Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Official Report 436KB pdf

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Committee Reports (Responses)

The next item of business is consideration of Government responses on three committee reports that were published in the spring: “Children’s Hearing System—Taking Stock of Recent Reforms”, “How is Additional Support for Learning working in practice?”, and “Let’s Talk about Personal and Social Education”.

Do members have any comments on the responses on the children’s hearings system report?

I thought that most of what was said was very good.

That is great. I suggest that we make it clear to the Government that the committee wants to be kept actively informed of the Government’s progress towards commencing the provisions on advocacy for children at hearings. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

I now move to the additional support for learning report responses. I am interested in the independent research that the Scottish Government has said that it will commission in response to our recommendation for a quality assurance review. That is on page 10 of paper 4. I would like more details on the research, including an assurance that it will be published and shared with the committee. I suggest that we could write to the Scottish Government to seek that assurance and to ask about timescales for the work. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

I invite members’ views.

To follow up on what you have just said, I think that it is important to get the necessary detail on the timescales. Those are important in relation to some of the other things that we are pursuing.

Thank you. The issue of additional support needs is clearly one that a number of members are very interested in and on which there are matters outstanding, so I suggest that we write to the cabinet secretary to ask about his priorities for the financial year 2018-19 in advance of our session with him on the draft budget. In the letter, we could ask about his priorities for future funding and the extent to which funding for ASN will be prioritised. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

I particularly support that point, because the school visits that I have made at home over the past month suggest that that is the issue. It would be very good to see the Government’s response to the gaps that I think that many teachers and schools see, certainly in my part of the world, and, I am sure, across Scotland. That is something that we could stress quite heavily.

Thank you, Tavish.

The third report was on personal and social education. As members have no comments on the responses to that report, I remind them that, as previously agreed, the committee is planning to hold a chamber debate together with the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. That committee undertook an inquiry into bullying earlier this year and its report endorses a number of our recommendations. The chamber debate will give the committees the opportunity to debate those important issues with the Parliament as a whole.

That brings us to the end of the public part of the meeting.

11:16 Meeting continued in private until 12:21.