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It is also about the value of what you deliver, which relates to the outcomes.

Jim Wallace mentioned Action for Children and Barnardo’s. In its submission to the committee, the Robertson Trust talked about displacement within the third sector, with the larger charities rolling over the smaller ones. Would you like to comment on that? Have you witnessed the marginalisation of smaller charities that the Robertson Trust talks about?

That is very helpful. We will come back to some of those issues.

I will bring in Fergus Ewing, who indicated some time ago that he wants to ask about the funding issue that Michael Marra raised.

It is about people having confidence and meeting challenges within their own resources. That is quite hard to measure, is it not?

I hear what you are saying, and I can think of examples in my region of that kind of interaction between schools, organisations such as yours, employers and all kinds of external bodies that support young people, which is fantastic, but my concern is that there are many other schools where none of that is happening. Local employers have even told me that they do not feel welcome at all, and I am talking about before the pandemic, not just during it. They do not feel as invited as they perhaps ought to be. Is that your experience? I know that we are talking in generalities but, from your perspective, is that a reflection of the situation across Scotland, not just in Central Scotland, which I represent?

That was helpful.

Good morning, and welcome to the fifth meeting in 2022 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee. This is a hybrid meeting, which means that some people are in the committee room—it is nice to be back in the room—and some of the witnesses and members are joining us remotely.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on taking business in private. Are members content to take item 5 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The second item on our agenda is to take evidence for our Scottish attainment challenge inquiry. I welcome Professor Mel Ainscow, who is a professor of education at the University of Glasgow, and Professor Becky Francis, who is the chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation. Both are joining us virtually. I also welcome, in the committee room, Dr Laura Robertson, who is the senior research officer at the Poverty Alliance, and Emma Congreve, who is a knowledge exchange fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute. It is really good to have you with us.

I start with Mel Ainscow. You submitted some very interesting written evidence. I could not say that I understood all that was said in it, but I will focus on the reasons why we have not made the progress that we should have made on closing the poverty-related attainment gap. In your written submission, you mention five specific areas. For those who have joined us and are watching our proceedings, could you summarise what you have said are the reasons why we have not made more progress and what you describe as barriers to making further progress?

Are you saying that the focus should be on raising educational standards across the board, rather than on focusing narrowly on the poverty-related attainment gap?

Before I hand back to Michael Marra, I would like to put one more question to Mel Ainscow, about leadership. You are talking about there being overly tight controls at local authority and central levels, so can you comment on the quality of the leadership that is required in order to make the learning environment and school successful? If we are going to devolve more and more powers to headteachers and teachers, what would that look like and, given that we are talking about barriers, what do we need to be doing to ensure that that does not in itself become a barrier?