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I am sorry to jump in. You are right that there needs to be a whole-system approach, but somebody needs to lead the piece of work in order to get it started.

Will you consider leading that piece of work or do you need direction from Government? For example, do you need the cabinet secretary to say to you, “This is a strategic priority, so I would like you to co-ordinate it. I would like you to commission academics and work with partners and so on”, or is that something that Education Scotland, using its executive authority, can go ahead and do?

If there is time, convener, I have one more question about inspectors and inspections—it relates somewhat to the issue of longitudinal work and the length of time between inspections of individual schools. When your inspectors go into a school and engage with it as part of that regular programme, do they ask standard questions about specific points related to the use of attainment funding as part of their report? Could you give us a bit more detail on the role that the inspectors play in making sure that we are gathering the right kind of evidence in a supportive manner?

Now that that has been the case for seven years, has there been any collation or review of what inspectors come back with, or any identification of common trends in their reports?

This is probably a question for Patricia Watson in the first instance, but feel free to refer it to colleagues if that is more appropriate. I am looking to draw together some of the threads in the various answers that you have given already.

A couple of weeks ago, the committee heard evidence from Jim Thewliss of School Leaders Scotland. He is one of a number of witnesses who have suggested that there is a need for some longitudinal studies on the impact of the funding. We are at the stage at which an entire cohort could have gone through their whole time at primary or secondary with the funding in place, so this is an appropriate point at which to do some high-quality and in-depth longitudinal work to assess the impact of that.

You have mentioned the various bits of assessment work that you have been doing. In the work that you are already doing, is there anything that matches the description of what Jim Thewliss asked for? If the answer is no, do you have any plans to do the longitudinal work that people are interested in?

Excellent.

Absolutely—I agree with much of that. Would it be fair to say that, if we were to embark on such a piece of work, the appropriate body to undertake or co-ordinate it would either be Education Scotland or the Government’s learning directorate?

As the national education agency, you are ideally placed to co-ordinate a piece of work that would use case studies to look at, for example, a school in an urban area with high levels of deprivation, a school in a rural area that sits in the middle of SIMD and a school with a high level of students for whom English is a second language. Could you decide to do that, or would you need direction from the Government? Would you need the cabinet secretary to tell you, “We have now been running this funding programme for long enough, so I want to see the kind of longitudinal work that School Leaders Scotland has suggested”?

That is really useful—particularly your point about schools not being afraid to try something and fail. We should encourage that kind of innovation, and we have certainly heard evidence in the past of reticence about taking a risk and failing resulting in a lack of innovation. It is really healthy that schools are being encouraged to take acceptable risks and to know that the local authority will not come down on them for “wasting” money.

I put to the same question to Tony McDaid. How do you go about that? I know that your authority was not previously a challenge authority, but you have had some relevant funds. Now that we are moving to the new model, what approach will you be taking?

Finally, will Gerry Lyons comment on the new guidance that has recently come out on providing annual reports on how the money is spent to parent councils, for example? On one level, that provides a really healthy level of not local scrutiny, but local accountability and engagement. However, there is perhaps a danger that that will create false expectations that you can do something totally transformational in relation to embedded societal problems within the space of a year. How do you plan to get the balance right in Glasgow in giving parent councils the information that they deserve to have but getting their expectations right on what that means in relation to annual reporting?

I want to follow up on that line of questioning. I am interested in your approach to making sure that we get robust evaluation and that the money is spent on initiatives that are actually effective, without putting such an administrative burden on schools that staff spend more time on evaluating programmes than they spend on actually delivering better outcomes for young people.

I will start with Ruth Binks because, given the length of time in which Inverclyde Council has been a challenge authority, you have probably developed quite a coherent approach by this stage.