Education Committee, 08 Sep 2005

Meeting date: Thursday, September 8, 2005

Official Report 135KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Additional Support for Learning (Appropriate Agencies) (Scotland) Order 2005 (SSI 2005/325)

No motion to annul has been lodged and the Subordinate Legislation Committee has drawn nothing specific to our attention. Do members have any comments on the order?

As Elaine Murray mentioned a moment ago, it is good that this issue has been sorted out.

However, I notice that the financial implications of the instrument for further and higher education have not yet been assessed. Given our general concerns about resourcing the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, I am slightly concerned about that. I hope that we can be updated, in due course, when financial information becomes available to us.

Page 2 of the Executive note on the order states:

"The instrument has no financial effects on the Scottish Executive, local government or business."

However, it then states:

"The costs to be borne by the funding have already been identified in Spending Review 2004 for school/college partnership activity."

What costs are those? If they have been identified, how much do they amount to so far? Has a certain sum of money been set aside?

The Executive officials who are present are here not for this item, but for the second of the two statutory instruments. However, we can ask the minister to provide us with additional information regarding the costs. My understanding is that the Executive considers that there is enough money in the budget to cover the costs of this item in the current spending review period, but that it will reconsider it in the subsequent spending review. I think that that is what the Executive note is saying, but there would be no harm in asking the minister to provide the committee with some additional information on the financial implications.

I flag up a valid point that has been raised by Skill Scotland. Co-operation between agencies in support of young people is very much to be welcomed, but it is Skill Scotland's hope that appropriate support and guidance will be provided to the other appropriate agencies, so that not just resources but adequate staff time is committed to ensuring that that co-operation is meaningful and effective.

Are members content that we ask the minister to provide the committee with some additional financial information regarding the instrument, subject to which we have nothing to report on the Additional Support for Learning (Appropriate Agencies) (Scotland) Order 2005?

Members indicated agreement.

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Requirements for Teachers (Scotland) Regulations 2005 (SSI 2005/355)

I welcome from the Scottish Executive Dr Mike Gibson, who is the head of the additional support needs division, and Stewart Robertson, who is a team leader in the teachers division. Do members have any questions on the instrument to ask the officials?

How will local authorities ensure that teachers have the appropriate professional skills and knowledge if they are employed to teach a subject although they are qualified in another subject?

That would depend on the continuing professional development that the teacher has done. The idea is that a teacher gets their initial teacher training qualification but may also have to undertake 35 hours of CPD, which would show whether someone had developed the appropriate professional skills and knowledge to take up another post.

The instrument relates to teachers who are employed by publicly funded schools, but in the consideration of other legislation concerns were expressed about teachers in private schools. Willingness was expressed by the Scottish Council of Independent Schools that there should be an extension of registration.

To teachers in independent schools?

Yes.

I am not aware that any decision has been taken on that.

Would that require future amendment of the regulations?

It would. The regulations are made under section 2 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, which allows ministers to instruct, direct or place responsibilities on authorities. I do not think that the 1980 act gives them the power to place responsibilities on independent schools. Whether that would mean that there would have to be other powers in other parts of the act or whether primary legislation would be needed, I do not know.

The Executive note says:

"More recent improvements to educational regulation mean safeguards and provisions which were thought necessary in the context of the 1950s have now become redundant"

and that previous regulations were more about determining school inputs, which tends

"to stifle initiative and modernisation".

Will you flesh that out?

The idea was to increase flexibility, because the Schools (Scotland) Code 1956 was prescriptive about what teachers could do. For example, regulation 5(1) said that a person needed a primary or secondary qualification to teach in a primary school. To teach in a secondary school, a person needed a secondary qualification, although learning support could be provided with a primary qualification. That was it. Little interchange was possible between the two sectors. The idea was to improve that because, in some circumstances, it is appropriate or helpful for a primary teacher to take some secondary 1 or 2 pupils, for example.

The original code was prescriptive and bits of it were removed. A provision that was removed in 2003 determined the number of teachers in primary schools. A rule set class sizes. The code also set the number of principal teachers according to the number of pupils who took a subject for five years.

The code was a child of its time. In the 1950s, schools had teacher shortages and unqualified teachers. Even by 1965, about 5,000 uncertificated teachers taught in Scottish schools. The code was developed against that background. Since then, registration of teachers by the General Teaching Council for Scotland has begun and we are talking about the standard for full registration. We have chartered teachers and a standard for headship. The situation has changed.

Regulation 3 says:

"Every education authority shall employ adequate numbers of teachers",

which begs the question. You said that the adequate numbers were stipulated in the old code, but the regulations do not define adequacy.

Adequacy depends on the circumstances. Most authorities staff their schools according to a staffing formula. If an authority failed to do that, that would be a sign of inadequacy. An authority's performance might be due to an inadequate number of teachers. A judgment could be made by such measures.

In some ways, the regulation is almost a long stop. We had such a provision before and the fear is almost that if we did not have it now, we might need it. If the measure was not included in the regulations, we might have to introduce it later.

Regulation 8 enables authorities to employ teachers to teach visually or hearing-impaired pupils provided that they are obtaining an appropriate qualification and the time that is taken to do that does not exceed five years. Where did the figure of five years come from? How long does the training take? The time for which unqualified people are allowed to teach seems long.

We consulted on the figure. One issue is that the training qualification is modular, so it must be taken over several years. A couple of respondents to the consultation—I think that one was the GTC—asked whether the time could be reduced to three years, but the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf recognised the difficulty. In a sense, we have ended up with five years as the maximum.

We still fall back on regulation 3, which says that teachers—in this case, those who teach youngsters with sensory impairments—must have

"the appropriate professional skills and knowledge".

That is not to say that the teachers do not have the skills to do the job, but it can take five years to obtain a qualification simply because only one, two or three modules are taken a year. That is the issue.

I thank you both for giving evidence and ask members whether they wish to make any further comment on the regulations. No motion to annul has been lodged. Do we agree that we have nothing to report on the regulations?

Members indicated agreement.