Europe Familiarisation Scheme
Agenda item 4 is the deputy convener's report of her visit to the European Parliament. A written paper has just been circulated. I invite Cathy Peattie to introduce her report.
I have prepared only a brief report but I have some background papers that members might be interested in.
The aim of the visit was to familiarise ourselves with the European Union and get up to speed with some of the relevant issues. We had an opportunity to speak to people who were doing some of the same work as this committee in areas such as education, culture, sport and the media. I found that particularly interesting.
My meeting with David Coyne, the head of the European Commission's directorate-general for education and culture was interesting as we talked about how indicators are being used in Europe. Members will recall that the committee has had that discussion frequently. He highlighted, as did Mr Hingel at a later meeting, that none of the European countries have been reluctant to identify the fact that a number of kids are leaving school as under-achievers. For the first time, people are realising that they have to do something about that—I suppose that it used to be seen as simply the fault of the young people as opposed to the system. I have brought back a report on indicators, which deals specifically with how quality indicators can be used. That might be useful for us to consider at a later date.
I had a similar discussion with Mr Hingel, also from the directorate-general for education and culture. We talked about ways in which people had been dealing with the issues surrounding indicators. He outlined a pilot project involving second-chance schools. It works in partnership with education and industry to bring together kids who have left school fairly early, who are not getting jobs and who have been, in a way, disenfranchised within the system. Its aim is to get those kids back into society and into employment. The pilot project has been fairly successful and I have an outline of a second-chance school that is being run in Leeds. It is an issue that we might want to deal with.
We will all be aware that, somewhere along the line, youth has slipped off the agenda of the Scottish Parliament. I am not sure if getting it back on the agenda is the role of our committee or that of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, but it is important that we address how the Parliament deals with teenagers and young people. We might want to flag that up. I have a number of names of relevant people with whom we might want to speak.
I met Barbara O'Toole, who is a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport. She was interested in the work that we are doing on cultural issues and we exchanged information about our committees. She thought that it would be useful for us to link in with her committee on cultural areas. She suggested that she might visit us to examine a form of exchange between our committees to better promote some cultural issues.
I spoke to Doris Peck on languages. She did not seem to be quite up to speed on some of the issues around minority languages, although that is what I was interested in—I can tell that that does not surprise Irene McGugan. I have asked for other information to be sent to me. That was the only meeting of my visit that was in any way disappointing—it took place only an hour before I left so there was not much that could be done.
In spite of the press coverage, I found the visit useful and helpful. We can make links with Europe on the issues around education, culture, languages and so on and we must examine whether that should be done by exchanges, visits or whatever. We should certainly exchange information and I have the addresses of various websites that we should look at if we have not been looking at them already. Links with Europe provide a great opportunity for the committee.
The written report that members have received is brief. If there are any typographical errors, that is simply because it is hot off the press.
I will pass the publications that I brought back to Martin Verity, who can circulate them.
It would be helpful if we invited Barbara O'Toole and some of the members of her committee to meet us. It might be easiest to factor in such a meeting if we did that informally, as we envisage meeting the Irish members.
We should examine whether it is possible to arrange for some members of our committee to visit the school in Leeds that Cathy Peattie mentioned. It seems to be a good example of something that could be done to help under-achieving young people.
Perhaps we could get the "European Report on the Quality of School Education" copied to all committee members. It would be helpful if members would read that.
It is an interesting document. The European working committee on quality indicators did a lot of soul searching on the issue and its work has a good deal in common with some of that we have done and the issues that we have raised with Her Majesty's inspectors of schools.
We will move into private session.
Meeting continued in private until 15:08.