Chamber and committees

I am grateful to both witnesses for their answers and their willingness to take a constructive approach. However, I want to make a couple of points.

Stephen Boyle said that, with regard to the attainment fund, there would be a further look at hidden poverty and deprivation in rural areas to find out whether there is more inequality that needs to be addressed by additional funding and whether the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, as advisers on financial performance, should include in their criticism of the Scottish Government the point that more needs to be done on that. I welcome that, but the point that I am making is more basic. It is that inequality is inherent in the system of cost allocation because it costs more to provide the same services in an area of sparse population. More buildings are needed and there are smaller rolls so the cost per head is obviously greater.

I contend that inequality is a systemic issue, and I did not get the impression that either witness accepted that point. I read the report prepared by both bodies, which is entitled “Improving outcomes for young people through school education”. I am not necessarily a top-grade student—I never detained the judges’ time much when they made decisions on prize giving—but, in the 149 paragraphs and 49 pages, I can find no reference at all to rural cost issues. The word “rural” does not appear anywhere, as far as my reading of the report over the past 24 hours reveals. I put it to the witnesses that that appears to be a neglected area. It is an omission, a lacuna and a gap.

On a constructive point, I urge the witnesses to take the matter away and look at it again to see whether their bodies’ approach needs to be amended. Although Sharon O’Connor is correct that they are not policy-making bodies, their role is essential to good policy making and their advice informs it, as I know from my 14 years as a minister.

Good morning to all our guests. I represent Inverness and Nairn, the city and the town, and I have done so for 22 years. Most of my constituency, however, is rural. In fact, Highland Council covers an area that is nearly the size of Belgium and 20 per cent bigger than Wales—it is 10,000 square miles or, if you prefer, 26,000 square kilometres. The point is that the costs and challenges of providing public services, including education, in a largely rural authority are considerable. Indeed, 98 per cent of the land mass in Scotland is rural, as is 17 per cent of the population, so the point is not unique to the area that I represent.

As far as education is concerned, there are 203 primary schools and 29 high schools. Having been around the block a few times in parliamentary terms, I think that I can safely say that politicians from every party feel that the needs of rural Scotland—particularly the costs of providing services, especially in education—are, at best, perhaps not sufficiently understood and, at worst, neglected.

Do Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission feel that sufficient regard has been had to those issues in their work?

I will pursue the issue further, both generally and more specifically, if I may. I will give a few examples. A high school in my area, Grantown grammar school, has an excellent record. I have attended prize givings—if that is what they are still called—and have seen the success that the pupils, teachers and parents have achieved by working together. However, a systemic problem that they and many other rural high schools face is providing all the relevant subjects—such as all the science subjects—as well as other subjects off the mainstream curriculum. If there is no physics or chemistry teacher, how can a child in rural Scotland have access to the range of careers and university places, such as in medicine, for which advanced higher success in those subjects is a sine qua non for access? How do we prevent rural inequality from being systemic? I stress that the topic has been raised with me over the years, although relatively infrequently. I am trying to find out what regard the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General pay to the issue.

I have a different general point to make, but I might leave it until after I hear the answer to my question on the specific issues.

As well as the universality of provision, which can be dealt with in various practical ways—such as teachers visiting schools other than the one in which they are permanently based, and using other sharing and swapping mechanisms, difficult though they are to organise—the second specific issue is the endemic challenge of repairs and renewals to the 203 primary and 29 high schools. Although some success has been achieved recently in the allocation of funding, for which I am very grateful—not least for the replacement of Nairn academy in four years—that leaves a huge backlog of draughty, old, inadequate buildings, often from the 60s, when the common sense of the construction world when putting up the buildings seems to have momentarily departed the planet. The problem is shared in perspective across all political parties and among those who have none. A great many senior independent councillors would make the point that I am making.

Do the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission feel that they have really given sufficient mind time to those two specific matters?

Thank you, convener, but I did not indicate that I wish to ask a question at this point.

Good morning to the Deputy First Minister and his officials. Obviously, all of us in Parliament and throughout the country wish for survivors of this appalling abuse to receive redress payments, although we know that the payments will in no way compensate for the ghastliness of what they have been through.

I want to ask the Deputy First Minister about the standard of proof that is required in the process, given that the task is an inherently difficult one. As I understand it, part of the reason for the legislation was that the requirements for taking a case through the civil courts, where it is necessary to prove the case on the balance of probabilities and with corroborated evidence, were too high a threshold, and that underlay Parliament’s decision, which we all support, to provide another route—namely, the redress payments scheme.

Section 18 of the Redress for Survivors (Historical Child Abuse in Care) (Scotland) Act 2021 says that the abuse

“must have occurred before 1 December 2004.”

