The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 768 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Willie Rennie
To reflect briefly on that, you do not think that you will threaten the charitable status of universities with this reform. You are going to make sure that that does not happen.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Willie Rennie
In her statement yesterday, the education secretary set out a move towards greater emphasis on knowledge in maths. Surely, that foundation of knowledge needs to be assessed independently. I completely accept your point about skills, but surely knowledge should not be undervalued in all this.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Willie Rennie
My second question is about assessment. During the pandemic, there was a big debate about the role of teacher judgment, Scottish national standardised assessments and national testing, and about whether producing league tables creates the right dynamics. We have discussed how exams affect the system, too. Can we use artificial intelligence to assess independently and introduce accountability into the education system in a way that will give us confidence and will not create all the negative effects of SNSAs?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Willie Rennie
I will follow up on what has been said about the Hayward review, which recommends a move away from exams, towards assessments. It is not clearly defined exactly how far that would go, but many people in the education community are concerned that, given the rise of AI, that would be a retrograde step and think that we should stick with exams being conducted in sanitary conditions, isolated from technology. Do you have views on whether that is right?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 13 December 2023
Willie Rennie
I take your point that the role of the teacher is incredibly important, but when a dynamic is created in which people compete through the SNSA system—I know that the Government does not like to say that league tables are produced, but they are produced on the back of that—the relationships that teachers want to have with their pupils are corrupted. Is there not a way to ensure that policy makers, the Government and education leaders have the confidence that things are working without creating all those negative dynamics?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Willie Rennie
I return to the issue of behaviour in school. I buy all the stuff about early intervention, and I get the point about needing to avoid exclusions if at all possible. However, teachers tell me that they are often frustrated that they are left to pick up the tab when the service fails elsewhere. How do we deal with that? How do we support teachers to do their job?
10:00Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Willie Rennie
So, you accept that. Do we understand why that is happening? We know that the homelessness situation overall is tough—housing supply is difficult—but if this is a priority, why is the trend going backwards?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Willie Rennie
I will move on to housing now, if that is okay. The latest figures show that the proportion of those under 25 who were looked-after children and who were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness has increased by 10 per cent over the past year. Why is that happening and what are we doing about it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Willie Rennie
In a similar vein to Ruth Maguire’s question, I want to explore the no-compulsory-redundancy policy again. I accept what you have said before, which is that colleges have always been excluded, despite the broader statements that were made in the past. Are you recommending to colleges that there should be no compulsory redundancies?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 November 2023
Willie Rennie
When Mike Russell was in your position, he was quite clear that he was making a strong recommendation. He said, “This is Government policy and we expect colleges to follow it.” Is your position slightly different from that? Do you have a softer approach to it, or are you still as firm as Mike Russell was?