Chamber and committees

I was made aware of that a few weeks ago, prior to the public announcement being made.

I will take those two issues separately, as they are separate.

With regard to next year, the SQA has plan A, which is that exams will take place, and that is what we as a Government, the SQA and, importantly, schools and young people are moving forward with in their teaching and learning. There have, of course, been discussions around contingency measures that need to be in place. For example, if the public health advice at that point was that we could not have an exam diet, teacher judgment would be absolutely at the heart of those. However, the reassurance for teachers is that no additional assessments would need to take place. That is different from the alternative certification model.

In short, there will be no dual assessments. Normal assessments can take place and, at the end of the year, if there is no exam diet, teachers will be able to form a judgment based on what has taken place during a normal assessment year.

As for what will happen in future years, that is a very separate issue that will be looked at. I will make further announcements on that later in the autumn, as we have just had the Stobart report on what will happen in future. Exams will, of course, play a part, but the Stobart review has presented us with opportunities and questions about what these things will look like in the future. That is an issue not just for Government, and it will be taken forward very much in collaboration and discussion with others. However, as I have said, I will make further announcements in due course.

We will look very carefully at what the OECD has recommended. One of the challenges that we will have in taking the report forward is that there is a lot of change in it. Some of those changes can happen at the same time and some of them will have to happen on different timescales. Part of the reason for that is that our collaborative work with stakeholders to get the details of that change correct—which I believe that we should do—will take some time.

There is a lot to do. Some of it is work that we can undertake quite quickly, and in some areas, as I have said, it will take time. As I look to make further announcements on this, I will try to set out what we can do in the short term and to highlight the areas that will take longer. Part of the OECD’s suggestions about how to take things forward involved the time that it takes to take them forward.

The manner in which we do that is exceptionally important. As I said in earlier remarks, I am determined to play a collaborative role as education secretary. The committee and the Parliament will decide how it wants to take forward any work on these issues, but I will be more than happy to work with anyone and everyone who has a role. There are a number of challenges in the report, and not all of them can be addressed at the same time or quickly.

It is important that we look at this issue in the round, particularly when we look at the senior phase. Our school-college partnerships are exceptionally important and becoming even more so.

We are linking in with the colleges, as demonstrated by the fact that Colleges Scotland has been invited on to the Scottish education council, which it was not on previously. I hope that that demonstrates our commitment to look at this in the round and to recognise that we cannot look only at what happens in schools. When we look at attainment and achievement, we need to view it in a wider sense, and colleges play a very important role in that.

As you will appreciate, convener, discussions about the case have been on-going for some time, but the Supreme Court’s judgment has come out while I have been at committee.

To be clear, the Scottish Government does not, and will never, produce league tables of schools.

As I think I said earlier, we need to look at that to ensure that we are gathering the correct data about the correct areas. Although that is more challenging in some areas of curriculum for excellence than in others, we need to be up to that challenge.

There will be a review of the national improvement framework measurements in 2022. That will allow stakeholders to assess, with Government, how we have measured for the NIF in the past, whether that is correct, what needs to change, and what they would like to change it to. Although areas to do with health and wellbeing are, of course, already part of our analysis, it is the right time—as we move out of Covid—to ensure that we are doing that correctly. That consultation will happen early next year.

As I said, it is considering the four harms approach as a whole. Disruption to learning is one of the key issues. The sub-group advised that face coverings should be included in the mitigations that are in place in our schools, because the balance of the four harms approach included face masks as an important mitigation measure that allows less disruption in schools, which has a major impact on children’s health and wellbeing.

We already carry out functions in relation to the curriculum.

Forgive me, convener, but a variety of sectors across the country would absolutely say that some of the skills gaps have been accentuated as a result of Brexit. I do not think that that is too much of a political point; it is merely a statement of fact.

There are issues that have been going on for some time in certain areas. You quite rightly raised the issue of digital. That has been an on-going challenge.

To ensure that there are no structural challenges at the national level that have an impact on that, we are keen to ensure that SDS and the Scottish Funding Council work well together to assess skills gaps and what is happening in our education sector. The skills alignment work that has been done is very important in ensuring that, at Government level, our national agencies are working as effectively as they can from a skills point of view and an education point of view, and that they are working well together.

Another issue that we will need to look at as we move out of Covid is the challenge in providing support to key sectors. That is why there have been national transition training funds, for example, and why we have the flexible workforce development fund and individual training accounts. This year, we will evaluate the flexible workforce development fund and ITAs to assess whether more can be done to simplify and strengthen the lifelong learning offer, and to challenge ourselves on whether we can do more on that.

On digital shortages, a great deal of work is, of course, going on in that specific sector, which I probably do not have much time to go into today. However, I would be happy to give further evidence in writing on that to the committee, if that would help. Work is being done to deal with the short-term challenges that we have seen and to address the fact that we have a competitive market, which is making it difficult for small firms, for example, to take part.

At national Government level, we are looking very closely at what needs to be done by our funding streams and our national agencies to ensure that we are providing effective support to people when they need it.