Education Committee,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Official Report 374KB pdf

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Work Programme

We were going to wait until 2 o'clock for the minister, but I would like to move on to agenda items 4 and 5 to consider the committee's work programme and the budget process this morning, if we have enough time. Agenda item 4 is on the committee's work programme. Members have a paper before them, which raises one or two issues. There is a gap in June in between the bits and pieces of legislation that we have been dealing with.

I would like to make a suggestion, which I will put as a question. Can McCrone and to some extent the implementation of devolved school management be fitted in with everything else?

We are not discussing the long-term work programme; we are discussing the programme only up to the summer recess. There may be limits on what we can do in that period because of the time that is available.

I would like to put down a marker for those issues.

I think that they are on our list of issues to return to at some point.

I am concerned that the paper does not reflect our previous discussions. When we had a discussion previously, I was concerned that our discussions at the summer away day had not been reflected. I am concerned that we keep coming back and moving the goalposts whenever we get there. We should stick to the issues that we have previously agreed on.

One issue was a strategic look at the national debate on education. I do not know whether we can do that before the summer. We can consider McCrone as a short, sharp issue—more of a where-are-we-now issue. It is essential that we consider early-years intervention and we are committed to doing so. We put off appointing a reporter on early-years nursery nurses pending our consideration of the petition and the early-years inquiry. Perhaps some preliminary work can be done before the recess to help to start that work. There is an expectation that we will do that and we are committed to doing it. We agreed that we would not have a reporter but that there would be regular updates to the committee on the issue, although I have not seen anything coming forward.

I am a bit concerned that we are just waiting in the trail of the Executive for it to produce a summary of its strategy. I strongly recommend some preparatory work on early-years intervention or on McCrone. As Lord James Douglas-Hamilton said, we have acknowledged that stocktaking on McCrone would be appropriate. We should not reinvent the wheel and have similar discussions every three or four months.

I do not accept the suggestion that we are doing that. To a degree, the target is moving and developments happen, but I do not accept your interpretation of what we have agreed. However, we can resume the argument shortly.

I certainly do not accept what Fiona Hyslop said. One central issue that we said that we wanted to consider was the curriculum in the context of the Executive's curriculum review. I agree that the difficulty is in focusing on something in the curriculum on which we can make an input. My preference is for considering arts, culture and creativity in the curriculum. That is a hugely important topic with interesting evidence about what is happening in other parts of the world. The importance of that subject is increasingly accepted and the committee could make a significant contribution to that.

I am conscious of the need for the committee's work to add value to what is happening in the Executive and not just to tread in its footprints as if it were good King Wenceslas.

We should examine early-years intervention, which is important. Many developments are happening in that. I am also keen to consider the curriculum and in particular an aspect that is mentioned in paragraph 4 of our briefing paper, which is

"increased flexibility and pupil choice".

As announcements have been made about producing a more flexible curriculum, we should consider how that is progressing.

I would also like to study the final point in that paragraph, which is

"the need to motivate those ‘turned off' by the academic curriculum and to break down barriers between subject areas."

That fits in with the flexible curriculum. We should scrutinise those subjects carefully, because they are important.

That links a little with the possibility that we talked about a while back of working with the Enterprise and Culture Committee on 14 to 16-year-olds going to college and other such matters. That has not progressed because of the difficulties of two committees working together.

That would be part of our strategic approach.

Yes.

I endorse Rosemary Byrne's and Rhona Brankin's point that the curriculum should be our focus in the weeks up to the summer. Two options for discussion in our briefing paper are "increased flexibility", which Rosemary and Rhona discussed, and

"the prevalence of academic subjects at the expense of ‘soft skills'".

Discussing that would be more productive for us and would give us the option of adding value, which the convener mentioned.

Using the anniversary of the passing of the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000 as an opportunity to discuss the national priorities for education strikes me as slightly tokenistic, although it could be productive.

I endorse the need to return to the early years but, to do that topic justice, I suspect that we will have to do that after the summer.

That is the problem with working on the early years. My strong view is that the committee should make a significant contribution to early-years learning, but that is a lengthy and involved matter. There are two reasons for not dealing with that subject at the moment. One is that Executive reports that we should have first will be published in the next few months. The second reason is that such an investigation would take longer than the gap of two or three weeks in June. Does the committee agree that early-years learning will be a key priority for us from the autumn onwards, that we need time to study it properly and that we should examine another matter now? Is that broadly the consensus? Fiona Hyslop had a different view.

