Chamber and committees

I am interested that you do not want to deliver massive shocks into the system at a time when you are transferring massive sums from one organisation to another, but I will leave that to one side.

Your colleagues spoke to the committee before about Dundee university. Our concern at that point was that they were not telling ministers the truth about the financial situation—or it might be better to say that they were not being frank with ministers about the dire situation in universities. Is it not a concern to you that, following that, we will not be publishing the financial sustainability report for our universities and colleges until months later? Might that not feed into our anxiety that you are not being frank with ministers?

My question is for Clare Reid. Some, although not all, of the businesses and business organisations that I speak to are pretty angry about what is happening. They think that they are going to lose two things. One is business or employer involvement in the organisation that is responsible for the funding. Secondly, because they see that the university and college sector is under financial stress, they think that funding will be diverted away from apprenticeships. I am puzzled as to why your members are not reflecting that wider concern that I am picking up.

You both started the session by being quite positive about the bill, but you are getting more negative as you give your answers. Is that a fair representation of where this is going?

Earlier, you made a point about the need to have the proper resource to get the right people with the capacity to deliver the change. From your knowledge and experience over the years in various sectors—the public sector and the university sector—do you think that that is going to happen? From what you have seen before, do you have much confidence that the process will be properly resourced in that way?

Did the minister ask the review group to consider the amendments? Did he not think that that would be an appropriate thing to do?

Has the minister not asked that question already?

What did it say?

With the various amendments—and, indeed, the bill itself—we have been trying to strengthen the central organisations that have a major role in the performance of education in Scotland. Confidence in those bodies was shattered by a number of different experiences, from the performance of the SQA through the pandemic to the inability of the inspectorate to identify the relative decline in the performance of Scottish education. The fact that it never identified that throughout that whole period raises a big question.

In order for Scottish education to function, we need to have central bodies that have the confidence of not only pupils and teachers but the wider educational movement, including local authorities, which are major players in the performance of the education system. We need local authorities to be subject to good challenge, which is why we need strengthened central bodies.

We have made significant progress by separating Education Scotland from the inspectorate so that we are not marking our own homework. That is a good step, and I hope that we are able to appoint significant people to run both organisations, because people believe that they are bodies of consequence in Scottish education. That is incredibly important.

We are trying to strike a balance between George Adam’s lone wolf, which has the potential for making something too independent, and ensuring that we have sufficient independence to give confidence to the wider system. We are trying to strike a balance between those two priorities.

I am mindful of what Graham Donaldson said about the fact that he had more independence in his day than the bill proposes to give the chief inspector. It is significant that somebody of his stature said that, and it indicates that we can perhaps go further than the bill proposes to go. My amendments, although they are in some ways quite minor, would provide a greater degree of independence, as they would remove the power of the Scottish ministers to appoint the deputy chief inspector, while the chief inspector would still be appointed by ministers.

Unlike Sue Webber, I do not want to abolish Jenny Gilruth. I want to keep her important role—alongside that of the King—in Scottish education.

Amendment 147 provides that the inspectors of education would be appointed on the recommendation of the chief inspector. The deputy chief inspector and the inspectors would be under the responsibility of the chief inspector. Decisions on the number of inspectors and their terms and conditions would also lie with the chief inspector.

I understand all the arguments that the cabinet secretary is making, but the education inspectorate is in a different position from the inspectorates of the police and the prisons, because we have had what some would call a crisis in recent years. Although we are separating the SQA from Education Scotland, we need to go further. Does the minister think that there is any avenue that she has examined that we could pursue to give greater independence? If she does not agree with any of the amendments, is there anything that she might consider in order to bolster that? I think that she agrees with me—because she was nodding away when I was contributing earlier—that we need to build up the confidence of the central bodies. Is there nothing that she has looked at that we could pursue to give greater independence in order to build that confidence?

With the various amendments—and, indeed, the bill itself—we have been trying to strengthen the central organisations that have a major role in the performance of education in Scotland. Confidence in those bodies was shattered by a number of different experiences, from the performance of the SQA through the pandemic to the inability of the inspectorate to identify the relative decline in the performance of Scottish education. The fact that it never identified that throughout that whole period raises a big question.

In order for Scottish education to function, we need to have central bodies that have the confidence of not only pupils and teachers but the wider educational movement, including local authorities, which are major players in the performance of the education system. We need local authorities to be subject to good challenge, which is why we need strengthened central bodies.

We have made significant progress by separating Education Scotland from the inspectorate so that we are not marking our own homework. That is a good step, and I hope that we are able to appoint significant people to run both organisations, because people believe that they are bodies of consequence in Scottish education. That is incredibly important.

We are trying to strike a balance between George Adam’s lone wolf, which has the potential for making something too independent, and ensuring that we have sufficient independence to give confidence to the wider system. We are trying to strike a balance between those two priorities.

I am mindful of what Graham Donaldson said about the fact that he had more independence in his day than the bill proposes to give the chief inspector. It is significant that somebody of his stature said that, and it indicates that we can perhaps go further than the bill proposes to go. My amendments, although they are in some ways quite minor, would provide a greater degree of independence, as they would remove the power of the Scottish ministers to appoint the deputy chief inspector, while the chief inspector would still be appointed by ministers.

Unlike Sue Webber, I do not want to abolish Jenny Gilruth. I want to keep her important role—alongside that of the King—in Scottish education.

Amendment 147 provides that the inspectors of education would be appointed on the recommendation of the chief inspector. The deputy chief inspector and the inspectors would be under the responsibility of the chief inspector. Decisions on the number of inspectors and their terms and conditions would also lie with the chief inspector.