to make to change some of those issues maybe one is worth highlighting as comes through in part in the report is the difference in accountability arrangements that exists across the country so we have a national agency of community justice Scotland and then we have as we set out in exhibit 2 in the report of 30 community justice partnerships where really the work is undertaken in terms of the management interventions through social work services but yet quite varied accountability arrangements and the ability of community justice Scotland to influence and lead some of that work is questionable so all of that would be fertile ground for consideration for government and community justice Scotland is the system working as intended thank you and I think we may want to probe just a little bit more into that area so now to Sharon Dowey who's got some questions to ask you on data and outcomes and similar to what were predecessor committee raised significant concerns about once again there's a recurring key audit theme about incomplete and poor quality data which prevents us from measuring the progress and success of a policy and whether or not it's delivering value for money it's even more frustrating that the fact of a lack of data was something that was previously highlighted in Audit Scotland's 2012 report on reducing re-offending in Scotland so in those nine years are you aware of any improvements that have been made in this area? In terms of this report and this part of delivery of public services I think frustratingly it's a recurring theme Ms Dowey of incomplete data and not having that feel for whether or not the investment is delivering as intended so we recognise the finding in the legacy report from the predecessor committee but we're not seeing that translated into the delivery of services in this sector of Scottish public life, public service, public spending and I think that it's really that wider outcomes that is one of the key findings from this report that perhaps echoes of your earlier discussion this morning of the various factors that can influence outcomes in public service delivery and people's lives is that it's not clear whether public spending is delivering improved health outcomes education outcomes employment prospects for people who've gone through the justice system based on our work so all the more importance on one of the questions that we pose to the Government and community justice Scotland and no doubt to be considered through their consultation as to how they intend to have more consistent high quality data that allows for the tracking and monitoring of data and outcomes Have they given any explanation at all on why there hasn't been any improvements? I'll ask the team to come in in a moment to Nicollin particular who's been looking at some of the data work and I think that it again points to some of our discussion of a moment or two ago about the accountability arrangements is undoubtedly a factor that looking at the system as it's set up with if I can exemplify that in exhibit two again what we try to set out is the flow of funding and then the accountability arrangements too so we see that we have a structure of 30 community justice partnerships comprising of range of public bodies who are accountable for their own arrangements and their own spending and if I may maybe just kind of refer to some of our other recent commentary on data and measures that we tend to find that public bodies perform to the measures that they're accountable for so if a local authority or an NHS board are responsible for a set of accountabilities what we have here is almost a parallel set of accountabilities but not necessarily the ones that are the most dominant so these will all be factors that we're finding and again we've seen commentary from community justice Scotland about their enthusiasm to explore some of these accountability arrangements with ultimately to lead to better outcomes if I may pause and invite Nicola again to come in just to some of the commentary and discussion that we've had in that point so just to explain some of the differences in the data collection since the 2012 report there was a new outcomes improvement and performance framework published by the Government alongside the justice strategy in 2016 and that was to allow community justice Scotland to publish an annual report where they would report on progress against the national community justice outcomes so what they've published in the last two reports is that the data that they're getting in from the partnerships isn't allowing them to do that so while they're getting examples of good practice happening and improved outcomes at a local level the data that the framework provides doesn't allow them to compare between areas it's just not comparable data which also means they can't aggregate it up to a national level so they can't look at the national progress against outcomes so they are currently having a look at refreshing that framework and they'll be making recommendations to the Government about a future framework which will hopefully improve that but the current framework just doesn't allow them to do that okay thank you accountability seems to be a recurring theme in most of our meetings just now so just to ask another one in Exhibit 2 of your briefing sets out the role of community justice Scotland in that it oversees and reports on the performance of community justice services however it appears that while 30 should mention their community justice partnerships must provide information to community justice Scotland that individual partners remain accountable through their usual accountability arrangements so can you tell us what powers the community justice Scotland actually has as part of its overseeing role to say that should there be an issue with any of the partners then community justice Scotland would have no power to take any action other than report that issue to Scottish ministers I think generally speaking that's the case as you describe about but again I'll ask Nicola to come in in a moment I think as we've seen that we describe really a power of promotion support overseeing and reporting on performance as distinct from one of intervention to require the members of the community justice partnerships to do something at their direction that's not the model that we're operating with and again I think allows us to infer that conclusion that's part of the rationale and the reason behind we see such variability in the complete data that we refer to in the report as well and the need therefore to get underneath this as well as to have examples of good practice that there's perhaps more promotion more clarity about the impact of community justice and the improvement in outcomes that is intended to be delivered again Ms Lyle pausing to see if anything Nicola wishes to add to that not really to anything to add there