That means that any applicant will be making an application in respect of events—horrific though they were—that occurred more than 17 years ago. How will the Deputy First Minister balance the imperative of ensuring that the purpose of the act is achieved by those who have suffered from abuse receiving appropriate levels of payment under the law that Parliament has agreed to with the real risk that applications of a fraudulent nature could be made? Can he give the committee, either now or subsequently, information on what measures will be put in place by the Scottish Government and by those who, under part 4 of the act, have responsibility for determination of applications for preventing fraud, and therefore ensuring that public money and money from others goes to the intended purpose and not to any who might seek to abuse the scheme?

I thank the Deputy First Minister for that detailed answer in relation to the standard of proof, which of necessity has to be lower than in the civil courts, and the steps to be taken to protect the public purse. I am grateful for the assurances that have been provided. It is an inherently sensitive, delicate and difficult task.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. In the OECD’s evidence, there were a great deal of positive endorsements of the quality of education in Scotland. I do not have the time to run through them all, but it found that we are a leading country in global competence and proficiency, that our education system produces “confident” and “articulate” children, that there are good partnerships between universities and schools, and that curriculum for excellence has expanded opportunities.

I want to focus on what I took to be its central criticism, which is that although CFE has the four capacities of producing successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors, the system does not necessarily provide a means of assessing and ensuring that each of those four capacities has been achieved. That is what I took from the report; it might not be your view.

I want to ask you three questions. Do you think that I have accurately described the central thrust of the OECD’s criticism? How, in practice, do you think it can be—[Inaudible.]—successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors? Do we have a means of demonstrating that that is seen as reliable, objective and fair?

I am happy with that answer and look forward to further details and the statement. I hope that the cabinet secretary will be able to give even more consideration to the matter because it is important that we ensure that people in colleges, universities and business—the adult world—can have full confidence in the validity of the awards that we issue to children through the processes that we employ.

The second of the three questions that I wanted to ask was about that. With the massive disruption that the lockdown caused, we have had to do things differently and examinations have made way for the use of assessment in general. How we can ensure that the outside world—the adult world, if you like—has confidence, and can place confidence, in the accuracy of the results that flow from an assessment process, which we had of necessity over lockdown in the past two years, as opposed to traditional examinations? Can you reassure the adult world about the value and confidence that we can place in those results and awards?

I imagine that, in her discussions with everybody involved, the cabinet secretary will include the business world—the chambers of commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, the Institute of Directors and so on—to ensure that business is confident about the way ahead. It is important to get that buy-in, as it shows that we have an excellent system that people can put their confidence in.

The last of my three questions is slightly different and is perhaps a bit left field, cabinet secretary, but please do not look too worried. At the beginning of the session, you mentioned the pledge—which was made, I believe, by the Deputy First Minister earlier this year—to give every child a laptop or tablet. I welcome that; even though I suspect that many children already have such devices, I think it important that we reach out to all, particularly those who are unable to afford them.

That said, laptops and tablets are simply tools—they do not achieve anything by themselves. Does the cabinet secretary agree that it would be extremely useful for children to acquire the skill of touch typing using the QWERTY keyboard on a laptop or tablet? There are many things that I completely failed to learn in my life, such as a foreign language—that is my fault—but I had an opportunity through a friend of my mother’s to learn how to touch type. Frankly, it is the most useful skill that I have ever learned. Whenever I see children tapping away at a mobile phone with two fingers, I think, “This is not great,” because it just does not equip them for the many walks of life where the ability to type effectively and quickly is an extraordinary benefit, not just in our world but in almost every area where communication through the written word is appropriate.

I have asked my question at some length to give the cabinet secretary time to compose her answer. To be serious, though—and maybe this is just me—I think that it is an extremely useful skill, and I wonder whether the tool of a tablet or iPad can be made really useful by enabling children to learn how to touch type and give them a skill that might well transform what they can get out of their employment and their life in general.

Yes, thank you, convener. No country in the world suffering from the global pandemic had a syllabus ready and waiting to instruct us on how to proceed when schools were disrupted and shut down. Hindsight is a marvellous thing, is it not?

I would like to look forward, not back. I have two questions, the first of which arises from the OECD report. I am sure that Fiona Robertson and her colleagues will have read the evidence. I was struck by the very positive comments made by, for example, Beatriz Pont, who said that

“Scotland was among the leading countries in global competency proficiency”

and that

“in terms of equity, Scotland is above average across OECD countries.”

She went on to say that the OECD saw curriculum for excellence, which I want to question Fiona Robertson about, as being

“a pioneer among education systems internationally.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 8 September 2021; c 11-12.]

There were lots of positives in the report.

However, for me, the takeaway from the OECD—the central conceptual thrust of its criticism—was that the four capacities of successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors needed to be better worked on and assessed in the overall system. In other words, it is not clear at the moment how we assess whether individual children, pupils or learners have or have not attained those capacities.

That seemed to me to be the central tenet of the criticism. If that is correct, how do we address that in the future? What needs to be done to take Scotland forward, if you like, and ensure that we can drive the CFE forward in a way that allows us to say with confidence, “Yes, our children are successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors”?