Education Committee, 10 Sep 2003

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Official Report 238KB pdf

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Budget Process 2004-05

Agenda item 3 is the budget process. Members have a paper in front of them. We do not yet have the budget, but I understand that the paperwork will become available soon. Martin Verity will give us an introduction to the paper.

The paper that has been circulated gives a background briefing. As the convener said, the budget has not yet been issued, although we expect that to happen no later than tomorrow. The purpose of the paper is to seek the committee's endorsement for the process of dealing with the budget, which involves taking evidence from the minister at the committee's meeting on 24 September.

We might want to come up with some provisional thoughts about the areas that we want to explore or perhaps on which we might want a background briefing. When we discussed the budget process at the away day, we took the broad view that we might want to have a familiarisation exercise at this stage because, as a new committee, we need to familiarise ourselves with the sources of education funding and how they fit together. Wendy Alexander has raised the issue of relationships with local authorities and transparency of funding. We need to think about all such matters. The ability to link Executive and parliamentary decisions on funding matters with what happens on the ground and the contrary issue of the discretion and autonomy of local authorities to make their own priority decisions are quite important both to the bill and to the funding of education in general.

From my experience on both sides of the committee table, I am not sure that questioning a minister is necessarily always the best way of elucidating a subject area. [Laughter.] I am not against the idea—I just think that it is an inadequate way of determining what is happening in the bigger picture.

Elaine Murray and I also have the privilege of being members of the Finance Committee, which is pushing for subject committees to dig into the details of areas of the budget. However, before that happens, we should perhaps ensure that we have a broad and comprehensive overview of education spending. I will not embarrass anyone around the table by asking them, but will simply say that, if someone were to ask me about significant shifts in trends in education spending since the creation of the Scottish Parliament, I would struggle with the question. Indeed, we all would. That is a shortcoming in our understanding of the issues.

As a result, we should on 24 September question the minister if our scrutiny of the budget demands it. However, we should also try collectively to reach some understanding of how education spending has changed in Scotland over the past 10 years and its implications for the next three years. That would involve examining the trend of significant shifts over 15 years, so we should perhaps think about appointing a specialist adviser on educational finance issues on whom we might call only two or three times a year. Such an adviser would be familiar with a broad overview of the budget and would help us to dig down into one or two areas. Indeed, in that respect, I have highlighted the opaque nature of so much education spending.

Although the Executive has clear priorities in education, it then sends the money to local authorities, who might have different views on the matter. The Finance Committee certainly feels that the non-transparency surrounding the issue cannot pertain for ever; however, that committee would be happy for subject committees to use the next year to begin to get a handle on the issues. I accept that we will not be able to appoint an adviser in the next three days, but I think that it might be useful if, in the next year, we have a couple of discussions about what has happened over the past six or seven years and where things are headed in the next three.

The issues that you have highlighted also arise in relation to the important matter of spending on early years intervention, which straddles our area and other committees' areas.

I ask Martin Verity's view on the question of a specialist adviser. Would such an appointment need the permission of the Conveners Group?

Yes, it would. However, we could prepare a suggestions paper for the committee, invite the committee to decide on whether it wants to appoint a specialist adviser and take the matter from there.

It would be very interesting to find out how the Scottish Executive Education Department is beginning to plan for the expenditure that will be involved both in the issues that we have discussed this morning and in effective mainstreaming.

Given recent newspaper reports about the Scottish Qualifications Authority, it might also be useful to seek the minister's reassurance about funding for that organisation.

In practical terms, we clearly cannot appoint a specialist adviser before our immediate questioning of the ministers. However, we could readily ask the Scottish Parliament information centre to carry out some background work into the issue and, perhaps, to help us with questions to the ministers. Does the committee feel that we should consider appointing a specialist adviser when we come to assess the forthcoming budget bill in more detail?

I certainly agree with that. We have to recognise that we could not have had an adviser in place right now, even though in an ideal world it would have been useful.

