Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Official Report 931KB pdf

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Education

The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-04920, in the name of Tavish Scott, on education. I call Tavish Scott to speak to and move the motion.

14:41  

On Monday, I witnessed Whiteness primary school’s senior pupils performing “Henry VIII”. The play has a lot to say about politics at the moment, but I particularly enjoyed the blood-curdling decapitations that took place in the classroom. I am not proposing decapitation today, but surgery is certainly needed, both on the role that central Government plays in our schools and on how exams are set and marked in Scotland.

This week, the Government’s main education quango helped that analysis enormously. In “Quality and improvement in Scottish education 2012-2016”, Education Scotland’s chief executive published his interpretation of his own inspectors’ reports into Scotland’s schools. For the record, Dr Bill Maxwell is both Her Majesty’s chief inspector of education in Scotland and the chief executive of Education Scotland. He retires in June, and I wish him well. The chief executive is responsible both for what happens in the classroom and for inspecting the quality of teaching in our schools. Those two roles have not previously been and cannot continue to be in the same organisation. If ever a report graphically illustrated that Education Scotland’s policy and guidance functions and school inspections functions must be separated, it is the one that I have just mentioned.

Dr Maxwell’s introduction to the report could have been written by Mr Swinney, because it is a restatement of Government policy, not a hard-nosed assessment of Scottish education with recommendations for all involved. By any objective assessment, four out of the six curriculum for excellence implementation years were not well managed—2012 to 2016, on which the report is based. However, the report makes no observations about the roles of Education Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority or the curriculum for excellence management board. Instead, there is a tendency to blame schools for any failings. I will cite just three examples.

The report states:

“Evidence gathered from inspection shows that schools now need to put in place better arrangements for assessing and tracking children’s progress, including having a shared understanding of standards within Curriculum for Excellence levels.”

Whose fault is it that schools’

“understanding of standards within Curriculum for Excellence levels”

has been problematic? The answer is given in the 2015 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective”, which specifically questions the

“complexity of the layers and dimensions”

of CFE. CFE has four capacities, 12 attributes, 24 capabilities and 1,820 experiences and outcomes statements, with 1,488 in the eight curriculum areas and 332 in the three interdisciplinary areas. I could go on, especially as Education Scotland admits to presiding over the accrual of more than 20,000 pages of advice to schools. Why did the inspectorate not question the effectiveness of that mountain of paper? Was it because those 20,000 pages were produced by the same office? Before the Deputy First Minister says that it is all fixed, a teacher pointed out to me at the weekend that, last week, Education Scotland published its six new curriculum benchmarks to add to the two drafts on literacy and numeracy that it issued last August. That brings the new, streamlined CFE advice that has been issued to schools just this session to 348 pages.

I am grateful to Mr Scott for giving way. As he goes through the information about benchmarks, would he acknowledge that the number of pages that he has cited relates to the entire curriculum experience of a young person from the age of five to the age of 16 and that it covers various stages across various curricular areas, not all of which will be relevant to the needs and perspectives of every teacher in our schools?

Yes. There is much in that argument, although I suspect that it would be inordinately helpful to teachers the length and breadth of the country if the Deputy First Minister, rather than making the argument that he has just given, could give clarity on the numbers. I suspect that that would be welcomed by the Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee as well. However, the broad point that he makes is, of course, correct.

Those 348 pages have been issued by Education Scotland to provide that clarity. The new benchmarks in one of the areas that are the responsibility of all teachers—health and wellbeing—are published in three categories, and there are 70 pages of new reading in that single curriculum area alone. Mr Swinney has often chided me, saying that information is not for all teachers, but in this case it is for all teachers. My question to the Government and Education Scotland is how that lives up to the claim that

“Benchmarks draw together and streamline a wide range of previous assessment guidance”.

Perhaps the Deputy First Minister could tell the Parliament how many of the 20,000 pages have now gone.

Secondly, the report says:

“Improving the consistency of learning and teaching needs to be a key priority for all secondary schools.”

Some teachers put it to me the other day that Education Scotland has something of a brass neck saying that, given its inability to ensure curricular consistency in the implementation of curriculum for excellence.

The final point that I want to pick up from the report is about this statement:

“Towards the end of the period covered by this report”—

that is, in 2016—

“we found that many schools were indeed re-visiting the design of their S1 to S3 curriculum in the light of the experience they had gained of designing new senior phase programmes.”

That so many schools are revisiting the design is in large part due to the vague and contradictory advice that they feel they have received from Education Scotland.

The chief inspector said on Monday that schools do not

“yet provide all children and young people with consistently high-quality learning”.

His report warns that, unless that is tackled,

“we will not achieve the national ambition of excellence and equity”.

However, which Government quango has been responsible for implementing curriculum for excellence since 2011? The answer is Education Scotland, which is led, of course, by the chief inspector. His final, main recommendation is on better implementation of curriculum for excellence. Which education body has been charged by four successive Scottish National Party education cabinet secretaries with implementing CFE? The answer is Education Scotland.

I suggest to the Government that the Deputy First Minister’s governance review needs to start right here, with his own quango. We must separate the implementation of curriculum for excellence from evaluation, put policy and guidance into the ministerial office and have intelligent educationists working constructively with schools, encouraging school clusters and the essential links to colleges and universities with vocational courses. We must make the inspection of education quite separate. The inspectorate must be an independent body of people who look objectively at the success of the education system and the schools within it, rather than looking over their shoulders because their Education Scotland colleagues are responsible for the guidance that they are assessing.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority also needs reform. Its effectiveness was questioned by the Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee because of the inherent contradiction in the multivarious roles that it is asked to carry out. It is an arm of Government; a regulator; a monopoly provider of a service for which it charges money; and, indeed, an exporter.

As CFE has been introduced, the Scottish Qualifications Authority has been responsible for new exams. That work should have been done in conjunction with Education Scotland and other parts of Government. Why was the inevitable impact on teachers, pupils and schools not closely monitored? The reality is that there has been an unsustainable increase in teacher workload, a breakdown in trust between the SQA and teachers and a threat of industrial action.

The SQA’s chief executive, Janet Brown, told the committee that the SQA finds communication

“an extremely complicated and challenging area”.—[Official Report, Education and Skills Committee, 23 November 2016; c 6.]

