Chamber and committees

Undoubtedly. To be fair to the inspectorate side of Education Scotland, there is already a well developed associate inspector programme, which sees headteachers and senior leaders being seconded to take part in school inspections. For example, they might accompany an inspectorate team on a secondary school inspection, which is hugely important in informing policy and is also important for their own development.

Regarding Mr Greer’s point, when I was at Education Scotland, which is more than 10 years ago now, there were a number of people who might not have been in school for some time and who had not delivered curriculum for excellence. It is quite challenging to inspect a school if you have not yourself delivered the current qualifications.

There is a really important opportunity to give staff better professional development opportunities. I spoke about that when Mr Greer and I were both members of this committee. One of the best pieces of professional development that I undertook was to be an SQA marker for five years, because having an understanding of the national standard made me a better teacher. Not everyone has the opportunity to mark for the examining organisation. Teachers need to be let out of school, their headteacher needs to find cover and that can be challenging at a time when budgets are tight. We must think again about the opportunities that the qualifications body gives to the profession. That body is not just a service that runs qualifications; it must work better with the profession.

I was not in post during the pandemic, but I think that much of the frustration in the system came from that disconnect between the qualifications organisation and the profession. That did not come about only as a result of Covid; it had built up over many years.

I would like the debate to inform my response to the recommendations, and I want to ensure that I have heard all the ideas that Willie Rennie and his colleagues have.

As I said in my opening statement, when I was first appointed, I was struck first by the number of reports that landed on my desk in quick succession and then by the reality of what my former colleagues were experiencing in our classrooms. Some of that experience, including the changes in behaviour and attendance, has been raised in the chamber in recent months. Proponents of curriculum reform sometimes suggest that it can solve some or all of those challenges. I am not necessarily sure that I would accept that, but I think that there are opportunities to provide a more engaging curriculum.

Regarding evaluation, we are listening to and engaging with the profession. We engaged with 1,000 teachers towards the end of last year. We also asked local authorities to build in time during the in-service days in August, although some did it in October, to look at the changes proposed by the Hayward review and at the national discussion, which sometimes gets lost in the mix but did, in itself, set out a vision for reform. We will capture those views and ensure that they help to inform some of our thinking about the legislative changes that will be required for both bodies. The legislation is imminent, so I do not want to talk about the specifics of that, because it has not yet been laid before Parliament.

We have a generous offer in relation to student support. Some of the budget lines that the member spoke about were published by the Deputy First Minister in November, and they were taken as in-year savings. The member is right to say that those were demand-led budgets, so a number of savings were quantified by baked-in presumptions about uptake that, bluntly, was not there. We were able to identify savings through that process.

On student support, we have built into the budget an increase in higher education student support of £2,400 for all undergraduate students. An equivalent uplift will be applied to the postgraduate support package in the same year. That is raising student support for those who might be disadvantaged—for example, care leavers, estranged students and those from the socioeconomic areas that Liam Kerr spoke about earlier.

We will have to consider student support more broadly. It is worth saying that support and tuition fees are demand led. During 2023-24, £21.6 million of savings were identified due to reduced demand. Those savings are baked into this year’s financial allocation because they are both demand-led budgets and the demand was not there last year.

Good.

Just between us? I am not sure that is how it works.

I will respond formally to Professor Hayward’s consultation. There are parts of it that I think we will take forward, and there are parts of it that I will need to consider. The Hayward report would mark a substantive change in how we deliver qualifications in Scotland. It needs to be translated into an action plan for schools to implement, and it is not there yet.

To be fair to Professor Hayward, she talks about a 10-year plan and about setting out how we would map change. I am a modern studies teacher, however, so I am thinking, “How would I timetable that?” Those are the practical things that the Government needs to have an answer to in responding to her report, and we do not yet have those answers. I will respond to all the recommendations.

This brings me back to my initial response to Mr Kerr’s question about college places. A lot of this will not be known at this stage in the budget process. Currently, the SFC is working on allocations and translating what that will mean for the colleges sector. That is not an unusual situation; indeed, having probed this issue with officials prior to this meeting, I do not think that we would ever have had that level of detail at this point in the financial year. It has always been the case with the education budget and portfolio that we ask the SFC to look at translating those things.

However, I heard the comments from Shona Struthers and I recognise the challenge, particularly in relation to the points that Ruth Maguire made about financial sustainability and the wider forward look. I am happy to write to the committee with more detail when the SFC has decided and given me advice on those allocations, but we do not expect to have that detail at this point in the financial year.

No. I think that we will make progress in relation to that commitment this year, but delivering a reduction in class contact time will not happen overnight. It will take work from the SNCT, which has not been able to resolve the issue for years. Negotiation has been on-going since the last election, so there have been challenges for some time. We will work with the SNCT on delivery of the commitment. I do not yet have the evidence base to give a full answer. I am happy to include that in my written update to the committee, because I expect the evidence to give me numbers about additional budget in relation to delivery of the commitment. Is that a good answer?

Pardon?