Seòmar agus comataidhean

I welcome our guests—those online on computer link, and those who have joined us in the committee room. We are keen to get your perspective on the financial health of the further education sector and on issues such as governance arrangements, if you want to address those. Also, especially at this time, we are interested in how further education colleges have coped with the pandemic and what the experience has been for people who have been teaching and students. We also want to cover some ground looking at college performance. Our reference points are a blog that the Auditor General produced in May this year, and the more substantive report that came out in 2019, which gave a weather check on the state of further education colleges post-mergers and so on.

The panel members do not have to respond to every single question. There may be areas where you are enthusiastic to take part and other areas where you feel that others are better equipped to come in. We will have to manage the discussion tightly, given the time constraints. For those of you in the room, it would be helpful if you indicated to me or the clerks if you want to come in. Those on the videolink should put an R in the chat function if they want to come in on a particular part of the conversation. When you speak, your microphone will be automatically switched on.

I will begin by asking people to introduce themselves, starting with the MSPs who are in the room.

I will bring in Shona Struthers, then I will move on because Craig Hoy has some questions to ask.

The main purpose of this morning’s session is to look at the section 23 report that was brought out in March this year jointly by the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission, which looked at improving outcomes for young people through school education.

I am delighted once again to welcome the Auditor General, who is here with us in person this morning. There are also three of his colleagues who worked on the report joining us via videolink: Antony Clark, interim director of performance audit and best value; Tricia Meldrum, senior audit manager; and Zoe McGuire, senior auditor in performance audit and best value. Welcome to all four of you. We have quite a number of questions to put this morning but, before we do that, Auditor General, could you give us a brief introductory statement?

Good morning. I welcome everybody to the third meeting of the Public Audit Committee in this session of Parliament. I begin by reminding everybody about Parliament’s rules on social distancing and also the requirement to wear face masks if you are moving around the room or entering or leaving the room.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Tricia Meldrum, do you want to come in on the questions that Sharon Dowey put?

I will end with a couple of questions about the money. If I read it correctly, the report seems to conclude that while overall total national education spending on schools rose between 2013-14 and 2018-19 by 0.7 per cent in real terms, there was quite a bit of variation within that. One of the things that struck me was that the report concluded that in those councils that were targeted for attainment Scotland funding, there was quite a variation.

For example—keep me right if I am wrong on this—my understanding is that with the exception of Glasgow City Council all the attainment challenge councils saw a drop in education spending in that period if you exclude the attainment Scotland funding. I thought that the attainment Scotland funding was meant to be additional, to tackle a particular problem. Do you have any reflections or comments on that and do you have a view about the impact on councils in which there was a reduction in the budget for mainstream operational spending?

I will come back to that point in a minute, but I wanted to ask about something else that is covered in your report. It would have been very fresh at the time of the report and we now have some benefit of a slightly longer view of it. Money was set aside to help with the logistics of schools reopening at the start of the year. I think that there was £50 million additional funding allocated to help schools reopen safely. At the time, as I recall, councils said that it was insufficient to do what we need to do, but I think the Scottish Government said that it was sufficient. Have you had an opportunity to review that to see whether somebody was right and somebody was wrong?

Thank you very much indeed. This week, you made an important statement in a blog reflecting on 10 years since the Christie commission report was produced. If you do not mind me quoting you, because I think that it is important that this is on the record, I note that you warned that the country “remains riven by inequalities”, but you also said that it remains the case that there is

“a major implementation gap between policy ambitions and delivery on the ground.”

With reference to this morning’s inquiry, you said that

“progress on closing the poverty-related attainment gap between the most and least deprived school pupils had been limited.”

That is a very powerful statement of how you see things. Could you reflect on that and perhaps outline for us what you think needs to change so that that huge implementation gap that you spoke about can be closed?

Thank you, Mr Clark. I now turn to Sharon Dowey, who has a series of questions to ask.

Thank you. Before I widen the questioning, there is one other thing that I want to come back to, which again was mentioned in your opening statement—the OECD report that came out in June this year, just a couple of months after your own report was produced. In the briefing note for today’s committee meeting, you say that there are some common themes between the conclusions you arrived at and the conclusions and recommendations that were made by the OECD. It would be useful for us to hear from you what those common themes are and whether there are clear recommendations that come from those common themes that would do what the report says we need to do. I think that we are all agreed on the need to improve outcomes for young people in a broader sense through school education.