Teachers cite SQA websites and online resources as being barely adequate, and difficult and time consuming to navigate. Communication is not difficult. Of course it needs concerted action and attention, but we suggest that, if the SQA cannot get that right, the Deputy First Minister must again step in. Sorting that out must be a priority.

The case for real reform is not just about schools and local councils, as the Government has so far described it. It is about the education secretary’s own quangos. He should reform the SQA and split up Education Scotland’s functions—functions that it should be fulfilling for the benefit of education, for schools and for pupils.

I move,

That the Parliament understands that the Scottish Government’s next steps document on educational governance is to be published in June 2017 and, in advance of this, calls for the inspection and policy functions of Education Scotland to be separated and for a reorganisation of the SQA in recognition of the concerns expressed by the teaching profession to the Education and Skills Committee.

14:50  

The debate must be set in the context of our determination to improve performance in Scottish education. We have a good education system, with hard-working and committed teachers and early years practitioners who are working day in, day out to support children to succeed. It serves neither the country nor our children and young people to ignore the many positive achievements that are being made.

More young people are achieving excellent exam results than ever before. The number of advanced higher passes last year reached an all-time high, and the number of higher passes surpassed 150,000 for only the second time. The choices that the Government has made mean that more children and young people from deprived communities now leave school with at least one higher or the equivalent. The proportion of young people who leave school for positive destinations reached a record high in 2015-16.

Does the Deputy First Minister recognise the work of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which has discussed positive destinations and said that we should be cautious about using them as a signifier of excellence, as some destinations might be low-paid, zero-hours jobs with little prospect in terms of education? Will he undertake to consider what the positive destinations actually are for many young people in our communities?

The positive destinations analysis has been a reasonably long-term assessment of trends that has spanned many years. In the labour market strategy, we are concentrating on the issues that Johann Lamont appropriately raises to improve the quality of employment that is available in our society.

The progress in education that I have talked about is not an accident. At the heart of much of that progress are contributions from a range of organisations, including strong contributions from Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. As the OECD said in its review of the implementation of curriculum for excellence,

“Education Scotland has been a linchpin in providing the guidance resources and quality assurance”

that have been necessary for that change. Education Scotland has also been instrumental in taking forward my recent priorities of decluttering the curriculum and reducing teacher workload to ensure that our teachers are free to focus on providing valuable experiences for young people.

The arguments for establishing Education Scotland’s dual functions—of inspection and of curriculum and pedagogical advice—were designed to ensure that the findings of inspection directly influence improvement in curriculum development and vice versa. That rationale is important to consider today.

Education Scotland also has a role in providing effective challenge to and scrutiny of the Government. Its publication earlier this week, which Tavish Scott quoted extensively, is clear in highlighting strengths but also areas for improvement in Scottish education. As members will be aware, Dr Bill Maxwell, HM chief inspector of education in Scotland, has announced his forthcoming retirement, and I record my thanks for the significant contribution that he has made to the leadership and improvement of education in Scotland.

As a national education body, the SQA is properly within the scope of the governance review, as is Education Scotland. I put that point on the record to contradict what Tavish Scott said. Education Scotland and the SQA are both within the scope of the governance review that the Scottish Government is undertaking. Having said that, I have always made it clear that a national examinations body will be needed.

The SQA has played a key role in the implementation of curriculum for excellence. It focuses on ensuring that our young people can rely on the agency to give authoritative and accredited qualifications, which are essential for assessing the performance of young people.

I acknowledge that the performance of all agencies must be effective. I recognise that the SQA has made errors in the past, and I have made it clear to the SQA chief executive that there is no room for error. The SQA accepts that and is addressing that.

Although we must promote the whole record and the positives of organisations, as I reiterated in my comments a moment ago, the Government is undertaking a governance review that takes into its scope the SQA and Education Scotland. That is why the Government amendment proposes that we seriously consider the issues that the Lib Dems are raising in today’s debate. The governance review is looking at the role of all the constituent parts of our education system in delivering excellence and equity in education. It is focused on promoting and developing the crucial culture of collaboration across the education system that will help to drive innovation in Scottish education.

I do not want to pre-empt that consideration today. However, I assure Parliament that the governance review will focus on ensuring that the Scottish Government and other national bodies provide the right support to deliver the empowered and flexible education system that we want. It will support the empowerment of schools and assist in building their capacity to drive improvement and raise the attainment and achievement of children and young people.

Our reforms will be based on the best evidence of what will work and what will empower schools. There will not be a top-down, prescriptive approach. Our reforms will put children and young people at the heart of Scottish education. We will bring forward changes that are focused on processes, not structures, and which are flexible and able to adapt to change. We will build capacity, encourage open dialogue and stakeholder involvement, take a whole-system approach and harness evidence and research to inform policy.

The Government is committed to taking forward a reform agenda that ensures that young people are well supported in their education in every locality of the country. That involves looking at the roles of our education bodies, which is why the Government amendment is set out in the way that it is. The approach must take into account the actions and involvement of all aspects of the education system, so that young people in Scotland have a guarantee that they are operating in a world-class education system.

I move amendment S5M-04920.1, to insert after “calls for”:

“serious consideration to be given to”.

14:56  

John Swinney made it abundantly clear last week, in responding to a poor inspection report on Argyll and Bute Council, that when it comes to improving standards in Scottish schools,

“the status quo is not an option.”

We whole-heartedly agree with him not just on new measures to reform school governance and tackle the attainment gap, such as standardised testing, but on reforming the education agencies that are in charge of our schools, the justification for which has been an important focus for the Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee.

John Swinney made an interesting speech on 2 June 2016, not long after he became Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, when he described teachers as experiencing a “mystery tour” with regard to the curriculum for excellence. Again, he was right, but let us deal with exactly what that has meant for teachers, why it has happened and, most important, what should be done about it.

In doing so, I refer to the compelling evidence that is out there. There is the formal evidence that the Education and Skills Committee heard over several weeks. I know that John Swinney does not think that that evidence was particularly balanced, but it must be considered in the context of other evidence that we took in private, the evidence in the OECD report, the evidence from Education Scotland’s report this week and the surveys that the teaching unions and professional associations have undertaken, which, taken together, speaks on behalf of many teachers and headteachers across Scotland.

