Chamber and committees

Do you have good examples of new buildings having been constructed that are sympathetic to the issue? In your discussions with Government and local authorities, what do they say?

But how about specialist advice on what kind of buildings they should be building? We are building a lot of schools, and it is alarming that they are not really fitting in with the mainstream policy that the Government has in place. What are you doing about that?

Glenn Carter, your point goes to the heart of what we discussed last week. There was some discussion of compulsory training, but it was felt that that would be inappropriate, because there is not one type of additional need—there is a huge range. That range is constantly moving, and I presume that the training is constantly moving, too.

Your point is that, instead of expecting teachers to be experts on everything all the time, we should reflect on that model and say that we need specialists to give direct assistance rather than put extraordinary pressure on teachers to be up to date with everything all the time. Is that your summary?

I am going to be a wee bit provocative and say that I think that you disagree with the other panel members, some of whom have even mentioned compulsory training. Can I flush that out? What is the actual consensus on that? Are we in favour of compulsory training? Do we want every teacher to be an expert, or should we rely on pulling in experts as required?

Suzi Martin, do you want to come in?

Do education leaders understand what you have just said?

Has anybody gone to Jenny Gilruth and said, “What on earth are you doing?”

You could be a good Liberal. [Laughter.]

We need to be clear about this. You are saying that the type of training for teachers needs to be much more clearly defined. Instead of expecting the full spectrum of stuff to be taught, we need to understand which groups require an expert to be brought in and which require the teacher to play the central role. A bit of both approaches might be involved. Are you saying that we need to get much better at defining what we ask teachers to do?

Let me be clear. When you said earlier that the system is not working and that we need to stop doing the same thing over and over again, what precisely did you mean by that?

You have not answered my question. What is not working?

Have we moved on from buildings?