Chamber and committees

I want to go back a little bit, and bring in Professor Ainscow in particular, but the other witnesses should feel free to come in.

Having recently been a teacher—well, until last May; it is not that recent, any more—I found that a lot of what Professor Ainscow said resonated with me. I still keep in touch with my teaching colleagues, and I know that initiatives and expectations for data collection and implementation come from on high. It feels like that all the time. Many stakeholders in education are quite disconnected from the classroom and from the children who come to school every day, as well as the ones who do not. We have mentioned the importance of that.

I am interested in unpicking that a little. How can policymakers and national and local agencies increase their credibility among headteachers and teachers in the classrooms, so that they do not feel that everything is being dictated to them or coming down from on high? They need to feel that they are part of the process, rather than simply recipients.

If anybody else wants to answer, they should indicate that.

Does anybody have ideas about how we can improve accountability at implementation level—local authority level and school level? At the moment, there is a lot of scrutiny and accountability at Government policy level, but I think, from what I hear, that more of that should happen at local authority level and school level.

I absolutely agree that there are amazing pockets—they are actually quite vast—of good practice. I have taken part in cluster projects and shared good practice. Our challenge now is to ensure that practice is consistent across all 32 local authorities. We can explore that further.

My supplementary, which is for Becky Francis, goes back to an issue that was raised a few questions ago. I was interested in your comment about attainment being the primary outcome and that you consider wellbeing, too. Do you consider other positive pathways such as apprenticeships?

I also wanted to ask about tutoring and the expectation on our young people and children to go to school between 9 o’clock and 3 or 4 o’clock and then do additional work. I wonder how many adults would want to do additional work in the evening—indeed, I am always mindful of that impact. [Interruption.] Yes, that was a comment, convener.

Has any thought been given to the impact of that? Adults seem to think that additional tutoring is a good thing. I am not against it by any means, but has there has been any consultation with young people and learners on what they feel about doing that additional work? What is the take-up rate?

Before I let people in, I want to make a comment about the Volunteer Tutors Organisation, which I had the chance to meet a couple of weeks ago. It is based in the Glasgow Kelvin constituency, and its amazing work is being rolled out across and beyond Glasgow. I just wanted to put that on the record.

I want to bring in Andrew Green. It is important to get the perspectives of the pubs and licensed trades on the matter. I am particularly interested in their perspectives on staff training and how the bystander model is working.

That is an important point if we are looking at gender-based violence.

Mike Grieve, do you want to come in?

Do you consider that—I am sorry to speak over you. It is difficult not to do so in a virtual meeting, in which we overlap a little bit.

If Mike Grieve wants to add anything, I am happy for him to come in as well.

You keep records so that there is a trail, which is great. Has there been an increase in your record keeping? I mean an increase in your numbers—I am sorry for the clumsy wording.

You said that it is good practice to keep records but that there is no compulsion to do so and no expectation that it will be done. What would be the industry’s opinion if some sort of enforcement was brought in and venues did have to keep records? What would the industry feel about that?

I want to take us back to ventilation, which Ross Greer touched on, in order to drill down and get underneath the headlines that there have been. First, I put on record that, as an ex-teacher, I am really grateful to my colleagues in the profession and to all staff, parents and pupils who had to turn on a sixpence. The amount of work that has been done is amazing. That applies to councils across Scotland, as well.

I want to ask about the assessments that have been done with regard to ventilation. The COSLA report says that 100 per cent of the learning and teaching spaces were assessed by November 2021, yet we have been hearing evidence from voices both within and outwith the profession that there are inadequacies. I would like some more information about that assessment of all the learning and teaching places. What mitigations were made, how were any issues rectified and where are we in that process? How much more is there to be done? I direct my question to Simon Cameron from COSLA initially.