I welcome you to the 15th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee and remind everyone to put any electronic devices on to silent mode for the duration of the meeting. The first agenda item is consideration of whether to take a number of items of business and private specifically, the review of evidence in the work programme at today's meeting and the reviews of evidence from the Cabinet Secretary on the budget and also separately on the Scottish child abuse inquiry at her next meeting. Are we agreed? The second item of business is a session on the role of education authorities. The committee agreed to undertake this session following its overview sessions, which emphasise the central role of education authorities in delivering policies in relation to childcare and education. I welcome to the meeting councillor Stephanie Primrose, education, children and young people spokesperson and Janet Donnell, chief officer of COSLA, councillor Jacqueline Henry, chair of the children and young people thematic board and Peter McLeod, director of children services, Renfrewshire Council, Scottish local government partnership. I understand both councillors wish to make a short opening statement. Can I start with yourself councillor? Thank you and good morning. COSLA has pleased me invited to attend this session of the Education and Skills Committee. COSLA represents 28 of the 32 local fortunes in Scotland and I am the spokesperson for children and young people. I reinvent cover school-based education, early years, children's health and wellbeing, social care for families and young people and youth employment and positive destinations. It is important because it reflects how we work as local authorities. Councils play a fundamental role in the lives of children and young people in Scotland and our role as education authority is only one aspect of the role bound with wider role responsibilities for children and family services and underpinned by GERFEC. That works particularly for families and young people under most stress at the moment. We need a wide range of services to support them in every aspect of their lives. We hear me say often that we cannot mitigate against the real impact of poverty and chaotic lives in a classroom alone. Council uniquely plays to bring together a range of committed public service professionals to support families and communities. There has been a lot of media coverage of the Scottish Government's education delivery plan and education governance review. We have agreed our response and will make that available to you as soon as possible. There are a couple of tweaks, so it is not publicly available at the moment, but it will be published as soon as possible. However, I am happy to discuss with you the detail today. We recognise Concerned Voice elsewhere about the leading nature of the questions and have therefore provided a response, which focuses on the key principles and issues under discussion. We hope that this is accessible to everyone and encourage others to join the debate. As we consider our principles, there is much we agree upon. The devil is in the detail and the real systematic change we have seen over recent years with being unveiled without an evidence base for change. We agree that we need to close attainment gap. We would widen this further other than those experienced poverty and deprivation. We agree that our workforce is a committed, talented and valuable asset to Scotland. We believe that councils support the workforce in providing a strategic support and local elected scrutiny to the delivery of services and to ensuring the quality that communities expect and need is there. We again agree that the parental voice is important and the achievement of positive outcomes for young people. We know that we need to encourage those who feel disengaged to come forward to achieve equality. We agree with the Christchurch Commission principles of prevention and early intervention and we have therefore noted the importance of quality early learning and played to offset attainment gap, which can exist by primary 1. Rather, we require a classroom teacher to fix all the problems that exist. Further, we support the support that we can put around families in pregnancy and early infancy, which is delivered by social care colleagues in partnership with health. Of course, I have agreed across party position in relation to the education delivery plan and governance review, and this consensus is further supported by meaningful dialogue and engagement with our wider local government family. I look forward to the discussion this morning. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Henry, do you have a comment you would like to make? Just a very brief statement. First of all, just for clarity, I am convener of education and children policy board. The thematic board is a community planning committee of the community planning partnership in Renfrewshire. I want to align myself and the Scottish local government partnership with many of the remarks that were made by Councillor Primrose. The Scottish local government partnership represents a significant number of the population or the size of the population in Scotland and, as such, a significant number of children. As with COSLA, we see education firmly within the wider children's services underpinned by GERFEC, and we would like to discuss more of that today with you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Before I begin the questions, I would just like to say thank you to help part secondary for taking the time to allow me to visit them on Friday. I met senior management team, pupils and teachers and found it very useful. I got some very interesting responses to some of the questions I had. One of the things that was quite clear was the importance of collaboration between some of the local schools and the local integration groups that they have called in Glasgow. When they worked, they were kind of like what came across from there, but there still was a fair bit of work to be done to make sure that the relationship was as strong as it could be, but it is clearly a very important thing. Working together collaboratively, I thought, was one of the things that came across loud and clear. Also, the importance of strong leadership within the school, which in this case seemed to think that they had both in this headteacher and the previous headteacher, so that was very encouraging. My question will not surprise Councillor Primrose in particular that I am going back to the funding on the early years issue. We did say at the last time that Councillor Primrose was in front of us that there was clearly quite a gap between what the Scottish Government had said that the local authorities had received for funding early years and what appeared to have been spent. From further correspondence, another £40-50 million was made available, but there still seemed to be a gap of something like £86 million, which the councils did not seem to be able to tell us where it was in terms of the early years spending, although they claimed that it has been spent on that. I wonder if we have any further on finding out whether that money has been spent or if it has been put aside to be spent in the near future. Thank you very much, and that has come as no surprise. I think to start off with very early on in these discussions, both myself and my colleagues at COSLA met with the minister. We have had this discussion at this committee before. At that early meeting with the minister, we expressed concern that there was only one local financial term that was being assessed. At that point in time, we said, that does not encompass the whole spend in early years. A lot of the referrals, for example, for our vulnerable two-year-olds have come through a social work referral, which would mean that that LFR had not been represented within that. We started off the discussion with the Scottish Government on a basis that they had not provided the full spend. In my own authority—I have shared this with you before— we had at least three LFRs that came into play. Again, it was only assessed on one. To start off with, I think that we had a debate on the figures. I think that we have to accept a couple of things, that the introduction of 600 hours has been very, very successful. There was a recent survey done, and 97 per cent of parents or carers using that said that the service was either good or very good. I think that local government has delivered a very, very good service. I think that the parent forum has come in, and they have said that it is not a flexible enough for us to look for flexibility. We have said what we are going to do. We have got our 600 hours in. I think that we have done it very well. What we are going to do now is build on that flexibility. In order to do the building on the flexibility, we have to accept that there is a lot of groundwork still to do. We still have to get more people in place. We still have to get our buildings out of the ground. I had a very long discussion with one of our finance officers, and he said that a lot of the money is still sitting in the uncommitted balances. If you think about it, I mean... It is sitting in uncommitted balances, and what was not mentioned there was that COSLA was part of the group that signed off on these figures. Clearly COSLA may well have some concerns at the beginning of the conversation, but they signed off on those figures along with the ministers. Where is this £86 million in these uncommitted balances, and why was not it recorded? Why did not you say, either at the initial meeting or in further correspondence, or even when the Government was coming out with these figures? How could COSLA, at that point, accept those two different groups now, that our share of that is this and this is where it is? I was not on shift at that point in time. I will pass over to Jane. Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you, chair. It is important to say that, all during the discussions at an official level, we had advised our colleagues in the Scottish Government that the single LFR would be unhelpful, and it would not encompass the large amount of spend. That position was not agreed and was not taken forward. At the point of the report being published, COSLA had never agreed that that was the figure that should go forward. We had always had the position that... You did agree the report.  On the financial return. At every point, we mentioned that those figures were not accurate. We said that the spend is elsewhere. Why would you have signed it off then? If the Government are claiming that you have got 135 million black hole in early years, why would you have signed that off? Why would you not have made it very clear at that point that you may well accept the generality of it, but you are not willing to accept that because it makes your local authorities look as if they are not doing their job properly? To be clear that COSLA did take that position, as we accepted the generality of the report, but we did not accept the LFR return. I apologise if that has not been made clear to you. We are happy to be clear on that now. I think also just to support, in addition to what Councillor Primrose has said, at the point at which we agreed that we were going to do the 600 hours provision. I would agree that it is a real good news story between the Scottish Government and local government. Something marvellous has happened here. It was not ring-fenced, and this was because a number of local authorities had already started the spend, and some of my colleagues here will be able to give you some detail on that. They had already started spend in early years, so they had taken some of that money to mitigate against the spend that they had already made. Also, we agreed with the Government that the important thing is to get the 600 hours in a very tight timescale. I think that we are about eight months to do it. Again, successful because we did it, but the flexibility would come online later on, and hopefully that is what you have started to see. I believe that my colleagues did send a report to the committee on 20 October. Given your idea when we spoke to our member councils, some of the areas they feel they are building on the flexibility. I hope that that has been made available to you. Happy again to go into that, and again my colleagues in Renfrewshire may have some ideas as they are. If I could give you one example from the Renfrewshire part of the Scottish local government partnership. The total expenditure on learning and childcare of just under £14 million, what happened was that our quoted figure of uncommitted expenditure was a million pounds just under a quarter of the total allocation. Just as Jane has indicated, what we did with the money was an effect that we had already committed to the expansion of early learning and childcare before the grant funding became available. It was not a question of under-spending the grant funding, the fact was that the commitment had already been made and was being delivered by Renfrewshire. Renfrewshire, in the context of the policy, had also taken some very early steps in expanding different models of learning and childcare, and one model in particular led by Councillor Henry was Families First, which has subsequently been evaluated by Glasgow University as being one of the most positive programmes to implement in Scotland to date. Our position would be very clear, and that is that we had already committed expenditure before the grant funding was made available. It was not a question of under-spending, it was in effect a recognition that as a local authority we had taken early steps to put in place the measures that the policy then indicated we should subsequently put in place through the funding mechanism. That would be one example from