What is alarming—I hope that it is the reason for John Swinney’s recent comments—is that the principal education agencies, which are the SQA and Education Scotland, have allowed the current situation to develop over the past decade, despite all the warnings from the profession. It was a bit rich of Education Scotland to tell us earlier this week that urgent improvement to raise standards is required in five areas, given that the problems in at least four of the areas—and perhaps all five of them—have been created by the education agencies themselves. The problems have been created not by teachers or headteachers but by the very people who are employed by the Scottish Government to oversee the curriculum and the qualifications system.

It is exactly that failure that so frustrates teachers—just as they were frustrated by the accrual of 20,000 sheets of curriculum for excellence guidance, which Tavish Scott mentioned. Let us be clear: the curriculum for excellence was the first major reform of Scottish education to be driven and implemented by civil servants and the education agencies and not by teachers on the ground.

The committee made sharp criticism of Education Scotland; I will pick out three of the most serious concerns. The committee asked why the lines of accountability for decision making are unclear; we asked why there is an absence of a good base of data to assess the progress that has been made with curriculum for excellence; and we were concerned about the conflict of interest in Education Scotland’s role as developer of the curriculum and independent evaluator of its inspection, which I think has no comparable model in other countries.

When those points were put to Education Scotland, what did the committee get in return? We got a 10-page document in which there is no real acknowledgement of the problems or, more important, recommendations for change. Instead, we got sentences such as

“This cycle of improvement is acknowledged widely as the Scottish approach to improvement”—

I do not know what that means—and commitments to have

“a mythbusters campaign via social media”.

That is something that we have to address. We got an outline of the theoretical structures in Education Scotland, but we did not get an outline of what happens in practice, and we got an extraordinary defence of Education Scotland’s role as both judge and jury when it said that

“This status safeguards the independence of its inspection and review function”.

No—it does not, and I am sure that Johann Lamont will outline her exchanges with Education Scotland, which prove exactly why not.

At the time of the merger of Learning and Teaching Scotland and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education—which, incidentally, was not voted on in committee or Parliament—some believed that it was partly a cost-cutting exercise. It seems that, as there are fewer inspections and fewer inspectors—many of whom were seconded last year to help in local authorities—that is a large part of the truth. It cannot be right that the cycle of school inspections is getting ever longer, notwithstanding the changes to inspection.

When the SQA was represented at committee in November last year, it faced strong criticism from teachers and some of the teachers professional associations that the exam structure was weak and not sufficiently well articulated with coursework and, in some cases, prelims. Concerns were expressed about some exams not being sufficiently rigorous, about grade-related criteria, about grade boundaries—especially the disparity across different subjects at advanced higher level—and about marking and the transparency of requests for marking reviews. All of us as MSPs have heard parents of exam candidates raise those issues. We heard concerns about whether the national 4 and national 5 exams are properly structured to meet the needs of a diverse range of pupils and about whether that qualification network is, in some ways, undermining subject choice.

To sum up, with hindsight, it is very clear indeed that Education Scotland and the SQA, via the management board, have not delivered sufficiently well alongside each other. We therefore have a problem with the implementation of curriculum for excellence, which we all agree is the right theme. On that basis, I support the motion in Tavish Scott’s name.

15:02  

Like Liz Smith, I have carefully studied Mr Swinney’s speech last week, in which he declared that

“the status quo is not an option”

in our schools. I agree. The status quo in our schools is too few teachers, too few support staff and class sizes that are far too big, and that cannot go on. The status quo in our school system is also two Government bodies—Education Scotland and the SQA—that are, at best, failing to deliver and, at worst, dysfunctional.

The cabinet secretary said that his governance review included Education Scotland and the SQA in its scope. That is absolutely true, although Tavish Scott is right that it is quite hard to find them in there. Let us look at what some of the respondents to the governance review had to say about them. The Educational Institute of Scotland said this about Education Scotland:

“The EIS has concerns ... over the increasingly politicised role of Education Scotland ... With the role of the Inspectorate having been brought closer to Government, questions remain about the independence of the inspection process and its relationship to government policy, and concerns have emerged more recently regarding the capacity of Education Scotland to provide sound, evidence-based advice to inform government policy.”

That is pretty damning. It is reflected too in the submission from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which says,

“There is concern that Education Scotland’s role has become increasingly politicised, with the implication that it prioritises the needs of Government over those of schools and teachers”,

and,

“where Education Scotland carries out the development work and has responsibility for evaluating those developments ... Its independence as an evaluator needs to be questioned”.

That too is fairly damning but, as Tavish Scott pointed out, we can look to what Education Scotland itself says in its role as the schools inspectorate. In Bill Maxwell’s valedictory report this week, he points out that school provision for pupils is very variable, that 23 per cent of secondaries and 26 per cent of primaries have “important weaknesses”, or strengths that only just outweigh weaknesses. That is hardly a glowing report. As Mr Scott pointed out, it is a report on Bill Maxwell himself, because, as chief inspector, he reports on Education Scotland, of which he is, of course, the chief executive. I fear that he rather damns himself by his own faint praise. We must ask ourselves on what he bases his assessment, because at the weekend we also discovered that, last year, only one in 18 schools was inspected. One element of Education Scotland’s responsibility seems to be disappearing.

As for the SQA, the Education and Skills Committee has received strong evidence from teachers that they no longer trust our exam body. In one submission, the committee was told:

“I am afraid that my current experience of the SQA is almost entirely negative ... Documentation is highly complex, repetitive and difficult to access”.

There have been failures by the SQA in maths, geography and computer studies exams, to name but a few. The cabinet secretary spoke of the decluttering of assessments but, at the moment, the SQA is making rather a hash of the change that has come about because of his decision to remove the unit assessments from national 4 and national 5. Let us not forget, either, the SQA’s decision to push the cost of appeals on to schools and local authorities, which has led to a massive drop in the number of pupils who can benefit from appeals or re-marks. That is affecting pupils in the state sector disproportionately and unfairly.

It seems clear that reform is needed. With Education Scotland, the reform that is needed is obvious: it is the splitting of functions. With the SQA, the required reform is perhaps less clear, but the organisation has certainly suffered a loss of experienced staff, and there are questions to be answered about the balance of its income-generating work and the work that it does for the Scottish exam system. We need a review of the SQA, and we need the certainty of knowing that reform will take place.

