I welcome everyone to the 22nd meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2017. Can I please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? Apologies have been received from Oliver Mundell. Michelle Ballantine is substituting for Oliver. This is Michelle Ballantine's first appearance at the committee and the first item of business is an opportunity for Michelle to declare any relevant interests. Michelle? Yes, just to let you know, I am a sitting councillor on the Scottish Borders Council and I also have involvement with voluntary sector children's services supporting children's with additional needs. Thank you very much. The second item of business is a decision on whether to take agenda item 4 of business and private. We agreed. Thank you. And agenda item 3 is an evidence session with the SQA. The committee has done a fair amount of work on the performance of the SQA in the last year and we felt that now would be a good time to hear again from the SQA for an update on its work. I welcome to the meeting Dr Janet Brown, chief executive, Linda Ellison, director of finance and Robert Quinn, head of qualifications development, English language business and course skills from the SQA. Good morning. I understand that Dr Brown wishes to make a short opening statement. Yes, thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to come here today to provide an update on the activities of the SQA. I want to particularly focus on the actions that we have taken in response to the committee's report on the performance and role of key education and skills bodies. We have taken action to both review our approach to engagement and communication with teachers and lecturers but also to use the opportunity afforded by the revision of the assessments of national qualifications to streamline documentation and accessibility of this material on our website. A significant feature of these changes has been closer engagement with those who need to use the information, namely teachers. This has been to ensure that we more fully understand how we can best structure the essential and support materials that are there so that they can both be easily found and are clearly worded. Both the documents themselves and the structure of the new web pages have been user tested and feedback from these activities used to make further improvements. All documents for a national 5 subject can now be accessed through a single web page. These documents are now more precise and clearly worded, with, for example, the course specification for national 5 maths being reduced by almost 60%. Those involved in the development of the qualifications assessment and the materials and events that support their delivery are predominantly teachers, whether they are the principal assessors, members of question paper setting and marking teams, subject implementation managers that are involved in supporting teachers, or those seconded from schools to work with SQA as the revision through assessment are undertaken. These people have recent and direct teaching experience in delivering qualifications. Strong engagement with and response to the feedback from teachers, parents and learners remain a key focus for us. SQA receives a significant demand of feedback on all of our work which we carefully consider. This feedback can often be very positive about the nature and content of the qualifications and about the changes that we are currently making to the assessment of national qualifications. As is the case with the submissions to the committee, however, some of the feedback that we receive raises issues and concerns, and the points raised are carefully reviewed and discussed and actions taken. We also commission independent surveys of our customers, and these findings are also used to improve the way we work. In May 2016, we published the results of our own fieldwork on how the qualifications are working on the ground in schools, and this identified several areas that needed to be addressed by the wider education system and highlighted some of the workload for both learners and teachers that were associated with unit assessments. While SQA instituted revisions to address this for the previous session in 2016-17, further planned changes were superseded by the decision that was recommended by the assessment and national qualifications group to remove the units from national courses. This has been completed now for national 5 and work is on-going for the higher during the current session. A follow-up review was undertaken and the findings from this work were published earlier this month. The feedback from senior management in schools, teachers, parents and learners themselves provide valuable insight into how the senior phase and qualifications are perceived. This fieldwork report will inform the discussions that are taking place at the A&Q group, particularly around national 4. We hold webinars on specific subjects where teachers can participate in live sessions or watch on catch-up TV at a suitable time for them. 18 have been held so far and a further 11 are scheduled. We continue with the understanding standards support programme. SQA has a dedicated team that works directly with every school in Scotland, visiting schools regularly to address concerns or arrange for specific subject support at a local authority or an individual school level. I want to reassure the committee that, while significant progress has been made, SQA will continue to find ways to improve how we communicate and engage with teachers and other stakeholders. We have a programme focused specifically on supporting our customers that is bringing together groups of teachers, lecturers, parents and other stakeholders to help us to develop new approaches to ensure effective, timely, efficient and valuable engagement with SQA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr Brown. I will kick off with the first question, which touches on the first two themes that we want to talk about the development of national qualifications and communication with teachers. The new national 5 qualifications have been taken in this current academic year. Are you confident that, given that communication and relationships with teachers was an issue that was raised in the last session, that teachers understand the changes and more importantly, what have you done to take the profession with you on those changes and to make sure that that information gets to them? Given the timeframe that was available in terms of the development of the revisions, we used a significant amount of our national qualifications support teams to engage with us in terms of the revisions that we are being made. The membership of those support teams are made up of practising teachers and professional associations and others, other stakeholders, and we have actively worked to ensure that there is appropriate representation on those. That is the way that we have engaged in terms of making sure that we got feedback on the changes that were being made. In terms of the communication of the changes themselves, we have initially, just straight after Christmas started this year, put out a high-level notification on what the changes were likely to be. Subsequently, in April, the detailed changes were published at that point. We have been publishing during the course of the summer further information and we have been engaging at a school level through our liaison managers and also at a subject-specific level with key organisations and other teachers. We have also engaged with headteachers across the country in terms of the types of work that we are doing and the nature of the changes. I do not know if Robert wants to add any more to that. The only other thing that I would add is that we now have integral to our teams, our qualification development teams, a type of post called a Subject Implementation Manager. Those are usually secondees from colleges and schools who are experienced staff in delivering the existing national courses and have a strong insight into the changes that we are taking forward in terms of national 5. Those Subject Implementation Managers do a lot of work around the country, sometimes with groups of teachers within a local authority or sometimes they are in individual colleges or schools. For example, just in the last year or two, we had feedback from one Subject Implementation Manager who has been speaking to principal teachers in Highland County, Glasgow City and Edinburgh College. That is another part of a slightly more informal mechanism for rolling out the changes and to ensure that people are happy with them. We will follow that up with a number of events and further question and answer webinars, for example, which do not have a fixed defined agenda. In modern languages, for example, we have taken some feedback from centres around some areas that lead us to think, well, let us run a Q&A webinar that everybody can log into and we can have an open agenda. It is actions like that, both informal and formal, that we are trying to use in order to get closer to the teachers in order to ensure that they are comfortable with the changes. We will be coming on to communication. I am sure that there are lots of questions that the committee wants to ask about that. I want to open up the questions up to the development of the new national qualifications. Can I ask the panel that when you are asking questions it is not to veer into the other areas because there will be members who already want to ask a question on that. Let's start with Liz. Dr Brown, when you were at committee in November last year, you said that Scotland needed to have a national conversation about national 4. You are in the middle of that conversation just now. Could I ask you to be very specific with us about the concerns that have been presented to you by teachers about national 4 and how SQA is addressing those concerns? The national conversation is taking place under the auspices of the assessment national qualifications group. SQA has undertaken some research in terms of the second portion of the field work that we undertook towards the end of last year in the beginning of this that was just published earlier this month. That was very much to talk to senior management teams within schools, with teachers within schools, but also importantly with learners and parents about their perceptions of national 4. The report very much highlighted that there was not only a difference of opinion across the country about how national 4 was operating, but also a difference of opinion within local authorities and also within schools across subjects. So there is a variety of different views on the nature of national 4 as it stands today and the nature of what national 4 might need to be if it were to be revised. Those opinions vary from the fact that both learners and some teachers felt that not having an exam for national 4 was an appropriate way of doing it, as it prepared people for a different pathway potentially going into college and other vocational qualifications that are internally assessed, whilst others felt that the lack of an exam, particularly an examination, was an issue that needed to be addressed. There was definitely a consensus that there needed to be some form of differentiation at national 4. Currently, there is a pass, and that is the way in which national 4 is certificated. So there was a consensus view that there needed to be some differentiation, but not a consensus view on what the nature of that differentiation should be. So all of that work and all of the detailed feedback that we got from those different groups will be fed into the assessment national qualifications group, and the next time they meet, they will be discussing that along with other pieces of input to decide what the nature of the future for national 4 should be. Is it accurate, Dr Brown, as to what has been reflected in the press and anecdotally to members of this committee, that quite a substantial number of teachers feel quite strongly that national 4 is not in the best educational interests of quite a large number of children? Is that an accurate reflection of the feedback that you think you have had? The feedback report that we got showed that there was a significant proportion of teachers who felt that there should be some form of external assessment and, in some cases, exams at the end of national 4. It is likely that that will change, that there will be some form of examination in national 4. That is a matter for the A&Q group to discuss, as to how they