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Without further ado, we will move on to new petitions.
I will speak first and Andrew McPake will speak second.
You have the floor.
Should I stand up?
Whatever you wish—stand up or sit down.
Our petition was organised by students for students and it was signed by students. Our petition is unique because it also includes teachers' opinions—it was signed by both students and teachers.
Unit assessments create an unnecessary culture of fear and anxiety, as students have to work knowing that they might not be allowed to sit their exams. Moreover, teaching time is affected, as staff create a culture of paranoia about the fact that students might not pass the assessments and might not be able to sit the exams. That means that the subjects are not taught in as great detail as they should be, which in turn means that the workers of the future might not be as skilled as the workers of today. In maths, a week will be taken to prepare for the assessment rather than to teach. In my English class, we are studying far less literature than the previous year did. Under the previous system, my English teacher taught her class 12 Burns poems, a Shakespeare drama and a novel. We have had only two McCaig poems and a Shakespeare drama. That is a great reduction.
That was excellent. You delivered your statements within the time limit, which is not always the case in this committee. Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, who has a particular interest in the school, has joined us today. Did you want to say anything, Lord James?
Are there simply too many assessments or should there be a totally different system?
As I said, I have to sit 29 unit assessments over the year. That is a ridiculous figure. Nobody can pass them all and I will undoubtedly have to resit some of them. If a student fails them all the first time around, they will end up having to sit double the number of unit assessments. In the past week, I have had four. The system seems to put a great burden on pupils.
We would like fewer unit assessments. The petition says that schools should be able to determine the number of assessments that are needed to prepare students for the exam. Beyond that, we would like unit assessments to be abolished. We are against the principle of putting students under such pressure early in the course and against undermining staff with the idea that they cannot decide which students are capable of sitting the exam.
You said that the system is causing students to neglect other subjects. Is it also causing the teachers considerable stress?
Definitely. In English, the papers can take hours to mark. We have said that a great deal of undue stress is placed on students and staff by the system of unit assessment. The threat that students will not be allowed to sit the exam is a looming dagger, which comes into play early in the course. That causes the stress.
As an ex-teacher, I have every sympathy with that point.
Have you taken this complaint to anyone other than the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee?
Initially, the matter was taken to our school's student representative committee. We can present a united front today because the students and staff were able to agree at that meeting. There have been separate staff petitions. The petition that we presented to the Public Petitions Committee is, in a way, an amalgamation of a previous student petition and a previous staff petition.
Do other schools perceive the problem in the same way as your school does?
They certainly do. Friends and teachers at other schools describe the same problems. The problem is widespread, and we felt that we needed to do something about it.
So you would say that the higher still system is not working.
Let me clarify that. We are not opposed to higher still, as it provides a constructive course prior to school leaving age. The intermediate 2 means that students who did not receive credit level grades in their standard grades can continue to study beyond fourth year. However, we are opposed to unit assessments. We would not abolish the higher still course; we simply want to demonstrate what things were like under the old higher, when unit assessments did not exist.
I suffer in this matter from the disadvantage of not having been a teacher. I simply cannot imagine what the assessments are like. You said that you have had four in the past week.
I have had four in the past week, one of which was yesterday.
I want to try to understand what happens. You mentioned written papers. Do you have to sit a kind of pre-exam?
I will sit 29 assessments this year. They are shorter than the final exam. If you fail them, you resit them. If you fail them again, you do not get to sit the exam. You are effectively buying your ticket to the exam—that is totally wrong. If you have the ability, a couple of off-days should not prevent you from reaching your long-term goal.
Who sets the tests?
The unit assessments are what we know as NABs: national assessment banks. They are given out by the Scottish Qualifications Authority, but they are not standardised across the board—not everyone in Scotland sits the same assessment. Students sit similar assessments that test the same skills. Different questions suit different people. In a history exam, for example, some people might not be too smart when it comes to the Munich agreement, but they may know everything about the Spanish civil war. The fact that there is no standardisation is one of the many flaws in the unit assessment system.