Although I acknowledge that the Government’s amendment takes seriously the issues that the Liberal Democrats have raised, it is not enough to say that reform will be given “serious consideration”. The Parliament must commit itself to actual reform—Education Scotland must be split and things must be changed at the SQA to make it work—and that is why we will support the Liberal Democrat motion this evening.

We move to the open debate. We are extremely tight for time, so there is no leeway at all on the time limit of four minutes.

15:07  

Last night, when I discussed the topic of the motion with my wife, who is a primary school teacher of 15 years’ experience, she gave me an insight into the mild disdain with which Education Scotland is viewed by educationists at every level in the primary and secondary education sectors. The amassing of 20,000 pages of guidance is a source of derision in itself. Each iteration of the guidance forms the basis of a game of spot the difference in classrooms and staffrooms around the country. Each one is examined and digested by senior management teams at every level in our education sector before heads are scratched as teaching staff grapple with what revelation in the new guidance is different from the previous version. The strength of feeling in that regard was evidenced in last week’s evidence to the Education and Skills Committee.

The policy function of Education Scotland belies the Government’s attempts to centralise, to control and to avoid external scrutiny of the conduct of education in this country. “Leave us alone,” has been the clarion call of teachers and unions at every education hustings that I have been to in my political career. They say, “Allow the curriculum to bed in and let us get on with on it,” but like a hyperactive lab technician, the Government—in tandem with Education Scotland—has sought to tweak and prod at the curriculum in the desperate hope that the next intervention might be the one to stem the slump in our programme for international student assessment scores and our widening attainment gap.

I hear teachers say, “Leave us alone—let the curriculum bed in,” all the time. Does the member not agree that changing the governance structures of the educational bodies would be an example of interference and changing the situation for teachers on the ground, rather than leaving them alone?

Not when that is exactly the intervention that our teachers are asking for.

The most recent example of the Government’s tendency has been the advent of national testing, which has been rejected roundly by teachers across the board, who feel that they will once again be forced to teach to the test.

Across the board, educationists agree that the inspection of our schools should be entirely disaggregated from the guidance-generating machinery of Education Scotland. How else can the inspection regime offer that all-important role as the independent critical friend to the stewardship of education in this country? In effect, what is happening right now is that the Scottish Government and Education Scotland are marking their own homework, and that has to stop.

Furthermore, if we are truly to reverse the worrying decline in education standards in this country, we must reform not just Education Scotland but the Scottish Qualifications Authority. All of us will remember the anxiety and stress that we endured when we sat life-qualifying exams in our teens, so we can only imagine the terror of the young people who sat last year’s higher geography exam, which teachers described as the worst ever and as nothing like the specimen. It came hot on the heels of the worst higher maths exam in living memory just a couple of years previously. The most important thing about this is the impact on schools in deprived communities, where young people’s resilience when sitting these very traumatic life-qualifying exams can take a real knock if the first question on the paper is on something that they have never been taught.

The repetition of such a situation, which has a clear and demonstrable impact on the mental health and wellbeing of young people at what is a critical crossroads in their lives, should serve as proof, if any were needed, that the structures and governance of our qualifications system are in dire need of reform. Indeed, we saw that most recently in the roll-out of the unpopular national testing that I mentioned earlier.

You must come to a close, please.

I will, Presiding Officer. This is symptomatic of the Government’s approach of measurement, meddling and micromanagement, and I am therefore quite happy to support the motion in the name of my friend and colleague Tavish Scott and to ask Parliament to follow suit.

15:11  

In my contribution, I will concentrate on the first part of the Liberal Democrat motion, which refers to inspections.

As a member of the Education and Skills Committee, I was interested in asking Education Scotland about the inspectorate when it appeared before us at the end of last year. In my mind, the main questions about inspections were about the workload and stress that they have traditionally resulted in, but we were assured by the current chief inspector, Alastair Delaney, that the method of inspections was changing, with more emphasis on support and advice on classroom practice and less of the sort of walking around with a clipboard and making judgments based on documentation and copious written evidence that we had for many years.

I must admit that I was sceptical. I know many teachers—indeed, Mr Cole-Hamilton is not the only person who is married to a teacher—and their experience of inspections has not always been positive, as was reflected in some of the submissions that we received from teachers based on historical inspections. However, when a school in my constituency has an inspection, I take it upon myself to go and speak to the headteacher about their experience, so I have some up-to-date evidence from my constituency that the inspection method is improving. Recently, two of my local primary schools underwent inspections that both headteachers said were a vastly more positive experience for the schools than inspections in the past have been. It is important that we monitor that and ensure that that is the trajectory.

From the evidence that the committee has gathered, there seems to be a disconnect between the value that headteachers place on inspections and the value that classroom teachers place on them, with classroom teachers feeling that there is less value to be had from them. Why might that be the case?

I have heard that kind of stuff, too, and I think that it is a cultural thing. The previous inspections regime was so onerous—and I will say more about this in a moment—that there is a disconnect with the inspectorate’s message that it is there to help teachers develop, instead of taking a clipboard approach. That message has yet to percolate through, and it is incumbent on local authorities and headteachers to get it down to classroom level.

Another issue that has been raised by the Liberal Democrats is the conflict of interest in having the inspectorate as part of Education Scotland. I am not wholly convinced by the argument; I can see what they mean on the face of it, but I do not think that there is a pressing case for separation and going back to having two separate bodies. Education Scotland provides insight into the practical implementation of education policy through its school inspection programme and other quality assurance activities at school and local authority level. Scotland is not alone in taking that approach; Norway has a similar body that takes an integrated approach to curriculum development, learning and teaching, and inspection. It builds on a three-tier approach to quality assurance that puts practitioner self-evaluation at the heart of things, which is only right. As a former education practitioner, I know that self-evaluation and peer evaluation are among the most effective ways of carrying out continuing professional development.

As it stands, Education Scotland does not determine the design or the content of the curriculum that is being inspected—that is the SQA’s job. Rather, Education Scotland takes that curriculum and develops it in partnership with local authorities, teachers and the inspectors. The inspections are part and parcel of that development. If inspections truly are moving away from the culture of judgment and are, as committee witnesses and teaching practitioners to whom I have spoken have suggested, becoming more of a professional development tool, separating the inspectors from Education Scotland might be a backwards step for Scottish education. To be honest, there are probably more pressing issues, such as getting the message across that the culture of inspections has changed wholly—Ross Greer mentioned that issue—rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and going back to an HMIE-type situation.