Renfrewshire's point of view of how we had already put in place the measures that were then subsequently funded through the grant that became available. Although that's suggesting to me that what you're saying is that if we have done something in the past and then we're given something to do in the future we should be allowed to say that but we've done it in the past and we'll just keep the money. I'm not sure necessarily that that's what we are saying. I think that what I'm indicating is a recognition that some authorities had already moved before the policy was implemented before the grant funding became available. I suppose as my colleague Jane has indicated because of the ring ffensing issue that she's already pointed out to the committee and the fact that the needs of these young people spread across different categories of service. My service, for example, is an integrated children's service with children's social work. Clearly our health partners play a significant role in the provision of services to all, particularly those with additional leads in early learning and childcare. I suppose that I'm indicating that we use the money to the best effect based on the needs of our local population and our analysis of it. I don't think that it was a question of keeping the money to do something that was not in line with the policy. It was in recognition that we'd already indicated the need and we're meeting the provisions that the policy subsequently put the grant in place for. I don't want to hog this meeting but you've given money for a specific purpose and then the local authorities can't seem to justify that they've spent it on a specific purpose. One of the problems that I had which is probably more an issue for COSLA because COSLA has got more local authorities there is that when I had asked originally if there was anybody that oversees the money that comes in from Government that is for specific subjects such as this at local authority level the answer I suspect we never really got the clear answer but the answer seems to be no that that money comes into local authorities COSLA doesn't know how much local authority is spending on it so therefore COSLA really shouldn't have been taking a position on it because it should have been from each local authority at that point. Now correct me if I'm wrong but what I would suggest the best thing to be doing here is that there is some kind of monitoring exercise through COSLA to make sure that local authorities that they are responsible for are doing what they are meant to be doing in terms of the money that the Government has given them or else the facts I think it's like there's a fundamental issue here and that I represent 28 local authorities so I represent them I do not police them so you'll make it Making statements saying that we are confident that the local authorities have done this when you can't possibly back that up in fact because you're not as you say policing them Your local authorities come into us and tell us what they have done because we can't go and police them we need to just take that as I can't, I don't have the authority to go back and ask 20 local authorities for their budget lines No, no, no, she'd die Sorry Jane LaDonna It was just to support what Councillor Primrose was saying I think what we had suggested as officials at the point of this financial report being pulled together was that we would have been more than happy to have done a bit of that work which would have allowed us to do a bit of the monitoring and identifying where the baseline position is it's a way we've worked in the past with the Scottish Government and it's actually been very successful because we link very much in with our professional colleagues like directors of finance, directs of education, children's services and therefore we can get a sense of what's going on and identify if there are things that on a national basis local government should be looking at unfortunately we didn't get the opportunity to do that this time but I think we're willing to consider it in the future in terms of just having a look at how that money's spent in order to be accountable and transparent Okay, I'm going to move on now If you'd like to say yes Last point, I think it's an issue that I'm sure we'll share I have, as we do at Cossel we have concerns about the uptake of the vulnerable two-year-olds I was in discussions with the previous campsite about this and I think I crossed Scotland and I will stand correct in these statistics I think the uptake was around about 25% and my own authority was 33 and that was seen as good so I think we have some work to do to tackle the families surrounding those vulnerable two-year-olds we all share this commitment to early intervention and I think we do need to drill further into why a vulnerable two-year-old take-up is not perhaps where it should be and I think that's the thing that we have to share certainly anecdotally some of the things that I'm coming back to me is that we've not been clear enough about the link with DWP a lot of parents are very worried that there's a link to their actual benefits so you have to come forward if they get a job if their child's not performing or whatever somehow that will affect their benefits a point I would like to raise about that I got the opportunity through the question as well so just before I finished we haven't figured out where the £86 million is but I do want to congratulate the local authorities on all the good work that we've done to make sure that the £600 million has been achieved Ross Thomson Thank you very much Nabil In a submission to the committee we hear from fair funding for our kids and in that they talk about the expansion of childcare from 600 hours to the 1140 In the submission and I'll quote it they have worked out that even if councils used every single space to deliver the promise of 1143 hours by the end of 2020 Scotland would still be 26,000 places short with an average of 40 children in a nursery meaning 650 new nurseries minimum Just to ask both COSLA and the Scottish Government local partnership if this is an estimate that you both agree with I would not be in a position to agree with that we would need to have further reference back to I don't know where their figures are coming from but I know that the fair funding issue has been coming up and I think I've maybe mentioned it earlier that we do still need to build in flexibility and I think we have our 600 hours which I think has been delivered very very well and I think it really I'm going to go on about it but it really bites into what we're trying to do and I think increasingly we're going to build in flexibility to our 600 hours and we do need to build the flexibility into 1140 hours and a plea I would make here and now is that we need to get on with that I think I know Mr Scott asked me this before you know, am I concerned about the workforce and I'm concerned about the pace of the 1140 hours and actually I think I maybe quite answered his question but I think that we really now need to get on to that we need a blended approach we need to get our young people trained we need to get older people back into the workforce so I think that the 1140 hours and flexibility is one that we really need to drill into sorry in my council we need to keep touching pressing the console if we want to speak I would agree that we don't know where the figures are from so I can't really comment on those figures I should perhaps set the context that for 38 years before I came into this post I was an early year specialist in terms of working in education at both local and national level so I'm delighted to see expansion of early years although I do have some concerns concerns about do we have enough places at the moment no we don't we are working with children as an authority in Renfrewshire we are working with children in Scotland to review childcare provision within the authority it may be that we need to build some additional places or extend but at the moment we have no idea where that money is coming from and 2017 to have that in place within three years as it won't always be easy as an early years professional the recent advice that we utilise spare accommodation in museums and art galleries is quite insulting to young children there is an issue of quality that we need to address certainly in my authority where we have extended nurseries and in fact our building a new nursery at the moment is part of an additional support needs school the quality of the learning environment and can I say the learning environment is crucial the other thing that I am concerned about is when we have blended provision what does that actually mean one of the things that has been suggested is that we have childminders and nurseries sharing the care as we used to call it and it used to happen all the time but we were very clear on education and can I say early education instead of early learning because I believe that you can learn to put your hand in a fire but it's much better you know learn not to put your hand in a fire but it's actually better to be educated about it I think we need to be very clear on what the balance is and what appearance right to that allocation will be I think that needs sorted out for the 1140 hours I also think that we need to look very carefully at our young children under 5 being in care provision for a longer day than our 18-year-olds are in school I think that's very something that we need to look at and I need to say that I also agree with Naomi Eisenstadt the Government's poverty advisor that young children will not make cognitive and social gains from two compressed days particularly when they are living in poverty all the research that shows that we need five days of consistent education and care to make those differences now I fully recognise that parents need care Is this you now making your opening statement because I'm not finishing off the question that I was asked I realised that parents need care but if parents need care we need to be careful about what we provide for them and at the moment we don't know what we can provide for them It's just a response to the question that you asked I was struck by the idea that we'd need 650 new centres and I think that officials right across that's how we're going to start to measure the success of this policy the number of shiny new centres that we've built up in our communities we really need to look at that blended approach that we've discussed where our colleagues and the private sector where childminders are all going to play a key role here and actually there's a little bit of concern that we have that we may build a number of shiny new early years centres which are fantastic and then they're not populated by children and as our colleagues would say in early years it's a happy environment for these very young and children and there's a concern that if we just focus on building a certain number of buildings that's not really what we're trying to do and I think that what we've discussed at COSLA is what we're looking here is about the quality of early learning and yes there is a need to provide childcare we do need to help people get into work and that's about the wider economic responsibility we have as local authorities but we need to identify what the purpose is and think about how we do that and the resources associated with it Thank you very much for your answers and as you've sort of intimated some of the answers there will be a need obviously for some capital investment whether it is new facilities, whether it's expansion or looking at new other processes on Monday you'll no doubt be aware the Scottish local government partnership convener Councillor Jenny Lane in relation to the expansion of childcare stated and I'll quote again that the SLGP have not had a single piece of information on what the capital investment will be or when the government will even begin to put milestones in place so we can at least start planning and because of the reluctance to have communication on these particular details and again I'll quote it will now be impossible to implement the policy in the time promised so first we'll ask the SLGP what information is lacking and what impact is this having on you being able to plan your capital plan and your budget in relation to the timeline's promise how far behind do you think we are we have no information on the amount of capital that will be available so until we have that we cannot plan in any detail and when we plan with new facilities we plan with parents parents are involved in the design right from the beginning they're involved in the design of all our new education establishments so that takes time and process and then you have building time so and you also have to plan the building programme so it is unlikely that it all completed within four or five years because there is also the availability of contractors to build is that the same experience with COSLA as well? COSLA is not in a slightly different position both myself and my officers are involved with Scottish Government we sit on all the strategic level boards to look at this in a slightly different position perhaps we have a better understanding of what might be coming down the track would that be fair to say? I think to be clear where there's a lot of work going on and so we're reassured that this has been considered at the highest level both at official level and political level there's awareness of the timescales I think we'd have to agree that there is a concern across all local authorities that if we were going to be asked to deliver the entirety of this programme by 2020 that's becoming more and more difficult as delays continue but I do think that there is a recognition of that and I expect that we should see some progress in the new year OK, I've