Welcome to today's webinar, improving your nonprofit impact using real Web3 examples. Now some of us may have some trouble imagining how we can actually apply these Web3 and decentralized technologies to solve wicked problems in our work. This technology, though, is more than just cryptocurrency wizards out there to make a buck. We're going to show you today how nonprofits and civil society organizations can use these new technologies in really practical, tangible ways. We of course are very grateful for the support of the Filecoin Foundation for the decentralized Web who has been sponsoring us for this series. We've got Robert, aka Robbie, here with us today. I'm super excited to bring in this guest expert. Robert Greenfield is the CEO of Umoja Labs and his blockchain experience goes way back to 2011 before I knew such a thing even existed. Prior to developing Umoja Labs, Robert served as Consensus's head of social impact and he co-founded the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition, which is the world's first social impact block. He's also co-led from the world's largest profile, Blockchain for Social Impact Projects, including the first cryptocurrency backed cash assistance program in Vanu and the first worker wellness pilot with the U.S. State Department. And I think which is going to be really interesting. He also worked on the first fully transparent grant management solution with the World Wildlife Fund. He's got this huge wealth of experience, which means you're going to pepper with him with questions, try and trip him up and let's like pull all the knowledge right out of that nog and ladies and gentlemen, give it up with those little reaction emojis to Robert Greenfield. Yeah, I very much appreciate it and everyone really do appreciate your time and just thank you for the opportunity to be with you all. And as he said, please actively ask questions, make comments, disagree, agree, whichever want to make this as much of a conversation as possible, because as and unfortunately, the world needs modernized methodologies to scale impacts more than ever. And so hopefully I can be a tool to guide you or whatever that may be for whichever impact your organization facilitates. As a quick introduction, the Moja Labs, we were founded in 2020 in the midst of the beginning of COVID and we actually spun out of consensus. So prior, as Eli said, I was the head of social impact at consensus and managed and developed all of the social sector and some public sector solutions that consensus brought to market over a period of three to four years. And so Moja Labs spun out, continued that work and work have historically worked with a lot of NGOs and we've also extended into other product categories such as foreign exchange hedging in the context of SME financing as well. In the context of cash assistance programs in particular, which is that our namesake and usually is one of the first use cases that we're recognized for. We've deployed all over the world and our focus generally has been how can you leverage adaptable and emerging technologies such as blockchain and deploy them in not only emerging markets, but hard to reach regions with vulnerable communities. And so this means that you're going to have to deal with a great deal of a lack of technical literacy, a lack of access to certain devices and also a variety of local payment methods that are oftentimes not compatible with even international wires transfers. And so how do you take that technology and its transparency and its security and embed them in a way in which people can use them simply and reliably? And so today wanted to go over what blockchain for social impact is, touch on some real life use cases that I have been lucky to be a part of over the course of my career and then also look into some impact opportunities as well, opportunities which amazing executives, leaders such as yourselves can bring to the world that I think there's still pretty large gaps in and some of the obstacles as to why those gaps exist. And I put this in the context of Emoja Labs programming, but I think this is true more broadly that there are a lot of different verticals of social impact as it pertains to blockchain technology. For us, it's typically financial inclusion, research and learning and humanitarian and development aid. So financial inclusion is really envelopes every financially considerate programs, micro saving, micro loans, insurance, remittances, micro work, as many of you may know, but some of you may not. Blockchain technology lends itself very well to financial use cases, right? And so it's typically one of the easiest use cases or use case categories to apply the technology to see if there's any real operational benefit. And of course, the second is research and learning. There are many ways in which the technology is hypothesized to work, but have not yet been put it to practice. And it's important to continually, one, theorize as to how it can be useful and find cost effective ways to validate those hypotheses. But to make sure that those proposals are in line with the existing methodologies that I know you all hold near and dear to your heart, and which is also very important in my work as well. And of course, an offshoot of research and learning is policy development, as you all may have seen, particularly those who are in the United States, but also those London, those in Dubai. Blockchain regulation is becoming a thing. How do you regulate the technology? How do you regulate features of the technology, such as cryptocurrency? And how do you not limit innovation to the point at which you are also limiting the potential impact for people, for example, to receive cash assistance in regions where it otherwise would be very difficult to deliver such assistance or other use cases as well. And so such research not only applies to use case deployment, but it can also apply to how your organization or how your region looks at the technology from a public policy perspective. And then I have separated out humanitarian and development aid only because cash transfer programs and fundraising are the lifeblood of many not-for-profit organizations around the world. And it is a particularly pressing use case now. Obviously, we're all aware of conflict in the Middle East or aware of Sudanese refugee issues, aware of the situation in Haiti. There are a lot of, unfortunately, geopolitical conflicts that are blooming in parallel. And typically the first response is a humanitarian aid. But oftentimes those regions do not have the benefit of their beneficiaries having internet, smartphones, bank accounts. Many of the things that may be aid, say, in the Ukraine war situation may have an advantage of. And how do you get around those obstacles, but also leverage technology such as this? So we're going to get straight into it. I'll give you a premise to each of these use cases. Please ask questions over time and I'll try my best as we go through this to pick up some of the questions that you might have. So let's actually start off with one really high level question that was from Imani, which is just to say, is blockchain the same as Web 3? Like how do we parse these two different terms? That is an excellent question. But there's a marketing side of that question. There's also a technical side of that question. So the marketing side of that question is that, as you all may know, before all of the blockchain space really was referred to as crypto more generally. And that had been true for about half a decade after the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. But unfortunately, cryptocurrency has a negative social connotation associated with it, right? You got Silk Road, illicit markets on the dark web. Obviously fraud cases, such as what happened with FTX. And so as an industry, you have seen over the course of the last three or four years, the usage of Web 3 as an enveloping term of the market rather than the usage of crypto or the usage of blockchain, the latter of which is a bit more technical. From a technical perspective, yes, Web 3 envelops all technologies built on or associated with blockchain technology. It is indicative of a more democratized internet and related services that Web 2 traditionally has not offered. And in particular, services that are more centralised versus being less centralised. A perfect example is obviously the case of finance, using code to facilitate certain transactions automatically rather than, say, a bank, which may have institutional solvency risks, many of which we saw earlier this year with a lot of mid-sized banks closing. And that's the metaphorical and also technical kind of analysis on the term Web 3. Awesome. That's super helpful. And to the rest, please keep adding those questions right into the chat and we'll either tackle them as we go or save some of the more gnarly ones for the end. Yes, and gnarly questions are okay. Spicy questions. All right. I don't take anything too hard. I think we're all still figuring these things out together. So the first year's case is HALA systems. So some of you may be aware of who HALA systems is. So HALA develops effectively AI based monitoring tools in and around Syria to ensure that certain attacks from typically from Syrian government or its allies are not perpetrated in areas in which they shouldn't, right? Mainly protecting civilian communities. And the way that they've historically done that is is that they will have both some devices or device based monitors in different regions. Some will detect certain sounds. Some will be video. It'll be a combination of technologies to get an understanding of the state of a particular area. And then they also use human observers and have an application for that. And effectively what they try to do is to amalgamate the information from the devices and from the human observers to come to a conclusion as to whether a war crime has been committed. Perfect example is that you may have a device that is monitoring sound. It hears the sound of a jet in an area where there should be no jets. And then you also see human observers see a bombing route, right? Those two factors can be leveraged and presented as evidence in international criminal court to prosecute governments or associated military groups of such war crimes. Now, traditionally, even with all that evidence, usually it's very hard to make that case. And because if I as an observant citizen, trying to keep my community safe, accuse you of something, and I present this evidence, the first thing that governments oftentimes do is say, oh, that's fake news, right? That's become a popularized argument around the world. And the fact of the matter is because of where technology is particularly AI, it's actually it's a valid argument. You can now create images, videos, text, different aspects