15:15  

Education should serve two functions: it should enrich the minds of students and prepare them for the modern workforce. My colleague Liz Smith said that recent evidence to the Education and Skills Committee had not made for happy reading. Having spent the past few days reading much of that evidence, I could not agree more. Not getting our agencies right has a knock-on effect on the output of our education system.

On Monday this week, I met DigitalEurope, which is the trade body that represents the technology sectors across Europe. I was told about the major problem of a shortage of suitably skilled graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which will have a knock-on effect on our ability to grow the digital economy in Scotland.

In light of the fact that there is already a shortage of computer science teachers in Scotland, a number of other things in the evidence to the Education and Skills Committee worried me. For example, the national 5 computing exam had coding errors in it, and STEM subjects and exams have become increasingly technical and have faced increased scrutiny. For example, some 20,000 people signed a petition to complain about the higher maths and national 5 maths exams, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh has expressed concern that the structure of secondary 4 compromised subject choice. That surely must compromise opportunity as well.

Any lack of confidence in the quality, fairness or even the delivery of our exam systems undermines the opportunities for those who are coming out of those systems. Exams are not just statistics, letters, scores and percentages; they should deliver skills and knowledge as well as qualifications. For example, DigitalEurope said that although there are certainly a lot of people coming out of the education system with technical skills, very few of them have business acumen to go with those skills. Coding and programming skills are not good enough on their own; people also need management, financial and legal skills and knowledge.

How can we expect employers to have confidence in our exam process when our teachers are questioning it? There is clear evidence to suggest that the relationship between teachers and the SQA is not working as well as it should. A number of people have raised concerns about the additional workload that the curriculum for excellence has placed on teachers. Janet Brown mentioned that at one committee meeting. The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association showed that 65 per cent of respondents to a survey did not believe that the guidance and support around the curriculum for excellence provide the support that is needed to build a world-class curriculum in Scotland.

There are overarching structural problems, too. Education Scotland is structured in a way that means that it is in charge of policy delivery, implementation and then assessing its own quality. As someone suggested earlier, it is not just the judge and jury, it is also the defendant. Is there a conflict of interest there? Lindsay Paterson, who is professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh, seemed to suggest so, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh is concerned about that conflict. Keir Bloomer of Reform Scotland said that being responsible for both development and inspection has created

“a fundamental conflict of interest”.

Those people are the experts. Surely we must listen to them.

The Lib Dem motion calls for

“the inspection and policy functions of Education Scotland to be separated and for a reorganisation of the SQA”.

There is merit in that. If education is such a priority for the Government, I urge it to consider that proposal.

15:19  

I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate—albeit briefly—and I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing the issue to the chamber.

I hope that the Scottish Government will commit to focusing more rigorously on education in the coming period, given the significant mandate that it has in relation to the issue. My greatest regret, following the two-day debate that we had about the referendum, is the opportunity costs that there will be over the next period as a result of the focus that the Government has chosen. There is a danger that all of Scotland’s talent in Government, local government and the civil service, as well as the talent in civic Scotland, will be focused on an imagined future, not the real and fundamental challenges that we face in creating an education system that matches our ambitions for the people of Scotland. Instead of making the tough choices that I believe need to be made, the Government will settle for what keeps everyone happy because of a putative vote in a couple of years’ time.

The Scottish Government needs to fully acknowledge the challenges presented to it by the Education and Skills Committee’s evidence on education bodies, much of which has already been rehearsed. Central to the issue is hearing what teachers and other education professionals—people working in schools—say, rather than seeking to explain away what they say. The Deputy First Minister quite rightly talks about the importance of valuing staff and recognising the job that they do every day. However, the first principle of that involves listening to what they say about the barriers that they face in trying to do their jobs. That would be real respect. Rather than trying to explain away what staff are saying, it would be better for the Government to try to understand properly why so many people across education are so exercised.

There is an issue about the profound lack of clarity about the responsibility of individual education bodies and who is accountable. The evidence demonstrates that there is a lot of buck passing. In a world in which all are responsible, ultimately none is responsible. Indeed, Education Scotland says that, with regard to the extent to which it has authority over policy, there are a lot of action points for discussion by the management board of the curriculum for excellence. We need better than action points for discussion; we need someone to get a grip of some of these issues.

The dual role of Education Scotland has been highlighted already. I recommend that people read the Official Report of the exchange on that matter between me and the head of Education Scotland. There is a dilemma. Education Scotland gives the Government private advice that is not known to the rest of us; it has a responsibility to implement policy, regardless of whether it thinks that the policy is wise; and, ultimately, it has the responsibility to inspect the impact of the policy, a role that many education academics have said is a major weakness. That really needs to be addressed.

We are in a position in which the body that is implementing Government policy is not then looking at and testing the merits of the policy, but is looking at its implementation. It is impossible to conceive of a way in which that body could then say to Government that the Government is wrong. The evidence is that it says instead that the teachers do not understand and that there is a problem in communication. Maybe, sometimes, there is a problem with the policy, but it is not clear how that message would get back to the Government. Indeed, it is not clear how confident education professionals would be to say that the policy was the problem rather than the degree of guidance. The Government needs to address that fundamental issue.

There is institutional protection going on. The instinct is to say, “They have a problem. They did not agree with us. There is a conservative lack of desire for change.”

You must close, please.

That is not good enough. We know that people are trying to do their best. I believe that the proposed change in the role of Education Scotland would play a part in addressing the problem.

15:24  

Our education agencies play a vital role in ensuring that pupils get a strong education. Their performance has a real impact. As members are aware, the Education and Skills Committee has recently been scrutinising quite substantially the performance of the SQA and Education Scotland. We have listened to teachers, parents, other experts and the agencies themselves. Only this morning, we discussed the response of the agencies to our report and, quite rightly, it has been a pretty dismal experience. It is clear that improvement urgently needs to be made and that neither Education Scotland nor the SQA is willing fully to acknowledge the problems.

What we heard from teachers were significant concerns about the way in which those agencies function. It is clear that they do not feel that they can raise their concerns openly with either agency. Trust in the SQA, in particular, has completely broken down. Based on the evidence received by the committee, it is disappointing that the Government’s education governance review has not focused more closely on the role that the education agencies play—although I heard the cabinet secretary’s comments in that regard earlier.

