Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. Our first item on our agenda this morning is consideration of subordinate legislation, the Police Act 1997 and the protection of vulnerable groups Scotland Act 2007, fees, coronavirus amendment regulations 2022. The committee conserved this instrument at its meeting on the 9 March and we agreed to write to Clare Hockey MSP Minister for Children and Young People on several points. The committee considered the minister's response by correspondence and agreed to note and to make no recommendations in respect of the instrument. It is on the agenda today to allow the committee to formally record that decision. With that, we will move on to the next item on the agenda. The second item on our agenda today is to take evidence on education reform and specifically on the report putting learners at the centre towards a future vision for Scottish education. I would like to give very long welcome to our witnesses to the committee this morning, Professor Kenneth Muir, honorary professor at the University of the West of Scotland and formerly chief executive and registrar of the general teaching council for Scotland. You are very welcome Professor Muir and Professor Graham Donaldson on a Professor School of Education at the University of Glasgow. As I said, we are delighted to have both of you with us coming so soon after the publication of this very important report. To begin with, I would like to invite Professor Muir if he would like to make a short opening statement for up to five minutes and then we will move on to questions. Professor Muir. Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be here with you and your committee both virtually and in real life this morning. As you say, I am accompanied by Graham Donaldson. Graham was one of the expert panel members that I brought together, a small expert panel to advise me. It is worthwhile to say at the outset that the report is actually mine, although Graham and other members of the expert panel accompanied me on some of the visits that I undertook and also gave feedback on some of the emerging recommendations from my report. As committee will be aware, when I took up this remit at the beginning of August, there were three decisions that had already been made. One was to replace SQA, one was to remove the inspectorate from Education Scotland, and the third was that Education Scotland as a result would be subject to reform, and I was to advise on what that reform might look like. I was also asked to consider the possibility of establishing a curriculum and assessment body that I took into account as part of my work. Although my remit was quite tight and ring-fenced, it was very clear that it was given the substantial remit and role of Education Scotland and SQA in Scottish education. It was necessary to take a very wide-ranging view and to engage widely with folk not just in the school sector but out with the school sector in other areas. I was very keen to engage extensively, particularly with learners and particularly with practitioners. As committee will be aware, I engaged with the Scottish Youth Parliament and the charity together to survey the views of primary and secondary learners throughout that. It was very apparent when I took on the remit that the work that I was being asked to do did not exist in a vacuum. There were a lot of things that were going on at that time within the education system. In the early years, for example, the impact of the national care service review and what some of the fallout from that might be. Equally, at the other end of the school spectrum, the work that was undertaken by the funding council in the review of tertiary education fit very much into that. The 21 recommendations that I make need to be seen as part of a package that is designed to address the remit that I faced and what came through some of the OECD report on curriculum for excellence, but also an attempt to address some of the long-standing tensions and issues that we have had in Scottish education. My report is designed to be a catalyst for further reform and further change. It is certainly the case that the replacement of SQA and the restructuring of the reform of Education Scotland is a starter, but I hope that you get the sense from my report that it is very much a starter that more is needed in order to ensure that the education system in Scotland is fit for purpose for current and future learners in what is a very changing world. With many things that are changing anyway, whether it be in society or more widely and globally, the education system needs to reflect that. Of course, it is 20 years since we had a national debate on education, which spawned curriculum for excellence. We had a period immediately after that of consensus around the direction of travel. That was very much what influenced my thinking in regard to the first recommendation that now is an opportune time to have a really deep think about the purpose of education in Scotland and what we want the education system to do for current and future learners. If we could move now to questions, I will start with some just background questions that will benefit from hearing your answers. Why is the SQA broken beyond repair? Those are not my words, but I do think that, particularly in the recent past, there have been issues concerning the national qualifications and the issues that have emerged around that over recent years. It goes back beyond that. There was concern expressed, and it was fed back to me and many of the engagements that I had, that the national qualifications that were designed to support curriculum for excellence were not meeting the needs of practitioners and the needs of young people. Again, coming back to the feedback that I received from my various engagements, concerns expressed about the extent to which SQA in its current format was a listening organisation and the extent to which it took advice from practitioners and teachers themselves. I think that, generally, there was a fair degree of discontent expressed about how SQA operates and the extent to which its governance, and I reference governance in the report, as governance is representative of some of the expertise that exists within schools and classrooms in Scotland. A feeling, and there are various expressions used in a lot of the discussions that I had about it being an unlistening organisation, a distant organisation, I included a number of quotes within the report to try and emphasise some of these things. One that struck a particular chord with me was a very senior headteacher, a long-standing headteacher, who told me that for a number of years he had felt that SQA had become tone deaf to what was both required within the system and how it responded to the system and engaged with the system. It was particularly telling when I began to talk to folk who were working in the further education sector, in particular, who felt that a number of the qualifications, the vocational qualifications, were very much out of date. That was reflected, to some extent, in the discussions that I had with folk in higher education as well. Convener, it was a combination of issues that led to the notion that SQA needed to be replaced. One of the recommendations that I make is the separation of the awarding and the accrediting and regulation. There was a strong sense that came through some of the discussions that I had that SQA marked its own homework was the term that was used. From an accountability point of view, having lost a degree of trust and confidence from the profession but also from society more widely, I undertook a fair degree of engagement with parents. I think that they themselves were saying that the confidence that they had in that organisation in particular was something that had waned over the years. I think that there were a number of factors that led to the decision that it needed to be replaced. I think that that was a decision that accorded with the views of many that I engaged with. The functions that the SQA was to carry out are still in need for that body, hence your recommendation that there is a new body created. What we are really talking about, it sounds like to me, is that if we are talking about culture, the organisation's culture had gone wrong, had gone adrift. Culture is ultimately the responsibility of the leadership of the SQA. Has the leadership of the SQA sailed the boat on to the rocks? As I said earlier, some of the issues have been more long-standing than the current leadership, particularly in regard to NQs, which is where I have my expertise. As I said, there was disquiet about the extent to which national qualifications, when they came in a number of years ago, were fit for purpose, if I can put it like that. I know that the current leadership has tried to make some changes to the culture, but in my report I talk about three things that I think in combination have affected SQA. Certainly, the culture, as I said earlier, has a very strong sense that it is an organisation that needs to listen more. It is an organisation whose governance needs to better reflect the expert practitioners who are undertaking the very challenging task of learning and teaching. As a result, given that there have been criticisms of the culture within the organisation, that automatically filters on to the leadership of the organisation. Those three things came through very strongly about how SQA is perceived and, in some cases, how it operates currently. One of the factors that I am sure that you will appreciate that I had to take account of was recognising that there will not be a quick fix to SQA in the sense that they are undertaking at least another two, possibly three, diets of examinations. I was very mindful and students themselves reminded me very often that it was important that the currency of the qualifications that they had gained under the last two diets were comparable to what had been undertaken and were perceived to be the currencies of previous years and a recognition that SQA needs to continue to deliver as well as change. You rightly point out that one of the concerns that has been expressed and you address it in your report is that this new body is simply not a rebranded SQA because of the issues that you have raised. If there is a rebrand and nothing else, I will be very disappointed and I think that the profession will be very disappointed. Given what I have said, I think that this is an opportune moment to really look at the role of not just SQA but organisations generally that support a very fast-changing education system. I see and the feedback that I got from many of the engagements that I had that there is a window of opportunity here to have the kind of discussion that is set out in my first recommendation about taking a deep think about what we want the education system to do and how we want it to change. As importantly as anything, how the organisations that are part of the infrastructure need to change as well. There is culture that needs to change in those, in many cases, to match what we want an education system to look like. You might suggest that it would be a bad move to simply rehire the existing leadership, senior leadership team at the SQA for the new body. That would undermine the confidence that people might have in the new body. Is that a fair comment? I think that the current leadership needs to look at the things that I have identified in my report. The quotes that are in it, the children and young persons report that the children's Parliament and others pulled together and also the analysis of the consultation returns. Use those as a mirror to reflect on their current practice. At the end of the day, they are being asked to deliver for at least the next two or three diets. There is undoubtedly huge expertise and experience within SQA. Some of that needs to be retained. However, as a first step, I think that the chief executive and the executive management team need to look at those reports and to think deeply about how they engage and operate for the duration of their continued existence as SQA. I appreciate that the report is far more than the personalities. It is about organisations, culture and broader leadership. How difficult will it be for the new qualifications in Scotland to win over the profession if the old leadership remains in place? I suppose that the issue is whether they are able to and up for the kinds of radical changes to culture and governance. Some of them can be fixed fairly quickly. One of my concerns is that, although the board of management is appointed by ministers, there is an advisory council there, which comprises about 17 individuals. However, not any who have got current practitioner experience, and I think that that has been part of the problem. As I say, it has been reported to me that practitioners and headteachers say that at times there has been a very unlistening organisation. Finding a way in which they can get more of an input from practitioners themselves to influence what they do has to be part of how they reflect on my report and the other reports that sit alongside it. Staff at the SQA feel similarly about the senior leadership in terms of their tenured approach to their concerns. I had a look convener at the staff surveys and, in fairness to the SQA, they were very open. They made available on their SharePoint site a very wide range of documents, all of which I read. At times, I thought that they were trying to confuddle me, but they were very helpful in that regard. Some of that came through. I also looked at things like the local government leaders survey of 2021. Reading between the lines, although there was not a lot of qualitative detail in that survey, you got a sense that there was something amiss within SQA in terms of the views of chief executives of councils, council leaders, directors of education, the levels of confidence in SQA. All of that pointing very much to an organisation that really needs to take a long hard look at itself, or a short hard look at itself more lightly as opposed to a long hard look at itself. Then take the appropriate action. There are a number of things that point towards culture, leadership and governance that I think are three keys that that current executive management team needs to consider. How far back do you think that this issue has been existent? It has been difficult to say. It probably