Chamber and committees

The minister knows that I broadly welcomed his statement in December, which represented pragmatic progress. Other members have pressed him on timing, so I will not go over that other than to say that we did not start from here, because the reform has been a long time coming. The situation culminated in quite a critical report from Audit Scotland on the lack of leadership, so there is a degree of urgency.

I understand the minister’s point that we must get this right, but I hope that he appreciates that, when he publishes a timeline—perhaps in March—there will be pressure for delivery to be as prompt as possible because of the tangible impact, which I will explore a bit. Having a single funding source sounds neat and tidy, but what tangible benefits will it have?

I mean for the whole skills agenda.

I will move on briefly to UHI Shetland, with which you have been involved. First, some redundancies have been announced recently. What are you doing to protect college provision in Shetland?

Secondly, the cost base for rural provision, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, is much greater than it would be in the central belt. I recently met the principal of the new UHI North, West and Hebrides to discuss its provision. What are we doing to make sure that the provision in the Highlands and Islands is protected, recognising the higher base of costs?

There seems to be some ambiguity about exactly what colleges’ budget will be for the forthcoming year. They feel that the world is very uncertain for them. There are significant in-year cuts this year, and there is uncertainty about next year. When you try to provide colleges with some direction, do you fight their corner enough with the finance secretary?

To reflect briefly on that, you do not think that you will threaten the charitable status of universities with this reform. You are going to make sure that that does not happen.

In her statement yesterday, the education secretary set out a move towards greater emphasis on knowledge in maths. Surely, that foundation of knowledge needs to be assessed independently. I completely accept your point about skills, but surely knowledge should not be undervalued in all this.

My second question is about assessment. During the pandemic, there was a big debate about the role of teacher judgment, Scottish national standardised assessments and national testing, and about whether producing league tables creates the right dynamics. We have discussed how exams affect the system, too. Can we use artificial intelligence to assess independently and introduce accountability into the education system in a way that will give us confidence and will not create all the negative effects of SNSAs?

I will follow up on what has been said about the Hayward review, which recommends a move away from exams, towards assessments. It is not clearly defined exactly how far that would go, but many people in the education community are concerned that, given the rise of AI, that would be a retrograde step and think that we should stick with exams being conducted in sanitary conditions, isolated from technology. Do you have views on whether that is right?

I take your point that the role of the teacher is incredibly important, but when a dynamic is created in which people compete through the SNSA system—I know that the Government does not like to say that league tables are produced, but they are produced on the back of that—the relationships that teachers want to have with their pupils are corrupted. Is there not a way to ensure that policy makers, the Government and education leaders have the confidence that things are working without creating all those negative dynamics?

I return to the issue of behaviour in school. I buy all the stuff about early intervention, and I get the point about needing to avoid exclusions if at all possible. However, teachers tell me that they are often frustrated that they are left to pick up the tab when the service fails elsewhere. How do we deal with that? How do we support teachers to do their job?