yet so community justice Scotland will report on the performance up to ministers rather than take action themselves but then the difficulty in getting that comparable data to be able to look at how performance compares across areas will make that more of a challenge as well okay thank you very much and on a related theme again I'd like to invite Craig Hoy to put some questions forward thank you good morning Stephen one of the key issues identified in your briefing states that community justice Scotland has reported that data deficiencies mean progress against national community justice outcomes are still not being effectively measured have you been able to ascertain as of yet whether or not community justice Scotland has identified where these deficiencies exist and who is ultimately responsible for them so I'll happy to start and Nicola I'm sure we'll want to say a word or two about that in terms of the the data deficiencies I'll maybe say a bit about who's responsible for it the structure we have so the accountability rests with the individual bodies that comprise the community justice partnerships and I think that in part is one of the reasons but the complex accountability nature of the structure that we have and it's interesting to note that when Audit Scotland produced this earlier report in 2012 about reducing reoffending one of the conclusions in that report was about the complex structure and accountability arrangements that existed in Scotland around community justice with the eight community justice authorities and a sense of confusion about roles and responsibilities when the new structure was created in 2016 and 2017 with the creation of community justice Scotland there were similar voices who questioned whether the new structure was sufficient to allow for that clarity and accountability to see the change in outcomes that we'd hoped for on the point about the inconsistency again I'll ask Nicola to see if there's any examples that we can offer to the committee in terms of the different gaps in the data inconsistencies community justice Scotland have been quite clear in their most recent report of what's missing of the fact that they're not getting that data because of the performance framework and specifically if some of the outcomes are around the community justice outcomes are around the wider outcomes so employability, health, housing the kind of things that people might be struggling with when they go into the justice system so that's what they've identified is missing and is not comparable between areas but they are currently carrying out work involving stakeholders to look at what they should be recording so that they can make good recommendations to the Government to refresh that framework so that there is work happening on it just now. Okay, and just, I think you broadly answered the second question that I was going to ask which was just when you said there was little evidence of shift towards the use of community based sentences or of improved outcomes. I was going to ask you whether or not this is due to a lack of data but I don't think you've pretty much said that that's not the case. I just wanted to broaden that out just a little bit which is as we look at the wider use if that trend is achieved of community justice and community payback orders is that a more difficult environment to audit and to benchmark and to assess outcomes and people's experience than a custodial environment where obviously somebody goes into prison you know the amount of time they're in for you know their release date but in relation to doing community justice payback orders for example, how easy is it to monitor the hours that an individual is undertaking and just one final relation to that presently community payback orders and the performance isn't included in the victim notification scheme is that a policy decision or does that point to any doubts that you may have about the integrity of the data? Thank you Again, I invite colleagues to come in in a moment or two I think I guess what we're trying to do is parts of this will be just input data so we know it will be clear how many community payback orders have been completed is also clear how many prison sentences have been served we have I think it's coming through in the paper and the conversation is that there are data gaps that really go beyond that so we know to an extent about the reconviction rates and how they vary between prison sentences and community based sentences but really this call that we need to go beyond that what is the impact of those sentences on some of these wider outcomes health employability arrangements and so forth that we're just not seeing the data gaps that will allow that wider judgment not just by us but really by Community Justice Scotland by Government the people who are using these services to get a much stronger feel as to whether this money is being spent well and properly supports the ambition to transition away from fewer prison sentences and worn into community based arrangements I'm not sure I know the answer to your question I'll get in turn to colleagues Mr Hoy the victim notification scheme to see if we can answer that unfortunately but I think we're shaking our heads on that one so we'll do our best to come back to the committee on writing on that point just a final question just about the complexities of the data and comparing apples with apples and pears with pears as community justice grows as a concept and presumably first offenders and those for less serious crimes would go down the community justice route whereas more serious crimes and repeat offenders would tend to go down the custodial route how will you continue to compare the two because obviously a repeat offender for more serious crime is probably more likely to go on an offender again than a first offender of a relatively minor crime so in terms of accountability and presenting the data moving forward do you think you'll have to be more granular and maybe add more caveats to explain that we aren't measuring apples with apples and pears with pears between the two forms of justice we absolutely agree there needs to be a robustness around the data that is comparable over time and there will be limitations to that of course but as people enter into the justice system and leave us I suppose it will be on trends on an overall basis albeit of course there are individual factors therein but I think that's the important point for community justice Scotland the system if it wishes to make the impact that it aspires to do that the data is measurable supports that the accountability arrangements are also clear therein too so I think we absolutely agree and regrettably is a recurring theme about the data and the implementation of policy isn't clear enough and there's lots of factors behind that but referencing back to our own report of 2018 about planning for outcomes