From the evidence that we gathered, we felt that there was a serious cause for concern about the SQA: there has been a breakdown in trust with teachers, there have been errors in exam papers and the approach to feedback was akin to a defensive corporate public relations exercise. In fact, I believe that, from a freedom of information request made by Iain Gray, we found that defensive corporate PR was exactly what was going on.

We have heard of a geography exam being described by teachers as the “worst ever”, a computer science exam that contained errors from back to front—which I had to pursue through this Parliament—and a maths exam said by students to be “impossible”. Teachers have reported excessively high workloads created by huge amounts of complex and inconsistent documentation over which neither Education Scotland nor the SQA has kept sufficient control. One physics teacher cited 81 pages of guidance, spread across five different documents, available through different parts of the glow website. Guidance has been updated several times already, for courses that have been running for only a few years. We cannot say that that is an acceptable situation for our teachers.

The SQA’s response to the committee’s report has been far from adequate. I described it this morning as defensive, filled with platitudes and simply restating its structures and processes—as other members have already mentioned—but not addressing the concerns that our committee raised. It has committed itself to further engagement with teachers and to reviewing some of its working practices, but has not yet substantively addressed the causes of many of the problems. Far more needs to be done to repair the trust between the SQA and teachers.

As Tavish Scott’s motion highlights, concerns have also been raised repeatedly about the dual role of Education Scotland in both developing CFE and inspecting its implementation in schools. A majority of the teachers who responded to the committee told us that they felt that inspections added either little or nothing to their school’s performance—that inspections do not grasp the realities of the school, as measures are taken simply to improve appearances for inspections. That is like the story about the Queen believing that everywhere smells of fresh paint.

That stands in pretty stark contrast to Education Scotland’s own review, which stated that headteachers overwhelmingly value inspections—which was the point that I made in my intervention to Gillian Martin’s speech. It appears that the further from the classroom you are, the more you value the inspections. That is not good enough.

It is concerning that Education Scotland’s primary response to those concerns was to launch a media campaign, in its words

“to correct any misconceptions about inspections”.

We need to ensure that school inspections have the confidence of all teachers in the classroom—not just headteachers. I believe that there is a strong case to split the functions of Education Scotland and that that should be further explored, for the reasons that Tavish Scott outlined.

I have no interest in last-minute theatrics in this debate. The Greens will support the Government’s amendment because we believe that Tavish Scott’s proposal should be explored further, but that we should not yet make an absolute commitment to it. We will hold the Government to its commitment to consider the proposal seriously, because solving the real education issues in Scotland cannot be kicked into the long grass. We will not allow the Government to do that.

The last contribution in the open debate is from Fulton MacGregor.

15:28  

First, I would like to apologise for my hoarse voice. I have had the flu that has been going around—or, as I have been told by my partner several times this week, the man flu. Apparently, she had it a couple of weeks ago and was neither up nor down, which says it all really.

As has been said many times, there are improvements to be made to the Scottish education system. The governance review is a key part of making those improvements. The OECD is right when it says that schools and communities should be at the heart of our education system and I welcome the Government’s response in launching the review. I am pleased to hear the level of contribution to the review that has already taken place, with a number of responses having been received to date. I encourage everyone to get involved and to put forward their views. The review will consider the role of every part of the education system, including national agencies, and we are committed to ensuring that young people and parents have confidence in all parts of the system.

Decisions about a child’s learning should absolutely be made as close as possible to the child and by the people who are closest to the child. The review is about getting it right for every child and, at its heart, is the presumption that as many decisions as possible should be taken at school level—a decentralisation, right to the heart of our communities. For that reason, the Government’s pupil equity fund is a welcome step in the right direction, as it puts money into the hands of headteachers to invest in raising attainment based on the needs of their pupils.

My own local authority has garnered some media attention lately. It has received an investment of almost £9 million but the Labour council, rather than supporting headteachers and allowing them to invest as they see fit, has instructed all schools to hand over a large portion of the money to it to pay staffing costs. The situation has been well documented and is completely unacceptable. Once again, I call on the council to reverse that outrageous cash grab.

I am delighted to be a member of a party that is putting education first and working day in, day out to raise attainment for the most disadvantaged in our society—[Interruption.] I do not know why Labour and the Tories seem to find that funny. Better Together is obviously re-forming just now, so it is fair enough—[Interruption.]

I will tell members what is not funny. My constituency—

Will the member take an intervention?

No—there is not a lot of time.

My constituency contains some of the most deprived areas in Scotland, according to the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, and it voted yes in the referendum—Johann Lamont mentioned the referendum. It is an area that wants change and wants to see everybody doing better, so the Government’s investment to help young people has been very much welcomed by the schools, some of which are rated 50 per cent higher than the SIMD threshold.

Will the member take an intervention?

I do not have time.

Education Scotland already runs independently of Government, but I would support a review of the processes that are in place—as Ross Greer and other members mentioned—to ensure that things are being done as well as they can be.

The SQA has had its problems and those should be addressed, but we should support it as it attempts to make the necessary improvements to improve attainment. The SQA is already committed to working closely with teachers to develop new qualifications. It is reviewing its approach to engagement and communication with teachers, and it will work to ensure that its relationship with the profession reflects the mutual trust and support that it and teachers have enjoyed throughout the SQA’s history.

I have made this point previously in debates, as other members have, but it is worth reinforcing: in aiming to improve education in Scotland, we must all support those who work in our schools and who strive to provide quality education for our young people. We have a lot to be proud of in Scotland. More of our population is educated beyond school level than is the case in any other European country, and young people from the most deprived areas are now more likely to participate in higher education than they were 10 years ago. A higher number of young people than ever before leave school for positive destinations—

The member must close.

Those are just some of the positives, which we should all welcome. I put on record again my appreciation of the teachers and assistants involved.

15:32  

As many members have mentioned, John Swinney, in a recent speech, said:

“the status quo is not an option.”

I not only think that he is right but will go further and say that the status quo is never an option. We need to review and modernise our public services constantly to respond to changing public demand and need, and that is especially true of education.

However, when we propose reform, we must have vision and evidence that leads to prescription—a vision of what the world should look like, and evidence of why change is needed and why the proposed reforms will improve the situation. Unfortunately, the emphasis to date has been on particular structural reforms without evidence or any particular explanation.

