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The next item on our agenda is our forward work programme, for which I refer members to re-issued paper ED/S2/04/27/7, which contains a helpful annex that provides the draft agenda for the committee's meetings for the forthcoming period from the beginning of next year. Have members any comments on the contents of the paper?
I want to mention three issues. First, given that much of the research evidence talks about the importance of providing parallel support for parenting, we should look at the extent to which that is currently provided in early-years provision. Secondly, there is an issue to do with the start date of collective caring for children, as opposed to individual caring for children. The compulsory right to nursery care has been extended in England to cover all two-years-olds—or, at least, to all such children in deprived areas—but there are issues about children bonding to one adult rather than to a collectivity. We need to consider what sort of care we should most support for children who are between the ages of zero and three and beyond. We need not go into that issue in great detail, but it should be on our agenda. The third issue is flexibility, which is again being addressed elsewhere. At the moment, we are pretty restrictive about how people can take their two and a half hours. That makes it more difficult for people to provide wrap-around care over an extended day. Therefore, support for parenting, the optimal form of care for zero to three-year-olds and the extended day are the three issues that I think should be included in our future agendas.
The SPICe briefing lists the partnership commitment to provide flexible and more available child care that is accessible to all. We need an update from the Executive on what progress is being made on that. We could then home in on any issues that arise from that.
It might be helpful to give advance written notice of that to the Executive officials who will provide us with a briefing on 19 January. Do members have any other comments?
I would echo some of the points that Wendy Alexander raised, particularly with regard to our ability to look ahead at the costs and benefits of extended wrap-around care, not just for children but for families. I would like to explore the crossover between child care and education, because that is a slightly tricky issue. We have a clear educational policy, but child care is just as important in many families' lives, and I would like to know whether it has the bigger impact. It would be good to have some evidence on the early-years policies and people's interpretation of them. We need an idea not only of the numbers but of how effective the early-years policy is on people's lives and of whether it is the education element or the child care element that needs to be developed.
I have a sense, to some degree, that the complexity of the provision at the moment could mean that there are savings to be made in making things more efficient and more suitable to people's needs, but an expansion of care is obviously needed as well.
That is right. One of the areas that I would like to explore is the idea of greater choice in child care provision generally and in early-years education. I would like to know whether the Executive has those figures. With the Government supporting a big expansion in child care, we have seen the playgroups, which were extensive, moved slightly to the side and replaced by state-provided education. That may or may not be a good thing, but it slightly restricts choice. Some people want their child to start quite early on with a relatively formal curriculum in a more structured and disciplined environment, whereas a playgroup is a much more relaxed environment. I would be interested to know what the picture is across the country, as opposed to in my own experience, and whether playgroups have shrunk hugely across Scotland and been replaced by formal nurseries attached to primary schools. If that has happened, I would like to know what the advantage or cost has been.
Surveys are available. Children in Scotland has conducted surveys and we could find out about that.
The SPICe briefing indicates that there has been a shrinking of playgroups. My impression is that there has also been a refocusing of their role, to some extent. Playgroups have had to look to new business in slightly different ways from before, and one would not want to lose the volunteer experience that has been built up over some years if it can be refocused effectively.
Indeed. That is what has happened to playgroups. In such situations, playgroups often refocus their energies in different areas as a way of surviving, and they are following the funding. Playgroups exist for a purpose, but if the funding is skewed in a certain way, they will skew their activities to get that funding, and that is not necessarily to everyone's advantage. I just want to explore that area.
We rely on you and Fiona Hyslop for expertise in that area.
The difficulty is that we are aware of our own circumstances, but we are not necessarily experts on the situation throughout the country.
It is very difficult to be a full-time MSP and take your child to a daytime playgroup. That is my advice and expertise.
Are there any other comments on early-years learning? I think that what has been said will give Ken Macintosh and Fiona Hyslop some guidance.
I do not know whether this would fit in with what you suggest, but when I examined the forward work programme I thought that we should include updates from the minister on reduction of class sizes and the proposal to reduce class sizes by 2007. Such updates would be useful and might be incorporated into a broader report on recruitment and retention.
That would be one aspect of the general area. My belief is that class sizes can be a bit misleading, because there could be several teachers in one class or a variety of different formulations to arrive at the same end. Greater flexibility, with more experts giving teachers a bit more freedom in terms of class-contact time, is also an aspect of the issue. There are a number of ways in which to arrive at the same objective; examining class sizes is one.
Reductions have been promised specifically in secondary 1 and S2 maths and English, and in primary 1, so it would be useful to have updates on those.
Class sizes and teacher numbers are discrete schools issues that we should examine in the context of the budget. We should also—we have done so, but we could be better at it—include scrutiny of the budget in our early-years inquiry or our child protection inquiry, which we could do as we make progress.
That is absolutely right.
I support the call for an investigation of teacher numbers, which have a bearing on the curriculum and on shortage subjects and which are—of course—relevant to Gaelic, which we are considering now. It may not be possible, but perhaps our inquiry could be widened to include the McCrone settlement and devolved school management, which are related subjects.