just got one last which is in a slightly different just again from fair funding for our children in their submission point to a case study of a lady who they've called Jane where in West Lothian essentially she couldn't get her son into a partnership placement with a private nursery in the end she was advised by the council within West Lothian that she could use a council one which was nearer to her home in the end she actually got about 10 minutes away a placement in Edinburgh because there's a relationship between Edinburgh City Council and the bordering councils and West Lothian are reimbursing Edinburgh for that so now she's found this obviously particularly bizarre that that's happened so can you explain why we can have this situation with local authorities and why a resident in this case has had to go to a neighbouring council but her own local authority is paying for it and she can't get it in her own community it just seems a bit strange I think that that actually came up at the last committee and the colleague that was with me at the time said we actually do have arrangements in place for cross boundary placements if you like I know that that was one particular example and I think in the response that we sent out the other day I think that there are examples of other areas where arrangements are more fluid I think and I think that West Lothian in particular there's an example from West Lothian just to be very open I'm a resident of West Lothian I'm also a working parent and I accept the validity of that perspective my own perspective was that my youngest child did have the very quality high quality early learning plus wraparound which was available to me to buy additional hours and that's definitely what we want in local authorities I actually think that it's a strength as well there's good stories as well across all local authority areas but what we really want is you would expect us to make sure that there is cross boundary arrangements so that if a resident of for example East Ayrshire travels to North Ayrshire for their work and actually it's easier for that parent to put their child into an establishment in North Ayrshire that we as local authorities should be able to make that happen I think that there's a real strength that we are committed to that and we're building that up and hopefully that will help to alleviate some of the concerns experienced by that lady and others who are experiencing that Daniel, I'd just like to begin actually just by following on from some of Ross Thompson's questions particularly around the leading time for new facilities and I totally accept that it's not all about brand new shiny buildings but Jacqueline Henry and certainly my informal discussions four years is a sort of an aggressive timeline for getting new facilities three possibly for childcare I mean are those sorts of timelines that you'd say are reasonable rules of thumb in terms of what you need to build new facilities Can I start by saying that I'm fortunate that I have frequent discussions with the minister and I was in a meeting a few weeks ago and he made it quite clear then that he doesn't expect 1140 there'll be a point in the calendar where we go from 600 to 1140 so I think we will have certain tranches of this development coming out I think from a causal point of view it would be very difficult to answer that on a causal basis because you think about it, you'll click manager you'll need a lot less and what Edinburgh city needs and things like that so I suppose the timelines would be so that each individual council I know that each individual council that I represent are committed to this each individual council realises the health benefits the educational benefits, the GERFEC which is what we're ultimately here to talk about so I know that each individual authority will do their absolute best we're planning for it already we've got builds coming out of the ground that will actually encompass 1140 so there's staff planning that already so what we would ask again is that we just stop up the pace a bit a minority of local authority places are actually able to offer lunch at the moment according to the figures that I've seen that gives you a sense of the scale of investment that's required do you need those capital plans in place within the next 6 months 12 months, 18 months roughly when do you need that in place so that you can be sure of having 140 hours by the end of this parliamentary term sorry I was just going to add to that I think it is difficult to answer definitively your question however I think the answer is as soon as we possibly can if you think about not just the capital investment and clearly a number of us here involved in major school of state management programmes and clearly the lead in time planning to build to actual operational buildings is quite considerable the expansion proposed here a doubling of the hours a workforce which is somewhere in the region of 20,000 more early years in childcare workers in Scotland now the capital aspect of your question clearly is absolutely critical in terms of 3 or 4 years as a time frame of lead in but the workforce elements to deliver the doubling of the hours is absolutely critical too so I suppose the two things go hand in hand and I suppose the position of the Scottish local government partnership that is confirmed with Jenny Lang is confirmed is that if we continue with a position of uncertainty about capital and the other elements around workforce and revenue then we are going to be absolutely up against it despite our absolute ambition and commitment to delivering the aims of the policy so the sooner that we get confirmation about the available funding the better otherwise we will struggle as Councillor Lang has said to deliver the policy in the time frame indicated you've neatly anticipated my next question so thank you very much which is about workforce and indeed doubling up the hours means that we need more people as well as more facilities what sort of capacity do we need in terms of training those people are you confident that we've got that in our colleges and indeed also just any reflections you have in terms of that balance between trained childcare professionals and teachers within the learning context perhaps I could take that one because immediately previous to becoming a convener I was responsible for both undergraduate and postgraduate early years courses at one of our universities 20,000 nursery workers officers just basic grade would take two years at college so we'd need to be sure that our colleges have that capacity nursery to manage it will also require management level as well that's something that we haven't looked at there is just the basic nursery provision nursery 20,000 nursery workers now that's two years at college or that they can be on the job trained but that requires a mass of already trained workers to assist them and to assist them it also means as nurseries get bigger you have the management of those nurseries and that means that we need degree educated staff to do that to lead on the nurseries if it's a daycare nursery that can be done at an ordinary degree level if they're in a school that brings much greater sort of management provision we then need to look at job sizing the job sizing tool is an accurate for nursery provision you're also looking at an area where head teachers and teachers are not there for 12 weeks that perhaps if you have flexible provision in the nursery that they are so you need to put in extra staffing the hours are different as you've already alluded to we've got catering and clean additional catering and cleaning costs so 20,000 workers yes there is an issue there but there's also a management issue that needs to be looked at in terms of the difference between a BA professional and a teacher a BA professional will a childhood practitioner will typically have either come through the college or SVQ route taken an additional SVQ and carry out a year at university or be a part time year be two years or I believe there is some further vocational qualification assessment a teacher would have the general four year BA honours course which would be looking at much more in depth at education processes just a couple of points I would like to make I think our local authorities are already thinking about this more than apprenticeships are going to be critical here I know I'm not not here to talk about my own authority but my own authority we've already gone out to get more than apprentices so I think local authorities have a critical role here to actually nurture our own as well I've already raised this as well both with Mr Hepburn and Mr McDonald if you go back to the developing the young workforce which I think is a very good piece of work we already have a framework to do this if you think about all the work that's been done in STEM if you think about the amount of work that's going into the vocational and academic stuff I think we actually have a scheme here that we could use I think I've said this before in front of the committee I think it's what we have to have again a blinds approach I think we may struggle to get 20,000 young people interested in this so we have to look at our workforce at large we do have parents that have perhaps brought up their own children the hours might suit them we should be encouraging older people back into this area they have the expertise and things like that so I would agree that it's a thing we really need to get on with but I think we've got some good work started already I think we could go on for some time on this but if you do have any information about the capacity required both in terms of people and timelines of capital I think it would be very interesting to see any assessment you have on that so I've got one final question which is and there's one in particular about take-up so we've had figures just released by the Care Inspectorate showing that the take-up for funded child care is around 70 per cent but the government's figures really says they claim 99 per cent within that detail there's a rather remarkable fact that our garland view has 115 per cent take-up so my question is where do you think of those two figures as closest to reality and what I would point with you I think it depends which age group you're looking at for one thing with four-year-olds yes, I would think it's more likely to be nearer the 97, 98 level we do in fact have 108 per cent but part of that is double counting because of children attending more than one facility we want to look at the number of children benefitting rather than the number of places taken up the Care Inspectorate figures more likely to be right, is it not? I cannot say for definite we've not had time to reflect on this but one thing I would want to say is that it's not a requirement of a parent to put their child into early years and we have to take that into account a lot of his parental choice and I can no more force a parent to put their child into early years than I can force somebody to put them into the vulnerable two-year-olds so I think we have to take a degree of parental choice into this as well and I think there is work to do again on you whether we have 75 or 115 I'll go for something in the middle Can I suggest that every council should be looking for 115 per cent that would be a very impressive thing Ross Thank you very much, convener it's very much falling on some of the themes that have already been touched on it's about access to nursery teachers and discussions that I've had with trade unions recently they've had a lot of concern about what the definition of access to a teacher actually means there was some media coverage this week showing that just over one in four pre-school pupils don't have access to a nursery teacher but some of the concerns that I've had is that access has been defined as broadly as a nursery teacher not having any direct contact with the children but advising or directing childcare workers is this an issue of not being well defined or is this simply a reality of budget constraints over recent years Perhaps I could start that I think it's both to be honest I think there is a lack of definition of what a nursery teacher actually does and as a former nursery teacher and a trainer educator of nursery teachers I find that a source of some regret Within this has been a move for a number of years in Renfrewshire we have taken the position that nursery teachers are a valuable part of the nursery team they provide particular skills particularly around the transition period of children into primary and we've actually improved the number of teachers in our nursery team it was one of the first things that we did when I became convener we improved the number by 50% we still don't have enough all of our centres have access to a teacher on a regular basis and that would depend on the needs within the centre because some of our centres may have children that have there is a higher concentration of deprivation or particular problems so some of them would have a teacher working directly with the children and with the staff others the teacher would be more of a consultant someone to guide the childcare staff it really depends on the facility I would like to think about that and I have just confirmed with my colleague nursery teachers are not within the protected teacher numbers so I think you're right I dare say we'll come on to budgets at some point that particular area is not within the protected amount within the budget because we have to protect the stuff at PPI, we have to protect our teacher numbers that there will be an element of budget constraints in there as well I think one more positive thing is that by 2018 the more deprived areas within Scotland will have a teacher and I think that will make a difference I know a lot of them already