Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will strike my previous remarks from the record and thank the minister for his support by pressing amendment 72. I am grateful for his support, and I will come back at stage 3 with redrafted equivalents to amendments 73 and 74.

Amendment 72 agreed to.

Amendments 73 and 74 not moved.

Section 45, as amended, agreed to.

Before section 46

Amendments 75 and 76 moved—[Bob Doris]—and agreed to.

Section 46—Five-year plan: devolved Scottish elections and referendums

Amendment 77 moved—[Bob Doris]—and agreed to.

Amendment 48 moved—[Jamie Hepburn]—and agreed to.

Section 46, as amended, agreed to.

After section 46

Amendments 55 and 56 moved—[Bob Doris]—and agreed to.

Section 47—Constitution of the Electoral Management Board for Scotland

That is great—thanks. I move on to my core question, which is about inspections and how you are assessed. I am interested in hearing about the basics of safeguarding, inspections and things like that, but also about how the educational outcomes of the services that you provide are assessed. The wider context of the bill is that it is being considered at the same time as quite a lot of reform in the system. The Government’s education reform bill will re-establish the independent inspectorate, and a discussion is taking place about how wide its remit should be.

Will you tell us a little about how you are inspected and assessed on both safeguarding and educational outcomes? What changes might have to be made if we pass the bill and move it on to a statutory footing?

I want to ask about how your centres are inspected and assessed, but before that I will follow up on a point that was made about financial viability. Nick March gave the example of Blairvadach, which is in my area. As he pointed out, it is pretty much fully booked for 48 or 49 weeks of the year, but in most years Glasgow City Council still considers closing it because it is quite a significant net financial liability. There is a tension in that, if the council reduced its school trips that it brings in and increased the number of commercial bookings, the centre might move towards viability, but that would defeat its core purpose and the reason why the council has the centre in the first place.

If we are to pass the bill and significantly increase the demand from local authorities and schools for class trips, how can we address the tension whereby centres such as Blairvadach could move towards financial viability but only if they decrease the number of school trips that come in and move to being more of a commercial setting?

Absolutely. Thank you.

Good morning. My questions are primarily related to the impact on teachers’ terms and conditions. Tara Lillis, you have covered that quite comprehensively already, but could you clarify whether it is the position of the NASUWT that, were the bill to be passed and the obligation to provide outdoor residential education were to be delivered in the typical way, through teachers volunteering their time, that would end up going to the SNCT for a formal discussion about changes to terms and conditions?

I have no doubt that that is true. When I am not here in the Parliament, I am a youth worker, and plenty of the young people I have worked with have had excellent experiences of outdoor education.

A cynical or pessimistic approach to what will happen if we pass the bill might suggest that we could create a capacity issue by significantly increasing demand. At the moment, schools can be somewhat selective and go to a centre that they know they will be happy with. If schools are obligated to go somewhere and there are capacity issues in the system, their options may be limited and they may, therefore, end up not being completely satisfied that the place they go to will have positive outcomes. What systems do we need to have in place to prevent that? If we increase demand, capacity will have to be created to meet that demand, and we will need to ensure that the capacity of the new, expanded system matches the standards that I have no doubt you are all meeting at the moment, if that makes sense.

You mentioned that the support does not have to be provided by teachers in the typical manner that I think that we are all familiar with. Andrew Bradshaw, I am interested in anything that you can add to the discussion in terms of what alternative models look like. Are there areas of best practice that exist already? Are there any local authorities that use a model that is not typically reliant on teachers volunteering to go away with their class for the week?

Thanks—that was useful. Tara Lillis covered the core questions around terms and conditions when she responded to Bill Kidd, so I do not need to repeat the question.

I sympathise with the Government on public sector pay, because the moment that any figure is published, that figure becomes the floor for negotiations from the union negotiator side. There is no winning when it comes to transparently setting out public sector pay in a way that does not undermine negotiations or make them more difficult.

Michael Marra mentioned some of the specific cuts that have been made, such as to the nature restoration fund, which you referred to in your response to Michelle Thomson. Is it still the Government’s position that there is no way to press ahead with some of those very small pots, such as the £1 million for the nature restoration fund—although a larger figure of £5 million has been mentioned—and the £2 million for the asylum seeker bus travel scheme had it proceeded?

If we take asylum seeker bus travel as the clearest example, the Parliament has now voted that that should still go ahead. Your group and the Government were part of that vote. We are heading towards the end of the financial year, so it would not even be possible to spend £2 million at this point, but allocating something—£1 million or £0.5 million—would allow the project to get under way, with the intention of funding it fully and delivering it from the subsequent financial year. Is there really no scope to allocate back in the region of £1 million or £0.5 million?

With respect, that is not an answer to the question that I asked. It is clear that, year on year, the education portfolio has borne quite a bit of the burden, in cash terms and as a percentage of its overall budget. Does the Government recognise that, when certain portfolios bear the burden year after year, that eventually has a disproportionate effect?