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I declare an interest as a serving councillor on Dundee City Council, which is Audrey May’s employer. Also, Audrey May is a former teacher of mine. That is the more interesting point. She was a very young teacher.

We are going to talk quite a bit about qualifications, grades and outcomes, first and foremost. The other side of the outcome that I am interested in is knowledge and what young people learned.

I think that Tony McDaid made a point about missing the workhorse term and an awful lot of people missing an awful lot of time in school. As we look forward, what concerns do you have about what those young people might not know because of what they have missed, and what they have learned?

That makes sense to me. However, it worries me a little when I hear from young people who are going from highers to advanced highers, for instance, and when I speak to university principals and lecturers about people coming out of school with perhaps a lack of knowledge compared to what they might have had otherwise. The question whether we, as a country, are adapting to address that worries me a little.

I do not want to burrow too deeply into that, because I have another question.

Data that were released yesterday show the scale of the attainment gap produced by the ACM—or the alternative certification model; I am trying to avoid acronyms as best as I can. They show that around 75 per cent of private school pupils got A grades compared with fewer than half in the state sector. Do you think that the system benefited the most affluent at the expense of the poorest?

The move from teacher judgment to demonstrated attainment in the second year obviously created many of the pressures that you are talking about in terms of the assessment model and having to go through that. As part of the process, it removed taking into account the circumstances that many of the young people you describe were facing. They had to get the exams done, as there had to be demonstrated attainment rather than judgment. Does the absence of exceptional circumstances and appeals not go against what you are saying about the lived experience of young people?

All of that is useful and, when we consider the design of the 2022 system, those broader impacts must be part of it. It cannot just be about the assessment model; it has to be about the reality of what teachers are facing in the classroom and the circumstances that those young people face.

My final question is about the low number of appeals. Mr Flanagan said that most pupils seem to be satisfied, but I have had representations from a significant number of pupils from across both cohorts—those who got results last year, under the algorithm, and those who got theirs this year, under the alternative certification model—and they are greatly concerned that exceptional circumstances were not accepted in their appeals. So many people faced exceptional circumstances. Should they have been included in the appeals process, and should they be included in the future? I am not too interested in additional information, because I know that provision was made for that to come through in September. That is mentioned in some of the written submissions. I am talking about the exceptional circumstances that were faced.

Do you think that is happening?

That was to do with additional evidence and not exceptional circumstances.

I found all that commentary on assessments very useful.

Earlier, Dr Pont commented on the work that the OECD has done internationally on development of other systems. It is great to hear that other countries are observing Scotland, but I want also to learn a bit from those countries. Dr Pont said that other countries have implemented new curriculums that share the same ethos as curriculum for excellence. Have those countries faced implementation issues that are similar to those that we have had in Scotland? Are there any issues that are distinct to us, in Scotland?

It is useful to hear those points. One of the most common comments that I hear from university principals and vice-principals is a real concern about the level of knowledge, capabilities and capacity in some of the people who come to university as undergraduates—in particular, in science, technology, mathematics and engineering subjects. I have heard that, for first-year students, universities are having to teach, or re-teach, things that would previously, in their understanding, have been in the school curriculum. I go back to Willie Rennie’s comments on how we can work with universities to try to understand why that is happening. Is it inevitable? The committee could perhaps discuss that at a later point.

My question relates to some of the causal factors around that issue. There is much research on it, including a report from the Education and Skills Committee in the previous session of Parliament, which noted—to get quite technical—that a key issue with senior phase implementation is timetabling in the fourth year. That issue was created predominantly by moving from standard grades, with 160 hours of teaching time over two years, to nationals, with 160 hours over one year.

From your research, how key do you think those issues are to implementation of the curriculum? It would also be useful to hear comments on what seems to me to be the resulting inevitable narrowing of choice, with regard to the senior phase and the general education experience.

I understand that it was a broad question that probably requires broader analysis of the issues.

You mentioned that in Mexico there is a lack of training to prepare teachers to engage in curriculum development. That would have been somewhat familiar to teachers in Scotland at the start of curriculum for excellence, given the great challenges in its implementation phase. Are there places that have done that better, and are there lessons that we can learn? You have given Mexico as one example in which things have not gone well because of the lack of such capacity. Are you saying that we need to lift that capacity in Scotland? What kind of capacity do we need? One of the core issues that you mentioned is in-school development time. Where are the models that we should reflect on and learn from?