do but I think in more deprived areas that will start to make a big difference as well but I think it's both elements sorry just I don't want to correct my colleague here but it's by 2018 it will be a teacher or a BA childhood professional it's not necessary and that's an issue if it's one or the other unless you know what that dream is and what the difference is how do you allocate them appropriately in terms of transition to primary school even things like identification of additional support needs etc but we will be getting on to that later just one final question on that what is your expectation of how this ratio will fare the fact that there's roughly one in four children currently with that access as we move towards the increase in child carers I think that that has to do against the backdrop of the workforce I suppose we have to take that back when we actually increase our workforce to step up to 1140 what are we looking for are we looking for your nursery care workers or are we looking for and do you like to know correct me if it's qualified nursery teachers and I apologise I'm a secondary teacher I'm not as up to speed on the qualifications within early years so I think it will depend on how that shapes in the future I think we have an opportunity to look very carefully at nursery education and what we mean by nursery education and care I think it's time that we had some evidence on what the difference having a teacher could make on what difference having a teacher can make there is evidence from other countries there's evidence from Kathy Silva who used to be an adviser to the Scottish Government some time ago that having a teacher makes a qualitative difference to young children I think that's from my reading of recent research that's still the case I think it's something that we need to look at and that is not denigrating the work of BA childhood professionals indeed, childhood practitioners who do a marvellous job but we need to recognise that there are differences in skills and differences in their knowledge and experience that we need to utilise all of that to help to promote the education and care of young children I have a question first of all for councillor Henry we clearly have a lot of views on what should be delivered and the issues around providing the 100,000 and 140 hours can I ask what the SLGP engagement has been with the minister for childcare in early years to my knowledge there hasn't been a great deal of engagement with the minister well for a number of months we weren't really recognised because we had previously as authorities being part of COSLA and we moved away from that a meeting with the minister for early years in childcare I am not sure I would need to go back and check with the leadership it strikes me that if you have very strong views about the delivery of the hours the engagement with the minister would probably be the first thing that I would do I mean personally I would like to have a meeting with the minister yes and with previous ministers I have engaged on a number of issues but not in this case not at this crucial point where you are I was part and did question the cabinet secretary at a recent meeting that was hosted by COSLA but in order to have a frank an open discussion about your concerns about the delivery of this programme which the Government is pledging to do as part of their manifesto would you not say that having a meeting with the minister for childcare in early years would be a number one priority for the group like yourselves in the same way that councillor Primrose has said she has I'm sorry just to say that in answer to your question as we indicated earlier what we are anticipating is an announcement from Government about the level of resource, the timeframe the programme towards the 1140 and in a sense the issues that we've raised as a local government partnership and as COSLA which have been relayed to the committee just now are anticipating something soon about what that programme would look like, what the level of resource commitment would be like and in that regard then the engagement has more meaning in the sense of what it is that we believe we can deliver against the backdrop of resource that's not to deny your question and I would ask that we go back and just check what interaction has been by other parts the leadership of SLGP but certainly the indications of concern which have been indicated by our colleagues in COSLA which are well known to Government ministers and the Cabinet Secretary would take your point absolutely and there is an indication that we are to hear and indications of resource commitment are to be made soon in that sense that I think would be a very opposite point at which to engage in further discussions about the reality of delivery against the timeframe Glad to hear you say that because I'm sitting here and I'm hearing engagement happening directly with Government ministers in COSLA so that we can hear this we can hear this from yourself and I have to be frank with you that is the impression I'm getting can I actually come on to my question that I was going to I'd actually planned to ask would you say that from both groups that the current childcare offer the local authorities that you represent would you say that it meets the needs of parents in terms of flexibility at the moment and what engagement have you had with parents in order to ascertain whether they feel that it's flexible and in any kind of formal way I'll take that to start with I think I've already used the statistic 97% of care or some parents are satisfied or very satisfied with the service provided we understand that we need to build in more flexibility but our agreement our commitment at the time was to get the 600 hours up and running so councils are now looking at the flexibility in my own authority we have three trials I think we're on at the moment I think one should be eight to eight and things like that so we're actively working on that now the parent voice I think is a very important one James you want to come in on that? Just to support what councillor Premier was saying COSLA officials have been having discussions with national parent groups who are more representative than individuals who are equally able to raise their concerns locally and I think there is a concern that working parents require as much flexibility as they possibly can to continue to work and obviously we have a responsibility to our children and young people we also have an economic responsibility to ensure that people have access to work so we're not ducking that at all I think we are starting on a strong base has been discussed around the 600 hours and that will build and there's definitely a place for our colleagues and childminders and in other providers to support us in doing that I think the point I would make is that some of the discussions around how that provision will be funded will be very important as to how local authorities are able to provide their very high quality provision and if there's a suggestion that there's a childcare account option that would prohibit local authorities from meaningfully planning and delivering a service for all parents whether they're working or not and it's really about making the equity across the piece we need to know the number of children how many establishments we need we need to know how many trained colleagues of whatever calibre that we need to be in there and so that's just our play around the blueprint that's currently out for consultation at the moment which is great groundwork has started and in relation to the 1140 we're going to need some real clarity around funding to make sure we deliver what we're required as local authorities but at the same time that funding could be informed by work that you could be doing now in the type of provision that people are going to want to access in terms of flexibility in terms of location and whatever so my question to both groups and I'll ask Councillor Henry as well what are you doing now to ascertain what parents want right first of all can I apologise if you think that we are saying we can't do this because in actual fact I think both Mr McLeod and myself as we've gone through have said this is what we're doing in advance of government policy so we and my colleagues in the Scottish Local Government partnership are very much at the forefront of developing policy and we do have engagement with ministers we are a much smaller organisation than COSLA most of our engagement with ministers will come through our leaders committee into which education conveners will feed into that and also directly with ministers but in terms of what we're doing with parents well we've just completed a survey of parents in which 50% said that they would prefer the traditional just under 50% said they would prefer the traditional three to five 50% said they wanted more flexibility in addition to that as I think I've mentioned we've commissioned children in Scotland to do a more involved piece of work not only looking at early years childcare but also at out of school care and we've also commissioned Glasgow University I think in fact they've just completed a piece of research where they have spoken to parents on our behalf as well so yes we are doing all we also do biannual service of parents and I personally meet with parent council forum chairs on a six weekly basis and issues such as this are discussed there so there's quite a lot going on it would be very helpful actually I would convene if we maybe got some of the reports from these surveys back so that we could see some of this research I'm sure that would be doing well just a very quick point which will answer that councils have a statutory duty to go out to parents every two years and that is fed back so we already do that so it's a statutory duty so we have to thank you thank you thank you very much I'm interested in this issue about uptake I'm in two separate groups I mean you say that we're not in the nanny state and you can't make people send their children to nursery I don't think I've come across a lot of families where they're saying we're not interested in the free childcare that's available from the figures from fear funding for our kids they say that 89% of all council nursery place for three to five year olds were half days only do you think that might have some impact on uptake I think that is probably part of the case as well I think that when I've said this when we're talking about going into flexibility I think that this will be in the next phase of our 600 and then going into 1140 I think that we do need to have flexibility I take your point about not being a nanny state but in my own word we have a high some parts have a high SIMD rating and I have met parents who have said well it's not worth me taking my child in and I think we'd still need to tackle that I still think we've got some work to do there that we're not a nanny state but I think we need to do more to encourage parents to bring that in and I think that's why we have to start this engagement very early on I think this is where we have to bring our health visitors, our GP practices and things like that when you're talking about GERFEC you're not just talking about the education department we all know that Harry Burns has made very public that if we can actually access those youngsters much earlier on then we'd have a higher chance of getting people to come in two slightly different points working parents half days I abandoned it, it was too complicated for me and that's 20 years ago and I was fortunate I was able to make a different kind of provision so we do need to think about working parents actually being reasonable about what Henry says about youngsters being in care don't feel any more guilty than I was at the time 24 hours a day or whatever it was but I think families then make balances in other ways but realistically if you're trying to manage your working life your care package has to reflect that and the idea that two and a half hours three hours in the morning or in the afternoon doesn't do anything other than add to the complications I think is one problem but I think there's some interested in how you think and how do you deal with that and secondly the group of people who perhaps aren't in work and I don't know if you have figures around for example youngsters who are registered to attend a nursery but are less likely to attend for their full hours and how do we address that question which is really the two things that childcare wants to do which is support parents to work but also support young people to learn who may be in more difficult circumstances so how do you think you address that Just to make a brief comment I agree absolutely with working parents and I think in a perfect world and we're not in a perfect world we would have childcare ruled out childcare does not stop when your child reaches five we all know that my boy's 18 and a half I think an ideal world we'd have provision for for people up to maybe even primary seven but I'm more than aware the fact that we are in financially difficult times that's a point that we very much take on board and just to go back to it we are looking at flexibility I have a and I think I've mentioned it that's going on from eight to eight wrap around that sort of thing so we do need to take that into account we've got various buildings that will be open 52 weeks a year unfortunately I don't work the summer I don't work teacher holidays anymore so we do need to have a 52 week provision and we do need to have it seven days a week this is where the flexibility the trials that we have will be important and that's the second question about the actual numbers I don't think that we have that to hand because I don't have this I'm sorry to look at the way youngsters have access to