I welcome everyone to the 32nd meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2017 and can please remind everyone present to turn their mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting. The first item of business is our third evidence session as part of the early scrutiny of the Scottish Government's proposed education reforms. Our meetings over the last two weeks have included very interesting evidence sessions from academics and experts. Today we are hearing from Education Scotland. The primary focus of this session will be the proposed change to its roles under the proposed reforms. This week I welcome Gail Gorman, chief inspector of education and chief executive, Graham Logan, strategic director and Mike Ewer, non-executive board member Education Scotland. I would like to begin by congratulating Gail Gorman on your new role. I understand that this is just your second week in the job, so we thought we would get you an easy. For the benefit of those watching, I should mention that Gail was until recently director of education and children's services at Aberdeen City Council, an improvement lead at the Northern Alliance. Ms Gorman, I understand that you will make a short opening statement. Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. As you stated, last week, last Monday, I took up my post as chief inspector of education and chief executive of Education Scotland. Being so new in the role, I am therefore joined today, as you said, by Graham and Mike, whom I know from previous appearances at the committee. Mike Ewer is a non-executive who sits on our advisory management board. I am committed to working for Scotland's children with Scotland's educators, and it is a real privilege and honour to have taken up this post and to have the opportunity to speak to you so early in my tenure. I believe that education Scotland needs to continue to focus on teaching and learning, working in classroom and community practitioners to make a difference to children and young people in their daily work. We need to create a collaborative learning community across Scotland through refreshing the profession and empowering our teachers and practitioners to be inquiry-led practitioners. We need to keep a central focus on getting it right for every child and the totality of children's lives and experiences. We need to provide assurance and evidence through inspection that focuses on research at its centre, sharing best practice, learning from within and across Scotland and from elsewhere. We must re-engage and reshape education Scotland and the sector on improvement, working in partnership with all our stakeholders on our shared improvement aim to improve the outcomes for children and young people in Scotland. We will do that through working locally, regionally and nationally with a clear purpose to reshape the organisation to meet the needs of the systems and to deliver excellence and equity for all Scotland's children. I am pleased at this early stage in my appointment to have the opportunity to engage with you, and my colleagues and I are happy to answer your questions today. Thank you very much, and I wish you well in your new position. I will begin the questions before inviting contributions from other members. Can you explain where curriculum support will sit once the regional improvement collaborative becomes fully operational? Thank you. Regional collaborations will work in partnership with Education Scotland and with local authorities, of which they are consistent members. Curriculum support will be led through the regional improvement collaborative plans, whether that be literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing, the eight core areas. That will be supported by colleagues from Education Scotland who, once the plans are scoped and fully written, that work is under way, we will then align our resources to meet the requests and needs of each local regional collaborative. That will not be one-size-fits-all because every region is very different and the needs will be very different, but we will bring together in a collaborative leadership piece the strengths of each region locally and then also bring to that the national agenda and the national team to add to that and extrapolate and then share that practice about the curriculum through that model. From what you are saying, you do not perceive it as being a top-down Education Scotland saying that regional collaboratives will come up with their plan and your role will be to facilitate that? It has to be a combination of both. If we want a school-led, teacher-led system, we have to work in partnership with our colleagues locally at schools, particularly as well, who will be feeding into the collaboratives and helping in requesting the support that they would like to see at classroom and at practitioner level, as well as taking our evidence from inspection. We would be able to bring that evidence national picture from inspection, what the gaps are, where there are issues, where there are successes and to feed that into the system. A very much collegiate collaborative approach to that going forward is how we would want to shape the organisation and work in partnership. How do you seriously establish the regional collaboratives effect the way that Education Scotland works? It is a significant change and one that I welcome in terms of being able to to create that shared space to actually pool resources, take our collaborative learning from front-line teachers, practitioners and everyone in the sector to bring it together in one place, to review where the gaps and issues are and then collectively to design programs, evidence-based, research-based, that deliver improvements for young people. To add to that, good morning everyone. We have started to transform the way that we do our business planning to accommodate that. At the moment, we do nine national programs and we are scaling that right back to streamline our national offer so that the bulk of our staff can contribute to the regional improvement plans. In other words, rather than us developing these nine big programs, we will match staff expertise in a responsive way to the needs and the regional collaborative. That is quite a dramatic change in how we plan and deliver our work. The whole delivery model of the organisation needs to change. The days of staff sitting at the centre producing things, putting them on our website, are over. We will produce the guidance that is needed, but that will be kept very streamlined and staff will be out working with our partners and local authorities in schools in the regional collaboratives. Good morning, and it is nice to welcome you, Gail, from Aberdeen City down to Education Scotland. I think that it would be very helpful, given that you were involved in the Northern Alliance so fundamentally, to give an overview of how the Northern Alliance worked. I know that you are making the point that one size does not fit all, and that is fine. Obviously, the Northern Alliance had an ethos behind it and a way of working, which has probably been a precursor for a regional collaborative. Could you give us an overview of what the Northern Alliance is and how it worked? The Northern Alliance is a collaborative of eight local authorities from across predominantly the north of Scotland. We came together about four years ago, just over four years ago. We were originally focusing on shared issues that we had and how we could look at those collectively at the time that it was teacher recruitment and teacher numbers. We quickly realised the strength of that collaboration, given our geography and our scale. We then looked at what were our common issues around curriculum, children's outcomes and approaches, and decided to share our expertise with each other. We are all very different sizes. Highlands is a very large authority, for instance. Shetland is a relatively small authority, a murray scale and size. Perhaps we had one resource and one local authority that maybe we could not match on another. We decided to become that collaborative community of learners and share that expertise in doing that. We formed relationships. We formed relationships at all layers in the system, at director level but also very much at head of service, service manager and at school level. We began targeting on three key priorities, early literacy, early numeracy and poverty. We collectively designed programmes that all our schools and programmes at set schools could have access to and work collectively to create a network across the region. There are now more than 15 programmes that the Northern Alliance runs, involving hundreds of teachers and practitioners. We are sharing that collective expertise. We are learning from each other, creating teacher networks, support networks and professional collaboration to really impact on children's outcomes. It has been a very positive model that has grown and strengthened over time and is now moving into being the full definition of the regional improvement collaborative. In areas where we are going to have the new regional collaboratives, how are you going to ensure—that is quite an organic change. You say that you started looking at teacher recruitment and then it grew into something organically. How can we ensure that there is that organic growth that is right for the other regions that are starting up afresh? Obviously, timescales are different and are challenging, but, interestingly, there are many other collaborations that have always been in place across Scottish education. I know that the Tayside collaborative, for instance, has been working together for some time now as well. There are developments with the other collaboratives. There have always been groups that have got together in local authority parings and groups. People are building and establishing and taking that base and growing it. We certainly will be supporting, and even in the last eight days, Gary and I have been involved in talking to some of our other regional improvement collaborative leads and supporting them in developing a plan, working on an iterative process with them because they will be able to scale up their activities over time, but are very much focusing on the core agenda that we all have in terms of improving attainment for young people. What do you think the regional collaboratives are going to mean for a teacher on the ground? I hope that it means more equity of access to professional learning and development. As I said, one of the issues is sometimes scale, size and resource. Being able to look at that across a region will allow us and teachers to have access to that consistency of approach, resource and opportunity for learning. For teachers, the connection is certainly my old head teachers, and teachers said that the opportunity for them to make a connection with a school in Shetland or a school in Argyll and Bute is to develop that professional relationship, almost a families of schools approach. If you are at one school of a certain type in a local authority that is relatively small, the fact that you could find a partner school is pretty similar to your school, somewhere else, has huge strength in terms of professional capacity and learning. I think that we have an agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA and partners on the core functions of the collaboratives. At the moment, our evidence suggests that there is too much variability in the quality of support across Scotland. This is an opportunity to provide the support, the curricular support and the improvement support that schools and local authorities need. However, as Gil said, in our discussion with regional leaders, it has been very clear that, as the planning process develops, the offer to schools has to be very, very clear and very practical. As the plans develop, taking the example of the Northern Alliance, we hope to make sure that head teachers and teachers are very clear on what that means to them and who they can contact for particular types of support at regional level. Just my final question in this, how are you going to monitor the progress of the new collaboratives? Obviously, we are working with them in terms of developing the plans. We have a regional liaison officer that has now been appointed to the six regional improvement collaboratives. They will have a brokering and link role to work with the collaboratives and to feedback information to ourselves in terms of requests for support or additional help or needs. When the plans are submitted, there will be the formal sign-off process, but we are seeing that as a phased