The question is whether we could kick-start work on the early years, as we did with the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, on which we undertook preparatory work in the summer before it was introduced.

My concern is that we agreed not to have a reporter on the early years on the basis that we would be kept up to date with information, but we have not been kept up to date. The evidence sessions might take place in the autumn, but we could do preparatory work and receive information before that.

I sense that the committee's feeling, however, has been to leave the early years until the autumn and to take advantage of the period between now and then to examine curriculum issues. Is that acceptable?

Members indicated agreement.

I want to raise an issue to do with planning for next year. Rhona Brankin mentioned the arts, culture and creativity and I mentioned McCrone and devolved school management. I think that there might be scope for short, sharp, quick inquiries well into the future, because the committee can make a strong contribution without issues being overtaken by events. It is better to write the last word on everything, but I do not think that that is possible, because nothing in education is standing still. I want to put that down as a marker.

I do not think that the possibility of having an away day during the summer recess is raised in the briefing paper, but an away day would allow us to consider, among other things, our work programme for the following year. Is the committee minded to repeat the experience of having an away day during the summer recess, perhaps in September? That would allow us to consider the matter in more detail and take some of the suggestions on board.

Members indicated agreement.

Let us hear a few more views.

When one thinks about a work programme, there are always two dimensions—what one does and how one does it. I would like the clerks and the convener to reflect on how we do things. The fact that the paper outlines a whole lot more that we might do raises issues such as the balance of written and oral evidence, the use of reporters and specialist advisers—which we have tried and, I think, has been quite helpful—and the frequency and duration of Education Committee meetings.

You used the word "gap", but it is clear that we have abandoned the notion of having a long meeting once every two weeks, which I think was what Fiona Hyslop suggested at the beginning. I presume that by your reference to a gap you meant that we will not have filled three hours every week for the entire parliamentary session. That is not a flippant point. We started off by saying that we would have very long meetings once every two weeks. I can recollect only one week in which we have not met, and we are having a double session this week and a double session in two weeks' time.

In any organisation, discussions about work programmes are a question not just of content, but of process. What is the assumption about the anticipated frequency and duration of our meetings and how should we allocate the use of our time within meetings? For example, I thought that it was unnecessary for COSLA to have two representatives this morning. Although they both spoke, I am not sure that that added to our consideration, as the people driving the investigative aspect.

The second representative did not say very much.

Sure. I simply say that it is a mistake to talk about a work programme only in terms of content and not to invite the clerks to comment on how to attack the volume of work. There needs to be an appetite to examine the use of written versus oral evidence, the anticipated frequency and duration of meetings, the timetabling of the meetings themselves and the role of reporters and outside advisers. We can come back to that at a future stage, but we need to consider the implications of the decisions that we make today. It is clear that expert advisers and reporters are more helpful on some subjects than on others.

I do not think that what we decide today will have implications, because we are dealing only with the short term. Those were useful points, which we should consider in more detail at the away day and in preparation for it. I am sure that we will be able to take account of all the points that we want to talk about.

Notwithstanding what we said about early-years education—we must examine that—given that we are talking about a period of two or three weeks in June, I was wondering about a follow-up to our budget scrutiny. In particular, I was thinking about the national initiatives and the transparency of the funds and the outcomes. This morning, ADES told us that it perceives the integration of the national initiatives in their on-going local work as a problem. Should we not take some time to consider that? During our budget discussions, we indicated that we needed to drill down and examine that area. I do not think that that is in our programme for the near future.

Again, it is a question of timescale. We need to do some work first. We need our advisers to work with the Executive, in accordance with Wendy's suggestion, to go a bit deeper and give us something to get our teeth into.

When we come back, will we not be considering phase 2 of the budget process, during which the details will come through? Can we not do some preliminary work to prepare us for that?

I have no doubt that we can, but I am not sure that we can do it before June, because we have to do further work on quite a lot of stuff.