wish to approach the changes if there were to be any to national 4. It is a topic that will be of great debate in that discussion. On the related issue, some of the changes that have been made were made on the basis of feedback that teachers gave you, that they felt that their workloads were extensive and that John Swinney had made a commitment to unburden that. Take that aside. Do you believe that the national 4 and national 5 structure is educationally sound for the best interests of our pupils in S4 and S5? National 4 is set at SCQF level 4 and there are candidates that will achieve that and then will move from that into other types of education or directly into workforce. There is absolutely a requirement for a qualification at SCQF level 4. The nature of what national 4 needs to be, the content of it, is something that has been built upon, the broad general education, the curriculum levels that were associated with the experiences and outcomes. I think the discussion as to the progression from national 4 to national 5, progression from national 4 to other forms of qualifications at either a SQF level 5 or a SQF level 4 is something that really needs the teachers to be able to be individually thinking about in terms of the customisation for the individual child and the individual student as to what is the best direction of travel for them. For me, it is important to recognise that part of curriculum for excellence is about personalisation and about making sure that there are appropriate pathways. We spend a lot of time discussing national 4 and national 5. There are a large number of qualifications at SQF 4 and 5 that might be a better pathway for some learners and for many learners. That is something that we should be thinking about. Robert probably wants to add something to that. We see a lot of very innovative practice at that level, SQF level, not just national 4 but other qualifications and sometimes combining national 4 and national 5 using a modern language for life and work awards at SQF 3 and 4. Some teachers quite innovatively combine that with what they do at national 4 and involve local employers such as Halcro or Holiday Inn so that the youngsters can see the absolute relevance of what they are doing and the freedom that personalisation is in choice with the type of qualification that allows the youngsters to take forward. We need to be careful that we don't become over-focused on just national courses and that national courses are the only show in town. I think that at all levels we want the senior phase to be a mixed economy of provision, qualifications and other experiences that people can engage with and national 4 is part of that. I understand that Mr Quinn but one of the great concerns that this committee was presented with was the fact that when it came to the management board for curriculum for excellence and obviously the qualifications that feed into that who makes the decisions and where the accountability lies. Over the summer there has been a great deal of discussion about national 4 and its accountability and who has the decision making power about whether that will change as a qualification. I think that this is quite an urgent point. It certainly is an urgent point as far as many parents are concerned and certainly as teachers are concerned. National 4 does not appear to be working in the best interests of quite a number of pupils and I think that that is quite a general feeling amongst teachers. I am really keen to try and ascertain where SQA is on this because I think that it is a very pressing issue in schools. As I said the decision as to any changes that would be required for national 4 would be taken through the A and Q group and then SQA would be charged with implementing those changes. That is the point that we are at right now. We are providing that information and there will be a very detailed discussion at the A and Q group, which I think that the committee is familiar with the membership. That includes the professional associations Scully to Scotland, ADES, Education Scotland, Scottish Government etc. There are a variety of voices around that table that would come to the decision as to what the nature of the changes would be and then SQA would be tasked with doing that. My last question is just to ask is SQA providing advice on national 4? Do you have an opinion as to what should happen in national 4? One of the reasons we did the field work is because there is such a variety of opinion about what should happen with national 4. One of the things we will be doing is giving the pros and cons of the different options that would be available. Do you not regard yourself as having a role in coming to a view given the field work that you have done? I think that this is a big issue. I feel very much that you are saying that it is like a dispassionate on the one hand and on the other hand that a lot of people get a lot of views on that. You need somebody to be driving it because while there is not a decision that a young people in my view are being failed in a system by not having a qualification that will be regarded externally as reflecting on their abilities. Absolutely. SQA is a key part of the A&Q group and we will be providing that advice and guidance to that group. Is it ready to be pros and cons? If you have a view, could you share it with us? I think that it is a decision as to what is the nature and the requirement of what national 4 is to be. There are a variety of different positives about internal assessment. There are a lot of positives around not having an examination but having some other form of external assessment. Externally assessed coursework for instance is an aspect that is seen as a way in which candidates can demonstrate what they can do in a different way. You have seen in the press that the variety of opinions whether an exam is good or bad for candidates. That needs to be thought through in a very careful way. With respect, if we thought that that would be something we would carry out across examination qualification but we are seeing somehow for people who are working at the level of national 4 they do not need external assessment but nobody is suggesting at higher or advanced level that does not need external assessment although the same pressures exist. I agree with you that lots of people have lots of opinions on this. What is SQA's opinion? Given, for example, from one perspective, originally curriculum for excellence did not intend to remove the external qualification and that way back in the day Munn and Dunning said that they could ensure that resources went in a fair way across the cohort of young people. You do not have an external examination the chances are that the resources that you need, the resources will be directed elsewhere. In simple terms, going to the meeting to make a decision will the SQA come to a conclusion about what should happen? Not reflect what everybody said to you but on the basis of what has been said to you will the SQA take a view into that meeting? Can I also add though that at SQA level 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 there are qualifications that are purely assessed through either coursework or internally assessed, externally verified and it is only higher advanced higher and national five that have exams so there are very, very high credibility qualifications that are not associated with examinations. So logically you would argue that higher and advanced higher should be the same then if there is a problem with external examination it applies at all levels. I think there are advantages to examinations and it specifically can also be in different subjects so some subjects are very appropriately dealt with in examinations such as mathematics in other subjects it is very difficult to do in examinations such as dance where it is performance related etc. So it is a subject specific issue as well and we have reflected that in the national five and higher and advanced higher courses in terms of the nature of the assessments that are undertaken as well. Thank you. Just a couple of supplementaries to flow from that. Firstly, Dr Brann, on the point that you make about fieldwork does that fieldwork include an assessment of where young people who take national fours then go? The fieldwork was undertaken by going to schools and asking trying to find out how the qualifications were operating within the schools so it did not go into the destination of those candidates. Does anyone within the great system that is our education world worked out where young people are going once they've passed or not past national fours? Part of the insight programme which is what Scottish Government runs in terms of the measurement system for cricket and fractions is looking at destinations of students. The assessment national qualifications group meet, presumably they'd want to know in assessing this qualification of where young people are going. That's part of what we would expect to come from the representatives from the schools and from local authorities and from college. On the accountability point that all my colleagues are raising, who is doing that work and will it be presented to this group at the same time as you're presenting your evidence on whether national fours are working or not working? That will come from others around that table. Well, I would say that I know this is not a massive for SQA but I think it is local authorities and schools and the insight group that is there to look at the destinations of the students. In your assessment that you've just been asked by Joanne Lamont to explain as to whether these are working or not do you not think that a big part of that is where pupils are then going after they've done a national four? So why is it not your work then? Why is it not part of your field work? Would that not be an essential component of your assessment that you're going to make to the group that you've been describing this morning? We are part of the system that runs curriculum for excellence. That is not a piece of work that we have currently undertaken. We would be happy to undertake that if that is something that is regarded as the focus for SQA to be doing. Your advice to us would be to ask local authorities and schools but in that sense there is no national picture being built up of where... And the insight tool is there to understand... Sorry, I don't know what the insight tool is. I'm just a MSP. What is the insight tool? Sorry, it's the current measurement system that the Scottish Government has put in place to measure the effectiveness of curriculum for excellence which takes account of not only national qualifications attainment but other types of qualifications, the destinations, positive destinations and a variety of other measures. So if I put insight into Google where all the people who have gone through national force have gone to after they've completed the national force. I don't think that it will at this point in time. We don't know the destinations on the national scale. We are currently in the second year of the full senior phase and it's early days here but that is the plan. To all the questions if I may Mr Chairman firstly who chairs the group? Who's currently the chair of the group of the assessment national qualifications group? The Deputy First Minister. Is the decision ultimately taken by the minister as to whether this changes or not? The changes that Liz Smith was asking about earlier. Finally on the timescale when is it likely to make a decision? I read various things in the last month which suggests that this could be a three-year process is that fair or what would be your understanding of when if there are to be changes to national force in terms of the points being raised about external exams when is it envisaged those changes might happen? Again the A&Q group will be deciding when those changes will come to place. When does it next meet? I am not familiar with when the data is being said it's in the current... Will it be this year? Oh yes. Over to Daniel to come in. Just a question about destinations would it not be the case that schools would know who's left school before the end of the term or has moved on to employment more likely? So that information is there, it's just a case if it's not centrally collated, would that be what Tavish was getting at? I think schools will know that students have left and where they've gone to is something that needs to be collected actively collected and that is part of the plan in terms of understanding