provision the families perhaps aren't working how does the nursery pool them in if there's not a support to get them into nursery it's a challenge in schools so I wonder whether it's also a challenge we've been looking at a community provision provision within the community we'd actually quite lucky in Renfrewshire if I speak for my own authority here in as much as our partnership and local authority provision is almost at the same level one's 34, the other one's 33 and even within the local authority provision we have 12 extended day nurseries that are open from 7 till 6 or from 8 till 6 52 weeks a year so there is a range of provision and we've tried to look at that in communities so that within each community because within Renfrewshire as I've just said about half of the parents who responded to our consultation wanted part day provision still wanted part day provision for three to five year olds so we need to have a range of provision within a community it may be that not every nursery will provide the full range but within the community there will be a range and that's something we're looking at just now we're also looking at further work with childminders two very last very brief points and we understand that social care workers are expected to get the Scottish living wage will care workers in the nursery setting be getting the same and is there an implication for your budgets and that and secondly in the context of very significant cuts to local government what capacity is in the system to deliver childcare because you were going to deliver this it's not just within the education department will be your planning department it'll be all the other but it's round about local government budget cuts that are going to impact on your ability to deliver in this programme what's the point of view all our staff are on the living wage I think that's a big benefit I think we do have to look at budgets however the 600 years the 600 years slowly feels like that it's fully funded yes so we would hope that the 1140 would be the same it's an important point to make it a very valuable point to raise the degree to which we have funding for certain things like the delivery of early learning it doesn't take into account the very integrated way we work in local authority so there'll be a number of services that support the children and the families and actually may be key to making sure we get a better take up and as those services are cut just because of the degree of local authority cuts we've received over the last few years that there is less capacity in the system to make sure we're delivering at the level we want to deliver it and it's not just a child it's a system that's soft around the core services like in a school where it's a classroom these are all things that have gone but if your planning department stripped away what's your capacity then to actually deliver on a building programme around nurseries what I alluded to earlier when I was speaking about the capital programme it's my understanding certainly within the Scottish local government partnership and within my own authority it's absolutely we would pay the living wage the Scottish living wage and above the Scottish living wage to our staff however it's my understanding that that is unlike social care, nursery care workers and the independence sector although many do pay it is not a requirement I do think budget cuts have had and will continue to have a massive impact on local authorities and our ability to deliver everything that we would hope to deliver I just want to ask a quick couple of questions on teacher numbers and clearly we saw the statistics this week which in some ways were welcome because of the extra numbers across Scotland but there were of course some councils where the numbers have declined showing particular pressures on some parts of the country and I should declare that I represent Murray which happens to have had the biggest decline in terms of this week's statistics at least one of the biggest over recent times I just want to ask what fresh thinking is taking place within local government to attract teachers into the profession I agree with you the teacher statistics they came out yesterday were very very positive and we welcomed that and I certainly realised that you both yourself in the Highland and in Shetland that some of the authorities that you would have been sanctioned last year haven't had that so I think that that's a very positive step I think that the underlying issue here is about workforce and I think that a lot of good work has been taking place very proactive and non-aligned is a regional organisation that has been grassroots so they've looked at real issues I was reading in the BBC last night that there was a school in Fort William that has got higher computing studies and no computing teacher so that is the sort of thing that we're looking at I think there's a lot of very very good practice around but it's particularly a non-aligned to try and do that within non-aligned as well they've agreed to stop competing against each other they've seen it as a whole so I think there's a lot of golden hellos and things like that and I think they're maybe not quite as popular that they're seen as an issue all around I think we need to work better within our schools I think for example if one school can't offer advanced higher chemistry we have to let another school do that so I think increasingly our schools will be moving into specialist areas and I think too that we're going to have to expect some children to maybe go to a different school to have that delivered not every school can deliver every single advanced higher and I think we have to accept that I think we've got a lot of work to do to encourage people into into the sector when I was teaching we were going into the new curriculum and things like that very new and very shiny, very exciting but I think at the moment when we look at newspapers, when we look at the media education's up there all the time and it's bad news stories it's about budget cuts it's about bad behaviour in schools it's about buildings not being up to standard and I think as a profession and I mean that with unions, with cosla, with parliamentarians that we need to get education back on a firm footing if you look at lawyers, oh they're great they help the underdog, doctor saves lives nurses are wonderful, teachers well they just take a lot of sticks so I think we need to almost reinvent teaching as a profession to encourage people in to encourage people again who have maybe, I think Aberdein are doing it I'm sure they are actually people who've already had a career bringing them back in so a lot of people, as you're probably more aware than I have come from the oil industry they've been re-changing their going back out so we need to be proactive we really do and we need to get teaching back up there with a profession that people want to do it's a great job sorry, I'm getting good but we do need to get that out I'm glad to hear that because I agree that the image broadcast and promoted by the local authorities for teachers and education is very important because often our local headlines are dominated by the cuts and therefore young teachers looking for somewhere to work and looking at the map of Scotland perhaps have the wrong impression of certain parts of the country of where they may wish to work so I'd like to in the future hear more about that kind of work someone else wants to come in just to support what council Henry had said I think there's a number of things actively being done by local government so our colleagues in Aberdein and Aberdeinshire are working with ex-oil and gas employees specifically we're working with council workers who there may be less need for their jobs in relation to the wider local government sector but actually they've got a lot of skills and we're looking at bringing them into retraining we need to really see this in the light of the wider issues around our rural and remote areas we're seeing depopulation and actually we need to encourage people into these areas with the real benefits that rural and remote environments and communities can bring and I think that's often lost so I think we really need to work with the initial teacher training providers to make sure that we're encouraging people from those communities into teaching and that when teachers are doing their probation they get the opportunity to work in rural areas to really benefit from that rural environment and it always strikes me when I'm doing my work with COSLA and I'm speaking to teachers and headteachers in rural communities how close they are to their communities and the real benefits that brings not only to the communities but to them and their professionals so it's that same idea we are doing some stuff I would just agree with what's been said there there's a lot that local authorities are doing to promote teaching as a positive profession and we call it grow our own we're actually talking to young people in a much more positive way on a day and daily basis about the job of teaching we also are part of a relationship with one of the universities one of the teacher education institutions where we are becoming more involved in that and hoping to at an early stage with teaching students to have them see us as a positive place to go but it's also Councillor Primrose mentioned the Northern Alliance Aberdeen City is part of a Scottish local government partnership but the voluntary partnerships that every local authority has and certainly the ones that we're involved with that's an area where we are beginning to work together on how we promote teaching and how we have more people coming forward to be teachers and just to agree with everything else that has been said is exactly what's happening. Can I just ask one other question? A more general question in terms of the allocation of resources and I fully appreciate the very difficult decisions that local government have to take and on the one hand today we're discussing the need for resources to go towards education. One concern I always have is that teachers are expected to answer all of society's problems and that's going to happen in the classroom and it's not going to happen just in the classroom it's going to happen in the wider society. Can you explain to me how local government joins up all these policy objectives? What actually happens to ensure that when you're talking about a closing attainment gap it's not just about what happens in the classroom, the local authorities are looking at the local housing situation, other deprivation factors and so how's all that joined up? To begin with if that's okay. I think I would put this as one of the heart of the matter if you wouldn't mind me saying that in relation to this debate. Is that wrap around system? The policy that drives this and my very clear views get the right for every child. I said already that we are very fortunate to have very deliberately put together an integrated children's services system. I think the answer to your question is children's services planning is a commitment in each local authority that is discharged through its children's services planning partnership through the community planning arrangements that Councillor Henry has referred to earlier on. I think that one of the dangers that we must avoid is fragmentation of policy intent. If fragmentation of policy intent takes us back to a world where several decades ago we integrated services to ensure that they replicated the conditions of the families that many of us live in with children and our communities and our societies. I think that teachers are not going to fix poverty and what happens in classrooms is incredibly important. If it happens in the absence of what happens with social care which is a key responsibility that I have what happens around the Christie principles of prevention, your own point and indeed all the parts our families first programme for early years, for example, has generated £3 million worth of unclaimed benefits. That money in the pocket of impoverished families has made a huge difference to the outcomes of these children as much as what would happen potentially in the classroom but the two things need to join up. I suppose that my point is that within the context of our budget led by myself and Councillor Henry and what we do is we deliberately look at all of the spend in terms of the needs of our population. We have developed needs analysis of our population we have just completed a survey of 11,000 young people one unique point of what we do but the point is that local authorities have to join up our intent both in financial terms and in children services planning terms to ensure that GIRFFEC is the delivery point not just what happens in schools and I think that's the issue that is a heart of the matter part of the debate. Your point about the benefits is a powerful illustration. I'm just trying to understand in my head the wider point about how a local authority joins up all the policies across the council. If there's a catchment area that's got a particular challenge with attainment, how does that link into inward investment strategies? How does that link into benefits take-up, as you've said? So not just children's services but the wider council's responsibilities. How are they joined up? I think that the answer would be in relation to community planning and also in relation to the council's plan in Wrenshire again not talking for all of the Scottish local government partnership but for example we have had attacked the poverty commission so what that has examined is that we have absolutely clear views about where the issues lie within our communities. Those join up with our housing investment decisions, they join up with our job creation decisions and they