Work Programme
Members have in front of them a proposal that was put to the conveners liaison group yesterday, seeking permission for the committee to hold an away day. The committee agreed to a draft proposal at a private meeting. We decided that it would be useful for us to take stock of where we had been, to examine how things had worked over the past year and then to consider how to move forward in the final two years of the committee's work in this session.
I am happy to report that, after considerable lobbying by the deputy convener, the conveners liaison group has given us permission to have an away day up to a cost of £3,000. I will abuse my position as convener and suggest that the venue for the away day should be New Lanark, given its history in developing forward-looking education and the fact that the school has now been reopened for public use. There is a hotel there with conference facilities. I am sure that, with negotiation, we could get a rate that would allow us to hold the away day there within budget. Holding such an event outside Edinburgh would be useful as we could ensure that we were away from our telephones and staff who might want us to be doing something different elsewhere.
If members are agreed, we should invite various people along to assist our discussions. We need to look back at what has happened over the past two years. That will be a fuller process for some of us than it will be for others. The key element of the committee's work over the past two years has been undertaken in reaction to situations as they have developed. Obviously, we will need to have space in our timetable to react to situations, but it is important that the committee is proactive over the next two years. We want to have made some positive contribution to education, culture and sport in Scotland. We must not sideline any aspect of our work.
The deputy convener and I had a useful and helpful meeting with Lindsay Paterson and Carol Craig from Edinburgh University. They are currently working with parents, teachers and other people involved in education to develop a vision for education in Scotland. It might be useful to invite them to the away day to outline what they are doing and to consider whether the committee could have a role in initiating the debate on the shape of education in the future. That is one of the big issues facing Scottish education.
We might want to invite certain people to provide input on other issues around sport and the cultural strategy. I would like to ask both the ministerial teams with which we work to come along at some point in the day to give us an indication of what they are planning for the next 18 months. It is important that we know what their thoughts are. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee had a full and frank discussion with Wendy Alexander, which gave it an insight into the direction in which the ministerial team is moving. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee can now plan its work alongside that of the minister's team. It would be helpful if we could do something similar.
I welcome comments from members on the proposal and any ideas for the away day.
The difficulty is our capacity to take in a whole series of critical issues in one day. Perhaps we should consider focusing on a particular area and work on it thoroughly. I have been on away days, as we all have. The problem is that you start with the good intention of covering many matters, but in reality it is pretty hectic. It gets to 2 o'clock and several issues have still not been addressed.
There are two key points. First, we should consider what issues the ministerial team is examining and investigate whether we can complement its work and fill the spaces that it has left. Secondly, some serious thinkers should be there to consider the way that education should be developed. We should examine critical issues such as the structure of education and the important role of leadership in educational institutions. We should focus on those issues. We could perhaps have an Edinburgh-based session to cover some of the other issues. We all view education as critical.
It depends on what we want to do with the away day. It is not the appropriate occasion on which to have detailed discussions about policy development. The intention is that we should use it to form an agenda for the committee so that we can get into a detailed investigation of policy. It would be helpful for people to come to give us an overview of the situation in each of our areas of responsibility rather than discuss the nitty-gritty detail.
I agree with Frank McAveety that packing too many matters in would be a problem, unless it is, as the convener suggested, an information session. One of the problems with this job is that you receive information about seminars that you would like to go to, which take a whole day to cover issues that we would cover in half an hour, but you can rarely attend them because you have so many other things to do. It would be useful to have an away day when we can stop and think, but if we are trying to cover education, culture and sport we must realise that what we can achieve is limited. If it gives us a sight of where we are going, it could be valuable. We must get culture and sport into the agenda, because they tend to be sidelined or to be a more vague aspect of the remit. We must focus better than we have done.
Like other members, I think that the away day is an important opportunity. Its success will depend on how good the convener is at negotiating the time that we have. It is an opportunity to do some visioning work on how education will develop in Scotland. We have been involved in several studies, in each of which it has been said that we must consider teacher training and expectations. A fair amount of academic comment has been made on where education should be going, but we have not had a chance to consider it and perhaps lead the Executive on where it should be going.
It would be a good idea to involve Lindsay Paterson. I also suggest that we invite Keir Bloomer, who is the chief executive of Clackmannanshire council. He has produced some interesting work on education.
It would be appropriate to take some time to consider culture and sport. We should consider how they impinge on our work and have a visioning exercise on those matters as well. I am pleased that work is continuing through the reporters on the cultural strategy. We will all have the opportunity to bring those issues back to the committee and discuss them.
Apart from the convener's report on sport in schools, we have not touched on sport in education and the participation of young people in sport. We must address those matters, because the nature of our culture means that people do not participate in sport in the way that they should. We should consider where we are going, what we want to achieve over the next two years and how we move the agenda forward over the next 10 years. I would be reluctant to spend time examining what we have done so far or what other people are currently doing. This is about moving forward.