goes slightly longer than the Covid period, to be honest, because, as I said, there was some disquiet. Over recent years, we have had the issue about unit assessments within national qualifications and whether they are part of it and whether they are not. All of that and how it was handled generally contributed to a very strong view that the organisation needed to be at least reformed if not replaced. However, I think that it has been exacerbated by Covid to be quite truthful. I sat myself in my previous existence on the Covid education recovery group and I know some of the challenges that SQA went through in looking at the options or the scenarios if a diet didn't exist and so on. It has been exacerbated in the past few years to be quite honest by Covid. Of course, I have had a change of chief executive as well. It is never easy coming into an organisation as a new chief executive and trying to make your mark in that organisation. Some of what the chief executive has done has begun to work. I think that comms is improving to a degree but not entirely, as we have seen from some of the recent press and media coverage, but I think that it is an organisation that still has some way to go. As has already been touched upon, some of the respondents to the consultation expressed concerns that the reforms were simply rebranding in the current system. Now we all know that that cynicism is always going to be there in this sort of process. I want to explore with you to get your view on this. Do you believe that the Scottish Government's response to the OECD report, and thereafter to your report, offers a genuine reassurance that it certainly is at Scottish Government level, that there is a recognition of the need to reform fully and a commitment to that process? There is nothing in any of the engagements that I have had with Scottish Government to suggest that they are not up for reform. They recognise that the world has changed significantly and continues to change and the education system needs to respond to that. In that sense, I think that there is an acceptance that the system needs to change. On the Government's response to my report, as I said in my opening statement, I think that there are a number of things that are happening outwith the school education sector that I have had to take into account. Some of the recommendations and some of the Government's response are perhaps a bit more tentative than I might have wanted them to have been, if I point to, for example, the decision not to include the Scottish Credit and Qualifications framework within the proposed national agency. I think that that is a disappointment to me, but at the same time my sense is that the Government's response said that they recognise the value of the SCQF and the partnership body that runs it and that there is a need to heighten the profile significantly of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications framework. The inspectorate, I am very clear as a former HMI myself, having worked with Graham when he was a senior chief inspector, that it needs to be a very independent body that is able to inform yourselves that the expression that gets used about talking truth to power absolutely comes through having an independent inspectorate. I suggest in my report that it is either a non-ministerial office or a national body akin to the likes of Audit Scotland reporting to Parliament rather than to ministers. I think that that helps to build trust and confidence in the education system to have an independent body that is a step removed in that way. I can understand why some of the responses have been a bit tentative. Some of them are also dependent on the fallout from the tertiary review that is under way. Some of it is determined, as I said earlier in my opening statement, about how the national care service review plays out and what falls out from that. I can understand why some of the Government's response has been a bit tentative, but I think that some of it has needed to be. For example, primary legislation being required for some of the changes. I know that you all know that that will take a bit of time and so on. However, if it is nothing more, as I was suggesting earlier, Mr Day, that it is a rebranding of two major organisations, I will have wasted six months. I think that more than anything, the expectation that is out there that change and reform will come will be aligned sorely with teachers, practitioners and headteachers. Just one more question for me before we come back to Willie Rennie. Since it is my first time to speak, I thank Professor Muir for a report on care for young people in Scotland and their future prospects. It shines through it in every page for the long-term aspiration that you have for the country and for our young people. I thank you for all that work. However, I want to focus a little bit on the short term, if that is okay. Some of the questions that my colleagues have asked about leadership. Your report on your commission to do this work was precipitated by a crisis of confidence in the SQA through the disastrous handling through the pandemic. I think that we all recognise that that is why you are sitting here today and why we have got this report in front of us. We are now looking at that organisation staying in place for another three exam diets, the current one and another two. Should we have confidence in that leadership if there was another crisis for them to take those decisions? I would hope that Mr Muir of the SQA has learned from the last two years. I think that as long as we have Covid hanging there, we have an organisation that, because of the public profile of qualifications and examinations, is going to have to consider a number of options as it has over the last two years and some of those having to be implemented at very short notice. I have a degree of sympathy with SQA in that regard. However, as I said in my earlier response, it is really important that, given that SQA will continue to exist, a fair amount of the expertise and specialisms that are required are in there that need to be in place to undertake a national diet of examinations. It is important that, in the very short term, the SQA leadership looks at themselves and asks themselves whether we have the capacity, the culture or the organisational will to make the changes that are necessary. I think that the changes are very clear from my report. As I say, if you look at the other reports, there is much more detail in them. I could have included other quotes and comments that were made to me that were significantly more damning. I have tried to be very balanced in what I have said in the report in terms of the feedback. One of the things that is not well understood out there in the system generally, particularly the school system, is the breadth of qualifications that SQA offers. I have to say that some of the feedback that I got from those who are training providers or those who are operating in the vocational sphere—much more so than the national qualification sphere—is very positive about the work that SQA has done. The reason that I chose to separate out the accreditation and regulation, as I say, is to try and give a very clear indication that trust and confidence in SQA needs to be improved. It needs to have someone and somebody looking at it from afar, as opposed to having a regulatory and accreditation function built into the system. I think that it will be a challenge. I do not think that it is necessarily for me to say what should happen to that board, but I think that there are questions that need to be asked of the executive management team, the chief executive and the board, because there is a management board in there, all of whom have come under criticism in some of the discussions and engagements that I have had. As much as anything, it is for them to decide or to make a determination as to whether they think that they have the capacity and possibly in some cases the will to lead the organisation forward in what is undoubtedly going to be a period of significant challenge and change, because not only, as you say, Mr Mallow, they are delivering the next three diets, they are going to have to pay very close attention to the reforms that are coming down the track. I was going to ask one very quick question, but it is probably not a quick question, but we will try and deal with it quickly. You deliberately have put, as your first recommendation, a national discussion about the future of crook and for excellence, in light of the OECD commentary on crook and for excellence. In the report, you said, that there was generally agreement with the OECD that crook and for excellence is still part of the direction of travel and confirmation, that its underpinning philosophy was still sound, and then you go on to talk about the need for change in the report, you quote, one of the consultation findings, which was that 58% agreed that the vision for crook and for excellence reflects what matters for the education of children and young people in Scotland, but can I ask you to comment on the second top finding in the consultation, which was when asked to agree whether crook and for excellence gives the best possible educational experience for our young people and enables them to realise their ambitions, only 22%. One in five were able to say that they felt that they could agree with that statement. When you talk about change, Professor Muir, we are really looking at a major overhaul of crook and for excellence, if it is failing to deliver on educational experience, best possible educational experience and realisation of ambition, surely. I think, if you don't mind, I will ask Mibig Graham to say something on that as well, because he was party to the creation of crook and for excellence after the national debate, which, as I said, spawned crook and for excellence. We need to bear in mind that there are some teachers in some schools where children get an excellent deal. I do not think that there is any doubt about that, and they have gone to the ends of the earth to try and make crook and for excellence work. Crook and for excellence is 20 years old, the thinking and the philosophy behind it. There are some teachers who are part of the committee and others who know how hard it has been to introduce crook and for excellence. It is a very different philosophy, first time ever, in Scottish education. We have tried to change the entire system at once. We tended to do it in bits and pieces in the past. We need to remember that there are children and young people in Scottish schools who are getting a very good deal through crook and for excellence. What has happened is that the world has moved on in 20 years. The expectations of what we want from an education system in Scottish society has changed hugely and it is changing even more quickly as we move on, which is one of the reasons why I think that this is this report. I think that whatever comes out of Professor Hayward's report on the reform of the national qualifications or the review of the national qualifications gives us a window of time to make a decision about and get a consensus on what we want in the education system to look like. It is important that I say that I have seen it as an inspector myself, a lot of the feedback that I had was confirming how hard schools are working to implement crook and for excellence. However, it is true that it does not meet the needs of all the children and young people. That is one of the reasons why the central message in my report is that we really need to turn everything in the education system, all of the telescopes need to focus very much on meeting the needs of learners first and foremost. That has to be the prime objective of what we do in education. In order to do that, we need to put in an infrastructure that supports the learning and teaching and supports teachers and practitioners. Again, I hope that comes through very strongly in the report. However, in order to do that and to make any further change to the infrastructure, we need to take the time to ask the kind of questions that we asked 20 years ago what we want the education system to do for the next generation. That needs a consensual vision that is agreed by all parties, political and otherwise, I have to say, because I think that one of the things that we had for four or five years after the introduction of curriculum for excellence was absolute consensus around the direction of travel. Where I think it began to come off the rails was that we did not do enough to explain the philosophy of CFET teachers and what that meant for practice. We did not do enough to communicate with parents around what curriculum for excellence was trying to do and why the national qualifications needed to be different from what we had before. I think that making that first and second recommendation is really saying that this is a good time to have that discussion, but it needs to be an all-embracing discussion and critically it needs to take account of the views of teachers who are experts in the profession and just as importantly learners themselves. Some of the most interesting engagements that I had in Graham was parted to some of them were with children and young people. They know what they want from an education system and it is not just about being driven by examinations and when you get below the skin of what children and young people say about what they want from their experience in schools it is far more than just attainment. Important though that is, so how do we embrace all of that within a national discussion is a really important way forward. As I say, Graham was parted to the creation of curriculum for excellence. I do not know whether Graham might want to say something on that. I was head of the inspectorate during the period that the reforms, the great debate took place and the reforms that followed from it. I was engaging with ministers and with the Parliament with your predecessor committees quite extensively during that period. I think that Ken's point, 20 years ago that debate took place, curriculum for excellence and OECD referred to this, curriculum for excellence departed dramatically from conventional wisdom about what a curriculum should look like. Actually over the course of the last 20 years what we have seen internationally is country after country moving in that direction. Prior to 2004 essentially a curriculum