My understanding was that, under the old system, students worked all year and then sat an exam. If they were having a bad day, they might fail that exam and a year's work would go to waste. The unit system did away with that problem—people are assessed over the year, so that if they have a bad day on the day of the final exam they still have something to show for their year's work and can get some credit for it. Can you suggest a different system that would provide a similar safety net for people who may not perform well at a final exam?
We are talking from the point of view of student representatives. When students take away the assessments that they have passed, many of them feel that they are not taking away anything. Sixth years who failed higher stills last year do not feel like they have gained anything, although the fact that they passed their unit assessments is on paper. The pressure still exists that, on the one day of the exam, students might have a bad day; however, they can appeal on an exam. Unit assessments buy you your ticket to the exam and place pressure on you from an early stage in the course. Students work continuously throughout the year. The question is whether they are working in a state of panic and anxiety or in a state of comfort and positive motivation.
I speak as a parent who has a daughter doing sixth-year studies and who is at the moment matching the stress of her daughter. My understanding of the assessment system is that, if a person does not secure as good a grade at the final exam as they would have hoped, they can, in effect, appeal on the basis of the work that has been done in the year before. I understood that that appeal could result in an upgrading of the final mark.
That tends to happen more with the prelim exams. Technically, prelims are not unit assessments; they are set and marked by the school as a dry run for the big exam. Prelim grades are used more often than unit assessment grades for the purposes of appeal.
Are you arguing for a reduction in the number of unit assessment grades? You are not necessarily arguing for a total abolition.
We have argued for total abolition. We are not opposed to class tests and we are not opposed to the idea of preparing students for their final exam. We are opposed to the idea that, if a particular test is not passed, that may be the higher over for the student. That thought is in the back of every student's mind when they sit a unit assessment. That is why we are arguing for the abolition of unit assessments. We are opposed in principle to the creation of panic so early in the course or outwith the final exam, as that does not give people the whole year in which to prepare. The unit assessment buys students the ticket to their final exam but, when they take a higher course, they expect to be able to sit the exam anyway.
You have obviously given careful consideration to the idea behind the petition—teachers and students have thought it through and come to this position. Would you accept that, to achieve your aim of abolishing mandatory unit assessments, evidence of unrest among the student and teacher population of Scotland will be needed from more than only one school?
Definitely. We hope to be the first of many. I believe that our petition has widespread support across the Scottish education system. If the students and staff of Craigmount high school did not bring their concerns to the Parliament, nothing might ever be done about the matter.
That is excellent. We can anticipate more petitions in the future from different schools. That keeps us in business. Thank you very much. We shall now discuss what to do with the petition. You are welcome to sit and listen to our discussion.
I am worried that the problem may not be Scotland-wide. If the problem is confined to Craigmount high school, it is not Scotland-wide. There is nothing new in pupils arguing for fewer exams—I did it myself. If this is a national problem, it is a matter for the professionals. Perhaps they need to re-evaluate their procedures. Let us see what happens.
As a first stage, we should wait for the Executive's response to the petition, and then consider further what to do with it. Are members agreed?
I welcome Dorothy-Grace Elder. Are the trains not running properly?
ScotRail is sort of innocent—perhaps not proven.
The next petition is PE345 on behalf of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. Two representatives will speak to the petition: Dave Alexander, who works for the SFHA, and Josie Mitchell, who is a member of the Glen Housing Association. You have three minutes; the floor is yours.
I am director of the SFHA and I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to present the petition. The SFHA is the voice of the voluntary housing movement in Scotland and we feel that the voluntary aspect is particularly important. The voluntary housing movement supports much of what the Executive is trying to do on housing, particularly its promotion of community ownership and community empowerment. However, the proposal under the Housing (Scotland) Bill to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants flies in the face of that notion of community ownership, which is why it has raised such strong feelings within the voluntary housing movement. There are about 2,400 voluntary committee members in Scotland, who give up their time and energy to run housing associations. About 1,500 of them will be directly affected by the extension of the right to buy and 900 have put their name to the petition. Josie Mitchell, who is the chair of Glen Housing Association, will now speak to the petition.
