Chamber and committees

My final question is for Stuart Hunter. You heard quite a lot there about cultural change and the restoration of trust. Do you in the SSTA think that the fix to that is legislative, or is it practical and on the ground? In any event, given what you have heard, what should we as a committee amend? What change to the bill would you like?

I am very grateful.

Good morning. I will direct a question straight to Fiona Robertson. Concerns have been raised about the same actors being in the old and the new bodies, before and after reform. Several reports have highlighted that there were various fundamental issues with the SQA that required reform. Do you and, presumably, the management of the SQA accept all those characterisations and issues in their entirety, or are there any that went too far or were unfair?

If the Government does not provide that money, will you not realise the ambitions?

I have a quick question for Fiona Robertson. In your letter to the committee, you say that investment is needed, and you give a specific example. How much investment is needed? What figure are you after? Is there any indication that that investment will be forthcoming?

You are having a grand day.

I thank everyone for their submissions, which I will refer to, but I will come to you first, Graham Hutton. In the SLS submission, you say that reform is overdue, and you speak quite positively about some of the things that are happening. Earlier, we explored the fact that, fundamentally, the same people from the SQA will be popping up on the other side of reform. Does SLS have any sense that the SQA and the people who run it accept the criticisms that have been levelled in their entirety? In any event, are those who are presiding over those issues able and willing to address those criticisms as we go forward?

I will put my final question to Professor Priestley, but Professor Donaldson may wish to come in, given his remarks earlier.

The University of Stirling’s submission welcomes that the bill makes provision for learner and practitioner charters, interest committees and representation on the board of the new body. We heard from Professor Muir that certain challenges might arise around that. Will those proposals ensure that the new body is appropriately shaped and responsive to learners, teachers and stakeholders?

Good morning, Professor Muir.

I was very interested in what you said in your opening remarks. First, you talked about the chronology of how we have got to this point. In 2021, the Scottish Government announced that it would scrap the SQA and create a separate inspectorate. Your report, which came out in 2022, made recommendations that, presumably, were based on the presumption that the SQA would be scrapped and the inspection function removed from Education Scotland. Would you have recommended those changes had they not already been pre-programmed by the Government?

I am very grateful for that.

You have said that we need to look at the education system as a whole and that its complexity is remarkable—and I agree with you. The bill, however, is part of a wider set of reforms and policy work around education. You mentioned in your opening remarks Hayward, Withers and Morgan as well as several others, and said that, taken together, what their reports said will meet the needs of Scotland’s education system. Some voices have suggested that doing it like this—that is, in almost a piecemeal, a-bit-here, a-bit-there way—is not the optimum approach. What is your view of that? Is now the right time to introduce this bill before other aspects of the reform programme are bottomed out?