was about a definition of what young people should learn. It sounds pretty obvious that that is what a curriculum was about but what curriculum for excellence said was of course that is important but actually it is how they use that learning and what they become as a result of that learning that the school also has a responsibility not just to give them the learning they require and then test whether they have got it or not but actually to see whether or not they have the capacity and that is what those four capacities are about, the capacity to learn and then to be able to contribute to be able to engage as 21st century citizens to think through some of the complex issues. So curriculum for excellence was a very radical departure at the time and interestingly OECD currently have what they call a 2030 project which is looking at their view of what the curriculum should look like in 2030. It looks awfully like curriculum for excellence not the same but it's the same kind of thrust of thinking about building capacity and competency of young people helping to grow as people as well as simply to acquire pre-specified learning but a curriculum doesn't deliver anything you know I mean a curriculum is inert it is totally dependent on what happens as a result of that and I think as Ken said over that 20 year period I think partly we've lost a narrative I think I think it if you ask people what curriculum for excellence says I see even schools ask them to give it 20 different answers because in a sense it's become too diffuse and it's been influenced by the way in which events have shaped things over the course of that over the course of the last 20 years and in particular I think in the senior phase and that goes back to the questions you've been raising about SQA and examinations just as an aside examination board on an eye and nothing you know it's a very very difficult thing to do to maintain standards reliably over time I think that the problem back in 2000 when there was the meltdown in relation to examination to Scotland has created an SQA which is a very risk averse it's an organisation which is has been thinking about whatever we do we mustn't you know be back and we were aware in 2000 and I think that was quite influential in terms of the way in which the examination process a qualification process was developed in relation to the curriculum of thinking that taken previously so I think what we got was a very conservative fairly narrow interpretation of what it was that that curriculum philosophy was about and therefore you got this which comes through in Gens report you got this mismatch between what what schools thought they were doing in relation to the bit that went before and then in secondary schools in particular now we get down to serious stuff and the serious stuff doesn't look awfully different from the serious stuff looked before and therefore we got that disjuncture between a curriculum philosophy and an examination and the practicalities of of examinations and also I think partly because of the 2000 situation SQA were given a governance structure which I hadn't quite realised I have to say when I looked at it in working with Ken and the board of management seems to me to be very narrowly conceived and it's not really surprising that it's a board of management that's not really in touch with issues of the classroom and with with learning and teaching because it's a very I think it's a board of management that was set up in order to to avoid risk you know to to manage the organization very tightly and avoid risk but it wasn't the board of management that was designed to think about the nature of what what's the learning that ought to be taking place and how can we best provide qualifications that reflect the learning and that means you have to look two ways you have to look at the at business at universities at FE colleges and say the qualifications have got to serve them but they've also got to look back and they've got to reflect the learning that's built up over the course of the of the period so so when we talk about curriculum for excellence it is only a curriculum and it's only as good as the context within which it actually is is taking place and secondaries has been a serious issue I think in terms of the the disjuncture between the examinations and the curriculum philosophy and in primaries I do think we lost the narrative a bit in primaries that the four capacities became something that everyone could subscribe to but they're only worthwhile if you really drill down and there's real rigor and depth to those four capacities you know so you've really got to think what does that really mean because you can you can call anything creating a content individual you know it's not hard to do that so you really got to stick at it and drill down and so the young people are being challenged that the whole business of developing those capacities should be a very rigorous process it should be one that is challenging also enjoyable but challenging for young people and I think to some extent we kind of lost the flow that was intended originally in curriculum for excellence so having a debate now which is Ken's recommendation seems to me 20 years on I've been involved in a number of OECD reviews and it's interesting I did a review of with actually with more or less the same team in Japan of Japanese education and Japan have a formal 10-year review of the curriculum so that's just automatic and that kind of depoliticises that you know you don't review it because you've got a problem review it because of course you review it but of course it needs to change of course you need to update it so it needs to be kept under constant under that process of of review so I think it you know the curriculum for excellence is used as a label but actually it's what lies behind how we achieve the aspirations that were in that original curriculum and we ask ourselves a hard question which is is very much in Ken's report is given where we are now you know given all the disruptors that are around just now and you heard me talking about this earlier so I'll not go on about it here but we have got particularly technology I mean just changing the nature of learning and teaching over the course of next decade dramatically through artificial intelligence through the so-called metaverse all of that is going to impact on schools very very dramatically we need to think very hard about the nature of the curriculum that we need that is going to work with the grain of those changes in the learning context that young people need to have let alone sustainability let alone you know all the geopolitical implications of what's happening currently in in Ukraine so the time is right for that debate absolutely right I think for for a debate of that kind and that's why I think that recommendation in Ken's report is so important and I hope we can have our genuine debate you know not the great and the good thing somebody I'd say do you like it you know but actually one that engages people which actually was pretty well done back in the in the first flush of this parliament in the early part of the early part of the century anyone national discussion but that was a pretty strong endorsement of that first recommendation of the report and I appreciate that. Willie Rennie so I want to come to child protection in a second but first just about education Scotland and the new national agency because that's I think the next meaty part of the report you talked about a cluttered landscape patchy delivery schools teachers felt bombarded with the material that's provided and you talk about very much about a teacher kind of responsive approach to matters I'm not really sure what that means I get the idea but you know what would a teacher notice in terms of the difference with this new national agency compared with what they're receiving now? I think what I'm trying to suggest in that report and in the creation of this national agency Mr Rennie is that teachers at the moment get a variable experience in terms of the support that's available to them so currently education Scotland has a national office or not a national offer a lot around leadership and professional learning but what teachers were saying to me were very mixed messages some of them felt that that suited their needs but others didn't so what would they notice in this new agency are much more responsive and reactive agency to what teachers themselves are saying they need in order to undertake that very difficult task of teaching and learning and within the report what I've tried to do is to say that one of the issues at the moment and I think education Scotland recognises this to himself is that you know they're facing different ways that they're facing government they're facing they're trying to face the profession they're trying to work with local authorities through regional improvement collaboratives some of that's working very well in fairness but it's not working well enough consistently so in creating an agency that is aligned with the philosophy that you put the child very much at the centre that that is the prime focus of what the education system is about the next level then is to say so how do you ensure that the teachers and the practitioners are supporting that learning get the support and the professional learning that they require it's not determined by a national agency or by a national organisation it's determined by those who are actually engaged in that critical learning and teaching process and it goes back to what Graham was saying it's one of the reasons why I rejected the notion of a purely curriculum and assessment agency because very often I mean there are different interpretations of curriculum but most folk see it in a very traditional sense that it's about the content and the delivery of that content what a curriculum and assessment agency I think ran the risk of doing was missing out that really important element of learning and teaching so a lot of what is in my report is very much orientated towards improving learning and teaching that then it will allow outcomes for learners to be better met and that agency I saw being one where the resource was much more localised it was much more responsive and it was much more responding to the bespoke requests of schools and individual teachers as to the support that they require to make learning and teaching effective so I think that if we can create that kind of agency that brings together not just the opportunities for professional learning at a local level but brings in the opportunity for teachers and practitioners head teachers and so on to feel that they have a role to play in creating the education system because at the moment a lot of the feedback that I get is that it's still a very hierarchical system that we have in Scotland it's a very top-down system it's driven from the top a key message that I tried to embed within the report is that we actually need to turn that around and we need to start with the learner and we need to start with the teachers and the practitioners and make sure that they are supported and one of the ways of doing that is through looking again at the role of what is currently regional provenant collaboratives but in fact my report talks more about regional collaboration and local collaboration because a lot of teachers are falling back on that those who are critical of the support that they receive during Covid a lot of them found salvation through their informal networks so organisations that at a national level are producing resources for teachers Royal Scottish Geographical Society, the Scottish Geography Teachers Modern Studies Association, the Teacher of History and so on there are lots of national organisations there that are populated by expert volunteers who are very very committed to their subject but also to learning and teaching so a lot of them have fallen back on that but recreating that kind of model where teachers needs are being responded to just as much as learners needs are being responded to is very much the kind of central philosophy of what I saw in that national agency so you talk about the hierarchy and the top-down approach so are you saying this national agency will almost have a filtering a gatekeeping role to make sure that the teachers the education providers are put first and that any kind of interference that contradicts that you know this national agency will have a role in in filtering that because you talk about coordination coherence within the report is that what you mean yeah and that's part of the thinking Mr Rennie behind that central agency is that by bringing together you know what I had intended within my recommendations bringing in sqf bringing in the insight team bringing in part of the curriculum and qualifications division within Scottish Government with you know an eye to policy bringing that all together all of the key decisions that are taken about direction of travel and so on all sit within a single agency and it's then in itself providing a greater level of coherence to the thinking and the provision of support and resource that is then going into schools and into classrooms so it is very much about trying to ensure that some of the variations of interpretation that exists out there in the system around policy and so on and there's less chance of that being a fragmented interpretation if it to use your words you know it's filtered through but through a central agency where all of the the bits of the jigsaw are sitting together and that I think will do a number of things you know in the report I think that will help to reduce some of the pressures on the system some of the bureaucracy that's in the system as you know in the report one of the things that I asked head teachers in both primary and secondary settings to do was to give me an indication of the number of extant policies that they are dealing with on a day to day basis secondary head teachers round about 40 primary teachers round about 34 and complaints that not all of those policies were necessarily coherent themselves so there's a question about where the reform actually lies you know for me it lies at all levels and we can't have a system where different policies are either contradicting each other or working against each other or are not clear enough to be implemented because they then go through a filter at local authority