Our petition outlines the reasons why the housing association movement is against the right to buy. However, it is not simply a list of such reasons, even though some of them are very good; its other element is feeling. The petition is a measure of how strongly committee members feel about the right to buy. No one should make the mistake of thinking that we are against the right to buy because we think that something is being taken away from us; we are against it because we think that something that we stand for is being taken away from us.
Excuse my ignorance, but do housing associations cover the whole of Scotland? Are there as many in the Highlands and Islands as there are in the central belt?
Although most of the 192 housing associations in Scotland cover quite small geographical localities, they are found in all parts of the country, from Shetland to Dumfries and Galloway.
I am interested in the third bullet point in the covering letter, about houses being holiday homes while the locals live in caravans. That is all too prevalent in many parts of the Highlands and Islands, which is of course a beautiful place. Plockton, for example, is dead in the winter because people come for three weeks a year and a lot of the locals cannot get houses.
The feelings about the extended right to buy have been especially strong in the Highlands and Islands, because of what has happened with right to buy in the council housing stock. Right to buy has decimated the supply of rented housing in communities in the Highlands. That explains the origins of some of the rural housing associations, such as Lochalsh and Skye Housing Association and Lochaber Housing Association. Those associations were set up to provide a pool of rented accommodation, because council rented accommodation had been sold off. The activities of those rural housing associations will be affected by an extension of the right to buy.
I notice from the committee paper that you have given evidence to the Social Justice Committee at stage 1 of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. I also notice that Jackie Baillie has endeavoured to go some way towards meeting your concerns by, as the paper says,
We welcome the changes that were introduced last summer, which answer some of our concerns. However, the 10-year delay in the full implementation of the right to buy for housing association tenants merely delays the impact. Housing association committees take a long-term view of the needs of their areas. It is not sufficient to delay the impact by 10 years. There is every risk that in 10 years a large number of tenants who have accumulated the discount entitlement will exercise the right to buy and cause great problems for the housing association committees.
One of the reasons why the housing association movement started was that the areas in which we live were run down. The movement is about building up the communities. I started this work 10 years ago. I said that it was a long-term plan—for my children and my children's children—to have the right to a house. People do not just want a flat; they start with a flat and, when they get married and have children, they aspire to have a house and hope to be able to rent it if they so choose. The bill takes away those choices from people.
The Executive has stated:
In Scotland, about a third of housing associations are charitable. It is interesting to note why only a third are charitable: the majority are community controlled and there is a perceived incompatibility between community control and charitable status. In England, where that condition does not apply, a much larger percentage of housing associations have charitable status. That is an interesting twist.
Glen Housing Association is not a charitable housing association.
So your view has not changed.
No.
If you believe that the bill's proposals on pressured areas are inadequate, what suggestions do you have for improving them?
The pressured area concession was another concession introduced by the Executive when people were thinking about the right to buy. It was introduced to protect areas that would otherwise lose their housing stock.
Would you like to comment on the provision of grants to allow people in those areas to buy private sector housing rather than housing association stock?
At an early stage, the SFHA suggested that alternative ways existed to promote home ownership. I emphasise that the housing association movement is not against home ownership. We advocated a form of cash incentive scheme that would allow tenants to buy on the open market as an alternative to buying the house that they rent. That would allow people to achieve home ownership without eating into the supply of scarce social rented housing stock. We would support such a scheme.
An argument that has been used against those who want to drop the extension of the right to buy is that only housing professionals want to drop the extension, while tenants support it. What is your reaction to that?