collaborative approach that we would be saying to local authorities making up the collaboratives. Those are the right lines. Perhaps you would like more development in this area. Perhaps we could help other national partners as well, coming to the table and adding to that care inspector and others. I have a number of people who want to ask questions on the theme, so it will be Liz then Tavish, and then I will go. Mrs Gorman, I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about accountability for decision making. A year ago, when Education Scotland was before this committee, when the curriculum for excellence was very much the centre of discussions, we were finding it a little difficult to know who was responsible for key decisions and strategy. The cabinet secretary is very clear that he has overall command of that, but where everybody else fits in, if there is to be a newly reformed Education Scotland, where the lines of accountability are, and particularly in relation to the collaboratives that you have just spoken about at a time where we are devolving more power to head teachers, could you explain where the lines of accountability are for decision making and education? I will make a start and then colleagues will join in in terms of some of the nuances of Education Scotland. As you are well aware, policy sits with the cabinet secretary and with governance. Education Scotland is very much there to look at implementation support, curricular support, guidance for schools and other areas of the sector around the best way to implement curriculum for excellence, the best way to improve outcomes and to really focus on the impactful delivery of good quality teaching and learning. To follow that up, we are at a period of change in governance, Ms Smith. The new Scottish Education Council has met for the first time, which we remember, and is developing its own remit and role as an advisory council to ministers. Obviously, there are other groups, as well as the curriculum and assessment board at the first meeting last week. We started to discuss how the board wants to oversee the curriculum and the role and remit. We will see those roles and remit firmed up. At the moment, as we know, the statutory duty for improvement sits with ministers and local authorities. At Education Scotland, we are in the process of developing a new corporate plan, which will shortly come out for consultation and will set out very clearly the outcomes and the areas that Education Scotland is responsible for. We want to make that as clear as possible so that members and the public can see what Education Scotland is about, what our purpose is and the outcomes that we are responsible for delivering over the next year. I will probe a bit further on that. The cabinet secretary is keen indeed about greater autonomy for headteachers, which is policy that I support very much. Obviously, that means that there will be less power in the hands of local authorities in the way that they have just now. Do I understand that the Scottish Government and its new council, of which Education Scotland is part, will be deciding education policy and that the co-laboratives, local government and headteachers are all expected to adopt that strategy? The Scottish Education Council met for the first time roughly about 10 days ago. The role and remit for that council was very clear. It is not a decision-making body. It is a consultative group that will work together and feedback from various stakeholders on what are the wicked issues in Scottish education. It is an opportunity for the cabinet secretary to hear that, what the issues are and what people's views are, and then it would be for him to decide how that was taken forward. Yes, absolutely. It is very clear that policy responsibility sits with ministers and with the Scottish Government, and the council has an advisory function. Obviously, within that policy framework at present, if we take curriculum for excellence, there is a lot of autonomy and flexibility built in for local decision-making. Obviously, we await with interest to see how areas such as the headteachers charter emerge. There is a consultation on that at the moment, and we will be making an official response to the consultation on the Education and Governance Bill before the close of that. Mr Logan, can I just propagate a wee bit further on this? At the meeting last December, when we talked a lot about the delivery of the curriculum for excellence, there were a lot of concerns from members in the committee asking about who was responsible for key decisions within the curriculum for excellence, particularly a couple where things had not worked out. I think that we found it quite difficult to know who was responsible in the changes that are coming forward for new governance. I think that everybody, whether they are a parent or a teacher or a pupil, wants to know exactly who is making the decisions that will affect them in their school and what happens in terms of accountability. I am still a little bit unclear about where those lines are, particularly if headteachers have much greater autonomy and the regional collaboratives have a new relationship with local government, they will have a new relationship with Education Scotland. Can we just be absolutely clear about what is going to happen in terms of the decision-making process, who will finally be responsible and accountable to whom? At the moment, there are a number of consultations, as Graeme mentioned. The headteacher charter has been one of the central ones currently. Obviously, the education bill consultation is active and live at the moment. We are developing in Education Scotland a corporate plan where we will clearly articulate in terms of our role moving forward, but some of that will be based on the decisions that are made by the Scottish Government at the end of those consultations. We had two witnesses last week make the point that, while everybody was united behind the principles of curriculum for excellence, it had lost its way a little bit. It was struggling to convince people in terms of exactly what it meant. Will you be able to tell us why you think that the new structure will improve the definition of curriculum for excellence and its delivery? I am not sure that I would fully correlate with the statement that began there around CFE. I think that there is still some inconsistency around CFE. We need to do further work around clarity for front-line teachers who are very busy and actively engaged in learning every day and the challenge that that is in serving our young people the best that they can. Some of the streamlining work that has gone on around the benchmarks, some of the reduction in guidance, etc. I will certainly want to continue that narrative under my tenure and scaling things back and providing a real clarity for teachers about the next step in learning. As a classroom practitioner, what you really need to focus on are the young people in front of you and the gaps in their learning. We must support teachers' professional learning in terms of using CFE, really being able to see the progression in core skills and any advice or information that is there driving that and supporting it and taking away some of the confusion that there may have been in the past. A lot of good work has already started and taken place on that. In terms of guidance for front-line practitioners, it will really make a difference if there are the core messages that we stick to. There are core guidance and there is a consistency of approach. The networking between schools is very, very important. Regional collaboratives will allow that professional dialogue to really be established and strengthened over time. First of all, welcome to your post. I think that you have one of the toughest jobs in the public sector, if I may say so. They are not your fault but there is a lot of stuff that went on in the past, which Liz has frankly hinted at, which I think lots of us are really sceptical about. I think that you have a big job to do, but good luck with it. I want to ask you about the point that you made early on in recognising along Gillian Martin's line of questioning about regional collaboratives taking different approaches across the country. You will well know from the Northern Lions. In many rural areas, we have teaching heads for primary schools in particular. They do not have time for yet more governance going on. They just like time to teach and to learn. If a regional collaborative comes to you and says, I am terribly sorry, Chief Inspector, our primary schools do not want this imposed on them, this governance stuff imposed on them right now, and here is why, and here is all the evidence about learning. Will you accept that? I think that it is about listening to the profession. I am very much. I spoke to our Education Scotland team yesterday about listening to the profession, about remembering what it is like to be a teacher every day and the pressures that that brings. As a teacher myself, as a professional, we always want to learn from each other. We always want to do the best for our children and young people. If the regional collaborative approaches are about practical support for teachers and headteachers, my experience is that headteachers welcome that. It is not about governance, it is about support or guidance or a quick win that another school has already learned from. You do not go down a blind alley. Certainly, in my professional experience, what professionals are looking for is that collaboration and that support. That is certainly what I would want to be driving and seeing demonstrated in the regional plans. I think that I take that. In Shetland, most of our primary school heads teach, and they do not have time to deal with all this other stuff that is in these consultations flowing in on top of them, nor do they want it. They want to be able to teach and give the best chance to their kids. What I am actually asking you is, will you reflect that when the cabinet secretary says, I want this teacher's chart across the whole of Scotland? Will you reflect that? As you advised that cabinet secretary, will you reflect that to him, saying, look, we have situations across the whole of Scotland here where schools are not ready for this, they do not want to take this on right now and you cannot impose it from such and such a date. Do you understand that distinction about recognising how hard it is for heads who teach to suddenly take on all these extra roles? Absolutely. My role is very much to be that professional advice, and I will continue to voice my professional advice as I go forward as I have throughout my career. That is really helpful. Thank you. If you have given some thought yet in 10 days to the split between primaries and secondaries and how these governance proposals could potentially impact on them, because there seems to be a huge difference between the primary and secondary sectors, we have had that in evidence in the last couple of weeks. Do you think that that is a legitimate concern, and how would you see that being reflected by regional collaboratives? I think that we have to be very mindful of the points that you raised exactly in your earlier question. We have to be mindful of the impact on all headteachers. Being a headteacher is a hard job, and it is about running your school and supporting the children, families and community that you serve. We have always got to keep that in the forefront of our support and focus. There are different asks of different sectors, and that is okay. That reflects the uniqueness of each sector, including early years in childcare. We would want to see that represented in the scale and approach of each regional collaborative. Absolutely. The sentiment of the headteachers charter about empowering headteachers to be leaders of learning is the right one. As it develops, we need to make sure that it becomes a mandate for headteachers to do the job that they want to do. As you say, Mr Scott, I was in Shetland a few weeks ago that there are unique challenges in different parts of the country, and we have to make sure that all schools have the support that they need. If the regional collaborative is delivered, we will know that headteachers, if they want support with literacy, will know who to go to at a local or regional level, so it will improve the current level of variability. On the primary and secondary sectors, there are split views because some secondary schools have already more support, because they might have a business manager who is primaries, not necessarily the case. I think