Chamber and committees

We have focused our inquiry on the west region, and you are involved in the regional improvement collaborative there. Teachers have told us that the pandemic has had a massively detrimental effect on the work and the scale of the challenge. Do you accept that characterisation?

Just picking up on the point about RICs, when you reform something, there is inevitably a degree of resentment from some quarters and a period of readjustment. If we look at the approach that is being taken here and at how pupil equity funding and other funding streams have put power in the hands of headteachers—a change that some local authorities did not particularly like—we see that there was a similar impact to that of setting up the RICs. Education Scotland has had direct involvement in that. Do you accept that there was a degree of pushback by local authorities—or at least some of them—at the outset, and has that changed? Have we got to a position where everybody is now pulling in the same direction or do we still have some way to go?

I have a follow-up question for Pamela Di Nardo. As I said earlier, we have focused on the west region, which has a significant poverty issue and attainment gap to tackle, and everybody has a clear focus on tackling that—just as they did prior to this workstream. Is it the same situation across the rest of the country? I think that you were involved in the Tayside regional improvement collaborative at the outset. That collaborative takes in a major city with significant deprivation and attainment issues, but also rural areas such as mine, where there are towns with a focus of deprivation, and challenges that are masked in the rural areas—my colleague Oliver Mundell will come on to that later. Is the picture that Craig Clement paints a universal one across Scotland, or are there different sets of challenges and recognition of those challenges? Are we seeing variation in the performance of the RICs in the context of attainment?

A group of principal teachers and headteachers that Bob Doris and I met in Glasgow said that there were fads in the first year but they were quickly identified as fads and ditched. They said that we are now in a space where we know what works in tackling the attainment gap. Is that your experience? Is the whole country in that space? Do we now know what needs to be done to tackle the attainment gap? If so, given that starting point and accepting that we may need to re-baseline following the pandemic, do you accept that we ought to see significant progress in the coming years?

With respect, you suggest that we fundamentally accept that this is an issue of national Government funding, and I am not sure that I entirely agree with that.

This is not a question so much as an observation. I totally get Michael Marra’s point about the representations that we receive as members, although we might disagree about the extent to which responsibility for additional support for learning lies with local authorities as opposed to the Scottish Government through additional funding.

What form would the committee’s work take if we considered the issue? Given our workload, I do not envisage an inquiry into it, so I am not clear how we would take it forward. That is not to say that we should not, but we need at least to have an idea of what form our interest would take before we come to a decision as to what to do.

I should acknowledge that the petitioner is one of my constituents. I very much commend her doggedness and constructive suggestions, without which we would not have reached this stage.

Clearly, Covid has interrupted progress. It would be appropriate to write to the cabinet secretary, seeking an understanding of where matters rest at the moment.

The committee’s inquiry is looking at how effectively funding streams that are specifically aimed at improving attainment are being deployed, but I want to explore the potential impact of one or two other Scottish Government initiatives. Ruth Binks talked about the groundwork having been done, and I want to look at the impact of physical infrastructure. We are now in a position in which 91.6 per cent of pupils are being educated in settings that are deemed to be in good or even better condition. That has come about because of joint work since 2007 by the Scottish Government and councils to refurbish and rebuild schools. To what extent has that created a foundation to help us to tackle the attainment challenge?

Before the meeting, I was looking for examples of schools that have flourished, and I was struck by a couple in particular. Following a refurbishment, Kilmacolm primary school in Inverclyde won an award for raising attainment in literacy. We have also seen some quite remarkable figures at Eastwood high school in Glasgow, where the percentage of pupils getting five or more highers has increased from 17 per cent to 40 per cent.

I want to explore the extent to which refurbishing school infrastructure, including buildings, will help us to move forward with the challenge that we face. I will start with Ruth Binks, because I namechecked her.

In my neck of the woods, community campuses have been developed. The school building does not just open Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and then shut; its leisure facilities and so on are available to the community. That model must surely assist communities to develop.

To be clear, I was not in any way suggesting that refurbished facilities are the most important thing as opposed to the ethos of the school and the quality of the teaching—far from it. I see them as being complementary to the work that is being done.