I am a committee member and a tenant, and I believe that people on the street do not really understand what the debate is about. They just think that they will be able to buy their house and do not take into consideration what that might mean. People are selfish in that respect—they think only of themselves.
Are all committee members tenants?
Fifty per cent of our committee members are tenants.
Are the 900 people who signed your petition both tenants and non-tenants?
Yes—there is a mixture of both.
Should what your petition calls for be seen against the background of mass housing stock transfer in places such as Glasgow? The stock transfer that is proposed by the Executive and Glasgow City Council would hand over tens of thousands of council houses to the financial market and would end council housing as we know it. Are you concerned that you are part of that wider picture of the loss of what might be called true publicly controlled housing?
The housing association of which I am a tenant began as a stock transfer, albeit a small one. I might be frightened of a larger-scale transfer, never mind anyone else. However, I do not think that that is our fear. Our concern is that we should educate people about what taking control of something means.
I was referring to the issue against a background of mass housing stock transfer, rather than the smaller transfers that have taken place for years.
We have concerns about the scale of stock transfer and whether the stock transfers that are being considered represent genuine opportunities for community ownership. I emphasise that we support strongly what the Executive is trying to do in terms of community ownership, but it is hard to see how some of the initiatives that are being discussed and promoted can deliver genuine community ownership.
Do you have any questions to ask, or points that you wish to make?
No. Thank you for having us.
Thank you. The question-and-answer session is over, so we will now consider what to do with the petition.
Can we send a copy to the Executive as well?
Yes.
Can we remove the bit about taking no further action? Let us see what response we get before we decide to take no further action.
It is not easier for the clerks if we say that we will leave it, but you are right.
The petitioners are raising the issue of rural housing associations' problems. The long-term sustainability of those housing associations is at stake. The Parliament must consider that carefully.
That is a fair point. The petition will remain active and we will continue to monitor it as it goes through the Parliament.
Could we point out in the note to the Executive that the petitioners have noted and studied the Executive's moves, but have rejected them? There is particular concern about the 10-year situation, which would just move the issue 10 years down the line.
It would be possible to include that in the note to the Executive. Is that agreed?
The next petition, PE343, is from Thea Rae; it calls on the Parliament to review and amend the law pertaining to contracts between building companies and their clients. Thea Rae is here this morning, but I believe that she does not want to address the—
I was told that what I wanted to let you know was not what you wanted to know. Perhaps you will find out all that you need by asking questions.
Okay.
I am buying a house from a builder.
And you entered into a contract with the builder.
Yes. I had only a verbal contract about when I would get into the house, which I was told would be at the end of April last year. Three weeks before then I moved up from Norfolk, where I had sold my property, to come back to Ayr. I lived in my mother's house, which, luckily, my son was living in, but I intended to live there for only three weeks until I moved in to my new property. Nobody said, "Don't hurry. It will not be ready." Here I am, almost a year later, and I am still not in the building, nor is anybody else.
I remind members that we must be careful not to get involved in the particulars of this case, as it could end up in court at some point.
Yes. At the moment, the law is weighted in favour of big business, and I do not intend that the case should ever come to court.
Just in case it does, we have to be careful.
Bearing in mind what the convener has said, I shall have to modify the content and tone of what I was about to say.
We are asking the petitioner questions at this stage. We can discuss the case afterwards.
I am not sure whether you can answer my question. If a big company were ordering a building to be built, there would be an end date in the contract, and penalties and get-out clauses would apply if the work was not completed. Is it possible for someone who is buying a property on a housing estate to have such penalties included in their contract, or has that facility just been overlooked by the solicitors in this case because they thought that the penalties would not be needed?
I do not know that that facility is not available, but I am fairly certain from the way that the builder was selling the houses—very quickly, before there was any show house or anything for us to see—that he would not have been interested in my saying, "Put in a penalty clause." He would not have accepted that from me because he knew that he had 121 of his 157 houses sold when I started the contract with him a year ago in February. He was not short of buyers, so he would not have been interested in that side of things.
