Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for that. On that basis, I will not press amendment 2 to a vote.

Amendment 2, by agreement, withdrawn.

Schedule 1—Qualifications Scotland

That is a fair point from the cabinet secretary. I expressed scepticism at the time—I will need to check whether that is recorded in the Official Report or whether my comments were made in another setting—about the refreshed national improvement framework being the driver for change and based on a consensus around a refreshed vision for education.

Although there are areas to welcome in the national improvement framework, it does not adequately address Liz Smith’s point about a shared refreshed vision for Scottish education as a whole. The framework has some specific areas around which we would probably find consensus, but if we had that refreshed vision and consensus around the core principles of the system, it would make it easier to address some of these quite knotty questions. I do not think that we have quite achieved that.

I will finish on that point, convener. I tried to finish five minutes ago, but I am glad that I did not because I think that the interventions have added significantly to the debate.

I agree absolutely. It comes back to a point that a few of us raised earlier, and not just in relation to the bill. The fact is that we are four years into this parliamentary session and multiple areas of education reform have been carried out simultaneously. We have had the national discussion about the curriculum and Professor Hayward’s review, and we have the set of governance reforms that are contained in the bill. In addition, we now have what we did not expect to have at the start of the session: the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, which addresses some of the issues around the skills landscape.

Throughout the process, a number of us have raised concerns that the sequencing of all that is challenging to the point of creating areas in which it is impossible for us to address the issues adequately without knowing what the outcomes of other elements of the process will be. I do not think that there was ever a perfect way to do that, but, at some point, there needs to be a chronology or a sequence, and we need to make those decisions. Part of the issue is that, at this time, some of the processes seem to have gone nowhere.

On the national discussion and the broader vision, the idea of trying to coalesce around some kind of consensus on the curriculum and on the core ethos of Scottish education seems to have disappeared. I do not see what the outcome of the national discussion was. If we achieved consensus on a refreshed vision for Scottish education, it would probably make it easier for us to answer some of the specific questions of governance, structure and function.

The frustration across the committee is clear. Indeed, I share the frustration with the Government that this issue has been considered for so long—yet here we are at stage 2 without the Government having put forward a satisfactory solution. However, as has been mentioned, it is worth reflecting on the fact that, even after the significant volume of evidence that we, as a committee, took at stage 1, we could not collectively come to a clear, satisfactory conclusion on the matter. Clearly, this is the single most challenging issue with regard to the bill.

A majority of committee members and, I think, a majority across the Parliament want there to be a greater distance between the accreditation function and the rest of the functions that are currently proposed for qualifications Scotland. However, all the options that are in front of us have significant pitfalls.

Putting the accreditation function into Education Scotland would do the opposite of creating that greater distance, because, in essence, it would give the function to the Scottish ministers, and that would undermine the principle of what we are trying to achieve.

My initial preference was to move accreditation to the SCQF Partnership. However, as I started drafting amendments to that effect, it became clear—as has been made clear from a lot of the issues that have been raised today—that the SCQF Partnership is not the right home for it, not least because that organisation is a charity, not a public body.

I will come back to this point when we get to the relevant group later, but I will say now that we need to look at the status of the SCQF Partnership. The body is integral to the Scottish education system. As successful as it is, it is not part of our public sector and is not accountable in the way that the rest of the public sector is. That is not a criticism of it but a question about its status.

Obviously, we cannot simply remove accreditation from qualifications Scotland and not put the function somewhere else. I am interested in Pam Duncan-Glancy’s proposals on curriculum Scotland. I am wary of them, to be honest, but we will get into the substance of that in a later group of amendments.

I am willing to reconsider the options on accreditation once we have had the debate on whether to set up a new body. Like John Mason, I sit on the Finance and Public Administration Committee. It recently considered similar issues, particularly in relation to proposals for new Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body-appointed bodies. It proposed a moratorium on their establishment, to which Parliament agreed.

