The next agenda item is our timetable, which we began to consider at our previous meeting. The clerks have circulated a helpful note of the available meeting dates between now and the end of the year. We are highly unlikely to have any bills until after the autumn recess, after which we might have our first bill, which will deal with additional support needs and other matters. We will have to produce a stage 1 report at that time. Do we want to make any visits or have briefings before then? That might be worth while.
From what you are saying, it appears that we have six meetings before we are likely to hit legislation.
Yes.
I feel strongly—as do other members—that we need to prepare ourselves properly for the proposed bill on additional support for learning. I do not want simply to wait until the bill comes before us. I take your point that balancing our agenda is a challenge. I would be reluctant, however, to have an agenda that focused on young people and youth organisations but had no purpose. I do not mean that in a derogatory sense, but I think that our agenda should be focused on something that will be useful. Before agreeing to a proposal, I would like to have a more specific idea about what we are trying to achieve. I strongly emphasise focusing on the bill, as we must ensure that we do a proper job with it.
I agree. The proposed bill on additional support for learning deals with a complex and sensitive area. Ken Macintosh was involved in the production of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report on the issue, but I do not think that anyone on the present Education Committee has done any work on it. It is important that the rest of us get a chance to prepare ourselves before the legislation arrives.
I am not against discussing youth issues, as they are important. Is there a need to make a decision today? I thought that we would have a discussion paper on work to be done over the summer.
In broad terms, you are right, and we will deal with the issue of the committee's away day in a moment. However, we need to make a decision about the first subject that we will deal with so that we can arrange witnesses and so on over the summer. That way, we can start work straight away after the recess, rather than dither about.
The committee could do preparatory work by taking witnesses as a stand-alone item, in a sense. In other words, without having to conduct a formal inquiry, the committee could invite people to give evidence for the information of the committee and the public.
I would be quite keen to have the committee visit some places in that context. That would allow us to see what happens in special schools, schools that have been mainstreamed and so on. Do members think that that would be useful?
I am conscious that no one on this committee represents Scotland north of the Glasgow-Edinburgh divide. It is essential that the committee travel further north, especially to the Highlands, when we investigate issues.
I think that we have a moral obligation to consider the issue of special educational needs, as it is uppermost in ministers' minds. We ought to conduct visits in relation to that issue, if they could be fitted in.
I agree with everything that Lord James said. There is an emerging consensus around the view that the special needs and additional support for learning agenda and the discipline issue should be our short-term priorities. That point arose at a committee meeting that I attended yesterday.
I do not want any decisions to be made on the long-term programme today. I imagine that we will work on a work programme paper on our away day. I simply wanted to ensure that we had an idea of an agenda that we could work with in the period between the summer and October recesses to ensure that we do not waste time.
It is not a case of any subject's being less important than others; we simply have to work out what we can usefully do in the time that we have. What can we most usefully do and when?
I will deal with your specific points. Without prejudice to what we might do with the issue, I see no reason why we cannot write to the Executive about school transport to ask for an update. We could discuss the matter and decide whether to go further with it at the first or second meeting after the recess.
We should steer clear while ministers are considering the matter.
I accept that, but an official briefing would start us off.
That is a good idea. An outline paper or a presentation would be handy. I would welcome evidence from some of the groups that are involved. Any number of organisations represent different views and some organisations might co-ordinate views that cover the range of special educational needs or additional support for learning needs. We should hear from a parents' group. I would be keen to go early into the concern side of the argument, if members know what I mean. I have no views on the group that we should hear from, but it would be useful to hear early on from service users, rather than providers.
That can be readily done and is something to be worked up—we cannot discuss details today. As I am sure that other members have, I have met one or two groups privately, so I have a feel for the issues.
The Auditor General for Scotland and Accounts Commission for Scotland published a report this summer that showed that difficult resource issues are involved, as well as policy issues. We do not have the notion of giving every child individualised education, so we must balance how, in mainstream schools, we provide education for a large number of children as well as specialised support for those who need it. Resource considerations are inevitable, particularly if we are trying to twin-track provision between specialist schools and mainstream schools and to shift the balance. The suggestion that decreasing the number of kids in special schools by a percentage will mean a one-to-one resource transfer into the mainstream sector is not how things work in reality.
I do not want to double up what I think that the Audit Committee will do on that issue. However, we might have a report about when that committee will deal with the matter. We can feed that committee's deliberations into our discussion.