look at all of the parts that we require to have in place to ensure that we close the gap in all senses, not just in the education sense. Having that tackling poverty commission but also having a strategic intent lined up with the investment available is the way that we do it and in children's services that's planning but in relation to the whole of local authorities that's what council plans do but it is also about being aware of the needs in your area and making sure that all of the policies you've talked about are aligned towards need and we believe that in Wrenshire that we do that and I think that Scottish local government partnership would claim the same for its other participating authorities. I am tempted to ask the big question but I do not want to get the chance to answer that question. I just ask people to make their responses as short a please because we have still got quite a bit to go through. I'm afraid I can't give you that supplementary, we really have got quite a lot to go through, just now my apologies. Fulton. I'll start off with quite a simple question. For today's committee we were asked to speak to us in our own constituency area. What's your view, do you think that local authorities should engage with a Parliament committee processes such as this? Probably yourself. I think it's absolutely critical and I said that in opening speech, we're not that far apart, we're all politicians to a greater or lesser extent as a society we want the same thing so I think it's absolutely critical and I think we have to have a free discussion. I've said this at a national conference that I was speaking at. I think sometimes we get too bogged down in things we don't agree about. For example, I have tried very, very hard to get away from teacher numbers because we're just not going to agree on that. There's no point in throwing the baby out of the bathwater, we just have to accept the fact that that's something that we're probably not going to agree on. I think we have to park that and move on. I think this is absolutely critical that we have this. I'm in a very fortunate position and that through my cause of the job parlementarians through East Asia as well and I think it's very, very important that local authority has a voice because I say we want exactly the same thing and I think this is an ideal opportunity. You've answered that so positively because what I'm now going to come to some of my committee colleagues know is that actually I had real difficulty getting teachers well should I say the local authority in North Lanarkshire to agree for the teachers to speak with me specifically about this committee session today of which the clerks have provided us a line of questioning which was sent in advance to the local authority so that it was clear and transparent for them. It actually came as a real surprise to me, I have to say, because I've got a great work in relationship with the schools in North Lanarkshire and I just set it up to go and meet them but as soon as the sort of political figures feel like a cleaner of education became involved in the process tremendous barriers were put up to the point that the meeting didn't happen so can I ask sorry, convener do you have any idea why North Lanarkshire council would have acted in such a manner? I couldn't answer on behalf of North Lanarkshire council but certainly one of the things I've found about teachers about my head teachers I'm very fortunate I know all my head teachers have a very good relationship with them and I've never encountered that but as for the specific North Lanarkshire question I'm not sure that we could give you a definitive answer on that one No, I think just to be clear I don't think that COSLA could comment on that but it would be fair to say that COSLA's position is that we would encourage parliamentarians to get to liaison with our communities and the same we would expect elected members to so apologies that that has happened I'm sure it's a one-off incident on behalf of the Government I would like to reiterate that it is important to do that that the relationship I've got with it was high schools I was looking to speak to teaching staff in so that I could come to this committee prepared with what teachers in my constituency are actually highlighting as concerns and I feel actually really disappointed that that didn't happen but the schools in the area do a fantastic job and as we've talked about already and other members have said that they're working in difficult circumstances and it kind of brings me on to my next line of questioning Do you think that headteachers should have more say in the delivery of education given the plans and do you think that that will help to meet in the attainment gap challenges and it will maybe become yourself Councillor Henry? Speaking for my own authority and I know for the Scottish Local Government partnership authorities as well our headteachers have when it comes to learning and teaching within their school they have the greatest say in that in fact they have the say within their schools and I think that is right as headteachers, former headteacher myself, you are the leader of learning and I think that is what headteachers want to do I would like to say something very quick about your first question I was fortunate in one of the North Lanarkshire schools recently as part of the GYW with Mr Hepburn and Mr Swinney we couldn't have been made any more welcome to be honest with you, I think maybe caught me in a bad day I would agree with what Councillor Henry has To be fair, the point that Mr Fulton was making was not about the schools because his relationship with the schools has been excellent the point that he was making was about the education authority and the fact that they stopped him from going to the schools so it's too difficult I'll take that to your own board there is becoming increasingly clear an agreement within what we would call the local government family our response is not out at the moment it will be out as soon as possible our response was agreed yes about the governance review it goes back to what Councillor Henry was saying it's come increasingly clear that headteachers are happy with what devolved management they have the devolved school management toolkit has devolved 95% of the budget headteachers don't want to be business administrators they don't want to have to do things that we do they don't want to have to interview every single headteach they don't want that HR responsibility they don't want the responsibility for all the finance stuff they actually want to lead learning communities another issue that I would have with putting that pressure on headteachers if we talk about tackling bureaucracy which I think we've all signed up to if we're serious about tackling bureaucracy at one level you can't add another layer of bureaucracy because you can't tackle bureaucracy and add more bureaucracy it just doesn't add up and I think increasingly our teachers have seen that it goes back to some points that have been made on its own as well that if we're increasingly putting more and more pressures on headteachers who do a difficult job and they do it very well if we have an issue whereby headteachers don't want to do that then we're going into problems with recruitment and if we can't recruit we can't attain so we have balances and checks and I think that's what headteachers and still appear local authorities would want to be thank you can I come in a slightly different... yes it's still relating to the attainment gap obviously you'll be aware of the pieces of results last week which were uncomfortable reading I think it's terrible I think quite a few people have used and would agree with that and you don't know that John Swinney brought the matter to to the chamber and dealt with it head on and I felt that was the right thing to do how will councils respond because obviously there are various stakeholders involved in making sure that the education system is as best as it can be how are councils going to respond to the pieces of results maybe take some of that and then pass over to Jane I think the pieces of results have made difficult reading I don't think anybody has welcomed them with open arms so I think we have to accept that fact but I think the message I want to get out to do is that is one piece of work it was done 18 months ago I actually only test one specific thing you're actually comparing apples with pears so the Scottish education system is completely different to Chinese education systems so you're comparing things that you probably can't compare I think it's one piece of research I think two of the Deputy First Minister's international advisers have said more or less the same that it doesn't make any interest in reading but you can't just see that as one complete picture of Scottish education it's a snapshot councils aren't complacent but we have to say that we do identify the fact that we have work to do and you are not shying away from this so yes we've taken on board we have reservations perhaps about how it's been done but I'll pass over to Jane I would agree that PISA does not make pleasant reading for anyone in Scottish education never mind just in this room I do not think that a lot of it has been of a great surprise to us we know that there is a problem with literacy and with numeracy and science for some time I think local government are making attempts at improving things for example my own authority we've invested money in a literacy development programme with Strathclyde University that works not only with our primary colleagues but also with subject literacy at secondary and we are starting to see results although it's very early and we are also beginning to look at numeracy and having discussions with university colleagues because I think we need to look clearly at evidence but I don't think we can look at these things in isolation we talked about children's services the team around the child I think we also need to be looking at the context in Scottish education we've lost 4,000 teachers we can't take and make a cake with half the ingredients we have improved that just now in my own authority we have used our own resources to increase the number of teachers and I think that's being significant I know that we've had the teacher numbers that were mentioned earlier we've had an increase in teacher numbers of 253 across Scotland but to put that in context when the Cabinet Secretary for Finance was leader of my council we lost 250 within our own authority so there have been issues there there have been major cuts to council budgets all of which affect teaching and learning classroom assistants have been cut throughout Scotland all of those resources have had an effect what I think we need to do now is look at the best evidence and how we improve very briefly I'd like to thank the panel for the response and I know that it was a very difficult question to answer in relation to the North Lanarkshire Council situation I will make the letter that I'll be sending to the convener and the chief executive available to the convener okay, thank you very much we will discuss that I'm going to bring in Liz and then you could respond to that as well Liz Smith councillor Primrose, could I ask you on the back of the PISA results when the Cabinet Secretary had made a statement to Parliament you or the COSLA made a comment in the paper that there is nothing in these results that suggests a change of governance will lead to improvement in those particular curricular areas and you say in your letter to us that you believe that the governance review is based on flawed assumptions and that it is not based on evidence so I take it that when we have your contribution from COSLA to the governance review you are going to be arguing in favour of the status quo I think what we are arguing for is time to embed some of the things that have come through already if you look at the national improvement framework that's just come in if you look at other examples of 600 errors going into 1140 education won't change overnight and I think both as local authority but coming from schools coming from head teachers coming from other teachers we need some time to let this all bed in evidence from your head teachers that you feel backs up that point will we get the evidence that you believe that head teachers are not in favour of more devolved responsibility I think you will find that already in the EIS submission which is public sorry will we get it in the COSLA one in our COSLA one we put this through EIS we just go back to Jane just a point of clarification for councillor, Primrose Smith our submission doesn't include survey findings if you like what we have done since the governance review has been announced is we have brought the local government family together on a regular basis so these are the representative organisations in trade unions which represent our teachers and our head teachers primary, secondary etc and we have asked them the question which is an important debate I think that's the point we have to say it's an important discussion to be having what's holding you back from delivering and these representatives are not saying it's a local authority it's all the support you're putting around us so we've questioned quite closely on that because it was important that we took that to our elected members before they understood that position and signed it off and we've had a number of discussions and that's been their position the local authority is not holding them back you've made quite a strong criticism of the government not having evidence base so that's the reason I'm asking because obviously as a committee we want to work out what the best thing to do is and that has to be based on evidence as far as we are concerned I just make that point