Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 18 Sep 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Official Report 296KB pdf

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Reporters' Inquiries

We move on to item 4, which is an update from reporters on the state of their inquiries. Next week, I will bring a paper to the committee on sport strategy. Mike Russell's inquiry into Gaelic broadcasting has become a committee inquiry and it is progressing.

Although I do not yet have a written report, my inquiry is under way. I have contacted each local authority to find out how it supports traditional arts. Furthermore, I have met a number of people in Dingwall and Plockton and I plan to visit the Borders and Skye and look at St Andrew's centre for Scottish music and dance in Glasgow. I expect my report to be ready by late October and we will need to work out when we can timetable the inquiry. The traditional arts sector in Scotland is expecting the report and has been very helpful in providing me with information.

Excellent.

I was asked to undertake an inquiry into Scotland's languages. Although, unlike Cathy Peattie, I have not visited anywhere, my call for evidence at the start of the summer has resulted in an enormous body of written information from a wide range of organisations and individuals with an interest in the subject. We are focusing on the educational and cultural aspects of languages and on policies and practices that might help to promote their development.

As that very healthy flow of evidence has now slowed to a trickle, we can assume that everyone who was keen to comment has probably done so. We are starting the huge work of assimilating the information and pulling it together into a draft report. I hope that within a few weeks we will bring that report to the committee.

I expect to bring a draft report on my inquiry to the committee some time in November. I have met a number of local authorities that are involved in popular music development and there has been some participation from the cross-party group on the Scottish contemporary music industry and from the industry itself. That said, I have not quite managed to persuade anyone to get me an invitation to the South by Southwest music conference and festival in Austin, but I am still desperately trying, because that is a major event as far as developments in popular music are concerned. I am also gathering many responses from local authorities, which feel that their work on popular music is undervalued. I think that the draft report will be ready by mid-November. However, like Cathy Peattie, I want to get access to slightly more remote areas and find out how they target young people. I might follow up some of my ideas with the clerk.

I have not made much progress at all on my report on early-years education. However, in light of the new developments in pre-school education and initiatives such as sure start Scotland and early intervention, we need to stand back and consider the whole picture of changes in education for children up to the ages of seven and eight. We must also find out how everything is pulling together and identify points that arise from those changes. For example, how is formal education introduced? Is a child's entry into primary school at the age of five part of a real process or is it merely determined by the calendar?

We must also address organisational issues about how education is delivered to children from when they enter school until the age of eight. Questions about transport, philosophies of education and so on might tie in with some of the broader issues that we raised in our discussions of the earlier paper. I apologise for not having progressed the report. I will do my best to draw it together soon.

In addition, the committee agreed to conduct an inquiry into education and training in the film industry, which will be included in our future work programme. As yet, there is no remit for that inquiry.

I remind members that the committee needs to seek approval for any meetings held outwith Edinburgh. If members plan to travel, they must inform the committee and the clerk.