that we need to continue the dialogue with the profession and make sure that those changes enable them to do the job that they all want to do as best they possibly can. A couple of final questions if I can, convener. You mentioned earlier on about aligning resources. In your opening remarks, you said about aligning resources to regional improvement collaboratives. What does that mean in practice? Does that mean people and money going to a regional collaborative to help them to get their job done? It exactly means that we are looking at the deployment of our current central teams, many of whom are based locally and attainment advisers and inspectors have always worked in local contexts, but one of the pieces of work that I'm going forward now is looking at when the regional collaborative plans are scoped up a little bit more, what's their ask of us, what do they say their gaps are, and how can we realign the majority of our curriculum teams in front to support that local delivery? That's very much the focus of the change in Education Scotland going forward. Do you think we'll end up with, I don't know, a group of professionals in, say, Aberdeen or wherever the Northern Alliance may be based, there'll be a row about that in the doubt, but wherever it's going to be based, we'll practically be in that place and there'll be a budget there and they will then be responsible for assisting the local team. I certainly think we'll have, we already have in some of the instances if I use the example of the Northern Alliance, three of our core programmes, the attainment advisers from Education Scotland have been involved in those for over two years and are part of the steering group for those literacy and numeracy and secondary mathematics programmes. They've been part of that, they've helped shape it and they're out there co-delivering, so already that's happening in practice and the attainment advisers, the majority of them, are based in local authorities across Scotland, so I'd see very much of that model developing. Daniel Richards My question is very much one, but can I also just acknowledge that coming before a parliamentary committee on your ninth day in a new job is somewhat of an intimidating task, so I hope we're being kind to you this morning. I'm very interested in how the regional improvement collaborators will work and I think critical to their functioning is clearly going to be the regional improvement plans, which are under development and will be published early in the new year. Could you just maybe explain to me how they are being put together, what they will look like in broad terms and can I also just find out what opportunities there's been for practitioners and local schools to actually feed into those up the way, so to speak? OK. Most of the six regional collaboratives have appointed a regional improvement collaborative lead from the local authorities, mainly director level. They are co-ordinating the work of the various directors and teams in each local authority, along with chief executives as well and in most cases also the convener or chair of the relevant committee for that as well. They're working and looking at their doing a performance overview, a contextual piece about the performance across the region. So looking at inspection data, but also looking at CFE, looking at curriculum gaps, bringing in things like community planning and maybe some of the health indicators, not just education fields. So they're doing a performance piece, they're looking there, from that they'll extrapolate what are the key priorities for the region and decide which ones they can focus of in the first phase of their development. As mentioned earlier, people are at different phases and at different stages and so they'll identify their key priorities and then work up an actual improvement plan for the region that says this is our key focus, say for example on numeracy in primary 4. We're going to target that, that's a key area for us, there's an issue around mathematics anxiety in teachers and in children and young people. We're going to use this model, we're going to target, we're going to run so many events for teachers, we're going to work in schools, we're going to support them, this is how we're going to evaluate, this will be the impact and how we'll measure it. And they'll do that under various themes that are recorded in the joint agreement, they'll build evaluation into that, they'll also from that look at workforce, a workforce plan, so they'll draw from that what's the resource they need from across the region, but also what's the resource request from ourselves in Education Scotland or other agencies and partners, their sector and alike. As part of that then they'll then create a plan, it will be at like any good school improvement plan, you know there'll be a phase one, then there'll be a further development for the next academic year, we'll try and align it to run more academic year school improvement cycle, so they'll do that. There is, we have asked for local authorities and for regional improvement collaboratives to very much build from bottom up, but we are very conscious of the timescales involved, so many of them have spoken to head teachers particularly, some of them have done practitioner events, I know some of them have done online surveys asking their workforce what they would like to see to move forward, but many of them will put in their plan how they're going to develop that with more strength and depth over time, but very much trying to feed that practitioner voice in and make sure what they're delivering is actually what schools and teachers are asking for, that will be the key measure. That's helpful. Can I ask what will then happen with those plans? So in 12 months time, will you be having a conversation with each of the regional improvement liaisons? Will there be a strict measurement against that, or how will these be used and who will be measured against them? Will it be just the improvement liaisons or will individual schools be measured against the regional improvement plans? How will they work? So some of that detail we want to work through in partnership with colleagues so that we get that right, but the improvement plans have to be signed off by myself in this role as part of the team, but we do that in collaboration, looking at the range of evidence that's there. There's an evaluation six months in in terms of how's the progress going and how's that looking, and then a further evaluation down the road in terms of looking at the impact, because ultimately we must look at is this making a difference to children and young people across Scotland? Is this work regionally, locally and nationally really addressing some of the concerns we may have around progress for children and young people? So we will look at that, but we will be looking at the progress against the plan, the impact that it's having, and taking a very wide looking range at the success criteria, at inspection evidence, and also what teachers and practitioners are saying has been the impact of that work. So just with a view to the questions around the accountability and trying to get an understanding of who is accountable to whom for what, if a region fails to meet the targets it sets out in its regional improvement plan, who will be holding who to task and what will be the consequences? I mean, will you be firing regional improvement liaisons or will the schools be holding them, I mean what's the direction of accountability here? So the accountability, the regional improvement leads are employed by the council that they're working with, and as part of the collaborative established joint agreement between Scottish Government and COSLA was very much about the leadership of the regional improvement collaborative, sits with local authorities that are the constituent members of that regional improvement collaborative. There is a lead chief executive in each one of the collaboratives who is responsible for working and ensuring and seeing the oversight of the work of the regional improvement lead. We would be evaluating that work and feeding that information back to them in terms of accountability for the impact on children and young people. Yes, just to follow on from that and Mr Johnston's point about planning. I think we've seen a significant impact from the national improvement framework in that school improvement plans and local plans are now aligned to the drivers and the priorities, so that's almost a golden thread that we now have in education improvement planning in Scotland. So school plans will continue to be very prominent and we would want the regional improvement plan to take full account of the school priorities and local authorities have already been analysing those when developing their own NIF plans. So we do have that golden thread based on the drivers and the priorities in the national improvement framework and that's bringing a greater sense of clarity around the improvement priorities at both school, local and national level. Yes, one last question, which is, you talked about education Scotland staff being deployed to the regional improvement collaboratives. Will they be formally seconded and will those education Scotland staff be formally accountable and answering to the regional liaisons? Is that going to be the formal structure or could you explain how that's going to work? No, we wouldn't see that as the formal structure. They would still be employed and working with education Scotland. However, the narrative is about a partnership approach and so the regional collaboratives would be brokering and asking for that support from education Scotland where they felt they wanted it. We would be responding to that and then we'd be working in partnership and alongside. On a day-to-day basis they would be working with and through the regional improvement collaboratives but also feeding back information to education Scotland around learning that we could share with other collaboratives or national pictures that we're emerging to help us drive some of the national messaging as well. In effect, they'd have dual lines of accountability. It would almost be like a matrix management model. Thank you and firstly congratulations to Ms Gorman on your new position and best wishes for the future. It's good to have someone from the northeast taking such a prominent position. As a member of the Northern Alliance, I'm not talking about this character in the new Star Wars movie but the Northern Alliance as in the education collaboration in our part of the world because obviously I represent Murray and they're one of the local authorities involved. I'm keen to explore with you your vision for how that will develop. I know other members have touched upon that but one issue that occurs to me looking at some of the unique and some are general of the challenges facing Murray at the moment and there's clearly an issue over a shortage of teachers and there's additional pressures facing many of our schools locally and I understand from teachers locally that there's only three quality improvement officers now working for the Murray council to support the schools from that central perspective and I also understand from teachers that it used to be more than double that just a few years ago. So the advice and support they're getting is limited compared to previous times and I'm just trying to understand if your vision for the regional collaboration is you could help plug that gap and then that begs a question in the longer term should this regional collaboration approach just take over the role of the quality improvement officer so there's equal support across the regional areas. I do know Murray very well and I have had the privilege of being in many Murray schools and working with a number of your teachers. One of the things that, if I use the example of the Northern Alliance where you're referring to, is that the QIOs are actually all working collectively together so about 18 months ago the QIOs got together a working group of two from each of the seven constituent authorities at the time and looked at their processes for quality assuring, leadership in schools and supporting and making judgments around the quality of the curriculum. They worked together for some time and then they ran an event where all the QIOs across the Northern Alliance came together. They shared approaches and to get a common agreement and consistency around approaches to evaluation and self-evaluation of leadership and the core QIs around that in schools. They then have then developed that further and are