Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 06 Dec 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 6, 2000

Official Report 203KB pdf

---

Committee Business

I have a couple of issues to raise under item 3. Members have before them a letter from the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which deals with some of the issues to which we had asked it to respond. Unfortunately, the letter did not arrive until after our draft report had been finalised, so it has not been included in that. However, my intention is that the letter should be attached to the minutes of this meeting. I will signal to people who may be interested in it that it will be available on the committee's website with the minutes. There was particular interest in the timeline for the 2001 diet.

I received the letter this morning, so I have been able only to glance at it. The item third from the bottom under "Timelines" is "Marking of External Exams", for which the finish date of Tuesday 14 August is given. Presumably marking should have been finished long before that. Does the SQA mean that exam results will be issued on Tuesday 14 August, or that the marking will be finished on that date, which seems a bit late?

No date is given for the announcement of results.

That is what I am saying. I suspect that what is meant is that results will be announced on 14 August, but that is not what the letter says.

I do not have an answer to Ian Jenkins's question. We will refer it back to the SQA for an answer and e-mail that to members as soon as we have received it. I hope that you will receive clarification before Friday, when this issue may be raised.

The letter states that the appeals process will start on 6 August.

The appeals process appears to start before the marking has finished, which is rather odd.

I am sure that there is an explanation. The SQA may have made a mistake; it may have meant to say that the marking will be finished in July.

We will have that issue clarified and e-mail members with the details—before Friday, I hope.

We will hold a press conference at 10 am on Friday, here at the Hub—although I am not sure in which room—to launch our report on the SQA. All members of the committee are welcome to attend, and an invitation has been issued to Hamish Long. We also invited Professor McGettrick, but unfortunately he is out of the country and will not be able to attend. However, it is important that Hamish Long should be there.

Next Wednesday morning—13 December—there will be a three-hour debate in Parliament on our report. Yesterday, I met Alex Neil, as our report will be debated in conjunction with the report of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee. We have agreed that I will open the debate and that Alex Neil will close it. I assume that party spokespeople will be asked to speak first. Most members of this committee will also want to speak, so they should put their names forward.

So there will be a list of members who want to speak in the debate.

Yes.

Our next committee meeting will be on Monday 18 December. At that meeting we will consider a draft report for the special educational needs inquiry and finalise the committee's work programme for 2001.

Will you still be in the chair?

That will depend on when the motion on committee changes is agreed by Parliament—if it ever is.

It is proposed that it should be debated next Thursday.

The film inquiry report was supposed to be discussed at our meeting on 18 December. Obviously, that will not now happen, as I cannot attend that meeting. Is our first meeting of the new year on Wednesday 10 January?

Yes.

I suggest that we discuss the film inquiry report on Wednesday 17 January. That will give me time to get a copy of it to the clerks at the start of the new year, so that they can circulate it.

I will not be present at the meeting on 18 December, at which we will discuss our work programme, although I will give Irene McGugan some notes. However, I would like at this point to suggest two ideas. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Gaelic Television Committee. Apart from briefly interviewing representatives of Scottish Media Group, this committee has not considered a broadcasting topic. Funding for the Gaelic Television Committee comes from the Scottish block, so it is a responsibility of the Parliament. By next year, the committee will have spent between £85 million and £90 million since it was established. The report of the broadcasting task force, chaired by Alasdair Milne, proposes a move to a full digital channel. Many people would be interested if we were to examine the implications of that proposal and what has happened so far.

Such an inquiry would also give this committee the opportunity—which it has not yet taken—to meet outwith Edinburgh. From discussions that I have had, I know that there would be great enthusiasm for our holding an evidence session in Stornoway. I propose that that be considered as a work item. It would require only two days of inquiry—one session in Edinburgh and one in Stornoway, flying out one day and coming back the next. I think that the council chambers in Stornoway would be made available to us. We could also visit the studio, which may close at the end of this year because of a difficulty with the Gaelic television news service, Telefios.

Education is on the subject list for strand three of the Belfast agreement, relating to the British-Irish Council. It has yet to be taken up fully, but there is growing interest in what the British-Irish Council may be able to do with the devolved Assemblies and this Parliament. Perhaps we could look into that issue. We could, for example, explore the educational links between Scotland and Northern Ireland. I know that the Education Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly is also interested in those links.

Each of those items will be included in the discussion paper for the meeting of 18 December. I am sorry that Mike Russell is unable to attend that meeting. As I am sure he knows, the date of the meeting had to be changed to accommodate parliamentary business.

I fully appreciate that. It is unfortunate that I have many other appointments on that date.

Do other members have comments?

Mike Russell mentioned SMG. The six-month period that we agreed has passed, and it might be useful for us to look back on what has happened.

I remind the committee that next year is the European year of languages and that we may want to consider the use in Scotland of minority languages, particularly Scots. We should put that on our agenda for the coming year.

I have two points to mention, which may come up next week. First, I understand that the policy position paper "The Way Forward for Care" will come before the Parliament this month. I suspect that the Health and Community Care Committee will be the designated lead committee on that. However, given that the paper makes frequent reference to children and to the establishment of the commission for the regulation of care—which will regulate all forms of child care—and a council to monitor the work force, this committee could reasonably claim an input into those discussions.

Yes. That is an outstanding item on the agenda. Margaret Smith has been in touch with me to arrange a meeting to discuss how we can feed into those discussions. The Health and Community Care Committee will be the lead committee, but the paper also enters the remit of this committee and that of the Local Government Committee. I have suggested to Margaret Smith that that meeting should be delayed by a week, after which the committee changes will have been made. She will then be able to meet the new convener of this committee.

The committee still has an outstanding responsibility to consider the establishment of a children's commissioner. The Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs mentioned that to me last week, and we recognise the need to fit it into our timetable at some stage.

Secondly, I would like the committee's advice. Members may know that a special educational needs and disability rights in education bill will be introduced early in the new session of the Westminster Parliament. The bill will impact on Scotland, as it will affect the disability task force recommendations in respect of education and will place all kinds of new duties on local authorities, schools and further education units. I am not sure whether that would require a Sewel motion for the elements that relate to Scotland. Perhaps this committee should have a prominent role in considering the implications of such a motion.

Sewel motions have not been referred first to committees, with the exception of one that the Rural Affairs Committee considered. It would be appropriate for the Parliamentary Bureau to refer the Sewel motion to this committee for discussion and for us to take any evidence that might be required before the motion was debated in the chamber. The clerks might make that request.

I shall ask the clerks to discuss that with the Minister for Parliament's office.

I welcome the Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs. If you do not mind, we will finish discussing this item while you catch your breath.

You waited for me, so I shall wait for you.

We should try not to be too ambitious. A lot of significant agenda items have been delayed repeatedly, usually as a result of untoward events and crises that have knocked us sideways. I am worried that our programme might get clogged up and that we might not be able to meet the ambitious targets that we have set.

That is a reasonable point.

The Hampden inquiry was meant to be a major inquiry, but it is obviously not a major inquiry now that things have moved on. Either it has become a minor inquiry or its time has passed. I am not arguing either way, but we should consider those possibilities.

I have tried to speak to spokespeople about the Hampden inquiry, to get a sense of how it could progress. It might be worth speaking to those people again this week, to establish how we can bring the matter to a conclusion. We must speak to a couple of people but not conduct the sort of wide-ranging inquiry that we planned in the early stages, when more difficulties were identified. As Mike Russell says, some of those difficulties have now been ironed out. [Interruption.]

I am advised that there is a problem with the sound recording. I suspend the meeting.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—