I appreciate the change in emphasis that we have heard today and the acknowledgement that we have to look at these bodies and institutions. More importantly, however, it must be acknowledged that the status quo in education has been created by the Scottish National Party Government. Its reforms have created the burden on teachers, who have had to make sense of curriculum for excellence and make it work. It is the Government’s reforms to the qualifications that teachers have struggled to make work, and it is the Government’s changes that have led teachers to feel unsupported and left them struggling with the guidance and help that have been provided.

SQA and Education Scotland have been central to those reforms, and they are also culpable for those faults, which need to be looked at. That is why this debate is so important and why I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing it to the chamber.

I hope that the Government considers its amendment, because the issues that have been revealed through the work of the Education and Skills Committee and in the wider discussions are important and need to be addressed.

In the four minutes that I have, I do not pretend that I can cover everything that members have said in the debate, but the issues can be summarised under four key headings.

First, there are clear issues with responsiveness and transparency in both the SQA and Education Scotland. As Liz Smith put it, those bodies have, to be frank, just not been listening, which has led to—as Iain Gray put it—a lack of trust. Given that those bodies are responsible for devising and implementing the curriculum and for administering our qualifications, trust is critical, and the current lack of it is dire.

Secondly, there is a real issue around the guidance and support supplied by both of those agencies to teachers, which has led to an increased workload. Tavish Scott did an excellent job of illustrating the sheer complexity. It is ironic that the SQA, in its defence, has said that information technology has made things much more complicated. It must be the only organisation in the world to complain that IT makes communication more difficult, not less.

Thirdly, there are issues around design, coherence and implementation and with the complexity of the transition from broad, general education into the senior phase. As Lindsay Paterson set out in his evidence to the committee, that has led to an inherent narrowing of the curriculum, reducing the number of subjects that pupils and students take through to secondary 4. In an education system that has prided itself on its breadth, that is of serious concern.

The fourth issue is the measurement and tracking of success. As the OECD pointed out, there simply is not the evidence base to establish how well curriculum for excellence has taken hold. If anyone needs to understand why Education Scotland must have its functions split apart, I would direct them to its response to the Education and Skills Committee, in which it pointed to its own inspection regime as being the measure of whether or not curriculum for excellence has been a success. That is quite simply not plausible—completely glossing over the lack of data and pointing to its own functions is simply not satisfactory. That is why we need the agencies to be reformed, and that is why we need the Government to make a frank acknowledgement of where we are with curriculum for excellence and to acknowledge its role and the evidence when it considers its reforms.

15:36  

I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing forward this debate. When improving educational standards is supposed to be the defining mission of the Government, it is right that we have a frank debate about the real issues in education and thoroughly scrutinise the role of education agencies.

Since the start of this session of Parliament, the Education and Skills Committee, in undertaking a deep dive of the performance of the education agencies, has brought together some stark and compelling evidence. What is so deeply worrying is the huge distrust that exists between our teachers and the principal agencies, Education Scotland and the SQA. Plagued by bureaucracy and inconsistency, the current system is not fit for purpose and needs reform.

Beyond committee evidence, I know from speaking to teachers in my own region, as I am sure all members do, that there are very real concerns about the complications of guidance, the weight of workload and the lack of flexibility and clarity. I hope that the Government, in responding to the debate, will answer Tavish Scott’s point about how many of the 20,000 pages of guidance have actually gone.

One local teacher in my region wrote to me to say:

“And more depressingly this simply adds to our workload. I have to say I am rapidly despairing of hearing any common sense on the whole issue of CfE and how it in any way meets its supposed aims. Sorry to keep saying it but we are facing a further downturn in attainment and it really saddens me to see the situation we are in and the failure to address the real issues.”

Indeed, the OECD examined the guidance and found that it contained, almost like a curriculum for excellence Christmas carol, 12 attributes, 10 aims, eight curriculum areas, seven principles, six entitlements, five levels and four capabilities—all we need next is two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

In just over six months, support for the Scottish Government’s handling of education has fallen another five points, with 56 per cent of people believing that the SNP is not handling education well. It truly is a deeply troubling state of affairs.

In opening for the Conservatives, Liz Smith highlighted inspections. Inspections provide a necessary and informative way of ensuring that the system is watertight and runs effectively. Education Scotland stated in its letter of 16 December 2016 that it anticipates conducting between 115 and 120 inspections in the current financial year. Nonetheless, the number of school inspections will be lower than in 2012-13, and Government statistics show that there has been a 70 per cent drop in the number of inspections taking place since 2004-05.

Yesterday, I obtained figures on school inspections for my own region from the Scottish Parliament information centre. The figures show that, since 2009-10, numbers of inspections have fallen by 57 per cent in Aberdeenshire, from 26 to 11, with only five in the past three years; by 80 per cent in Aberdeen city, with just two completed this year; by 75 per cent in Dundee; and to zero in Angus, where no inspections took place.

As Tavish Scott said in opening the debate, Education Scotland is responsible for what happens in the classroom and the quality of teaching in our schools, and it is a body that assesses its own performance. I listened carefully to Gillian Martin, but I am sure that she would agree that that is equivalent to someone sitting an exam and then being handed it back to mark their own performance. There is an inherent conflict of interest.

Will the member take an intervention?

No—I am in my last minute.

Time and again, the Government comes to Parliament to tell us that its defining mission is education. Fulton MacGregor says that we discuss it day in, day out but, given that education has been discussed only in committee time and in the Parliament only in Opposition time, and that we spent two days of Government time debating independence, I seriously challenge that assertion.

We most certainly know that ministers can talk the talk, but they need to seriously prove that they can walk the walk. It is time for reform and it is time for action, and that is why we will support the motion in the name of Tavish Scott.

15:40  

I want to address a number of the issues that have been raised. The first is Alex Cole-Hamilton’s point about external scrutiny of education. The Government invited the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is renowned across the globe as the strongest interrogator of the performance of education systems in the world, to review curriculum for excellence and its implementation. The OECD did that and confirmed, essentially, that curriculum for excellence is a strong, effective and appropriate reform for Scotland to have undertaken. The OECD also identified a range of improvements that are required to ensure that curriculum for excellence can generate benefit and value as a consequence of the bold decision to implement it. That is the agenda that I am pursuing relentlessly. It underpinned the address that I gave at Queen Margaret University last week and I intend to stick to it, because I have sought external validation of and challenge to our approach. I accept the scale of that challenge and am now proceeding to address it.

