Y distracting fel hwnnw, ar gyfer y cyfwreg yn gyfaluig yn 3-2-9-8, yn defnyddiaeth James Dorran, yn fawr dda i ddisrwynt Cymru ar y syddwyr ddiogelwch, ddisgrwynt Sql, Sql's Development Scotland ac y Tych Gunnedig panledig. Rydym ni i gael ei ddweud i'i dweud i'r ddisgrwynt ddod o'ch cyfaluig i'r dderwnt i ddisgrwynt i ddifuig yn Cyswll嵐 yn ddiogelwch i ddweud? I call on James Dornan to speak and move the motion on behalf of the Education and Skills Committee. Mr Dornan, 14 minutes please. That debate is happening today because the committee was struck by the views that received from front-line staff as part of its recent scrutiny of public bodies, in particular on the Scottish Qualifications Authority. We wanted to highlight that to the Parliament as a whole. It is also an opportun moment to debate the role of the SQA Education Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland bodies, since they are all covered by the terms of a Government review at present, whether it be the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland under the Enterprise and Skills review, or the SQA and Education Scotland within the Education and Governance review. I want to start with a quick whistle-top tour for non-committee members of how the committee sourced this valuable evidence. The committee decided that an early piece of work that should undertake was an assessment of how well the key public organisations overseeing school education, further education, higher education and skills for young people were delivering. The ways that we gathered views are not new, but the combination of them led to a very credible thread of issues for members to pursue. From the off-the-education and skills committee-made inclusivity, a strategic priority in its work, to me that means trying to make the ways that we invite evidence as unintimidating as possible. The focus on the public body's work was getting candid views from front-line staff that we could use to challenge the big bodies. We wanted to make sure that the link between practical front-line experience and the way that these bodies functions is there. In gathering views, we are aware that submitting evidence to Parliament can be very daunting. Even a language submitting evidence would understandably put a lot of individuals off. That barrier can sometimes prevent us from receiving the most candid and therefore valuable views. The key to our work was offering anonymity through three means. First, a survey, secondly, anonymous submissions and thirdly, a meeting with teachers. The meeting was a relatively random sample of teachers who were coming to Parliament for another reason as part of our education centre's work towards the professional development of teachers. That meeting, which I attended with my colleague Ross Greer, was a valuable lesson for me. I got into the room with an idea of what I was going to hear and the views of those teachers certainly rewrote my take in quite a few things. What was stark from this meeting and the submission from teachers was that, especially with the promise of anonymity, there was an outpouring of views from some contributors there. It has to be said that the real strength of feeling was about the functioning of the SQA. You need only to read the submission from the Scottish Association of Geography teachers, for example, to get a sense of that. What was even more notable was the extent to which the views in the SQA from teacher submissions and submissions from some academics and some other stakeholders were along very similar lines. Perhaps most notable was the survey response in the SQA. Despite survey results, summary highlights, as it is appropriate to do so, are the limitations of the survey. That is not a random sample and therefore, of course, is not representative of the views of all teachers. Over 646 people, including 462 teachers, chose to respond in the SQA compared to 340 people in Education Scotland, including 211 teachers. It is telling that over twice as many teachers chose to respond in the SQA. From the 646 responses in the SQA, 67 per cent of respondents disagreed strongly with the statement that SQA's customers and users trust it to get it right for them. Even acknowledging the limitations of the survey results, that result is very hard to ignore. All that evidence led to a very searching evidence session with the SQA, with detailed and varied comments from teachers' anonymous submissions adding real resonance to the criticisms that the committee members put to the SQA's chief executive. The ability for the committee to act as a mouthpiece for teachers gave the SQA a clear understanding of the challenges that it faces from those in the know, the teachers themselves. At the end of the session, I made clear that the committee would expect changes to be made, in particular given the amount of change under way that the SQA is responsible for overseeing. For example, changes resulting from the removal of unit assessments. The SQA left the meeting with a very clear message that it needs to make improvements and make them fast. The committee did hear some positive views in the SQA, and the SQA did highlight to the committee the positive feedback that it has received through its own independently commissioned work. There are, of course, other views out there, but the SQA was accepting of the strength of the results generated when teachers were given the opportunity to speak freely to an independent committee. Moving on to the other organisations, the SDS and SFC had a positive report card from the survey, granted from a far smaller sample. The SDS also had its progress to report on the delivery of the Government's aims for modern apprenticeships. It continues to meet its overall targets in this regard. Engagement in delivery at a local level and equalities considerations in the delivery of its work were raised in written evidence and therefore were a focus of the evidence session with the SDS. I am sure that other members will pick up on those issues in more detail later in the debate. The role of the Scottish Funding Council was explored in its evidence session, including the importance of being able to demonstrate to key stakeholders such as universities and colleges where it is performing a challenge function to Government. The discussion and role highlighted the need for further clarity in the exact implications of the enterprise and skills review on the Scottish Funding Council, given that its board will be replaced by an overarching board, as recommended by phase 1. The committee decided, having heard this evidence, that it would be prudent to take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work on those issues. The committee then wrote to the cabinet secretary following the meeting seeking more information on which bodies had suggested the removal of the SFC to be replaced by an overarching board. As the committee stated in this letter, the committee is committed to testing the evidence base for that recommendation, and one will undoubtedly give the phase 2 findings consideration in the spring. The session with the fourth body, Education Scotland, included a focus on the dual role of the body, something that members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Education Committee have been very prominent on. Education Scotland refuted the suggestion that there was a conflict of interest and suggested that the distinct roles were clear. Since then, I say that a number of submissions to the governance review have commented on this, so again, this is another likely theme for today's debate. Lastly, specifically on Education Scotland, there was a focus on the types and frequency of inspection that would add value to schools, as some of the survey results from teachers suggested that their school inspections had not always added a lot of value from their perspective. I would like to quickly make comment on some of the themes that arose relating to education bodies in relation to the curriculum for excellence. The burden on teachers having been excessive was acknowledged by the SQA, Education Scotland and Education Authority representatives during their separate evidence sessions. Work is under way at the cabinet secretary's behest to reduce the burden, but the committee wants to look at how that arose in the first place. Having heard from those bodies, we will hear from the curriculum for excellence management board next week to establish whether everyone is clear who is responsible for what in ensuring strong decision taking. That will include looking back at a number of key decisions taken in the evolution of the curriculum flexions and the process of implementation. In particular, I will be interested to learn whether those who should be acting as a challenge function to ensure that the cumulative amount of information produced is not excessive for fulfilling that role. Local authorities in their role as education authorities and also as responsible employers should see part of their core role as protecting the wellbeing of their workforce and ensuring that workforce is protected from excessive working demands. Local authority representatives on the board should be well appraised of the practical experience of teachers and other staff working education through strong lines of communication with the various education authorities that they represent. The focus of the debate is not education authorities, but I want to highlight the importance of the role that they play in acting as a challenge function to the SQA in Education Scotland and others on the curriculum for excellence management board. The evidence that we received from COSLA, in my personal view, gave the impression that they had not performed the challenge function that teachers would expect of them in the face of excessive guidance going to teachers. In my view, that is not acceptable. It is also not acceptable to prevent parliamentary committees from speaking to teachers to gather their views. That was the case when one of our members sought to meet teachers local to his area. His education authority told him that he could not do this. I have every sympathy if teachers do not have time to meet members, but for an education authority to deny communication with teachers who are happy to engage is not something that the committee will accept, and therefore we have written to the education authority in question for an explanation. It is fair to say that I await their response with some interest. I want to make it clear that the issue was only encountered with one education authority and that other members, including myself, undertook visits to schools in their local area to inform their committees' work without any issues at all. I thank the teachers and support staff who made those visits possible. Turning back to the four bodies in question, I hope that my broad summary of the issue is explored with the bodies that gives members who are not on the committee a sense of the area that the committee has explored. I should emphasise that today we are talking about performance and role. Our members do not plan to cover detail on the future budget provision for those organisations, as that would put us in danger of veering towards budget recommendations that are not yet in the public domain. Rather, we are looking at the key issues in the paper circulated for the debate, and those include, are those bodies delivering on their core functions, should the role of those organisations or their structures change as a result of the education governance review or the enterprise and skills review, are those organisations sufficiently mindful of the qualities when delivering their functions, and do those bodies respond effectively to the needs of stakeholders and to constructive advice. The motion for debate mentions the importance of parliamentary scrutiny, and that means a joined-up approach from backbenchers to have the greatest impact. I had not anticipated when I became convener the number of other committees that would become involved in issues that cross over into our broad remit, and my last count was seven other committees. Do not get me wrong, that additional scrutiny is to be welcomed. I just want to ensure, as part of my role, that it is co-ordinated that progress that is made in other committees or other parts of the Parliament's work is communicated to us and vice versa. For example, the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee has undertaken valuable work scrutinising the Scottish Funding Council as follow-up work in Audit Scotland's overview reports on universities and colleges. Co-ordinating scrutiny across committees will be particularly important when looking at the proposal stemming from Government reviews. How we do so effectively might be a matter for the conveners group to consider further. Understandably, the local government and communities committee intended to look at any proposal from the education governance review that impact on the role of local government and their role as education authorities and any changes in the associated funding levels. In addition, the economy, fair work and jobs committee took evidence at phase 1 of the enterprise and skills review, including from Skills Development Scotland, and may well look again at proposals at phase 2. The second letter that the Education and Skills Committee received from the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work suggested that there would be further consultation at phase 2, so that there is a further opportunity for parliamentary input. Of course, there will be legislation to bring about the proposals that result from the education governance review and the enterprise and skills review. In my last couple of minutes, I want to look back to the evidence garden. I have placed a good deal of emphasis on the evidence from teachers, so I wish to give my sincere thanks to those bodies and academics who have taken the time to contribute their views to the committee. It is sometimes a delicate process for organisations that have valuable working relationships with public bodies to provide constructive criticism through a parliamentary consultation about those bodies. I would also like to specifically thank the organisations that we scrutinised. They have all been very accommodating in assisting the committee with its work. For example, a number of members have visited local SDS offices or projects in the fortnight leading up to the evidence session, including myself. The committee wishes to thank Skills Development Scotland for facilitating those visits and particularly tailoring each visit to the specific interests of each of our members. The Scottish Funding Council, Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority have also arranged visits or attended informal meetings with small groups of members to give us more of a sense of their day-to-day activity. This included, in some cases, involving more junior staff than those who give evidence to committee. This provided a useful insight into the work of organisations at an operational as well as a strategic level. Finally, in relation to future work, the committee will seek to build on its first experience of engaging the views of front-line staff, including on the education legislation arising from the governance review. Of course, engagement with parents and indeed children and young people will be crucial too, so I want to close with a general shout-out to those who have something to say, but have a misconception that they need to wait to see what a committee focuses on in its work programme or wait to be invited to contribute in a formal format before they can express a view. That is not how our committee is working. If you are a young person, a parent or work in one of our schools, colleges, universities or within the organisations that we scrutinise and you think things need to change