of evidence that is not real, that appears to be real. And so their question is, how do you prove that their evidence that they collected at point A is real and relevant in point B when you're at international criminal court presenting that evidence? And so this was a very simple use case. It was just hashing, getting a fingerprints of that information, that evidence collected at point A to prove that it has not been tampered with over time until it is presented in court. And you can do that very simply using blockchain technology, right? Transactions facilitated on a ledger, right? They have an immutability associated with them, meaning you can't go back and change them or it's very difficult to. And in doing so on public networks such as Ethereum, right, you can take some information, hash it, which is typically a deterministic algorithm that gives fingerprints or an ID associated with a particular set of information, put that into a transaction and then reference that transaction at a much later date to show that information has not been tampered with. This could also be used in the context of police brutality, seen it applied in that context as well. And then another context, which will later cover. So this is, you know, one example that we did a couple of years ago with how systems and they continue to engage with Web 3 technologies as to how it can better their technology stack. The second is with the World Wildlife Fund. So a few years ago, consensus and the World Wildlife Fund had two engagements. One was the bait to plate initiative, which was a transparent supply chain use case. And another was a transparent grant management use case. This one speaks to the supply chain, as most of us don't know where most of the things that we consume, use, look at, come from and increasingly people are becoming a lot more health conscious as to not only are one of the downstream effects to those a part of that supply chain, but also how that affects themselves and their physiology. And in this use case, they actually could track all the way from Southeast Asia. I believe it was Fiji, the capture of fish and the delivery of said fish all the way to New York, which people ate at a conference that consensus had hosted. And of course, that level of visibility, understanding from bait to plate, where something has been, how it's been processed, who's touched it at what time. We only have a loose understanding of how to replicate, right? And even some of the best systems like Amazon, for example, still struggles with origin source responsibilities, particularly when you have certain factories that serve many different customers upon thousands of products. It's difficult to understand. Okay, are they using slave labor as a part of that production? And so this was a perfect use case that trial that you can provide such transparency. However, I will say that there's still much to be built off of, though this was an earlier use case to show that international supply chains can embed within themselves a level of transparency, where for every checkpoint across the supply chain, there is a transaction committed on chain to show that custody that you still need to embed that type of technology into your supply chain in the first place. And that can take time, right? Especially for very large supply chains. And it also is very dependent on the power balance between the retailer and the supplier, right? If you are a small percentage of the supplier's production, you don't have much leverage to tell them what to do. And actually, I had previously also worked at Amazon where I was on the social impact team, where this was quite literally our responsibility. And in some cases there were those asymmetric relationships. But again, another example, and if you Google bait to plate or bait to plate consensus, there's actually a video on this that you can look at on YouTube that visualizes the whole experience as well. The next is collaborative healthcare solutions. This very similar to the Hollis Systems use case, but instead they were ensuring that sexual assault kits evidence was not tampered with. Unfortunately, in the United States, for those that aren't here, sexual assault as a crime is not one that has historically been managed very well, domestically. There have been many cases, particularly in Detroit, but also in Oakland, and it's not just those two territories as other areas as well, in which law enforcement has been caught mismanaging sexual assault forensic kits or the kit of evidence of that individual's clothes, blood swabs, other artifacts that they collect once a sexual assault has occurred. And that has led to serial sexual assaulters continuing to perpetrate whichever crimes they are doing within the community, sometimes for decades. So it's a very serious problem. And in some cases, and again, I'm not saying that this is like a widespread issue, but it is an issue and it does continue. The underlying evidence for the sexual assault forensic kit can be tampered with if there are entities within an agency that prefer that evidence not to get out, that can be for political reasons that can be for the reason that the perpetrator is a part of the law enforcement team itself, many different reasons, but still it's rather unacceptable. And so you can leverage that same tamper proof evidence mechanism in this use case as well, and I have a wholly different type of impact in collaborative health care solutions continues its work to this day. They also more broadly help a lot of law enforcement agencies iterate on their processes with regards to how such evidence is collected, because it's also somewhat embarrassing is not the word, but I would say maybe even humiliating experience when you are recently assaulted and you have to go through this process of evidence collection right after, right? You haven't even been able to deal with your trauma and they're they're they're doing great work. And that was one of the things that we investigated with them. Project Unblocked, this is probably one of the more quote unquote famous and maybe I'm patting on my back too much. So certainly let me know if I am. Use cases that we will review Project Unblocked cash was and let me be careful because when any when any time someone uses the word first, people start to get very aggressive. It was the first international humanitarian aid program that leveraged stable coins and specifically used dye. So dye had just recently come out. USTC did not yet exist and it used it in Vanuatu. So Vanuatu is a Pacific Island nation. It is the most disaster prone nation on the planet. They have volcanoes. They obviously get earthquakes because of those volcanoes, but they also have cyclones as well. In which case the vast majority of individuals do not have birth certificates. Many do not have phones. And the only way really to safe keep your money is to quite literally bury it. In fact, a few years ago around that same time, the central bank had introduced a plastic variant of their money to make doing so easier. So that is the context. And also, as many of you may know, cash transfer programs do not have the best record with regards to monitoring transparency. And that's oftentimes because either it's facilitated in actual cash. It can be facilitated with paper vouchers, which are better, but it's hard to reconcile. And of course, it's not easy to keep track of. And even the usage of mobile money via tools like Impessa and still have limited transparency issues, right? When you use Impessa, you cannot determine the exact item that someone got. You can determine maybe sometimes the merchant that person transacted with if there is a good relationship with that mobile money vendor after specific contracts have been set up between the NGO and the mobile money vendor, right? And so this was one of the first ever use cases that show that you can leverage blockchain technology, that same transparency element that we continue to hit on. You can leverage that in a way that one allows people with lower technical literacy and access to resources to use it without having to understand what blockchain is. In this case, it was NFC cards. So every beneficiary received NFC card. That's just a plastic card for those who are not familiar with the term NFC is near field communication. So it's technology very similar to Bluetooth in a way as a rough comparison. So it receives and can signals from different devices. And and then there was also a mass payout dashboard. And so effectively, the flow was that you would register beneficiaries as you typically would. You could do that via Kobold Toolbox. You could do that via Excel. Do not need internet to do that. You would get the bare minimum information from those individuals. They don't need to have phones named their sex, whether they're representative of a family or not, based off of the needs analysis that you facilitated in that particular area. And then after you register those individuals, they would be handed these cards and effectively a stable coin balance or a digital dollar balance was sent using blockchain technology to their cards. Right. So they didn't need to do anything that to occur. The NGO knew and in this case, it was Oxfam knew exactly how much money has been dispersed to whom. And everyone had a PIN code, so it would make it harder for someone to steal someone else's card. And more importantly, the money on that card cannot be used for anything but the participating merchants within that program. So this was a conditional program. And so you had a full control of funds, but even more, you could determine the spending patterns over time to better prepare for future disasters. So now instead of settling transactions net 30, you're selling transactions instantaneously in real time. Instead of providing impact of reporting on a quarterly basis, you can have donors look at the analytics dashboard in real time and see how their capital is being used. So you had 100 percent monitoring transparency. And then, of course, those merchants who typically have access to more resources, they would then offer ramp to to the local currency, which is the VATU in this particular case. This program started with I believe it was around 300 people at scale to over 40,000 dispersed. I believe in aggregate about three million dollars in it up itself and also led to the development of Moja Labs and the facilitation of our work in other areas like Colombia, Venezuela, Kenya and even Haiti. And and what it has proven is that there is a way in war-torn or disaster-prone areas to facilitate digital cash transfers with 100 percent monitoring transparency as to how that capital is used, both in conditional and in unconditional scenarios. And you do not need to be interconnected with the payment systems of those regions necessarily to enable