Seòmar agus comataidhean

—[Inaudible.]

Although I am not responsible for the information technology, I apologise for the inconvenience to fellow members and the commissioner.

I think that I heard the convener ask a question that I had been going to ask about the conflict between being prescriptive, to achieve good outcomes in diversity and to ensure best practice, and the flexibility and innovation that the Government had said that it wanted. I think that you got some good stuff on the record in relation to that, convener, so there is no need for me to ask about it. That is what I picked up from the bits of sound that I could make out.

I will ask the follow-up question. Will the revised code help with finding a balance between achieving diversity—we want diversity to be achieved, of course—and ensuring that boards retain their range of essential skills? As well as achieving diversity from the point of view of protected characteristics, including people from various income backgrounds—it is good to hear what you have said about that—and having a diversity of opinion and views, we need people to have the relevant skills. There can be a tension between achieving diversity and getting the relevant skills. How do we get that balance?

Thank you. I will let other members come in. I again apologise for the disruption at the start of the meeting.

Hello.

I find that last comment very helpful. Can I infer from what you are saying that the purposes, the values and the objectives are things that your office may have been doing anyway but that people cannot just take that for granted? It is about putting that out openly in the public domain, and, as you expand the staffing team in your office, making sure that staff are clear about what it means. I particularly like the bit about whether members of the public feel you are upholding your purposes, your values and your strategic objectives. I think that that is really helpful—it was a helpful answer.

Page 5 of the draft strategic plan sets out some key changes that you wish to deliver, such as

“Recruiting and developing staff to ensure consistent high quality of our professional skills base”.

I think that there are six or seven key changes. I will not run through them all because of time constraints and the fact that my eyesight probably will not allow me to see the tiny typing on the handout that I have. How do you think that the key changes that you have set out will improve the quality of the outputs from your office? You may want to pick one or two of them and flesh out the differences that you think they will make.

The commissioner has probably dealt with the issue in his exchange with Mr Mountain. I just wanted to put on record that it might be worth seeking information on the role of the Social Security Committee in the previous session in relation to the appointment of commissioners to the Poverty and Inequality Commission. I do not want to tie up the meeting with this, but that might give a real-life example of a committee not going through a tick-box exercise or jumping through the hoops but, instead, having a dynamic and practical process.

I am going to move on to another line of questioning, but I offer a brief reflection. Commissioner, I think that, in the way that you are navigating these questions, there is a diplomatic corps job for you as well as a commissioner’s role.

If you want to reflect on this, that would be interesting. Clearly, the role of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland should be about making sure that the public are aware of your office, that they can complain to you if they believe that those ethical standards are not being met and that the process is open, transparent and accessible. The more effectively your office does that, by the nature of things, the more complaints will come in that may not meet the criteria or that may be inspired by an individual tweet or a campaign for people to complain about an individual MP, MSP or whatever.

I think that you are in a very difficult position, because, even if you were to get many more complaints coming in that were not upheld, that might be deemed a success for your office. It would mean that your office was more open, transparent, visible and accessible, even if the complaints that were coming in were not of a substantial, material nature. I am interested in your comments on that before we move on to the next line of questioning.

That is very helpful, and I absolutely recognise that two-term dash. I do not think that the OECD has been prescriptive about how that could be fixed. Some schools currently do nat 5 or highers over two years. They pace the curriculum and syllabus at a much more appropriate level for students. I get that. On additional provision of the further education that is already dropping down into schools, I absolutely get the idea of expanding those pathways and broadening that out.

My follow-up question relates to assessments. I see reference in the report to much more use of portfolio work, continuous assessment and teacher judgment—with appropriate moderation, of course. I also see that some of that moderation for continuous assessment should be external to the school, in order to build much more chunky checks and balances into the system. There is a lot to welcome in there.

My question is in the context of the poverty-related attainment gap. In years gone by, when we have given young people more content to produce, the young people who had better support at home for preparing folio work were, quite often, from higher-income backgrounds. They had more time and space at home, and they had tutors and that kind of thing.

I support what has been said, but would we have to be careful to broaden out continuous assessment, and not to build in an advantage, as we did with external assessment, for a cohort of young people who might be in a better place to take up the benefits of continuous assessment because of all the additional advantages of things such as tutors and parental support?

It has been a fascinating evidence session so far. I have a few questions on some of the recommendations on what the report sees as the mismatch between the senior phase of school and curriculum for excellence. One point is that there is too narrow a range of learning activities in the senior phase. I am keen to know how that might be improved and how you would broaden out the activities. There is much talk about diversity of pathways being required and about lack of time to go into detail in some subjects. I wonder about the range of learning activities and about going into detail on subjects.

If I have it correctly, the OECD’s suggestion is that there should be a limited number of core subjects in the senior phase, and some subjects in which students go into much more specialist detail. I am open minded on that, but I wonder whether it might have the unintended consequence of narrowing options for young people in the senior phase. I am interested in hearing your comments on that.

I am a new member of the committee, so I will look at the legacy paper carefully. We have agreed to take in private our work programme agenda item, which is the convention not just in this committee but across all committees. I was really pleased with the tone that you set in your initial remarks, convener, and I hope that Mr Mundell might reflect on his tone. That said, our committee will look at not only this OECD report but the further report on assessments and certification later in the year. That should go without saying, but Mr Mundell felt the need to raise the issue. I respect that but, moving forward, I hope that we can work collegiately and non-tribally, as the convener suggested. I hope that we can all live up to that.