to improve the opportunities and experiences of our young people, we want to hear from you. One of the teachers who wrote to us even stated that the committee's questioning of the SQA, based on teachers' views, restored their faith in politicians. I would venture that we still have a wee bit more to do to convince other people in that regard, but this piece of work is a strong start. I want to finish off now by thanking my fellow committee members for their contribution and support. All of my fantastic clerking team, led by the inimitable Royce Thompson, is brilliantly supported by Ned Sharratt. Most importantly, I wish to thank the teachers and others for taking the time to share their valuable experience with us. Thank you very much. Mr Swinney, restored faith in politicians, therefore I call on you to answer on behalf of the Government, to open the Government. Nine minutes are thereabouts, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome this afternoon's debate brought forward by the Education and Skills Committee and of the issues covered by the convener in his introductory remarks. This is an opportunity for the Government to reaffirm our commitment to doing the very best that we can for children and young people and to ensure that every one of those young people can fulfil their potential through their participation in the Scottish education system. That commitment is also shared by Education Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council bodies, which play a crucial role in delivering and improving high-quality education in Scotland. The committee has undertaken considerable scrutiny of the performance of those national agencies, and the convener has explained some of that detail in his remarks already. It has questioned them on specific criticism that is raised through its online surveys and has identified issues on which they have challenged the SQA and Education Scotland, particularly on performance, on communication and on guidance. I wish to make clear to the chamber that I welcome feedback from anyone with a stake in Scottish education. Indeed, I spend a great deal of my time engaged in exactly that pursuit. I will always expect the highest standards from national bodies charged with improving outcomes for young people in Scotland. At the outset of the debate, without questioning the importance of holding those agencies to account, I want to make it clear that I believe that those agencies contribute a significant amount of positive benefit to the delivery of Scottish education. In the most recent survey undertaken independently on behalf of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which was published in January 2016, 84 per cent of respondents believed that the SQA had high credibility and 91 per cent believed that the SQA could be trusted as an organisation. In its assessment of the implementation of curriculum for excellence, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, said that Education Scotland has been a linchpin in providing the guidance resources and quality assurance for the implementation of curriculum for excellence. As well as acknowledging the criticism that can be levelled at organisations and, of course, criticism that can be levelled at all organisations, it is important that we place on record the fact that there is significant strength in those organisations that contribute towards the delivery of Scottish education and the performance that we experience in Scottish education. It is important at the outset of the debate that we focus on the questions of what all of this produces, of what is the impact and the outcome of all of this activity. I want to go through with Parliament a number of examples about the current performance of Scottish education. The overwhelming majority of children in our education system are performing well in school under curriculum for excellence. At least 84 per cent of pupils are achieving the expected level or better in literacy and numeracy by the end of S3. The number of advanced higher passes reached a record high in 2016, while the number of higher passes was second only to the record high in 2015. More of our population is educated beyond school than any other European country, and a higher percentage of young people now leave school for positive destinations than at any time on record. We have seen annual increases in the proportion of school leavers reaching at least SCQF level 5, 73.2 per cent in 2007-08, reaching 85.2 per cent in 2014-15, and the gap between our 20 per cent most and least deprived pupils achieving this level has reduced from 36.8 per cent points in 2007-08 to 20.9 per cent points in 2014-15. While school leavers from our 10 per cent least deprived communities are around twice as likely as those from the 10 per cent most deprived communities to achieve at least one qualification at higher or above, that is a notable improvement on the position in 2007-08 when they were almost four times as likely to do so. The gap between those from the most and least deprived communities in positive follow-up school leaver destinations continues to narrow. For 2014-15, the gap was 10 per cent points down from 20.2 per cent points in 2009-10, which is the earliest year for which comparable data exists. Finally, in 2014-15, 14 per cent of Scottish domiciled full-time first degree entrance to Scottish universities were from SIMD-20 up from 11.2 per cent in 2006-07. Although there is legitimate ground for us to consider and to challenge and to press for improvements in performance in Scottish education, there are very strong foundations upon which we build at this time. Jenny Marra The Cabinet Secretary for Giving Way, I want to ask him about the SIMD figures that he just raised. Is he aware that the University of Scotland and a number of individual universities have drawn question marks over the efficacy of using SIMD on its own and not with other indicators to make sure that it is the most deprived pupils that are getting into university and not more affluent pupils who happen to live in that postcode? John Swinney I think that there may well be issues that have to be considered. That is precisely why we have appointed our commissioner for widening access to make sure that those issues can be thoroughly considered. It is important that we record on a comparative basis the progress that has been made on that very important indicator to demonstrate the strength of the improvements in performance that are being achieved. As the Government embarks on its reform agenda in education based on very solid foundations, we have to be mindful of the fact that some of the data that we heard prior to Christmas was extremely challenging data about the performance of the education system. Our reform agenda is designed to address those issues. One of those key aspects is the review of governance, which closed just on Friday. At its heart is the presumption that decisions about children's learning and school life should be made at school level. We will be looking closely at the responses that we have had, including to consider the roles of Education Scotland and the SQA, as I indicated at the outset that we would do. I make the point to Parliament that the delivery of success in Scottish education is not just down to the work of the SQA or Education Scotland. The performance of Scottish education is influenced by a whole range of organisations, including the Scottish Government, and most significantly by local authorities, who carry the statutory responsibility to deliver effective education for all. The purpose of the governance review is to ensure that every element of the system fulfills their roles to the highest standards that we can expect. The Government will bring forward relevant proposals back to Parliament in due course, based on the outcome of the research in the governance review. Excellent education is vital for our society, not just for our economy, but most importantly for the individual life chances of every single child and young person. Our education and training system must support every one of those individuals to make their contribution to our economy. The Enterprise and Skills Review, highlighted by the motion, will help us to achieve that. I want to put on record that I welcome the committee's scrutiny of that process. I also welcome its support for its ambition to take fresh action towards our long-term ambition, encapsulated in Scotland's economic strategy, to rank in the top quartile of OECD countries for productivity, equality, wellbeing and sustainability. That is the focus and the purpose of the Enterprise and Skills Review. It is to establish how by creating greater alignment and greater cohesion between the work of Scottish Enterprise, Hans-Anne's Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council. We can ensure that we take the necessary collaborative and cohesive steps to improve the economic performance of Scotland and to build on the strong foundations that are established in our education system. As the convener correctly said, phase 2 of that process has commenced, and the Government will be delighted to engage with Parliament and with committees on the progress of phase 2 of that review. Together with the learner journey that we will commence in due course and the school governance reforms, that work will help to create a more seamless and focused education and skills system in Scotland, which will give every young person the best opportunity that they can to prosper through our education system, but also give them the greatest opportunity to make a contribution to the economic life of Scotland. The Government welcomes this opportunity to debate and to consider the role of these agencies, but I stress the point to Parliament that is of significance. Education and its success is a consequence of the work and the participation of a whole range of different organisations, not just the four organisations that are part of this debate today. I look forward to reflecting on the debate in my concluding remarks later this afternoon. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. I call on the Smith for the Conservatives. Seven minutes, please, Ms Smith. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I am very grateful to the convener of the Education and Skills Committee for setting out the parameters of this debate. He is quite correct to say that we have to scrutinise these public bodies, we have to measure their respective performances against the Scottish Government's national performance framework, how they evaluate the quality of their delivery, how they manage change in terms of the Christie commission, et cetera. However, good quality scrutiny is, of course, entirely dependent upon the availability and the effective analysis of the evidence provided, and I want to examine both of those. I do so in light of my 10 years in attending committee sessions in this Parliament, which I believe are the most important forum for establishing the detail that members, and indeed the public, need to know before they make political judgments on specific issues and before policy is developed. As the convener rightly intimated, the committee heard very strong four lengthy sessions, and that was a result of several things. Firstly, the volume of the responses that we received and, as he pointed out, some of them were from an anonymous position to allow free expression. Secondly, because, naturally, the Scottish Government has put such store on education, it was right and proper that it was a very comprehensive and wide-ranging review. As such, it is difficult to know where to start, but let me begin with what happened in these committee sessions themselves. As the Parliament is well aware, there were some extraordinary exchanges during these sessions in November and December, which made it all too clear that each of those four public bodies currently faces significant problems, albeit to varying degrees. As such, in some cases, they have lost the confidence of some key people in the education profession. I think that what struck me most of all was the issue about communication within and between those four public bodies. Far too often, the committee was faced with jargon, instead of plain English—the irony, of course, being that this is the time that the country is trying to improve literacy and numeracy—and, as such, the evidence was often muddled and open to different interpretations. At times, it was actually unintelligible and, therefore, the lines of responsibility were unclear. All of those issues were a matter of concern, and they are slightly different from the issues of the fact that we received very conflicting views from the agencies and professionals on the ground—something that, of course, is quite normal within the committee system. The committee convener reflected upon the strong views among teachers, and he is right to do so. That mattered, because, as we tried to reconcile completely contrasting views, it became increasingly apparent—through, I may say, the evidence provided by more than one of those agencies—that the criteria by which the evidence was being produced was not consistent, and in some cases it was actually incomplete. I will come back to that in just a minute. My colleagues will concentrate on specific areas of the evidence in respect, but I want to develop some important general principles, four in particular. First, there are clearly issues about strategic decision making and the respective timescales in which that takes place. More than once, reservations have been expressed about the fact that the strategic decision making is compromised by the lack of a longer-term approach. I use the example of the concerns among colleges and universities that their longer-term sustainability, which is so important to the maintenance of their competitive advantage, is threatened by the fact that the Scottish funding council appears to live from year to year, rather than looking at a three-year or perhaps a five-year term. That is a point that has been raised by Audit Scotland, and it is something that was raised at the Audit Committee of Parliament on 1 December. Lack of effective strategy is also the main reason why there have been so many changes to policy and guidelines in SQA and education Scotland. Changes that the cabinet secretary recognised when he announced his bid to declutter the CFE landscape. The OECD mentioned this crucial point, too, when it flagged up the long list of CFE capacities, attributes, capabilities, levels, 1,820 outcomes and experiences. It is the fact that those have all been changed and amended several times and now replaced with new ones, albeit fewer and simpler in number. However, we should be very clear that it is not the teachers who asked for the edicts, but the agencies themselves. When you hear that the excuse for mistakes being made within exams—we have had some—is because there has been an overburden of workload, it is little wonder that that does not inspire the confidence among teachers. What I worry about most and what I am sure parents are worried about is the effective delivery of the curriculum for excellence, which is the single biggest educational reform in a generation. Of course, the impact that that has on qualifications and on-subject choice in the senior phase is serious issues and the committee is right to be concerned. Secondly, we heard on several occasions that there are question marks over whether the agencies have sufficient resources and whether they are able to deploy them properly. It is a question raised by colleges and universities about the Scottish Funding Council, not about the skills set of its staff but whether there are sufficient of them with the skills to ensure that Scottish Funding Council officers have the in-depth knowledge of the institutions and the outcome agreements for what