them to work. And there's a huge documentary that we created with Project Unblocked Cash. The partner in this case was a company called Sempo who consensus and as I was like consensus at the time, I worked with very closely. And yeah, it was just an overall great experience. And we have case studies for some of the other deployments that we've done as a Moja Labs as well. So bounties for ocean conservation. So an interesting one and it is different in that it is not just sending money somewhere or getting something right, proving something hasn't been tampered with. This introduces the theme of game theory that is very relevant to Web 3 technology. And what I mean by that is that. In Web 2 technologies, whether it's traditional banking or the Internet or the normal applications that we use, though they do certainly use psychological game theory to inhibit certain actions or to incentivize them. Oftentimes, they're not very creative at doing so, nor are they generally directed at generating impact. And so the context of this particular project was how can you get individuals to become incentivized to clean their own communities and earn an income in doing so? And the two partners in this were Consensus Social Impact and Moja Labs now and the Bounties Network. Unfortunately, the Bounties Network is no longer active, but effectively it is what it sounds like. It is a network of community developed bounties that anyone can participate in and earn an income in fulfilling those bounties. And those bounties can be everything from write me an article to clean up trash in Atlanta and prove that you did by taking a picture or something like that. Right. And so this was facilitated in the Philippines. If any of you are familiar, there are certain areas within the Philippines that are quite literally made of trash or villages that are set within landfills. And obviously it's not a healthy place to live and a great place to incentivize people who otherwise might not have other work opportunities to help clean and earn an income from. And so it was very interesting. It was a different use case. And it was something that. I think I would like to see more of us because these creative approaches of aligning both environmental impacts with economic impacts at the same time are few and far between. And I believe there's also a documentary on this as well. So if you're going to look up the Bounty Network, Consensus, Philippines, a general Google search, I don't quite remember the name of the documentary, but it is on YouTube and also a great watch if you are interested. So Luxerity. This is getting more into a social sector commercially philanthropic use case. Luxerity is the social arm of Lane Crawford Joyce. Lane Crawford Joyce is one of the largest retail clothing goods companies in the world based in Asia. And what Luxerity does is every year. And I believe they still do this to this day. They do this in Hong Kong around this time of year, November, December. They get donors to donate luxury goods, secondhand luxury goods, Louis Vuitton bags, Gucci belts, all that good stuff. And they resell them and they use the capital from those resales to provide community grants, whether it's community grants in fashion for those who otherwise wouldn't afford the ability to learn more about it or to local schools, etc. And the issue, the problem that they wanted to solve was is how if I give a Louis Vuitton bag as a donor. Well, how do I know what my end impact is? Right? When the grants are provided. How much of that grant did I contribute? How much of the scholarship or how many people did I affect? And so in the same way that we've seen blockchain technology is extremely useful for hyper transparency and traceability. You can do so in this context as well. You can take a good. You can record when it's been donated and by whom you can record when that exact same item is sold and how much money it's generated. And now you can proportionally report back what the economic impact of the donor was. And I believe we had done over, I think it was around $50,000 in sales within a two day span. All of it was facilitated directly on chain. This was actually on the Ethereum network. I was actually one of the developers of this project. And yeah, it was very interesting. And again, you could show that impact in real time. And so just another example of how it can be helpful. So any of you who have models that are similar to this, certainly a page to to tear some notes from. So more broadly, impact opportunities. As you've seen a lot there, there have been a lot of startups that attend to one or not multiple of the problems that we've gone over. But there are still many gaps in what's both the social sector, the public sector, whether the world need more generally. Carbon credit markets is definitely one of them. For those who are unfamiliar with carbon credit markets, the only note that I can leave you with is that they are completely messed up. They are not that from an infrastructure perspective, from a bureaucracy perspective, they are completely misaligned with the intended environmental impact domestically in the United States, but also internationally. And so if you do want such markets to thrive, become more liquid and I think even become more verifiable and more reliable. This is an obvious use case for the technology because it has some financial aspects to it, but also has some transparency aspects to it as well. And there are some startups that create such markets. Flow Carbon is one of them and there are a few others. But if you type in Carbon Credit Market, blockchain, you'll see several types of these markets. And so it is starting. But I think the one issue that a lot of these companies have is the economic viability, right? Because it needs to be a sustainable business model to continue that project as well as provide such markets. Evolution of microfinance outside of just sending money, getting money, understanding where it got there. You can now start to. To tokenize or to create a digital representation of value that was previously very difficult to make fungible, to make transfer. I'll give you a perfect example in the context of microfinancing. When you look at the agro value chains, the agricultural value chain for rice in Tanzania, oftentimes you'll have a farmer. They need to get some financing, usually is from friends, family to afford water costs, to afford fertilizer, to afford seeds. And they will do the math, grow the crop, and then they will pay back those proceeds to those individuals. And I ideally keep half of that as a profit to sustain their income. And within that chain, there is warehousing of their rice. They have the rice put in a bag. They want to warehouse it. Some people do it purposely to wait to a certain part in the season where prices are the highest, right? And in exchange for taking that rice, that bag of rice to the warehouse, they get a receipt and that receipt says you have four bags of rice here, right? You can come back and you can get those four bags. This is something that could, if digitized, be used to access more financing for that next season, right? You could have a farmer leverage a tokenized receipt of rice being warehoused to as collateral for a loan, right? And this is something that happens regularly. It happens every season, and it does happen across many different agricultural value chains in different ways. And so when I talk about the evolution of microfinance, it's not just about digitizing it. I think in many ways it's already been digitized at scale in many different regions. It's talking about how can you find and create different credit models or collateral models that already occur in the informal credit market that can put less cost or economic strain on the borrower, right? That's where the magic is. And investigating and investing in those type of models is going to be a lot more helpful. And interestingly enough, a lot of these communities within their informal credit sectors already have these models, right? For example, saving groups, that's a model. It's not a model that you oftentimes see in the West, but it is extremely capital efficient and makes perfect sense. And that is why you've seen many startups starting to digitize saving groups. And there's a lot of variations and build off models that you can create to maintain default risk, but also increase credit accessibility as well. And we've done a bit of this in Morogoro, Tanzania, done short stints and microfinance programs over the previous year. Obviously, tokenization of emerging market fiat currencies. So this is a big one for any of you who, especially if you are doing any financial related program. The digitization of currencies is inevitable. It is inevitable. It is a fact. It will occur. It has already occurred. You must leave this workshop with that knowledge. And over the next decade, likely, you will see many central bank digital currencies produce. You will see many private digital currencies of different regions produce, one of which in the United States is USDC. But I've been a recent conversation with the United Arab Emirates or individuals from that region, and they are going to be introducing a digital Durham as well. And so it is very important that you adapt your methodologies. You don't need to change the way that you engage with communities, but you do need to adapt the ways that money is monitored and transferred to this new reality, because it is going to happen. And another important thing to realize is that with the increased digitization of national currencies, the biggest export of a lot of these country becomes their own monetary policy. So what does that mean? So for a very long time, one of the biggest exports of the United States has been the US dollar, right? And because it's a good store of value, right? One of the world's largest economies. And so the feature that everyone appreciated was is that if I put my money into this asset, it will not depreciate or at least it won't depreciate at the speed of my own currency. And thus you see global trade, particularly in emerging markets, global debt investment, usually denominated in USD. Over time, this is obviously changing because the USD is going through a great deal of inflation, right? That is also inflating the local currencies. And you also have international partnerships like BRICS forming and taking on many members to de-dollarize their economy so that they have more monetary control over their policies, which I think is a smart thing for those countries to do. But when you digitize these different currencies, what happens is that now someone is not necessarily only judging that currency by it being a good store of value, right? You could have a country say, hey, if you just hold our currency, we'll offer you a savings rate of 12 