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Do education leaders understand what you have just said?

Has anybody gone to Jenny Gilruth and said, “What on earth are you doing?”

You could be a good Liberal. [Laughter.]

We need to be clear about this. You are saying that the type of training for teachers needs to be much more clearly defined. Instead of expecting the full spectrum of stuff to be taught, we need to understand which groups require an expert to be brought in and which require the teacher to play the central role. A bit of both approaches might be involved. Are you saying that we need to get much better at defining what we ask teachers to do?

Let me be clear. When you said earlier that the system is not working and that we need to stop doing the same thing over and over again, what precisely did you mean by that?

You have not answered my question. What is not working?

Have we moved on from buildings?

I am talking about when new buildings are being constructed. I presume that you try to have some kind of input into the design.

But you would try to make the case.

Susan Quinn has just brought everything into sharp focus with her explanation of the training that is required. Teachers are specialists, but in many ways they are generalists as well, so they have to cover a range of areas. The depth of knowledge that they require, sometimes for just the one pupil who may come along from time to time, is huge. The enormity of the task is beyond what I initially thought.

Do teachers feel helpless when faced with all of that? Do they think that it is just such a big task that they feel helpless and that they will not be able to get sufficiently knowledgeable to meet all the children’s needs, or do they still hope that they can get to that point and provide a good-quality education? What is the feeling in that respect?

I am really interested in what you said. Everybody else was nodding when you were saying it. Am I right in thinking that you are saying that it is not so much that there is a presumption of mainstreaming but almost a rule that a child should be mainstreamed?