is responsible. It is a question raised by SQA when it comes to finding sufficient markers at the right time with the right knowledge for the wide diversity of qualifications now being sat. It is a question that needs to be answered by Education Scotland how it feels able to take on the dual role of being judge and jury when it comes to the main body that both implements education policy and also inspects our schools. On that same theme, we have had issues about the accuracy of data. In the session with Education Scotland, there was a complete lack of clarity when it came to them commenting on their own table, which was supposed to show the number of school inspections. We were left unclear about whether there were statistics that included projections or not. In one case, there appeared to be arithmetic, which told the committee that the number of inspections had fallen when there was a contorted attempt to say that it actually had risen. That is simply not acceptable and that is something that we need to do something about radically and quickly. Let me come to the wider issue of data because again this was a comment picked up by the committee evidence and by the OECD, namely that Scotland does not have the sufficient, relevant baseline data at the start of the CFE and therefore is not in a position to be able to do enough proper analysis of exactly what progress is being made in the curriculum for excellence. Finally, I think that there have been questions about the links between the Scottish Government and its agencies, whether the latter are in fact at arm's length bodies or whether they are being drawn more and more into Government direction. Indeed, I think that it is completely unclear as to what the management board of the curriculum for excellence has actually been doing for nine years and therefore there are questions about its responsibilities. May I finish, Deputy Presiding Officer, on the fact that, in November and December, the Education and Skills Committee was an eye-opener, but it was also deeply worrying, as I think that the various sessions collectively showed just exactly why the Education and Skills brief is providing the Scottish Government with so many headaches. We wholeheartedly support the work of the convener—we want to thank the work of the clerks—and may I say that I think that we have an awful lot of work to do to bring these education agencies to account. They are simply not doing well enough and that is a matter of great concern to this Parliament. Scotland's education system is critical to the future of our country and vital if our young people are to fulfil their potential. Yet our once lauded system is falling behind on international measures. The Education and Skills Committee where it compounds those concerns having found serious issues with the organisations responsible for our exams, inspections and the curriculum. Those conclusions point clearly to what we need to fix in Scotland's education system. I would like to thank colleagues on the Education and Skills Committee for bringing this debate forward. Indeed, I would like to thank the convener, James Dornan, for his very thorough summary of the evidence that we have looked at. I would also like to thank the clerks and SPICE for preparing the reports and information that is provided to us specifically to the very helpful paper that was sent to all MSPs this week. One of the things that marks out the seriousness of the debate is the fact that that paper needed to ask such a fundamental question as, do our educational bodies deliver on their core functions? I know that not every member was glued to their TV screens while the committee was taking all its evidence. Those questions may come as a bit of a surprise, but let me read from the official report when the head of the SQA said that the negative views around qualifications were because of the way in which they, and I quote, have been designed and implemented and the way in which they have worked. When a chief exec says, don't worry, the problems are just about how we plan, how we operate and how everything works, you have to conclude that something is seriously wrong. The significance of the problems were emphasised by a survey that was conducted for the committee, which revealed a crisis of confidence in those agencies from teachers. The committee's evidence indicates that teachers no longer have trust in the SQA or Education Scotland. Just 20 per cent of survey respondents trusted the SQA to, quote, get it right. Teachers pointed to unclear documentation, change through fatigue, inconsistency. The majority of teachers expressed criticism of Education Scotland's guidance and support. More than half expressed reservations about the independence of evaluation of education provision. Those initial concerns were compounded by the evidence that we received from the organisations themselves. Not only is there a failure in how those organisations are interacting with teachers, but there was a failure to explain how they are accountable, responsible or indeed delivering on what they are charged with. The evidence that the committee received showed that the SQA's faults with particular exams such as the higher maths paper in 2015 or geography last year, whether the teaching time for each exam over a single year was possible and indeed who had responsibility for the design of that. Neither the SQA nor Education Scotland were able to explain how the curriculum and the examination system were meant to work together or indeed who was responsible for that integration. The narrowing of the curriculum and result of the new exam system was called into question. Education Scotland failed to explain the fallen inspections and indeed it could not explain its independence in that role, given its other functions. So when you reel off the litany of failures by those key organisations, surely it should be part of this part of the system, those Government agencies that need reform, rather than the Government's plans to just simply shift power around between schools and local authorities. The Government have not presented sufficient evidence that their plans will help to improve standards. The Government, in the words of the Royal Society for Edinburgh, has not made the case. Children in Scotland, which represents 500 bodies across the public, private and voluntary sectors, said that there was virtually no evidence to support the view that changing governance will reduce the attainment gap. Most worrying is the respected worldwide study PISA, which came out last month, that showed that, after a decade of SNP stewardship of the education system, we have seen standards go backwards. Across the core measures of reading, maths and science, Scotland has gone from being one of the best to merely or indeed barely average. The children in the study have spent their whole school lives under curriculum for excellence, under the guidance of the SNP. I believe that it is worth returning to the OECD report that was published in December 2015. I am grateful to Mr Johnson for giving me an interest in his point about curriculum for excellence and the experience of young people. Do I deduce from what he has just said that Mr Johnson is no longer a supporter of curriculum for excellence? The point is about the way that curriculum for excellence integrates with the examination system. That was the very point that both the SQA and education Scotland were entirely unable to explain who had taken responsibility for those core points of integration between those two elements of the junior and senior phase in senior school. That is a highly worrying conclusion to have arrived at. Returning to the OECD report that was published in December 2015, that said that curriculum for excellence was at a make-or-break moment. Indeed, reading from the report one year on, it imagined the negative scenario of a context of criticism and cuts that could lead to micromanagement from the centre and growing tension between Government and councils. People will rightly ask whether the SNP is walking down this exact road of cuts and centralisation that the OECD so clearly warned us against. At this make-or-break moment, surely the focus must be on education Scotland and the SQA—the body is responsible for making curriculum for excellence work. When we have the body of evidence in front of us, surely that is where reform must lie? Where is the ambition and the effort, as the OECD put it, to unleash the potential of curriculum for excellence? The First Minister said that her top priority is education. Indeed, the Deputy First Minister has come to his new role saying that he has got the answers, that his governance review is the thing that will fix education in Scotland. Indeed, he is using the fact that Scottish education is facing the issues that is highlighted by pieces of his justification for his preferred reforms, but those failures are the result of his party's time in government. It is the SNP who created education in Scotland, which now cannot explain who is responsible for curriculum for excellence. It is this Scottish Government who created the exams that our teachers are now struggling to make work. It is this administration who are overseeing those bodies, who are experiencing a catastrophic loss of trust from the teaching profession. Before this debate, we knew the legacy of 10 years of SNP Government, 4,000 fewer teachers in our schools, 1,000 fewer support staff and Scotland's fall from the worlds that are leading to barely or merely average. However, today's debate shows us that the Government is not just failing to fund education properly, but they are failing to run it properly too, dysfunction in the two main education agencies, problems with the way that our curriculum and exams work, a crisis of consonants from our teacher, and so, yes, we need to reform, but the SNP should look to their own record and fix the mistakes that they have made. Thank you very much. Mr Johnson, we now move to the open debate. Full to McGregor, to be followed by Liam Kerr. Mr McGregor, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As a member of the Education and Skills Committee, it gives me great pleasure to contribute to this debate. I want to start my contribution by paying tribute and giving thanks to the many, many teachers, assistants and various other staff who work tirelessly day in and day out in our schools and wider education system, including some of the bodies mentioned by the convener and other speakers. The chamber may remember that it was just during 2014, less than three years ago, when the ONS showed that Scotland was the most educated country in Europe. I think that that is important to keep in mind as we go through this debate, and as scrutinising has been tough at times on the witnesses and members, as the convener has already said, it is important to remember that we do have the basis of a world-class education system that has been renowned. Presiding Officer, on the 16th of November, I visited the SQA offices in Glasgow with my committee colleague Ross Thompson. I think that it is fair that I use my time to talk a wee bit about them as their evidence session with the SQA was, after all, what brought around this debate. When Mr Thompson and I visited, we met Janet Brown and a number of senior officials. We heard about the day-to-day work of the SQA, engagement with teachers and schools, development of awards and how performance is generally measured. We also had the privilege of meeting some of the staff and heard about the customer management and the particular difficulties on results day and how that is handled. Further to that, we have to take into account the evidence received to which the convener has talked about, which was far from complementary. Teachers are taking time to contact us about concerns that they had about the SQA, raising questions about the function of the SQA, the pressures on teachers and the organisation, with some questioning, was it fit for purpose. I also think that it is worth noting that the survey size was around 400 plus out of 50,000 plus teachers. Over the past few years, we have heard a lot about the silent majority—I have not heard this term until a couple of years ago—but what does that say about the 49,500 or so who did not respond? Are they happy? Are they satisfied? Or do indeed those who responded speak for all? I am not sure. I cannot say with any certain date, and I do not know that Mdales here can. I merely pose the question. I know that there will be colleagues in the chamber today, to my left and my right, who will think that, by me raising the validity of the survey, I am somehow not scrutinising. I would like to say that that is far from it. I have a slightly different view, and I do not believe that every time we scrutinise it needs to be bad, bad, dare I say it, hashtag bad. I come from a different angle, that, when scrutinising, you can still do it through a positive framework. I believe that that is how I will continue to take it forward, as I do believe my colleagues in this party and government. I do not think that people want us or our teachers or people want us to be necessarily negative all the time when we are scrutinising, and I do think that Mr Johnson's approach was particularly negative. I thank him for doing so. He makes a very important point that scrutinising is not always about being bad. It is about being good, too. The key point, however, as he will acknowledge, given some of the good questions that he asked of the education agencies, is that we got muddled and confused evidence that did not allow us to carry out the scrutinising effectively. Would he accept that? I would like to continue on and develop my point further on. I thank the member for making the intervention, because what I was going on to say was that the views of those who did contribute must be taken into account. I do not think that anybody would deny that. I was merely putting the views into the context of how many people had responded to the survey. For the avoidance of any doubt, I would like to quote what I said to Janet Brown and the SQA during the committee evidence session, which, when I read it again, I thought was quite balanced on the face of it. I said at that evidence session that there is no escaping the fact that the submissions are very damning for you. Indeed, you have reflected that view. Can you convince me and this committee that you will seek to change the nature of the relationship between the SQA and teachers? I would like to get an answer that would make me think that, when you come back next year, things will have changed. I think that you are capable of doing that. Indeed, the team that we met last week is fantastic. Your opening statement and your previous two responses have covered the facts, but I want to feel convinced. I hope that the improvements that we all seek will be made and that we will be able to discuss that in the Parliament at some point in the future. As members will know, I have had excellent educational facilities in my constituency, and I take every opportunity to praise them here during debates and members' debates. Indeed, just yesterday, during an excellent debate that was brought forward by Liz Smith, I highlighted the excellent work that has been done by four primary schools in relation to physical activity, the daily mile, and that has been done through the curriculum for education framework. I was very pleased to be able to do that, and each of those four primary schools retweeted and commented last night on that particular debate. However, as the convener alluded to, it was disappointing that significant barriers were put up by North Lanarkshire Council to prevent teachers from being involved in the committee process. Most of us have a good relationship with each of the schools and some of the members of the senior staff at