Seòmar agus comataidhean

I can let you have one more quick question on this area.

Thank you, Bob.

Did you catch all of what Mr Greer asked, Auditor General?

We are almost two hours into the meeting. I hope that Stephen Boyle and his colleagues will bear with us for a little longer. We have at least one more round of questions before we conclude.

Item 2 is evidence from the Auditor General for Scotland and officials from Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission as part of the committee’s pre-budget scrutiny. Joining us this morning are Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland; Sharon O’Connor, Accounts Commission member; and Tricia Meldrum and Rebecca Seidel, who are both senior managers at Audit Scotland. I welcome you all—it is nice to see you with us this morning.

Before we move to the committee’s questions—as the witnesses might imagine, we have quite a few questions to get through—I invite the Auditor General, and then Sharon O’Connor, to give a brief opening statement.

Thank you very much. I think that Tricia Meldrum was the lead senior manager on the March report, so we have a really good team of people from Audit Scotland with us.

That is great. Thank you.

Stephen, you recently published a blog called “Christie’s clarion call can’t wait another decade”, and there has been another publication called “Christie—It Really Is Now Or Never”. Can you unpack that a bit more for us? Are you saying that we need concrete, measurable policy outcomes for measures that are intended to prevent, so that we can say, “Yes, this is working,” or, “It is not really working”? Is that what you are saying, or am I putting words in your mouth?

I have a question for you, Tricia, while we have you on screen. One of the recommendations in the report, on which you are the lead, is that Education Scotland

“should work with schools, councils and RICs to: ... understand the factors that cause variation in performance across schools and councils”.

Does that mean that, as auditors, you were not satisfied that Education Scotland was already doing that work and understood what those factors were?

You led on the interesting and well-put-together report that was published in March. Is revisiting that work in your work plan? I am interested in the difference that all the new teachers and support staff make. Do you have plans in your work schedule to revisit all that and consider what can be measured?

We have the Auditor General here. Do you want to come in, Stephen?