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I think that there are many strengths in Scottish education. In 2015—the year prior to the one that Mr Rennie cites—I was in the classroom, so I went through the most recent curriculum reform iteration as a teacher. We need to learn lessons from the implementation of curriculum for excellence in the implementation of any changes to the current qualifications, because there are things that we should do differently in future. We need to engage the profession in that and create time for the profession to be fully engaged.

I do not necessarily think that there are things wrong with Scottish education, though I would accept that there are challenges. We see that in the programme for international student assessment data that was published at the end of last year. I met Professor Graham Donaldson, whom the committee will be well acquainted with, just after my appointment in the summer last year. We talked about some of the challenges in relation to broad general education and the senior phase.

One thing that I think is unresolved from curriculum reform in Scotland is the transition from BGE and the straight-through curriculum to the senior phase. There is a disconnect. I argue, from a classroom teacher or head of department level, that part of that is about the hours that are allocated to courses. It does not work when you timetable at the current time, so you break the broad general education to deliver more courses. There is variation in the system, and I think that the committee might have taken evidence on that. Certainly, in the previous session of Parliament, Mr Greer and I heard evidence on the number of courses that are delivered in S4.

I have a report on my desk from Professor Louise Hayward, who talks about entitlements in the system. That is a challenge to Government that we need to resolve through reform. Right now, we do not have entitlements; the number of subjects that are delivered in schools varies across the board, and we need to use reform to address and improve that.

I think that we all accept that, and we can see it. I may pass over to Clare Hicks on this, but part of the challenge is around how we measure performance. The national improvement framework that we have in Government considers a broader range of measures than local authorities consider. The framework will take into account the five highers measure, I think. There is a bit of a disconnect there, which we are working to resolve. I will pass to Clare on the specific point about the variation.

There is a bit of a disconnect between some of the arguments around a culture of performativity and PISA scores. I have to be honest with the committee: PISA is a raw data set that tells the Government a very challenging story. If we are moving away from a culture of performativity, do I have to ignore PISA scores? I do not think so. That data set tells me a story that I need to respond to—and that is one of the reasons why we have rejoined other international surveys that we had previously not been part of for a number of years, which will give me more data.

I think that, during the previous education debate in the chamber, I mentioned the role of PISA and its history. An American President in the 1980s was looking for objective data from the states on education performance. That is the origin of PISA, which is about driving improvement. I do not think that we should necessarily ignore the culture of performativity. I hear about some of the challenge, but we need to improve and PISA gives us a data set to support improvement. That is why we are investing in the other surveys, and it is why we need to engage in the substantive detail—as do local authorities regarding their responsibilities for outcomes for young people.

I do not think that the current reforms mirror those that existed in 2016—forgive me, I was not in post at that time. We are working in a completely different space to that which existed when I was first elected, in 2016, and when Mr Swinney, I think, brought forward those changes. We live in a post-pandemic world, and I tried to contextualise some of the challenge that we face in Scotland by saying that it is not unique to us.

Mr Rennie asked why we are uniquely falling down the international league tables, as it were, in relation to the PISA data that was published last year. We are not unique. When it comes to comparable countries, that was the Covid edition. However, in my statement to the Parliament, I made it very clear that we need to turn that trajectory around.

I do not accept Mr Rennie’s illustration of what happened prior to my time in office.

Mr Rennie asks why we wanted to close the poverty-related attainment gap. Surely the answer should be obvious to him: we want to ensure that children who live in poverty attain and go on to positive destinations.

Good.

In my response to Ms Duncan-Glancy, I mentioned the real challenge that we are facing. That challenge has not grown up overnight; it has been happening over the time that Ms Maguire and I have been MSPs, and, indeed, the situation with colleges probably predates 2016.

We need to be mindful of the challenge with regard to industrial action. When I was before the committee last September, I think, Mr Rennie asked me about this very issue and the role of ministers in this respect. I am extremely limited in the role that I can play in industrial disputes in the colleges sector, given their independence from Government, but I recognise the challenge here and the on-going disputes, which I will not comment on.