I do not see quite how McCrone is related. Devolved school management, whatever its merits, seems also to be some distance from the subject.
I support our doing something on teacher numbers and shortages. It would be valuable, but we should not try to expand consideration too much. If we are to consider such matters as part of our budget scrutiny, we will need to focus in on them.
That should be part of our consideration. We agreed previously, when considering the nursery nurses' petition, that workforce training would be part of the early-years policy. Our concern was that it would be so far off that we did not address it, so we must return to it. We are already committed to doing so.
That is absolutely right. We must be careful not to get into pay levels, which is more complex, but the training issues are certainly important.
On the forward look, there is an issue about implementation of McCrone, which is not necessarily about the national agreement. The minister replied to a question from me by saying that he does not think that there is, from the Executive's perspective, a need to conduct a review of McCrone implementation, which means that the only body that could do that is this committee. There is general disquiet and concern in some parts of the country about how the McCrone settlement is being implemented in respect of doing away with principal teachers and in respect of the curriculum and faculty issues. We have a duty to maintain a watching brief on that. I am not sure that that would be as onerous as a big project, report and inquiry, but it is something on which we could conduct correspondence with the parties concerned.
Some of those issues emerge not only from McCrone, but from wider changes that have taken place.
The implementation of McCrone has, however, been used by some local authorities to implement new management structures.
I am told that an Audit Scotland review is taking place on that, which might provide us with useful information. That information is not available at the moment, but it might be useful to focus on it. We need something a bit more definite than just a review of McCrone to focus on. If we can, I would like to find out more about the Audit Scotland review, if that is appropriate, bearing it in mind that our work programme is beginning to develop and that we will have to be able to fit everything into it and do justice to all the issues that we consider.
I am happy with what we have agreed so far. Paragraph 6 of the clerk's note says:
We will have first to see the guidance.
Exactly.
The matter relates to an amendment to the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill that the committee successfully secured.
Given that we will be considering the draft code of guidance, I suspect that there will be a little time in which we will be able to do something about it.
I appreciate that we do not yet know what we will want to do, but I wanted to flag up that we might need to allow more than just one slot.
Paragraph 10 raises the possibility of a visit to our colleagues in the National Assembly for Wales, which has emerged from discussions that the clerks have been having. The committee has not made such a visit and it might be interesting to learn about the Welsh experience in what is obviously a different system. Are members interested in visiting the Assembly?
A visit would need to have a specific purpose.
Could we fit in such a visit?
I gather from members' comments that there is no huge enthusiasm for such a visit at the moment.
It would be interesting to know what our colleagues in Wales are doing. Wales might be a good place to visit, but there might be other areas that we should consider. For example, I have been reading about the development of specialist schools in England and Wales, which is pertinent. Perhaps we should ask for a brief paper from the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee in the National Assembly for Wales on its work and what we might learn from it.
It might be possible to send two committee members or a reporter to the Assembly, if we thought it necessary to do so—I think that that would be within the committee's jurisdiction.
We have been talking about early-years education. I have no objection to our sending a couple of members to Wales to see what the Assembly is doing, but a visit to Scandinavia at some point in the future would also be useful. For example, an examination of what is happening with early-years education in Denmark would be very productive and worth while.
I have suggested that, too; we might want to take up that idea. Given that a general election is coming up—the election is not our immediate concern, but it is in the background—we might consider making such a visit after the summer recess. We can come back to that.
We need to schedule a follow-up session on the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003, as agreed.
I am taking it for granted that that will have to fit into our schedule somewhere.
Paragraph 9 says that we should consider the report because integrated community schools are
We might need to explore that. At this week's meeting of the cross-party group on children and young people, the minister said that the excellence standard that the Executive wants to introduce for HMIE inspections can be achieved only if there is progress on integrated community schools. That suggests convincingly that the Executive regards the matter as significant. However, we could deal with that through correspondence.
Fine.
We could interview HMIE in the context of its annual report, bearing in mind the issue that is raised in paragraph 9. We need to know when the different reports are published.
We could discuss the HMIE report on integrated community schools, which was published a few months ago.
Okay. We can look again at the lists of reports to see which we might consider, but we should probably consider the HMIE report.
Do we know when HMIE publishes its annual report?
The idea is to produce a list of the various reports that come to the committee, so that we can choose which to consider. I am beginning to pick up a sense that we might well want to consider closely the social work services inspectorate's reports and HMIE's reports. I think that we should leave it at that for the moment.
We need to keep an eye on implementation of the McCrone agreement. When the Audit Scotland review is complete we might want to explore the matter further, because there are issues around what is currently happening in schools in relation to head teachers' discretion on department heads and faculties. It is important to underline that we might need to revisit the matter; Fiona Hyslop is absolutely right about that. Do we know when the review will be completed?
We have already been through that—
I know, but I want to—
Just a minute. We said that we do not know when the review will be completed, but that we will make inquiries about that. We have given a broad undertaking to come back to the McCrone agreement and to get our teeth into specific issues that have been raised.