and the need for high quality data milestones to be set so that its measurable interventions changes can be applied thank you I'm now going to bring in Colin Beattie who's got a number of questions to ask Colin thank you General in paragraph 13 you suggested to take forward a revised approach to community justice that the Scottish Government needs to consider and understand whether all stakeholders involved in the planning and delivery of community justice have a shared understanding of lines of accountability and areas of responsibility that suggests that it's not happening at the moment how do you see it being put into place in practice so yeah that is what we would observe Mr Beattie that there isn't that shared understanding of accountability I think as we've touched on already and what we look to set out at exhibit 2 in the report with the 30 community justice partnerships the role of community justice Scotland and that exemplified data gaps the variation in practice that's happening across Scotland is what we're seeing and perhaps attributing that to the lack of a shared understanding we've perhaps a point too and again Anthony might invite to come in and talk about some of the changes that the Government is thinking around its renew and transformation programme through the Government's consultation on community justice Scotland its next community justice strategy for Scotland and that there are opportunities to make the kind of interventions to address some of the gaps that we've seen across Scotland and we hope to see that happen but again I'll invite Anthony just to say a bit more about how that's progressing just before we go to Anthony can I ask, do you have a timescale for this happening or is it sort of open ended yeah I think as mentioned I've mentioned three remarks that it's early stage in terms of the community justice renew, recover, transformation thinking there are two consultations planned which is designed to be a stakeholder led contribution and then another one planned in the months ahead which is much wider and perhaps speaks to Mr Hoy's earlier question about that ultimately it's citizens who are touched by the justice system and that people also have the opportunity to make their contributions planned but in terms of timescales and ambitions again I'll maybe ask Anthony to say a bit more thank you Stephen thank you Stephen I think I might touch on two points firstly to make the general point that the recovery, renewal and transformation programme is wider than just community justice it's about how the Scottish Government will deal with the impact of Covid-19 across the whole of the justice sector and a significant part of that is investing in additional what capacity to do with the backlogs and also thinking through how they might also develop a still workforce gaps as well the aspects of that strategy that we relate to community justice are very much framed around better understanding how community-based justice interventions can be made more effective so there's an evaluation aspect to that as well as thinking through the interplay between community justice activity and the prison population as well Stephen mentioned the consultation exercise that's taking place at the moment we've mentioned it a few times today this is really community justice Scotland consulting with their stakeholders on how they can make things work more effectively and I think it touches on quite a few of the points today I think they are wanting to explore how they can get data data they are wanting to explore how they can better have more impact and influence to shape change across the system and I think it's quite likely that as part of that consultation they may get feedback on some of the difficulties that are well known and have been rehearsed not just around community justice Scotland itself but just around partnership working more generally where people operate with multiple accountabilities the point that the Auditor General has raised several times is that we have the same issue this morning I hope that that begins to answer your question but I'm happy to follow up if you've got any further questions we seem to be back at the horry old issue of data is it this is not just in this regard where we encounter us as you know it's been pretty much across the board there's deficiencies in data data's not up to date data's not produced in a common format and so forth is it because events are changing so quickly that data collection requirements are not keeping up so whereas five years ago this range of data indicators might be quite adequate we haven't transitioned to new and more effective data collection and as we know in the public sector because of the size of it it takes so long to make these changes could you maybe give us a little bit of info around that happy to Mr Beattie all the factors that you suggest will be components of why the data isn't as strong as it needs to be to make the not just the evaluation on how well public policy has been implemented whether value for money has been achieved whether opportunities for change and intervention and there are also the other factors that are quite fundamental that we've discussed with the committee in recent times building on our planning for outcomes report as well about just whether the milestones that were set would be supported by the right data from the outset of the implementation of a policy we also would recognise that in a fluid environment clearly Covid has influenced that yet further some of the policy changes that happened alongside it in this context of changing things around sentencing arrangements presumption against short sentencing and so forth will all be components of that and also the factors around the accountability arrangements will know that they have played a part too that the with the accountability resting with individual bodies in the community justice partnerships and perhaps that lack of direction that a national body would be able to to require certain data in certain formats at certain time will all be factors that we've played I think for our enthusiasm and one of the questions that we raised in the report is that in order to make the type of evaluation and the type of interventions and improvement in outcomes the fundamentals of high quality data remain a need to be resolved and you mentioned that Covid brings me neatly on to recover, renew, transform programme and how it affects community justice in what way do you see this as an opportunity to to make that shift push forward that shift to sustainable community based alternatives to custody I'll invite Anthony to come in a moment in terms of his familiarity with the Government's plan and as he rightly says earlier that the recover, renew, transform programme is part of the Government's wider approach to the delivery of public services beyond community justice I think