Chamber and committees

With respect, how long will that take? I am advised—it is not a world with which I am familiar—that the decision-making process at universities can be swift—

—but we have seen very serious criticism of both the Scottish Government and the Westminster Government for acting too slowly. Whether those criticisms are well founded or not, time will tell; the inquiry will look into that. I think, however, that many people suspect that the right decisions were taken, but not quickly enough. Are you not proposing a system that will inevitably lead to delay? The Scottish Government process would involve making decisions in close consultation with your member universities, and you would then overlay a college or university consultation process. Even if you did that in a week, surely that would be too late, and that is the whole point.

With respect, what would happen if there were a disagreement? In a pandemic there has to be emergency action. At the end of the day, if the Government did not have power to do something, as Mr Greer pointed out, you could end up in the courts and by that time it would all be too late and thousands more people would have the virus. With respect, although your argument is well intentioned and no doubt discussions can be had about the granular detail—in my experience in Government, officials constantly worked closely with those affected, as I think that you have indicated yourself—surely you must accept, as a point of principle, that the buck stops with the Government. If it does not have the powers, it could end up in a situation in which it could not take the action necessary, on the basis of the public health evidence, to protect public health in Scotland.

Convener, I do not want to interrupt, but I am aware from previous work with Paul Little of the good work that he does in his college; I applaud him for that and I value that. However, with respect, that is not what we are here to talk about. It is very important, but it is not the question that I asked. Behind you, to your left, there is a plaque, which I assume is yours, which has the Latin motto “Semper Paratus”, which as I understand it means “Always Ready”. My point is that Governments must be always ready and unless they have emergency powers they cannot act swiftly.

That is the point. We will not be semper paratus. We will be unprepared and without the powers that may be necessary because, in a future pandemic, the problems that we have may be slightly or entirely different from the problems that we face in the Covid pandemic. History does not repeat itself precisely in many respects, so surely we need to be ready for the future. That is what I asked. It was not about the other problems that you face. I am not in any way denigrating your raising them, but they are not relevant to today. With respect, I think that both you and Mr Sim have protested too much and have not accepted the absolute fundamental principle that Governments—this is the case with the UK Government; presumably you would support that, convener—have to be able to act swiftly.

Does Professor Little not accept that Governments must have powers to act swiftly and it is not possible to know in advance precisely what action must be taken? At the end of the day, it must be the Government that has the powers, otherwise we are not able to protect public health.

I thank the witnesses for their evidence and for what they do. Over the years, I have had occasion to work with some of the charities that are giving evidence today, and I recognise what Mr Wallace said earlier—that what they do is, in many ways, not instead of but complementary, additional or supplementary to what the state does through its agencies. It often does that work in a different way, and it is not necessarily all about money. I just wanted to make that point. I do not think that we should start from the premise that, if we had a perfect social work department, a perfect state and perfect schools, we would not need the third sector. I think that, actually, we need the third sector in addition. It is easy to get sidetracked by regarding money as the proxy for everything, but it is not that.

Over the years, I have been struck by the position of many charities—even leading ones such as Aberlour, Barnardo’s and the Prince’s Trust. As I understand it, they all have various funding streams, including funding from the state, the private sector and philanthropic donations. All of those are important, but each of the charities has certain funding from the state. The impression that I get is that many charities spend as much time chasing the money, which is granted on a very short-term basis from year to year, as they spend performing their function, which is to provide support—in this case, to the most needy.

I have often thought that, if the funding was guaranteed on a three or four-year basis, that would alleviate the pressures on major charities—or, really, on all charities—quite considerably. Of course, some might lose funding altogether, which is, I am afraid, just something that will happen in life.

I am sorry that my question has been a wee bit long winded, but have I analysed that in a fair way? Do people in the charities spend a lot of time chasing the funding rather than providing the services for young people that they get up in the morning to provide—in this instance, to tackle the hardship of poverty?

I am impressed by the passion with which you espouse your views. Instinctively, I am supportive of the idea of headteachers having more discretion but, when we get down to specifics, Professor Ainscow, many things are fixed, such as salaries. I presume that you do not think that headteachers should start to pay some teachers more or less than they are paid per the tariff. There is so much of the budget that is fixed—building repairs, rates, heat, lighting and insurance, for example. I was interested in whether there were any specifics.

