Chamber and committees

Currently, unlike some other countries, we allow pupils to leave at 16. I think that, in the past, some of my family left school at 14. The leaving age is now 16; other countries have gone for a leaving age of 18.

If we had a leaving qualification—not necessarily from school, but from education—would we need to raise the leaving age? Would we need further reform around the leaving age?

I want to talk about colleges and regionalisation. Do you think that the regionalisation has achieved the objectives that were set out in 2011?

My question goes back to early learning and childcare. Councils have done an amazing job in rolling out the 1,140 hours, but I was a bit concerned by the reference to our now being into refinement when there are big questions about the viability of private nurseries based on the rates of return that they are getting. They are getting only about a third of the entitled two-year-olds into nursery, and the flexibility that it was claimed would be integral to the scheme when we set it up has not been achieved.

What are your reflections on that? It is more of a point than a question, but I was alarmed that the witnesses thought that we are into refinement when there are major problems with aspects of the roll-out.

I want to touch on universities, which are under—[Inaudible.]—and, in particular, are more reliant on potentially volatile international student numbers, because the world is volatile. The finances in those institutions, which are otherwise amazingly successful, are still unpredictable. That means that there is quite a significant demand on the public sector, although those institutions nevertheless are, and have been, quite independent, which is in large part why they are so successful.

How do you go about doing your job with universities? I noted a little bit of frustration in one of the remarks, about being unable to measure effectively, because it is not so easy to do. How do you strike a balance between those institutions’ independence, and therefore their success, and the need for the public sector to be able to measure and scrutinise what is happening in them?

You are both being very diplomatic. The danger with all of this is that the changes are big-bang changes. Many will know that I was a critic of the centralisation of the police. We have, in effect, a form of centralisation for colleges, and we are about to go into a form of centralisation through the national care service. The more diplomatic you are about whether objectives have been achieved, the more difficult it is for us to make the right decisions about further big-bang reforms, as I would call them. I therefore encourage you to be a little blunter about whether college regionalisation has been effective. If it has not been a success—even if you are not clear on whether the objectives have been achieved—surely that in itself should cause us to pause. A little bit more of a direct response from you would surely help us, because we have big decisions to make.

I might be wrong about all these things, but I do not think that I am. My fear is that we will end up with another set of reorganisations that will not deliver and that we will be back here with you in five years’ time saying that it is not clear whether the objectives for the national care service have been met. I encourage you to be a little bit blunter, as we have big decisions to make.

Forgive me for being a bit provocative.

I will return to the issue of the fair and meaningful contribution and, in particular, to the role of insurers in that. There was concern before about the impact on a charitable organisation’s finances if it made a contribution but its insurer did not support it. Do we have a clearer understanding of the attitude of the insurance industry to that?

I suspect that it is subject to negotiations, so you will probably not want to answer but, in the interests of giving confidence to providers or charitable organisations, if an insurance company was not contributing to payments and that threatened the viability of an otherwise good organisation, would your system be able to flex to reflect the fact that the insurer was not paying?

Baselining that funding for the additional teachers will help, but I hope that you will also look at the funding for PEF. It is allocated on an annual basis, which has an impact on the temporary arrangements that are available to schools.

On the Scottish national standardised assessments, I note that, on page 128 of its report, the OECD stated that

“the purpose and usefulness of these are already being questioned.”

It also told us that its team did not consider the SNSA

“to be the most appropriate system monitoring mechanism”.—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 8 September 2021; c 19.]

Are you therefore going to stop collecting assessment data across the country?

Schools have used formative assessments for generations. I understand that. My issue is that you collect the results and produce a national report that now leads to the publication of crude league tables. A school in the First Minister’s constituency was highlighted as apparently being one of the worst-performing schools in the country. I do not believe that for a minute: I believe that that school is probably performing well, but that because of its demographics and background, it is assessed as being one of the worst schools. That cannot be good for the Scottish education system.

If you stopped collecting that data nationally and using it for monitoring purposes, but allowed teachers to continue using it locally, that would be the best of all worlds. Why do you not stop collecting that information?