Chamber and committees

I will use that answer to pose a question to others on the panel. What is the role of the profession in the new body? A lot of the criticism—which also predates the pandemic and has included reports to the committee—is that the current SQA has been hostile to the feedback and input of the teaching profession. How could we structure the new organisation and what could the governance arrangements be in order to address the concern that, at the moment, teachers are not heard or respected by the body?

Greg Dempster, do you want to come in on Education Scotland? I do not mean to cut Pauline Walker off if she has a comment on the NQB.

I accept that time pressures and workload are the major concerns, but the awareness point has also come up quite a few times—not just in relation to Education Scotland. In a lot of the reviews that have taken place recently, the feedback from classroom teachers is, “Well, nobody asked me for my input on that.” As far as the people who were running the reviews were concerned, they distributed all the material to local authorities and schools, but it had not filtered down. Is there an issue with the structures that our national bodies use to communicate directly with teachers? Does a structure for enough direct communication not exist? Does communication go through too many layers of filtering?

Quite a lot has been covered already with regard to how inspections could work, looking at the new inspectorate aspect of reform, and we have talked about the qualifications and assessments themselves. However, I am interested in the panel’s perspective on what the governance and structures for the new qualifications body could look like. What would address the issues that are regularly cited with regard to how the SQA operates as an organisation?

I will put essentially the same question on Education Scotland, which is being reformed rather than replaced. What organisational, structural and governance reforms would address some of the issues that you have been talking about?

I direct the Education Scotland question to Greg Dempster; I suppose that you have less locus on the new qualifications body. I would be interested in hearing from Peter Bain, in the first instance, on governance structures for the new national qualifications body.

Pauline Walker, I will direct the question to you, if you do not mind, although that is somewhat arbitrary. Communication has to be two way. A lot of criticism of Education Scotland has said that it produces huge amounts of resources that teachers did not ask for. Some are good and some are not, but they are fundamentally not what teachers were asking for. How do we create a structure in which the work of Education Scotland, however we rename it, is being directed by what teachers say they need? If we want bottom-up communication, what structure do we need to put in place for teachers to be the ones who direct the work of the body that is supposed to produce resources to support them?

I recognise that this is a somewhat different bit of work, so it is fine if you are not across the detail of it. Are the processes and structures that are being used for setting up the new qualifications body and reforming Education Scotland similar to what you think would be required to deliver on your recommendations? Looking at what is happening in that space, would you be concerned if that was the approach that we took to implementing what you have recommended?

I strongly agree with Janet Brown’s point about the importance of rhetoric and Gordon Stobart’s point about wider communication skills. However, I would be interested in your thoughts on whether those are the kind of skills that need to sit inside a subject silo such as English.

A lot of employers tell us that they do not need to know that somebody was able to get a B grade in higher English; they need to know that that person can communicate with their team, work colleagues and customers. Are those not exactly the kind of skills that Professor Hayward’s recommendations around the diploma could recognise? You can be recognised for your communication skills and your ability to persuade without having done three 50-minute periods of English a week leading up to that exam. Actually, we need to recognise those kinds of skills in a more holistic sense rather than get trapped in the subject silos that lead us to all the issues that were talked about, such as BGE just becoming a diluted version of senior phase.

Thank you for that. Is it the Government’s position that the money that has not yet been distributed through either the recycling improvement fund or other capital investment in local authorities will be sufficient for implementation of the code of practice plus that you are talking about and that the money that has been invested so far should be sufficient for them to comply with the existing voluntary code of practice—obviously, most local authorities are not complying with it, and we will talk about why in a moment—and the money that is still to be distributed will be sufficient to meet the additional infrastructure requirements on local authorities?

Thank you very much. That is useful.

My final point in that area is about fixed-penalty notices for littering and the point that local authorities make around cost recovery there, which was pointed out a few moments ago. The FM assumes that 100 per cent of fines will be paid whereas some local authorities say that it is only 10 to 15 per cent. Again, I am interested in whether you could speak to that a little more and specifically to what conversations you have had with local authorities about why the payment rate for the existing fixed-penalty notice system is so low. Nobody would expect 100 per cent—I am interested in why 100 per cent is in the FM—but 10 per cent to 15 per cent seems to be remarkably low. Presumably, there are specific barriers in place that Government wants to help local authorities to remove.

Thanks very much. What is the timescale for the research that you mentioned, and how will that feed into the strategy? I completely understand why the Government would not want to concede that fines are not being paid, but fines are not being paid. The financial memorandum works on the assumption that they are, so we need to take into account whether the additional measures that you are developing, which the research will, we hope, inform, and which the strategy will deliver on to help local authorities increase the payment rate, will be in place in time for the additional fixed-penalty notice powers coming into place. If they are not, clearly, we will not get close to the 100 per cent payment. It would be good if we understood the timescale for that a little bit more.