doing some elements of joint value, I'm trying not to use jargon here, sorry, some self-evaluation work in schools and they're working collectively, three different QIOs coming together and going and doing a joint VSE in another authority or supporting another authority around that. That embryonic work has already been taken place to do that. It also brings a great deal of professional learning across those teams as well in terms of there's some fantastic work maybe happening here in one area, there's some great work here, we bring that together, actually we are able to share that with more schools more quickly. That development of the quality improvement officers coming together, learning from each other and helping to support schools with absolutely the challenges that many of them face is already under way and I know that the other regional improvement collaboratives are looking at developing similar approaches so it should provide some of that surety in the system and that capacity across a region that is difficult in the range of authorities that we have across Scotland. Okay and just very briefly because I'll come back to some of these teams when we talk about inspections later is in that case do you see the role or who's responsible for quality improvement officers changing in the future because it seems to me if one local authority is only employing three and another local authority is employing a lot more than that they're clearly preventing a lot more support to their schools and you know when you look at the inspection reports you get from many schools what you'll get back is oh we don't have a lot of quality improvement officers anymore to help those schools so therefore it's an issue so I'm just wondering you know there is some urgency about this whether you think that we could just rearrange the whole way in which quality improvement is delivered. No I don't think that's necessarily the way that things would need to develop because if we really are focusing in on a school and teacher led system actually some of the usually quality improvement officers are ex-head teachers or senior senior staff members so actually if we can can draw and bring capacity into the system with head teacher supporting each other as many do currently in cluster arrangements anyway but if we can build and strengthen that and create that network of professionals who are working across and within their own school but outside that actually it will help with some of that capacity and there is the fact that that there will be local authority targeted work that QIOs will be doing in their own authority that would continue as things go forward. Okay I'll come back. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you very much, convener. Can I start as well by joining colleagues in welcoming you to your new role? On the sort of issue of the collaborative you've talked a little bit about variability of service provision and capacity. Do you think there's a danger within some smaller local authorities where maybe that capacity is lacking at the centre at the moment that their voice will be less within larger regions and perhaps some of the priorities I'm thinking certainly within my own constituency where there's a number of smaller rural schools with very unique needs. Do you think that they'll be prioritised enough within larger regional collaboratives? Certainly my experience is yes because if it's truly about collective leadership and collaboration then everyone's equal and one of the core principles on the Northern Alliance was that regardless of scale size geography we're all equal and we all have an equal voice and certainly that would be what my expectation would be across the whole system and layers of the system. Then actually the issues in a one teacher primary school that's got a part time teaching head is actually just as viable as a 1400 place secondary school and many of the issues there because we're all part of the profession and if we create the collective learning community we're all respectful of that and that fundamentally has to be many of our schools in Scotland are small in your rural and we mustn't forget that. You're confident that when it comes to setting the priorities for improvement those smaller schools will be given that parity? It's certainly something I would be looking for. The next question was just around whether geography was the best or sort of only method of collaboration because obviously you've talked a little bit about family of schools and again thinking of those smaller rural schools some of those will have far more in common with those in the north of Scotland than they would with schools a few miles away in Sedumfreece which is the largest town locally so do you think geography is the best way of bringing people together to collaborate? Geography can be a significant challenge and also a significant strength. I think that one of the things we must be mindful of is that the regional collaborations are going to be one set of collaborations there's other collaborations that already exist so you know there are things like the small schools collaboration groups that happen across the whole of Scotland and beyond actually so we mustn't having regional improvement collaboratives doesn't preclude them from working in other ways and schools working in other ways and certainly that's my experience of for instance in the Northern Alliance there's the Highlands and Islands Convention of the Highlands and Islands there's also the island authorities there's also work that goes on very close between Highlands and Tayside which aren't any so there's lots of different you know we might it's not about precluding it's about yes there's another way of working but actually the strength of Scotland and its size and scale is actually those opportunities that we shouldn't close down in any shape or form and we need to bear that in mind that for one school it could be a very similar school at the other end of the country and we'd want to be joining up some of those connections and I think that's also part of the unique contribution of education Scotland because as Gail said we'll have our six regional officers who'll be meeting regularly and really they'll be looking at how can we broker and facilitate work across the collaboratives as well particularly with our national curriculum specialists who'll have an overview of literacy they'll be looking to connect and join up work so it's really important that as well as delivering a lot of our work regionally we do keep a national overview and look for opportunities to connect work across the collaboratives. Thank you and final question for now and hopefully I can come back in later. It was just around learning centres obviously we've heard there's a distinction between primary schools and secondary schools in a lot of the evidence. I've had a couple of teachers in the last few weeks flag up the issue of learning centres in that for some particularly primary school head teachers managing the learning centre facilities at the moment takes up a considerable amount of time and resource and they're getting quite a lot of support actually from the local authority in terms of making sure that works well. How do you see the sort of management of learning centres fitting in to the collaborative process? I think that would be for each collaborative to decide the scale and scope of that and it will be that regional collaboratives will evolve over time so it may be you know they're focusing very much on on some of the core agenda issues around CFE around DYW around the core curriculum and it may be that over time they then begin to look at support and networks around that particular area. Where do you see the role of the local authority in terms of learning centres under that model? Do you think that they would still be taking principal responsibility for administering them? Regional collaborations are about the collaborative coming together actually in terms of roles and responsibilities local authorities will retain their roles and responsibilities on their duties in those those areas. Thank you. Thank you very much and welcome to you. I want to, first of all, welcome to other issues but just on the collaborations thing. First of all, do you acknowledge that the suggestion of regional collaborations through the governance consultation wasn't popular? It didn't have support in the learning community? It had very mixed responses. At least very mixed responses. You're implementing something that the profession itself hasn't given its support to, which must be a challenge. You also said that there are lots of collaborations, which I agree with. There are also different collaborations going on, but this is the only one where we're employing chief executives to be in charge. Do you think that that makes it different? There may be other collaboratives where chief executives are involved, solace and others would be able to give you that information. I think that there are community planning collaborations. There are other collaboratives in different forms with different names that are across, I imagine, many areas of governance in my experience. In community planning there'll be somebody in charge of community planning. My question is, we're supposed to be making strengthening education and putting a lot of emphasis on regional collaboratives. We're employing people, you're going to be deploying people in. When we already have a structure where there's education directors, for example. You said earlier that it was a matrix management model. I don't know what that means, but I'm interested in where accountability lies. Who is responsible within a regional area? Who is responsible for the quality of education within a local authority and within the regional collaborative? The Education Act is very clear that the duty for improvement and for education sits with the local authority. The regional improvement collaboratives would not change that, and that's the joint agreement that was reached. If I were employing somebody as a chief executive to do a job, if they're all doing, it's bringing people together? You may have picked up incorrectly for what I meant was that the existing local authority chief executives are involved in the management and organisation of regional collaboratives. They're not employing a chief executive in my apologies. That maybe wasn't clear. I just meant that out of the six or seven chief executives that are in the region, there's one who's taking on the responsibility of helping to oversee and govern the collaborative. Sorry, that was my mistake. Just to add to that, Mr Lamont, you mentioned the directors of education. There's only really two who have a sole focus on education, and that's part of the reason of collectively pulling together education support and resources so that we can actually strengthen that support at regional level and with our contribution. I think that it's really important that the evidence from inspection and through our quality improvement in the Scottish education report highlighted that there was too much variance in that quality improvement support across Scotland. The purpose here is to pull together and to work together to share expertise across sectors and subjects so that we actually improve that quality support in all parts of the country. It's also the case that people actively in policy terms decided within local authorities that the education director should have a broader role because they were responsible for getting right for every child. We're saying that we've agreed that as a policy that there should be that collaboration at a local authority level, but because there is that collaboration at a local level you have to pull something up into a regional collaborative or national level to make sure there's consistency. Is that not a contradiction? No, I may not have picked you up correctly there, but the plans that are being developed have gerffick as part of the core agenda. The point that I was making was that if you're explaining why you have to have a regional collaborative because there aren't very many directors who are solely responsible for education, there's a combination of reasons for that. Some of it is not sufficient money in the system and also because philosophical people recognise that a young person, education, social work and so on, actually is pulled together. That's not an explanation of why you would do it at a regional level. Yes, thanks. You're absolutely right that we have education and children's services. In some cases there's much broader