North Lanarkshire's HQ, such as Isabel Boyd, whom I will give a mention to, and they did not seem to have any major objections to the process. I was not going to comment, but when the convener mentioned his statement, I would like to point out that, unfortunately, the decision has appeared to be political in nature, and as it is local and the convener and I have taken it up with the council leader, I will leave it at that, and I do believe that the council leader will not be satisfied with how the situation was dealt with. Let me finish off where I started by thanking those involved in the system for the amazing job that they do. Education is the most important part of any society, I believe, so the commitment of the Government and the Cabinet Secretary to make education Scotland's number one priority is an important one. As we have already heard, the Government is committed to funding and to reducing the attainment gap. There is a lot of work to be done in this area, as other members have said, and everyone in this chamber, every local authority and anyone who is involved in education from nursery to university should be prepared to work together constructively and in a positive up-beat manner to make sure that Scotland retains its days as a world leader in education. We had some time in hand, so I give a minute or so over for interventions. I give Liam Kerr to be followed by Monica Lennon and Mr Kerr, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. On 16 November 2016, Dr John Kemp, interim director of the Scottish Funding Council, appeared before the Education Committee. He stated that the ambition of the SFC is that Scotland will be the best place in the world in which to educate, learn, research and innovate. He added the SFC's task is to care for and develop the whole system of colleges and universities and their connections with and contribution to Scotland's educational, social and cultural life. I do not doubt it, nor that its dedicated staff are committed to those ambitions. However, despite its position as a non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government operating at arm's length, there is significant concern, articulated well by NUS Scotland, that the SFC must not simply implement ministerial guidance and must remain more than a vehicle through which funding is delivered. The distance between ministers and the SFC is becoming increasingly blurred. What is more, those at the SFC and in charge of our higher education system are aware that the public and indeed our education professionals are losing confidence in how education is being managed in our country. One of the major initiatives of this Government in the area of higher education has been the merger and creation of regional colleges, and to say that the reaction, not least in the Public Audit Committee, scrutiny sessions, has been mixed would be putting it mildly. In November 2015, the EIS published a survey of college lecturers in Scotland. 89 per cent did not believe that merger had improved learning and teaching quality. 91 per cent did not believe that their merger had improved management of their college. 94 per cent did not believe that their merger had improved staff morale. I won't as important you hear this, so if you want to write to me afterwards, I undertake to respond. The Government— I'm afraid that's rather pompous, but go for it. I want to make sure that I get all my words in, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would give you an extra minute if you took an intervention. It's up to you. Oh, go on. Not very gracefully said, but there you are, Ms Martyn. I'm grateful to the member for letting me give this intervention. Mr Kerr will know that I used to work in one of the colleges that he is talking about, and of course he is a North East Scotland representative. Can I ask if you have actually visited North East Scotland College and asked directly the board or any of the staff of North East Scotland College about their feelings on the merger in our area? I thank Gillian Martin for the intervention. I thank the Deputy Presiding Officer for allowing me the opportunity to say, yes, I have. Audit Scotland's Government and the SFC points to savings of £50 million, but Audit Scotland's report of August 2016 Scotland's Colleges, which was also scrutinised at the Public Audit Committee, says that the savings arose mainly from a real-terms reduction in funding to the sector as a whole and not just merged colleges. Audit Scotland says that it remains unclear how much of these savings are as a direct result of college mergers. The same report also raises very serious concerns regarding the SFC policy of cutting funding for part-time courses. Audit Scotland states that that has led to a decrease of 53 per cent in part-time female student numbers. It is this level of parliamentary scrutiny and openness that is mandated if Parliament and the people of Scotland are to have confidence in the system. I would rather not, thank you. Universities Scotland put it well in saying that the SFC should be, quote, an independent expert body at arm's length from the Government that can develop detailed policy on how to support the sector's success with broad overall strategic guidance from government. However, as Dr Kemp told Johann Lamont in the education committee on 16 November, when we speak to ministers, we speak to them in private because that is the way to give advice. Are private discussions really how an arm's length organisation should operate? As Liz Smith pointed out at the same meeting, Audit Scotland are increasingly of the view that the long-term strategy of the SFC lacks transparency and sufficient scrutiny, which leads neatly into the motion's focus on the Scottish Government's enterprise and skills review. So many organisations, individuals and many in this chamber find the proposals outlined in phase 1 of the Government's enterprise and skills review concerning, particularly in relation to the creation of a new super board. The Government proposes that it will create a new Scotland-wide statutory board to co-ordinate HIE and SE, including SDI, SDS and the SFC. The fact is that this proposal, possibly or maybe probably, with a minister in the chair, will make the SFC more political—another arm of government accountable to Government ministers. That will have a detrimental impact on the vital academic independence of our universities and higher education establishments. No, I won't. In November, Universities Scotland rightly said this. We need to make sure that universities are independent actors, that we are working in partnership with Government but we are still working as autonomous charities, that we are another force of initiative in society and not being brought into a directive relationship from the Government. What is the impact of the new super board? The Public Audit Committee was concerned to hear from Alistair Sim that the more we come into the sphere of influence of and direction from government, the higher the risk of being reclassified for ONS purposes, which means that we cannot earn entrepreneurial income or hold reserves. Leaving that aside, what would be the impact of being under the governance of a super board, which has as its remit enterprise and skills, rather than the full range of higher education institutions missions? In summary, the further and higher education fields are under immense strain. Audit Scotland has expressed concerns that the SFC's relationship with government lacks transparency. The education committee is concerned that too often decisions on the funding and future of our educational establishments are taken in private. The merging of colleges has led to a slashing of part-time courses, having a detrimental impact on female students and it remains unclear to the Public Audit Committee or Audit Scotland whether the apparent £50 million of savings that is promised due to mergers have been achieved because of the mergers or simply through budget cuts. Perhaps most troubling to anyone who believes in open and transparent governance for those that cherish the independence of academia is the blurring of the line between the arms-length SFC and the government, and that the independence of our institutions may be put at risk through the proposals in the enterprise and skills review. I am pleased that Parliament is getting the chance to give closer scrutiny to the important evidence that the committee has gathered during their pre-budget scrutiny sessions from the SQA, Education Scotland, SDS and the Scottish Funding Council. Some of the evidence that has been given to the committee during their recent sessions has been troubling concerns over the effectiveness of the SQA, alongside concerns about the role of Education Scotland and the funding council are deeply worrying, and it is imperative that Parliament takes this very seriously. We currently have an education system that is facing significant challenges, something borne out by the recent spate of damming statistics that has been released over the past few months. When our Scottish Parliament's own cross-party education skills committee is now also exploring key issues that question the very core functions of the key education bodies that deliver and regulate the education system, it seems very clear to me that there are serious challenges here that must be addressed. The damming statistics from last month tell us that, after a decade of this administration, we have seen Scottish education go backwards with falling standards in reading, mathematics and science, where the attainment gap between pupils from the richest backgrounds and those from the most deprived persists. Meanwhile, it is a fact that we have 4,000 fewer teachers than when the SNP came to power. The number of pupils with identified additional support needs has substantially increased, but the number of additional support needs teachers is down 13 per cent between 2010 and 2015, according to the Scottish Government's own statistics. The member will know, because the argument has been well rehearsed in this chamber, that, although additional support needs teachers are indeed trained to deal with pupils, for example, with autism, dyslexia, etc., the definition of additional support needs was expanded to include, for example, periods of bereavement and other short-term measures that would require support above and beyond that, which is normally delivered within the school setting. Therefore, the two are not necessarily directly analogous. Monica Lennon The fact remains that we now have more information about the needs of children, but we are seeing a decline in support. We have the children's charities tell Parliament and Government that they fear a lost generation of opportunities for these young people, so I hope that we can continue to debate that. I will make some progress, if I may. I will make way for Christina McKelvie. Christina McKelvie The Chief Councilor Lennon would tell us how many of the special education we need teachers will sack for South Lanarkshire Council last year. Monica Lennon Is the cat from the budget? Well, I really think that Christina McKelvie needs to reflect on the comment that she has just made. I have never heard Christina McKelvie raise any concern about budget pressures facing South Lanarkshire Council. In fact, we hear from this side of the chamber that Government, sorry, councils are receiving fair settlements, and I do not think that what is happening in local government and local communities is at all fair. However, Christina McKelvie can perhaps clarify her position at another opportunity. Cutting resources means that hardworking teachers are forced to pick up the extra workload, putting the sector under every increasing strain, meaning that the educational experience of our young people ultimately suffers as a result. The teachers' admissions to the committee regarding the SQA shall be on doubt that the authority and this Government have lost the full confidence of teachers. When teachers are expressing experiences of the SQA as to quote some of the submissions entirely negative, hugely inconsistent and not fit for purpose, it is clear that there is a serious problem. Others may choose to ignore that. Rather than addressing these very real problems, the Scottish Government and the Cabinet Secretary for Education, I fear, is looking in the wrong place for solutions to these challenges. The school governance review puts the emphasis on reforming where power for school lies and a misguided attempt to restructure local government responsibility for education that will only risk creating yet more layers of bureaucracy and confusion for parents and pupils and will do little to affect outcomes. What our education system needs is more resources, more teachers and more support staff so that our children have the support that they need to succeed. That means using the powers of this Parliament to invest in our schools and protect education budgets, not rush into wrong-headed reforms. The Government should listen to the experts on its education governance review. The Scottish Parent Teacher Council is right to raise concerns about how accessible that review actually was to parents, that the majority of its respondents skipped a question about the governance review that it is telling. It highlights where the real priorities of parents lie and should be a signal to the Government that it is currently focusing its attention in the wrong place. As Dando Johnson has said, children in Scotland were also among the latest organisations this week to question the plans by raising concerns that the current form of proposals for governance reform will have virtually zero impact on educational attainment. The view from parents, from teachers and from education professionals across the sector is clear. Lack of proper resource, not school governance, is where the problem lies. I personally find it concerning and perhaps telling that there is a common thread of critique about miscommunication and complex inaccessible information from both teachers and parents across the education system, whether that be from the experience of dealing with the SQA documentation or attempting to access the governance review. We must remember that the most important thing about this debate is improving outcomes for our children. That is something we can all agree on, even though we may disagree on the best way to go about it. Behind the statistics about cuts to staff numbers, cuts to support staff and failing attainment are real individual experiences of teachers under pressure, and pupils who are not getting the experiences that they deserve or the support that they need to fulfil their potential. To close the attainment gap and tackle inequality, then I believe that we also need to take a broad view of what support our education system can offer to pupils. A fully rounded education has to be more than just attainment as important as that is. In closing, it must also be about ensuring that our children have a rounded experience and that their health and emotional wellbeing are considered. Counselors in every school would be a huge step in the right direction. To close, I believe that we need to take a whole system review with regard to improving the educational experience of our young people. Going forward, that should be included in any considerations for what the role and functions of our education bodies are or should be. Thank you. Ross Greer, to be followed by Tavish Scott. There are two key issues that have arisen at the committee's scrutiny of education agencies and enterprise agencies that I would like to raise today. The proposed new superboard that would replace the boards of the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and HIE, and the performance of the SQA and the breakdown of teachers trust in the authority. I am disappointed