Chamber and committees

I should put on record the fact that I am a former secondary school teacher and a former member of the EIS—in fact, the EIS might still be taking my subscriptions. I will need to check that.

All the witnesses have said that they agree that a moderation process is needed, and that that is important. The issue is to do with the extent of the moderation, the burden that we put on teaching professionals and the proportionality of the process. I think that everyone is wedded to the idea that moderation is important.

Mr Flanagan said in his submission that moderation provides teaching professionals with additional protections. Seamus Searson said that a teacher might think that a pupil was working beyond what evidence they had, but the opposite can also be true—a teacher might think that a young person is working at the level of a C grade but the young person might want to achieve a B. Unless teaching professionals can provide an evidence base for how they reach their professional judgments, I can see them getting into all kinds of difficulties. I would like Mr Flanagan to say more about the protections that moderation provides to teaching professionals.

In my constituency experience, I found that difficult conversations had to be had between teachers and young people when young people were informed what grade it was thought they were working towards, which might not have been the grade that they aspired to. There needs to be a lot more good-quality direct communication between teachers and pupils on such matters.

I am interested in Mr Mundell’s line of questioning—

I will be very brief. I am concerned that we were confused about the purpose of moderation—Mr Mundell mentioned what the former cabinet secretary said about second guessing. It would help to hear from the witnesses that moderation is about professional support and assistance for teachers, that it is about checks and balances that teachers also want to see within the system, and that it has been that way in relation to continuous assessment and processes within departments. Some departments have only one teacher whereas some have five or six teachers, and that may change the balance in terms of the support that is needed.

Although I am not responsible for the information technology, I apologise for the inconvenience to fellow members and the commissioner.

I think that I heard the convener ask a question that I had been going to ask about the conflict between being prescriptive, to achieve good outcomes in diversity and to ensure best practice, and the flexibility and innovation that the Government had said that it wanted. I think that you got some good stuff on the record in relation to that, convener, so there is no need for me to ask about it. That is what I picked up from the bits of sound that I could make out.

I will ask the follow-up question. Will the revised code help with finding a balance between achieving diversity—we want diversity to be achieved, of course—and ensuring that boards retain their range of essential skills? As well as achieving diversity from the point of view of protected characteristics, including people from various income backgrounds—it is good to hear what you have said about that—and having a diversity of opinion and views, we need people to have the relevant skills. There can be a tension between achieving diversity and getting the relevant skills. How do we get that balance?

Thank you. I will let other members come in. I again apologise for the disruption at the start of the meeting.

Hello.

I find that last comment very helpful. Can I infer from what you are saying that the purposes, the values and the objectives are things that your office may have been doing anyway but that people cannot just take that for granted? It is about putting that out openly in the public domain, and, as you expand the staffing team in your office, making sure that staff are clear about what it means. I particularly like the bit about whether members of the public feel you are upholding your purposes, your values and your strategic objectives. I think that that is really helpful—it was a helpful answer.

Page 5 of the draft strategic plan sets out some key changes that you wish to deliver, such as

“Recruiting and developing staff to ensure consistent high quality of our professional skills base”.

I think that there are six or seven key changes. I will not run through them all because of time constraints and the fact that my eyesight probably will not allow me to see the tiny typing on the handout that I have. How do you think that the key changes that you have set out will improve the quality of the outputs from your office? You may want to pick one or two of them and flesh out the differences that you think they will make.

The commissioner has probably dealt with the issue in his exchange with Mr Mountain. I just wanted to put on record that it might be worth seeking information on the role of the Social Security Committee in the previous session in relation to the appointment of commissioners to the Poverty and Inequality Commission. I do not want to tie up the meeting with this, but that might give a real-life example of a committee not going through a tick-box exercise or jumping through the hoops but, instead, having a dynamic and practical process.

I am going to move on to another line of questioning, but I offer a brief reflection. Commissioner, I think that, in the way that you are navigating these questions, there is a diplomatic corps job for you as well as a commissioner’s role.

If you want to reflect on this, that would be interesting. Clearly, the role of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland should be about making sure that the public are aware of your office, that they can complain to you if they believe that those ethical standards are not being met and that the process is open, transparent and accessible. The more effectively your office does that, by the nature of things, the more complaints will come in that may not meet the criteria or that may be inspired by an individual tweet or a campaign for people to complain about an individual MP, MSP or whatever.

I think that you are in a very difficult position, because, even if you were to get many more complaints coming in that were not upheld, that might be deemed a success for your office. It would mean that your office was more open, transparent, visible and accessible, even if the complaints that were coming in were not of a substantial, material nature. I am interested in your comments on that before we move on to the next line of questioning.

That is very helpful. Sometimes a significant increase in complaints does not mean that something untoward is going on with an elected representative. It might actually be a success in that the office is more accessible to people who want to complain, as difficult as that is for elected representatives.

I was pleased to see in the draft plan that there will be a new statement on purposes, values and strategic objectives. I suppose that it is stating the obvious to say that that is a good thing, but it does beg a question. If that statement did not exist before, what was missing and what added benefit will the new statement give?