remits, including other areas, but beyond education and children's services. The evidence is clear and it's in the quality improvement and Scottish education report that we need to improve the variability if we are going to achieve excellence and equity. That is one of the main pieces of evidence that underpins the need to look at regional collaboration to strengthen that support on the ground. One last question. We had a brief discussion earlier about the role of the Education Council, which I can't say filled me with any great confidence because you said it didn't have authority. It brought people together. It felt a bit like I don't know if it was the CFE implementation group or some equivalent to that, where everybody was responsible and nobody was responsible and nobody could tell us who was making the decisions. If you're sitting inside the Education Council as with a role for implementing policy, what authority have you got in there? Or are we in the danger of recreating another body where everybody's there but nobody's actually taking responsibility for saying that there's an issue here or there's a concern here? It's difficult for me to comment on the board you're referring to because obviously I wasn't part of that, but Graham Lee wants to... I think that's why the Government has an Education Governance Bill out for consultation to clarify the governance model in Scottish education moving forward. There's a range of options there, but at the first meeting of the Education Council, the rule and remit was discussed and we would expect that to be firmed up and made clear equally for the rule and remit of the curriculum and assessment board. But it's not a decision-making body. It has an advisory function. Great, George. Mr Gorman, don't let me be the only one that never wish you the best a lot in your role. I feel on or bound to ask you that to say that to you now. One of the things that's going to happen is going to be an expanded role for leadership and a need for professional development. I know that you've hinted at some of that already, but one of the things that... I just want some more detail. Professor Chris Chapman said, the fundamental issue concerns how you build the leadership capacity that makes collaborative, effective and purposeful. I'm aware of my time as a local councillor and obviously my time in the education committee previously that leadership is the key. The headteacher in the school is going to make all the difference to young people's lives and that's the foundation stone on everything. Basically, it's a very simple question. How is Education Scotland going to do this? How are they going to have the plans to support leadership and professional development of those individuals? Thank you. I'm very pleased to say that the Scottish Council for Educational Leadership Scale is joining Education Scotland and plans have already been under way to transfer the staff there and the 10 programmes that they run for professional learning, particularly for headteachers and aspiring headteachers, into Education Scotland. They'll move across formally to us on the 1st of April, but we're doing lots of work together in getting ready for that process. They will bring that expertise, those programmes that are highly thought of by colleagues across Scotland and involve a number of participants. They will bring that expertise, we will learn from that, we'll grow that, we'll look at also how we develop leadership at classroom level, leadership of learning, leadership of the curriculum, as well as other more formal leadership pathways into promoted posts etc, and use that to really draw on that expertise. It's evidence-based, research-based learning programmes that then develop and support our headteachers. We'll develop a suite of opportunities for that, but we want to draw from the requests and the expertise and the knowledge of headteachers and aspiring headteachers currently, and make sure that we match our offer to their needs. So we'll look very closely with regional collaboratives about what they ask is and what people are saying are the gaps and what are the issues they're concerned about, and then work with colleagues from the Scale as part of Education Scotland to deliver a more coherent and comprehensive offer across the country. On that point as well, one of the issues that's always come up before is local authorities. There might be certain parts that are doing great work in education, and they talk about sharing expertise and development and everything else, but it doesn't tend to happen. How do you see with the new process and new system regional collaboratives, how do you see that sharing happening, how do you see that panning out? I think it's about a combination of factors, so I very much believe that there's the local, there's three levels of that collaboration, there's locally, school to school, practitioner to practitioner, there's the regional facilitation of that and sharing and pointing out and making those connections, and then there's also the national piece that is actually making the bigger connections and drawing that together and putting the evidence in place. So it's about making sure there's an offer at all three layers and that Education Scotland helps to contribute and facilitate all of them, but very much supporting that teacher-led, school-led system where we're developing classroom-based, evidence-based inquiry learning for a teacher or a headteacher, which then impacts on outcomes and their confidence in terms of leadership, because leadership is absolutely, as you stated, at the heart of the improvement process for Scottish education. Ms Gorman, how do we create the atmosphere where I've spoken to headteachers locally in my constituency in Paisley and they have said, particularly in secondary schools, they have said, you know, they would like a forum where they can openly talk about ideas and push things forward, you know, they feel sometimes the local authorities got what they have to do and they don't feel that's the place for it and sometimes they feel they can't get access to what's happening nationally and put their point across. How do we, how do you see this is a way forward of creating that kind of leadership and giving them that opportunity to develop further as well? Very much so. It must be about, and I think I said in my open statement about empowering teachers and empowering the profession to do that and to take that leadership role and to drive and to have those professional dialogues and to really use that to shape the responses and the curriculum and the opportunity because they know best what meets the needs of their learners in front of them every day and we must listen to that and shape the national guidance accordingly. Okay, and just one final part. One of my colleagues will probably go in this in more detail, but there has been concern over the dual roles that you have, which is effectively inspecting and development of curriculum. Now, I'm interested in the way that Education Scotland write about it as a complementary role. Can you maybe, that's different from someone my colleagues will maybe explain it later on? Can you maybe expand on how you see that as a complementary role? I'll make a start then. I'll hand over to you. I think it's about improvement, school improvement is a suite of elements and inspection is one part of that. If we really want to use inspection to uplift the profession and not to be a finger to wag at it, we have to keep it as part of the improvement cycle. We have to be really clear that the evidence and research that comes out of the inspection is used to then support and drive and share evidence-based work with other schools. So, as part of that improvement cycle, it's really important that inspection is part of that process, while without fear or favour and making sure that there are clear boundaries around that. In terms of not creating a culture that's about seeing inspection as a negative, seeing it as a positive that feeds the information and improving system, it's really important that we keep that collaboration and that is looked at in other systems around the world in a similar way, as a very positive way, to keep that balance of the engagement of inspection and support across the national picture. I think that the bottom line here is, do we see inspection as a tool to improve schools or a stick to beat them with? Our professional opinion is very clear that inspection should be part of the suite of improvement activities. That is the international direction of travel. In Scotland, HM inspectors have always been involved in improvement work with schools and local authorities. Indeed, it's been recognised as a strength of the Scottish approach to improving education. Mike, you might want to add to that. Yes, if I could go back into my own history, I remember that, long before the creation of Education Scotland, there was concern expressed that HMIE provided both advice and inspected against that advice. The creation of Education Scotland has not changed anything in that regard. There is still a canard in the system that says that the central body is both, as it were, judge and jury. That is clearly not the case. The best evidence for what can improve education comes from the inspection activity, and it should be cycled directly into improvement advice. It is for the operation of the inspection function, as it stands, to be independent. That has always been the case, and it remains the case. Okay, thank you George. Liz? Yes, can I just pick up on that point, given a comment that was given to us by Graham Donaldson, who said that putting the two together would not have been his decision? He made that point based on the fact that he felt that if inspection is to work well, it ought to be entirely independent of the body that is overseeing the development of the curriculum. Do you think he's wrong? I don't think he's wrong, and I'm not entirely sure that I understood his remarks to be precisely as you've described them, because he wanted to separate the two functions. I think what he said was that it wouldn't have been my choice to make the organisational change that was required. That meant that he wouldn't have put the two together. He was very clear about that in his comments. Do you think that he's wrong? I don't think that he's wrong to say that there is a consequence of organisational change. I've lived through it with my role as a member of the management advisory board. Just to be clear, Mr Ewert, Mr Donaldson was perfectly clear of what he was saying that it would not have been his choice to put the two organisations together. He's making the point that he felt that for absolute integrity of both organisations it's better to have them separate and entirely independent. Even if the lessons from inspections get fed back, he believed that it was not appropriate to be judge and jury. Do you think that he's—do you disagree with that? I disagree with it in the sense that even before Education Scotland was created, that was still a view in the system, that the inspectorate were both judge and jury, because they were the source of professional advice. Just on that point, it's a question—I mean, I don't agree with the characterisation that the either inspector stick to beat the back with or an improvement plan. It could be something else. It could also be that it's establishing that the policy that's being developed is unsustainable, unworkable and unwise. The new chief inspector said that the role was to implement policy and not to decide policy, but surely an independent inspection system would allow you to speak truth to the person who's developing the policy about its consequences. I wonder if you think that that is an issue. I think that it's a false characterisation to see that's the only two choices that we've got in terms of the role of inspections. It's very clear that inspection and evidence-based work should be driving any education system, and fundamentally that's the role of inspection, is to help us steer the system and get that evidence. Without fear or favour, it's very clear—there's a separate director of inspection—that actually provides that information, that we're able to use that to provide advice, professional guidance and for that to be taken on board to help shape the system. But your job in Education Scotland is to implement the policies that are decided by the cabinet secretary. You said that already. You're already implementing regional collaboratives, which aren't got the support of the profession of many people across the