Seòmar agus comataidhean

Those people have practical, tangible experience of your organisation, and they are telling me the opposite of what you have said.

Okay.

Mr Greer made a point earlier about the Audit Scotland report—which, again, was very scathing. Do you think that that is not relevant any more?

Mr Yeates, the Withers report was pretty scathing about the SDS. I will give you a few snatches of the commentary. It refers to “competing narratives”, “duplication”, “lack of clarity”,

“lack of leadership and effective governance”,

and “harmful, false division”. A particularly critical bit is the comment that the SDS

“doesn’t always appear that it makes decisions or demonstrates behaviours which are focused first on public service delivery or the needs of learners. This dynamic is acting as a blocker for partnership working, joined-up thinking and delivery across the public sector.”

What is your response?

Did the minister ask the review group to consider the amendments? Did he not think that that would be an appropriate thing to do?

Has the minister not asked that question already?

What did it say?

With the various amendments—and, indeed, the bill itself—we have been trying to strengthen the central organisations that have a major role in the performance of education in Scotland. Confidence in those bodies was shattered by a number of different experiences, from the performance of the SQA through the pandemic to the inability of the inspectorate to identify the relative decline in the performance of Scottish education. The fact that it never identified that throughout that whole period raises a big question.

In order for Scottish education to function, we need to have central bodies that have the confidence of not only pupils and teachers but the wider educational movement, including local authorities, which are major players in the performance of the education system. We need local authorities to be subject to good challenge, which is why we need strengthened central bodies.

We have made significant progress by separating Education Scotland from the inspectorate so that we are not marking our own homework. That is a good step, and I hope that we are able to appoint significant people to run both organisations, because people believe that they are bodies of consequence in Scottish education. That is incredibly important.

We are trying to strike a balance between George Adam’s lone wolf, which has the potential for making something too independent, and ensuring that we have sufficient independence to give confidence to the wider system. We are trying to strike a balance between those two priorities.

I am mindful of what Graham Donaldson said about the fact that he had more independence in his day than the bill proposes to give the chief inspector. It is significant that somebody of his stature said that, and it indicates that we can perhaps go further than the bill proposes to go. My amendments, although they are in some ways quite minor, would provide a greater degree of independence, as they would remove the power of the Scottish ministers to appoint the deputy chief inspector, while the chief inspector would still be appointed by ministers.

Unlike Sue Webber, I do not want to abolish Jenny Gilruth. I want to keep her important role—alongside that of the King—in Scottish education.

Amendment 147 provides that the inspectors of education would be appointed on the recommendation of the chief inspector. The deputy chief inspector and the inspectors would be under the responsibility of the chief inspector. Decisions on the number of inspectors and their terms and conditions would also lie with the chief inspector.

I understand all the arguments that the cabinet secretary is making, but the education inspectorate is in a different position from the inspectorates of the police and the prisons, because we have had what some would call a crisis in recent years. Although we are separating the SQA from Education Scotland, we need to go further. Does the minister think that there is any avenue that she has examined that we could pursue to give greater independence? If she does not agree with any of the amendments, is there anything that she might consider in order to bolster that? I think that she agrees with me—because she was nodding away when I was contributing earlier—that we need to build up the confidence of the central bodies. Is there nothing that she has looked at that we could pursue to give greater independence in order to build that confidence?

Just to seek clarity, is it the Government’s position that we should name qualifications based on the SCQF?

With the various amendments—and, indeed, the bill itself—we have been trying to strengthen the central organisations that have a major role in the performance of education in Scotland. Confidence in those bodies was shattered by a number of different experiences, from the performance of the SQA through the pandemic to the inability of the inspectorate to identify the relative decline in the performance of Scottish education. The fact that it never identified that throughout that whole period raises a big question.

In order for Scottish education to function, we need to have central bodies that have the confidence of not only pupils and teachers but the wider educational movement, including local authorities, which are major players in the performance of the education system. We need local authorities to be subject to good challenge, which is why we need strengthened central bodies.

We have made significant progress by separating Education Scotland from the inspectorate so that we are not marking our own homework. That is a good step, and I hope that we are able to appoint significant people to run both organisations, because people believe that they are bodies of consequence in Scottish education. That is incredibly important.

We are trying to strike a balance between George Adam’s lone wolf, which has the potential for making something too independent, and ensuring that we have sufficient independence to give confidence to the wider system. We are trying to strike a balance between those two priorities.

I am mindful of what Graham Donaldson said about the fact that he had more independence in his day than the bill proposes to give the chief inspector. It is significant that somebody of his stature said that, and it indicates that we can perhaps go further than the bill proposes to go. My amendments, although they are in some ways quite minor, would provide a greater degree of independence, as they would remove the power of the Scottish ministers to appoint the deputy chief inspector, while the chief inspector would still be appointed by ministers.

Unlike Sue Webber, I do not want to abolish Jenny Gilruth. I want to keep her important role—alongside that of the King—in Scottish education.

Amendment 147 provides that the inspectors of education would be appointed on the recommendation of the chief inspector. The deputy chief inspector and the inspectors would be under the responsibility of the chief inspector. Decisions on the number of inspectors and their terms and conditions would also lie with the chief inspector.