So the builder would not have accepted an offer to buy under those conditions?
I do not know that, but I feel perfectly certain that he would not. He did not have to.
Slow-builder syndrome can wreck someone's life. Your situation seems to call for a change in the law. You have touched on a running sore, probably throughout Europe rather than just in Scotland. The fact that there was no penalty clause is important. As you say, the houses were being snapped up. Although we do not delve deeply into individual cases, we are talking about one modern house on a new estate, all built by the same builder. You are not aware whether other people are having the same problem.
I am, because it is not a house but a flat. It is in a block of 150-odd flats, and none of the buyers are in.
There are 150 flats?
I think that there were 152 flats in that phase of the development.
And their completion has been delayed.
Yes. They were supposed to be the first block to be completed, but they will now be the last.
Was no reason whatever given for the unreasonable delay—bad weather or something like that?
No.
I think that your case is similar to that of someone who is buying or renovating an individual house. Lives can be harmed equally in those circumstances.
The difficulty in changing the law is that contract law is a specific kind of law, in which the parties to the contract make the law. The answer might be, "If you don't like the contract, don't sign it." I do not know whether you consulted a solicitor. If you had done so, the solicitor might have told you that the contract gave you no rights if the builder delayed.
I consulted a solicitor, who did not alert me to that possibility. He did not think that that would happen. Delays are not usually as long as this; the delay has been 18 months for some people.
I understand your problem. However, contract law is made by the parties and you were a participant in making a bad bargain. I do not know what the law can do to rescue you from that situation. I do not think that the law will be changed to say that, if one party to a contract behaves unreasonably, the other party will be allowed to withdraw from the contract. That option was not specified by you when you entered into the contract, and I do not know what the law can do to help your situation.
We can discuss the matter when we have finished our questioning.
What role did your building society play? I had a house built, and the building society laid down strict regulations about the staging of payments. Payments were released to the builders only on the basis of certain progress having been made—I think that there were three separate stages. Were any such terms agreed?
No building society has been involved. I paid only an initial deposit, which I was willing to forgo to be released from the contract, but the builder would not accept that. I did not need to involve a building society, as I had sold a house.
You said that 152 flats have been delayed by around 18 months. Does that mean that there are 152 buyers? Are all the flats sold?
I do not know. In February 2000, 121 had been sold—at least, that is what the builder told me.
So, at least 120 people are in the same position as you. Have you formed an action committee or generated publicity about the issue?
I do not know how to contact the other buyers. I have spoken to John Scott about the matter, but I do not know how to get in touch with more than two other buyers whom I happened to encounter through a casual contact.
We cannot go into this in detail, but I suggest that you go to the newspapers with your story. Other buyers would probably come forward.
I approached the newspapers, but they were not interested. The local paper has run the story twice, but it did not get back to me when I approached it.
You should have sought more legal protection when the contract was being drawn up. Lawyers can foresee that things might happen.
Yes.
Was the contract that you entered into with the builder a standard contract that was available to all the people who bought flats?
I do not know. I presume so.
It is a buyers' market, is it not?
No, it is a seller's market.
Yes. Sorry. So, you felt that you had no alternative but to enter into the contract that you were offered, and your solicitor did not warn you about the possible outcome.
No, he did not. I read the contract, but I did not think that any builder would be a year to 18 months behind schedule.
Would you like to discuss the assurances that you have been given about when you will be able to move in, and about the development of the project?
I can give you the letters from the builder, which specify the various dates when the flat was going to be ready. The latest letter says:
Do you have other similar letters?
Yes, I have letters that go back to last June.
Do they contain assurances that you would gain access to your property?
Yes. The developer's letter saying that I would not be let out of the contract "as completion is imminent" was dated November.