country, because that's your job to do it and I recognise that's your job. Do you not see that to people outside Education Scotland it feels very much like a contradiction that these two things are very difficult to resolve? If you're both the person who's the responsibility for implementing policy and inspecting—you're not going to inspect to see whether the policy's right presumably—are you then able to go back and say, well, actually, what inspection tells us is this is wrong? Absolutely. The focus of inspection is about inspecting the improvement of outcomes for children and young people. It's always been about that, it will remain that. If there are things that are supporting that, that are working very successfully, inspectors have a duty to report on that. If there are things that are getting in the way, they have a duty to report on that too. My duty in the annual summary of that inspection would be to put that to the forefront so that everyone in the profession and politicians would be able to see the evidence that's been gathered about what's happening in the system. So, do you have a responsibility to ensure that, when you give that information, it's acted on? I have a responsibility as an executive agency of the Government to feedback that information and to make sure that it's fed into the governance structures of the organisation. Can I answer that last question then? What it says in here—somebody said that it was perhaps Bill Maxwell or somebody else that had given us evidence in this anyway—that what you would need to do, you recognise as a bit of a stress with having both roles, you would need to ensure that there was a Chinese wall between the two areas of responsibility. Would you propose to be constructing such a wall? What would it look like, or, in fact, do you think that it's maybe not necessary? I think that there has always been a clear distinction between the work of HMIE and the work of the curriculum and support teams and divisions and the various organisations over time. We would continue to ensure that there already is a clear distinction around some roles, there's a clear distinction around where there's a conflict of interest in terms of inspectors individually, maybe local authorities they work in or schools, etc. We continue to keep a close eye on that to make sure that, for the credibility of inspection, we absolutely fundamentally are very clear about any conflict of interest and any perceived issues that are around some of the tensions with that. We could probably say that more today. Absolutely, and I think that the director of inspection role has a custodian and protective role for ensuring that inspection does operate openly and impartially, and that is a distinct role within the organisation, and we'll be using this opportunity with the new role and remit to look again at the framework for inspection review and make sure that how we do that is absolutely clear to the profession and to the public. Rather big question of why the two have been brought together then, Tom. That clearly wasn't a question. The phrase judge and jury is, I think, possibly perpetuating a culture around inspection, which is an extremely stressful one for practitioners. I really wanted to ask you around the issue of how we're going to feed that down to teachers who find the inspection process extremely stressful and time-consuming ones where they have maybe had inspections maybe years ago, where there has been that kind of, like, arriving with a clipboard, let's paint all the walls, let's refotocopy absolutely everything, and teachers are good in for weekends and advance of inspections when that kind of language has been used in their committee setting. I think that there's been a lot of work done to change inspection, to make it supportive, to work with people, to engage in professional dialogue. In fact, in the last year, 94 per cent of head teachers have said who were inspected and completed the post-inspection questionnaire that inspection was helpful for them to improve. They've 100 per cent agreed that the relationship with the managing inspector was a positive and constructive one. There's been a lot of progress in terms of inspection working alongside practitioners and engaging in that dialogue, and we need to continue to bust any myths about that. For example, we can totally streamline the amount of evidence that schools need to prepare in advance for inspection, and that will continue to be the case. We do need to keep focusing on the narrative being about a positive and constructive experience. Yes, there's a public reporting element for parents, but we want inspection to be seen as central to that suite of improvement activities that Gail outlined. We've kind of deviated from where we were going, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Ross, Richard, to come in and deal with inspection activity, and then we'll go back to dealing with the structure and accountability mechanisms in that. Ross. Thanks, convener, and Ms Gorman will let me not break your streak, if committee members wishing you well in your new post. As part of the Government's reform agenda, they've stated an intention to strengthen the school inspection programme. Could you outline what your understanding of that is? Okay, I'll let Mr Logan be involved in those discussions. Thanks, Mr Greer. Strengthening in terms of clarifying the focus and frequency of inspection, so we've started to develop a new standards and evaluation framework. We've also honed inspection in very clearly on the things that make the most difference to the excellence and equity agenda, so looking at progress and literacy and numeracy, looking at a school's success in raising attainment and achievement. We've got three core areas that we look at. We also look at the leadership of change, because we recognise how important leadership is, as members have said earlier, to impact on improvement in school. We've also recently announced a 30 per cent increase from April 2008 on inspection, moving towards 250 per year. That will enable us to engage with more schools through inspection. We also aim to engage with schools across the country, across the suite of improvement activities. The main areas in Strengthening are looking at the focus, at what we know makes the greatest difference, and at the standards and evaluation framework, at clarifying the different models of inspection and when they would be deployed. Looking at the documentation around inspections, I did not find much evidence in the inspection documentation for mainstream schools that emphasis was placed on inspecting the provision of additional support needs services and issues around identification. The committee has spent some time looking at additional support needs. I believe that the most recent figures that yesterday showed around 27 per cent of young people have not identified additional support needs, so they will then be a further proportion with a non-identified need. How will the inspection regime take that into account? It has been raised a number of times that a lack of emphasis within inspections can sometimes result in a lack of priority given to both ASN identification and the provision of services within mainstream schools. In our new framework, How Good Is Our School, we have a new quality indicator on ensuring equality, inclusion and wellbeing. That has been applied in the schools that we have inspected over the last year. That looks very much at the school's success in identifying and supporting a range of additional support needs. It looks at the school's overall approach to improving wellbeing and inclusion. We hope that, as that builds up, we will be able to analyse the themes that emerge to provide further advice to schools and regional collaborators, but also to Government on those issues. The new quality indicator that is in How Good Is Our School was designed to do what you have just described. Thank you. With the overwhelming majority of what we are discussing at the moment of the education reform agenda in relation to state schools, you mentioned issues around frequency of inspection. With a non-state school, a school in the private sector, how frequently would they expect to be subject to a full external inspection at present? In the independent sector, the same approaches apply in terms of how we plan inspection. We also wish the independent sector, given that there are local authorities, we also do quality improvement visits, which are planned on an annual basis. We also have link inspectors who link with groups of independent schools. Through those three approaches, we engage with the independent sector. How frequently should an independent school expect to be subject to a full external inspection? We have moved away from a fixed cycle of inspection as members are aware, so we would be using a sampling approach to look at different sizes and types of schools, and that would equally apply to the independent sector across urban and rural. We would also be drawing on any intelligence that we gather around inspection. There is not a fixed cycle, but, as I said, each of our independent schools has the opportunity to engage through a link inspector, through the quality improvement and professional engagement visits and through full inspection. A recent issue following a special inspection, the register of independent schools, recently informed George Watson's college that ministers believed that they were at risk of becoming objectionable on the grounds of not adequately safeguarding people welfare. Just a few months before that, a self-assessment at the school had concluded that their systems for dealing with bullying were just fine. If I get into the specific details of that school and the instance there, is there an issue with self-assessments? If they can result in a conclusion that all is fine, only for months later, is there a serious conclusion to be made by the cabinet secretary? Obviously, I cannot comment on individual cases, because I believe that there is ongoing work around that. In terms of self-evaluation, that is why many local authorities and the regional collaboratives are looking at validated self-evaluation, where there is that peer-to-peer challenge and external voice within that. That development and that work is widespread and would be encouraged as one of the checks and balances around self-evaluation. That is very welcome. How would that relate to schools in the independent sector, who are then not part of local authority or regional collaboratives? My experience is that many of the independent school sector will do exactly the same through cultures and through support networks. Sometimes they do ask local authorities to carry out a validated self-evaluation with them because of the relationships that there are locally. Is there an issue that that is then left down to being culture? It is a matter of choice rather than mandated by a framework. As I have been talking about today about a school and teacher-led system, it is about balancing that within a scrutinised risk assessment environment. Thank you very much. Clearly, with your appointment now, there is an opportunity to fresh look at inspections in the whole regime. I do think that there is still some room for improvement. I find that it is an unusual situation where professionals are subjected to inspections that most professions are not subject to. You may have been a teacher of 10 or 15 years experience and suddenly inspectors come into your school. They perhaps are quite critical of your professional capabilities and your teaching. That can be a huge damage to morale and continues to be so in many cases. There are still cases of tears in the staff room and schools finding it really difficult to cope with the inspections process. I think that there is a lot to be done. I hope that you can agree with this to turn it into a much more positive rather than a negative experience for teachers inspections. Some of the issues that I hear about are secondary teachers inspecting primary schools. There is a huge difference between secondary teachers who have taught a class of 25 pupils of chemistry and suddenly they are inspecting a class or a school where there are 30 P3s or whatever. They are also not taking into account external factors. The schools have been left to develop their own pathways for teaching and learning. Neighboring authorities have provided that centrally, so that takes a huge burden off the teachers. The teachers, for instance, do not get that support to the same degrees of local authorities, so they are under pressure and that is perhaps influencing their teaching environment and that is not taking into account by inspectors. There is a range of issues there. Do you not agree that we have to have a bit more of a reforming agenda when it comes to inspections? I think that certainly one of the messages in my opening statement that I have been repeating just in the last seven days that I have been in post is about working for Scotland's children with Scotland's teachers. I would certainly want to make sure that all of education Scotland's activity reflects that narrative and recognises the challenges that teachers face every day, their dedication and professionalism to what they do. That inspection would also reflect that experience back and be part of that improvement and positive feedback cycle for teachers across Scotland. Mr Lochhead, to add to that, yes, of course we want to continually improve inspection, we listen to feedback, we get engagement post-inspection through questionnaires, we meet with the teacher unions, some of the teacher unions survey every individual school that is inspected and then give us their feedback as well and we always act upon that. I think that it is also really important to be aware that inspection is built on the context that the school finds itself in. At the start of an inspection, a headteacher will outline the context that they are in and the challenges that they face and the inspection will be built around that. I will just re-emphasise the evidence that we have about the impact of inspection from the last year and the 94 per cent finding helping them to plan further improvement. 