Chamber and committees

I want to follow up on the relationship with ELC and the Care Inspectorate. You said that it was really important to work in partnership. I do not know whether you remember the Care Inspectorate issuing its framework just when HMIE was agreeing with the Care Inspectorate on a joint approach. Do you know how that came about? Have those relationships improved since then?

That is a change in your position. You previously said that you could not understand how the chair could continue from one to the other.

Fiona Robertson will have heard comments in previous evidence sessions about the accreditation function sitting with qualifications Scotland. What is your response to those comments?

I apologise for the direct nature of my question, but it is a question that other people are asking, so I hope that you do not mind me asking it of you, Fiona. Should the leadership of the SQA become the leadership of qualifications Scotland?

I suppose that there is a difference between having the right to remain in post and exercising leadership and making a decision about whether you should remain in that post, given the groundswell of demand for change. There is a difference between the two, but I will not ask you to go any further than that.

I want to put on the record that a whole range of organisations have expressed very strong views. Many local authority education officers and heads of education have commented. West Dunbartonshire Council said that

“a wholesale transfer of personnel to Qualifications Scotland would undermine the reform process.”

Inverclyde Council said that

“the same people will still be involved leading to … the same approach by another name.”

Moray Council asks:

“How will the current system be different with the same people leading in senior roles?”

Lots of other organisations are responding in that way. How do you view those responses? Will they affect the decisions that you and your team will make going forward?

You have described the circumstances very well, but you have not given me your view. Do you feel uncomfortable that the accreditation part, which assesses the functions of other parts of the body, will sit within the same organisation? Are you comfortable with that? Has there ever been a moment when you have thought, “This should be separate. This should not be with me; it should be with another organisation”?

That is very helpful. Thank you.

This is quite a difficult set of questions, because we are talking about people’s jobs and livelihoods. Laurence Findlay and Graham Hutton, I was pleased to hear that your experience is that the SQA has attempted to change, and that you have seen some of the benefits of that. However, Graham, you indicated that a change of personnel will still be needed. I will be direct. Should the chair and chief executive of the SQA be the chair and chief executive of qualifications Scotland?

One last question—

Would you have any objection to the function going into the inspectorate?