I am very concerned about the short-term spending of funding when budgets have already been thought through. In this committee, and certainly in the chamber, I have said that money that is ring-fenced for initiatives is often wasted because there is no strategy. I speak from personal experience. I do not know how we should push forward at the moment, but it would be useful to receive—perhaps separately from a paper on the budget—a paper that makes us aware of all the funding areas that will be affected. For example, the roll-out of community schools has short-term funding that appears every now and again. Money is launched into schools from the excellence fund, from social inclusion partnerships and from all sorts of sources. Getting an overview of that between now and the recess might be useful.

I do not dispute what you say, Rosemary, but the issue is whether we have enough information to go on with until the advisers and the Executive have worked together. What you suggest may be an issue for the away day and after the summer recess. Members have raised good points, but we must approach our work in a systematic way that will add value. I am not convinced that we are in a position to do that. If we had been able to do that, we would have been able to do it in the context of the budget discussions at this point.

May I make a suggestion, even though I will probably be on maternity leave when you might follow it? I was interested in the points that Adam Ingram and Rosemary Byrne raised about the budget. Paragraph 4 in the work programme is on the curriculum. We are trying to find out what is happening in schools. What flexibility and choice do pupils have? What is the prevalence of soft skills? What is the theory behind what is happening? Elaine Murray has made the important point that, in the autumn, we will want to make interventions on the budget, if we have ideas. However, many ideas come from finding out what is happening on the ground. Involved discussions with experienced people are important. I got a lot out of school visits when we were working on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill. Wendy makes points about how we go about our business. We may decide that working on both the curriculum and the budget would be unwieldy, but we could gain a great deal for our work on both subjects, not so much through meetings such as this, but through visits—learning about the theory, the academic background and the practice on the ground. However, I am loth to commit my colleagues to work that I will not necessarily be doing myself.

Nevertheless, that is a good suggestion.

Before we move on, I want to say that I am interested in some of the academic subject areas. I do not mean that I am interested in the subjects as such, but because they involve major issues that will affect the country. A while back, James Douglas-Hamilton had a members' business debate on science education. I and others were interested in that too. I am also interested in the teaching of languages, which is not done particularly well—not because of the teaching necessarily, but because of the structure. I wonder whether we want to look into that.

Is there support for the idea of making targeted visits over the summer? Is that a useful idea?

I think that that would be very useful, but we should focus on support for the young people in schools who would want to access the flexible curriculum, and on support for those who are disillusioned with school. What are the schools doing to reduce their truancy rates and to bring those children into the school community as participants? Fiona Hyslop is right that that links in with the extra funding, much of which focuses on those areas in school. That would be a very useful exercise.

We need some kind of background briefing paper to guide us in our approach.

I do not want the committee to do that particular work. We have done a lot of work on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill and we need to see how that begins to bed down in practice.

Various measures and projects are under way to look at matters such as truancy and I am more than happy to ask for an update on those. However, we need to make a positive contribution to the debate on the curriculum, the opportunities to change the curriculum and how we look at the learning that we want to take place in schools. That is why creativity links in with entrepreneurship and with what Rosemary Byrne says about motivating young people. It is a particularly new and exciting area.

That is a slightly difficult approach to pin down in recommendations.

It would have a potential budget implication.

No, it would not.

Could languages be considered in the context of the curriculum? They play a major part.

Yes, they could. The good thing about the curriculum is that it is so wide—it covers everything—and the whole of school life is under one review. We have to narrow that down perhaps and focus on something a bit more meaningful. The briefing paper has tried to make one or two suggestions about that: one is not necessarily any worse or better than the other; it is just a matter of making a choice and getting the approach right.

Flexibility in the curriculum has an impact on the traditional academic subjects, so the two are not mutually exclusive. We just have to be careful about how we do this. For example, it is likely that science would suffer from increased flexibility—the protected environment in which it currently operates will not exist under a more flexible curriculum. Therefore, we have to look at that.

If we focus on the academic subjects, we will be looking back at how we used to do things—the boxed way of learning—and I would be more interested in having a greater understanding of how people learn, the advantages that flexibility has to offer and the lessons that can be learned.

Paragraph 4 of the briefing paper offers three priorities and we would detract from them if we were to add a fourth or more. We want to be at the stage where we have identified three priorities; if people want to suggest that one is deleted and we add another, that is fine.

Then we return to process. If we go beyond three priorities, we begin to dilute the quality of any one of them. My instinct is to say to people, "Let's go with three, let's do them well; if we don't like them, let's substitute one of them." If we were to get up to four or five, we would lose focus. We might find ourselves trying to hear 12 witnesses and hold three priorities in our heads, and that probably approaches our limits.