positive destinations. So yes, it's not at a national level but schools will have their own information on that. So would they then pass that information up to the council to the local authority? Yes, I mean normally I've been in a centre before normally there's a survey of people who leave at the transition points to try and discern what their destinations are and that's collected and reviewed at either a local authority level or a college level or whatever that's the process. And certainly in terms of people who do national four qualifications to other qualifications obviously we have that information so I think that's we have a part to play in terms of that and I think it's also important to recognise that people are not just national four candidates, it's national five candidates, quite often candidates are doing a mixture of national four and national five and the candidate voice as well is an interesting factor in all of this engagement in their perception of their load and the worth of the national four and progressing on but certainly in terms of qualifications progression that the youngsters do afterwards we've got a part to play on that at schools, local authorities, colleges etc at the various transition points should I think be collecting destination figures I think that there should be more of a focus on destinations in Scottish education and less of a focus on absolute attainment and I mean I don't just mean in relation to national four I mean in relation to higher hires as well so I think that's only looking for part of them because you've already got the information for the other school, the people who are going through that for us and stuff you've already got that information if we've moved on to some other educational destination if there are other qualifications if there are other qualifications that potentially should be available certainly within the subjects we can see the progressions but there also might be more information in relation to other qualifications okay thanks for that Dyle from this line of questioning we've focused a lot in terms of the concerns around national four around assessment and progression but I think the concerns aren't limited to those things I think one of the key concerns I've heard from teachers around deliverability especially teachers charged with delivering national four and five in a single class and if I may just the key example from that that sticks in my mind is a physics teacher who was telling me that both waves form the part of the syllabus for both those qualifications but for nat four is sound waves that they teach whereas nat five is EM spectrum which is just not compatible is that compatibility an issue that you are looking at examining and seeking to resolve I think as we look at the revisions of national four and understand what the requirements are and how it's operating within schools some of the nature of the content would probably be something we would look at in terms of it is a different level of complexity at four versus five the challenge is if we're seeing significant numbers of schools delivering in multilevel teaching then I think we do have to start looking at some of the content the challenge as soon as we start looking at the content is we would change again so we would have to change the content of either four or five to be able to have that blend that blended learning to be able to take place but that multilevel teaching was something that was explicitly contained within the old regime of standard grades whereas it sounds as if the current national four and national five were designed in isolation the current national four and national five were not designed along the lines of standard grade they were designed as a progression route either to college or to national five so no consideration was given to how they might be taught by a single teacher in a single classroom the way in which creaking for excellence asked for qualifications to be designed specifically for progression from four to five and we did not do the same as was in the previous system we are seeing teachers using the current qualifications as they had used standard grades in the past and that is one of the issues that we need to look at so remind us that deliverability wasn't taken into account no I just to clarify the qualifications were organised into what we call units and they were set up hierarchically so the intention was to try and as far as possible set up the situation where there was a hierarchical progression from the different SQF levels level four to level five to level six but in some of the science areas my understanding is there was some challenges although the unit titles were similar it was the same broad area there was some differences in content but I think the intention was to organise the categories into organisers called units they have now been removed so we are now re-evaluating that and having other organisers within the courses and taking into account the deliverability issues okay I know how I'm interpreting that answer I think another key concern is around breadth so since 2014 we've seen a a decline of around a quarter in terms of the number of presentations for modern languages and I hear that with the old standard grade regime broadly between national four and five that's a 60 per cent decline in number of presentations is that something that you are concerned about is that the breadth of qualifications being taken in categories of qualifications subjects is that something that you are looking at and how that examination structure regime may contribute to those trends I think we've discussed this before at the committee in terms of the number of qualifications that candidates are taking and the associated changes in the pattern of qualifications I think one of the things that we need to understand is whether that is as a result of people bypassing a particular level for instance and moving straight on to higher which was one of the aims of quick and for excellence associated with the nature of the other types of qualifications that are available. Roberts highlighted some of the other languages qualifications and awards that are available in schools we monitor that we look at that and we give that feedback to Education Scotland Scottish Government and local authorities in terms of the nature of the presentation pattern for particular courses I think that you also have to take into account the potential changes in the school road change as well that's happening but also the philosophy with CFE that it wasn't about cramming three years of successive qualifications into senior phase it was about diffusing that through the course of the three years full three years of senior phase and I think that those taken together means that there has been a change in the number of students undertaking qualifications at S4 for instance I mean some of those factors may account for a change but even if you combine bypassing and other qualifications we're moving to a situation where out of a cohort of around 130,000 only around 20,000 are taking languages and that seems to be a whole category of subjects that are simply not being taken by you know by people at school people leaving school without any qualifications in languages at all I mean is that not a situation that would be of concern I mean in terms of SQS position in that we want all language qualifications to flourish we want young people to engage with languages but the fact is at the moment that previously under standard grade English maths and a foreign language were compulsory that is not the case now statistically the only way that can go is down when you give a degree of option and choice from our perspective we want to try and retain as broad a breadth of provision of languages as possible and also it creates some other qualifications provisions that can be engaged within the schools the modern languages for life and work award for example with 3,000 entries last year and some people were taking that qualification in lieu of a national course it's a much more flexible qualification but it still gives people an insight into languages and more importantly how they can use language in a real life environment so yes I agree with the sentiments you've expressed and obviously we would want more people to engage with languages and our aim is to continue to provide as broad a base provision as is viable in order to meet with that Finally are you going to undertake that broad macro view as to what is the total level of language attainment in schools in terms of taking into account alternative qualifications and bypassing and then looking at that aggregate picture as to what the situation is in terms of modern languages in secondary schools Certainly we can provide that information that data and that information and yes when we review our language provision and we look at the success or otherwise of the language provision we take into account the totality of that provision not just the national courses Michelle We've talked a lot in the course of today about moving on and going from N4 to N5 to Highers but all of these things all these stepping stones ultimately about leading to the world of work and I wonder what kind of engagement have you actually had with employers particularly perhaps from the smaller end employers for youngsters who leave certainly at the N4 kind of level because I think there's a lot of confusion there now and actually a lot of employers are telling me that they are going to devise their own assessments when they're trying to recruit people because they really don't understand it anymore so what are you doing about that During the course of both the development of the original curriculum for excellence qualifications but also the revisions we have a programme where we engage with businesses and we communicate with businesses as to what the nature of the qualifications are and we we also work with parents associations to make sure that parents are aware of the nature of the qualifications the nature of the changes and what the qualifications are aimed to do and what the potential progression pathways from them are but working with employers is an absolutely critical part of what we do both in terms of developing the content of what is in the qualification particularly around not necessarily the national qualifications but the other qualifications around developing Scotland's young workforce making sure that the nature of what is in the qualifications is relevant to employers the whole issue of core skills which Robert has a particular focus on is about making sure that candidates who take our qualifications have got that basis that would enable them to be successful in work and one of the challenges is making sure that we have that strong engagement with employers to do that we work closely with the Federation of Small Businesses in terms of the SMU population as well in that case and the CBI etc Are you confident that you can meet what they're asking because obviously we've had a full start and you're now revising it did what they tell you was akin to what you decided to do the first time around or are you moving towards something that they asked for now Employers are relatively familiar with internal assessment with units and with taking not only new employees but their current employees through skills development in forms that are at college and that are in a very similar framework to what national four is right now so they were very familiar with that and were very comfortable with the approach that was being taken I think what we've seen over the last couple of years is an increasing concern about how national four is perceived across the board and we need to go back and have that further on further discussion with them on that Thank you very much I'd now like to move on to discussing communication and start with Ruth Good morning panel Thank you for being here Communication was one of the themes that came up the last time you appeared before the committee there was quite a lot of reference made to jargon and language he spoke in the opening statement about close engagement with teachers and strong engagement and I guess I'd just like to ask you quite simply what does that look like who are you speaking to how are you speaking to them, how are you acting on it and how do you know what's working Do you want to start that off? Yep I mean constant engagement with teaching is our mantra in terms of qualifications the people we work with who develop and