level and some local authorities will apply their interpretation of that policy on the system so you know head teachers and teachers are saying to me well you know the government are asking me to do this you know this seems to be government policy but local authority are asking me to do that so I'm hoping you know through the creation of a national agency for Scottish education of the kind that I'm recommending that some of those inconsistencies and some of that fragmentation will disappear but as I also highlight in the report it has to be much more than simply replacing SQA and reforming education Scotland. So child protection obviously this is with regards your role previously with the general teaching council of Scotland there will be something that will be close to you. The GTCS did make a submission where they talked about putting words in their mouth that they kind of the vacuum around about regulation of employers when it comes to child protection and safeguarding. They've got a role as you know in terms of regulating the profession but because local authorities employers they're regarded as the front line in child protection those issues are referred on or those referrals are passed on to local authorities to deal with but the GTCS doesn't necessarily know what happens to those referrals and they say there's a gap in the system because nobody's regulating and we know local authorities sometimes manage issues rather than you know they manage people out rather than actually dealing with the issues head on. Not necessarily doing anything necessarily inappropriate but there's a tendency to manage issues. So why didn't you include a recommendation on the regulation of employers in that regard within your report when the GTCS had suggested that there is a gap in the arrangements just now? Yes and I think you make a very valid point. I mean there is a lot of trust required in the system and you know a trust that local authorities will be upfront with the professional regulatory body with the general teaching council in reporting any issues around child protection to the regulator. GTCS is a relatively small organisation although its profile is very big and certainly when I was there we simply did not have the resource to be able to monitor what was happening within individual local authorities. So there is a need for trust in the system and you're right local authorities sometimes do manage particularly where there are issues of fitness to teach not in a child protection sense but where teachers are perhaps not performing to a standard that's expected through the professional standards. What I did do in the report was I emphasised in my consideration of what the inspector might do I emphasised the important role that they can play in respect of overseeing the procedures that are in place within schools and local authorities around child protection. I only got a hard copy of the report this morning but from memory I specifically made reference to child protection because I was very conscious in my latter years as the chief executive the child abuse inquiry and the extent to which independent schools were not part of the GTC's registration functions at that time when many of these abuses took place but I was very conscious that the profile of child protection was very much on their eyes and rightly so. So I've included it more within an inspectorate role I do think there is more work that needs to be done in working between GTC Scotland and the local authorities in order to impress upon them the significance of them not referring issues directly to the regulatory body but as I said my approach to it was to look at it more from an inspectorate point of view and again one of the arguments for it being an independent inspectorate as I suggested either a national body or an NMO was partly because of that the importance given to the child protection agenda. shoulders commissioner was quite forceful this week about the issue particularly with regards to restraint where we still have problems with the profession using inappropriate restraint methods. How important do you think it is that the inspector does make this a significant area of work that we do look at how the employers are dealing with those issues and how we address the restraint issues as well? We can't have a system that is so dependent and trust as it is at the moment where there's child protection issues and I think in fairness in my experience as chief executive most local authorities were good at coming forward but I recognise that there was variation there. What was a bigger issue for us at the time and it's only just been resolved by the inner house of the court of session is that we had a number of child protection issues relating to teachers where there was criminal activity and we had difficulty in getting the the intelligence that we required from Police Scotland who were unwilling to share information citing data protection and GDPR. We took that in my time as chief executive to the court of session and in the last year I think it was maybe in October that case was won by the general teaching council for Scotland and rightly so. I mean I haven't kept up to speed with it but whether Police Scotland are any more forthcoming with the kind of information that would require well you know better than I Mr Rennie but I think it's not just about the local authorities not informing the regulator about child protection issues. There are other players in the system and quite frankly for Police Scotland to ask us to take out a court order at £40,000 a time every time we wanted information relating to a teacher where there was an issue of child protection was frankly absurd and if Police Scotland has not been more forthcoming than the inner house's decision asked them to be then quite frankly that's appalling. Thank you very much. Willie Rennie, I'm going to call on Fergus Ewing and after Fergus has completed his line of questions it'll be Michael Marra. Fergus. Yes thank you convener and good morning to both professors. I just wanted to pick up on something I think it's Professor Donaldson said that there were extant and implemented policies of 40 I think he said in secondary school and 34 in primary school. Have these been looked at as part of the report and have you identified which policies should be implemented and which should be consigned to the dustbin of educational history if any? I think Mr Ewing it was me that made reference to the number of policies and it was more the volume of policy that schools are dealing with as opposed to whether some were working well and some were working less well. The point that I was trying to make was it was highlighted by a comment that I had teacher made I didn't include it in the report but rather than being a leader of learning I'm now a leader of administration and you know I think that's a great sadness because our expectation should be that head teachers are model leaders of learning in their establishment and particularly in primary but also in secondary and in secondary that it's still an issue but maybe less of an issue because there's a larger senior management team in general but it's particularly in primary and particularly where you have a teaching head teacher who has perhaps half a day a week of relief then having to juggle 34 policies as that was the average figure that primary head teachers came out with and responded to me with is a major challenge and you know again going back to the main thrust of my report if we want to change the education system for the better my view is that we need to focus much more significantly on learning and teaching and where there are variations in learning and teaching the first port of responsibility and accountability is to the head teacher you know the head teacher is responsible for the overall quality of what goes on in her or his school and if they're if they're being if they're being overtaken by implementing policy some of which they may find difficult to interpret some of which individuals have said at times can contradict whether it be government policy as a whole or whether it be the local authorities interpretation of government policy and who do they respond to as I say it was more about the volume of that policy but there needs to be and this starts at the level of Scottish Government and civil servants in the creation of policy you know it's not just the learning directorate that teachers need to be responsive to there's lots of directorates out there that quite frankly would benefit from from engaging with each other to ensure that policies articulate and that the volume of policy isn't such that schools local authorities and teachers drown under them because that cannot be the purpose of policy well thanks for that answer and you know it it does strike a cord with what I've heard in my constituency over the years from teachers and particularly head teachers who complain that there too much time doing administration and that detracts from their primary function of teaching but what I don't get Professor Muir is anyone actually coming up with any specific plan to deburocratise the system I mean I did know it in your report that one of the opportunities you identified for the new agency and I quote is to declutter and streamline the middle ground in Scotland's educational landscape and I also read I think a page 47 of page 109 of your report sounds impressive I don't think I quite made it through to the end if I'm being candid but but this was the point that interested me so I stopped at paragraph 47 sorry about that but that's because it quoted a primary teacher who said I quote we need less agencies more support in classrooms smaller class sizes more prescriptive planning not more agencies trying to justify how busy they are so I guess you know I was very impressed by the report and it's obvious care for for your task and for the pupils and so on as Mr Manor said earlier but where's the beef who is going to get to grips with this enormous bureaucracy that we have in Scotland and that you have identified and you know would it not be really incumbent on you as the author of the report to say how you declutter and streamline which policies should be if you like suspended removed in other words is it too much to ask is it an unfair ask professor Muir that we really need somebody to lead the task of how to get teachers back to teaching and away from the administration side and you know just saying it as an aspiration I'm afraid it just doesn't cut the mustard and I say that with 30 years of ministerial experience where frustration was a daily emotion suffered when one comes up against a very large bureaucracy which sometimes appears to impede the very purposes that we are here to advance firstly minister union I hope you didn't get to the end of the report simply because it was a boring read it's a riveting read right to page 109 I can assure you and I don't think it's for one person to make that change I think the system needs to agree to their being less bureaucracy and when you scratch below the surface of why we have so much bureaucracy as I've tried to suggest in my report it partly stems from it's not wholly as a result of but it partly stems from how policy is created the fragmented nature of how policy is created the extent to which the volume of policy as I talked about earlier is considered to be appropriate for the system to deal with and you're quite right you know I think we do need less agencies what I've tried to do in creating this national agency for Scottish education is to bring bits of the environment together I think there are probably steps further down the road but I don't think the extent of change that would be required to bring a whole host of agencies together at this point would necessarily be appropriate I've tried to in my report balance what I think is feasible change at this point but part of the part of the thinking around the very first recommendation is let us together everyone who has an interest from this committee right down to right to the teaching profession itself let's try and get a consensus about what we want to focus on and I think it's only by doing that that you begin to strip away some of the policy and bureaucracy that does exist within the system you're right there are far too many agencies there are there are organisations and agencies out there that some teachers are unclear as to what their role and purpose in life is and it was interesting talking to some of the expert panel members and Graham might want to come in on this who thought they knew the education system well in Scotland but it's actually an awful lot more complex than even they imagined so you know part of my balancing act in writing the report Mr Ewing has been to try and suggest what is feasible in the short term but also set the direction of travel for the longer term and as I said I don't think it's the job of an individual to say these are the policies that are appropriate and these are the ones that aren't I think that has to come through a discussion of where we want the education system to be you know over the next 20 years and and the policies then reflect that and I think that will automatically produce a rationalisation of policies and I think if we are very much focused on ensuring that you know that we focus on learners we focus on teachers and the and head teachers as as leaders of learning then I think you'll get a very clear response from them as to what needs to go and what needs to stay. Just to pick up Mr Ewing's point I mean I think that that is one of the key roles for the inspectorate you know I was conscious as the head of the inspectorate part of my job sometimes didn't make me all that popular but is to say to ministers or to say to the profession to act as a kind of filter and if the inspector is doing his job properly and because of the evidence that comes through the inspection programme it's got an absolutely up-to-date knowledge of what's happening throughout scotish schools and can then help to deploy that knowledge partly to address issues of of policy and confidence which can can certainly happen because if you get a very responsive policy environment it you know the answer to a problem is is a new policy and it's got to hit down somewhere so I think I mean part of the role of of of an inspectorate is to provide us with that evaluation and I think