that the Scottish Government has insisted on pushing ahead with its centralisation agenda, despite concerns raised across the political spectrum, by local authorities, by our partners in education and by experts such as the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Government has insisted that the review of enterprise and skills is premised on evidence and focus towards a step change. The proposed new superboard meets neither of those principles. There is little evidence to support the idea of a new superboard replacing the existing boards for the education and enterprise agencies, something that the Education and Skills Committee has been acutely aware of. We asked Keith Brown to produce that evidence. He highlighted four submissions that have over 300 responses to our call for evidence, yet, on inspection, those submissions do not call for the existing boards to be abolished. They call for clarity and consistency in the direction of Scotland's economic strategy—a concern that I am sure we all share—and they highlight the potential for a Scotland-wide strategic board, but they do not call for the existing boards to be abolished. In the case of the funding council, the committee has had much discussion on the fact that the board of the Scottish funding council is the Scottish funding council. It appears that the cabinet secretary has been rather liberal in his interpretation of the evidence provided, interpreting legitimate concerns over the complexity of existing structures as an endorsement of the SNP's push for centralisation and closer government control. The evidence, in fact, seems to me, at least, to suggest the opposite—concerns in opposition to the Government's superboard plans. The Royal Society of Edinburgh, universities and colleges union, the NUS, University of Scotland have all raised concerns about the independence of the Scottish funding council following the creation of a superboard. The proposed board also goes beyond the step-change remit of the Government's review. The Government has so far refused to rule out that the new board will be chaired by a minister—a step that would significantly enhance Government control over those agencies, potentially ending their status as arms-length bodies. Such a move would also severely endanger the independence of Scotland's universities, which is absolutely vital to its world-class competitiveness and its ability to attract funding. I reassure him and Liam Kerr, who did not give me the opportunity to do this earlier, that the Government will do nothing to jeopardise the independence of the higher education institutions or the reclassification with ONS. We are absolutely categorical on that, and I have said so to University of Scotland. The minister raises an issue that I am just about to come to, in that the Government seems to have reached a conclusion and will now assess how it can make that conclusion work, despite the fact that it is not actually assessed what the effects will be. Both the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work and Education and Skills and their appearances before our committee were unable to provide anything approaching evidence of the effect that the superboard proposal could have on research funding as an example, and there is significant concern about the risk of reclassification as public bodies, as the minister has mentioned. However, I have been left with a distinct impression that, regardless of the conclusions that I feel are misguided, that process has been flawed in the extreme. The Government seems to have reached a conclusion when I expect it to have reached regardless of the evidence that it has submitted, has decided unequivocally to press ahead with that conclusion and will only now assess what the impact is. In phase 1, a conclusion was reached, and in phase 2, it will assess what the impact of it is. That is not the right way to do that. It is not evidence-based policy making. It is not acceptable. There are further concerns about the suitability of a superboard tasked with, according to the Government, bringing greater integration and focus to the delivery of enterprise and skills that would be overseeing further and higher education funding. Scotland's colleges and universities are certainly important to the skills of the nation, but they are also much more than that, and the agencies involved in those proposals have remits far beyond enterprise and skills alone. Education and research is a goal in itself, the freedom to pursue lines of inquiry, even where they do not appear to directly contribute towards economic development, is absolutely vital to the freedom of our universities. None of us question that. Many of humanity's greatest discoveries have occurred quite by accident. After all, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin this way during his research at St Mary's hospital. Our funding for colleges and universities cannot be dictated to, diluted by or have its focus taken away because of a focus on enterprise and skills goals. I would ask for assurances from the cabinet secretary that he will rethink the Government's proposal to abolish the existing boards and, at the very least, ensure some level of independence for our universities by guaranteeing that any new superboard will not be chaired by a minister. In the committee's scrutiny of the education agencies, it has become increasingly apparent that an alarming breakdown in trust has occurred between the SQA and the teachers that it works with. Crucially, the SQA does not seem to recognise the breakdown in trust. The development of new qualifications under the curriculum for excellence has contributed to unsustainable work-codes and a lack of clarity for both teachers and pupils. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary recognises that and has been working towards a workload reduction. However, we have seen issues. Exam scripts have been used, which have contained significant errors discussed in this Parliament, while other exams have seen a significant variation in the quality of their marking. It is apparent that teachers do not always feel comfortable openly raising and discussing the problems facing the SQA and the implementation of curriculum for excellence. The convener mentioned the value of the anonymous submissions that we received. The fact that we received so many submissions from so many teachers with such consistency was informative and deeply alarming, as was the discussion that the convener and I hosted with a group of primary and secondary teachers here in the Parliament. It is unlike any other evidence that I have seen in my short time in this Parliament. We need to consider how to improve oversight of the SQA and repair the trust with teachers. The Scottish Government should consider proposals that are made by the EIS for greater teacher representation, including on the boards of education agencies, particularly the SQA. The Scottish education has a world-renowned reputation, but we know that while staff and students put an incredible effort, something is not working at present. In reviewing those four agencies, the committee has uncovered a number of areas where clear improvements can be made, and where the Scottish Government's current efforts are perhaps misguided. I hope that the Government will carefully consider them. Tavish Scott, to be followed by Gillian Martin. I must say on Rosgea's central point about evidence. It strikes me that there is a slight disconnect between the argument that says that there is no evidence in relation to the proposal for a superboard and the abolition of the other boards, not the principle that the minister earlier outlined, but the argument that Morosgea made. Those who have also been arguing that there is something slightly wrong with the number of representations that the committee had on from teachers and whether that really reflected teachers' views and teachers' concerns about the SQA and some of our other bodies. I would simply say that we cannot have it both ways. There is evidence to the committee and there is not evidence that failed to be presented in relation to the superboards. I just want the Government to at least reflect on that at some point in the phase 2 consideration of this matter, because it has not taken Parliament with them on that. I wanted to address a slightly wider remark today, but could I firstly apologise to you and to the chamber for having to leave early today the weather is such that I'm going to try and catch an early flight to somewhere, although snow may stop that. I also want to thank James Dornan for the careful and indeed cheerful way in which he convenes the Education and Skills Committee, not an easy task, given the varied quality of the members on it, and I very much include myself in that. What I wanted to do was very sensually address the point that the cabinet secretary made in his opening remarks, because he was right about teachers being at the core of this debate, that the biggest educational challenge that we have, as Liz Smith and Daniel Johnson put it to, is around the implementation of curriculum for excellence and that the concern that we have established as a committee and one's views about the level of that concern, of course, are open to interpretation, is about how that was implemented and, crucially, the role of the curriculum for excellence management board, which of course includes the SQA, the Education Scotland, yes, local government, COSLA and local authorities, and is of course chaired by the Government. Now, as the convener said, we are taking further evidence on that in due course, but any objective assessment of the evidence that we have already got by the Government or by anyone else from outside has to say that something has not worked there. Otherwise, the Royal Society of Edinburgh would not say in their submission for today's debate that, in our view, coherent strategic leadership, especially at an educational professional level, has been virtually nonexistent and implementation of curriculum for excellence has suffered profoundly from inadequate action having been given to how change should be managed. Now, even if they are half right, even if they are a quarter right, Presiding Officer, and maybe they are overdoing it, that is a profound finding about what has been going on in these past nine years. I do think that the Government must reflect on that in the Government's review that is now under way. The cabinet secretary rightly set out some changes that had taken place in relation to Scottish education and performance, but he also has to reflect, and he did, the PISA findings and also the new focus. It is a new focus on literacy and numeracy by him and his Government. I think that they are right to do that, but if nothing else is at admission that not all has been well and that the implementation of curriculum for excellence has not gone as it should have done. I think that that does mean that we do need to ask some fundamental questions about, in particular, Education Scotland and the structure of education at Scotland. The OECD report that the cabinet secretary cited also said some fairly damning things about Education Scotland in terms of its implementation. It said at page 44 about the comprehensibility of CFE. This is again in the context of Education Scotland. It described a scattergun approach to strategic planning at page 77, and it called on the site of the need for simplifying the simplification process, if that is not an oxymoron, on page 109. So, there are some fundamental questions about the effectiveness of Education Scotland. Just now, the study into the employees' views of that organisation have been published, and I thought that the most damning one was its performance. Education Scotland's performance in the key category of managing change, which is what this has all been about, is woeful. Only 11% of Education Scotland's own employees in this last year, 2016, think that change is well managed by Education Scotland. Were the Education Secretary or a local authority leader to find a school with those kind of results, then the demand for change would be very clear. The head teacher would probably be looking for a new position, although there would certainly be lots of continuous professional development and so on. I suggest to the cabinet secretary and his colleagues that we cannot ignore the reality of what has happened and the need for some change. The change that I would advocate is very simple. I strongly believe that Education Scotland should be split into its two respective functions—one, the inspection of not just schools but, of course, other parts of the educational regime. I think that that is a profoundly different function from that of policy guidance, both to ministers, which of course Education Scotland must conduct. To say to Liam Kerr, some of that does need to be in private. I take the point that Mr Kerr has taken, but, of course, Education Scotland should brief any cabinet secretary in private, but that is a very different function from the inspection regime. The two are quite separate, if I may be so bold. On the SQA, there has been a range of evidence provided by my colleagues across the committee this afternoon, but it seems to me that the challenge function, the ability to look at how the SQA has co-ordinated its activities on exams and on the design of exams and on the assessment process with Education Scotland and with the other parts of that management board just has not worked. It is difficult not to come to that conclusion in the first instance. I hope that the Government again will reflect on that and find a way in which that management board starts to bring those organisations not just round a table, because by definition they have been doing that, but to concentrate on what needs to happen to make the lives of our teachers and the ability of our teachers to teach successfully much more powerful and much more straightforward. The final point that I want to make is on the Scottish funding council. Others, Ross Greer, Liz Smith and Daniel Johnson, among others, have made the case for leaving that organisation well alone. I believe that the Government, when they say that they do not want to interfere with the independence of higher education institutions or the university sector more broadly, should therefore do the sensible thing and the logical thing from that position, and that is to leave that board alone. Alice Brown and her board provide the very challenge function to the executive team, to the chief executive that is needed. It should stay that way, and I urge the Government to take exactly that step. The profession with responsibility for our country's teaching and learning is one of the best and most important professions out there. It is the career that I previously chose as a college lecturer, and it is the career that my husband chose as a secondary school teacher. I know how hard those on the ground have worked to get the curriculum for excellence implemented over the years, and if I forget, my husband will surely remind me. Indeed, the cabinet secretary rightly points out that the curriculum for excellence is a collaborative enterprise between teachers, local authorities and all the various agencies. Scrutiny of our education system from the convines of a committee room in Parliament has been a challenge for me, I am going to be honest, particularly given my knowledge of the tremendous work that has gone on in the schools and colleges that I know from personal experience, and I am always mindful of that when levelling any criticism. I have to say that I find it quite distressing today to hear Willie Rennie's FMQs today say the phrase, our schools are failing, particularly when we had pupils and teachers from Balweries School in Kirkcaldy, one of the top performing schools in Scotland sitting in the public