One of the challenges that I face in progressing the agenda—I do not think that this will be a revelation to anyone in the chamber—is that not everybody in education agrees on the right thing to do. Therefore, in the debate that has been marshalled today, many of the opinions that members of Parliament have set out will be vigorously contested by commentators outside Parliament, including in the education system. I do not say that to criticise anyone; I simply have to reflect the fact that there are different and disparate views. I have to chart a course through them in order to try to address the issues.

On the separation of inspection from other Education Scotland functions, who can Mr Swinney pray in aid as supporting the current position?

That is part of the exercise that I am going through to make a determination on the issues. I come back to the rationale that I set out in my opening speech: the thinking behind linking the inspectorate function and the policy function is that that ensures that what we learn in inspection informs policy and that what we learn in policy informs inspection. In the alternative scenario, in which there are separate policy and inspection functions, the teaching profession would perhaps be uncertain about where guidance and certainty on the direction of education would come from. Would they come from the policy function or the inspection function? If those functions had different perspectives and there was no cross-fertilisation with other opinions, the teaching profession could have uncertainty. That is one of the issues that I am wrestling with as I consider these matters.

Johann Lamont and a number of other members asked whether we are listening to staff, and Liz Smith referred to my comments about the education system being a “mystery tour” for the profession. Those are the reasons why the curriculum guidance was issued in August last year, to what I think has been a pretty strong and positive reaction from the teaching profession. Further, the benchmarks have been published to make crystal clear to everybody at every level in the education system the levels that we are trying to get young people to achieve. That is crucial because it will, at the end of the broad general phase of education, be the foundation for the senior phase of education. The interaction between the work of Education Scotland and that of the Scottish Qualifications Authority is crucial in ensuring that learning in the broad general phase of education establishes strong foundations for the senior phase. That is the central argument that we are having today.

Does the cabinet secretary accept that one of the reasons for the reaction to the recent changes that he made is that teachers feel that they have been involved in those changes and that, with other issues around curriculum for excellence in previous years, it was felt that changes were being driven by Government and the agencies, which were not listening to teachers?

I take entirely the opposite view. What struck me as I looked into the issues was that there was an endless amount of criticism of the formulation of guidance. If I am exposed to any criticism just now—and I accept that there is a danger that I might be—it is that I have not carried out as much consultation on the benchmarks that have been put out into the education system as was carried out on the previous guidance. That is a risk that I have taken because I want to provide early and swift clarity to the system to enable judgments to be made.

The Government amendment is designed to be helpful in ensuring that we can have a debate about the proper role and functions of Education Scotland and the SQA. I am happy to confirm to Parliament that they are part of the governance review. They always have been—they were part of it from day 1. The Government will conclude that exercise and I will come back to Parliament in June with the next steps that we intend to take on our journey to reform.

15:46  

John Swinney will well remember that, before the 1997 general election, Gordon Brown wholly opposed separating the Bank of England from Government, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in effect setting interest rates. I remember that, before that election, loyal back benchers were sent out to the television studios to run down, or at least disagree with, the argument for the independence of the Bank of England. If I remember rightly, the day after the election, Gordon Brown declared, rightly, that the Bank of England would be absolutely independent of Government.

In fairness to the Deputy First Minister, I accept that he has listened to the argument. He has deployed a few back benchers today—Gillian Martin and Ross Greer among them—to make the opposite case, which is fair enough. He sensibly made the case that Education Scotland and the SQA are within his governance review and left the door open. I listened carefully to his point about dual functions and the arguments, which, frankly, I do not remember, from all those years ago about the rationale for merging the organisations. I ask him to reflect on the evidence in the coming months, before he gets to the June statement on governance, which I am sure that he will make to Parliament. The evidence that members from across the chamber have presented for the separation of Education Scotland’s two functions and the SQA’s reform is pretty strong and powerful.

I struggle with recollections as well, but is it not the case that the bodies were really merged in order to meet a commitment to reduce the number of Government bodies, rather than for any sound educational reason?

I would be happy to go back and look at that. I suspect that we should probably ask the Deputy First Minister, because, as I recall, he was the minister who very much drove the reform of organisations at that time.

I have two other points to make about the Deputy First Minister’s remarks. The first is that we can all find something in the OECD report. The OECD said in 2015 that there was a need to streamline the enormous amount of guidance in schools. I have said before that the Deputy First Minister has begun to address that, although today I set out some numbers that illustrate that there is still much to be done. However, it is important to recognise what the OECD said on both sides of the argument—about both the development of curriculum for excellence and its implementation.

On the broader debate, a number of colleagues from across the chamber have looked at the concerns that have been expressed about the SQA. Some spoke about its evidence to the committee and others have been stark in their arguments on the need for change because of the multivarious roles that the SQA plays.

Johann Lamont’s argument about the need for clarity around accountability is perhaps the most powerful argument of the lot. Such clarity is in the cabinet secretary’s interests. The argument that John Swinney just rehearsed in dealing with Iain Gray’s intervention about where policy and inspection sit is the central argument that we are having today. That is absolutely right.

The clarity around accountability that Johann Lamont raised is what so exercised the Education and Skills Committee. When it asked the curriculum management board to explain that, the answer was that they were all responsible for everything and yet no one was responsible for anything. That is the challenge that needs to be met.

For absolute completeness, will Mr Scott put on the record that, when I appeared at the committee, I accepted ministerial responsibility for everything?

Ministerial responsibility for everything, indeed. The debate is about helping the cabinet secretary to clarify the roles of his agencies. That clarity is what we seek.

The important evidence that we ask the cabinet secretary to bear in mind relates to the points that Iain Gray made about the responses from the EIS and the RSE on the need for the inspection process to be separate. That is the answer to Gillian Martin’s reasonable arguments about the culture of inspection in our schools. If the EIS is arguing, on behalf of teachers, that that process is too close to the Government, I suggest that that is the very evidence that the cabinet secretary is looking for to make a fundamental change in that area. It is on that basis that we hope that he will take the advice that is being offered and the clear evidence that is in front of him, and make the changes when the time comes.