maintain qualifications are teachers and lecturers and we've taken quite a lot of steps to try and reach out more closely towards the wider balance of teachers who are not directly involved so as I said earlier the new post subject implementation managers well as the customer liaison people subject implementation managers are teachers themselves so they're teachers talking to teachers and that's a wee bit different from the liaison team who are excellent who are primarily the voice of SQA but these people have a two-way communication channel so we can use them as a benchmark so when we are thinking about how do we want to frame a piece of guidance in a particular subject or a piece of advice or we're getting a lot of feedback from teachers about clarity around something how do we make that clearer then we've got that ready available benchmark of teachers who we can use to actually road test any communications that we have with them I think that's a really valuable resource over the last year or so it's something that we've really tried to and indeed in some areas we're trying to follow strength in that particular areas where we need to provide even more support in clarity How many of those posts are there? Sorry, it sounds quite jarg in the title to be honest Yeah, okay so we could have you could have a qualifications manager who's an SQ member of staff usually with an education and teaching background and within that person's team we will second a subject specialist so in modern languages for example we have two subject specialists who we've seconded into SQA who can go out and work with and speak to teachers so they bring us closer to the teaching profession Can two members of staff have how much ground are they covering? Well, quite a lot quite a lot, I mean we have in some areas we have quite a lot they're free to go out and engage with local authorities they can meet with colleges I think it's a significant investment and in some areas you might have a qualifications manager who looks after three or four high profile subjects but they will have individual implementation managers attached to these so that can be quite a rich resource if they use it time wisely I think the other aspect is we've specifically held workshops with teachers to say this is how we are thinking about restructuring our documents this is how we're thinking about ensuring that our website is more accessible and basically engaging them and getting their feedback as to whether what we're proposing is a valuable way forward or whether it's something that we should stop and completely rethink we've had some very strong feedback on our website as you could probably imagine short and medium and longer term actions to try and address that so there's a variety of different ways in which we engage with teachers I think what Robert is highlighting is the fact that when we're writing the documents we not only write them now from the perspective of what needs to be in them we also get teachers to read them and come back and say is that easily understandable we have removed a lot of the jargon from a lot of the subjects and I think if you look at the new national 5 documentation it's a lot more streamlined that will happen again this year for hire it's a real focus I wanted to ask you again specifically about that there's an example in your evidence of one that's been reduced by 60% how do you know that this has worked for teachers what feedback have you had and what further measures have you taken we road tested the revised specifications with our subject implementation managers and we also spoke to teachers via our national qualification support team and other wider teacher networks the key thing to achieve that reduction was to learn lessons to a degree there was a number of standard statements jargon if you like that repeated itself across a number of documents and what we've done is I think these things when you read them they're educationally appropriate statements to have but when they keep repeating themselves on an on-going basis teachers have to wade through them in order to access the information so taking a step back from that and getting feedback we've stripped a lot of that out so that when a teacher reads a course specification now they can get to the heart of their subject right away as opposed to reading through a few pages of broader educational aims of the development it's not audible but don't get to the meat of the matter so I think that that was the strategy that we tried to put in place in order to achieve that that's worked feedback from teachers if we're up to speaking to Highland Council or Glasgow City or Edinburgh College then we asked them for feedback the proof in the pudding will be when we move it forward but that's what people are saying to us is they like the reduction in jargon, the increased brevity and also where it needs to be the instructive nature of it you know there are aspects of guidance which are important and autonomy and we value that but there are also some things that we have to say this is how you do it and we've tried to be a wee bit more instructive there Tavish you wanted to come in on that point Doctor Brown won't thank me for this but last November we had a submission or rather a submission from a physics teacher who said on the higher physics unit an assessment there were 81 pages of guidance across five different documents three accessible on the main SQA website but two on the SQA secure website I take it that's all rather better now better for national 5 and it will be better for higher we have redesigned all of the pages so all of the links are on one page now but when we do the revisions of the assessments for higher we will be addressing that as well but if you go back and you look at national 5 it's very different national 5 it's pretty well sorted but for teachers teaching higher physics there's still a bit of this challenge in there there's still a bit of the challenge but it's all in one place now there's one website there's one set of links our longer term approach is to develop the single sign on and everything else that will make it easier for teachers on Mr Quinn's point there's now not 81 pages of guidance so I take it that's been rather stripped down to what really matters for national 5 it will be done this year we're taking advantage of the revisions to assessment to refine our documentation it's a good opportunity to do that timely thank you before I bring in Claire can I just ask that Ruth was talking about you said you get feedback from teachers but have you got any plans to make an evaluation of the changes in your communication strategy to see how effective it is we commission on a regular basis a company to do independent surveys for us and we will continue to do that I think we've highlighted that to the committee in the past thank you very much Claire thank you convener and panel thank you for your submission I'm somewhat concerned that in a 15 page document there are two mentions of parents in that document one of which was about improving the search experience of your web pages and the other one was about materials that schools can adapt for the use of pupils and parents I can't hear or I'm not hearing from the panel this morning of much engagement with parents who are key to this so tell me how do the SQA engage and communicate with parents part of the fieldwork that we've just published and in last year's fieldwork part of that was absolutely talking to parents and hearing the voice of parents as to how they felt their children were doing in terms of the qualification so that's a significant portion it's my submission and I've not heard any of that this morning why is that? because we're focusing on the specific questions maybe it's an omission and we should have included more on our parental engagement but I would like to reassure you that we do do it and in the fieldwork report that was published early this month you'll see a specific section on parents and carers we very much work with both major parental organisations to make sure that we provide materials and work with them to provide materials that are appropriate and meaningful to parents because we recognise that the types of documentation that are on our website that are valuable for teachers are not necessarily as valuable for parents and therefore we've got a significant programme working with them and we also meet on a regular basis with the parental bodies to understand what they're doing and they also sit on SQA's advisory council you also said in your submission that as a means of engagement and again there was nothing to hear about parents in terms of your means of engagement that you made visits to schools in 2015 to 2016 and 2016 to 2017 follow-up visits in the later years to look at gaining insight into teacher and pupil opinion so where's the parents opinion there? That's what I was talking about we obviously omitted to add the word parents and carers in there but as part of that second portion of the fieldwork that was done in 1617 parents and carers and very deep discussions with them on the nature of how they felt that the qualifications were operating and the report highlights the feedback that we received from parents and carers on specifically the same sorts of questions we were asking teachers senior management teams and candidates so do you not think given that you're back here to tell the panel tell the committee rather about how well you're communicating omission in your evidence of your engagement with parents that you're not telling the committee about? We could probably have done a lot better on doing that, yes. Right, we're going to move on to marking and invigilation of scripts and exams so start with Ross. Thanks, convener. For this year's exam day the SQA decided that the papers would be withheld for 24 hours after the exam and then released how you consulted with teachers and students before making that decision. We made that decision in response to a series of events that occurred in previous sessions and we felt that we had received complaints associated with specific posts being posted during the course of an exam and we took that action to try and address it. We have reviewed that action and have decided to change that policy to what had originally been the case but was potentially not being implemented as much which is that the examination papers will be made available at the end of the school day after all candidates had undertaken the qualifications. I'm glad to hear that that decision had been reversed because the feedback that I received was that it was increasing rather than decreasing anxiety but given where we were last year where this committee went through in the SQA, the breakdown in communication, why did you not consult before making that decision? The EIS said that it was another example of an apparent lack of trust that the SQA had in teachers that further damaged your reputation in their eyes. Why did you not ask them before making that decision? I think that there are lessons for us to learn in that, definitely. I think that there is also the issue that we need to ensure that we have an appropriate mechanism that ensures that all teachers and all candidates are given a fair experience on an exam day. One of the issues that we had heard and had evidence of was inappropriate use of examination papers during the course of an exam and we needed to address that and we needed to address that pretty quickly. We did not consult, you're absolutely correct and we probably should have done and we have subsequently consulted, we've subsequently done a review of how question papers are handled in schools. We've gone into many schools and we've done a lot of audits to understand how we can best change the policy and that has resulted in us changing our approach for this coming year. We did learn the lesson that we did not consult and we went back out and taught to teachers and did a survey and went into schools during the course of the examination period to understand the implications that we would make to the availability of exam papers. That's very positive to hear. Part of the issue was the language used in your communications when I think it was in response to media inquiries explaining why you'd made that decision. The phrases that you used around inappropriate postings many teachers felt were accusational. Have you had any review of your communication strategy in terms of the language that you're using? Yes. One of the things that we've talked a