Chamber and committees

As much as I have views on the particular form that scrutiny should take, my general view is that one Parliament should not bind the next. It would be relatively unprecedented to put specific forms of scrutiny into primary legislation, and it would perhaps restrict our successors from adapting their approach to scrutiny in a way that is more appropriate to things that we cannot yet predict.

Ultimately, the decision would still rest with the Parliament, but I cannot assume that the form of scrutiny that I believe to be appropriate now will still be appropriate in five or 10 years’ time. I would not want our successors to have to change primary legislation in order to change what could be quite minor elements of their approach.

Amendment 40 seeks to make accessible versions of inspection reports available to learners, but it would build in flexibility, too, as we are talking about learners at very different ages and stages and in various settings. It would give the chief inspector, where they consider it appropriate, the ability to ensure that inspection reports would be presented in accessible formats to learners at the establishments involved, which would generally be schools. Although some schools communicate inspection results to pupils, others do not; moreover, headteachers have raised with me the possibility of councils interfering with such communications. Empowering the chief inspector in that role would, I think, mitigate some of those concerns about potential interference.

In some cases, the first time that pupils become aware of the outcome of an inspection at their school is when they see negative press coverage—if the result is negative—or hear hearsay and gossip in the local community. Placing such a requirement on the inspectorate itself would ensure consistency of approach, and it would remove the potential for spin on the part of the education authority or, indeed, the school management.

Amendment 40 would allow for flexibility, too. After all, it is clearly more appropriate to communicate inspection results directly to high school pupils than it is to do so to very young children in early learning and childcare settings. Given that it would build in that flexibility, I hope that members will be able to support amendment 40.

Amendment 11 would simply put into legislation something that happens in practice at the moment. The chief inspector currently sends a copy of a report to the establishment that has been inspected, before the report is published; however, there is nothing that says that they have to do so. It would be useful for us to set such practice as the minimum standard, in legislation, to ensure that it continues.

Amendment 18 is about ensuring that, in inspections, consideration is given to compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024. Given the significant change in practice that is required across a number of areas as a result of that legislation, a consistent approach to checking on its implementation would be valuable, and it would catch many of the discussions that we have had so far on promoting the rights of children and young people in schools.

Amendment 20 is intended to ensure that valuable recommendations that are made by inspectors would be acted on, without ultimately requiring that to happen. These establishments—and we are talking about schools here—deserve a level of autonomy, but they should have regard to the reports; indeed, significant weight should be put on them. In that sense, amendment 20 pairs well with amendment 21.

In the interests of time, convener, I will finish there.

Amendment 21 covers what we have just discussed in relation to the previous group. My intention in this amendment and my amendment 20 in the previous group, which I agreed not to move but instead to work with the cabinet secretary on, is to ensure that the relevant establishments have due regard to any report about their own establishment and any relevant system-wide reports, thematic reports and so on. A high school should have regard to a report about itself, and it should also have due regard to any thematic review of numeracy, LGBT inclusion or whatever it may be.

Amendments 14 to 16 would simply change the time of the reporting period to align it with the academic year. My concern is that, if the reports do not align with the academic year, we will have a classic situation in which a report is published midway through the academic year and we then start to see creeping excuses such as, “We’re halfway through addressing that problem, so we can’t comment on it yet.” If we align the reports with the new full academic year, it will be harder to avoid the issues that are raised, and that would make a bit more practical sense.

That being said, I have lodged amendments 93 and 112 so that ministers may, by regulation in the future, modify the reporting period only after consultation with the chief inspector, the advisory council and anyone else they consider appropriate. That is because there can be unforeseen events—the pandemic was an obvious example of that. It would have been inconvenient, to say the least, to have had to produce an annual report at the height of the pandemic. However, in the subsequent year, I would not have wanted any requirements that limited the reports to 12 months, as that would have made it possible to write off months previous to that. One year may be missed because of a pandemic, for example, but I would want the subsequent report to cover and look back on an 18-month or 24-month period.

Amendments 93 and 112 are there simply to provide flexibility to change the reporting period in the future, with appropriate accountability.

I am glad that the member is pushing the issue on to the debate and that he said that these are probing amendments. I have a lot of sympathy for what he is proposing.

Part of my concern about the operational aspect is the idea that the inspectorate would have to engage with every complaint that is received. I am sure that we have all had complaints in our email inboxes. I have had someone complaining about a school because the school was helping to deliver vaccinations to children and the individual who complained thought that the vaccinations included 5G chips from Bill Gates. Not every complaint is equal, so there needs to be some flexibility to ensure that spurious complaints can be dismissed, so that, if we assign such responsibility to the inspectorate, its focus can be dedicated entirely to serious complaints, although I agree that there is a gap in the system around addressing those.

I take the cabinet secretary’s point in relation to the cross-over between amendment 321 and the one that I did not move in an earlier group. However, when it comes to how I will vote on amendment 321, if it is moved, it would certainly give me some comfort if the cabinet secretary were able to jump ahead a little bit and indicate the Government’s position on my amendment in a later group—that is, amendment 92, which relates to consultation with the Parliament in preparing the inspection plan and would require the chief inspector to lay a draft of the plan before Parliament for 60 days. If the Government were to agree to that, it would build in direct engagement between the chief inspector and the Parliament without getting entangled in the issues that we explored in relation to my amendment 60.

I acknowledge that amendments 317 and 350 will not be moved, because of the drafting issue, but my broader concern about all the amendments in the group is that they go against the direction of travel in the bill. In certain circumstances, collaboration is not just desirable—the OECD has told us that we need more of it in Scottish education—but what we are seeking to do here is split the inspectorate from Education Scotland, because of the inherent conflict of interest.

I worry about the language in amendment 317, which is that the chief inspector

“must ... work in collaboration with Education Scotland”

on any matters to which their functions relate. However, that will relate to most of their functions, as they are both education bodies. Does that not go against what we are trying to do in the bill, which is to create a degree of separation that we hope will allow the inspectorate to be more robust in its feedback and observations about the system?

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s comments. I am happy not to move amendment 20. We will come to that later amendment on the reports that the inspector will publish on the wider system. I entirely take the cabinet secretary’s point about the drafting of amendment 20. The intention was not to make relevant establishments have due regard to every report—that is, to include reports that are published on other establishments—but to ensure that an establishment would have due regard to any report that is published about itself. Does the cabinet secretary agree that there is perhaps space to agree something for stage 3 to ensure that a school gives due regard to any inspectorate report about that school?

The SDS submission makes interesting points about the proposed new definition of an apprenticeship in the bill. Essentially, is it based on—it is certainly aligned with—the one that the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board settled on in 2019.

However, there have been quite a few developments since then. The board has done a lot of work on the definition of an apprenticeship to make sure that there is alignment with Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership qualifications, for example.

That concern about the definition has not particularly been reflected in the submissions from external organisations that I have seen—the focus is much more on the definition of a private provider. I would be interested to hear whether the RSE or Prosper have a view on the definition of an apprenticeship and whether you think that what is in the bill is adequate to capture that, or whether we should take a more comprehensive approach or perhaps set more specific standards?

In that case, I will come back in on later themes, if that is okay, convener.

Is that the same for RSE?