Seòmar agus comataidhean

I come to Mark Ratter to move the discussion on. It is impossible for the committee to scrutinise in detail what every local authority and every school spends the money on. We should not do that, because every local authority has its own elected representatives who are responsible for scrutiny at the local level. Will you give us an example of what that looks like in East Renfrewshire? What kinds of report do you prepare for councillors? What scrutiny is provided at that level?

Thank you very much. We would certainly be very grateful for that. Would any of the other witnesses like to provide any specific examples?

Thank you very much. That was really useful.

I believe that Greg Dempster is looking to come in.

Thank you very much. Andrea Bradley and Mike Corbett want to come in. I am conscious that I am probably eating into colleagues’ time, though, so, if you do not mind, I ask you to be brief in your responses.

I will stick with the point about evaluation. I am interested in examples of local good practice. This morning, a number of anecdotal examples have been given of good practice in deploying the funds, but I am interested in whether any of the witnesses are aware of schools, clusters, local authorities or even regional improvement collaboratives that are already doing a really good job of local evaluation. It would be of considerable interest to the committee if you could point us towards examples of successful evaluation in practice. I ask Jim Thewliss to answer first.

I have one final question, which is a bit of a two-parter. I go back to Bob Doris’s line of questioning about the new guidance around annual reporting to parent councils, but also to his questions around longitudinal studies, which I think are very important.

On one level, I think that it is a very good idea to make sure that there is a clear expectation of local accountability through, for example, those annual reports. However, there is a bit of me that is concerned that that then creates an expectation that we can and should be able to measure the impact of some of this stuff within a year, whereas we have spent quite a lot of this morning talking about the fact that, whether over a year or even an entire parliamentary session, we cannot close the poverty-related attainment gap in such a short period of time.

I am interested in your reflections on how we get that balance right between making sure that there is robust local accountability and not creating unrealistic expectations, whether among parents or at local authority level or, indeed, at the parliamentary or national level.

I am most interested in your thoughts on where responsibility for longitudinal studies should lie. Is that something that schools, clusters, local authorities or RICs should be doing, or should it be done nationally by Education Scotland, or even directly by the Government? Where is the most appropriate place for longitudinal evaluation to be organised? We will start with Jim Thewliss.

On the second question about responsibility for longitudinal work, we could do a national study and Education Scotland could be responsible for that, but are there levels beneath that where you think that such a study would be appropriate?

Thank you very much. Before I bring in Mr Corbett, I point out that he was my English teacher—I do not think that I mentioned that at the previous committee meeting—so if any colleagues have complaints about my approach to Scottish education, they can take that up with him after the meeting. [Laughter.]

You again mentioned what you said at the start of the meeting about the difference between attainment and achievement, and about ensuring that we get the wider measures of achievement right. My question is similar to the one that I asked a moment ago. Are you aware of any local authorities that are taking that more rounded, achievement-based approach, or is the picture still pretty consistent across the country, in so far as we are consistently being too narrow by looking just at attainment?

I should say that I am sure Aberdeen City Council is absolutely nailing it. Mr Lumsden can confirm that later on. [Laughter.]

Jennifer Henderson made an interesting point a moment ago about the role of corporate boards. I have mentioned in committee a few times that there seems, particularly in the public sector in Scotland, to be quite a wide spectrum of understanding among board members about the role of the board of a public body. Is the role about scrutinising policy, decision making, strategic direction setting and so on, or is it purely about corporate governance, including human resources practices and so on? Did you find, among the board members to whom you spoke, a wide spectrum of opinion about their role in the process, or is there some consistency—whether good or bad?