I was dubious about whether even three priorities were more than we could deal with. There is also a hidden agenda in the overcrowding of the curriculum and focusing it against all the demands that come in from across the board to do X, Y and Z and to add them to A, B, C, D and E.

You made the point that the committee should not tread in the steps of the Executive. My understanding of its priorities for the curriculum is that it wants to look at bureaucracy and overcrowding. We need to look at the situation from a slightly different angle because I do not want to repeat what the Executive is doing.

Are we getting towards achieving a focus on the points in paragraph 4? Are we finding a central point?

The paragraph covers quite a lot of what Rosemary Byrne wants.

Is there too much there or is it about right? Do we need to change the areas that are suggested?

I think that they are linked.

The first point—about increased flexibility and pupil choice without overcrowding the curriculum—captures the tension in that issue.

I think we have consensus on that. There were a number of suggestions about bodies and I am not unsympathetic to the idea of visits to schools. We must keep a balance between listening to the usual suspects and getting a flavour of what happens in the schools, which we do not always get once the information is evened out, qualified and modified by the official representatives.

I wonder how many slots we have for fitting in something. [Interruption.] The clerk has brought our timetable to my attention. On 2 June we will consider our draft report on the School Education (Ministerial Powers and Independent Schools) (Scotland) Bill, which will take all morning. On 9 June, we will discuss the away day, which is a fairly minor matter and can go in anywhere. On 16 June, we will consider the draft report on the child protection inquiry, which will not take all day. I suppose that those items could be moved about slightly, although the clerks need proper time in which to complete the reports in reasonable time.

I suppose that, effectively, we have from 2 June to 30 June, which is five meetings of one sort or another; we could adjust the timetable a bit. I do not want the committee to decide exactly how we do it. However, if we take the principle that there are five meetings, with a bit of input we can either shuffle things about and get a clear meeting for a visit or we can do something else. Would it be sensible to adopt the approach of perhaps having one meeting on visits to suitable schools and in the rest we can try to identity suitable witnesses to hear from in that context? Obviously, we have the beginnings of a remit for the inquiry there.

When you talk about five meetings, when does that imply that the committee's final meeting is?

The final meeting before the recess is on 30 June.

We have the first week in July as well.

Well—have we? [Interruption.] I am informed that the week of 28 June is the final week of the parliamentary term. The recess begins on 5 July. Perhaps we do not have a meeting scheduled for the final week—I do not know.

That is the final week of the parliamentary term.

Yes.

I think that the final committee meeting is scheduled for 30 June. I am not aware that we have one scheduled for the first week in July, but I will check that.

I do not think that we do.

Okay. We have broad consensus on where we are going in terms of that period. There will be one meeting on visits and the rest will be on witnesses. Perhaps suggestions beyond what is in the paper will come in from people within a day or two. People can give a bit of thought to whom we should actually see or where we should go.

You said one meeting on visits. What do you mean by that?

One period—instead of having a meeting on a Wednesday or another day—

We do visits.

Yes, we do visits.

Sorry. I thought that you meant discuss doing visits.

Not a bit of it.

As we did before, we could divide the visits into two or three people going to different places. That worked well.

That is probably a good idea.

We can try and get about a bit in that regard.

Okay. That should give the clerks enough to work with. We can talk that through. We will send an e-mail round, but can people put in suggestions within a day or two for consideration in the planning process—which is obviously quite tight—about where you want to go or witnesses that you want to see.

May I also suggest that, in terms of visits, the clerk contacts someone like HMIE to find out where the examples of good practice are? I know that there are examples of good practice in different areas in Scotland. It would also be worth while contacting the Scottish Arts Council.

That is a good point. I actually met with a group a while back. I will give you details on that particular issue.

Is there anything else under that? Obviously, this is the short-term work programme. We will come back to the away day and all of that for the longer-term stuff.

I have one more suggestion. It might be worth while contacting sportscotland as well, given our involvement in engaging youngsters in sport.

Okay. Thank you very much for that.

We move on to item 5, which is on the budget process. In accordance with our earlier decision, the committee will move into private session. I ask members of the public to leave.

Meeting continued in private.

Meeting suspended.

Meeting continued in public.