Seòmar agus comataidhean

Again, my amendments in this group are about increasing transparency and confidence that qualifications Scotland is engaging with the advice that it receives. I should say that my amendments 36 and 37 and Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendments 283 and 284 do essentially the same thing, mine for the interest committees and Ms Duncan-Glancy’s for the advisory committee.

The amendments would require qualifications Scotland to publish the advice that it receives and the response that it has produced. That is about trying to increase transparency, and it would give those involved on the interest committees and on the advisory committee more confidence that their advice was being taken seriously, even on occasions when that advice was not necessarily taken on board. It is critical for those in the system more widely, including learners and practitioners, to see that advice and how the body is responding to it.

One of the criticisms of the SQA has been that it does not take on board advice from those with direct knowledge of how to deliver the qualifications or experience of undertaking them. Increasing transparency in that regard would, I think, result in greater buy-in and trust across the system.

I move amendment 36.

In conclusion, I confirm that the basis on which I would be happy not to move my amendments—and I suggest that the same is true for others—is that the cabinet secretary confirms that the Government accepts the principle of co-design as part of the process.

Yes, but I want to make a point and raise an issue first.

I like the points about monitoring compliance in amendments 261 and 271. Although I am wary about creating an unequivocal requirement to comply, the monitoring points have value.

Amendment 285, which would require the organisation to publish a report in instances in which the charters had not been complied with, has a lot of value. I am wary that the organisation, by not complying, would be breaching its legislative duties, but there should be transparency around situations in which it has not complied. In such situations, the organisation should explain why it believes that non-compliance was necessary and should be held to account as appropriate.

Martin Whitfield made the point about this being a one-off exercise, and I do not think that it is a particularly onerous one. I am seeking clarity from the member. I think that there is broad agreement about the educational benefits of having the unique learner number and data sharing, but the real challenges are around the practicalities of data sharing and the data and privacy rights of the individuals concerned—the learners. Will the member clarify that the suggestion is not for the strategic advisory council to consider those questions? I suggest that that is outwith the expertise that the individuals who we are proposing to sit on the advisory council will have. They would be focusing solely on the educational benefits of such an approach, not on dealing with practical and legal questions around data sharing and privacy rights.

I agree that that is a significant challenge. However, I suggest that a wider challenge is that we are just over a quarter of a century into devolution, and Parliament should have had a wider discussion about its ability to effectively scrutinise and hold public bodies to account before now. I am glad that we are starting to have that discussion, and I understand the issues of precedence that the amendment potentially sets.

My main motivation in lodging amendment 60 is to put that challenge to the Government and to seek its reassurance about how it will avoid the situation that we have been in up until now, in which a public body—in this case, the SQA—has been so resistant to parliamentary accountability that, at points in the past, the committee has genuinely entertained the idea of simply not inviting it back, because we questioned the purpose of bringing it in, in terms of the value of its evidence to the committee and its disregard of the recommendation that the committee made in response. As I have said, my main motivation in lodging the amendment is to put that to the Government and to seek its response as to how we will ensure that qualifications Scotland does not repeat those challenges, that it submits itself to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and that it gives due regard—even if that is not the language used in the legislation—to the recommendations put to it by Parliament.

I turn briefly to the other amendments in the group. I agree with the cabinet secretary’s amendment 59, which is quite simple and contributes to the transparency objective that I have been pursuing elsewhere.

Although I am keen on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendment 242 in principle, I am a little wary of the specificity of the reference to quarterly meetings and of putting that into legislation. It is quite a rigid requirement. Bodies that I have chaired in the past have been required by their own constitution to meet a certain number of times a year, but there were various points in the year when we realised that it would have been more hassle than it was worth to have a meeting, because the previous one had been sufficiently productive or for other such reasons. I am broadly content with the amendment, but I would be open to a bit more flexibility being brought in at stage 3. I will close there, convener.

I move amendment 57.

I take on board the cabinet secretary’s point about amendment 60, and I will restrain myself from giving a much longer response to the interventions of Liz Smith and Martin Whitfield on the wider question of the performance of the Parliament, parliamentary scrutiny and our capacity to do that. Having written most of the Green group’s response to the work that Mr Whitfield’s committee is currently doing on that, I welcome that work, as he may have been able to tell from the tone of some of my contribution.

I am happy not to press amendment 57 and not to move amendments 7 and 8 in relation to consultation, and to continue speaking to the cabinet secretary about that. The key point that I was looking for was an acknowledgement of the need in some circumstances for that wider consultation, not just consultation with the committees. The cabinet secretary has acknowledged that and, if we can come back at stage 3 with something satisfactory, I will be happy with that.