percent. And many of us know in Eastern African countries, the average sovereign bond gives you about 12 percent, right? Now, these types of rates are typically offered or even accessible to individuals now because you would have to open up an account to be able to access that sovereign bond and do a whole bunch of things. And thus it's not very fungible, but increasingly it will become fungible. And now you're not only looking at is the money that I have a good store of value? Does the money that I have create a good yield for myself? Does the money that I have in transactions provide me a discount? Or does me hoarding a certain amount of capital allow me other potential secondary benefits like being able to get a visa sooner? So money, the value of money will start to become featured as it becomes more digital. And so outside of the transparency and security and the modernization aspects of cash transfer programs and microfinance programs as it relates to money, these other considerations are things that your organizations to certainly think about because although they might not necessarily be as pertinent now, they are a financial inevitability. It may take a decade or so, but it will happen. And this is why I put this in here more more generally. Obstacles. So to finish off, regulatory ambiguity, right, particularly around digital currency. This is not me. That's that that every cryptocurrency is related to crime. That I don't want to give you that that that feeling that you do need to have. You do need to do your own due diligence. You do need to have a compliance regime as to how risky you assess certain cryptocurrencies to be. You do need to limit how many cryptocurrencies you're exposed to in the context because a lot of the regulations around cryptocurrency and not necessarily underlying technology of blockchain and to be optimistically cautious based off of the model and methodology of your particular organization. But do not be too cautious as to not take action or as to think that you can continue pushing back all of these considerations with regards to taking in donations with regards to facilitating digital cash transfer programs and perpetuity, because that's just negating your responsibility for what's what is real, what is happening. And so it does need to be an active approach, though it doesn't necessarily need to be a reckless one. The second is user experience and design of applications. This is one of the reasons why, you know, when Emoja first started, we only focused on non-smartphone devices, feature phones, NFC cards, right, WhatsApp, right, on old Android phones. We didn't focus on iOS or iPhones, right? It doesn't make any sense because none of the individuals that you're serving are likely to have an iPhone or a new Android. And so a lot of the interfaces of these applications that hope to do good don't understand the reality of the device accessibility and the technical literacy constraints within the regions they help to impact. And that's generally because a lot of the creators and much like myself are from the West and they are not embedded within these communities to understand those realities. And so we need to do a better job at enabling entrepreneurs from those communities to solve those problems by investing in them. Third, disconnection between NGOs and technology companies have, and this is why I love TechSoup, right, have social and private sector relationships, not just in the context of donations. I know as a fact that overhead is always something that we always worry about within the social sector, but we never really talk about how we can minimize overhead where it is reasonable. I think that part of the overhead conversation is ridiculous because people do need to live in order to create the impact that we make. But I do think that a percentage of that overhead can be greatly reduced if methodologies are modernized in a responsible way. And I have not seen that done enough from multinational NGO to regional NGO. And as you all know, the rates of global need, particularly for humanitarian aid, far outpaces our ability to attend to it. And we can start to catch up if we create these private and social sector collaborations and again, in the context of scale, not in the context of fundraising for a particular project, in the context that is the way that you will do things from now on. Once you find a way to do it, that you and those communities you serve are comfortable with. And that's a process, right? But it starts with a small pilot of trusted individuals that you have close relationships with of that vulnerable community. And then it gradually scales to acceptance. It's not something that you should force on anyone, but it is something that it will help reduce your costs. A perfect example in the cash assistance program, the Project on Black Cash, that's delivered a 92 percent more effectively than the previous methodologies that they were using, which was mobile money and cash valve. And generally from what we've seen, it's always been about above 80 percent increased efficiency. That significantly lowers overhead and allows you to deploy the programs in seconds rather than in months when you've already reached out to certain beneficiaries that you know are going to be double three time participants because of particularly disaster relief needs. The last is a lack of willingness to sandbox solutions. I think that some NGOs that are large enough can afford to sandbox solutions. Others that they might not have the capital resources to do that. I think this is more broadly a public sector responsibility. But if you do have relationships with the local central bank or representatives, just making sure that they're aware that, again, especially on the financial use case side, one of the one of the benefits of the blockchain technology more broadly is enabling people to have financial services across a broad spectrum that otherwise do not do. And it does it better than any other digital solution because of the security and the transparency. And but in order for those solutions to become viable, particularly for vulnerable communities, you need to have a sandbox in which you can facilitate them amidst the regulatory ambiguity of those regions, right? Because the United States is rather on the negative side when it comes to regulatory landscape, but there are other areas that are more positive like that of the United Arab Emirates or that of London. But then there are other areas that have no consideration as to how to use these technologies at all. And thus, rightfully, your organization may be trepidatious in employing those tools. And so that's pretty much it. Apologies, I didn't look at the questions, but we love questions. We can get into a discussion. Awesome. We've got six minutes, so let's fly through these. Let's start off with a good leading question. Robbie, saying my organization wanted to create a digital mass payment solution purpose-built for vulnerable communities. Yes. Who should I talk to? How would they make that thing real? Yeah, talk to us. We already have one. We've deployed it with Oxfam, World Vision, Care, deployed it across six countries, over $3 million just burst today. Tens of thousands of people served. And we primarily focus on individuals who do not have access to smartphones that have very low technical literacy. So it is extremely adaptable. We would love to work with you. Awesome. So I've got a pair of questions here from Paul and Imani talking a little bit about verification. So Paul asks what controls are put in place to prevent the creation of fake individuals because while the blockchain may give us verification, it doesn't necessarily verify a human necessarily. Yes, absolutely. We have historically required the NGOs that we work with in the past to facilitate in-person KYC. And the reason why it's in-person KYC, because as we know, many of these individuals don't have identification documents, right? And so there has to be a country staff responsibility to ensure that people that are participating in a program are adequately registered and appropriately dispersed toward. Of course, what's very interesting is even in the case of, say, you have a fraudster amidst the beneficiaries, they are not able to leverage that capital in a way in which they can easily commit the fraud itself. And what I mean by that is that in an unconditional program, the worst that they can do is transact that money with an approved merchant and then maybe offsell that thing that they got because they can't use the money for anything else. In an unconditional program, they can withdraw from a merchant, but you can see you can see patterns actively as to how people are using the money. And you're also in control as to the disbursements that go to those individuals. So their ability to siphon funds from that cash program would be severely limited. And if you did see any coordination with, say, a staff member, because that's really the only way they can really happen is the other coordinate with the staff member to facilitate such fraud, it would become immediately you would see it. You would see it immediately and you can pause while it's you can delist participants. And then, of course, fortify your methodology is to avoid that. But to your point, there is no fraud proof technology out there as long as humans stay creative. Fair enough. So it's more a process, not a thing we can just turn on turn off. Yes, absolutely. Cool. Here's a question coming from team CSR box, who's curious about how costly is it to deploy these kinds of Web three technologies you've been talking about today in a developing country like India? What are those current avenues? Is the best way to talk to an ammoja.money? What's what's the way people would begin this work? I would say in the context, if you had a specific program in mind, I would say that you would want a private sector partner focused on that particular use case. Yes. Otherwise, it is quite expensive to build these solutions from scratch. And it takes many different iterations. Now, I will say it's a lot less expensive now than it was before. When we got started, there weren't all these multi billion dollar companies with APIs and all these easy ways to create things. You really did have to create things from scratch. Now that's not necessarily the case. But unless, one, obviously, you have the resources to develop, to invest in developers, and those developers would need to ideally be on your team, right? The issue of using contractors to develop internal solutions is that you become perpetually reliant on those contractors. And in times of bad, when there are bugs, that just increases your overhead. And that's why I usually say, if you are not a technology driven engineer, which I know some of you may be, and you're not familiar with that product development process, it is better to find a private sector partner that can implement that for you. And I think the last thing we got is an interesting potential use case that Imani has been sharing in the chat.  