Chamber and committees

Convener, you make a very important point about putting statistics, data or facts that change over time into the purpose of CPG. Gordon MacDonald was quite right to draw that issue to our attention and to seek permission to change the group’s purpose.

I note that the sector employs 47,000 people, has sales of £4 billion and contributes £40 million in gross value added to Scotland’s economy per annum. I am delighted to put that on the record for my colleague Gordon MacDonald, but I suppose that it is also a snapshot of time. What if a new report comes out and that data changes? If we have such data within the purpose of a CPG, should there be a reference to the nature of those figures? They could be from one year ago, two years ago or a report that was published last week—I have no idea. So, as soon as we approve the purpose—and I think that we should do so—they may be out of date.

My second point is about the procedure. If such things are put into the purpose of a CPG and the statistical data changes but the group wishes to keep that information within the purpose of the CPG—in this case, I think it is to draw the importance of the sector to the attention of Parliament quite clearly up front, and I get why they wish to do that—we could simply note the change and it could be a procedural matter rather than needing to be a formal agenda item. However, I am not sure of the process around that.

I hope that those two points are helpful.

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It has been a fascinating evidence session so far. I have a few questions on some of the recommendations on what the report sees as the mismatch between the senior phase of school and curriculum for excellence. One point is that there is too narrow a range of learning activities in the senior phase. I am keen to know how that might be improved and how you would broaden out the activities. There is much talk about diversity of pathways being required and about lack of time to go into detail in some subjects. I wonder about the range of learning activities and about going into detail on subjects.

If I have it correctly, the OECD’s suggestion is that there should be a limited number of core subjects in the senior phase, and some subjects in which students go into much more specialist detail. I am open minded on that, but I wonder whether it might have the unintended consequence of narrowing options for young people in the senior phase. I am interested in hearing your comments on that.

That is very helpful, and I absolutely recognise that two-term dash. I do not think that the OECD has been prescriptive about how that could be fixed. Some schools currently do nat 5 or highers over two years. They pace the curriculum and syllabus at a much more appropriate level for students. I get that. On additional provision of the further education that is already dropping down into schools, I absolutely get the idea of expanding those pathways and broadening that out.

My follow-up question relates to assessments. I see reference in the report to much more use of portfolio work, continuous assessment and teacher judgment—with appropriate moderation, of course. I also see that some of that moderation for continuous assessment should be external to the school, in order to build much more chunky checks and balances into the system. There is a lot to welcome in there.

My question is in the context of the poverty-related attainment gap. In years gone by, when we have given young people more content to produce, the young people who had better support at home for preparing folio work were, quite often, from higher-income backgrounds. They had more time and space at home, and they had tutors and that kind of thing.

I support what has been said, but would we have to be careful to broaden out continuous assessment, and not to build in an advantage, as we did with external assessment, for a cohort of young people who might be in a better place to take up the benefits of continuous assessment because of all the additional advantages of things such as tutors and parental support?

I am a new member of the committee, so I will look at the legacy paper carefully. We have agreed to take in private our work programme agenda item, which is the convention not just in this committee but across all committees. I was really pleased with the tone that you set in your initial remarks, convener, and I hope that Mr Mundell might reflect on his tone. That said, our committee will look at not only this OECD report but the further report on assessments and certification later in the year. That should go without saying, but Mr Mundell felt the need to raise the issue. I respect that but, moving forward, I hope that we can work collegiately and non-tribally, as the convener suggested. I hope that we can all live up to that.

There is nothing that I am required to declare, but it makes sense to note that I was a teacher for 10 years. I was registered with the General Teaching Council for Scotland and was a member of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

I am happy to nominate Kaukab Stewart.

Likewise, I have no relevant interests to declare.

Thank you.

I would not normally say something at this point but, given the resonance of your initial comments as convener, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on them. We should of course strive for gender balance on all committees, but that is particularly the case with this committee, given the types of issues that we will consider proactively, I hope, and, frankly, as a matter of course. I support your initial comments. The lack of gender balance is deeply unfortunate but, irrespective of that, I look forward to working collegiately with all committee members to ensure that we seek the views of MSPs more widely—they are far more reflective of Scotland than the members of the committee might be in practice at the moment—and the views of wider society.