Chamber and committees

I have looked at the committee’s evidence sessions and, as the committee will know, and as the convener is right to say, the history of this goes back many years. The original petition was, I think, introduced in 2015, and that was followed by the commitment from the Government at that time to look at guidance—and then, of course, a commitment to publish further additional guidance, which we published last year.

It has taken too long—I will absolutely concede that. Part of the delay in relation to the most recent round of guidance was, of course, due to the pandemic, which I think was covered in some of the evidence that the committee heard. However, I accept that that has taken too long, and that it should not have had to come about in the way that it has.

The convener pointed to the fact that we are talking about a member’s bill. The committee will be aware that we published guidance last year. We have not yet reviewed the guidance and so, to my mind, there is a data gap in relation to its implementation and how it works.

The committee often asks the Government to do things that we do not have legislative power over because of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 and the responsibilities of local authorities. A good example of that is guidance on mobile phones, which we debated recently. We can publish non-statutory guidance, but, at the current time, the statutory power rests with local authorities. Based on my understanding of some of the evidence that the committee has taken, we should also be mindful of that in relation to this bill.

As I said in my opening statement, we have not yet reviewed the guidance, and we would want to carry out that review. We still need to gather that data in order to understand to what extent the new guidance is improving practice. The committee has heard from the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and from others that they are of the view that it is improving practice, but we need to look at the granular evidence. Originally, our view would have been that we would complete the review before considering whether statutory guidance was deemed necessary. However, the timelines for this bill mean that that has not been the case.

We are supportive of the bill at stage 1, but we have a number of concerns that I have written to the committee on, and we would like to see Mr Johnson address those. I am committed to working with him to that end.

I think that some of the asks were set out in correspondence from the SFC to the university directly, and I think that the committee received a copy of that letter back in August.

The SFC obviously supports ministers, so you cannot imagine that there would be divergence in our views on these things. However, with regard to the conditions themselves, I have not yet received that information. I met with officials on this matter yesterday, and I am meeting with the SFC later today. I would have expected to receive the conditions perhaps sooner than I have. Dundee university management has been involved in a number of workshops, along with the SFC. I think that the committee heard evidence on that from Richard Maconachie. There have been three workshops, which have helped to inform some of the thinking behind the conditions, but the conditions have not yet been presented to me, so it would be remiss of me to suggest otherwise today.

I am not familiar with the phrase “training needs analysis”, but I would argue that teachers do that anyway. They do that every year as part of their CPD—they consider what they are delivering. If they have a class one year with lots of young people with additional support needs, they might say that, as part of their continuing development for that year, they will engage in further training on X, Y and Z to support the young people in their care. That is something that individual teachers take a decision on and we do not mandate that as a Government—neither does local government. However, the committee might want to pursue the issue at stage 2 or with Mr Johnson.

I hear the point that Mr Mason is making, but we also need to be mindful that teachers are professionals, and they tend to make those individual judgments as professionals. I am not sure that it is for me to tell them what training they need in that regard, because their classes and the needs in front of them will change every year. They adapt their training appropriately and accordingly.

I think so. I have seen the evidence and am aware that that practice is used across the country in a range of different ways. Robert Eckhart might want to say more on that.

I do not want to put an arbitrary date on it, but I think that we would have expected them some time before now. If we wind back the clock to the end of June and my announcement to the Parliament then, we were pretty clear about the announcement of funding and what it was going to provide for. We then had a pretty quick change of leadership team, with an interim leadership team being installed, and we subsequently engaged with the SFC over the summer period. We then had correspondence that the committee is aware of in relation to the SFC setting out requirements regarding what the university was proposing. We have had to work with the university on that, which has taken longer than we had originally anticipated, going back to my announcement in June.

Yes.

That speaks to the point that the convener made at the start about the roles of local and national Government. Ministers have some powers relating to improvement in Scotland’s schools. There is legislation relating to standards in Scotland’s schools—Nico McKenzie-Juetten will be able to name the act—and there is the 1980 act, but the majority of the statutory responsibility for delivery of education lies with local government, which must have policies in place.

However, as we have heard in recent months and years, there has been a push from Parliament to have clearer direction from national Government on a number of issues, not least on this one. We have responded to petition PE1548 and to calls from parents and carers, and we published the national guidance last November. We can take a range of actions, but the primary responsibility for the delivery of education rests with local government. We can provide advisory guidance, and have done so, and we are, of course, discussing today whether Parliament will agree to put that on a statutory footing.

The committee might be interested to know that that might alter the future relationship between local and national Government and how we run our education services. That is a far bigger question than is dealt with by the bill, but the committee might want to be mindful of that, given the other issues that we have discussed in recent years. There are always challenges about where the responsibility for education sits.

Let us look at the history, which is that the previous cabinet secretary was asked to provide guidance. That was asked for by lots of different stakeholders, before my time as cabinet secretary—I think that that goes back to 2019. The original agreement was to provide guidance. We have moved on from that to putting things on a statutory footing, so I am not sure that I agree with—

I would expect the university to be able to meet those conditions, yes.