Yes. Hi, Robbie. You are just really amazing and have been waiting all my life to hear this presentation. I actually partnered with an international organization that helps people in poverty stricken areas like Vietnam, South Africa, learn how to use technology and leverage that technology to solve problems in their own community. And I was in a webinar where they were talking about the problem that the Gullah Island people have. And I'll just read this to you. The partition sales are the cause of dispossession crisis according to the Heirs Property Retention Coalition. Property developers entice faraway relatives who may never have visited their family's land to sell their share for a fraction of its market value. Once they buy a share, these developers can then sell all of the land at auction to a large profit. And we need to be able to have people verify their ancestral claim to that land and have it be held in check so that these developers have to go through an oversight. And other people that have shares in that land, they have to know that this person is trying to sell off part of inheritance because it affects the value of everybody that's there. Would that be an application that Emotions Labs can help? So there are it wouldn't be not necessarily on the land title verification, but there are companies that focus on that exact use case. I can refer a few to Eli to share with everyone. But if you wanted to do some investigation yourself like land title and tokenization would be the prompt. But there are and I know that there are a few that are deployed in different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and some in Southeast Asia as well. I know that more broadly, the problem that they have had with regards to adoption has been getting those communities, which to your point, a lot of communities, there are no titles. There's just an ancestral heritage and everybody knows from that community who owns what, right? The go to market to capture those individuals and leverage digital tools in capturing those kind of ancestral land titles has been hard for some of those platforms to really break into. But I think to your point, someone like yourself was very well connected within those communities or organizations that affect those communities is a lot easier. So I think that the best partner and this is a perfect example to the private social sector partnerships, the best partner for that type of company is going to be someone like you because you enable them to be trusted by the community and everyone to work in tangent with one another. But private tech companies going into smaller regions where it's more village than city. Obviously, that trust hasn't been built, especially with something as sensitive as land ownership, which is to your point, the crux of wealth for that particular community. Thank you so much, Robbie. And I will be contacting you to make a connection with this international community. They're going to be so excited to find out about the work that you're doing. Thank you so much for the work you do. Not, I appreciate the work you do and I appreciate your kind comments. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robbie. I'm really delighted to have you come here today share your expertise.


to improve their life chances. I know that you have mentioned standardised assessment, and it is important to say that the assessment of children's progress is just one of the six drivers of improvement. In the context of curriculum for excellence, standardised assessment would be 10 per cent of the curriculum, because much of what we do relies on teacher judgment. The standardised assessment, which is absolutely clear, needs to inform teacher judgment and most certainly not replace it. I am alive to the debates in and around what information is published, how it is used and at what level. It is fair to say that there are different needs at a school level, at a local authority level and at a national level. That is what we would actively engage to resolve. There are also concerns about teaching to the test. Do you have a view of what we have done at the beginning of the year as a tool to assist teachers or have we done as a measure of progress at the end of the year? I have been very clear that the purpose of standardised assessment is to assist teachers on the front line. One of the compelling reasons to introduce a formal standardised assessment is for diagnostic purposes. I am very alive to the debate in and around the window of assessment and the debate around how having a narrow window of assessment at the end of a school year, how that may impact on the ability of a standardised assessment to be used for diagnostic purposes. In terms of practice currently across Scotland, there are some local authorities that will have a window of assessment. Some local authorities will have a few windows of assessment and others will have no window of assessment. That is the type of detail that we are currently engaged in. However, it is an aspect of the debate that we are very alive to because, as well as standardised assessment, which is just one part of a wider range of assessment, the data from that does indeed have to be used for accountability purposes of local and national government. Ultimately, we do not want that drive for accountability to impact adversely on the great gift, the potential use of standardised assessments to diagnose and inform the need for action that will improve outcomes for children. Cabinet Secretary, we heard this morning that, in terms of standardised testing and assessment, that is already going on in 30 of the 32 local authorities. There is even an argument for saying that, to some extent, it is going on across all local authorities to an extent. The provision here for national standardised testing and assessment does not make clear what the status of the activity that is currently going on will be. In relation to the standard for headship, there appears to at least be a clarity around the fact that the statutory provision that this bill will introduce replaces the qualification for headship that is currently in place in its non-statutory. We have not got that clarity here and, therefore, there are concerns among teachers that this will add to the workload of teachers over and above the concerns around lead tables and teaching to the test. What assurances can you give about the status of the current activity that schools and local authorities are undertaking? We have been clear from the outset that any introduction of a national standardised assessment system is to replace current activity. The last thing that I want to do is to add to the workload of teachers. Therefore, we are currently working very hard with the specification group in terms of pulling together the actual detail and nuts and bolts of what the standardised assessment part may look like. We want that to be of such a high standard that it has relevance to all local authorities, that it meets the needs of all local authorities, so that there is no need for duplication. One of the benefits, if you get the detail of the standardised assessment done at a national level, is that it can strip out duplication in the system. That is our ambition and that is what we are striving to do. The bill will require local authorities who, in response to the Smith question earlier, are doing very well to replace what they are doing at the moment in terms of the assessment and the way they use that to inform teaching and learning with a standardised model. You are going to be requiring local authorities to stop what they are doing at the moment and to take on doing something different that is consistent, albeit not exactly the same across the board. What the bill will require local authorities to do is to work towards the delivery of the priorities as contained within the framework. That is the six areas that are identified that are significant drivers for improvement. We have no plans to specifically legislate for a specific assessment model. We will work collegially and very hard with our partners in local government so that we have a shared understanding and a shared agreement in and around the spec of the standardised assessment so that it removes the need for there to be duplication. We want the specification to be of a high standard so that it meets all the needs of all local authorities. In terms of the question about whether that will result in lead tables or teaching to the test, we have heard from EIS again this morning that the provisions in a bill represent a blunt instrument. In the written evidence, the EIS is of the view that designing a one-size-fits-all standardised assessment for use across Scotland that would provide policy makers with a framework to positively impact on teaching and learning in the classroom is a challenge that has proved to be beyond the capacity of any education system that has attempted such an approach. What confidence can we have that ultimately we will not see a return to lead tables either official or unofficial and, as a consequence, a teaching to the test? Mr MacArthur will know that this Government has no desire whatsoever to return to crude lead tables to teach to the test to narrow down the curriculum whatsoever. This has never been about returning to high-stakes national testing of the past. However, we have heard today in evidence from the EIS and certainly in terms of our own engagement from the EIS and others that where there is considerable focus on is that window of assessment. That is one of the reasons why we are very alive to the debate in and around whether there should be a window of assessment or whether the assessment should be able to be done at any time of the year. We are, in terms of some of the media commentary around education, a move away from producing crude lead tables. I know that some newspapers still do it, but in terms of the work that we have done, for example in the senior phase and in terms of producing parent zone, that gives a good indication of the benefits of a more dashboard of information. We are currently in dialogue with our partners about producing that dashboard of information for the broad general education part of our curriculum. It may be comparatively easy if someone has the will and the time to look at every high school in Scotland and produce lead tables in and around the number of hires, three plus hires, five plus hires. However, we are talking about something quite different for 2,000-odd primary schools. If you were, for example, publishing data based on teacher judgment as to whether