because the inspectorate was inside the development body I think that bit of the inspectorate's role became very difficult to do so the chief inspector was also the the head of the development organisation I think that role conflict that's in there maybe diluted the role of the inspectorate in terms of helping to address the issue you're raising was to you just reflection really and I appreciate that you know I'm an outsider to the educational world in your insider experts so who am I to opine because I don't arguably have the fact of knowledge but you have said we want to declutter and streamline the middle ground that I don't quite know if you have a plan for how that can be done other than as Professor Donaldson just said the inspectorate should perhaps identify things to be called it made more efficient and so on but we would it not be one idea to ask a group of head teachers to say what should be dispensed with has that been tried and you know say five from primary schools and secondary schools throughout the country and say you know what would you do to to simplify and declutter the middle ground with that the people who do work and who do things in my experience are the people who know what is wrong the people who are you know with all respect professors MSPs who are not in the classroom are not in the schools don't know what's going on very often that's whatever walk of life I always feel that it's the people that are doing the work that know what doesn't work and very often they're the people who are asked for their opinions last so I'm just putting this as a maybe it's a daft laddie suggestion but would that be something that you could add as an addendum to your recommendations Professor Muir perhaps I think Mr I think Mr Ewing there will lots of volunteers coming forward from primary and secondary sector and also from early years to cull some of those policies and I'm not sure I could make it an addendum to the report it's certainly something I would accord with thank you Michael Marra I think has one more element of questioning to follow and then we will go to Bob Doris thanks convener it's what actually follows on from in a slightly similar vein so would the new national education agency if that was put in place on the vision that you've outlined for Professor Muir could we then get rid of the regional improvement collaboratives is that one thing that could along the lines of fellow students suggestion be scrapped I think the regional improvement collaboratives are modelled on what's been happening in Wales and I think they have been an attempt to try and create a more local support structure as you know the report on the regional improvement collaboratives that came out last year I think was saying that some of them seem to be working reasonably well but others are not you'll notice that in the report as I said earlier I tend to talk about regional collaboration I think this is that this is one of the issues that we have currently within the education system in Scotland that regional improvement collaboratives are seen as being an entity they are a body whereas what I'm trying to direct it towards is the concept of regional collaboration so in other words provide the mechanism for support to be much more regional and localised seconded staff and you know so they create their own bureaucracy and I suppose Mr Ewing's question in on that line about that middle ground there's these intermediate organisations I mean essentially the regional improvement collaboratives are the kind of the rusting hulks of a failed reform agenda from the last cabinet secretary you know it was the attempt to remove control of education policy from local councils and this was kind of what was the leftover result of that now some of them I would tend to agree when I speak to teachers some of them have had some value but actually when when you're the thing that you're describing in terms of a kind of a teacher led kind of sharing empowering teachers giving them the information they need that sounds like a little bit about where regional improvement collaboratives of work that's what they've got out of them so are we not looking at another duplication there no I hope not and I mean I think in the my report I'm very clear that one of the models I looked at I mean there is obviously an agreement between Scottish Government local authorities in education Scotland at the moment regarding regional improvement collaboratives and how they operate but one of the things that struck me was the model for operating public health Scotland which was a co-sponsorship model and I make reference specifically to it and you're right I think what is needed for that regional collaboration not ricks but regional collaboration to work is that they have that they have more control of their finance they have a longer term funding and the resources that currently comprise education Scotland and the regional improvement collaboratives are much more directed to supporting teachers on the ground so that resource is being used so it's more a kind of co-sponsorship model which is why I was attracted to the the public health Scotland model which is a slightly different model to what exists just now in terms of the infrastructure of ricks I think you're reflecting on some of that policy landscape as well I mean it's a very busy place I asked Spice the Scottish Parliament Information Centre to give me a number of the working groups there were a total of the number of working groups the Scottish Government had set up for education and they were unable to do so the answer was loads there were there was so many they were unable to count them they weren't able to track down I mean we seem in kind of the announcements we get in the chamber whether reference to your own commission of work you know each statement that the Scottish Cabinet Secretary gives there seems to be another three or four kind of crop up and you know groups to be and all of these bodies then produce the kind of policies that we end up talking about so I have an issue then about I think what you identify in the report at section 13 regarding I suppose kind of transition the transition period between where we are now to where we we have to get to and I worry about pace in this and I understand what you have identified in there in terms of the kind of the twin track approach and making sure that there's an agency that sits alongside the other one but we have really urgent problems in Scottish education now so we have you know the biggest attainment gap we've ever had we have the lowest attainment in primary school pupils and we have no assessment that's been made of the impact of the pandemic on the rest of our education system complete refusal so far from the government to actually do that work but international evidence seems to suggest that it's very very difficult situation and that's what we're hearing from teachers so are we changing quickly enough to actually address the real problems that we have now in the system? I think from a school point of view and particularly a secondary point of view one of the big challenges is around the national qualifications and as you know the professor Hayward from Glasgow is going to be doing some work on the review of national qualifications I think that that's absolutely essential certainly speaking to the FE sector the review of higher national provision is something that has been delayed it's one of the reasons why there's a view out there that some of the vocational qualifications that SQA offer are out of date and one of the reasons why colleges are looking to other providers of qualifications as opposed to SQA yes there are a lot of policies out there I don't doubt it I think it goes back to something Graham hinted at in one of his responses Mr Marra and that is that characterising Scottish education just now is it tends to be a very reactive system that we've got what we don't have is the kind of thing that Graham referred to in his Japanese experience we don't really have a programme of monitoring and review in the sense that yourselves as education skills committee and government generally can get feedback on how things how well things are working or not working so I think all of that to me has to be in the mix of what do we want the education system to look like and how do we then support that what is the infrastructure that we create round about it that produces a much more a much more forward looking and reflective education system that doesn't wait for crisis to come along that doesn't wait for a policy to address an issue or to address a crisis and there always will be crisis and it's inevitable that you know governments and local authorities need to respond to those but one of the very clear views I've had for some time and it came through and confirmed by the those that I spoke with is that you know we're in that reactive mode far too much and that's what sometimes adds to the stress that's what adds to the bureaucracy the bureaucracy you know there's a crisis so this is the response and all of a sudden schools are having to local authorities are having to respond to another policy or another suite of policies to address that issue so trying to get to a system and I would hope that this would be part of the outcome of a of a national conversation is a recognition that because of the pace of change in education which has been significant and it's going to be more significant over the next 20 years as Graham hinted at we need to have a mechanism we need to have an infrastructure that is much more on the front foot and is ahead of the curve and not simply responding with all of the follow that have a responsive system then produces we are looking at three years before we get into a new settled pattern and those young people who are going through the system at the moment you know aren't going to see the benefit of those changes I mean if you reflect on what happened in the last couple of weeks the study guides that were produced by the SQA described I think reasonably memorably to me by a geography teacher in Glasgow is the Marianna trench of uselessness I mean this is an organisation that is failing now rather than and so you'll understand that again where you're pitching the long term I absolutely agree with that the need for strategic intent but there's also the need for short term leadership isn't there yes there is and you know I would hope that the government would look at what I have recommended in the 21 recommendations and identify those that can go forward quickly because you're right there are issues in the system at the moment I think that I think the timescale the four-year timescale to after diet 2024 for some of the areas that we need to respond to probably is too long a timescale I think you're right I think there are things that need to be addressed in the system just now and you know I would be as keen as anyone to see a very clear plan that sets out how in the short term some of these can be taken forward to deal with some of the very real issues and the challenges that have emerged particularly in the last two years that's really useful thank you convener thank you very much Michael Marra bob Doris thank you very much convener and good morning to both of us this has been really helpful so far I want to raise an area where I think there's probably broad consensus on and that's in relation to recommendations around the reform of inspections now I know some colleagues will have some general questions in relation to this but I want to specifically look at early learning in childcare and reform of inspections process there it's widely agreed I think that the sector is disproportionately assessed and it can be far more efficient I know there's a recommendation for Professor Muir who says there should be a shared inspections framework between the new inspectorate body and the care inspectorate now given the fact there's over 8,000 registered early learning in childcare services in Scotland and over 200,000 young people there is obvious to see how bureaucracy could be an assessment and inspection could be burdensome so a very specific question on that education Scotland says on its website they already have examples where standalone childcare facilities will have a care inspectorate representative on their inspection team from time to time so I'm keen to know what a shared inspection framework would look like and whether it would be inspecting once and comprehensively rather than returning again and again to earlier settings. I think you touch Mr Dweig on an issue that came through very strongly from the early learning in childcare sector and that is the extent to which the as you say are disproportionately it was a word I used in the report disproportionately subject to inspection by both bodies if I can maybe just respond by giving an example of where policy doesn't always align you know the care inspectorate last year produced a new inspection framework at a time when prior to Covid they were working on a shared inspection framework the notion of a shared inspection framework was that it would be a single inspection and it would be a single inspection activity now how the care inspectorate were ever allowed to create a new inspection framework at a time when they were meant to be working with education Scotland on a shared inspection framework I find quite bamboozling to be honest and particularly a time when the early learning in childcare sector is working hard across the board and the independent as well as in the other settings to embed the the 1140 hours so I actually think it's one of the recommendations that I was quite tentative on because I was very conscious as I said earlier Mr Dweig that I had to be mindful of what was happening in the wider firmament and that includes the national care service outcomes and how that might impact on the work of the care inspectorate I didn't go as far as saying that it should be undertaken by the education inspectorate but personally that is my view but there is a statutory function that the care inspectorate undertakes so that would require and it's one of the reasons Mr Marrow either sometimes ardeleys as you well know that you know someone of the statute requires to be amended but I do think that I do think that the work that's done in early learning in childcare subject as much inspection as has been the case is not sustainable