The Audit Committee has a retrospective function of examining whether mistakes were made, but for us it is a first principles issue. If a class has 27 children, in future, four of them might have special needs, or in any one year the figure might be one, zero or five. We are fundamentally changing the basis of provision for large numbers of children. Forget mistakes that have been made—what are the resource choices that are implicit in the policy choices that we seek to make? We should not outsource that to the Executive or say, "You make it work—there might be additional resource implications."
What do people feel about that?
I agree, but we must be specific about what we consider. We should not replicate what happens on the Audit Committee. We are almost thinking through the Executive's analytical process and the issues that it had to address, as opposed to what it found. That is what Wendy Alexander is after.
Exactly.
Do members have any other thoughts? We might develop some of those suggestions at the away day. The geographical spread of visits and types of project are matters to look into. Perhaps suggestions could go to the clerk in the meantime.
I have one detailed point on funding for specialised support. The funding may be totally different depending on whether the pupils want a bit of extra support or a great deal of it. Sometimes civil servants think in terms of Rolls-Royce treatment, rather than what parents want, which is a bit of extra help.
I will follow up Ken Macintosh's point about speaking to parents and those who are concerned. One of the issues that has been raised with me as a constituency MSP is parents' feeling that they are excluded from official consultation, not least because of the ways in which public meetings were organised and communicated. It is important that the committee practises an inclusive approach in advertising that we are considering the issue, to ensure that people have access and are able to come to us to say that they have concerns, have something to offer and want to give evidence.
You may remember that, when we were both on the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, it held one or two open meetings to which people of various sorts were brought along to chat through issues with the assistance of one or two of the organisations in the field. There may be scope at some point for an event of that kind, at which we try to talk directly to parents, and which is not mediated through the role of official bodies of one sort or another. I am keen to do that.
On visits, I presume that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education could advise us where there are examples of good practice that we might want to see.
I think that the ministers are going on a programme of visits to, among others, places where practice in this area is particularly good. That gives us a framework to start on that aspect of the matter.
It would be important to consider matters such as alternatives to exclusion and how children's behavioural problems are managed in different schools. That would not only be about the down side. We could also consider effective ways of dealing with those issues.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited a school in Glasgow that has a particularly good record on dealing with such issues. There are clearly lessons to be learned from such practice.
The issue is more behaviour than discipline. Is that what we are talking about?
We want to get a flavour of schools' strategies, to some extent, and of how we can influence the policy agenda. What do members consider to be the objective of an inquiry into that area, apart from informing us?
I would like to consider two matters to get us up to speed. One is a review of the changing policy context in the past 10 years. Over the past four years, the starting policy was to reduce exclusions in schools by a third. As I understand it, that is no longer one of the Executive's objectives. I would like us to undertake an historical review of the changing official policy towards discipline in schools over a decade.
Okay, we are moving towards having a briefing on that subject. I would have thought that, given what we have discussed, HMIE would have a useful input. Do you agree, Elaine?
Yes.
The convener wondered what we would be able to get out of an inquiry. I suggest that it would be examples of best practice. I visited a school that had teams of specialists for pupils with difficulties. Several of the children had been abused, and they had relatives in prison and other background difficulties. The specialists assessed each case and made proposals. That system worked well.
Right. Do you need any more guidance, Martin?
No. We have enough information from members' proposals and suggestions to prepare work for the start of the new term and to work up issues for the away day.
Perhaps we could e-mail members with suggestions for visits, witnesses and so on to give a bit of flavour to the whole thing.
The proposed dates for the away day are 19 and 20 August at the Stirling Management Centre.
Do those dates suit members? I take it that there are no difficulties about time scales.
Do not change the dates now, please.
Right. We can work up the away day's agenda to include members' suggestions. I think that a briefing paper has been circulated to members, who should come back quickly to me if they want to add anything to the proposed scenario. We have invited the Minister for Education and Young People and the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People to come along for at least part of the proceedings and to have dinner with us on the same night—I hope that we will get an informal input from them as well.
I have a time-management issue. We have a list of potential dates for committee meetings, but no times. Is a time associated with the meetings?