could I ask you also about the powers issue are there powers that you feel that ought to be devolved further down to schools I think at the moment you come from the evidence that we have very infrequent discussions with our trade unions I think that would be a big go I think generally speaking I think that teachers are comfortable with where they are what they would like perhaps is more money that will obviously be a decision made later on but I think at the moment you're the devolved school management toolkit is there they have control over what they want to have control over I think generally speaking they have 95% of the budget so they have control over learning teaching you've had the control over classroom and I think that's important your councils maintain the checks and balances and I think that's important too but from what I'm getting from trade union callings is that your headteachers are happy with the responsibility they have and I think I said this earlier on they're happy with that role they don't want to go into business managers they don't want to have any more things that take them away from the actual role of a headteacher which is to lead learning and teaching Councillor Primrose why is it that we have seen successive decline in the standards in Scottish schools which nobody wants to see why is it that people are content with the system that we have when we have declining standards I think that Councillor Henry has answered that that we do have budget issues and I think that you can take that out of the debate to come in on that I think that there have also been issues to do with pressures that teachers have felt under and I know that this committee have discussed it before in relation to implementation of curriculum for excellence and the advice coming nationally which at times has not been the clearest I think is what I'm being told from our headteachers that they've had concerns with that with the assessment process that SQA had put in place originally so we've had a period where we've had budget cuts of services that support schools and that are in schools like classroom assistants and teachers, 4,000 teachers taking out we've also had a new curriculum where it hasn't always been the clearest information and advice coming through that has changed sometimes very quickly and we need to look at the advice that national organisations have changed over that period as well if you think of learning and teaching in Scotland, HMI, Education Scotland coming together as Education Scotland so there has been a period of significant change and downward pressure in terms of resources ramping down and that's an issue and the OECD report when it looks at Ontario noted the need for increased resources and how that allowed the schools there to flourish My final point is on exactly that that I think you're right that there has been confused guidance and one of the most interesting statistics that came out yesterday was the comparison to level 4 by S3 and it was a huge variation across the country and I do not believe that that was to do with any difference in the pupils and the staff who are in these local authorities I firmly believe it's to do with the delivery of the curriculum for excellence which is so different across different regions do you accept as the two groups representing local authorities that the delivery of the curriculum for excellence is a mental problem in terms of raising standards I think you have to look at the actual reason why curriculum for excellence is there I think that we have to be very careful in assessing the actual success of education and purely in terms of exam passes we have really good high exam pass for the second highest this year and higher that's very very good but what the curriculum for excellence is there to do is to actually broaden that so that you're not just focusing on academic skills, there's a great deal of vocational and you're actually focusing the whole person you know the four capacities very very well and I think that's what we're looking at as well I think we're still bedding in I think there's still some things to iron out I think some of the things that have come out recently about trying to cut some of the bureaucracy within the curriculum for excellence will help but I certainly believe that the curriculum for excellence is a great piece of work I had visitors over from France a couple of weeks ago and they come over specifically to talk to me about curriculum for excellence they're actually replicating that in their area in France so I think that because that would be of the opinion that the curriculum for excellence is the way forward I'm sorry I'm not saying it's not the way forward what I'm saying is that delivery is a serious issue there are some very good councils who normally perform extremely well on the national average yesterday they were not performing well in terms of the teaching it's because of the timing and the structure of the courses that is surely an issue for COSLA I think that would be more of an issue for Education Scotland perhaps come in here I think that we need to be careful that we don't take a simplistic analysis of the reason for a decline in standards I think it's multifaceted and multi-layered I think that perhaps the delivery is our parts of the delivery is part of the issue but I do think that there are other parts and it's been almost like a perfect storm where everything has come together at the same time in terms of the delivery I would perhaps use a teaching analogy if you teach a class and four children don't get it you might want to target them more if 11 or 12 you might think you know is my delivery being what it should be as the content delivered properly if it's 25 you need to start looking at your own communication and the way that you have taught that lesson and if you look over Scotland we're all up and down here and perhaps it's been the communication and of that and the delivery of it OK, Eliza Thank you very much, Tavish Thank you, can I have the same theme ask Cosler if they were on the curriculum management board Yes So you'd be familiar with the 20,000 pages of guidance that teachers have been subjected to over the last nine years on the curriculum for excellence I have been a teacher, I'm aware of that, yes So what did Cosler do in the curriculum management board to try and ease that back given your very fair points in response to Richard about the teaching profession I personally don't sit in that but Jane does Yes, that's an officer base board so I would represent Cosler on that We've acknowledged the concerns being raised up by teachers and head teachers in relation to this and we've received a number of assurances that our colleagues and other agencies are looking at this and taking it seriously So to be fair we've allowed that process to take place I think that what happened the recent interventions by the Deputy First Minister you've seen a degree of pace in relation to that and there's been a full commitment which I think is now being upheld that this sheer amount of documentation that went to our teaching colleagues has been reduced what our colleagues in the trade unions say to us and on that management board is that then leads us a new set of guidance to get a hold off and we need time to allow that to bed in which is sort of picking up some of the points that was raised by the two councillors up till now So in relation to Cosler yes, we were concerned that our teachers and head teachers had a large amount of bureaucracy we accepted that to some extent we had had a role to help them with that and we also asked our colleagues in the SQA in Education Scotland to assist with that they were doing so and then there was a degree of pace injected by the Deputy First Minister So they only did so after John Swinney got a grip of it this summer you've had nine years of this you'll know as a teacher how much this has been going on so nothing was happening over the last eight years until this summer, was it? How many more stats have been presented to this committee on how much they've had including the 1,820 experiences and outcomes and the latest 600 pages of benchmarks How has any teacher meant to cope with all that? I take that on board absolutely I'm a teacher and I think... Education Scotland and SQA what did you do about it? Can I make a couple of points? No, I'd like you to answer the question with great respect I think you're the actual teacher and pages of documents teachers were not responsible for that that is an education SQA responsibility and I agree it was cumbersome and I think we have agreed with the DfM that you have to streamline that back so I think that tackling the bureaucracy there was report and councils did act on that How did they react on that? So I'm just trying to report today that was the date of that report It was October 2013 so I think initial responses to the target started to take place but yes I agree that we did have to up the pace and I think the DfM was absolutely right we agreed with him So you'd accept you have to take responsibility for the situation that teachers find themselves in today which is again they've now been issued with 600 more pages and the teachers showed me this in Monday in Shetland 600 pages of benchmarks that have just been issued you know about all this you've been aware about it all and you've accepted that as part of your responsibilities with your relationship with the Government and we don't issue them that's SQA Education Scotland I don't have control over it but you've just passed it all on you've just fed it all on to teachers with support from the centre but we don't have control over what the content of the exams will be or what the content of assessment will be We're aware of that I think it's a useful point to raise and I think what is fair to say for local authorities is there's a detail which we wanted to get it right too and professionals in Education Scotland and the SQA that this is what's required then our councillors have a responsibility to their communities and their children to make sure that they're not withholding that advice against it so yes, we had the concern about our workforce which is real and a concern that our children and our families were getting what they needed from those I totally picked the point and I think that's a very fair point except that headteachers are your responsibilities as other teachers and they were to our man and a woman so I'd like that back into the system where you've got that role to challenge all that I think those discussions did happen in the CFE management board not only from ourselves but from other partners so the discussion did happen OK, can I take a point? Can I ask one other question? In the causal submission today it says on attainment funding, as the attainment fund has grown core funding for local government in 2016-17 has reduced does that mean that you've made a different argument before tomorrow's budget that will be presented to Parliament? I'm looking to repeat the question In your submission to this committee it says, and I quote as the attainment fund has grown core funding for local government in 2016-17 has reduced, so therefore have you made a different submission to the Government in respect of the budget that's going to be announced tomorrow? I think that there's been on-going discussion between cause and Scottish Government in relation to local authority budgets and to the education spend within that and I don't think we're in a position to make a comment on that at the moment First I'd like to thank Newbattle Community High School for hosting me on Monday and for Midlothian Education Authority for facilitating that their input's been very useful certainly in my understanding here and I'd like to talk a little bit about or ask a few questions about additional support needs clearly mainstreaming of pupils has been broadly successful but there are issues around that and I'm looking at a figure here that says 22.5% of pupils are recorded as having additional support needs and obviously that's probably a fairly wide spectrum but it seems to be an awful lot of students it's almost one in four according to this also something like 0.6% of all students have what they call a co-ordinated support plan which means that they have social, emotional and behavioural difficulties how are schools coping with that are they managing to balance the mainstreaming of what can be very challenging pupils with the needs of the other pupils for example I think that's a very very fair point we actually had this discussion last night and I don't want to make it so obvious but I dealt with an incident recently whereby there was one young lad who had severe emotional and behavioural difficulties and his behaviour was at the point whereby it was causing potential harm to the rest of the pupils so those pupils were actually taken out of the classroom so I suppose we talk about mainstreaming which we agree with but I suppose sometimes we still have to always revert back to Gerfec every child has the right to have that education I think that's a very very challenging issue and it'll be no surprise that we're going to come back to budgets you know as well as I do that our core teaching budget our teaching numbers are preserved which means that when education conveners and officers are having to look at their budget then we have to take a fair share of that so it means that we are losing ASN teachers and that to me is a real challenge you know how do we actually keep looking after our most vulnerable children whilst having to cut back and cut back and cut back so we do have real challenges there spending on additional support for lending increased by £24 million so there was more money being made available I've need to ask for a breakdown of that I don't