and it's not sustainable for the very reasons that you cite I think also the early learning in childcare has to be seen as part of I think a kind of reenvisaging in the education system has to be seen as being a key player in the system it worries me at times and it did when I was an inspector when primary and secondary teachers seemed to value less what was happening from the years zero to five and the only really started learning when they come into the primary school I think we all know and the research shows that you know the six most important years in a young person's life is up to the age of five and that actually starts the learner journey and I think the profile of early learning in childcare I personally I think would like to see enhanced significantly in any reenvisaging of a vision for education going forward so you're right I think the reform of inspection should look very very closely at what can be done to lessen the burden and unnecessary inspection dare I say and obviously you know there are models there risk based models and so on that can be applied so that early learning in childcare centres can get on with the job that they've been expected to do and not have to respond sometimes twice a year to inspections coming down the road because they're all taken very seriously and they do create a lot of disruption to the flow of learning and that's just the reality of it. That's helpful just a relatively brief hopefully follow-up question that I think it could through question all the report your surprise that the care inspectorate produced that their own revised framework when they're supposed to be working collaborative with education Scotland and I'll leave that sitting there about why that would be the case but you seem to be quite clear about a shared inspection framework it would be integrated it would be combined it would be seamless and it would be an inspect once process so the skills mix would have to be appropriate in relation to that supportive inspection regime you said there that you probably favoured the new inspectorate body in the education side of things leading on that and you also acknowledged the need for legislative changes because there's a statutory duties in relation to inspections of early learning in childcare settings that's helpful and the government will bring forward its proposals on this before the summer is my understanding can I ask would it be possible to leave it open so that as long as a lead agency does that combined inspection be that the new education inspectorate or the care inspectorate as long as you have a multi-disciplinary team going into the establishment with the appropriate skills mix you could have a joint statutory duty in relation to that because I think petitioners would care whether it's the new education inspectorate or whether it's the care inspectorate they want it to be proportionate they want it to be supportive and they don't want it to be bureaucratic so any additional thoughts in relation to that as any thoughts in relation to the Scottish Government timescale or details are likely to emerge before the summer the kind of model that you're suggesting mr doig is very much what I have in mind and one of the reasons why I suggested that it resided within the education inspectorate is that it has a long history of having multi-disciplinary teams inspecting all manner of educational establishments and you're right the critical thing is that the expertise and the credibility of those who are undertaking the inspection is something that's recognised by those that are on the receiving end of an inspection so I think the kind of model that you're you're suggesting there is very much at the heart of it as to what that model might look like and that joint inspection framework might look like my engagements with folk in early learning and childcare make it very clear they have a good understanding of what they are trying to do and it goes back to that basic point in my report that we need to start and recognise better the expertise that resides within the sectors of education that we have and use that to support inspection frameworks or support policy and changes to policy much more so than we do at the moment. At the summer timescale would that be reasonable? Well I do think that you know looking at all of my recommendations I do think that an early move on the creation of the independent inspectorate body is something that can be done very quickly and again I don't know if Graham has much more experience in the inspection activities than I but you know I certainly saw that and bearing in mind some of the discussions we had amongst the expert panel I think it was felt very strongly that that is something that could be moved on very quickly. You've gone back to Mr Marra's point about the pace of some of the changes. I do think that there are things that can be done very quickly and I think that that is one of them. I would echo that. I was slightly surprised at the Government's response. I thought they would move quickly on taking inspection out of Education Scotland because that's something you could do quickly and then picking up Mr Marra's point that now independent external entity can be part of the engine that's driving change and asking hard questions of the process as it goes through so I think there is a case for that. Just a wee word of caution in the early years stuff because I mean I was ahead of the inspectorate when we introduced early years inspection which wasn't the case previously. There is a distinction between regulation and inspection so what's called a care inspector it's a regulator and it's dealing with important issues to do with infection control. There's all sorts of stuff that a regulator's got to do that requires a frequency of visit that you don't need when you're looking at the broader educational experience of young people so it's soluble but it's complexed. I think something around the multidisciplinary teams with perhaps visits to top up the regulation side rather than a big inspection, set piece inspection is would be a possibility but that distinction between a regulator and an inspector is quite an important one. I've been listening with great interest all morning a lot of what you have said so far certainly resonates from my experience in the teachers that I speak to. I welcome the fact that mainstreaming of the learner voice throughout the educational landscape is at the heart of this and it's something that I know that teachers and parents have wanted that for a long time and we don't always see it. I want to go carry on with inspections and just open that up a wee bit. Currently and having been through inspections to clear an interest there the process can be and often is very stressful and can cause enormous sort of like anxiety and extra burdens on schools, parents and pupils as well. So how do you think that the school inspection system can be more supportive of on-going quality improvement not just sort of like an event that happens that you know you put everything into it and then you recover from it but how does it become more integral to that? I think to some extent that the work that has been done over a number of years and Graham introduced this when he was a senior chief was to have the inspectorate bring on associate assessors, so practitioners from the system who are trained by HMI and who accompany after a period of probation, who accompany inspectors on inspection not within their own local authority area but more widely. I think extending that opportunity to see inspectors in operation is and I know from speaking to many associate assessors one of the best professional learning exercises that they can undertake. So I think there's something about having an inspection process that actively encourages the involvement of practitioners from the system whether it be headteachers or local authority officials as well as practising teachers themselves. We certainly found that in my time in the inspectorate, and I'm sure that it's the same with Graham, to be a very positive way of sharing standards but also a very positive way of reassuring the rest of the system that inspectors were empathetic, they understood, they always set the context of the inspection in the context of the school, so I think there are things like that that can be done. The sharing of good practice again, looking back over the years, we had a series of reports every three years, the improving Scottish education reports, which set out examples of good practice that teachers and headteachers could look at. Those reports were very much twofold in terms of what they did as well as sharing good practice. They helped to identify what Graham touched on earlier, what are some of the issues that need to be resolved within education. They became a really important driver for policy change. As I said earlier, coming from an independent body that is held in trust and has the confidence of teachers and wider society is a good way in which policy can be informed by what is happening on the ground. As inspectors, we were very up to speed with what was happening on the research front. Again, I think that there is more that could probably be done in looking at researching what is happening out there. I went back to Mr Marra's point earlier about how we know whether things are working well in the timescale over which that happens. I do see, and it is part of my thinking within the creation of the National Agency for Scottish Education, the notion that it would have a responsibility for bringing together the think-tank thinking that exists out there in the system, as well as, as is possible, in commissioning research in areas that are being identified as not working as well as they might, or looking at what is coming over the horizon and how we prepare for that in advance. I think that there are a number of things that are in the system just now that could be replicated or could be enhanced in order to remove some of the fear factor about inspection. The bottom line is, of course, that folk would rather not be inspected than inspected, but what that comes down to is who the inspectors are and how they operate. I think that, even in my time there, we worked very hard to appoint the right folk to the role of an inspector. I used the word empathy there because we were both involved in a lot of interviewing of inspectors. For me, that was one of the qualities that I looked for, somebody who could go in to a sometimes quite a challenging context and empathise with them and put themselves in the shoes of the headteacher or yourself as a former teacher or Mr Dweig as a former teacher. I do not know, Graham, if there are other things that you might want to suggest. I mean, broadly, I obviously agree with that. The challenge, good inspection, is always going to be a degree of stress. I mean, any of us, if somebody is coming in from the outside, it creates a degree of stress. That is going to happen, but it should not be oppressive. I think that when inspection becomes oppressive, then everyone freezes and it all becomes about how do we get these folk off our backs. The more you can create a context within which inspection is moving towards being done with rather than to, the more likely you are to actually improve things for children. The more oppressive it is, the more people are trying to hide their problems, trying to hide what is working. The more you can actually create a context within which somebody is coming in from the outside who has got a lot of expertise from having seen lots of stuff elsewhere or as a fellow professional in teaching at the time, giving you a view which can be combined with your own internal evaluation, your own assessment of what is needed. Good inspection does not tell you that there is a problem. It will do, obviously, that there is a problem, but good inspection heads problems off. If inspection is working well, it is identifying things that are emerging rather than telling the blindingly obvious afterwards and saying that this is not working. As Ken quoted in the report, I was asked to undertake a review of the inspectorate in Wales, Eston, with a quasi-off-stead type inspection. It was very external and very heavily driven. However, the report that I put in, which was called a learning inspectorate, was designed to turn that in its head and say that inspections about learning inspectors need to learn. We should see the inspection process as a learning process. Eston has completely changed their approach to inspection and have adopted that, which is much more in tune with the kind of reform that is taking place in Wales just now. One of the big questions when this new independent inspectorate is set up is whether to get the culture right from the start. Whoever is heading it up will have to have a very good strategic understanding of the role that inspection can and should play in helping kids to get the best possible Degland Scottish schools. I agree with a lot of what you have said there, especially the make-up of the inspectors. Do you think that having the credibility among the workforce will be mindful of people who have not been out of the classroom for too long, because it is quite easy to forget what it is actually like and retain that connection? Mainstream learners' voice and wanting to put learners and teachers at the heart of everything. I am looking at a quote from a child as well. If students had an opportunity to be involved in inspections, it would look a lot different. I am just wanting to explore that. How can we incorporate that in an inspection system? Is there scope for young people to be co-designing an inspection system or the remit of it in the future? Absolutely, there is. To some extent, there is a degree of involvement of children and young people in inspections at the moment. There are the questionnaires that go out, inspectors, take groups of children and young people and have discussions with them and so on. However, you are right. You are making a case, Mr Stewart, for recommendation 1. I think that all that is part of the kind of discussion that we need to have about the entirety of the education system. As Graham says, if we want to inspect it and recognise that there is value in having an inspectorate, how do we want it to operate? Who is it for? I think that bringing in the voice of children and young people is critical to it. We