When I speak to constituents about education, they do not talk in that language at all. The language and vocabulary that we use is not used out of the Holyrood bubble or system. They say, “I wish children could get musical instruction or a musical instrument,” or, “I wish that they could get more tutoring.” Those matters were referred to earlier in the meeting and perhaps we have not explored them enough. My constituents may also say, “Maybe children should learn how to touch type,” which is mandatory in Holland. That is still seen as a marginal skill for the 20th century, but it is now essential for the 21st century. I have no idea why the educational establishment has not homed in on that. They could say, “I would like more business people to come into schools to explain to our kids what they actually do.” Those are the things that I think my constituents would mention, but they have not been mentioned this morning. That is not a criticism of anybody; it is just a general observation from somebody who, unlike my colleague and friend Kaukab Stewart, has not really been involved since they left school, which was five decades ago or thereabouts.

Professor Ainscow, I want to challenge you on a specific point. I am not persuaded that there is an evidential basis for your contention that headteachers and teachers do not focus on individual children. My impression is that they do their best to do that and, by and large, they manage to do that.

I am not sure whether you meant to assert that there is a general failure across the board to identify, or even communicate with, large numbers of pupils in schools. I must admit that I find that a very difficult contention and one that does not square with my experience of going to what used to be called prizegivings, which I am sure are called something else now. The children at Grantown grammar school have a huge array of achievements—they seem to be happy and well known to their teachers, almost as friends. I am afraid that I do not recognise the single example that you gave as being evidence based, which I think was the point that you were making.

The late songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote a song that is still sung that said:

“Accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative”.

I mention it because, perhaps unintentionally, there is a risk in discussions such as the one that we are having that we run into doing the converse: that we eliminate the positive and accentuate the negative. I hope that we all recognise—I expect that we do—that, every day, our teachers work hard and put effort, enthusiasm and expertise into the job that they do. I have been an MSP for 22 years and I receive vanishingly few complaints about our teachers. It is correct to put that on record—not that the discussion has been unduly negative.

I also put on record the fact that the Scottish Government is, I understand, putting in £215 million of Scottish attainment challenge funding this year as well as protecting free tuition for higher education. That has not been mentioned, but it is key to addressing the problems of the poverty-related attainment gap.

The discussion has been interesting, but it tends to be of a general nature. There are lots of abstract nouns, but it is more difficult to get concrete actions. That is perhaps understandable but, following Mr Rennie’s line of questioning, I will try to drill down. Will Professor Ainscow say exactly what he meant when he said that headteachers require control over their budgets? Will he give me three examples of what headteachers might do in practice to make things better and tackle the poverty-related attainment gap?

I thank both Becky Francis and Emma Congreve for their answers and the specific issues that they have raised. It is self-evident that the issue of recruitment and retention is important.

I am very pleased that Emma Congreve raised the issue of school transport and I say, without fear of contradiction, that it is a serious one for many parents. It can take a long time for children to get to school—even for those who live just a few miles away from their school. In distributing the attainment fund we must ensure that it reaches areas where there is hidden poverty—in many parts of rural Scotland, such travel is an additional cost that simply does not arise in urban areas.

I will ask you one final question and then, to be fair to the other witnesses, I will invite them to comment on the specifics of any of the topics that I and others have raised and to tell us whether they think that we should be making specific recommendations about some of those matters.

I will go back to the national versus local issue, which, Professor Ainscow, you have raised as your main point. As an example, if we take the kids who need a bit more assistance in learning because they have fallen behind, or who need tutoring for whatever reason, surely there needs to be a national prescription that that requirement cannot be neglected, and it must be dealt with. How that is implemented is then a matter for headteachers and local education authorities. However, dealing with such issues cannot be left to random acts.

To take the example of children who need tutoring, I think that there is a strong case for doing something more about that. There needs to be a national prescription on that. Otherwise, we are leaving it entirely to decisions that are made at a local level, and we end up with—although I do not like the phrase—a postcode lottery, which was alluded to earlier.