This is serious. The committee will now discuss what to do with the petition. The point is that in law the onus is on the buyer's solicitor to examine the contract and missives on behalf of their client, to ensure that their client's interests are not likely to be compromised, before recommending that the contract and missives be agreed. However, given the circumstances, I suggest that we try to get an Executive response, as it cannot be right that people are being left in this situation. I take Dr Winnie Ewing's point about the law, but the law has to show common sense.
I was in the same situation as Mrs Rae is in when my husband bought our flat in Edinburgh. What happened to Mrs Rae also happened to me, but it was a seller's market and the developer encouraged us to get out of the contract so that the flat could be sold at a higher price. If it is true that Ayr is also a seller's market, I find it rather strange that the developer will not let Mrs Rae out of the contract, as it could find another purchaser.
I would not want to go into the specifics of that.
In somewhere such as Ayr, people should be aware of the situation and avoid getting involved in such an arrangement.
The delay that the petitioner has experienced has gone beyond the bounds of being reasonable. I accept Dr Ewing's point that there was a willing buyer and a willing seller and that the contract was freely entered into. Nonetheless, the delay is unreasonable, not just for Mrs Rae, but for the others who have been seriously disadvantaged by this delay.
I agree with my colleagues. I have the utmost sympathy for Mrs Rae and can tell her that she is not alone. I could give her chapter and verse of similar situations in my constituency. We are not able to name and shame the developer today, but that is what we should do in such situations. If the public are alerted to builders and developers who do not keep their word, the public can vote with their feet and not go anywhere near them.
I suggest that the committee contact the Law Society of Scotland, as it may take a long time to change the law. However, if the Law Society became involved, it could advise its members that they should include an end date and penalty clauses in contracts of this kind. As Mrs Rae said, if all lawyers did that and all offers to buy had the same conditions, the developer could not pick and choose which offer to take.
The clerk has suggested that we send a copy of the petition to the Law Society, asking it to comment on the particular point that solicitors are not giving proper advice to buyers.
If everyone changed the way in which they worked, the developer would have no choice.
We could ask for the Law Society of Scotland's views on that.
Buying and selling is an absolute nightmare and lawyers often give inadequate advice. I suggest that the convener pass copies to the Executive of the letters that Mrs Rae has received. I wonder why we cannot name the building firm concerned.
For legal reasons.
Lawyers again. Lawyers and builders—we have a real load today.
If the letters are made available to the clerks, we will pass them to the Executive.
Could we ensure that the Law Society gets a copy of the interesting charter for house buyers that Helen Eadie mentioned? It sounds very good.
If it is readily available.
It will be.
Do we agree to follow the recommended action, along with the additional action that we have discussed?
Petition PE342 is from Neil Kay. We also have a letter from Alex Johnstone MSP, who supports the petition. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to consider framing national guidelines for school closures that are at least as fair and comprehensive as those adopted in England and to ask councils to consider deferring decisions on any school closures until those new guidelines have been established. Alex Johnstone's letter basically says that he supports the petition and calls on the Public Petitions Committee to lend its support.
I support that. I am aware of the situation in Argyll and Bute that the petition deals with and know that the information that was being sent out to parents was that, although the capacity of the school in question was a certain number, considerations arising from composite classes and so on meant that only a lesser number could be dealt with. The issue of composite classes is reasonably new and I think that the guidance to local authorities needs to be reconsidered.
The English system, which the petitioners have kindly outlined, seems to be a good one. A presumption against closure was introduced in 1998.
Jamie Stone's report has been published by the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and is available publicly. It is important to note, as the petition does, that the report has not been acted on by COSLA. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee is the proper place for the issue to be considered further and it is suggested that we send the petition there.
Shetland avoided a school closure by finding a teacher with five children.
That could be seen as discrimination.
Do we agree to pass the petition to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and ask it to respond directly to the petitioner?
Petition PE344 is from Thelma McCaffery, on behalf of the Highland movement against water fluoridation, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to institute a research programme into the effects of fluoride in water supplies on the human body.
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