There is also another issue, which is the frequency of the meetings. I assume that we would routinely have weekly meetings, but I do not know whether that would meet the committee's desire. Frankly, I do not think that we will need weekly meetings because we will get through a reasonable agenda with fortnightly meetings. As regards time, I think that the predecessor committee met at 10 am or 10.30 am. Is that right, Martin?
The predecessor committee met in the afternoon. Morning committees usually start at 10 o'clock, but the starting time is up to the committee.
Is 10 o'clock acceptable?
I have no problem with weekly meetings. I think that we will need to meet weekly when we get into dealing with legislation. However, I am not entirely sure that we should rush breathlessly into agreeing to meet weekly. If there is a need to meet weekly, we will do so. The danger is that if we set weekly meetings, we will fill them.
It is reasonably certain that we will have plenty of material—at least in the short term—with which to fill the meetings.
I note that the committee members are long-standing members of the Parliament. Over the past 36 hours, I have noticed a perceptible shift of tone in the Parliament. I have been to three committee meetings in that time, all of which said that, although they met fortnightly in the previous session, they now want to meet weekly. That is certainly the case with the Finance Committee. In addition, there is the proposed change in the parliamentary business agenda for Thursday mornings. Now we are at risk of doing the same as other committees by proposing to have weekly meetings.
There could be scope for modifying the proposed timetable. For example, if we go on a visit one week, we do not need to have a public meeting that week. That would balance things slightly, because it is true that a committee can get overburdened.
If there is a choice—I am aware that some members have further to travel than others—I would prefer longer meetings that started at 9.30 am and went on until lunch time. I would rather do that, and use the time properly, than rush into agreeing to have two-hour meetings every week. I do not want to get into that agenda.
I have a question for the clerk. Does meeting every two weeks make it easier to book a room, rather than being in competition with other committees every week?
The rooms have been booked for the committee, but it is up to the committee to decide whether it wants to meet on each of the weekly dates that has been booked.
If we withdrew some of the bookings, would we be more likely to be displaced for the rest?
No. The committee is not required to meet on any of the booked dates, although the room is available.
I like Fiona Hyslop's suggestion. I never stay over, so it makes no difference to me when meetings start. However, I would be happier if we met earlier. Therefore, I suggest that we meet every second week from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm. We would, of course, have the freedom to expand that.
Can you fit that proposal, within a reasonable time scale, into what we have decided already, Martin, given that other things will be added?
Yes, I think so. The committee also needs to be aware that it will be required to do some work on the budget proposals for this year. However, there will certainly be enough time to do what the committee seems to be suggesting.
I am aware that, if we have the weekly arrangement, there are six meeting slots before the October recess. If we reduced that to three fortnightly slots, I do not think that that would be enough, even if we had longer meetings. Perhaps we should have four or five meetings. The clerks could look at that matter—taking into account members' views—and come back to us.
If we used spare slots for visits, it could make it easier to get a turnout of members. I am increasingly aware that members have additional commitments on Mondays, which are becoming crowded. Members indicated that they would like to go on a visit that is associated with special needs. If the Wednesday slot were preserved for such a visit, we would be more likely to get it into our programme.
If only a morning were available for visits, it would be tricky to go any distance.
We could go on visits within the central belt.
Even central-belt visits—for example, to Glasgow—would have around an hour's travelling time each way. Of course, that might not be the case for members from Glasgow.
If we went on visits on a Monday, members could keep Wednesday free for constituency business.
There is parliamentary business on a Wednesday afternoon.
It seems crazy to schedule all this so far in advance. However, Fiona Hyslop made an important point about rural Scotland being different from urban Scotland. The logic of that, it seems to me, is that at some point during our consideration of the special needs bill—which might, indeed, be during its formal consideration if we do not manage a visit in September—we should visit a non-urban setting or a dispersed authority to see how special needs issues are dealt with in a small-school situation. Obviously, the approach to mainstreaming is necessarily different in such a context.
The alternative is to do as we have done on other committees, which is to split the committee into smaller groups for specific visits. Our committee is not big, so it would be more difficult to do that. Nevertheless, it could be workable for two members to go on a visit and come back with their impressions. We should develop that idea. The predecessor committee made a lot of use of reporters. We could appoint reporters to deal with petition issues and so on. I am keen to ensure that we have the potential for doing that kind of thing. Also, there is a need for the committee to get about the country and see different sorts of people and events. We need to be as accessible as we can.
Meeting closed at 12:09.
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