have looming over the horizon in the UNCRC incorporation. I talk a lot in my report about culture and mindset shift. I think that that in itself, the UNCRC is being embedded in schools and there are already some strong moves in rights respecting schools in Scotland. However, that is going to call into question how teachers operate, their own values and how they engage with children and young people, but it is also going to ask the question whether they are the users of the education service, so what do they want from it themselves? Some of the comments that have come through, the wider comments that do not appear in my report but appear in the report that was produced by Cathy McCulloch and her colleagues at the children's parliament and so on, are fascinating. Some of them are reassuring, but some of them are deeply worrying as well. In a sense, that is part of the reason why we need to take this window of opportunity to review what we want the system to look like for the next generation. It is a big area to explore. It is just a final question. While school inspectors will assess schools and you are recommending that they be completely independent, who inspects the inspectors? I have passed agreement on that one. He has a much more experience than I have on that. The integrity of inspection has to do with its credibility. In a sense, inspectors are inspected by the extent to which they have a positive impact on Scottish education. Of course, the Parliament here and ministers will be looking at how well the inspector is fulfilling the functions that have been set for it. There is a role. It is interesting in Ken's report to talk about whether the inspectorate should report to the Parliament. It should have that role rather than the pros and cons in relation to that, which needs to be talked through. Fundamentally, inspection operates in the public arena and they are responsible to the Parliament at the end of the day in terms of the role that they are playing in Scottish education. My personal view, and I suppose that I would say that, but I think that over the course of the last 10 years, there has been an absence of that kind of external commentary on how Scottish education has been performing. I am certainly not being aware of it. I think that it is very important that we have that, because if we do not have that, we get evaluation by who shouts the loudest or evaluation by anecdote. We need something that is systematic, built-in and that is just consistently providing that kind of reflection back to the system. If inspectors do not do that well, you will have to tell them. I am sure that we will. I found this conversation around the inspectorate really interesting, particularly the questions a moment ago around who the inspector should be. Given what has just been said there and some of the remarks in your report, Professor Muir, on the need to make great use of peer review processes for inspectors to have recent first-hand classroom experience, does that not all point towards a system whereby the ideal inspectorate is largely staffed by teachers who are on a three-year or a five-year secondment? By the very nature, if you want to continuously have people with very recent classroom experience, you cannot have people in post as inspectors for a particularly long period of time, because it gets further and further away from the last time they were in the classroom. Does that not lead to—I think that that is an attractive proposal—a place of saying that the inspectorate should be seconded teachers on short-term contracts? To a degree, we have moved towards that with the introduction of associate assessors, as I said earlier, bringing them in. At the same time, there is an issue about continuity of experience. I was 18 years in the inspectorate, and I learned a lot in that time. Sharing that longer-term experience through the permanency of my role as a full-time permanent inspector benefited those associate assessors. However, the mix that you are suggesting—as I said earlier—is a bit of that already. The balance needs to be much more towards bringing on from the system itself into inspection activity. It does not necessarily mean that all inspectors need to be on a three- or a five-year term, because I think that there are benefits in having part of that cohort who are longer-term and who see patterns of change and so on, as I was suggesting through the improving Scottish education reports. It is not just about change over a few years. It is about how changes take place over a longer period. I think that you need a degree of continuity, but I think that the principle that you are suggesting in the balance is not far off what an ideal inspectorate would look like. Professor Dawson, do you have any thoughts on that on the inspectorate workforce make-up? I think, as Ken said, that it is about balance. In my experience, some very good teachers make very poor inspectors. Inspection is, in a sense, a profession that grows out of the teach profession, but it has its own set of skills. It is about evidence. It is about not saying, I am watching you teach and I would not have taught that way, therefore you are not good. In some ways, what a good inspector does is to understand the context that they are dealing with, to be looking for evidence, to be engaging very heavily with the young people and to be working in a genuinely collaborative way with whoever it is in the school that they are dealing with. I think that you have to get the balance right. I think that teams that are made up of somebody who is a skilled evaluator—that is what you are talking about—and can help to work with leading professionals that are brought in getting that balance right seems to me to be the model. That is very close to the model that Scotland was developing towards some time ago. Considering the current roles of the inspectorate, are there elements of that, elements of the inspection process that would perhaps be better suited moving to regional improvement collaboratives or even local authorities themselves and conducted entirely through a peer review process, so not through teachers who are seconded to become inspectors or inspectors who have come in through some other way, but are removed from the inspection process and taken into a purely peer review space? Are there any specific areas that you think that that would be more appropriate for? I think that the notion of having peer review as being just the way we do the job, that the peer review is integral, but working and seeing each other, seeing different schools in different contexts as part of the normal way of doing things is a very important way. Part of the problem—I have seen this many times—is that the better people know each other, the more difficult it is to engage in evaluative discussions. The notion of a critical friend is quite a hard role to play. The friend bit sometimes trumps the critical bit in terms of those honest conversations. There is a definite skill to being able to win the confidence of the people that you are dealing with, but you are there for the children. One of the peer review issues is that it can be a process that is about teachers rather than about children, ironically, given that everyone is a teacher. It is quite a complex issue. It is about getting the balance right and it is about creating a culture that is about evidence that sounds a bit trite, but my view is that, if I was asked who my reference point is, who I am inspecting for, it is the children. I am not inspecting for ministers, I am not inspecting for the Parliament, I am not inspecting for teachers in the profession. If necessary, and the evidence points in that direction, hard messages have to be given to any of those groups. Peer review should be part of how we do things, but, in addition to that, we need something that is helping to provide an external perspective of that kind of distance from the day-to-day stuff, which allows you to say to sometimes spot things that have not been spotted. I have sometimes been really surprised at some schools that have been horrified at what was happening in that school, and yet local authority either condoned it or did not do anything about it. How could that happen? It took that external coming in from the outside to say that this is not right and that this cannot go on. It is a question of balance, and creating the new inspectorate is exactly the kind of issues that you are raising need to be discussed about the strategy that the role of inspection is going to play in the system. My one view is that I would not have inspected us grading schools. That was my recommendation to the inspectorate in Wales when they have dropped the grading, because I think that the inspection then becomes all about the grade, not about the children and the learning from the process. Thanks very much. Professor Muir, I think that there is a really quite challenging question that you raised in this section of the report in relation to who the inspectorate are accountable to. Is it Parliament? Is it Government? Is it some mix of the two? My reading of it, and do you correct me if I have totally misinterpreted what you meant, is that your intention is much more about direct parliamentary accountability in the same way that some of the commissioners who are appointed by Parliament are. Is there not a need, to some extent, for Government to set strategic directions? For example, the process that we have gone through in recent years around embedding LGBT inclusive education and LGBT inclusive practices in all schools. Is the inspectorate not exactly the kind of body that we would want ensuring that something like that had indeed been implemented and therefore there's a need for Government to set strategic direction to say to the inspectorate for the next five years? It's really important that this is part of your inspection programme because we've set this as a priority for all schools with no exceptions. The inspectors inspect in that context because that's what is expected of schools. One of the ways in which, certainly in my time and in Graham's time, we did that was by undertaking not school inspections or establishment inspections but thematic inspections. I think back to what we talked earlier about child protection and thematic inspections on child protection in particular areas of concern, although it's part and parcel, or most part and parcel of the inspection process anyway, thematic inspections of teacher education. The kind of strategic policy areas that are set by ministers very much could be part of such an inspection. It would simply then be dependent on the arrangements for the governance of the new inspectorate body as to what ministers could ask of that inspectorate. At the moment, for example, the inspectorate don't inspect initial teacher education. It comes as a request from ministers to undertake a thematic review of teacher education. The same could be applied to any of those strategic policy areas. If the intention is for the inspectorate to still have its strategic direction set in some respects by government, how different a governance structure you are envisaging, particularly the points that you make around direct accountability to the Parliament, what are you looking for in terms of inspectorate accountability that's not in place as part of the current model? What I'm trying to do, Mr Geary, in suggesting that it was a non-ministerial office or a national body, was to make the new inspectorate part of the building of the trust and confidence in the education system. I think that it has waned, as I said, in one of my earlier answers. What I was trying to do there was to say that the system as a whole and the stakeholders in the system have a body there that they know, as Graham said earlier, is talking truth to power. Without fear or favour, it's delivering hard messages where it needs to deliver. My feeling was that the public body options that I looked at, the non-ministerial office or a public body or a national body, gave it that degree of separation from the system, but it also gave it a degree of credibility—I know that it has to gain credibility, but it gave a degree of reassurance to stakeholders and users of the system that this was a body that operated in a particular way and folk could have confidence, or more confidence, given that degree of separation. We're not going to have the privilege of seeing Oliver because he's got a broadband problem, so we're going to hear him only. Thank you, convener. Can you hear me okay now? I want to go back briefly to the SQA. Professor Muir has said that there are obvious problems or problems starting to become visible in the SQA before Covid. Does he think that it undermines some of the trust in Scottish education when you have the person responsible for ministerial oversight? You're continuing to say that they have full confidence in that organisation you're right up until June 2021. As Graham said, in one of his responses, Mr Munbel, the creation of or the work of an examination and qualifications body is particularly challenging. It's inevitable that, from time to time, they either don't get things right or they're perceived not to get things right. I think that they've been subject to a lot of scrutiny and rightly so. What has emerged has been the decision that they should be replaced simply because they have lost a degree of trust and confidence in that particular body. I think that it is, as I say, a real challenge for any examination and qualifications body to maintain full confidence during a period of what has been a significant change for it. It has had to be very responsive to the challenges that it has had to face. Part of what my proposals are trying to do is to go some way towards rebuilding some of the trust and confidence that has been lost. Not only in SQA but more generally across the board is how we have come to grapple with some of the challenges that we have faced. Not just in the last couple of years but, as I said earlier in one of my responses, I don't know if you heard it or not, but the introduction of the national qualifications a number of years ago is not being seen to be delivering on the philosophy of curriculum for excellence, which was what the intention was. Although SQA, I am sure, would say that it has attempted to ensure that the national qualifications do accord with that philosophy, the very firm view