Chamber and committees

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 have two quick points. First, we should recognise that the SQA leadership has changed. I have had the same issue when it comes to meeting people from the SQA but, to be fair, I think that that is because they want to meet in person.

Secondly, I hope that your amendments will be rolled into the wider discussions that, last week, we agreed to have, because the issue of regulation is along similar lines to that of accreditation. The proposed curriculum Scotland is another part of that discussion. Are you considering rolling your amendments into those discussions?

If Clare has had her camera on the whole time, there must have been some technical problem. I suggest that, if she disappears again during a vote, we should just pause and check.

The plethora of amendments in this group indicates that there is a problem. The fact that the cabinet secretary, quite late on, has lodged an amendment that proposes a two-year review period indicates that the Government also now accepts that there is a problem, which is a step in the right direction. As the convener has set out, this group of amendments involves quite a complicated set of considerations for us, but I hope that the debate manages to elicit some clarity about the preferred option to be agreed either at this stage or at stage 3.

The issue first arose primarily during the pandemic, when we had difficulties with the SQA. More recently, the higher history debacle crystallised the problem, and in fact the chief examiner herself identified the issue. She said quite clearly—I am paraphrasing—that it was her job to do the checking of the higher history process in the examinations. That was supremely logical, but I think that it was unsatisfactory that, effectively, the SQA was marking its own homework internally, with some external oversight. We need to try to move away from such an event being able to happen again.

We have moved through a set of reforms to separate the inspectorate from Education Scotland because we do not want Government agencies or public agencies marking their own homework. That applies equally in this circumstance, where we cannot have the new qualifications body marking its own homework, as happened with the higher history arrangements.

We have a number of different options before us, and I am grateful to other members who have proposed various alternatives. Those include housing the accreditation regulation function in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership or the inspectorate; removing the regulation function altogether; having a separate regulator, as the convener is proposing; having regulation through Education Scotland or a new body called curriculum Scotland, as Pam Duncan-Glancy is proposing; or, as the cabinet secretary proposes, having a review after two years.

I am open to all those suggestions, and the debate should elicit some clarity on all that. However, we need some change—we cannot simply carry on as we are. This is our opportunity—a set of reforms such as those in the bill is not something that will come along very often, which is why I will not support the cabinet secretary’s proposal for a review after two years. Although I can understand it, I just wish that the Government had proposed it two years ago. If it had, we might now have been in a position where we would have been able to legislate for something different.

For me, the three tests, or aims, for the new qualifications body are: ensuring its independence from the Government; avoiding it marking its own homework; and keeping our costs to a minimum, with no new quango or public body. Those are three legitimate aims, and none of the proposals before us today meets all those criteria, which is the challenge that we face.

The SCQF Partnership highlighted in its briefing that there continues to be a conflict. Education Scotland is perhaps too close to Government, and a new body would mean additional costs. I am not quite sure what the criticism is with regard to the inspectorate taking on the role; perhaps the cabinet secretary can clarify that a bit more. However, there is a problem with the status quo as well, because we continue to have a conflict of interest. We cannot, therefore, carry on as we are, and we need to look for change, so I am open to the arguments that will be set out today.

We may be looking not just at moving the accreditation function somewhere else, under a merger—we could look at hosting in order to cut costs. The function could be placed in one of a variety of bodies, and that body would provide the human resources and finance support arrangements. There are a number of different models, which I hope that we will be able to debate this morning.

I move amendment 115.

I will support your amendment 226, but it is important to recognise what the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland said about making sure that the boy at the back of the class who never speaks to anybody—as I would describe him—is actually included in the considerations.

It is right to have young people involved, but it is also right to have a mechanism that encapsulates the range of views. A young person might only speak to you for five seconds and have no idea about how a committee operates, but their views are just as valid. I want to make sure that they are involved. Do you recognise that?

We have had a really good debate, but I think that we have set a new standard by saying that any alternative needs to be perfect while the status quo needs to stay as it is. We must be better than that and try to find a much better solution, because the current solution will, I think, just provoke another crisis. If we carry on as we are, marking our own homework, this situation will, without doubt, happen again.

I always have the interests of the Government at heart, and I worry about the political crisis that might come if it does not seize an opportunity to make the change. I also worry about the staff, who have been through hell in recent years. They have suffered greatly, and, indeed, the body itself is about to be abolished.

We cannot afford to go through this again, and I worry about the cabinet secretary’s proposal for a two-year review because I think that it could happen again, even in that period. The staff have been through a prolonged period of limbo, and that limbo will continue if we have another two-year process. I do not think that the staff want that; they want some certainty about their future.

The cabinet secretary says that she is open minded, but everything that she has said this morning just closes down any other option. Her body language has been pretty clear: she has looked at the reviews that her predecessors have done and she is not convinced that any other option is credible. That is why I am sceptical. Yes, the other proposals are untidy, but that brings me back to my point about perfection. Nothing is perfect as far as this is concerned. However, Ken Muir, who has great authority in the education world, thought that it was okay to move. Other countries have managed it, as Stephen Kerr has pointed out, so why can Scotland not manage to do something different?

I do not think that we all fully understand how the accreditation function within the SQA currently works. It is my understanding that there is no separate unit within it that checks other staff’s work and processes. Its own staff check their own work, based on a set of principles. That set of principles is perfectly good, but it makes it even more difficult to separate the process.

This is not going to be easy. We are talking about creating new functions and new teams to do this work. I understand why the cabinet secretary has difficulties with the proposal, but the fact that the SQA does not even have a separate team for this and that the team that delivers these things checks itself shows just how weak the current system is.

I give full credit to the staff in the SQA. We have some exceptional people who are doing exceptional work in really difficult circumstances. However, we are tying their hands behind their back with the current structure. People—teachers, those in the education world and parents—must have confidence in the SQA, but when staff are checking their own homework, it does not matter how good they are, they are not starting off at the starting point. Therefore, they are disadvantaged—handicapped—from the beginning.

Just to be clear, I think that all the other options are far better than the status quo. They are not perfect—the new standard that John Mason has set—but they are better than what we have and they will improve confidence.

I am depressed, although I am ever-hopeful that things might come of this. In reality, this is the only option. Does the cabinet secretary want to make a remark about Pam Duncan-Glancy’s remarks?

It is a risk, but we have no other option. Ross Greer has indicated that that is where he would like to go, and he provides the majority in this committee and in the Parliament—[Laughter.]—so that is where we need to go on this particular vote. I think that we probably need to go down this route. I am sceptical, for all the reasons that I have set out, but that is the option that we will have to consider today in order to make progress. I hope that Ross Greer and his colleagues follow through on that, if nothing comes of the discussion, because we cannot afford to continue with the status quo.