gallery. Our schools are not failing. However, let us never lump the whole school system in with any comments that we have got on individual agencies, which I say are valid. Those comments are absolutely valid, but when you say that phrase, think about how that is received out there in our schools. I got a text later on from somebody who was watching this in their lunch hour saying, cheers Willie, my teacher is a friend of mine. How does that make them feel? An education system, however, must always be in development to apply to change in times, and that is why we must always reach out to practitioners to see where it can be improved. It is noted that we are just at the end of the first whole cycle of the new system. My son left six years last year and I leave him breathing product of the first cycle of curriculum for excellence. I think that the curriculum has worked well for him. The whole person approach, the broad curricular approach, allowed my son, who I do not think that he would mind me, to say that he is not particularly academic in the traditional bookish sense but is driven in other ways, to find out what he was good at and equipped him with skills that I see him using at college, a college that Mr Kerr, I mentioned to Mr Kerr, is a top performing Scottish college. That might be a good point for Mr Kerr to intervene in me and give me more detail in the conversations that he has had with my former colleagues on what they think about the merger process. My son's experience, if I can use it as an example, does not equate with the bad press that the education system is having over the last couple of months. Let us put that bad press into perspective. More school leavers are reaching positive destinations never before. Higher pass rates last year were very high, and college and university applications are at an all-time high. This week, we heard from the IPPR that youth unemployment is at its lowest level since 2001 and is consistently lower than the overall UK rate of unemployment in the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills outlined an awful lot more. Modern apprenticeships are providing positive destinations all over Scotland, and industry is getting more involved in learning. Colleges are rightly focusing on courses that lead to employment, which is nail this part-time course thing. For once and for all, I doubt that I will be able to, because I feel that I am on my feet defending it every single week. I will not accept the wire and war lines from both opposition benches that the levels of part-time courses are at the detriment of people's education. We have now got more people going into work as a result of their experiences in colleges. The work of SDS in early intervention to identify pupils who may not reach a positive destination is crucial. I am refocusing on achievement, not just to align with academia, but to recognise the diversity of skills that children have an aptitude for and which have career opportunities that will benefit our society and economy as a whole. I note, though, that some of the chambers of commerce and economic development agencies urged SDS to be more mindful of diversity and to adapt to local needs, particularly in rural areas. The report on the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce cited gender stereotyping as an issue and wanted to see improvements on the involvement of BME, disabled and care-leaving young people in modern apprenticeships. In the committee on 9 November, I highlighted to SDS the issue of involving more small to medium-sized businesses in modern apprenticeships, which is a concern that has been raised to me. In reaching out to stakeholders, we have seen quite consistent issues with the education agencies. That is true. Teachers pointed to things that were hindered rather than helped them. Still, the SQA is struggling to rein in the copious emit of guidance materials that we were told were often impenetrable and used confusing and contradictory language. Serious instances of lack of consistency between the curriculum guidance and exam papers are well documented and are simply unacceptable. The inspection system at Education Scotland also came in for some criticism. Teachers told us of the stress and the pointlessness of working evenings and weekends to print off evidence and documents for the inspection. Education Scotland assured us that they were working hard to change the inspection, and my exchange with Alasdair Delaney of Education Scotland on 3 November outlines the commitments that were made by them in that regard. I have seen evidence of this work. I recently visited a primary school in my constituency that did not do well in a stressful inspection years ago, and staff morale had been low as a result. They were recently reinspected, and the head teacher told me that this inspection was an entirely new experience for the school—a positive experience. It focused on support rather than judgment, on teaching and learning, rather than paperwork, on professional development and ideas, rather than box ticking. I want to congratulate Nwbili Mairys primary on how they have turned their inspection report into one that they can justify and will be very proud of. The inspection culture change is not complete, though, and that is evident from responses to our consultation. I just want to say in closing that the implementation and development of our curriculum is a work in progress. The committee has identified where more work is urgently required, and the ages that are in front of us have been left in no doubt as to where our correspondence thinks that our attention should be focused. Jeremy Balford is to be followed by Colin Beattie. I, like other members, welcome the debate. I thank the convener for bringing it to the chamber this afternoon. I am not a member of the committee. I come as a local councillor and as a parent, and as I waded through the different reports over the last couple of evenings, I come with an interest to see where we are, particularly in regard to Education Scotland. I am sure that, on 1 January, as you woke up with a clear head, you reviewed the previous year and then looked forward to making resolutions for the year ahead. I think that the same could be said as we started a new year to look at Education Scotland. This is a good time to review its function and operation, to see what is working and to see what needs to change. The first function of Education Scotland is to develop policy, but it is interesting that the evidence that is given to the committee by teachers is that it is failing in this role and teachers are confused and simply do not understand what is put before them. There was, when evidence was being taken by the committee, 20,000 pages on their website. If you are a local primary school teacher or a secondary school teacher trying to find information in a busy life, how is that meant to happen? I accept that it is being reduced, but we have to ask the question, how did we get to that situation in the first place? Who allowed that and who had been monitoring it and scrutinising it to say that it is simply not acceptable? However, if it is there to develop policy, it is secondly there to do quality assurance. It is there to scrutinise what is going on. I think that that comes to a very interesting question, a question that politicians all of us have to look at. Is Education Scotland there fundamentally to help and support teachers, or is it there as an arm of Scottish Government? Scottish Government might be clear on that, but I do not think that teachers and those that gave evidence to the committee are. It is very difficult to be judged and jury. I would love to have gone to university, sat my paper and then marked it myself, but that would be unacceptable. That is what we are asking Education Scotland to do. We are saying that you put the guidelines up. I am grateful to Mr Balfour, because I think that that gets to the number one key points. That is precisely not what Education Scotland has been asked to do. Education Scotland, yes, supports the development and delivery of policy within communities, but then inspects the delivery by schools of that policy. It does not judge itself, it is not judging you of itself, but it is judging the implementation of agreed policy by individual schools to help to drive improvement in education, and that is the fundamental error that is at the heart of Mr Balfour's argument. Jeremy Balfour? I thank the cabinet secretary for his intervention. To respond to that briefly, that might well be his understanding, but it is not the understanding that came out clearly in the evidence. If that is the case, why are we thinking of only one or four countries in the whole of the world that have this particular system? Almost every other country across the world has two bodies doing two separate functions. My question to the cabinet secretary is why do we not have it here? The third issue that I think is very important to raise is the decline in inspections. Whatever the figures, I gave up on me in trying to work out what the numbers exactly were, but one is clear that the number of inspections that happened in our schools today is less than what happened in 2010. It is not necessarily—it correlates that the inspections being—if there are less inspections, the quality of inspections is improving, and there do not have to be lots of inspections. In fact, they are very time consuming for teachers to undertake. No, I accept the point, but my point being that fewer children are known and fewer parents are known. Are their schools acceptable or not if they are fewer than inspections? I totally accept that it does not deal with the quality, but that is a separate issue. I am saying that less schools in Scotland are being expected now, and that, if you live in a certain area, you do not know how well that school is going on. I would have thought that, as we implement, and as curriculum for excellence has been implemented across Scotland over the last year, that there would be more need for inspections, less need. However, there is no evaluation at all going on, as far as I can see, in regard to curriculum for excellence. Before anyone jumps up from a Government benches, no, we are not against curriculum for excellence, but we are asking why has no minister— Mr Raffer has been extremely generous in his interventions today, and I am conscious that I am popping up from the Government benches. The Government invited the OECD to evaluate curriculum for excellence. That was what we invited the OECD to come in to do, so that has been done by the OECD. We could not have been more open about that point. It is not the baseline, and what has come out from that and from the PISA results is that we do not have a good system working at the moment, and yet nothing has been done about it. The final issue—and I hope that I can get through this very briefly, Presiding Officer—is in regard to subject choice. A number of parents have contacted me in regard to this, particularly here within Edinburgh and Malawians. They feel that their children are being preached down past too early that they simply do not want to go. There is a lack of choice in regard to choosing subjects, and too quickly people are not being allowed to do subjects that they want to study, depending on what the school or what region they live in in Scotland. We are endowing up if we are not careful not only a lottery in regard to region, but actually a lottery depending on which catchment area you go to within a city, town, village or area. My time has gone, so I cannot answer the many questions that I have asked, but those are questions that we need to come to. Why? Not just so that we can scrutinise Government agencies and fill in two or three hours of parliamentary time, but something far more important than that. If we do not get it right for our parents, for our pupils and for our teachers, we will be failing not only a generation, but we will be failing Scotland as we go forward into the 21st century. My fear, Presiding Officer, if the education in Scotland is simply not doing what it should be doing. Colin Beattie, to be followed by Jenny Marra, I would ask all members, Jeremy Balfour took a number of interventions, and I would ask all members to be tight to six minutes if they can. As a member of the Education and Culture Committee in the last parliamentary session and of the Education and Skills Committee in this session, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this motion today. As you have noted from the motion and the convener's opening speech, part of the committee's recent remit has focused on scrutiny and evidence gathering on the roles of four national organisations, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, Education Scotland, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council. The questions that the committee secured answers to were, are their core functions correct or are there alternative approaches? Are those bodies delivering on their core functions? Should the roles of those organisations or their structures change as a result of the governance review or the enterprise and skills review? Can they demonstrate that performance, including reflecting best use of taxpayers' money? Are they sufficiently mindful of equality when delivering their functions? Are those bodies sufficiently independent of government, acting as a sufficient advisory and challenge function to government? Do those bodies respond effectively to the needs of stakeholders and to constructive advice? It is clear to me, and I hope to my colleagues, that the process involved is both rigorous and effective in identifying the present situation within each organisation, and in particular, the process allowed a wide range of stakeholders to express their opinions. To allow for a maximum range of opinions, the evidence gathering took on a range of forms. The online surveys that ran from 2 October 1 November provided a total of 1,171 responses from teachers and lecturers through to parents and pupils. Those surveys were widely disseminated through social media, as well as the Parliament's education services newsletter, the latter being widely read by teachers. Beyond that, the surveys were also sent to political correspondence at major Scottish media and educational establishments. The success of those methods is evidenced by the substantial range and number of responses. Evidence was also gathered in person when the committee held an informal meeting with teachers, and that was built upon when the committee members individually arranged to visit a local educational establishment to speak directly with stakeholders. In my case, I visited Newbattle High School in Dalkeith. I was keen to canvass the thoughts of the teachers here, as the school is located in the catchment areas for three of the most socially deprived areas in Scotland. Around 69 per cent of pupils at the school are sourced from areas of multiple deprivation. The staff and teachers at Newbattle High do incredibly well under those circumstances, and in meeting with them, I was able to understand first hand if our local and national institutions were providing the required amount of support and guidance and to feed this back directly to the education committee. Returning to the surveys, those included questions designed to reflect how each organisation contributed to a range of the Scottish Government's national outcomes, and while some of the surveys had fewer participants than others, 646 for the SQA compared to 83 for colleges and universities, the responses were enlightening and displayed clear mismatches in understanding and respect to the work of each organisation. In the case of the national outcome, on a quote, our young people are more successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens, the colleges and universities