Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Official Report 439KB pdf
Contents
Legacy Paper
Under item 5, we will briefly consider the legacy paper from session 5, which members have all received copies of. The committee is asked to thank the session 5 Education and Skills Committee for its legacy paper—as is appropriate—and to note the paper for now and agree to consider it as part of our forthcoming work programme discussion under the next agenda item. Does anyone wish to speak or do we all agree to do that?
Since the legacy report was produced, there has been a major and highly critical intervention from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Its report details 10 years of botched reform and bureaucracy that has put teachers under pressure and failed young people. I do not know about other committee members, but I certainly found it embarrassing to read the 150-page document, especially given that many of the OECD’s suggestions were recommended by the Education and Skills Committee in the previous session. Those suggestions were resisted and ridiculed by the SNP Government for years.
Opposition members on the committee in the previous session were accused of politicking, of making baseless criticisms and of talking Scotland down, but we now know that those concerns were, in fact, true and that the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney, was putting his political future ahead of our young people. It is no wonder that the SNP was so keen to keep the report secret ahead of the election.
The material change in circumstances, to borrow a phrase, reframes many of the discussions that we had in the previous session and demands a different approach from the Government. It is therefore vital that we explore in detail the concerns that the OECD has highlighted before we revisit the legacy paper in its totality. I am content to leave that discussion to the work programme agenda item, which will be in private, but I wanted to make those points in the public session.
It is only fair that I invite other committee members to respond to that, if they wish to.
I am a new member of the committee, so I will look at the legacy paper carefully. We have agreed to take in private our work programme agenda item, which is the convention not just in this committee but across all committees. I was really pleased with the tone that you set in your initial remarks, convener, and I hope that Mr Mundell might reflect on his tone. That said, our committee will look at not only this OECD report but the further report on assessments and certification later in the year. That should go without saying, but Mr Mundell felt the need to raise the issue. I respect that but, moving forward, I hope that we can work collegiately and non-tribally, as the convener suggested. I hope that we can all live up to that.
As no one else wishes to speak, I will ask the question again. I might have already got past this point. If I have, forgive me—I am a new convener, so Bob Doris and I have something in common: we are both new to this whole thing. Do we agree to note the legacy paper and to consider it as part of our work programme discussion under our next agenda item?
Members indicated agreement.
That concludes the public part of the committee’s first meeting. We now move into private to consider the work programme.
09:29 Meeting continued in private until 10:46.