Chamber and committees

Good morning, convener.

With pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to listen this morning. I thank the committee for its consideration.

Essentially, the cross-party group on families supporting children’s learning aims to bring a focus and to provide a forum for parents, carers, families, parents organisations, MSPs, educators and other interested groups to discuss and debate matters relating to the links between families and the education system.

There are a couple of pertinent and current issues. A broad reform agenda is being pursued by the Government on education, and it is vital that families’ voices are heard with regard to that agenda. Specific challenges have been highlighted to the various members who are signatories to the group regarding the post-Covid environment and the challenges that families have faced in accessing schools and education and in playing their active role in the education of their children and discussing their education with formal educators in the school while better understanding their role in the home. The aim is to ensure that we have a positive influence in the post-Covid environment, taking into account the impacts on young people, which we know are long lasting.

The pandemic highlighted the real and material role of parents, carers and guardians in education when the formal school settings were not allowed. Some good experiences came out of that in relation to the kind of learning that went on in the home, and we need to capture those before they become part of folk memory rather than possible policy. Therefore, it is an apposite moment to set up the group.

Connect is a national organisation that represents parents and parents groups throughout Scotland. We have had wide discussions with it and it is keen to provide the secretariat function for the group. Obviously, we will reach out well beyond one individual group.

Connect is well aware of the need to engage as widely as possible, but it would provide the right kind of services and focus. In essence, it is an engagement group. It is a group of people who are involved in trying to bring others to the table, and it is well suited to doing the work to ensure that we have a representative discussion.

I thank Bob Doris for his reflection about the cross-over between Meghan Gallacher’s positions and about recognising the absence. It is a point well made, which should perhaps have been made in my own case. However, I focused on the gap in the initial pitch, if I can put it that way.

The reform agenda, which I have already mentioned, is absolutely critical. We should not underestimate the scale of the potential changes that the Government could bring to the table. We are kicking off a national conversation that has been stimulated by Ken Muir’s report, and it is vital that families are involved in that. It is vital not only that their role as educators is recognised and supported in that process, but that families have faith in and buy in to the education system, understanding its role and what impact the changes will have on them and on young people in years to come.

It is about making sure that there is a space in which to have the formal engagement. At times, there is an absence of parental voice in some of the conversations that we have in Parliament on the specifics of the reform agenda. I am reflecting more on that even during this conversation. The Education, Children and Young People Committee commonly—and rightly—engages trade unionists, youth voices from the Scottish Youth Parliament and other learners. We engage on that basis, but we seldom have structured or outreach conversations with families specifically about how they are involved in education and about the impact that things will have. Even considering how we ask the Parliament to better reflect those voices could be critical. If we are going to make the reform agenda work, doing that work will be absolutely central.

That would be critical to ensuring that we have a breadth of voices represented. There are voices that feel that they have not had enough representation in the education system and some that feel that they are well represented in it. It is important that we capture good practice and spread it as widely as possible.

Connect is well placed to do that form of engagement work. That has formed a central part of the early discussions we have had with the organisation about how we ensure that it is a representative voice and that we draw as widely as possible on different individuals.

Its role in the CPG is not to directly reflect those views; it would be to provide the secretariat function and to try to bring other people to the table. Connect has its own purpose as a group, but the role that it would play as the secretariat would be in helping to make the CPG work and in helping us with broader engagement.

Connect undertakes wide surveys. It engages and has online discussion groups and communities on families’ engagement in education. It has a good reach into many parts of the country and to a large number of individuals. It is fair to say that the nature of its work—talking about how parents and families can become involved in education—probably surfaces more problems at times. It surfaces people who are frustrated about the need to engage in their young person’s learning and who perhaps find barriers. As I said to the convener, it is important that we draw on positive examples as well as people who find frustrations. That broader engagement is critical.

We need to get the cross-party group set up and running and engage formally with other stakeholders and groups that have an interest in the agenda. From the discussions that we have had, the topic has felt somewhat neglected. Sometimes, parents’ voices have not found a place within education policy discussion, and that is part of the issue. We need to raise the profile of it and bring a focus to it.

I would say that there is interest. I would be happy to hear directly the views of the members of this committee, but, because of the conversations that I have had with other members about their case loads and the number of people who address those issues with them, I think that there is a need and a demand and that the cross-party group would be well used.

In relation to what Mr Doris said, we could set some tests for what that demand looks like in a year’s time. If, in a year’s time, the forum was not working successfully and it was felt that it was duplicating other work, I would happily recognise that. However, the very reason for proposing the cross-party group is that families feel that they do not have a voice and are not represented in the broader discussion. Finding a place for that voice within the Parliament, in order to test that ground, would be the right thing to do.

At the very least, we should test to see whether there is demand for the group. I have always felt that, if something does not work, we should stop doing it. I do not think that we do that enough in public policy. Therefore, if this group does not have success, I do not think that the Parliament should persist with it in the long term. However, I think that, at this moment, it will give an opportunity to raise particular issues of concern, and we can see what life it will have after that.

Those are very pertinent points. Different local authorities use a variety of engagement mechanisms for families, and that practice varies from school to school, from institution to institution and from nursery to nursery. Different places have different approaches to how much the parents, guardians and families of young people are involved in their education. There are a plethora of approaches and a wide variety of practice across the country. It is partly about understanding what works and what is the best that can be achieved.

Although frustration comes with the difference in those practices, that is not to say that we should have a universal approach, because it is about understanding what works and where the success is. That presents a problem, and part of the focus of the group will be to understand what works and the extent to which we can encourage and recognise the primary role of the family as educators. It will also be about recognising that our young people spend far more of their time in the family home and learn far more there than they do in a formal setting, particularly in the early years.

In response to the point that Mr Mountain makes about outreach and how we engage with more remote and rural communities, I note that those areas will clearly face particular challenges that are different from those faced in urban environments in relation to the involvement of families in young people’s education. It would be absolutely right to address that issue in the group, so we must make sure that, as well as meeting in the Parliament building, we have accessible online meetings, which could be in a hybrid format. We should recognise that it is vital to give the forum the imprimatur of the Parliament and a formal setting where we can have those discussions.

That is a pertinent point in relation to the mix of parental and family voices that will be prevalent in different areas. Alexander Stewart is right in saying that some families have a particularly strong set of needs and have to become strong advocates for their young person within the education system. We also recognise that middle-class voices are more prevalent in certain establishments, because they are more adept advocates for themselves in the situation that their families face. There are challenges in making sure that we have a breadth of voices, but that is identified in the description of the work of the CPG.

It is about trying to ensure that we have a representative breadth of voices, rather than only people who have a specific and long-standing advocacy on particular issues. It is right that those voices are heard, and we should applaud those parents and families for being advocates for their young people, but the purpose is to make sure that we have a representative breadth of voices in our system. However, that is not easy to do; if it was easy, it would be being done. Some places are doing it better than others, and it would be good to see if we can learn, as a Parliament and as a policy-making community, how that work could be supported.

Certainly.