At last week’s evidence session, Mr Kerr raised with Mr Dey the recommendations that were made in the Strathesk Re:solutions report back in 2022, and that report, I think, offers an opportunity to drive some of the change that we need to see here. We need to reset some of the agenda in relation to colleges and their importance in our education system, because I worry that some of that has been forgotten about in our thinking on school education. Indeed, the member has highlighted some of the opportunities that exist, particularly in work with our schools. Some of our colleges do fantastic work with our schools, and we need to quantify that impact in a better way and support the sector.

Colleges Scotland has formally responded to the Strathesk Re:solutions report, and it is meeting trade unions to look at next steps and is working with them collectively to support the continued success of national bargaining. I think that that offers a route forward.

That said, we need to inject a bit of urgency into this, particularly post-pandemic. Post-pandemic, the education sector is under an extraordinary amount of pressure; it is expected in all its guises—whether that be early learning and childcare, schools, colleges or universities—to mop up all society’s ills and solve everything. However, it cannot do that alone, and we need think more pragmatically about how we quantify the impacts of our education spend. The outcomes for our young people in our colleges are fundamental to that drive, and resolving some of the on-going dispute—for obvious reasons, I do not want to comment on the specifics of that—will be part of that, too.

Then, as you heard from Mr Dey last week, we can move forward with these recommendations and try to bring more sustainability to the sector. Yes, that might well look like flexibilities, but it might also look like education reform if we give colleges a driving seat in delivering some of the opportunities that I think reform will offer the sector.

Yes, absolutely. Post-pandemic, our schools are being expected to mop up quite a lot of society’s challenges. We have heard from Mr Rennie about the poverty-related attainment gap. That gap exists and, although it is not all of schools’ creation, we expect schools to mop up all of the challenge. We need a much more holistic approach, and part of that relates to how we budget across the Scottish Government. We need a much more holistic understanding of the inputs that we, as a Government, are putting in to try to disrupt the attainment gap, because we cannot expect our schools to do everything.

I joked earlier about my being a lightning rod for political challenge. In part, that is because schools are now expected to do so much more, even compared to when Ms Duncan-Glancy and I were at school. When I go into schools and see the extra things that they are doing for our young people, I am blown away. Yes, part of that is funded by the additionality from PEF and SAC, but part of it is a societal expectation that, as a teacher put it to me a few weeks ago, schools will step into the breach where other services can step back. School is a constant in a child’s life.

I understand and agree with Ms Duncan-Glancy’s point. We need to reconsider how we can pull other services into supporting schools, because they cannot do it alone, and we are expecting more and more from them.

I read some of the evidence that the committee took from Professor Humes. I met him in the summer after my appointment, because he has expressed many views on the Scottish Government’s performance on a variety of different topics over the years. His points about cosy conformity are quite accurate. There is not a lot of grit or challenge in the system. There is lots of grit directed my way, because I am the lightning rod for grit—I am the cabinet secretary—but I refer back to my response to questions from other members in the previous committee meeting about accountability at the local authority level. We seem to have forgotten that local authorities have such accountability, so we need to take the opportunity to reset some of that through the Verity house agreement.

I talked about the accountability framework in my response to a member earlier. We need challenge and we need grit. Sometimes, in Scottish education, we become reliant on hearing from the same people about the same topics. I make that observation as a previous member of the committee and having observed some of the witnesses who have already appeared. We need to hear fresh voices.

We also need to hear from teachers. During the previous parliamentary session, when Ross Greer and I were on your predecessor committee, we would hold private evidence sessions with teachers. I do not know whether the committee has explored that idea. I recall that the committee was keen to come to my behaviour summits, but teachers would not feel comfortable if they thought that their views were being recorded for purposes such as a parliamentary debate. They benefit from private time with politicians listening to them.

The first school visit that I undertook when I took up my role was to the school in Edinburgh where I taught. I asked my officials, Edinburgh council representatives and the headteacher to leave the room so that I could talk to the staff honestly about what was going on. That really helped to inform some of my thinking in the early days after I took up my post.

Professor Humes is absolutely right that there is a cosy conformity. We need a bit more challenge. I welcome the challenge, because it is a huge part of the job of being a cabinet secretary, but we also need to ensure that the critical voices in the system, such as that of Professor Humes, are listened to and not managed.

We cannot reach a consensus with the critique of Scottish education, and that is okay. However, to drive improvement we need to be a bit more honest about that, because, as per Willie Rennie’s point, consensus has delivered the status quo. Perhaps the challenge around some of the deliverability is how we unpick some of that.