as it relates to to this sector and perhaps borne out by what appears to be a fairly static level of progress in shifting the balancing of sentencing particularly for short sentences away from a prison based model to a community justice arrangement both the factors in terms of the data supporting a reduction in re-offending rates cheaper and less cost led models in terms of community justice relative to prison populations but perhaps the biggest factor and Anthony will also want to say is that there's improved clarity about what those wider outcomes for people who have engaged with the justice system and what are the prospects in terms of employment, health outcomes and wider contributions that will be on offer so all of that thinking will be important but again I'll pause for a moment and invite Anthony to say a bit more Thank you very much I think it's fair to say that it's quite difficult to give you a categorical answer to the extent to which the recovery and transform programme will deliver any kind of improvements that you're asking for than Mr Beattie because it's still at a relatively early stage of development above and beyond the thinking that's gone into the additional court services to deal with the backlogs I think what is clear is that there's both opportunities and risks at the moment there's an opportunity to think differently the way in which you suggested about how the opportunities that are presented through the transformation programme can help people to make that shift towards community-based interventions but there's also a risk I guess of the backlog around courts that that might actually end up being more of a driver of the transformation programme I think we're aware that community justice are at the table, they're part of those consultations so I think we need to wait and see what comes out of the discussions that are taking place at the moment as the programme gets firmed up and we get clear about what the actual strands of work that will flow from it are going to be it's certainly something we'll be keeping and watching by on ourselves Mr Beattie It certainly would appear that if all the stakeholders are not on board and pointing in the same direction then recovery of the new transform isn't going to be as effective as it should have one should precede the other There's a lack of a shared vision around delivery and accountability that will be a threat to the delivery of the type of change and the implementation and that's one of the factors that we point to in the report with that variation in accountability arrangements along with the data and the regional variation that we've seen all of these factors will be to be considered and hopefully addressed to shift the change that was envisaged in the original policy Thank you very much indeed and I think on that last point I just wanted to end up by reflecting on clearly that the roles and lines of accountability are perhaps not as clear as they ought to be and that might be one of the factors in the object of the Government certainly not being met in a comprehensive way as they would hope and many people would expect but I do just want to finish up asking a little bit more about funding so we know for example the recovery and new transform funds there is an additional £11.8 million you mentioned in the report which has been made available for criminal justice social work services that sounds like quite a small amount of money to me do you think that's sufficient to make any difference at all I think that ultimately time will tell about how well that money is used and clearly it's a matter of for Government to determine the allocation of funding I think it's part of the factor convener about the scale of funding that's invested but perhaps not the sole one as we've seen about the accountability which we've talked about high quality data getting beneath the factors around regional variation all of which will be components of improving how this system works as Anthony mentioned earlier as we touched on in the report just to keep this under review following the consultation and undertake further work to come back to the committee and report on thank you and just very finally you mentioned at the start about the high levels of incarceration rates in Scotland compared to other parts of western Europe and I think again in your report you say that around about 5% of the overall justice budget is spent on community based sentencing do you know what the international picture looks like, how that compares to these other countries which have a much lower rate of imprisonment of people who've committed crimes? I'll quickly turn to team Nicola I assume we'll come in with some of the data that we looked at in terms of the incarceration rates we looked at the world prison brief the source for the rates and comparing where Scotland sits with other jurisdictions we are as we concluded in the report at the higher end of the western European scale for imprisonment rates the whole justice system captures both the throughput through our court system our policing arrangements and all of these components of it how the comparability of that rest and the factors that lead to the different outcomes will be pretty complex and varied and also about the role of the judiciary and the sentencing arrangements so we'll continue to look at that and report publicly just following the Government's clarity on its next steps but again I'll turn to Nicola to see if there's anything that we can enlighten just on some of the data so as we said in the report funding-wise around just under 5% of the total justice funding is to community justice mostly to partnerships but that hasn't significantly changed over time despite this aimed shift we haven't compared that balance to how it is in other countries so I'm not sure how that prison versus community compares to other countries who incarcerate at a lower rate than us well if you do come across any useful comparators that are based on robust data then we would be interested to see that I think it might be a matter of public interest as well as interest to the Public Audit Committee Happy to do so convener actually and I think certainly as we think about our own next steps around further audit work in this area we'll consider that for our scope of just about the comparability across other parts of the UK and further beyond and again if we've any useful sources we'll happily share that with the committee right well thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning and for the production of the report which does indeed contain some fairly clear analysis of where things are and what might need to change so thanks to Anthony and Nicola who've joined us remotely and Auditor General Stephen Boyle thank you very much for being here with us at the committee and I'd now like to close the public part of today's proceedings thank you