were thought to make a valuable contribution, with almost half of respondents saying that they contributed a good deal. The modern apprenticeship scheme was also valued with roughly a third of respondents rating its contribution similarly. Conversely, Education Scotland was highlighted as an organisation that did not contribute as well to the national outcomes listed in the survey. In the case of that above outcome, 62 per cent of respondents felt Education Scotland's guidance and support contributed either a little or not at all, while 63 responded with similar answers for Education Scotland's inspections. Those responses were also broadly similar to those for Education Scotland, regarding the second national outcome in the survey. On a quote, we are better educated, more skilled and more successful, renowned for our research and innovation. The surveys and evidence gathered also shed light on a range of issues surrounding the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Generally, participants were on the fence when responding to the above queries on outcomes, however, more than two thirds of respondents disagreed with the SQA's value statement. I quote, Our customers and users trust us to get it right for them. There is clearly an issue here between how the SQA perceives itself and how its work is regarded by end users. And even though it is a valued organisation, almost three quarters of survey participants agreed that SQA's qualifications enabled learners to access and progress with further and higher education. The survey picked up a variety of main issues on the SQA, including that its documentation is unclear, its assessment standards not well understood, marking inconsistent and simply there are too many changes. Some of the anonymous submissions stated that, in my quote, SQA has not been able to communicate information in a clear, concise manner. There have been so many mistakes that we no longer trust anything that comes from them. SQA has lost the respect and trust of Scottish teachers and perhaps most pertinently, I cannot communicate strongly enough how discouraging it is to see keen, talented, hardworking pupils walk away from my subject with a C when they deserve an A or decide not to continue with art because they cannot deal with the physical workload. Those opinions were reinforced in my own discussions at New Barrow High School and here the teachers stated that, in recent years, qualifications and assessments have been dictating the curriculum and in particular what teachers concentrated on delivering in the classroom to get pupils through examinations. My thanks go to all respondents for their participation and also to the committee clerks for their hard work. I look forward to being part of the next steps as the committee takes us forward as well as seeing how this work will inform the roles of other committees. I am not a member of the education committee this session so I have not been privy to all the evidence sessions but I want to offer my reflections on something that is very close to my heart and I thank the committee for the important scrutiny that they are doing. I was extremely worried listening to the opening speeches from the convener, from Mr Swinney, from Liz Smith and Daniel Johnson about the confusion and lack of confidence in our key education agencies. I think that this is something that we should all legitimately be very concerned about. We do not have to look that far back. To remember a time when the SQA was seen as a real hallmark in Scotland, a real benchmarking institution of rigorous standards or I like to think that it was so when I passed my hires but I think that it was generally thought of as such. Now the SQA has not been without its problems since devolution under different Governments but the lack of confidence among teachers that the convener of the education committee, James Dorman, outlined today in the SQA is of real concern to me and I think of real concern to every member of this chamber and parents across the country. Of more, an acute concern to me is how this is contributing to education in every school in this country and the performance generally of education, which is the lifeline of opportunities in our communities. Presiding Officer, it was with great sadness and a bit of despair that I read the PISA results at the end of last year and the subsequent statistics released by the Scottish Government on 13 December caused me and I know many colleagues further grave concern and confusion. If I may make two points on this, Deputy Presiding Officer, Liz Smith outlined concerns about the rigor of data and I think that she was referring to Education Scotland and SQA. I was confused and perplexed by this data released on 13 December as I think many colleagues and journalists and many other people were. Let me give an example. Pupils at Fintech primary school in Dundee 20 to 30 per cent of them achieved the expected levels of writing at primary school, but by the time they reached secondary school, their writing achievement levels had shot up to 90 per cent. Even council officials in Dundee have indicated to me that those statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, which leads me to ask of the efficacy of this work and if it is just an experiment how this will improve. Of grave concern to me than the bare statistics is that it was another clear indicator that our education system is struggling more than it used to. The PISA and the 13 December statistics represent a trend in the wrong direction and the more statistics we have monitoring this trend the less we can ignore it or be complacent. On the 13 December, I was reflecting on the statistics, Presiding Officer, and my mind wound back to a discussion that I took part in at Dundee University during the Scottish referendum debate. If you will excuse me making a political point in this committee debate, Presiding Officer, I said during that debate back in the referendum that we should be concentrating our political energies on domestic concerns like education because education in Scotland was not as good as it used to be. Shona Robison immediately dismissed my concerns as talking Scotland down but I note now that this stuff has come home to roost and especially since PISA that the Scottish Government has had to wake up to these realities and the funding decisions that are being made. Presiding Officer, Dundee City Council will have to make budget cuts of £12.5 million in February after paring budgets back year after year. Teachers in attainment schools in Dundee tell me that they do not know how they can be expected to raise attainment when classroom assistants have gone from their very classrooms, when all the early years practitioners trained in literacy support were stripped out of these schools in deprived areas to cover the Government's childcare hours commitments in nurseries. When Dundee has seen a 28 per cent reduction in additional support needs teachers twice the national reduction and when, to my confusion, none, not one penny of the £4.8 million attainment money allocated to Dundee has been spent on additional specialist teachers in literacy and numeracy. Instead, a handful of modern apprentices have been employed but I am not really sure what qualifications young modern apprentices have in raising attainment and raising standards of literacy and numeracy in our schools. The new secondary school building in Dundee Harris academy, opened by Mr Swinney in December, is already scores of children over capacity and overcrowded after the SNP closed and merged Meadowshill High School last year. I wish the education committee all the best with their scrutiny of a critical issue for the future of Scotland. Shedding light on the efficacy of the SQA and Education Scotland must bear fruit for our pupils in our schools across this country and seek to reverse the downward trend that the statistics report. I call Richard Lochhead to be followed by Jenny Gilruth. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by congratulating as a member of the committee, our convener James Dornan, on summarising very well on his opening speech, the issues arose out of the evidence that we took from the agencies. My few short months as a member of that committee, I have been struck by the myriad of factors that impact on the ability of children in Scotland to learn and the quality of education that is delivered in our schools, in universities and colleges and through the other agendas. They are enormously complex, but today, of course, the focus is on the agencies and the role that they play, and I will refer to many of the issues that arose out of taking evidence in the SQA and Education Scotland. However, it is worth seeing at the outset that the education is a bit lot more than agencies. I think that Gillian Martin touched on a very important point in that regard. I recently visited Space High School on my constituency and Keith Grammer School and I visited many schools over the years, as many other members have. When I go in, when I speak to the teachers, when I speak to the other staff, when I speak to the pupils, we talk about the future of education. They do not say to me scrap the SQA, scrap Education Scotland. We talk about many of the wider issues in our society in Scotland and the impact they are having on our children to learn. We talk about the children who are coming to school with empty stomachs. How can they have a proper ability to learn? We talk about the chaotic lifestyles many of our families have in this country and the impact that has. Yes, of course, they talk about the issues that can be linked to the performance of the agencies, such as teachers' workload, which they will come on to, but we have to recognise that the agencies are just one small part of a wider jigsaw and we have to ensure that we keep the other issues in focus as well. At this debate, of course, is focusing on the results that we got from the survey of 211 teachers out of 50,000 working in Scotland. It is also important that we keep that in perspective. Again, that is not to demean the concerns expressed by the 211 teachers, because any of us have been in this Parliament, no from speaking to constituents and visiting schools, that the burden in teachers, the teachers' workloads, some of the other issues that we are discussing today are common concerns from teachers right across Scotland in many of the 50,000, not just the 211, but we must keep that statistic in perspective as well. I, of course, was a member of Parliament between 1999 and 2007, as was the Cabinet Secretary John Swinney. As an Opposition member, I regularly raised the issue of teachers' workload with the then education ministers. That is not a new issue, and many of the issues that we are discussing today are not new issues, but they are now the subject of a new focus because of some of the statistics about the direction that Education Scotland is taking, some of the global statistics that members have highlighted. So it is now a golden opportunity to address some of those issues, and that is why I welcome the fact that the Education Secretary has given such a focus to doing that. Our agencies, of course, have had to cope with the implementation of the curriculum for excellence over the last few years. That has soaked up a huge amount of time and energy. Now we have the Scottish Government's welcome commitment to close the attainment gap over the course of this Parliament. I should say the very bold commitment to close the attainment gap over the course of this Parliament. As I said before, the agencies alone cannot close that gap. We cannot have too much of a focus just in our schools when we have that debate. We have to look at those factors in wider society that I was referring to. When I speak to some of the educationalists, as I have been doing just today, they reiterate that we have to look at preschool education and the ability of our pupils to learn when they come into P1. So it is not just simply about a primary school education system or secondary school education. That is part of a much wider debate. So local authorities, Scottish Government, our leadership in schools, Parliament, we have all got to work together to address those big challenges. In terms of some of the real issues that did come to the committee's attention, which we identified from the SQA and Education Scotland evidence, the issues of the complexity of guidance, the lack of clarity, the constant changes, the constant revisions and the burden that puts on teachers' ability to teach are very, very real issues that do have to be addressed. We did get some commitments from the agencies that are being addressed. That is most welcome. We know the Cabinet Secretary and the Government are determined to address those issues as well and that is really important as well. We also have to address the jargon. One of the big issues is ensuring that this is not just the debate in this chamber amongst MSPs. It is a debate that the people of Scotland understand, particularly parents and pupils and as well as teachers of course and everyone else with a direct interest. And we can't have that transparency and openness if we concentrate on so much jargon and we have to move away from it. I learned on the committee what ease no stands for, which is experience and outcomes for the purposes of the official report. It is not the song by Ellie King, The X's and the O's, which is a song I have been listening to recently and which I keep getting wrong because of the ease no's phrase that is used in the education committee far too often. Janet Brown, who came to appear before the committee in answer to one of our questions, spoke about associated personalised areas. I still don't know what that means. It is really important the leaders of our agencies and they are not picking on the SQA or Education Scotland but the leaders of all our agencies with our role in this. Speak in language that people can understand as well as MSPs and the politicians and the Government as well. In the last minute I just want to address the teacher crisis in Murray because we have a shortage of teachers and this is going to affect the ability to close the attainment gap. I have been told today that tomorrow is going to be 23 adverts placed in the press for teachers to work in Murray but overall there's 33 vacancies and that's causing big problems in our schools in Murray and indeed in other cities or other places even some of our cities but mainly particularly rural areas so workforce planning is really important. I welcome the steps that the Government are taking to address that but clearly this puts an extra burden on the workload on the remaining teachers in our schools for having to carry more of a burden given the number of eight vacancies and also this is going to potentially affect the ability of some subjects to be taught from August 2017 onwards so I urge the cabinet secretary to continue to speak to Murray Council and other local authorities affected because this is a matter of now urgency that has to be addressed but I thank the committee and my colleagues for all the work that they've done to highlight many of those important issues and I wish the cabinet secretary well in the future in grassland what's a big issue for the future of scotland now the last two speakers are going to have to be very very tight in timing can I have Jenny Hall-Ruth followed by Jamie Greene please thank you Presiding Officer can I start by reminding the chamber that I am the parliamentary liaison officer to the cabinet secretary for education and I must also declare an interest as a former marker for standard grade and higher modern studies respectively at the SQA and as a former national qualifications development officer whilst I was going into education Scotland I recall one of my first meetings at education Scotland