Item 2 is the proposed school education bill, which will probably be introduced on 29 March. We have before us a paper to prepare us for the task of choosing witnesses; it contains suggestions of people to whom we might want to talk in relation to the bill, which has a fairly narrow compass. Is everyone happy with the list? We can consider the matter further when the bill has been published. Martin Verity has suggested that we should add the Association of Headteachers in Scotland to the list.
I would like to discuss a more fundamental issue—you know that my job in life is to make things easy for you, convener.
I do not think that we are entitled to take up that point particularly strongly. We will soon be faced with a timetable from the Parliamentary Bureau. The issues that you raise go beyond what the committee can deal with.
I disagree. As a former member of the Parliamentary Bureau and as a business manager, I know that we are perfectly within our rights to go to the Parliamentary Bureau and say that we think that our other commitments are more important than dealing with the bill at this point. We can ask the Executive whether it would be all right if we dealt with the bill after the summer recess.
If we did that, we would be putting the cart before the horse. We do not know the detail of the legislation yet; we need to see what is in the bill. We can argue about the timescale with the Parliamentary Bureau, to an extent, but we will be given a timescale within which we have to produce our stage 1 report. We can make representations about that timescale by writing to the Executive, if we are so inclined; I am not so inclined, but that is my personal view.
For whatever reason, Fiona Hyslop has her own views on bill. However, I would be concerned if we were to hold back the bill. As the convener pointed out, the committee has not had an opportunity to hear from the Executive about the scope of the bill.
We have a reasonably timetabled programme ahead of us. We can fit in our current inquiry and we should be able to produce a report in a reasonable timeframe at the end of it. I do not think that anybody has identified any other immediate pressures that could cause particular difficulty.
I echo that point. I disagree totally with Fiona Hyslop that there are pressing matters that we need to deal with before we consider the proposed bill. At the moment, I do not see any urgent inquiries queuing up for us to deal with them. We are debating the issues that we need to consider; there is nothing that I can see that would remove a piece of legislation from our agenda.
I do not know whether Fiona Hyslop wants to pursue her point; it is up to her. I sense that the committee is not in favour of the idea of making representations on the matter to the Executive or anybody else. I agree that the bill might not be the most important bill that ever was.
That is my point.
We deal with big bills and little bills; they are introduced in accordance with the Executive's legislative programme. It could be argued that the time to take up the issue was when the legislative programme was debated at parliamentary level. Ultimately, it is a matter for the Parliament to deal with the Executive's legislative programme. It is our job to process bills when they move through their stages in committee.
We have a tendency to have too many witnesses and to overburden our oral evidence sessions. I wonder whether we need to have the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, given that COSLA will probably send a director of education as one of its witnesses. Indeed, do we need to have Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education and the care commission, given that both organisations are involved in inspection? We can probably whittle down the number of witnesses.
I think that witnesses are given an indication of the likely timescale of the meeting. Some of them choose to sit through the evidence of other witnesses out of interest.
We are not given an indicative timetable in our papers. It might be helpful for us to have that, as we could curtail our discussions if we knew the times to which we were working. As the convener knows, members can expand what they say to fill a meeting if required.
That is absolutely right. However, the slight difficulty is that the indicative timetables do not always work out. For example, this morning, the indicative timetable allowed too little time for the first panel and perhaps too much time for the later panels—things did not work out in the way that the meeting was timetabled. I do not think that there is a difficulty, however, in letting members see the indicative timetable.
It is important that we hear from both HMIE and the care commission; I do not want either organisation to be taken off the list. I think that HMIE's remit is getting bigger, and we should find out how that will fit into all of this. We heard from the care commission today about the crucial role that it plays and it is important that we hear from its representatives on the subject of the bill.
Following our discussions today, I wonder whether it would be helpful to seek written evidence from those bodies, as is our normal practice. We could look at the submissions and see whether we can eliminate people. I take Elaine Murray's point, but, as Rosemary Byrne rightly said, there are interesting things that we might want to hear from the two different inspection regimes. Once we have seen the submissions and had sight of the bill, we will be clearer about the key points. It might be possible to prune the witness list at that point.
The list looks a little bit parochial. We are inviting people to anticipate what they believe will be in the bill. However, 150 miles away, south of the border, a system of intervention in schools is in operation, with which there are parallels. I wonder whether we should hear something about, for example, how intervention powers—albeit that they are slightly different—operate south of the border. That might be more valuable in terms of establishing the workability of the legislation.
Yes, but we need to recognise that the council will be called to give evidence not on that aspect of the bill, but on how the bill will affect independent schools.
As I said, I suggest that the council is given a place that is commensurate with its place in the overall system.
The crucial point is that its place should be commensurate with its relevance to the bill. Let us not be ridiculous about the issue.
It would be interesting.
Yes, but is it hugely relevant to the scope of the bill? I understand that the bill is, in large measure, a tidying-up mechanism. I understand that it is being introduced to fill a gap and not as a major reform of the current regime.
Could we ask the Scottish Parliament information centre to do some work on the subject? Perhaps it could produce a background paper for us.
That is a helpful suggestion, which the clerks confirm would be feasible. We could ask for some comparisons with the English system. Is that what you had in mind?
Yes.
I hear the different points of view that have been expressed and they will be taken on board. It is a bit awkward for us to consider the paper before having sight of the bill. However, part of the reason for bringing up the subject now is to avoid our wasting too much time when the bill is introduced. That will happen in a few days, by which time we will have set up the people who will be called as initial witnesses. They will probably be the people who have been involved in some of the discussion about the bill.
I accept that once the call for evidence goes out, other people might materialise out of the woodwork. I suspect that, in the case of this bill, that might not happen, but if it were to happen we would have to look at the subject again. There is not much more that can be said on the proposed timetable for the bill at this early stage. As members have no further observations to make, I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 12:42.
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