At the moment, we do not have a lot of information. For example, we have not yet received the draft budget bill or announcements on end-year flexibility.

We will get them on Thursday, I think.

We will need to do a lot of interrogation of level 3; we will need to look particularly at the increased costs of McCrone and at why the figures were underestimated. I do not know how much information we can receive before the minister comes to the committee, but we will need a lot of detail so that we can be more informed.

Wendy Alexander made a point about existing trends and there is some information in the background paper about that. SPICe can help us and give us some starting points. We will have to learn from the minister about proposed changes and the implications for this year's budget.

There was an interesting comment this morning about less attention being given to the economics of education than to the economics of, for example, the health service. I take Wendy's point about getting a perspective and a general view of where education is going. We should certainly do that for this bill, bearing in mind the Auditor General's comments about mainstreaming provision. It would also be useful when we consider early-years financing. We are committed to a strategic piece of work, which is to consider the three-to-18 curriculum generally. That work may also help to inform our discussions on the economics of education for planning for future years. We should put things in that context and not simply look at the bill as it goes through its stages.

That is right. We will have to consider the effectiveness of spending as well as its transparency.

I want to pick up on Rhona Brankin's point about doing specific work on special educational needs and additional support for learning. We are all aware of the difficulties of following funding in that area. Our meeting last week showed up the difficulties in making comparisons between local authorities. It would be good to be able to pull that information together. There might be some work for us in considering overall levels of expenditure throughout Scotland. That would allow us to question the Executive on how it makes judgments using such difficult data. We might then be able to consider how to arrive at a more equitable settlement.

It will not be possible to do all that through the budget process. We have discussed therapy issues and we had the Auditor General's report last week—those are contributions to what is an evolving picture. Getting precise information will be difficult.

What did you suggest that SPICe might do?

SPICe could give us background information about education spending figures since 1999.

So, are you suggesting that SPICe should give us an overview rather than look into additional support for learning or special educational needs?

There will be strands that we would want SPICe to pick out, such as early-years learning, additional support for learning and one or two other themes. Somebody mentioned McCrone earlier and that will be quite an important theme—in fact, it will probably be the overriding theme. That may lead into work that we will want to do later, once we have had time to assess how well McCrone is working. SPICe can give us general information, figures, hints and directions.

Without wanting to overload SPICe, could we also get an idea of what funds are ring fenced in local authorities and which are part of grant-aided expenditure?

That information is reasonably gettable, is it not?

My colleagues are nodding.

At a later stage, there will be a case for asking a special adviser to look into areas where there are particular pressure points in the budget. ASL is an obvious example, as is McCrone. There may be many other specialised areas, such as the education of travelling people and the extent to which that is successful.

There have also been a number of changes, such as special schools' moving from central funding to local authority funding. The effects of that will have to be teased out—for example, are there economic factors involved in having smaller numbers in special schools?

I believe that that change has been postponed and will not happen for six years. Special schools will still be grant-maintained centrally.

I thought that local authorities already had an input into the purchase of services and so on.

There are seven special schools in Scotland that are grant-maintained centrally. That will continue. They therefore have a special status.

Okay, I think that we have given SPICe researchers a hint of the work that we will be doing. They should be able to help us. We would have to make a case for having a special adviser. A number of themes have emerged in which we would be greatly assisted by an adviser. Shall I ask the clerks to produce a report with proposals that can go to the Conveners Group?

Members indicated agreement.

Does anyone else wish to raise points on the budget? If not, we will proceed on the basis that has been suggested: we will see the minister and follow up on issues if we are so inclined. Background information from SPICe will help us.

We could pick up on Rhona Brankin's point about the SQA. We need assurances from the minister on that.

I presume that there is existing information on how much has gone into the SQA. I cannot remember when it was set up, and I am not sure what changes there have been. We will raise those issues with the minister.

Finally, Martin Verity will update us on our work programme in private.

I thank members for their attendance and look forward to seeing you at our next meeting.

Meeting closed at 11:41.