children had met curriculum for excellence levels, for example, I do not believe that any of that is insurmountable. It is difficult. We are in very detailed discussions, sifted through the intricacies of it all, but I stress that the standardised assessment is one part of one part of the national improvement framework and that we are looking to publish a range of information that is important for national government, local government but also to teachers and crucially for parents. I am going to ask about assessments again. Craig Monroe said earlier that it is how you use the information to drive attainment forward. He said that that was one of the most important things when you want to take a good system and make it a great educational system. Is that not the case that the kind of information that you have already said is being able to get the information to be able to get the resource into the areas that need that resource? Is that not what we are talking about when we are talking about the assessments to help the attainment officers that are in local authorities to ensure that we can get the resource to the individuals, the pupils and the families that need it? To be fair, I think that that has been the focus of debates across Parliament and across the education sector more widely. The nuances of the debate are about what information is gathered and how you use that to drive improvements. Standardised assessment is one part of that panel play or dashboard of information. I have heard Craig Monroe speak many times about how there are some aspects of the curriculum that certainly lend themselves to the use of more standardised forms of assessment in and around literacy and numeracy. We know that literacy and numeracy is the gateway to all learning, but we also know that you can assess everything in a standardised way. The Government values teacher professional judgment. As a parent, I have seen the standardised assessment done or the results of that completed with regards to my own son. I can see how that informs the teacher judgment, because when that was shared with me, when I asked, it was shared in a way that was meaningful. It was not just giving me a list of scores that came with information. It chimed with my understanding of my son's strengths and the information that I had been given on many parents' nights from teachers. Standardised assessment is one aspect that informs teacher professional judgment. We should not be afraid of it, but we need to work through the detail, and we are utterly committed to doing that. The national recruitment framework is introduced as a draft. The final version, which will be published at the start of the year, will look quite different, given the quality of the debate and the quality of informed input that we have had in and around the many issues covered by the national recruitment framework. My final point, convener—I apologise for answering the question at length—is that the legal requirement is to review the national recruitment framework on an annual basis, so it will continually be evolved and refined to the needs of our education system. A more standardised national assessment, we are looking to replace the myriad of local arrangements with something that is actually more bespoke to our own curriculum. During your answer, cabinet secretary, you brought up an important point. You said that when you asked under the current system of your own son, you asked for information, because Ian Ellis from the National Parent Forum of Scotland said that although a lot of the data is out there just now, Ian said that a lot of it has not been shared with parents at the moment, giving them the opportunity to be part of the solution when we try to work towards closing the attainment gap, and he was bringing that forward as an issue that, possibly, that might be better in the future if they get the opportunity to do all the information, but the information is relevant to them and their child. If every parent will have different requests for the information that they want for their own child or children, we should not generalise about parents, about what parents need or what parents want. In my own experience, I was informed when my son started primary 1 that the local authority in question used chem testing, and I opted to ask for the results of that in more recent times. I am always hesitant to make gross generalisations about what parents need, but parents should be informed about how teachers assess the children and if standardised assessment is part of that. Parents should be aware of that, and it is through that dialogue between parents and teachers that you establish what information parents wish or request. Of course, that is just a small and important part of a wider parental engagement agenda. I just want to clarify something that you said in your answer a moment ago that you will publish a final version at the start of the year, but in the draft national improvement framework document that we have in front of us, and our understanding was certainly the case, but it says in the annex that you will publish the national improvement framework in December. This committee will reach stage 2 and deal with the amendment on 7 December. That is the likely date that we will have to vote on that particular issue. The draft said that it would publish in December. I think that you just said a moment ago that it will be published at the start of the year. Yes, it will be published at the start of the year, convener, and I am sorry if the committee has not been kept up to date with that, or if there are inconsistencies in information given to the committee. I should have perhaps said in earlier answers that we will receive the OECD report on our broad general education at the end of the year. I believe that it is important that that is published and available to everyone, because that is part of our process in terms of informing the final version of the national improvement framework, although I stress that the national improvement framework will have to be reviewed annually. I understand why you are saying that you want to wait for that publication from the OECD. My concern is that that publication of the final version of the national improvement framework will be after the committee's consideration at stage 2 of the national improvement framework amendment. I am sure that you can understand the concern that I am raising with you. I can understand that, convener. I know that we are talking in the vacuum of committee receiving the Government's amendments, but we are talking about amendments in three areas about ministers having a duty to establish a national improvement framework. That will have to be subject to annual review. The second area that the amendments will deal with is local authorities having to work towards the delivery of priorities set out in the national improvement framework. The third area being ministers and education authorities having to publish their progress annually. Those are three quite discreet areas that the amendments will be dealing with. Secretary, I would like to look at some aspects of the role of the Scottish Government. The EIS's written submission questions whether the Scottish Government feels frustrated about the lack of access to data available at local level. It added that a discernible tension appears to exist between the competing functions of the Scottish Government and local government. Do you recognise that? I suppose that I would articulate it with a different tone. Yes, there is lack of information available to the Scottish Government. There is a lack of consistent information because reflective of the current situation is not necessarily some deliberate foible by local government, but reflective of current arrangements and current reporting arrangements that there is different practice out there. There is a generalised frustration that the lack of consistent information is important to inform aspects of local and national policy, how we use our resources and how we get better. Our first panel seemed to be a little concerned about the collecting of data. I asked a specific question about whether that affected the levels of accountability between local and national government. They were a little hesitant, but they seemed to indicate that, in certain circumstances, that could happen. Do you agree with that? In terms of the proposed amendments that I have outlined today and the national improvement framework overall, I do not think that any of that changes radically the balance of accountability or the balance of responsibilities. I would contend that the national government has a responsibility and a duty to set out national priorities. We want to ensure that those national priorities are shared priorities, but there is nothing in the amendments or the national improvement framework that changes the fact that local authority has the legal and operational duty to deliver education. Crucially, we are not asking our partners and local government to do anything that we are not going to do. We are asking them to report annually. We are going to have to report annually to Parliament. I think that scrutiny at local and national level is important. The reporting arrangements will enhance scrutiny of the Scottish Government as well as local government. That is absolutely right. I am supposed to state the obvious, convener. If the Scottish Government is to report annually on the national position to Parliament, we will, of course, need to gather information that is held at a local level. The cabinet secretary mentioned just now about an annual plan being submitted to ministers. The COSLA submission, which came in rather later, seems to be broadly supportive of this initiative, but believes that councils should not be required by law to send plans to ministers. Do you have any view on that? If local government was not required by law to submit information to the Scottish Government, that would be the position that we are currently in. I believe that there is a growing consensus that there needs to be more visible information available and consistent information available so that progress can be measured. I asked the panel where it thought that a shared agreement on the national improvement framework could be reached in time for consideration of the amendments. Really, they said no. Can I just be clear that you are also saying no, that the amendments which will be considered at stage 2 will simply say that there shall be a national improvement framework, but we will not know what it is? I am clear that we will do everything that we can to build a national consensus around the national priorities and how they are articulated and how they are implemented in the national improvement framework, which is to be published at the beginning of the year. A crucial part