lot about SQA taking a stock of how we communicate and how we engage with teachers and the broader stakeholder community including parents and carers and one of the things that we have done is try and understand when we need to be directive and when we need to be supportive and when we need to explain things in a much better way. There are occasions as Robert has highlighted where we need to be clear and directive on how things absolutely have to happen in order to secure a certification to occur but we also need to be very cognisant of the nature of how we communicate so we have taken action on that. Thank you. Coming back to our discussions of November last year and the recommendations that the committee gave to the SQA were the discussions that we had then. Point 28 on our recommendations to the SQA which I'm sure you'll be familiar with is that the SQA's core business is producing and marking exams. The others in those areas are unacceptable and the committee is concerned that Dr Brown suggests that others occur because of excessive workload and has presented the solution that has been more work on quality assurance. We've urged you to consider how to re-prioritise and to give you the opportunity to tell the committee how you've done that. One of the things that we very much did this year is introduce additional quality assurance processes on the nature of the question papers and I think that the committee will have noticed that we replaced one examination paper this year but there were no other errors within the system that addressed any concerns. One of the things that we did do was introduce the previous year we discussed the fact that we introduced additional quality control mechanisms associated with specifically the sciences because of the complexity of those papers. We've rolled those changes out across the board and we've introduced additional quality assurance procedures both in terms of the nature of the development of the question paper but also in the actual printing of the question paper as well. Picking up on one of the things that was mentioned there was something that you said was a reason behind the errors of previous years. How has that been addressed? One of the things that we have done because we are in the midst of doing the revisions to the assessments is that we have added additional staff in terms of being able to take some of that work and spread it across the piece. Robert might want to cover that. A practical example of that is narrowing the number of examination papers or assessments that each qualification manager is responsible for. There is less absolute pressure on that individual if you like. We've broadened the qualification staff teams so each qualification manager now has a narrower range of subjects or exam papers which allows us collectively to focus more on quality. We've increased the size of the teams and decreased the number of specific subjects that each individual is responsible for which allows them the time and the space to be able to deal with that. One of the criticisms that came back anecdotally from people after your comments on this was about how the SQA is operating internationally as well and that might have had an impact on your core business of overseeing the qualifications regime in Scotland. How would you answer that criticism? Is it that you go on to international stuff later on? Do you answer that specific question? Yes, I will. I have another question then. Coming back to... I've got the official record of the committee meeting in November and it came back to a question that I asked at the time was about the recruitment of markers and that had been a problem in the past. You haven't been able to recruit enough markers and there were criticisms that you hadn't been able to recruit markers with enough experience. I believe that it's three years of teaching experience that you require before someone can be a marker for the SQA. Am I correct in that? Yes, it's three years. We don't count the probationary years. Two years, yes. Can you confirm to the committee that every marker that is marking for the SQA has had three years experience at least? Yes. When appointees register with us they tell us how much experience they have and we only accept teachers that have that level of experience to become markers. Another thing that was mentioned again out with the committee but with teachers that I know who had been markers was that the system, the computer system where they're actually marking online was difficult to negotiate. They were often getting locked out and having to phone a helpline. Has that been streamlined at all when you've been looking at your other computer issues? Yes. One of the things that we do every year is we review how our marking system has operated and we will make revisions for the following subsequent session. We did have one issue this year which was associated with markers and we were using Apple computers that was associated with the supply and that was dealt with very quickly. We have a system in place that allows markers to flag to team leaders any issues that they're finding that are then addressed as quickly as we possibly can but we do make incremental improvements during the course of the programme. Getting back to the number of markers that you had did you have any issues this year? Was there an improvement in getting enough markers? There was an improvement there. We put in place additional recruitment mechanisms to make sure that we had the right number of markers and we were not short on markers last year and we're starting in the process of beginning recruitment for the following session. Last year I asked you about and I was corrected by you by calling them appeals. I know they're not called appeals anymore. Ruth is going to be laughing at the jargon there. Forgive me if I lapse into calling them appeals but was there a decrease as a result of the measures that you took to improve the marking and to have more markers recruited? Was there a decrease in the amount of schools appealing the results or going to the post-result services? In the process of finalising that right now we've seen a slight reduction but I don't have the final figures with me. Can I ask a point of clarification, Dr Brown? It's my understanding that if there is some form of dispute over a request for a marking review that you're not in a position to let the papers be seen by the candidate, could I ask what the justification is for that because in other parts of the UK and other countries that does happen and given some constituents that write to us, I think it might be helpful if that transparency was in Scotland, too. That is currently the practice that we do not return scripts. One of the challenges has historically been the nature of the fact that you have one copy of a script. We are now moving to a different environment where we have electronic copies of scripts and we will be consulting this year on changing that policy if the system requires it. There is a variety of opinions again across the country as to whether or not that is a good thing to do. It's just from an integrity point of view that it helps the transparency that the candidate can see the reason. It's been a historical procedure in Scotland. That's good to hear. Okay, thank you. Tavish, do you want to come in at this point? Thank you, convener. Can I just ask a couple of questions about how the SQA set the pass rates for, I'm principally thinking of higher here, and how much those alter from year to year. I was told that higher PE went up this year. You need to keep me correct me if I've got this wrong. But it went up more by more than the normal variance of say two or three percent. Again, please correct me if I've got the numbers way wrong here. In other words, was it a statistically significant change in that particular subject? If so, why? Do you want me to do this one? As the committee is aware, what we do in the great boundary meetings is we review the nature of the assessment, we review how that assessment has performed, and if that assessment has been too challenging or too accessible, we will adjust the great boundary appropriately. The adjustment is not associated with the pass rate at all, the pass rate falls out of the discussion around where that great boundary should be set. In the case of PE, I am trying, I am not sure of the exact criteria that was in place, but that is the mechanism that we have. We would look at the nature of the assessments, because it is generally more than one assessment, that combines to make the final pass mark. What we would then do is adjust the great boundary based on how each component of that final assessment will have operated. Those adjustments would be fairly small in terms of a percentage change, 51, 49 rather than 10 per cent. Normally, that is the case. There are exceptional cases where you would see something happen that you needed to address and the great boundaries are there to address that. Daniel, do you have a question? We will move on to investment programme and international activities. I want to ask one or two questions about resources, but I want to ask a general one first. On page 10 paragraph 3, it says that this year conferences were held in Inverness, Dundee, Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow attracting 357 delegates. It does not sound like many delegates for five events. Sorry. Are you specifically talking about SQA co-ordinator events? That's right. There is a co-ordinator for every school or every centre in Scotland, so it's not each teacher that we're inviting to the co-ordinator events. So you expect one from each school? Yes. There's around 430 secondary schools in Scotland. Sorry, how many? Around 430 secondary schools in Scotland. Okay. The people that help co-ordinate all the data that's transferred between SQA and centres, et cetera, is the co-ordination role as opposed to the qualifications role. That's what those events are for, managing requests for information from SQA and marking reviews, all that type of stuff. Back to money. I notice that you're saying you intend to invest in your IT systems, which from my experience in the Public Audit Committee brings a sort of a cold sweat on other public IT programmes. What exactly are you intending doing? What we are doing, and we've been doing this now for the past two or three years, is we are evolving, not radically moving from one box to another box. We're evolving our IT systems. The current system that exists within SQA has been in place since the late 90s, 1990. One of the things we need to do is we need to bring our systems up to speed and up to the efficiency that we need them to be to enable us to do some of the things that we're talking about in here, in terms of engagement, in terms of transparency, in terms of giving people access to our systems. What we are doing is taking functionality. We're taking some of the things that the current system does and putting it on other smaller systems and building up a modular system. So we are not buying a brand-new gigantic system. It's very important that we don't do that because, like you, we absolutely have to be aware of minimising the risks to anything that we do within SQA. We are currently in the process of moving some of the things that our legacy system has been doing onto a corporate business system, which is what Linda is currently working on. That is to de-risk the main system. So we are slowly moving things off in a very controlled, very managed way. Who is managing the project in terms of input from the Scottish Government or whatever? Linda Ellison, who is the director of finance, the director of business systems and myself have met with the Scottish Government chief information officer and we are in regular communication with them. We have used the templates that the Scottish Government advised in terms of programme management for major IT changes. So we are fundamentally doing that. I think that Linda wants to add something to that. Essentially we have spoken with the Scottish Government but we have taken forward the paper to them a proposal on how we will make that shift our IT strategy, if you like, our change programme strategy, but essentially about de-risking and about moving transactional type data from the big main system. Everything that we hold about candidates, all the exams, all the qualifications, all the units, sitting in a single system that's a number of systems called APS and what we're doing is looking at how do we de-risk that system. We'll