As I have said, I will not move amendment 60.

I will move amendment 58 and press it to a vote, because the requirement that it would place is not onerous. We are already placing into legislation the requirement for the strategic advisory council to give advice, so it is proportionate to place a reciprocal requirement on qualifications Scotland to respond.

Amendment 57, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 7 and 8 not moved.

Amendment 58 moved—[Ross Greer].

I cannot guarantee that. The issue is partly about the board appointment process and making sure that the right individuals are appointed to the board. That is particularly important when it comes to the chair. In recent months, we have seen the difference that having a highly proactive board chair has made.

Nothing that we can do in legislation will guarantee that every individual on the board of qualifications Scotland will be as effective and as actively involved as we want them to be, but we can build in mechanisms that make that a little bit more likely. In this case, given the corporate plan’s importance to the organisation, ensuring that that document was actively considered and voted on would, I hope, improve the situation. There are no guarantees here, because, ultimately, we are talking about individual personalities and performance, which we cannot legislate for.

On amendment 35, we have touched on a couple of points in the past, particularly in relation to proposed new paragraph (c) of section 14(3), which relates to employers. What I am proposing in amendment 35 is that qualifications Scotland consults on the corporate plan before it is finalised. It should consult a range of key groups. As you would expect, that should include those undertaking the qualifications, namely the learners, and those delivering them, namely the teachers, college lecturing staff and so on. However, I also think that that is the appropriate point to engage with business and to bring in employers. We have talked about that in various other settings—for example, whether there is space on other committees for individuals representing industry and so on. It is important that employers who will be using the qualifications that learners will, we hope, obtain are consulted on the corporate plan. Amendment 35 would expand the list of stakeholders and service users who must be consulted in preparing the corporate plan, but it is not an exhaustive list. Proposed new paragraph (d) of section 14(3) states that qualifications Scotland can consult others, as required.

Some members who were involved in the stage 2 proceedings of the Scottish Languages Bill might recognise amendment 71, which is a proposal that the Law Society of Scotland has made on a number of occasions in relation to public bodies to improve transparency. It should be an incredibly unlikely event that Scottish ministers reject the corporate plan of any public body, but, in the event that they did, something would quite obviously have gone wrong. I would argue, as the Law Society has done a number of times in the past, that it would be in the public interest to publish the reasons for rejecting the plan. That is particularly to aid parliamentary scrutiny, which is relevant for this body, given the discussions that we have had about the difficulties of effective scrutiny and accountability in relation to the SQA.

I move amendment 280.

I am grateful for this last-minute intervention being accepted. I take the minister’s point. As I said at the start, amendment 60 was designed to be provocative, as it proposes something that is not the case elsewhere in legislation.

However, it is a reflection of the experiences that this committee and its predecessor committee have had. Given that the cabinet secretary was on the education committee at a point when there were particularly acute frustrations with the SQA’s resistance to accountability, to parliamentary scrutiny and to acting on committee recommendations, and taking on board her point that ministers are accountable to Parliament and that NDPBs are accountable to ministers, it is clear that that arrangement has not worked. That is one of the reasons why we are here.

Although I understand why amendment 60 is not necessarily the way in which to go about that, I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on the fact that it sounds as though she is saying that the system that we already have is the appropriate one. If that was the case, I suggest, the bill would not be in front of us now. If amendment 60 is not the change that is needed—I accept that, and will not move it—what change is required to ensure a sufficient level of scrutiny, accountability and respect from qualifications Scotland for the Parliament? At the core, that is what has been lacking, up to now. There has been a lack of respect for not just the Parliament but learners, teachers and so on; however, in relation to amendment 60, there has been a lack of respect for the Parliament.

My position on many of these amendments, especially the large group of amendments in the name of Sue Webber, reflects our discussion on the convener’s amendments on a new independent regulator. The Finance and Public Administration Committee—of which, along with John Mason, I am a member—considered issues related to the creation of new public bodies and, in particular, SPCB-appointed bodies. In our report to Parliament, we made a strong recommendation and did something that it is unusual to do in the context of a committee report—we put forward a motion to Parliament in which, rather than asking Parliament as a whole to note our report, we asked it specifically to agree to a moratorium on the creation of new SPCB-appointed office bearers.

I also have some specific issues in relation to moving the inspectorate entirely within the purview of Parliament. Ultimately, ministers have responsibility for the setting of education policy in Scotland, which is a significant responsibility. If we were to have a wider debate about whether we should remove education policy entirely from the remit of ministers, I would have a lot of questions about that.