of the process that makes that informed process, as well as the high quality and detailed input that we have had from a range of stakeholders, is indeed the OECD report. Most people would see that as an important part of the process that we are not publishing the final national improvement framework prior to the OECD report or assessment on broad general education. That is quite distinct from the very specific amendments that will come to committee at stage 2, which are an outline. They are quite specific and really just anchor the national improvement framework in legislation and give the reporting duties. There is a whole lot of other detail in the actual national improvement framework. Of course, there is also the matter of statutory guidance, which will require on-going dialogue, engagement and on-going opportunities to build that national consensus. I do not think that we are far apart. I do not think that stakeholders are far apart. In terms of stakeholders and how far apart they are, the EIS, when asked earlier today, if they thought that they would be able to reach shared agreement on the national improvement framework, said that only if it had removed from it the proposal for a single-diet national standardised assessment of P1, P4, P7 and S3. Earlier on, in your evidence, she said that you were alive to that debate. Does that mean that it is your intention to remove that from the national improvement framework? I think that our position on the value of standardised assessment as part of the overall process that informs teacher judgment as part of a range of data that is available for assessment purposes, as it indicated earlier. It is only 10 per cent of our curriculum. What I said earlier was that I was alive to the debate around the window of assessment and the links between having a narrow window of assessment and how that links with perverse incentives. Is your intention to meet the EIS's requirement to reach a shared agreement? It is our desire to reach a shared agreement with all stakeholders involved. There is broad agreement and the agreement that we have on the overall high-level purpose of a national improvement framework and how the six drivers of improvement are at the right place. I am asking specifically about the national standardised assessment. We are seeking agreement with the EIS, COSLA and parents groups. We want that to be a shared endeavour not just for the Government to be setting out the national priorities, but for those national priorities to be seen as shared priorities. Mr MacArthur asked about the impact of the new national standardised assessment replacing what already happens in different local authorities and at the hand of different teachers. In response to him, you said, we are not intending to legislate for the national standard assessment to happen. Are you suggesting that there will be a national standardised assessment but it will be optional and local authorities can choose to take part or not? No, because the obligation on local authorities will be to deliver to the outcomes within the national improvement framework. So there will be obligatory for all local authorities in all schools to pursue the national standardised assessment that is contained in the net? It will be obligatory for local authorities to work towards delivering the priorities that are contained in the national improvement framework. Children's assessment of children's progress is that, but that is quite different from anchoring the specific specification, if you like, of a standardised assessment. It is also not an answer to my question. If the net contains national standardised assessments, will it be obligatory for those to be applied in every school in Scotland? Your answer to Mr MacArthur was ambiguous. Your answer to me was ambiguous. I am not being unambiguous. I am trying to say that we do not need to legislate for standardised assessment in the manner in which you suggest. Because it will still happen everywhere in any case? Because we are building that shared agreement and there will be compelling practical reasons for local authorities to opt for the standardised assessment. We are aiming high here to deliver something that meets the needs of local authorities. I am sorry, so they will have the choice, but the specifications will be so good that they will all choose to do it, rather than they will be obliged to do it. What I am saying, Mr Gray, is that local authorities will have a duty to deliver education that is in keeping with the national improvement framework. I do not see a need to legislate for a specification for a standardised national assessment, but we will expect local authorities to deliver in the spirit and practice of the national improvement framework, and they will have a duty to do so on a range of issues. I am not sure that I understand the answer, but it is as it is. I am not sure that I understand the answer, cabinet secretary. Just for clarity, could a local authority in working towards the outcomes that you have described carry on doing what it is doing at the moment, because in its view that is working towards the aims that you have described? If we have consensus, there is no need to use some of the blunt instruments as suggested by others. There is, of course, the opportunity for statutory guidance. There will be statutory guidance, and we will be working hard with colleagues about the detail that goes into that statutory guidance. In the business of building consensus here, as opposed to creating an inflexibility by legislating for a specific specification of standardised assessment. Is your expectation that local authorities will stop doing what they are currently doing? Yes, it is. It is my expectation. Okay, thank you very much for that. I am going to move on now to the questions on the headship qualifications. I am going to begin with Liam McArthur. I think that we started with the last panel just setting the scene before turning to the provisions in the bill. I think that we are all aware of issues. I have to say that I thought primarily in rural and remote parts of the country, but I think that the previous panel suggested that that was a more widespread problem affecting councils in urban and rural areas in terms of headship recruitment. We heard a number of examples where openings in particular primary schools were often attracting no applicants or a very limited number of applicants. In the context of the provisions being brought forward in this bill, we were interested to understand what Scottish Government is doing to respond to that particular challenge, what local authorities are doing, probably what both are doing jointly. Would you be able to shed some light on what is being done to address a problem, as I say, which appears to affect local authorities across the country? In terms of the vacancies of headteachers across the country, the most latest or up-to-date information that I have seen is 3.6 per cent. It is fair to say that around a third of vacancies appear to be located in particular parts of the country, so about 35 per cent of current vacancies would be Aberdeenshire Highland. We accept that the situation is more acute in some parts of the country than others. A vacancy rate of around 3 per cent would not be unknown or abnormal. In broad terms, we recognise that becoming a headteacher is a personally and professionally demanding role. The standard for headship is a way to support the demands that are placed on headteachers. We see it as part of the solution—it is not the whole solution—in terms of recruitment issues for headteachers in parts of the country, but we would see it as a sensible way forward. It has also been Scottish Government policies since 2005 that headteachers should have the appropriate qualification. I do not think that any of the previous panel thought that the standard for headship was part of the solution to the problem that we currently face. In the sense that the discussion was about how to accommodate those provisions in circumstances that are already quite challenging. We talk about a vacancy rate of about 3 per cent. We have heard of acting headships being appointed to bridge a gap. We have heard from the situation in Western Bartonshire, where the age profile is such that, within the next four to five years, around a third of current heads are likely to retire, a demographic that I do not suppose is radically different from other parts of the country. Against that background, it would be reassuring to hear something suggesting that, rather than layering on additional responsibilities, which are statutory rather than the choice and discretion of individual schools and individual local authorities, there was more of a concerted effort to try and address a problem of recruitment. Both things can operate in tandem. We are currently working with the Addis and others in and around the range of issues that impact on the recruitment of headteachers. There is a complexity to it. No doubt you will have heard evidence about issues in and around salary and job sizing. However, there is a clear credible case for headteachers having a specific qualification for what is a personally and professionally very demanding role. We expect classroom teachers to have a prerequisite of qualifications. That is building on the work that is done in terms of teaching Scotland's future. Across the education system, we are having a debate about how we increase the professionalisation of early years workers. That is very much in tandem with increasing professionalism and crucially supporting leadership within the cohort of headteachers. While I am acknowledging that there is more to be done in terms of alleviating recruitment difficulties that exist in particular parts of the country, that is not an argument against a headship qualification. It has been policy since 2005. 