run all of our back-office services but we'll also do all of our transactional activities to do with all the 15,000 appointees that we work with, the teachers who get payments from us, who draw expenses from us. We are moving that on to the new, if you like, back-office service system. The system itself is a new software system, ERP system. It's called aggressive. It's a unit for business world as a supplier. It's used by a number of public sector bodies. But we are using a contractor to help us with that implementation. Yes, we are. One of the things we have been careful to do is make sure that we have good programme management of all of that. One of the things we've done is, in discussions with the Scottish Government Information Department, make sure that we look at their recommendations and do that on a regular basis as to what we should be tracking and make sure that we are tracking those things. We have a monthly meeting that monitors the progress of this and we have a project manager who is specifically dealing with it. It is not something that an organisation whose business is data takes lightly. SQA is a data organisation. That's what we do. What's the cash value of the project? Over its lifetime? The submission that we gave to the Scottish Government was spent to save the submission. We will be spending around in total £3 million to £4 million over a five-year period. We will be securing savings as we progress through that that we demonstrated because we've moved some of our office systems on to a new system. We've actually moved to Microsoft and we are securing quite substantial savings through that move and that's helping to fund some of the other changes that we're making. Just to labour one piece, you are aware of the successive failures of various IT projects. I know yours is smaller than some of them but hopefully you've seen the lessons from that. That's one of the reasons why we are working along the Scottish Government guidelines and they have looked at those as we have. We also have a very experienced business systems director in place who's implemented changes like this in other organisations successfully and we are very carefully monitoring how we're doing that. Just a couple. You've made reference to volumes of data being safely, securely and efficiently held. Are you absolutely confident that there's no chance of hacking? Everybody remembers the NHS a little earlier this year. That was something that we took very seriously. We have a security department within our business systems retreat that is actively looking at any penetration challenges that might be on-going. For instance, this week I think there was a US Government there was a potential hack out there that was immediately sprung upon by SQA. We have an on-going programme to look at the security of our systems and we also do penetration testing to make sure that we are as safe as we possibly can be. Still on resources on page 11 section 2 you state that the national qualifications programme announced by the Deputy First Minister six to three years will also demand significant staff resource and focus. Already the scope of what you've been talking about having done here must be taking up considerable staff resources. Can you quantify what you mean by that? Are you going to need additional resources? As we've said, we've completed national 5 and now we're moving on to higher. The resources that I've undertaken national 5 will now be moving on to higher. We anticipate it to be roughly similar but we cannot be absolutely sure that we wouldn't have to add more but at the moment we think it's roughly similar. How big is this roaming team that are handling this? Some of the changes that we've made are associated with improvements in quality assurance for instance and some of the changes are associated with the additions that we need to undertake the revisions. The figure that we have for this I think we can give you the financial number which is... The actual number of what happened with CFE was we took a lot of additional people on over the three years of developing the new qualifications. With the change to the assessments of the new qualifications we've retained some of those people and those people have actually come on to our level as opposed to being fixed-term people or secondaries. There may be surplus requirements down the line. Well, these are the same people who will work through the assessments whether it's national 5, higher or advanced higher so we made the decision based on the advice, the HR and the legislation advice around the status of these individuals that we should move some of them on to our permanent payroll. Thank you for that. Sorry, just trying to understand how it's affecting what they're going to be doing. Can I just say that we know we started off the committee session with national 4. We currently do not have a timeline for national 4 so we anticipate that we will be needing these people for a period yet. Okay, thanks Colin. Thank you. Thank you very much, you'll recall in last year's discussions one of the issues that was flagged up was this question of your international work. The charge is that basically the ability of the organisation to concentrate on its day job is affected by its desire to do international work or work across the rest of the United Kingdom. In your response you say and I quote this generates a contribution to SQE's finances thereby reducing dependency on the public purse. Can that be quantified? Yes. It's in our financial accounts. Sorry, what's the actual? I'm interested to know how your international work reduces dependency on the public purse by how much, roughly? Can I just say that there are multiple reasons why we undertake international work? Given the amount of time we have I know there's a whole list of reasons you've given in your submission about why it's important, including leadership and being respected across the world and all the rest of it, but the core charge is that the SQE can't do its day job because of the work it's doing in relation to getting contracts elsewhere. So maybe you can clarify from how this happens. You have what, a business development section? Yes. You have a contract section? Those are discrete bodies that don't draw on the work of the rest of the SQE? No, they don't. Staff are not taking from anywhere else in the organisation to support business development or contracts? No. When we win a contract, we bring on contractors to deliver that contract for us. When you develop plans or bids for a contract, do you draw on expertise beyond your business development and contracts group? Not at all? No. The only time that would happen with that is if we would have a meeting associated with that. However, there are no resources that come out and work internationally out with the business development teams from that perspective. The size of the business development team is? I'm sorry, I don't have that detail information. It's useful to know A what its size is and has it grown or reduced what the size of the SQE staff more generally is and whether it has grown or reduced. I do think that it would be important for us to know if there's a means of auditing the benefit. If the charges people have been drawn to this other work, you would need to balance that against knowing what the contracts are that you've secured, the cost in securing them and the cost and benefit of securing them, which are two different things. Is that information to be made available to the committee? That's appropriate. One of the things that I'd like to remind the committee is that we also develop qualification for colleges and for training providers for modern apprenticeships and foundation apprenticeships. One of the challenges is balancing the national qualifications developments alongside all of the vocational and other qualifications that we are required to deliver for Scotland. Robert's team, for instance, has the responsibility for both vocational and national qualifications. That blend is also something that is probably more of a challenge than a national component. That is core business. Looking for contract sales, we would have to be balanced against the benefits of securing them and the amount of finance that comes in and not drawing on other people's time and energy within the organisation. That forms part of the decision making criteria that we have as to whether or not we would do a contract. Is that what we're sorry? So, when we decide whether we are going to undertake a contract or not, we would look at what the cost-benefit analysis is and whether there is any benefit to SQA to do that. We would not take on something that would not be beneficial. So there's a process of that and presumably a commercial assessment subsequent to the contract being completed on its benefits. Is that publicly available? Is that available to the committee? We can make it available to the committee. Is that publicly available? Some of it is obviously commercially and we are bidding for contracts for some of it's commercial. We are absolutely confirming that staff are not used from elsewhere in the organisation to develop either proposals for a bid or in delivering that contract. Those are discreet to the business development and contracts departments. Yes. It's tender international awarding which is qualifications undertaken by centres overseas. The normal approach is that what we develop for Scotland people can pick up and use so the units and group awards can be used internationally. So the focus is that the work that we do for the Scottish market if other centres want to use it across the world then they can do that but it's the work that we develop for the Scottish market and for the benefit of Scottish candidates that's the primary source. That's different point isn't it? Other folk noticing the good work that SQA is doing and using it. Quite different from a focus on what you have already said finding means to contribute to SQA's finances by reducing dependence on the public person. One might argue that shouldn't necessarily be your job to have to do that. If your focus is on delivering qualification in Scotland you shouldn't have to find the commercial means for funding it. You don't have a view on that. Would it be better if SQA could simply align in a public resource to do its job so it doesn't have to do this commercial work? I think there's commercial work, there's international work. The value that we get from working internationally and to some extent from undertaking some contracts allows us to learn how to improve what we do in Scotland as well. There are multiple benefits. It allows us to think of different ways of doing things and to be a bit more innovative. It would again be interesting to have some kind of track of where that happened given at the moment. We'd all accept the view of SQA by a lot of practitioners in Scotland as sceptical. It would be interesting to know where there is evidence that international work has improved that reputation in Scotland. That is something that we can maybe explore further. Any information you can give us around the process and the numbers that are involved in SQA in that side of work. We can do that. You mentioned the value of working internationally. One of the goals of the Scottish Government is for the Scottish economy to develop more internationally as well. I was speaking to somebody last night about very good links internationally that could be taken in order to improve the economy. Would that be one of the advantages that you would see of the work that SQA does internationally? Some of what we do internationally is about supporting universities. Stirling University has a follow-on programme in Oman. It follows on from our HND programme in Oman. It supports that particular university institution on specific occasions. It does do that. Before we finish, I have just got one request that you could write with the details of the SNAP4s that are going on to further education. We are continuing education. We were talking about the point that Tavish raised. We knew where they were going when they had left the SNAP4s. If you could send us that information it would mean that we would know what the gap was that we were trying to fill. We can write to Deputy First Minister or local authorities or whoever is the most appropriate person to do that one. Other than that, thank you very much for your attendance and we will now move into private session. We will wait for the witnesses and gallery to leave before continuing.