90 per cent who took part in professional dialogue with inspectors found it helpful or very helpful, but of course we want to continue to improve the process to make it have as much impact as possible on improving outcomes for children and young people, as Gail said. There are welcome words, but you did use the phrase that we have to bust some of the myths, and I do think that they are not myths, they are actual reality in classrooms and schools across Murray in Scotland. I think that we have to recognise that, that is a real experience that schools are going through. I mentioned earlier that, if you have only got three quality improvement officers working in one authority but another authority next door has got many more, clearly that has an impact on the pressures and stresses of the school, especially if there are a number of vacancies at the same time. We have a number of vacancies with letters going out to parents in Murray, for instance, explaining the situation and the stage that it has reached. Those factors would you not agree have to be taken into account by the inspections process. The feedback that I get from teachers across my area is those factors that are not always taken into account. The context that a school is operating in fundamentally should be in part of the process of inspection, and that must be reflected by the team going forward. That is certainly the message that we would take back. That is helpful, thank you. Just to pick up on Gillian Martin's point, I think that the actual presentation of inspections could perhaps be reviewed as well, because MSPs get copied into all the inspection reports that go to our schools and we get a prior notice. Those external factors are not reflected to any particular degree in the reports that I see, so when I am aware of the situation in my area, and I think that no wonder the teachers are under huge stress just now and pressures, then that is not reflected in the reports that you read, or going to the media or going to parents, I think that that may be something that you could perhaps look at. I agree with that last point. It is a wee bit like an old-fashioned report card at times where your parents used to hate them, and they always liked mine coming in but others. Ruth Tavish, then Oliver. Thanks, convener. Good morning and Gail, welcome to your role. Thanks for being here so early on. Education Scotland is clearly going through quite a period of significant change. We have all the education reforms and, obviously, Gail Gorman's appointment. In light of that, can I ask for the panel's reflections on the 2017 UK civil service survey results, which would seem to suggest that there is very little confidence in the organisation's ability to manage change? This year, 2017, only 7 per cent of respondents said that they felt that change has managed well within the organisation. That is a decrease on the previous year, so I would be keen to hear your reflection on that. I am hugely disappointed that my new staff team feels like that. I had the opportunity yesterday to speak to them all at an event that we had yesterday, and I started off by addressing that, because for me, looking at that, it throws up huge issues and huge concerns about the organisation and how staff are feeling. I gave them my commitment to changing that. I am very much an open and transparent leader who works as part of a collective team and shared with them my commitment to having that open and transparent dialogue, and for them to be able to feed back the issues and what some of the challenges are and to call that out. It is very much how I operate, so I am disappointed, but I recognise that that is representing how people feel, and I know that Mike May wants to say more about that. Yes, I think that you began by saying that this is a period of great change, and that is exactly the situation. The organisation is not just having to change the way in which it works in order to reflect the regional structure. It also went through a period where there was interim management in the senior team, and when the future of the organisation itself was uncertain, given that it was in scope for the governance review. One of the things that my colleagues as non-execs on the management advisory board have reflected is that in that context it is hardly surprising that people have felt that the management of change was not something that was actually in the gift of the organisation at the time. It was things that were happening to it rather than inside it. Now there is clarity about where the organisation is going forward, and with the kind of leadership that Gail now represents as a firm part of the organisation, I confidently expect that to turn around. One of the things that I would reflect, and I would offer it to Gail of some comfort in this context, is that I and another non-exec colleague attended one of the first meetings of the assistant directors collectively in the organisation to scope out the way forward and to begin planning for this change. There was enormous positivity in that room. Everybody was working towards taking things forward. Nobody in the room said that it was too big a cliff for them to climb. They are up for it, and they will do it. I thank you for those answers. I do not have the full details of the survey in front of me, but 93 per cent of an organisation that I was running felt that change management was not up to scratch, and in a period of such change, I would probably be looking to take some concrete measures to ensure that I welcome your saying that your leadership approach is open and transparent. We are seeing some of that reflected in your answers, but what concrete steps will you be taking to make sure that all your organisation comes with you, not just the sort of top leadership team? There already are some plans in place that Graham can tell you about in a minute, but we have a transformation plan that colleagues have brought together. I want to take a little bit of time to review and look at that. I have already in the last eight days been out and about around the various bases, talking to individual staff. I will continue to do that because sometimes systems and processes can be quite intimidating for staff to use. I want to be able to have those individual one-to-one conversations. That is part of how I work and I will continue to do that. I want to go out and hear first hand what the issues are and really address those and look at them. We want to pull together a staff engagement plan where we have a staff stakeholder panel of all backgrounds, stages and positions who would then be very much driving and overseeing that cultural change in the organisation and the needs and requirements to have open and transparent communications. I have already established a blog that I am going to use with staff where we will be able to communicate and have closed forums and discussions, but we are very much creating panels and opportunities formally and informally, but we are also creating some success criteria around that. Those figures are very concerning and I want to see rapid improvement in them. Where we are not getting things right, staff need to have the opportunity to tell us that. We need to be able to see what you said and here is what we did, and we need to be able to evidence that really clearly. There is some work already under way. Thanks, Gail. I think that in September we had the opportunity to engage with the whole staff team to discuss the fact that the organisation has now a new remit and a new role and therefore to dispel the huge uncertainty that might refer to and to develop a new top-level narrative for the organisation. What is the organisation about? The staff developed and agreed that moving forward education Scotland is a partnership of people who believe passionately in the power of education to change lives because that is why everyone is in the organisation, that is why people enter the education profession and that everything that we do, as Gail said, will be in the interests of children and young people. We now have agreed that narrative and that way forward, and we now need to deliver on that and continue to engage with staff to make the most of the opportunity that the agency has to work with teachers and other education professionals to achieve excellence and equity for children. Certainly, in over 20 years that I have been in Scottish education, I cannot remember a time when we had such clarity on what we were trying to achieve as a profession, and that is excellence and equity for every learner in Scotland. Briefly, on the structure of education Scotland itself, there are significant new and different roles. I suppose that it is not unconnected to some of the answers that you have given, but what level of changes do you think will be required to the structure of your organisation itself? How are those going to be managed? It is too early for me to go into the detail of that. I would be hugely disrespectful to my organisation as well as the new girl in the door to suddenly be saying here is what we need to do. I would also look correct and I want to be co-constructing that with my team and with my staff in terms of the new direction of travel. There does have to be, as we have already indicated, some moves in terms of regional working, localised, embedded support and partnership approaches to really clarify that. That general direction of travel, but we need to look at the scale and scope of what we have. I need to have some time to reflect and hear from the staff voice about whether they think that some bits are working and some bits are not. It is also important to hear from the profession and from partners and stakeholders to be able to shape that going forward. I ask a couple of supplementaries to Ruth Gawr for questions. First, I take her point about the past year in terms of change and transitional teams, but the staff survey that Ruth Gawr has been referring to in terms of the information given to the committee goes back to 2015. At that time, 90 per cent of the organisation of your staff did not believe that the organisation could manage change well. It is not new, is it? No, it is not. The uncertainty is not new either. But it was not uncertainty in 2015. No-one was proposing that that time had changed to Education Scotland. There was uncertainty within the organisation about structures that were changing as a result of the bringing together of two organisations that had very, very different cultures learning and teaching Scotland. What year did that happen? 