Official Report 257KB pdf
Agenda item 2 is on the report on our inquiry into pupil motivation. Following our previous meeting, the clerks circulated a revised draft report for comment. None has been received, but we put the revised draft on the agenda so that we could consider it. I will go through it quickly, page by page, and people should shout out if they wish to comment. Page 1? Page 2? Page 3? Page 4? And page 5? Ken?
You thought you had got away with it. Correct me if I am wrong, but I had thought that we were going to take the conclusions from the longer paper and print them, either as a separate document or as part of this report. Was I totally wrong in thinking that?
In essence, we took the questions that arose from the longer report, because we wanted to use them as the basis for discussion.
Are we including none of the recommendations?
The problem is that there were no—
There were a few.
But the recommendations were not specific enough.
Well, some of them were a bit vague.
I think that the recommendations are included in the draft report, although perhaps not as such.
The draft is not what I was expecting and I am a bit worried that the report ends a little lamely in paragraphs 16 and 17. If that is all that we are going to have, why have conclusions at all? This is a paper designed to get the contributors to participate, is it not?
Yes.
I am therefore slightly concerned. If we are going to include conclusions, we should include all the conclusions. I thought that we were going to include conclusions even if they were open-ended. If we do not do that, that is fine, but I am concerned that we should not throw things away at the end by saying that we hope that the report "will stimulate further debate". There is nothing wrong with that, but I wonder whether we need a conclusion like that at this stage.
You always need something to end a report.
But is the point of this not to get people in the workshop to come up with a range of suggestions for us to consider?
That is the intention, yes.
So should we not say that? Should that not be how we end the report? We have given a brief summary of issues that we have identified, and we should tap into the workshop resource that we will then make available. We want a range of suggestions that we can either consider further, or forward in their entirety to the Executive.
Are there any other comments?
My understanding of what we were doing might be slightly different from Ken's. I was not surprised to see questions because I had thought that our purpose at the moment was to present evidence and encourage discussion. However, I agree that the conclusions seem a bit out of place. They are not firm conclusions and, if we want to discuss things further, we should not be forming conclusions at this point. All we are trying to do is encourage people to come forward with their comments on the evidence that we have received and the questions that arise from it. I would rewrite the final bit.
The conclusion should be about further exploring the issues and opportunities. We should take out the phrase "magic bullet" because it is useless.
If I understand Frank correctly, "conclusions" should come out and "further examination" go in.
Or "next steps".
Yes.
If members are content, I suggest that you allow me and the clerks to finalise the wording. I make it clear that this is not a full stop in the process; it is a comma, or rather a semi-colon, to be grammatically correct. It is part of the on-going discussion that we hope to take further in the participation event, which we will come to next.
We will circulate the revised version of the report. Do members agree to the publication of the report at a date to be agreed between me, the clerks and the relevant parliamentary authorities, to ensure that the date is appropriate? It is probably due towards the end of next week.
Now we come to a paper from the clerks on the proposed stakeholder event on pupil motivation. Our original date of the end of October is optimistic, if we are to get organised and circulate information to people. It is suggested that a date in January would be more appropriate. Do members agree?
We will delegate authority to the clerks to identify suitable venues that will meet the needs of the committee and the event.
I have two questions. You propose 50 or 60 attendees, but the list of invitees looks like it has double that. It includes committee members, witnesses, teachers and pupils from the schools that were visited, journalists, and two pupils whom we are each to invite. We will end up with 100 people.
I would be delighted if we did, but we have to be cautious with these things. You invite people, but you do not expect everyone to turn up. If they all turn up, though, that is fine.
If you are confident about the numbers, that is fine. I like the idea of inviting pupils from our constituencies.
Our problem is that it would be impossible to do everything that we want to do on an ordinary sitting day. The aim is to hold the event as one of our ordinary Wednesday slots. We would probably have to hold it on a Monday or Friday if we did it in the Parliament, because the required number of rooms would not be available.
Is there no break-out room upstairs?
There are not enough. It would be difficult to organise eight break-out rooms within the Parliament on an ordinary committee day when all the committee rooms are in use, even if we allow for the fact that one room would be available to us. That is the problem. The clerks will continue to investigate whether it is feasible to hold the event in the Parliament. If it is, that will happen, but I suspect that it will not be feasible to hold the event during a Wednesday morning slot because of the pressure on accommodation.
We have to decide whether to do it on a Monday in the Parliament.
That would take additional time out of members' diaries. I am reluctant to commit members to a Monday at this stage, unless it becomes essential. It is about getting the balance right. I accept Ken Macintosh's point, but it may not be practical.
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