We are now moving from some of the key themes that had been raised in the last session in talking about the narratives of cities and the built environment by looking at what this means in terms of the shape and the layering of histories of cities themselves. Aswa Aksoi is chairing the session with me. She is one of the key figures who's been looking at the sociological relations and the spatial relations in this city and a critical member of Bilgi University and also a member of the team that has helped us shape this conference. To speak on these issues, we're going to start with Hashim Sarkis. Hashim is the Aga Khan professor of landscape architecture and urbanism from the Graduate School of Design. He is an old friend. He's from Beirut which is more or less where I met him and he will be speaking about an issue which is I know very close to his heart having been brought up also on the other side of the Mediterranean where I was brought up which is Rome in my case and his case Beirut and to talk about some recent work that he has been doing on the cities of the Mediterranean. So could you welcome Hashim Sarkis? Good afternoon. In the paper in the journal that you have, I asked the question about what is it about Istanbul that makes it so attractive for subjects of former empires like myself coming from Beirut. Today I would like to ask it from the more professional point of view. What is it that attracts us as architects and planners to this place? What is it about Istanbul's urban geography that makes it relevant to contemporary urban studies at the onset of what we're here for, at the onset of the urban age? I contend that it has to do to a great extent with the way our disciplines and professions venerate the Mediterranean city as an urban ideal and the way we regard Istanbul as one of the clearest realizations of this ideal. Importantly, this ideal, I also want to argue, underlies our conception of the good global city if there is such a good. On the surface the Mediterranean as a cultural entity is full of ideological minds. As anthropologist Michael Hertzfeld has convincingly argued, Mediterraneanism tends to cast infinite stereotypes on the lands and the peoples that surround it. But those who live around the Mediterranean also use it to describe themselves, so we should take it seriously. In parallel, I propose that the Mediterranean city as a concept should be studied in terms of what we see as stereotypes of Mediterranean culture and attitudes, but also because it captures certain desires that we as architects and planners project when we say a Mediterranean city. I'm here confining myself to the formal desires and bracketing, if at all possible, the sensual desires of sea, sex and sun to borrow from Serge Gensboul's famous alliteration that have in some ways found their spatial manifestation in the all too dominant club med phenomenon that has basically overwhelmed much of this country, particularly its gated communities. I'm thinking of areas like Khmer country that really speak of this sensual desire of sea, sex and sun even though it is Mediterranean by way of Florida. Now these are images of the kind of Mediterranean city that we all have in mind when we say Mediterranean city or Istanbul as a Mediterranean city. But in a way after the grey weather of the past week, you may rightly ask what club med, what Mediterranean weather. There are different Mediterranean to be sure. There is the East Mediterranean versus the West Mediterranean. There is the North versus South. Then there are sub Mediterranean like the Adriatic and the Aegean. And then there are paramediteranians like Marmara and the Black Sea. Each of these subcultures aspires to a set of qualities that could distinguish it from the general stereotype without necessarily helping clarify what the general Mediterranean stereotype is actually. Now these geographic variations and subcategories notwithstanding, there are also different historiographic conceptions of the Mediterranean. Meaning ways in which this common basin has been understood to affect the evolution of its shores. Each of these conceptions implies a distinct understanding of the character of the Mediterranean city as a historic entity and as an ideal. Therefore, in my presentation today, I will focus on four sub conceptions of the Mediterranean. First, the Mediterranean as a unifying geography over time. The second is the Mediterranean as a culture, sorry, as a cluster of complementary micro regions. Third, the Mediterranean as opposite but interactive shores. And fourth, the Mediterranean as an endangered ecology. I apologize, this is not my real voice. My real voice is much, much better but I left it on the plane somewhere between Boston and here. Let me start then with the very first one. The Mediterranean as a unifying geography over time. In Fernand Brodell's history of the Mediterranean during the reign of Philip II and his subsequent studies on the Mediterranean, the complex web of diverse cultures and frequent exchanges is nevertheless given structure and long-term continuity by the Mediterranean geography that unifies it. In his long durée, geography is a form giver to the city. Now, how does this translate into the ideal of the Mediterranean city? When I think of the individual Brodell once wrote, I'm always inclined to see him imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand fixed in a landscape in which the infinite perspectives of the long term stretch into the distance both behind him and before. Perhaps the best representation of the Mediterranean city in this vein along these lines as the meandering coastline with harbours framed by mountains and an encroaching hinterland is captured in Istanbul's panoramic order. Istanbul's panorama captured this geographic constant and historic epochs displayed however synchronically on the same plane and it captures also what is constant and what is varied and it organizes them in a very clear structure of a foreground that is always changing, a middle ground that is fixed and the background that is changing as well. Now, does Istanbul, one may ask, live up to this panoramic ideal? The freezing of the Bosphorus skyline by the all-too-powerful Istanbul Historic Commission, is there anyone here from them? No. I can keep going. By the all-too-powerful Istanbul Historic Commission may have on the surface superficially protected this long durée and allowed for this condition of extended visibility to be preserved but it has also severed the constantly revised foreground of the Bosphorus and ever-looming background of Levent from the history of the city. It would be important to rethink the panoramic order of Istanbul as one that is capable of embracing the present and future of the city as well. Second, the Mediterranean as a cluster of complementary microregions. This conception is perhaps best captured in the work of Horden and Purcell on the Mediterranean. In their work, the Mediterranean is explained as a series of microregions that interact with each other frequently in order to complement each other's resources. This microregions mentality or approach to the Mediterranean also provides a very strong connection to the countryside. Historians and sociologists working in this tradition always remind us that culture and agriculture are continuous and they challenge the hegemony of the urban in our understanding of the Mediterranean. This clustering of micro communities is also perhaps best represented by a sketch by a young Le Corbusier. His rendition of Istanbul visited 1914. This rendition of Istanbul was allegedly the inspiration behind the separation of land uses in the modern urbanism. A clear land use subdivision and daily migrations in a landscape that displayed a natural connection between its different parts. The modernist city that it has inspired by this image has since abstracted its land uses and the land use order and separated them from the land underneath. But Istanbul has also abandoned the idea of complementarity among its parts, clearing the inner city of industry and agriculture and shifting towards its self-similarity that is in many ways quite alarming. This conception of the Mediterranean city is further bolstered by images of informality and frequent exchanges that generate the Mediterranean pulse as Henri Lefevre has talked about it. This pulse is in turn best illustrated in the contrast between the frequency of shop fronts in the disappearing bazaar versus those of the incoming shopping mall. But here we also forget one other thing which I think is very enlightening when we look at Istanbul. We often find three or four shops in the Istanbul bazaar owned by the same person or by a family feigning competition and that these bazaar products are also to be found in the formal economy of the shopping mall. Perhaps then we can suggest that this pulse of the city, this Mediterranean pulse, need not be contradictory with the formal economies of global cities. We should also ask whether the city that had been able to accept hinterland through the creation of informal settlements and to ultimately absorb them into its cosmopolitan fabric is now able to do so with its global hinterland. If I can borrow from Saskia Sassan's comments this morning and with the Gypsies and the Eastern Europeans and Africans. The example of Kasim Pasha obviously comes to mind. Thirdly, the idea of the Mediterranean city emerging out of the Mediterranean as opposite but interactive short. The historian, David Abulafia, has argued that what characterizes the Mediterranean the most is a geography of opposed but accessible short with a frequency of exchange between them. In this conception, the edges of the Mediterranean consist of cities and towns that are loosely connected with their hinterland but that are mostly connected with each other via trading communities and businesses. If we compare this with a second conception, here we are talking about cities whereas in the second one it was towns and small clusters and here these towns or big cities have very little interest in the hinterland. They turn their back to it and they're open more to the shores of the other side. Now the opposing shorelines should and could be taken at different scales in the case of Istanbul. There are the two sides of the Bosphorus. Remember that there are international waters that run through it. There's also the Marmara Sea and then the larger Mediterranean and Black Seas. The organization of the spaces and the population of this type of Mediterranean city has already been explained earlier this afternoon by Richard Sennett's use of the concept of the hinge city so I will not talk about it much. But I would like to say that the extent to which Istanbul can continue to make manifest the presence of its trading others in its urban fabric is no doubt threatened by the fact that the heterogeneity of its urban development is no longer connected to the heterogeneity of its ethnic composition but rather to the state development culture that is seeking to create market diversities. Let me repeat that because the Moeddin is not letting me speak. The extent to which Istanbul can continue to make manifest the presence of its trading others in its own fabric is no doubt threatened by the fact that the heterogeneity of its urban development is not connected anymore to the heterogeneity of its ethnic composition but rather to the real estate development culture that is seeking to create market diversity. It is a constructed heterogeneity. The presence of the other that is so celebrated in the hinge city and in Brodell is also threatened here by the nervousness exhibited by nationalist attitudes towards foreign architects and foreign developers. Lastly, the Mediterranean as an endangered ecology. Here, the Mediterranean of ecologists and ecological historians like J.R. McLean insist that Brodell's long-duration geography has also a history, a rapidly changing history. Climate and the terrain change, sorry, climate and the terrain change and they change fast and the history and the special qualities of the Mediterranean region are strongly affected by these changes. Historically, this city has often confronted disasters from fires to earthquakes that have changed its countenance. As historian Guru Neshi Boglu has illustrated, the shifts in the construction of the city from wood to stone and then to a combination of the two, the bringing in of foreign experts during times of crisis, the creation of public spaces and clearings are all historical manifestations of the city's vulnerability but also of its resilience. Today's discussion around climate change amplify the historical confrontation with disaster while also exposing the degree to which the problem cannot be addressed locally or nationally anymore. As Ulrich Peck has argued, the risks we confront today have shown that the national scale cannot deal with them anymore. The visibility of the Mediterranean as a semi-autonomous ecology becomes necessary for action. As the city reaches its limits of growth towards the Black Sea forests and towards the Marmara coastline, it is important for it to articulate these limits not simply as frontiers to eventually be conquered but as definitive edges of ecological commons to be highlighted and to be protected. These four models of the Mediterranean city are compatible with each other. For example, the relationship with the hinterland in the second model and third, conceptions are almost opposed, 180 degrees apart from each other, diametrically opposed. In historiographic terms, one may have to choose among the different models but the beauty of working with spatial models, the way we do, is that they are not mutually exclusive. After all, spatial simultaneity of opposing models may turn out to be a distinctly and desirably Mediterranean trait. In summary then, let me list those traits. The unfolding organization of the panorama that unifies the city with its geography but allows it to evolve, the frequent exchange among clusters of towns, the loose connection to the hinterland which nevertheless produces a distinct pulse in the life to the city that connects to the presence of the hinterland in the city and the city's embrace of a common fate that connects it with other cities bound to it by an endangered ecology. These constitute the qualities of the Mediterranean city which also describe its resilience and persistence as a model or as a series of models. If we close our eyes and look carefully, this is what you see when you close your eyes, at what we find best in the cities of the urban age, the cities that have been studied so far in New York, London, Johannesburg, Monbe, Mexico or Sao Paulo, we can no doubt find many of these qualities. Perhaps we can also begin to discern the emergence of a global Mediterranean. Thank you very much. Hashim, thank you very much for giving us that insight for an incredibly well researched historical region also formal context to the city. He warned me that his voice would run out after 14 and a half minutes and it did. So, you've done very well, so thank you for doing that.