The example that I have used before—I think that I might have used it in the stage 1 debate—is that it is entirely legitimate for the Scottish ministers to decide on a specific element of education policy, to instruct and expect schools to implement it and, then, after a few years, to ask the chief inspector to conduct a thematic inspection on that. Five or six years ago, the Government made a decision on LGBTQ-inclusive education. It would be entirely legitimate for the Government to say that it wanted to carry out a thematic inspection to ensure that that has been implemented.

Recently, we have had many parliamentary debates about pupil behaviour and violence against women and girls in particular. It is right for the Parliament to hold ministers to account on such important issues, and it is appropriate for ministers to retain the power to instruct a thematic inspection on, for example, how schools deal with violence against women and girls. That is an issue that I think requires such examination, because there are significant inconsistencies in policy.

I want to strengthen Parliament’s role in relation to, and its relationship with, the inspectorate. My amendment 92, which we will come to later, seeks to do that in relation to inspection plans, although I am open to other ways in which we can do that. The best way to describe it is that I want the inspectorate to have greater independence in most areas of practice, but not in relation to its form and not in every area of practice. For example, Pam Duncan-Glancy highlighted the issue of the terms and conditions of inspectorate staff, and I would probably share her position in relation to home schooling.

Turning briefly to Willie Rennie’s amendments, I am minded to support amendment 147 in particular, although I have some questions about the practice of inspectors being appointed “on the recommendation of” the chief inspector when, in practice, they will be appointed by the chief inspector. However, the principle behind that amendment is sound. The same is true of amendment 160. I think that it is desirable to provide for some extra scrutiny of the regulations on the intervals for schools to be inspected.

I have significant concerns about amendment 156, because I can envisage situations in which ministers would want to instruct the inspectorate to inspect a school—for example, for specific reasons that relate to welfare concerns that have been raised—and the delay that would result from having to seek the approval or the input of a parliamentary committee would not be acceptable. There are non-urgent situations for which I would welcome some kind of mechanism whereby ministers would seek the input of Parliament, but I do not want anything that could delay ministers’ instruction of inspections—particularly if there is a welfare issue. I am aware that that has been the case in the past.

I welcome amendments 342 and 345 from Pam Duncan-Glancy. However, on amendment 340, my concern—on which I would welcome clarification from the cabinet secretary—is that, at the moment, in practice, ministers request a copy of every inspection report, and there are a number of those every week, and the process of laying all those before the Parliament would be not just an unnecessary burden on the inspectorate but an additional burden on the Parliament. The business bulletin would certainly get a lot larger each week. For that reason, I cannot support amendment 340. However, the proposals in amendments 342 and 345 are advisable.

This debate will be pretty similar to the ones that we have had in relation to the interest committees, the board of qualifications Scotland and, in particular, the strategic advisory committee.

Amendment 91 is consequential, and amendment 77 would expand the starting membership of the chief inspector’s advisory council because of what I am proposing in amendment 78, although members will note that ministers would still have the power to vary the size of the council as required.

Amendment 78 is the substantive amendment that I have lodged in this group. It seeks to bring in those who have direct experience of actually being in educational establishments that are the subject of inspection by HMIE. Those are primarily schools, so it would therefore relate primarily to pupils in schools and to teachers, but also to college lecturers and college students. Amendment 78 also seeks to ensure that the voice of the staff in the inspectorate—the inspectors themselves and their support staff—is heard as part of the process and is represented on the advisory council.

As much as we have paid a great deal of attention to governance arrangements in other parts of the education landscape in recent years, it is fair to say that the inspectorate is a bit of a black box for a lot of people in our schools and colleges at the moment. There is a real lack of understanding about it. There is an element of a somewhat stand-offish approach, with people feeling that inspections are imposed on them, that the process is top-down and so on.

The advisory council proposals that are in the bill are very welcome. They can be strengthened, not in an exhaustive way, but by our being a bit more specific about the kind of people we wish to see as part of that advisory group.

I will touch briefly on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendments. I would welcome it if she could explain her thinking a little. As I understand it, the amendments would replace the word “advisory” with the word “governing”. However, the council would still not have any governing powers over the chief inspector. I am worried about the ambiguity that that might cause, so I would welcome it if Pam Duncan-Glancy could talk about that.

Amendment 326 mirrors an amendment that I lodged relating to the board of qualifications Scotland, and I am happy to support it.

I do not think that I will support amendment 172, which is in the name of Miles Briggs. I voted for a representative of parents and carers to be on the qualifications Scotland strategic advisory council. I am less convinced of the need in the case of the chief inspector’s advisory council, but I am open to the case that Mr Briggs will make.

I move amendment 77.