out there in the system is that they do not hence the call for a review of the NQs by the cabinet secretary. I hear what you are saying and I respect the answer, but I think that the challenge is that we have had problems for years. The predecessor committee to this in the last Parliament raised concerns about the independence of the inspectorate. We have had concerns repeated over and over again about the SQA. Lots of the problems you identify are well known amongst the teaching profession. It is just how we have confidence that the Government is going to take those things forward and build that trust when they have spent years trying to say that everything was okay, that these were not real problems and that everything could just be sorted if only people asked less difficult questions. Do you have confidence that they have taken that forward? I did not hear that last point, Mr Mundell, sorry. Can you repeat the last question all over? Do you have confidence that they have taken the message on board and should they have taken an OECD review and a review from yourself for them to recognise what are significant issues? No, I do not think that they should have. As I said earlier, I think that one of the values of my report and the reports that were issued at a company, my report, is that SQA uses them as a mirror to reflect on how they plan to go forward, given that they have been given a stay of execution until 2024. I have made it clear that, with some degree of urgency, they need to reflect on the three areas that I talk about in the report, the governance of the organisation, the leadership and the culture. I would hope that they would do that in prompt fashion, for the very reasons that we have discussed throughout all of this, that these are children and young people who are being most affected by the changes that are taking place in the education system and in society more generally. We need a qualifications and examination body that commands the confidence of everybody that uses it, particularly the learners. The point that I am trying to tease out is that there is also a cultural issue among Scottish Government ministers who have exercised very poor oversight over those bodies. It is wrong to try and shift all the bulk on to the SQA as dreadful as it has been. Surely, Scottish Government ministers should have identified sooner that something was going wrong in a system that was working well. Is there not accountability and cultural issues there? Scottish ministers are accountable to committees like that. I have to say that I did not feel that it was an area that I could refer to directly in my report. I think that what I have tried to do is to identify where I think that there are issues, and clearly if MSPs feel that the SQA needs to be held to account, then there are mechanisms for doing that, including through the committee. I think that that gets to the top of the issue. We have brought in the OECD to work to a very restricted remit, and then the Scottish Government has brought in yourself. Neither group has really felt able to challenge the culture at the heart of the Scottish Government and the lack of ministerial oversight that has allowed the issues that you have identified to continue on for five years, when Opposition parties across the Parliament have been called for an independent inspectorate. Opposition parties have raised concerns about leadership at the SQA. We have seen continued rebuts of curriculum for excellence, but nothing seems to have changed. What makes you confident that this time will be any different? What I have tried to do in my report, Mr Wendell, is to set out a number of recommendations that I think will drive that change. It is for everybody at all levels in the system, from ministers right the way through to teachers in schools, to consider those recommendations and to find a way forward, which is why I think that the next step has to be consideration or a conversation around what we want the education system to look like. Does that not take back to the start before the OECD report, before your own report, which in some respect has already set us off in a direction? Would it not be more of a genuine offer to teachers and to front-line practitioners to say that we value your input from the start, rather than putting so many pieces in place and then saying that we need to have a conversation? That is one of the reasons why, when I said in my opening statement that I had engaged in a very extensive round of engagements with all the stakeholders in the education system, I would hope that that would be replicated when the national conversation takes place, hopefully, promptly, with a degree of urgency. Oliver Wendell, and our final question is from Stephanie Callaghan. Thank you, convener, and thanks for joining us today. I know that it has been quite a long session, but I do have a few questions for you here. First of all, we have mentioned council leaders and directors of education, and I wonder if you can say a little bit more about how you envisage the role of local authorities fitting with a proposed national agency to really support and drive improvement at local and regional level and whether you know how important our clusters, collaboration, the kind of sense of shared identity and support and work through schools there. I will refer back to what I said earlier about my thinking about regional collaboration. I think that we have a system just now where many teachers see regional improvement collaboratives as individual bodies and entities, and what I am trying to suggest within my report is that the resource sync that is applied both from local authorities and from the central agency, Education Scotland, is something that is reconfigured so that there is more local and regional control over the agenda and also over the financing. One of the criticisms that I got back from local authorities around the funding of the regional improvement collaboratives was that it was one-year funding. That seemed to limit quite significantly the extent to which they could offer longer term support where they felt that was necessary because there were uncertainties about where future funding was going to come from. The bottom line is that local authorities have a statutory responsibility to effect improvement in their education system and support change in their education system. They are responsible for it. In the agency that I am proposing, I would expect a closer collaboration more consistently across the country between the local authorities and the national agency than perhaps has been the case so far. We cannot have a system as was reported to me where support is on the basis of who you know, either in the local authority or in the support agency, in this case Education Scotland. It needs to be something, as I said earlier, that is driven much more from the bottom up, from teachers who say, in order to deliver high quality learning and teaching, that is what I need. The mechanism and the infrastructure is there for that to happen. It is a much more bespoken and responsive system. It certainly seems to be the case for some at the moment. I have to caveat that by saying that clearly there are a number of schools and teachers out there who get very good support from a collaboration between the local authority and Education Scotland. However, it needs to be one that is more equitable than it would appear to be at the moment. There are some good examples of that just now that we could be building upon then. I am a councillor at South Lancer Council at the moment, so just to put that out there and declare that interest. There are some good examples to build on then. Absolutely. That came through to some extent the report on the regional improvement collaboratives. It has come through other reports, one that Glasgow University recently did on the west partnership. There are isolated examples. When you scratch below the surface as to why they are working well, which is something that I did, you tend to find that there is a commitment from all parties, which is important. I know that the birth of regional improvement collaboratives in some local authority areas was not without its difficulties. There were varying degrees of commitment from all parties to make it work, but the concept of regional and local collaboration has to be the way forward. It is the only way in which teachers can have the confidence that their needs would be responded to in a bespoke way, as opposed to some national or regional improvement collaborative offer that does not necessarily meet the needs of a hard-pressed P5 teacher in a particular primary school. That brings me on to my next question. You have spoken about the national agency, the need for it to be responsive and reactive, and you are looking again at the role of the regional improvement collaboration. Priorities for creating that on-going collaborative environment, I wonder what those are that allow the local authorities, the teachers, the parents and most of all our young people, including our young people who have additional support needs in that as well, because there is quite a big proportion of that. How we can actually look at maximising their influence, if you like, and also ensuring that wellbeing and rights are right at a really central focus, too. I think that there are two factors that need to be in place to make all of that work, because what you are illustrating is the kind of model that I think the system would want to have. I think that there are two factors that are critically important in that. One is about control and one is about resource. The two are related to each other, but part of my thinking with the national agency and, as I talked about earlier, the co-sponsorship model that is applied to Public Health Scotland is a sense that there is more control and more effective use of resource to provide support at the local level than might be the case at the moment. Having a control of the agenda, not necessarily creating voluminous regional improvement collaborative plans centrally, but having a control of the agenda that reflects local and regional needs and having a greater control of the resource, and fundamentally that is about staffing and finance, means that the needs of young people and the needs of teachers are more appropriately responded to in a proactive way, as opposed to the worst practice that is out there that is reflected in some of the feedback around regional improvement collaboratives at the moment. Having said that, there is some very good practice out there from regional improvement collaboratives and we really need to build on those, but, as I said, scratching below the surface of what is working well, it is where there is commitment, it is where they feel that there is a degree of empowerment over the agenda and that adequate resource has been applied to make it work. That is really, really helpful. Just a short question to finish off there, and I would not mind us going to both of you if we could. I wonder what your top task of us as politicians would be to help to facilitate the positive changes that our young people need and deserve? I will start and then give Graham time to think about that one. I actually think that there is a lot of really good stuff happening in Scottish schools, and I do not think that it is reflected in what goes out there into the public domain. It has been a particular thing that I have been in my bonnet for a number of years, that mostly what you hear out there in the system is more negative than positive. All of you know yourselves having visited schools and so on. There are some wonderful stuff happening out there. In whatever way, convener, you and your committee can extol the virtues of the positive things happening in education in Scotland. I think that we will go a long way towards helping to move the system forward in a positive way, because it is not a system that is broken. It is a system that should have enough confidence to look forward and build on the very good practice that exists out there, but it should make it more available and more apparent and more translatable across the board so that all young people can benefit from it. That would be my take. I want it, Ms Callan. Great, I could not agree more. If I could ask the same question to Professor Donaldson as well, please. I think that the benefit of my great age is that in the early years of the Parliament, it was interesting the extent to which parliamentarians had a very common sense of purpose, which the education debate that we talked about earlier reflected. My hope would be that, as we move forward, we can re-establish not a cosy consensus, but a constructive engagement around the issues that really matter for the young people. I try to keep the politics as confined as possible, because we really need—this is something that I really feel very strongly about—not just in Scotland, but across the world. We are at one of those points where the nature of what happens in our schools and how our young people learn is going to change dramatically over the course of the next five, 10, 15 years. It will be driven by all sorts of different forces that are disrupting previous assumptions that we had about what was the right thing to do and what we thought we could predict the future a bit better. It is just so important that we have within the Parliament a constructive engagement with that longer-term strategic thinking about how Scotland can grow and develop and flourish—how our young people can grow and develop and flourish—in what is going to be quite a febrile world that they are going to—they are living in and will live in and, of course, they are our future leaders. My plea would be to be as strategic as possible. Do not micromanage that. I certainly hope that our committee can really get that positive message out there. Our session has gone on quite a bit longer than I promised our witnesses. I apologise for that, but you have given us a lot of your time and also a lot to think about. I would like to thank Professor Ken Muir and Professor Graham Donaldson for what they have given us this morning. Thank you very much, gentlemen. The public part of today's meeting is now an end. I will now suspend the meeting for a couple of minutes to allow members to reconvene on Microsoft Teams for us to consider the final agenda item in private. Thank you and good morning.