The idea behind having a brief session on what we have done is to get an idea of the time scales that we work to, to consider how long things take and to see what we have been able to achieve in the past two years. We have managed to do some good things. Before we start that process, it would be helpful to acknowledge what we have managed to achieve, despite everything. I envisage it being a short, half-hour session. We could have three presentations, one on each of the core areas of our remit. It is for members to decide how we run that.
The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee was away from lunchtime on Tuesday until lunchtime on Wednesday. If we did that it would mean losing a full morning, because members would need to be back in Edinburgh for Wednesday afternoon. It could be argued that the away day should be held on a Monday and Tuesday. Obviously, that would have constituency implications. However, for once it might be worth taking a Monday away from constituency work. We could meet at about 11 o'clock, if that suited members. I know that Irene McGugan would have to travel furthest. We could have three presentation sessions on the Monday and a dinner that night. On the Tuesday morning we could meet the ministerial team and in the afternoon we could have a go at planning for the future, before finishing about Tuesday tea time.
Are you suggesting that the event run over two days?
Yes.
That is a very helpful suggestion. It would allow for more discussion, because people would feel less constrained than they do in normal sessions between 10 o'clock and 4 o'clock.
You mentioned inviting some big-name thinkers. Perhaps we could ask someone to speak at the dinner on the big vision, such as Lindsay Paterson or Keir Bloomer. Before the dinner we could have a brief résumé of the key issues, so that afterwards a broader discussion of the contribution that we have heard can take place. We could follow that through in the next morning's session.
From our constituencies, we all know that even in disadvantaged areas some schools are doing exceptional work. They have learned from models elsewhere in the UK, in Europe and in America. However, there is no consistency. We know that cheek by jowl there can be one primary school that is tremendous and one that is not. That has to do with the ethos, leadership and direction of schools—how children are involved and how their experience is shaped. The good practice to which I referred should be the future, but some of it has not percolated through to senior directorates of education throughout Scotland. There is still some negative thinking. It would, therefore, be very constructive to hear from someone such as Lindsay Paterson or Keir Bloomer.
I think that the event should take place on a Monday and Tuesday; we should take as much time as we can. I always used to find lack of time an annoying aspect of in-service days at school. The whole thing is blootered anyway; the whole time should be available for the exercise. There is not much value in it unless one does that. It would be a good idea for us to stay overnight and use the whole second day.
I agree with what has been said. If we are going to have an away day, we should do it properly and commit the necessary time to it. It is important that all members do that, so that we are all involved in the planning. We should not forget that it requires planning. It has been suggested that we invite speakers, but that can be done later. The most useful element of any away day will be prioritising and planning.
I suggested that we invite speakers to give us an overview of the situation in their field. That might involve a 20-minute presentation as part of a two-hour session. The committee would then thrash out what we see as the priorities in the area that is being discussed. The next day we would hear from the ministerial teams, so that they could give us an idea of their position. We would spend the afternoon of the second day pulling things together and drawing up a plan for the committee. The in-depth, detailed discussion of issues would take place later. We could spend the next 20 years discussing some of them. We will need to be strict with ourselves and to identify priorities.
We have received a couple of suggestions for speakers on education. I do not have a problem with either of the people who have been mentioned. I suggest that we invite the new chief executive of sportscotland to speak to us about sport. He is a visionary young man. We may also want to hear from Charles Raeburn, who has already appeared before the committee. He has a slightly different perspective on matters and he has considerable expertise across the school sports sector.
We might want to ask someone from the Scottish Arts Council—perhaps Tessa Jackson—to give us an overview from the SAC perspective. We could also seek someone who works in that field. Two 15-minute presentations would be enough, and we could then have a one-and-a-half-hour discussion of the issues. We can try to fit in three two-hour sessions on the first day back, followed by a dinner. That will involve a lot of work, but I think that it is worth doing. We are moving along, and I think that we should do things right when we are there.
Do members have any preferences about particular days? We initially mentioned October, but I think that it would be more useful were we to hold the away day sooner rather than later. I think that September would be a better time to aim for. I suggest that we e-mail members and ask them for an indication of Mondays and Tuesdays in September when they will be available. If there are any items in members' diaries that they cannot cancel, we will need to work around those. I always hold surgeries in my constituency on a Monday, but I think that I can put them to one side for this purpose. I understand that members include items in their diaries a long way in advance, which they cannot get out of. I would like members to indicate next week their availability. We can then begin negotiations on the venue. Are people happy with New Lanark as a venue? Is that acceptable?
Members indicated agreement.
I abuse my position as convener. I promise that I will not talk too much about New Lanark's history. If we e-mail members today, I would like to get a response by the end of next week. We can then try to firm something up.