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The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Oliver Mundell
There are more things that I would like push on, but, in the interests of time, I will accept that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Oliver Mundell
That leads to the second issue that I will raise briefly, which is that a lot of headteachers in smaller schools feel excluded from PEF, either because they are in the 3 per cent of schools that get no PEF at all or because they receive such a small amount of PEF that it is difficult to do something meaningful with the money. Do you reflect on that? Is there a policy challenge for schools that get no PEF? Such headteachers are not empowered in the same way to do things differently in their schools. That is another problem that attaches itself particularly to smaller rural schools.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Oliver Mundell
Would you accept that that is not consistent across the country? That is an example of something that is working well in one of the collaborative areas, but it is not necessarily replicated across the country. Earlier, someone mentioned the fact that the various collaboratives set out the opportunities and their slant on equity in different ways, and there is certainly a feeling in the local authority area that my constituency is in that the interests of smaller rural schools is not always reflected in how the priorities are set out. You can imagine the frustration of the teacher in a school whose pupils are experiencing rural poverty when the circumstances of smaller schools are not reflected in the decisions that are taken.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Oliver Mundell
I come back to the generic point that people feel not that those resources are bad but that they are not school specific and that they are not of the same quality as those that other people enjoy through face-to-face and other opportunities.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Oliver Mundell
I want to ask about two specific examples, the first of which concerns regional improvement collaboratives. I hear that, even in quite large areas, many small rural schools feel that they are pushed out of decision making when it comes to setting priorities and the agenda of the collaborative. Staff in those schools find it hard to participate because no one is available to cover their absence while they are taking part, and they feel that their interests are not heard. It is not that they think that the priorities are wrong; it is just that the priorities inevitably tend to gravitate towards what larger schools in urban centres are saying. They would say that they have more commonality with similar schools in other areas but, because of how the collaboratives are set up, there is not always the chance for the national issues that affect small and rural schools across Scotland, who form a community of interest, to be aired in the regional collaboratives. Do you recognise that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Oliver Mundell
I will ask one last question. Do you think that using low-income households as the criteria for distributing funding—the Scottish Government uses that approach in other policies now—would be a potential replacement? That certainly appears to pick up more poverty in rural areas. I see that Andrea Bradley is nodding.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Oliver Mundell
Thank you. That is all very helpful. I want to ask about the small group of schools—it has become smaller again—that do not receive any PEF money at all. When I look at the list, I am not convinced that no young people at those schools would be in poverty. I wonder whether the policy can be fully effective when some headteachers and some schools—many of which are small, rural schools—receive no PEF money at all. I guess that Greg Dempster or Jim Thewliss would be best placed to respond.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Oliver Mundell
My main line of questioning goes back to Jim Thewliss’s point that there are 32 different models across the country. I am particularly concerned about schools in rural areas, where the same suite of options is often not available to headteachers or even to local authorities. Do you recognise that that is a challenge, given that there are not the same third-sector providers or opportunities on schools’ doorsteps and that smaller schools often have smaller PEF budgets and therefore less flexibility?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Oliver Mundell
Do the other witnesses recognise that? If a headteacher has a small PEF budget but there are only limited resources to tap into in the immediate community, does that prevent the policy from working as well as it might?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Oliver Mundell
Following on from Graeme Dey’s line of questioning, I think that the obvious thing to say is that there is a gap because schools are not always properly funded. I would not want to defend attainment funding being spent on other things, but schools that I see locally do not always have a choice. Keeping staff on is a priority for headteachers. Do you agree with that, Mr Dempster?
