Seòmar agus comataidhean

—[Inaudible.]

It has been a fascinating evidence session so far. I have a few questions on some of the recommendations on what the report sees as the mismatch between the senior phase of school and curriculum for excellence. One point is that there is too narrow a range of learning activities in the senior phase. I am keen to know how that might be improved and how you would broaden out the activities. There is much talk about diversity of pathways being required and about lack of time to go into detail in some subjects. I wonder about the range of learning activities and about going into detail on subjects.

If I have it correctly, the OECD’s suggestion is that there should be a limited number of core subjects in the senior phase, and some subjects in which students go into much more specialist detail. I am open minded on that, but I wonder whether it might have the unintended consequence of narrowing options for young people in the senior phase. I am interested in hearing your comments on that.

That is very helpful, and I absolutely recognise that two-term dash. I do not think that the OECD has been prescriptive about how that could be fixed. Some schools currently do nat 5 or highers over two years. They pace the curriculum and syllabus at a much more appropriate level for students. I get that. On additional provision of the further education that is already dropping down into schools, I absolutely get the idea of expanding those pathways and broadening that out.

My follow-up question relates to assessments. I see reference in the report to much more use of portfolio work, continuous assessment and teacher judgment—with appropriate moderation, of course. I also see that some of that moderation for continuous assessment should be external to the school, in order to build much more chunky checks and balances into the system. There is a lot to welcome in there.

My question is in the context of the poverty-related attainment gap. In years gone by, when we have given young people more content to produce, the young people who had better support at home for preparing folio work were, quite often, from higher-income backgrounds. They had more time and space at home, and they had tutors and that kind of thing.

I support what has been said, but would we have to be careful to broaden out continuous assessment, and not to build in an advantage, as we did with external assessment, for a cohort of young people who might be in a better place to take up the benefits of continuous assessment because of all the additional advantages of things such as tutors and parental support?

I am a new member of the committee, so I will look at the legacy paper carefully. We have agreed to take in private our work programme agenda item, which is the convention not just in this committee but across all committees. I was really pleased with the tone that you set in your initial remarks, convener, and I hope that Mr Mundell might reflect on his tone. That said, our committee will look at not only this OECD report but the further report on assessments and certification later in the year. That should go without saying, but Mr Mundell felt the need to raise the issue. I respect that but, moving forward, I hope that we can work collegiately and non-tribally, as the convener suggested. I hope that we can all live up to that.

There is nothing that I am required to declare, but it makes sense to note that I was a teacher for 10 years. I was registered with the General Teaching Council for Scotland and was a member of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

I am happy to nominate Kaukab Stewart.

Likewise, I have no relevant interests to declare.

Thank you.

I would not normally say something at this point but, given the resonance of your initial comments as convener, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on them. We should of course strive for gender balance on all committees, but that is particularly the case with this committee, given the types of issues that we will consider proactively, I hope, and, frankly, as a matter of course. I support your initial comments. The lack of gender balance is deeply unfortunate but, irrespective of that, I look forward to working collegiately with all committee members to ensure that we seek the views of MSPs more widely—they are far more reflective of Scotland than the members of the committee might be in practice at the moment—and the views of wider society.

I concur with what Alexander Stewart has said. I draw members’ attention to two aspects of the legacy paper. The first is sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. It is clear and explicit in the legacy paper that the Parliament should never be complacent in dealing with such matters. We are urged to keep them under constant review, as we, of course, should.

We should be mindful of the comments that we made at the start of the meeting about the committee’s membership not being particularly reflective of Parliament as a whole. That does not mean that we cannot do our job, but it should not have to be this way. I want to put that on the record.

The legacy paper also mentions involving people in our work. Just because we are a small committee and it might seem that we are dealing with the nuts and bolts and the mundane aspects of the Parliament—they might be a bit dry, but they are vital—does not mean that we should not reach out and involve various stakeholders and individuals in our work. Of course, we should, and I see that the previous committee did that, so I thank it for putting that on the record.

Finally—I know that I said that I would talk about two aspects—there is the section on the Parliament’s practices and procedures. It is a real strength that we have new members on the committee, because I have been a member of the Scottish Parliament since 2007. The Parliament has been engaged in parliamentary reform in recent years, and some of that is bedding in, but it is very good to have a fresh set of eyes on the workings of Parliament. I call on fellow committee members who are new to the Parliament to work constructively and to look at the workings of the parliamentary process with a degree of scrutiny, because it is important to have a fresh look at such issues when we have new members coming in. We can get set in our ways if we are not careful.

I look forward to working collegiately in taking forward many of the issues that are raised in the legacy paper.