2010, wasn't it? 2011, I think. So, four years on, there was still going on? Four years on, there was still the need for organisational change. An organisation doesn't change quickly and people don't change quickly. It was Audit Scotland who said that there was a minimum of two years for a reorganisation to take place. That has certainly been my observation in what has happened in Education Scotland. You recognise that a lot of us are worried that how this is going to happen in the future. I recognise that there are concerns in the system and what we need to do is bring some clarity to that, some real clear partnership working and joint approaches that provide surety in the system. No, I entirely appreciate that. The other point that I wanted to, in this context, raise with you is that the RSE and its Submissions Committee today pointed out that the Scottish College of Educational Leadership, which for reasons I do not understand, has been taken within Education Scotland and is considered to be a body that has been flexible and creative in the view of RSE. I think that is the view that I have had from teachers as well. Why is that being taken inside Education Scotland? That is not for me to comment on. That was a government initiative. Mr Logan, do you have a view on that? No, that was a policy decision, but I think that we want to learn from the successes of scale. We want to enable them to increase their reach by coming to work alongside us. What should we increase their reach? So that they can reach more schools and enable their leadership programmes to reach more head teachers. There are clearly benefits from them working with us to do that. A small organisation will be able to access a greater range of channels. There is certainly a lot that we can learn from them and use what you have outlined, Mr Scott, as a chance to look at how we can learn from them in terms of how they have engaged with people and some of their approaches to communication. How will we be able to know that they have done a good job when they have become part of your organisation? Where will the line of accountability be there? How will we be able to judge that? As part of the new corporate plan that we would put together, we would be putting the activity of scale in its new position within Education Scotland as part of that. We would be looking at numbers and participation. We would be looking at evaluation, and that would be part of the overall corporate plan that we would take forward with that evidence behind it. Okay, thank you. Can I ask one last question about accountability? The minutes of the management advisory board that I think you referred to earlier on. I looked at your website last night, and the last time they were published was the 16th of December last year. Maybe it's not met since then, but why are the minutes not available to anyone who wishes to read them? We'll need to double check and come back to you on that. It doesn't suggest that you're hugely accountable, does it, if the minutes are a year out of date? We'll need to double check. We can certainly get back to the committee on that and clarify the meetings. Mr Scott will take him up to do that. Thank you very much, Oliver. I want to go back to the earlier quote that Joanne Lamont referenced, which I think is from Professor Donaldson, where he was talking about the sort of struggle to create convincing Chinese walls inside the organisation to preserve the independence of inspections. He felt that was important so that inspection is not simply seen as the enforcement arm of the development side of the organisation. Certainly, I think that over what's been a bumpy few years of the implementation of curriculum for excellence, a lot of teachers have felt inspectors are coming in to tell them things that they know work are no longer part of the plan that they're to teacher-led, to traditional, to repetitive, and that sometimes inspectors are not interested in encouraging innovation. What are you going to do in practical terms to make sure that there is a clear division and that inspection is not seen just about implementing policy from the top down? The focus of inspection is about improving outcomes for children and young people, and the methodology in many ways that people use to do that should be entirely school-led and focused. As an inspector, you have to leave your personal views or professional experience in terms of favours or non-favours without fear and favour is a tenure of inspection. Some of what you're representing there, I don't recognise and it doesn't resonate, but I do understand what you're saying around the clarity around we're not inspecting and going forward inspectors are not inspecting Education Scotland approaches provision curriculum guidance. It's about teaching and learning, the quality of teaching and learning and the impact on young people, and if we keep it focused on that, that's what teachers have confidence in because that's what they focus on, is the impact on children and young people. Our framework for inspection and self-evaluation, how good is our school, does not endorse any particular method or approach. That is the framework and the indicators that inspectors use and they engage in professional dialogue. Yes, if they're asked have you seen any examples of X or Y, they'll try and connect people up who have a similar theme or interest. When they see good practice, they'll look to ways of sharing that. As Gail said, inspection focuses on outcomes and impact, not on endorsing particular methods or strategies. I find it worrying then when we hear from people like Frank Lennon, a former head teacher who's here last week, who says that your organisation ought to focus a bit more on schools, that Education Scotland focuses its attention on government because government is the customer. He feels that, as a former head teacher, Education Scotland shouldn't be interfering in innovation at school levels. Why would he say something like that if that's not the experience of teachers? I can comment what I can say to you is that the focus is that absolutely we're focussers on children and young people and schools and their focus around improving outcomes for young people, regardless of its curriculum support, whether it's attainment adviser work. The focus is around children and young people and certainly that will be at the heart of the organisation that I'm leading driving forward. I hope that head teachers and others would see that and would understand and recognise that in the activities that are going forward. Ruth Davidson is a word of caution. Frank Lennon went on to say that it is a head certainly through the implementation of curriculum for excellence. He didn't find Education Scotland to be particularly helpful at any level and therefore was sceptical about whether Education Scotland can structurally be reformed sufficiently to improve relationships with schools. Do you think that, as well as the lack of confidence internally amongst your staff around capacity manage change, there has been a breakdown in trust between teachers and education in Scotland? I don't think that there's been a fundamental breakdown of trust. I think that we need to develop a narrative that's about partnership, that's about working collectively for the outcomes for Scotland's children and that's why I will continue to repeat the message for Scotland's children with Scotland's educators, because it's really important that we recognise the hard work and dedication that happens in schools up and down the country every single day. As a national organisation, we have to represent that, we have to champion it and we have to celebrate it, and that's fundamentally what we need to do going forward. Given what you say that inspections are there to assist and help teachers, if those governance reforms go ahead and there are big changes, do you envisage a greater number of inspections to help people through that journey? Yes. As I mentioned earlier at Mr Mundell, we have announced a 30 per cent increase in school inspection from April 2018, but what we'll also be doing is agreeing the sort of thematic inspection and review work that we can do with each improvement collaborative, depending on its priorities, so that we can get alongside the staff and the collaboratives, help to see what's working and ensure that the best progress is being made to support schools and to support children and young people. I think that it is helpful to hear from you what the statement of purpose of the organisation is. The only thing that I would say is that our experience in the past has been a lot of clarity around what the role is, but the gap between that and how people experience it has been very, very wide. I think that that's really the issue, whether you're set up in the right way or not, but I think that the profession and perhaps the wider groups of people who are interested in education are a bit more concerned about the fact that they are saying the thing and doing the thing, and as I would suggest, they come to the staff as well. They are quite different. Can I ask you just two last questions? One is on the budget. In your own submission, you say that you've got a core budget of £21.4 million and then received £12.8 million in-year transfers. My recollection from our budget scrutiny before, that was quite common. You get a core budget and then you get other bits of money. Will you be making representations and asking for a reasonable budget that you can plan on? It feels to me that it must be very, almost—I can't do the percentage of this—if it's a 50 per cent increase in your budget in-year, how do you plan for that? Is that something that you're going to be looking at? Any organisation would like clarity around funding on a long-term basis as possible, so certainly some clarity and surety around long-term funding, around how that can be planned for, so that in a change in an organisation we can strategically plan and cover those activities would certainly be something—I think that anyone in my position would be keen to clarify moving forward, so that we don't have change and further change as we move forward. Somewhere in our papers, it might be, as I said, that it's difficult to see where the Learning Directorate and the Scottish Government stopped in Education Scotland started, and I think that clarity around the budget would be helpful because it rather feels that there's short-term bits of money coming out to you in order to fund a project that anybody in government likes to be seen funding projects, but it doesn't make a long-term plan in whatever challenge. My final question is that we also have a submission from College of Scotland and they're interested in what their role of college is at a regional collaborative level, because obviously that transition for many young people is very critical. In fact, early engagement with some groups of young people before leaving school is also critical. I wonder if you want to say something about how you see their role and how does that collaboration look like and how would that sharing of evidence look like? I know that there have been some early discussions in my previous role. I've actually met the organisation to talk about links and collaboration and how the Northern Alliance was working. As DYW is one of the core components in the joint focus for regional improvement collaboratives. I apologise for developing the young workforce. It's one of the core areas in terms of developing regional collaboratives. We would expect to see strong links and developments in joint working coming forward. There already is some good work with colleges, particularly given curriculum offers and flexible pathways and the senior phase. There's already some excellent practice going on in pockets around the country and we'd want to take that and share that more widely. Yes, absolutely. The direction of travel would be looking at learner progression, Ms Lamont, as you suggested. Earlier this week, Gail and I visited the fourth valley and West Lothian collaborative who have been talking to their local colleges well to look at progression for learners. Obviously, in Education Scotland, we work with the colleges through both the college development network and through our annual agreement with the Scottish funding council on how we will support and help improvement in that sector. Both colleges and early learning and childcare are all relevant to ensure that learners progress as best as possible as they move through the various phases. Is the regional structure for the colleges the same as the regional structure for the collaboratives? No. I think that the college element is an important one. Thank you very much for your attendance and, Ms Gorman, I wish you well in your future endeavours and your new position. I have no doubt that we'll see you here in front of us many occasions in the future. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of the public party meeting. I will wait for the gallery to clear.