Europe, we don't have a lot of time to waste. The new competitive powers out there, it's not a matter if they're going to bypass us. I think the risk is they're going to run us over. In Europe, it's clear we're a mature, high-cost economy. We have to innovate through technology to prosper, to survive, to create jobs, to create investment. This region can't compete on the basis of price. It has to compete on the basis of quality. There are so many examples of innovation. It's the largest ever scientific collaboration on the largest ever experiment. Europe should actually set itself up to become the champions of the green economy. Central Asia is still seen as something of a mystery. The population of the Kazakh capital has doubled over the last ten years. If we don't engage with these countries, these countries will turn eastwards. In Central Asia, there needs to be much more flexibility around labour markets. It needs innovation. It needs change. It needs to be able to respond to the opportunities that are going to come. And I think it's highly important that they also look very strongly towards Europe. We have a region that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia have got a huge amount of potential. In a project to develop a high-tech research and production hub that will become Russia's Silicon Valley. The European Union is still the world's largest trading block, the world's largest integrated market. If you look at where Europe and Central Asia stand, you can see the opportunities. How can we actually create a fusion of Europe and Central Asia? The meeting in Vienna will create an opportunity for East to meet West. The idea was to build something completely new. The discussions are at the fundament of actions. There are very few barriers in Vienna. There has never been a better time to do this. A new start.


This coming Thursday on Winner Home, it's a last-minute scramble as the design duos work towards completing their second challenge. This looks like chaos. I'm just hoping it comes together. With two bathrooms to design and decorate in only two weeks, will they finish on time and will the judges be blown away by their unique spaces? Wow! Watch all the design drama unfold with Winner Home, Thursday evening at 7.30pm on SABC3. The stage is yours. Winner Home, proudly brought to you by Capitec and Private Property, with Samsung products designed for your connected lifestyle. Grand Prize Luxury Penthouse Apartment by Vaughan Properties.


Hey guys, welcome to the Tennis Mentor YouTube channel. My name's Ashie Neves and I run a tennis coaching program down on the south coast of the UK. Alongside my full-time role, I recently set up this YouTube channel to help tennis players, tennis coaches and tennis parents to get more out of the sport. Usually I'd be posting tennis lessons and tutorials on here, but today is going to be slightly different. Over the last few months, as the channel has grown, I've been contacted by a few companies from around the world asking me to unbox and review their products. And as unfortunately in the England at the moment, we are in lockdown and unable to play tennis. I thought it would be a good way to spend my time and to make more content. So I've chosen a couple of these products to unbox to show you and to let you know what I think. The one that I'm going to be looking at today is from a company called Racket Pets based in the United States and they kindly sent me a box of goodies. I've seen Racket Pets on Instagram, seen a few of their products and really like them, but never really looked much further than that because they are not available in the UK. However, Maria from Racket Pets emailed me to let me know that they are launching the product in the UK and that she'd like me to unbox them to show everybody what they are. Racket Pets are a fairly new company and they have created a matching overgrip and dampener set for children's tennis rackets. Or I guess you could probably use them as adults as well, but they are aimed towards children. I believe they're the only company that sells specifically matching overgrip and dampener sets and even more exciting, they are designed around the theme of animals. Now I don't have kids. If I did, it would be the perfect opportunity to get them to help me with the unboxing. The closest I can get is you can probably hear him snorting. But my dog, Marcel, he won't get quite as excited as kids would about the product, but I'm sure he'll be able to help me. Yeah, are you going to help if he looks that interested? So let's take a look. Nice. OK, so a little message. Hi Ashley. Thank you very much for your time and consideration of Racket Pets. I hope you like them, Maria. Nice little panda. OK, so let's have a look at the products. We've got quite a few in here. As you can see, I've sent a few of them. Got a set of stickers. OK, so the first one I'll show you here is a giraffe with a matching grip. Pretty cool. Got a dragon, an elephant, a unicorn, crocodile or an alligator. And finally, a snake. Which one would I choose? I think I'd go for the crocodile, actually. I think he's my favourite. However, probably want him to match my racket. Now, I've been playing with the head radical prototype, which is kind of a silvery grey with bright orange. So I reckon actually the elephant would go well with that or maybe the dragon. But to be honest, they're all pretty cool. I thought it'd be good to actually put a grip on, see how it feels and see how they look on the racket. So yeah, I'm going to put the crocodile on. So here is the grip out of the pack and the dampener. They're pretty good quality. They're actually, I don't know how they're made, but they're 3D and the quality feels very, very good. This is kind of like a standard dampener, but I know looking at the snake, it's one that will go across quite a few of the strings, but they do look very well made, which is pretty cool for a small company. So I'll put the dampener on first. Nice, so crocodile is on there looking cool. Let's put the grip on now. Okay, you've got a special guest now, Marcel. It comes with tape, just like a normal overgrip. It's got the protective film that you can take off and a little adhesive at the end to stick the first part of the grip down. My system's gone. So the grip feels nice and tacky actually, and it's got a little bit of stretch in it, which is nice. And it comes with racket pets tape. So you want to get the tapered edge. So I'm gripping a 21-inch racket, and you can see that there's quite a lot of the grip left over. So it will be suitable for a full-size racket too, I'm pretty sure. So just trim that end down to taper it off at the tape. And voila, looks pretty cool together. Got the grip and the croc. Feels nice and tacky actually, then it's nice and thin, so it's not going to build up the kid's grip too much. It's going to feel similar to the sort of grip size they already had. And it's nice and tacky too. Very cool. I would have absolutely loved this as a kid. I'm going to name him Colin, Colin the Crocodile. Let me know which one you would have gone for. Luckily I've got a nice selection now, so I'll probably give these out as prizes on the coaching program to some of the kids. So as I said, these are already on sale in the States. I will pop the link in the video description below, and they will be coming out in the UK very shortly. So as soon as they do, I will add that link into the video description as well. As part of making this video, I've been given an affiliate link. So if you wanted to purchase some of these, click the link in the video below, and I get a little kick back from this, so much appreciated. If you are in the UK and you're desperate to get a hold of them before they're launched, you can still order them. And I do have a discount code below as well, which will give you free shipping, but you need to order five units for that to work. So check out the link in the description below. I believe there are various other products that you can buy on the website too. Anyway, I'm really excited to get back onto the coaching program and to see what the kids and the players think of these. And hopefully I'll find little challenges in games to give them out as prizes. I hope you enjoyed this unboxing video. I will be doing a couple more over the coming weeks. So stay tuned, click subscribe if you'd like to see more, and hopefully I will see you on the next video. Take care.