Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Official Report 770KB pdf

Attainment and Achievement of School-aged Children Experiencing Poverty

The final agenda item to be taken in public is consideration of a further response from COSLA to our report on attainment and achievement of school-aged children experiencing poverty.

Last year, the committee considered responses from the Scottish Government and Education Scotland and an initial response from COSLA. However, the substantive response from COSLA covers issues that the committee acknowledges would take longer to analyse and therefore to respond to.

I observe that the Government responded to the committee’s recommendation that all local authorities be surveyed on charges that are made for core education and how they contribute to the cost of the school day. The Government said that it would pursue such charges with COSLA. However, COSLA’s recent submission does not mention the committee’s recommendations in that area.

It is suggested that the committee writes to the Scottish Government, copying in COSLA, to seek clarification of which organisation is taking forward the work that stems from the recommendation on the cost of the school day, and details of the specific work that is planned. Are members content for us to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

As members have no other observations on the response from COSLA, that concludes our public session for this week. We will move into private session.