have that figure broken down for me at the moment but I'd be happy to come back with that the other thing about this is there is a statutory presumption that students will be educated in the mainstream and there are some qualifications around that for example if it's incompatible with the education of the other children or if there's a significant unreasonable public expenditure can you quantify how do you reach the conclusion if it's unreasonable public expenditure or if it's having an unreasonable impact on other children's education I'm quite happy to take that certainly in Renfrewshire we have quite a developed system which would include a multidisciplinary group looking at the needs of that child and can I say additional support needs is driven by the needs of the child and while we have a presumption of mainstreaming we do have a number of different facilities such as autistic spectrum disorder bases in primary and secondary and social emotional behavioural needs but we also have to support in mainstream we also have a number of support systems there from we have 200 additional support needs assistance we have a home link team which go out and work with parents of children with special needs we have a looked after children link team and of course a children services inclusion team and psychological services so there are supports that the local authority essentially are able to assist schools in keeping children in the mainstream and that's one of the things that answer to the question about the governance review that local authorities do well helping schools deal with very difficult situations often from that central resource in a way that is cost effective not having one school dealing with perhaps as we have £72,000 and one school on two children Were we correct to say that support is becoming more centralised in that regard you referred to that somewhat yourself about all these other areas that are supporting children with difficult needs or whatever it's not centralised as such it is a central resource that is utilised in schools and that is done through agreement with the head teacher and the multidisciplinary team around the child if there is a multidisciplinary team so the centre in a way is the resource and the developer of the service but it is utilised in schools I don't know if you like to have that in old central teams but then they are deployed out to schools and I think that's a strength again within local authorities is that we wrap care around the child so if we do have a youngster who has ASN then we have social work we have home care involved we have ed sites, we have SLTs and they are brought into that specific child so that the child is seen at the centre which again goes back to the point that I make every two seconds is that GERFEC operates at that level that support is only one phone call away from the school the school does not have to go down different agencies or different services arranging that themselves so it's a single point of contact My discussions with New Barrow community high school indicated that extreme behaviour in the classrooms was increasing and the school itself of course is located in an area of considerable deprivation about I think about 69 per cent of the pupils come from an area of deprivation now this extreme behaviour they see is becoming more extreme, more common and it's very disruptive time consuming for the teachers to deal with and there is an impact on learning from other pupils do you recognise the fact that this is becoming more common problem? I think the answer is yes I think that in discussions with teachers and primary and secondary school we do recognise the challenge and the system around additional support needs what Councillor Henry was saying a minute ago is that the central resource is attempting to meet the needs and I think that there are a number of reasons why those needs are increasing partly there's issues around diagnosis, there's also issues around the impact of poverty in particular areas and that can also manifest itself in relation to parental mental health substance abuse use and so on that in turn has an impact on children I suppose the key point I wanted to make following from Councillor Primrose is that should we seek to devolve more to schools like new battle that are left holding all of that within the context of the school the school management, the school community and given some of the challenge and some of the extreme challenge that you've heard about Mr Beattie I think that that is a real concern that we have in the local government family should we devolve more responsibilities particularly around additional support needs to the unit of the school rather than trying to manage a very demanding agenda as you've outlined it it is that wraparound team around the child support system that is working despite the strains in the system currently but even without the more disruptive students we're still talking about 22.5% of all children have additional support needs that seems a very very high proportion and actually the the number of unreported or unrecorded additional support needs is thought to be much higher I think this is where again the role of early intervention comes in if we're looking at the speech and language therapist a statistic that hit my desk a couple of months back was that in one particular area 70% of children were not speech ready so at that point the enter into education 10 to 18 months behind those who are speech ready so I think that the earlier we access and of course the ASN it can be SLTs, it can be behavioural needs it can be severe to moderate disabilities if you like so I think that when we're looking at people who have the behavioural things that we need to get in early and if we get in early you'll be able to help the child which I think would be our ultimate goal you'll be able to close that attainment gap and then a consequence of that would be that your behaviour was better Ross, you've got a couple of questions off the back of Colin Beattie's questions, it's been interesting to know what role you'd hoped to have in the review the presumption of mainstreaming that should happen next year but Mr Macleod touched on the point I really wanted to ask about diagnosis there are considerable inconsistencies in the proportion of young people within local authorities who've been identified as having an additional support need and Councillor Henry touched on the fact that there are huge numbers that probably have unidentified support needs if local authorities with very similar demographics there can be anything as much as a 20% or more difference in identified additional support needs why do you think there is that level of inconsistency because it's surely not a genuine difference in the number of people with ASN I'll make a brief point if that can be passed back to you Jackie I think that one of the ASN things that we need to examine is people coming through with additional support needs for language so for example if you look at the big in our cities in Glasgow and Aberdeen they'll have a higher proportion of people who need English as a second language if you go further afield you'll have to look at my own authority the people who have that ASN need for languages is considerably lower of course all local authorities are very signed up to the refugee crisis but with the refugee crisis does come that need for the ASN stuff so I think that partly explains why there's a difference Jackie do you want to No, I would agree with that the only thing that made me think of both Mr McLeod and myself have referred to families first in one of the cases one of the things that we've learned from them is that children are often referred firstly about behaviour and it's only once the team get to know the child that they find all sorts of other problems behind them some of which are related to poverty some of which aren't so yes we're having for all the reasons that the councillor has mentioned about differences in the demographics of an authority I think we are perhaps becoming better at realising that children come from families and sometimes the tensions, dynamics within a family will have an impact on the child and we need to address that I think that one of the other areas is autistic spectrum disorder and certainly there have been changes both in diagnostic process and perceptions around autistic spectrum disorder in the last 10 years that will have seen and I couldn't quote you the figures but I could find them and perhaps convener supply them later to this committee that if you look at the increase exponential increase year and year on the numbers of children with ASD that in itself tells I think a story which is about partly variation because clearly the diagnostic ability of the system quickly to respond to concerns of that nature has been really tested in that particular field alone and that also means the partnership with the health service is critical in that regard I just wanted to add one thing you asked a very specific question about whether local authorities were part of the work going forward we are a member of the advisory group on the additional support for learning and we will be supporting Scottish Government as we look in this matter in the early new year Thanks very much and just very briefly going back to my previous point around nursery teachers contact time with a qualified nursery teacher would prove a barrier to the point that Councillor Primrose is making about early diagnosis and identification I think that we have to look at the new workforce that is coming in I think that we do have to bear this in mind when we are looking at more of the practices and things like that I think that that is why it is very critical that we have all partners on board we sit on what is the advisory group for early years and we raise that not only with the more of the practices and people that have come into early years but also with basic teacher induction increasingly these things need to be built in and we are certainly hitting discussions with various people about that I do not think that it is a barrier childcare practitioners liais with health professionals on issues that we do with children's speech and language on a day and daily basis I think that teachers would come in with a particular skill in how they develop that and help to develop that with other colleagues like speech and language therapists and childhood practitioners it would be a different discipline and a different look at it Thank you very much I just have one last question before we finish the session how would you spend £100 million on attainment fund? Solve the question for this time of day I think that I would have to accept the fact that although you have a number of authorities and nine authorities do have attainment challenge many of their attainment challenges we have to recognise that there is poverty in all 32 local authorities we have rural poverty we have poverty in all stretches we have £100 million I think that I would probably want more to make sure that we are targeting every local authority that does have children living in poverty how to spend it it would need to be across all services how would I allocate it I would ask a head of service to do that I don't think I would necessarily have to I would necessarily just say How would you like to see it allocated across local authorities but never mind I would like to see it across all the services that actually go into schools I would like to see it in home care link workers I think that that is a critical role How would you base how much of that £100 million goes to each authority? That would be a match for distribution for Anne's committee I have a side step to answer Beautifully, thank you In terms of allocating it all I would say I would hope that it gets its fair Remember you're here and it recognises our population that isn't recognised at the moment I think that that's a real issue because we need to recognise deprivation as you know at the moment supersparcity has a greater weighting in the way that the education budget is allocated than the deprivation does and that's not to minimise the expense that rural authorities with large rural areas have but I think deprivation and concentration of deprivation is a major issue we have schools in our authority where 96% of children live in SIMD1 we have the poorest area in Scotland so I think we need to look at deprivation So you'd be quite supportive of anything that was targeting the funding on those schools that have the greatest need of deprivation the greatest concept of deprivation I think we need to look at both universality and targeting because there are poor children in every school in my authority even those where they have 1% or less SIMD so I think there are two things teachers move, staff move we need training of staff regardless of where they are so that they benefit children throughout their career and across authorities and across schools so I think there's that but I think there is an element of targeting that is the approach that we have taken in our authority both in our tackling poverty commission that gave us £3 million and in our plans for the attainment fund that we have at last had access to okay, thank you very much okay before we finish the end there's just a couple of things I'd like to say, one is that the committee will be writing a letter to North Lanarkshire council and councillor McGregor has said and the other is that folk McGregor and the other is that the SLGP if they could write to us and then let us know what contact they've had with ministers about the earlier stuff that we were talking about earlier on okay, in that case thank you very much for your time and patience and for your responses thank you and that closes the public session of the meeting