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In the earlier part of our meeting, Linda Somerville from the STUC mentioned that its position is that we need to tax not just income, but wealth. Councillor Macgregor talked about other local revenue-raising opportunities, the transient visitor levy being one example. It was derailed by Covid, but there is still a broad appetite to move in that direction. We talked a moment ago about creative policy solutions being adopted in Scotland in the past years. Can other creative solutions for revenue raising be found at a local level?

To clarify, is the work that is being done purely internal to COSLA and the cross-party discussions that you talked about? Have any interim discussions been held with the Scottish Government at this point?

Yes. Thank you. I will go a little bit further. The SNSAs have a dual purpose: they are supposed to collect both formative and summative data. Their stated purpose is to help individual teachers in supporting their pupils and to provide that larger summative data about how the system as a whole is working. Romane Viennet made the point that SNSAs are not necessarily the best way to collect that data. To clarify, are you talking about the summative data? Is your point that SNSAs are not necessarily the best way to collect system-level data?

The Scottish Parliament information centre, which is a neutral research resource available to all members—it is not aligned with any one party—has just published more analysis of that. It highlights the potential difference between the Scottish Government accepting the headline recommendations of your report and responding to the wider commentary that it contains. For example, the report contains no specific headline recommendation on SNSAs, but there is wider commentary—as you just explained—on whether they are the most useful way to collect the required data. Would you expect the Scottish Government to respond directly to the points that the report makes around SNSAs?

Good morning. Over the past few days, much of the commentary in Scotland around the report has been about Scottish national standardised assessments—the achievement of curriculum for excellence level assessments—in relation to the references made both in the report itself and at the launch, back in June.

Rather than put words into your mouths, I will ask you to expand on what was said in the report about SNSAs. Specifically, is their purpose clear and are they meeting that stated purpose at present?

Yes.

Yes, convener. It was very useful.

Thank you both. That is all from me for now, convener.

For the purposes of time, I will ask only one question, which is on the governance arrangements around curriculum for excellence and, specifically, on the OECD’s findings relating to the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland, which are the two major agencies that are responsible for delivery, and their relationship.

In response to the OECD’s report, the Scottish Government announced that those two bodies will, in essence, be merged. Education Scotland’s inspection function is being removed. That function will be carried out independently, which is supported across the Parliament. However, the body that is responsible for developing the curriculum and the body that is responsible for developing qualifications will be brought together. I recognise the point that was made about the qualifications system and the curriculum simply not aligning, so, on the face of it, it makes a lot of sense to bring the two agencies together in order to get, I hope, better alignment. However, is that a common governance arrangement in other comparable education systems?

Although it is not a registrable interest, I have membership of the Disclosure Scotland protection of vulnerable groups scheme for the purposes of youth work with the Church of Scotland.