Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 30 Oct 2000

Meeting date: Monday, October 30, 2000

Official Report 201KB pdf

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Committee Business

The final item on the agenda is an update on committee business. I draw members' attention to the fact that we are part of the budget process. We must decide, as a committee, what part we will play in that and what comments we will make.

I see that Nicola Sturgeon is foreseeing her future and is leaving us.

This may be her last meeting.

Really?

There may be committee changes on Wednesday. There will be tears, especially from me.

I ask Martin Verity to say where we are in relation to the budget process and what we are likely to need to do.

As part of stage 2 of the budget process, the committee is invited to assess the education department's expenditure plans for 2000-01 and to report back to the Finance Committee.

The committee has not had the opportunity to consider its reaction because of a shortage of time owing to the inquiry that it has been involved in. We suggest that at the meeting this Wednesday, 1 November, we circulate to the committee a paper that analyses the Executive's response to the committee's concerns about stage 1 of the budget process. It would also look at the department's expenditure proposals for 2001-02.

If further questions arise from that meeting that members want to put to the Executive, I will write to the Executive with those questions asking for a fairly swift reply, which we could then circulate to members on Thursday 9 November. If members want, we could invite a minister to attend on Wednesday 8 November to answer those questions orally, but it is for members to decide whether they want a minister to give oral evidence on 8 November.

If members do not want a minister to attend, the paper that will be circulated on 9 November, which would include the Executive's response, will form the basis of a draft report that would be circulated for the meeting on 15 November. That would be the committee's draft report back to the Finance Committee, giving the committee's views on the Executive response and proposals for 2001-02.

That is a tight timetable. Because the emphasis has, obviously, been on the inquiry into school exam results, we have not really had the chance to discuss these things in as much detail as we should have done. However, the proposed timetable would enable us to report back to the Finance Committee in time.

As there are no questions or comments, do members agree to that timetable?

Members indicated agreement.

I am sure that the new Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs will understand the budgets well, given that he set them.

That is true.

Do members also agree that they would like to hear from the minister on 8 November, or shall we leave that decision until Wednesday?

We cannot decide that until we have seen the paper that is to be circulated on Wednesday.

That is right.

Is there a time scale for our committee report? I would like to spend a minute or two talking about where we go from here and about the time scale and key dates.

As I flagged up earlier, the Wednesday meeting is likely to be our last session of oral evidence apart from the meeting that will be arranged to take in the higher national diploma and higher national certificate students. We do not yet have a date for that session. I propose that, on 8 November, we consider a paper from the clerks and Hamish Long, our adviser, which will flag up a number of outstanding issues. In the meantime, the clerks will begin to put together an initial draft of the oral and written evidence that we have received. They will put that in front of us on 15 November, taking into account our discussions on 8 November. It will take us as long as it takes us to consider the draft reports and decide on a final version.

I am not clear about how we are liaising with the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee on the final report.

I will meet the convener of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee on Thursday. I will speak to him about his committee's proposed timetable and we will try to link the two together. I suggest that we hold a joint meeting at which we will launch the two reports. It would be silly to do that separately. Cathie Peattie has been acting as our reporter on the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee and Marilyn Livingstone has been acting as a reporter to that committee on our deliberations, and we must take on board their comments. They can give their views to the clerk.

The idea of joint publication is immensely sensible. It would be disastrous if one committee were to publish its report before the other. Perhaps there should be a joint meeting of the committees prior to publication so that we can discuss our final conclusions.

I notice from the papers for the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee meeting this week that there is a proposed discussion on making its draft reports available to the public prior to their being agreed. Has that been raised with you, convener? If it were agreed, would that include the report on the governance of the SQA? Will that issue come before this committee? I would be greatly worried about a report of this importance being put out in draft form, when it would not necessarily represent the view of the committee.

I share your concerns. The committees are coming at this issue from different perspectives, but I still think that there is merit in having a joint presentation of the two reports. When we have produced reports in the past we have had a lot of discussion about them and there have been changes to draft reports, so it would be unhelpful to have reports going out that we might wish to change at a later date. I am surprised at the proposal. I will take it up with Alex Neil on Thursday.

If it helps, this committee could indicate its unanimous disagreement with publishing a draft report of any description at this stage.

It flies in the face of what we try to do in having an open discussion when considering drafts.

For the record, it is important to indicate that that would be a unanimous view.

Yes.

I will ask the clerk to make that view known to the clerk of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee before my meeting with Alex Neil on Thursday, if the issue is being discussed on Wednesday. That committee should be aware of our view.

Are members happy with the timetable? The consideration of the draft report is in our hands. How long that will take is up to us.

I presume that we will set ourselves a target of publishing before the end of the month?

I am aware, as we all are, that already there are students who are half way through this year's exams. If we are to give them the confidence that they need to carry on, we have to ensure that our report is delivered as soon as possible, so we will be looking to the third week of November, or the fourth at the latest.

Ken Macintosh has already flagged up some issues for Wednesday's meeting. Are there any others?

I have printed out all the press releases—I have not read every one yet—from the SQA. I am sure that lines of questioning will arise from them, following on from the questions that I asked the minister, because there is an issue about the information that was coming out and how that contributed to the escalation of press concern and the concern of students.

So the press releases relate to the difficulties in August, rather than anything that has come out about the latest diet.

Yes.

Do you have another issue, Brian?

Yes. Would it be possible for the clerks to look at the remaining weeks that we have prior to the next recess and give us a draft of how we might fit in issues such as Hampden, the special educational needs inquiry report, the film studios report and so on?

I would like the film report to be considered some time in December.

I am concerned that we should have an idea of the timetable. We have been meeting twice weekly, and we will be reverting to once a week. We may have to meet twice a week on some occasions. If we do, the longer the period of notice the better.

I presume that the school infrastructure inquiry is the next big inquiry.

Yes.

It will be interesting to see how we timetable that, but it will also be useful for the committee to sit down and consider its future work plan, given that the SQA inquiry has occupied it extensively.

I am aware that the SEN and Hampden reports are on-going. If possible, I would like to programme them in before the Christmas recess. For obvious reasons, I am reluctant to tie us down to those dates too tightly. Over the past week to 10 days, the clerks and I have been considering what we thought would be our future work plan and have tried to draw that up. If we can settle on a vague future work plan, we will circulate it to members for their comments. Mike Russell's comment on his report is helpful, as we can plug that into some space.

Although we assume that committee meetings will resume on a weekly timetable, there is pressure from the conveners liaison group for committees to start meeting once every two weeks. We will have to consider that idea, but not necessarily now.

We have no further Monday meetings scheduled.

We do not, at this stage. If we felt that consideration of the draft report was dragging on, we might want to schedule one. However, at this stage we have no Monday meetings scheduled.

Thank you very much for your attendance.

Meeting closed at 15:51.