1,000 headteachers already have the existing qualification. There are 1,600 people with the existing qualification. Ultimately, the Scottish Government does not employ headteachers, we are not the employers. Nonetheless, we will seek to work with others to assist in recruitment difficulties. Just on that point, against that backdrop, the concern being expressed was that the speed at which those provisions would come in over three years. The argument that was made was that pushing that out even to 2020-22 may allow enough of an opportunity for those changes to bedding. Is that a change that you would be willing to consider? I mean, we are always willing to consider ideas and suggestions in terms of the state sector. I mean, this has been government policy since 2005. There are many headteachers already in the system with the existing qualification. There will have to be regulation making powers, because there is an acknowledgement in terms of the independent sector that we may have to look at a day post-2018 for the requirement to kick in for the independent sector, given that they currently have to work through the issues in and around ensuring that all their teachers are GTCS registered as well. We are alert to some of the issues and complexities. Colin Beattie I would like to look at one or two of the more practical issues around the appointments. Specifically about the appointments, will it be necessary for prospective headteachers to hold the standard before they are appointed to a post? Will they be given the opportunity to qualify perhaps within a certain period afterwards? It is our intention if it was a permanent appointment that before a permanent appointment of a headteacher could be made that they would have to have the standard for headship, where local authorities are making temporary provisions or acting up provisions, there could be some flexibility in and around that which may assist with some of the recruitment issues that Mr MacArthur has alluded to earlier. But anyone applying for a post as headteacher would require to have the standard already, the qualification already? If it was a permanent appointment, yes. In connection with training, could any teacher decide to take the standard and get the qualification in advance, but the view to maybe applying for a headteachers post later down the line? I think that that certainly happens just now because there are more people with the existing qualification than there are people employed as headteachers with the qualification. So there are 1,600 people with the existing headteacher qualification, 1,000 of them are in headteacher posts. John Pitland? The Scottish Government proposed amendment could very well add a financial burden and perhaps equality issues of access, especially for single parents, sole earners and possible candidates living in different parts of Scotland for those who want to enter the programme. Greg Demster from the previous panel said that financial burden should definitely not fall on the candidate. Who do you think should be responsible for meeting those costs considering there was a lack of applicants prior to this development and because of the apparent inadequate financial incentives to take on heads up? The first cohort for the new qualification, there are nearly 140 people participating in that and coming from 31 local authorities, so I think that that is a very encouraging take up rate. The Scottish Government is prepared to meet the cost, two thirds of the cost. We would have preferred to have done that in partnership with local government and had a three-way sharing of costs, but we are committed to this process. We did not want debates about who contributes to being a barrier, so we have made that commitment that we will meet two thirds of the cost. In terms of the longer term, we obviously need to go through a spending review and we will continue to have that dialogue with local government partners. It is fair to acknowledge that some local authorities meet the cost and therefore there is no additional financial burden on participants in some areas of the country, but I can appreciate how that would be iniquitous and it would be an area that we would want to revisit. I should also say that there is evidence to show that individuals investing some of their own income themselves in a qualification does improve completion rates, but I do appreciate that different things operating in different ways in different parts of the country may appear iniquitous to some. Do you not then think that there is a disadvantage for those people who may want to go up the career ladder and they cannot afford it? There is a disadvantage here? How do you support that? I think that that is what I have acknowledged, Mr Perler, that the Scottish Government is indeed supporting individuals to participate in this qualification by meeting two thirds of the cost. Some local authorities step up to the plate and make a financial contribution as well. I think that Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Cairnross councils have been examples of that. We have made a substantial commitment by meeting two thirds of the cost. I appreciate that that may in itself not be desirable to everybody. There will be many arguments that people will present that say that either the local government and the Scottish Government should be meeting the cost in full. You suggested there that local authorities who are already paying part cost in the existing qualification could then do the same for the new qualification. The previous panel seemed to have fears that it had to be the individual who paid that third of the cost. Are you saying that there would be no issue with the local authority stepping up to pay that third of the cost for somebody within their employ? There would not be any issue with that at all. My answer to Mr Perland is that I acknowledge that there is a wide variation of local practice, but Aberdeenshire, Perth and Cairnross councils are paying the individual contribution. The independent sector has expressed some concern not about the fact that there is to be increasing professional qualification, which I think that it has demonstrated already that there is increasing GTCS on that basis, but it has concern about the issue, which, as was evidence this morning, could restrict the pool of people that it may wish to appoint to head teacher posts, particularly in special schools that have very significant specialisms that are required. Do you think that it is the Government's right to tell governing boards what categories of people they could and could not appoint in the independent sector? One of the reasons that we may well certainly look at a delayed implementation date for the independent sector is to enable the GTCS to be able to establish equivalency procedures so that, if there were head teacher candidates coming from abroad where they could demonstrate skills, experience and qualification that was equivalent to the standard for headship, that there was a process by which that could be recognised. I do not think that it is unreasonable for baseline standards in terms of whether it is a national improvement framework, whether it is in terms of registered teachers or the qualifications that are required to be a head teacher, that those standards are available to the benefit of children and parents across both the independent sector. They are not arguing that at all. They are arguing a technical point that it is a governing council in the independent sector who appoints a head teacher, and that would be a restrictive policy in terms of the categories of people that we might be able to apply. The policy is with regard to ensuring that the qualifications or the equivalent qualifications are appropriate. I do not think that that is reasonable, but we are not appointing or choosing candidates. The governing council is. The implication from the GTCS is the fact that you might be restricting people from abroad, and the legal advice seems to indicate that. Would you consider an amendment in the area that might give some indication that you recognise that the independent sector has a different governing roles? The independent sector is already subject to registration and inspection processes, whether that is from Education Scotland or the care inspectorate. I am not sure whether I am really grasping what Liz Smith's specific concern is. It is exactly the same as the independent sector put to us this morning that the governing council in an independent school is by law the ones who have the authority and who they appoint. If they are restricted in the categories of people that they can appoint, then there is a serious problem, because the Government is then influencing a body that often has charitable status. I am not sure that you are entitled to do that. I do not think that we are interfering with the legal responsibilities of board members, but where regulation can clarify matters, I think that that is always helpful. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, and your officials for coming along this morning. You have evidence on the two proposed amendments, and I will suspend briefly. Our next item is to consider subordinate legislation, as listed on the agenda. Do members have any general comments that they want to make on the instrument? Lou MacArthur. Obviously, the subordinate legislation committee has looked at this, and it is compliant with powers under the 1992 act. As I said, when the statement was made to Parliament, this is not a comfortable position. I do not suppose that the minister is not a comfortable position for the Parliament to find itself in. Obviously, the task force has been established, but I think that this is an issue that we will need to return to in due course. I do not know when the task force is due to report back, but there have to be lessons learned in this that a nuclear option has been proposed here. Establishing what kind of checks and balances there are leading up to that point where the minister felt she had no option to take this decision would be useful for this committee to be exploring. Religious to support Lou MacArthur's point, it seems to me that the subordinate legislation committee has considered this. It is not clear that there is any great benefit in trying to reverse what has happened, but it is such a serious matter, both for the sector, for the college and for the individuals who were involved. It seems to me that the obligation on the committee is that it looks at what has happened here in more detail, at the very least, to learn what lessons might be applied in the future. The committee should commit to making sure that it does that. I agree with both those comments. Given that we have the task force, my understanding is that it will be published in the new year. We think that the timetable is. I think that it is very important that we go over this and certainly learn the lessons that can be. I would suggest to the committee, if it is agreeable, that we return to this in the new year in the context of the task force's publication. I look at it then. Are members agreeable to that? In terms of the instrument itself, there are two issues. There is the general question, which we will come to in a moment. In terms of the committee's standing orders under rule 10.3a, it requires that we look at the interpretation and legislative reform of Scotland Act 2010. I want to ask the committee, in light of the committee's standing order 10.3a, that requires the committee to consider whether the reasons given for breaching the 28-day rule are acceptable in the circumstances. Do the committee agree that they are reasonable? Finally, does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on the instrument? That is agreed. Thank you very much for that. I close the meeting.