my line manager at the time followed me out of the meeting she took my face in her hands in a motherly fashion and she said to me Jenny you've got to stop showing what you think on your face Presiding Officer I am well aware that my face gives me away in this place every single time I get up to speak about schools because when it comes to our schools we as politicians have to be extremely careful of the narrative that we use in Parliament as my colleague Gillian Martin so eloquently put in her speech earlier there are pupils sitting their prelims in our schools right now teachers preparing assessments right now entering grades into their reports right now planning lessons for tomorrow sorting materials photocopying handouts marking jotters right now make no mistake Presiding Officer how we talk about the work of our teachers impacts upon staff morale and if we are serious about closing the attainment gap can I make some progress please then we all irrelevant of political persuasion even you Mr Johnson although I see he's not here just now need to get serious about how we motivate a profession who for too long have been booted about like a political football we have excellent teachers in Scotland they need our support as MSPs and they need the support of organisations in order to get it right for every child today I want to focus on the role of education Scotland and on the SQA in that context and as was mentioned by my colleague James Dornan in his opening remarks the education committee's survey results showed that 67% of teachers disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement that the SQA's customers and users trust it to get it right for them Presiding Officer as the only MSP in this chamber who has ever delivered the new qualifications I cannot begin to explain to you how removing the outcome and assessment standards will reduce workload we often don't talk about the specifics in this chamber so let me do just that in my national four or five modern studies class I had 30 pupils there were 13 unit assessments standards for every pupil to sit at national five level and for those at national four they had to pass 18 that's before they came to the final exam for national five national four don't sit a final exam this meant that I would have to track 390 assessments for one class in one academic year at the very minimum and as most classes are mixed ability the Ture figure would probably be closer to 450 and as I say that was for one class alone the cabinet secretary was there for absolutely right to move on this by removing unit assessment standards in national five higher and advanced higher the associated bureaucracy with the outcome and assessment standards detracted from learning and teaching it caused the profession unnecessary stress conversely we cannot allow a narrative of failure to be presented unfairly when it comes to the exam board indeed my experience as an SKA marker was perhaps the single most valuable piece of professional development I ever undertook it meant that I could go back to my department and share what I'd learned it meant that I could focus my pupils to develop their responses and gain credit accordingly it developed my teaching style as a professional and yet I know that professional development is currently being hindered because some head teachers are now reluctant to release their staff to attend CPD as they cannot afford to pay for supply staff so I say today Presiding Officer that the Government must look at how the SKA provides funding to schools for supply teachers to promote staff development because if we are to close the attainment gap we need teachers who understand the requirements of the final exam we don't need a profession who are scared to ask out of school indeed we know that collaboration is key to driving up standards as per the recommendations outlined by the OECD Collaboration underpinned by relevant CPD opportunities for all staff and I want to move briefly to discuss the role of Education Scotland Education Scotland was formed in 2011 following the amalgamation of learning teaching in Scotland and HMI something I was not surprised to hear Tavish Scott lament earlier today while scondid Education Scotland I spent an inordinate amount of time writing core support materials for the new national qualifications this was something the previous cabinet secretary Michael Russell had committed to with support from the unions core support materials for every national 4, national 5 higher and higher course and advanced higher course now sit on glow the internet for teachers and pupils in Scotland but in order to access these resources teachers need a glow password and an account to log in however under learning teaching Scotland there was a front facing website which allowed staff to access support documents more freely so if we're serious about our teachers engaging with the requirements of the new qualification then Education Scotland need to think strategically about how they reach out to the profession and get them to engage with these resources the Parliament was founded upon the principles of openness and transparency for too long however our education system has not operated in such a fashion the SQA were the gatekeepers of the exam system HMI the inspectorate would send their boxes to school offices across the country the calling card of an imminent visit but things have changed we now have a reformed and more supportive approach to school inspections we have in Education Scotland an organisation of professionals who should be readily able to engage and support the teaching profession where most HMI development officers and senior education officers began their careers in front of a class of children as chief executive Dr Bill Maxwell stated in his evidence to the committee how he implemented CFE was a collective decision so, Presiding Officer let's now work collectively and collaboratively to ensure we have organisations which are fit for purpose to support our teachers and enable them to get it right for every child thank you thank you and I'll call Jamie Greene who is the last of the closing speakers you must be under six minutes please Mr Greene I'll try my best, Presiding Officer first of all may I thank the education and skills committee for bringing this debate to the chamber and whilst it's not my own committee or my brief I do have a substantial interest in the subject matter it's topical and timely as well because FMQs today mentioned was made of the recent IPPR report which highlights skills gap emerging in Scotland which needs a clearer national focus achieving the highest standards of skills training is something I think that all of us in this chamber want for Scotland for this reason I would like to focus my speech on the work of skills development Scotland which has the very important mission of growing our economy by ensuring that the workforces of today and tomorrow are equipped with the skills that the market conditions dictate and require SDS has people working in schools career centres and partner locations across the country to fulfil its colossal but very important remit employs over 1200 people and has a grant of over 180 million pounds from influencing career choices in schools although I do read with interest some debate on whether they did have people in schools or in offices or not to have a Scott Labour at this point in an education committee notes that I was reading and I thought my committee was quite lively until I read the transcripts of the education committee so it's fair to say that they do have a lot of staff in various different places with modern apprenticeships and career choices in schools being pretty much the lion's share of its spend however based on evidence given to the committee last year the Aberdeen grampion chamber of commerce said that it is unclear what SDS is really trying to achieve and what the impact of their activity is of course that is just one view but it is one that's echoed from various members who submitted In a previous debate on skills I pointed out that Audit Scotland's comments on the bigger picture in Scotland is that there's really a significant absence of measurable targets and clear strategies set by the Scottish Government for all its economic development agencies and I think it's very useful to heed that observation in this debate it's very hard to scrutinise an agency or hold a government to account without a clear measure of its success and failures in one interesting exchange I know that Daniel Johnson asked SDS if they would consider a more focused set of KPIs or a more balanced scorecard if that might be a better way of presenting its research and the vast amounts of data that accumulates The purpose of my speech today however is not just to list criticisms of SDS but to raise the points that have been made to the committee I think it is important to pick out a few of these critiques because therein may lie some of the solutions to improving the work of the agency Aberdeen Grampian, Chamber of Commerce and the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group which I'll refer to as SLEID and it's worth noting who they are they represent the economic development officers of 32 local authorities across Scotland and they gave some excellent submissions to the committee which I thoroughly recommend everyone reads Both these organisations brought up the real difficulties they have in getting in touch with the right people at SDS just simply due to the size and complexity of its structure Also the another submissions made to the committee CBI Scotland for example said that challenges included the potential bureaucratic nature of interactions with that agency there were there was the risk of duplication and that there were absolutely opportunities for simplification in how you deal with that agency colleges Scotland agreed with that saying that the skills landscape in Scotland would benefit from a less complex and administratively burden some system to monitor activities SLEID also made a number of comments about the lack of tailored approaches to take into account different local authorities they specifically mentioned rural authorities in that they commented on the lack of co-ordination between local authorities and SDS and I think that's best illustrated by the fact that there were actually very little face-to-face communications something that surely can be easily fixed some local councils and their various submissions noted that SDS is simply highly centralised the committee highlights that more needs to be done to evaluate initiatives so that strategies can be applied differently at national regional and local levels in its defence the chief executive of SDS, Damian Neats offered a robust written response to the committee on the 12th of December on some of these issues I quote from his letter that SDS had taken a huge number of measures to get in front of people who face redundancy in the north-east despite criticism of the agency's reaction to the downturn and the gas and oil industries in that part of Scotland and something that's very topical today in the news in the last few hours we see another set of job losses in that industry so the importance of the work that this agency provides is now more important than ever of course these are very complex issues and more than I can really illustrate in a short speech to the chamber today and I do think there is commitment amongst the leadership team in that agency to continue some improvement of the work of it nonetheless I've said to the Scottish Government before that it must offer detailed skills strategy for Scotland which shows how all agencies interweave and connect with each other as they play their own constituent part as part of an overarching strategy that being said we must make best use of what we already have and sometimes it is the simplest of changes that have the biggest effect in conclusion I hope that Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government are open to constructive criticism because as today's motion makes clear parliamentary scrutiny offers a vital sounding board thank you we move to the closing speeches and I have to be very strict with time Ian Gray six minutes please thank you very much it's traditional on these occasions to congratulate the committee on the work they've done leading up to the debate and the debate which takes place but I think it's important to do that today because this has been an important debate and the work undertaken by the committee has been very very important indeed in the evidence that they've taken not I have to agree with the convener because they've found a way to restore faith in the entire political class that's maybe too much to ask but I think the committee can be very clear that they have uncovered very significant home truths about some of what is happening in our education system and that is a very important contribution that has been made we all go into schools and a number of colleagues have talked about that in the course of the debate and when we go into schools I would guess that we probably all agree that what we find there are great teachers doing a great job with very engaged young people and pupils who are keen to learn and want to do well and yet I think we are entitled to believe and to argue that we have a problem in our education system now the cabinet secretary I thought heroically mind education statistics for a number of positive numbers and he's very entitled to do that but I think he has to acknowledge that objectively where we find ourselves in recent months is that we see a faltering performance in our education system in our schools with reductions in standards and writing, reading and maths falling down the PISA tables but also in the Scottish Government's own literacy and numeracy survey we've also seen in recent years in national four and five year on year reductions in both enrolment and attainment and I would argue last year we saw that feeding through into hires with a drop in pass rates there as well there is a problem here I don't think that there is a problem of failing teachers and Gillian Martin and Jenny Gilruth both spoke about teachers being hindered in their work and I think that's absolutely right I think they are succeeding in spite of the circumstances in which they find themselves working those circumstances include budget cuts which mean that there are far fewer of them they have fewer support staff they have bigger classes to teach and they have less investment and resources per pupil but what the committee have discovered I think and evidenced pretty comprehensively is that those teachers are also hindered by the very bodies who are supposed to be supporting them in working effectively that is Education Scotland and the SQA and I think that the evidence cannot be denied particularly the evidence of the survey of which the committee carried out and with regard to Education Scotland that survey showed that 36% of respondents didn't believe that Education Scotland contributed at all to building a world-class curriculum now I just think that's astonishing and the cabinet secretary asked Mr Johnson earlier do we on this side support curriculum for excellence of course we support curriculum for excellence it's because we support it that we're so concerned that the very body charged with ensuring effective delivery of it commands so little support amongst teachers and parents and others in the education system and as Mr Scott who isn't here now pointed out as a body only 24% of Education Scotland's own staff thinks it's well run so that has to be a serious serious problem but in some ways it was overshadowed by the evidence gathered around the SQA by the committee two thirds of those respondents to the survey saying that the SQA customers couldn't trust the SQA to get it right and Mr Beatti