Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am glad that the member is pushing the issue on to the debate and that he said that these are probing amendments. I have a lot of sympathy for what he is proposing.

Part of my concern about the operational aspect is the idea that the inspectorate would have to engage with every complaint that is received. I am sure that we have all had complaints in our email inboxes. I have had someone complaining about a school because the school was helping to deliver vaccinations to children and the individual who complained thought that the vaccinations included 5G chips from Bill Gates. Not every complaint is equal, so there needs to be some flexibility to ensure that spurious complaints can be dismissed, so that, if we assign such responsibility to the inspectorate, its focus can be dedicated entirely to serious complaints, although I agree that there is a gap in the system around addressing those.

I point out that, although health and safety is not devolved, building standards and building safety are. As much as I hope that the amendments are not moved at this stage, because there is still more work to do, I sympathise with their principle, particularly because of an incident a few years ago in the East Dunbartonshire Council area, when there were gas leaks in schools. It then emerged that the council could not locate the gas certificates for most of the primary schools in its estate.

There is a need for something more rigorous in the process to ensure that the safety of our school buildings is checked, although perhaps not through the mechanism that is proposed.

I apologise—I was not being clear. I was talking about amendments 317 and 350 in relation to the work with Education Scotland.

My concern about amendment 318 is similar to that of the cabinet secretary. I think that there is another conflict of interest, in that the effect of the amendment would be to move the inspectorate towards being a body involved in the delivery of the system. That would create a conflict of interest similar to what the bill is trying to resolve. I do not think those involved in co-ordinating the delivery of a service would be sufficiently independent to inspect how the service was being delivered.

On amendment 319, I agree that the inspectorate should set high standards in relation to education governance, but my issue with that is about upholding standards. It is surely for the establishments that are being inspected to uphold those standards, rather than for the inspectorate. I am not sure how it would be empowered to do so.

The SDS submission makes interesting points about the proposed new definition of an apprenticeship in the bill. Essentially, is it based on—it is certainly aligned with—the one that the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board settled on in 2019.

However, there have been quite a few developments since then. The board has done a lot of work on the definition of an apprenticeship to make sure that there is alignment with Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership qualifications, for example.

That concern about the definition has not particularly been reflected in the submissions from external organisations that I have seen—the focus is much more on the definition of a private provider. I would be interested to hear whether the RSE or Prosper have a view on the definition of an apprenticeship and whether you think that what is in the bill is adequate to capture that, or whether we should take a more comprehensive approach or perhaps set more specific standards.

In that case, I will come back in on later themes, if that is okay, convener.

Is that the same for RSE?

I agree entirely with the principle behind amendment 331. I agree with that behind amendment 334, too, but I am concerned that, as it is currently drafted, it would cover only students and teachers or lecturers, which would exclude support staff in the school and anybody else who might be involved. It would exclude all staff other than the educators.

I agree with the principle behind all the amendments in the group. My only concern is that, although amendment 308 talks about safeguarding requirements in general, others in the group—amendment 332, the cabinet secretary’s amendment 88 and Miles Briggs’s amendments—talk specifically about children and young people. Although I agree that specific arrangements are needed for children and young people, a wider safeguarding responsibility exists, particularly when it comes to vulnerable adults.

I should declare at this point that I have membership of the protecting vulnerable groups scheme.

If we agree to the principle of the amendments, is there perhaps a way to come back at stage 3 to make it clear that there are specific safeguarding duties in relation to children and young people but there are also wider safeguarding responsibilities towards everyone who is involved in or on the premises of an educational establishment—in particular, vulnerable adults?

I have a lot of sympathy for Mr Kerr’s amendment 315. Amendment 348, on the requirement to report, concerns me more, given that I hope—as I think that we would all hope—that, at least in some years, a relatively small number of complaints would be made via the proposed process. My worry is that, when we are talking about a small number of complaints that would have to be coalesced into a published report, the requirements on reporting that are in the amendment would be hard to reconcile with a need to make sure that there is absolute anonymity for whistleblowers and no prospect of jigsaw identification.