I absolutely agree with Stephen Kerr’s point about the need for a more granular discussion of the issue. This debate has been incredibly valuable in that regard. A range of new information on potential costs has been put on the record this morning, not least by the cabinet secretary. We need more discussion at that granular level, and I certainly want a greater understanding of some of the specific issues that have been teased out.

I repeat what I said earlier in an intervention on the cabinet secretary and what Martin Whitfield has also said: there is clearly a collective desire for us to reach a satisfactory conclusion. There is also clearly a recognition that none of the options that are in front of us is perfect. Given that, I suggest that none of the amendments be pressed at this stage if the Government can commit to facilitating discussion, for all interested members, to enable us to try to coalesce around a satisfactory solution—it will not be perfect—ahead of stage 3. If we cannot do that, I and other members will have to pick the least imperfect of the options. At the moment, I would probably lean towards placing accreditation with the inspectorate, imperfect as that option is. However, I do not think that we have to choose that at this stage. I think that we can come to a more satisfactory conclusion at stage 3, if we can have those further detailed discussions between now and then.

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for laying out the rationale for her position. For clarity, can she say whether, if I were to withdraw the amendment and come back with an equivalent to it that still separates those roles but addresses the GTCS point and takes a wider definition of an educator, the Government would be able to support it?

I am a little confused by the cabinet secretary’s explanation. On the one hand, it sounds like the Government objects to separating the roles in statute, full stop. However, on the other hand, it sounds like it is just a drafting issue. If it is the latter, I am perfectly happy to withdraw the amendment and come back at stage 3 to address the point about the requirement for membership of the GTCS being too restrictive. However, it does not sound like that is the Government’s objection; it sounds like the Government objects to us separating those roles in the bill, full stop.

This intervention can replace the contribution to the debate that I was going to make, convener.

In relation to amendment 288, would Katy Clark agree that institutions—schools, in particular—should have a duty of care to anyone who walks through the doors? I know that there is no intention to exclude anyone, but, to take schools as an example, I note that, although a school absolutely has a duty of care to its pupils and to its teachers, it also has a duty of care to its support staff.

In relation to violence against women and girls, I am particularly conscious that it is often women on the school support staff who are shown the least respect and who have to endure the most unacceptable sexual harassment. If we are heading towards a blanket duty of care—and I am glad that Katy Clark has lodged the amendments—we should ensure that that duty is to everyone who steps through the door of any of these establishments and, in particular, to all members of staff.

I apologise for not having done this earlier, but I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for working with me on several of these amendments over some months; I very much appreciate the collaborative approach that they have taken.

As the cabinet secretary said, amendment 32 is designed to strengthen the link between the learner interest committee and the board in particular. That is based on the experience of and the feedback from those on the learner panels that the SQA has run in recent years. It is certainly the perspective of the learners on the panels that it has often been the case that the SQA senior management have been the only people in receipt of their advice, which they have often disregarded. Very often, the board of the organisation has simply not been involved in that. There is a question around whether the board has received the advice and not considered it—never mind acted on it—or whether the board has not received the advice at all.

My intention with amendment 32 is to strengthen that link and to make it clear that the learner interest committee will have a relationship with the board of qualifications Scotland and with the organisation’s staff. Both groups—staff and board members—would benefit from having that direct relationship and the advice that they would get from the learner interest committee.

Amendments 119 and 120 are about clarifying the membership of the learner interest committee—the committee took a lot of evidence on that at stage 1. What I seek to do is twofold. First, I seek to clarify that the learner interest committee should not have qualifications Scotland staff members on it. Secondly, I seek to clarify that the learner interest committee should include children and young people and also adult learners.

The 18-year-olds who are taking an advanced higher course, as raised in Pam Duncan-Glancy’s point, would be covered under proposed new subparagraph b(ii) as set out in amendment 119. The amendment is intended to clarify that children and young people have unique needs so there is a unique role for them on the committee. It would also clarify that qualifications Scotland serves adult learners—that is, those who are 18 and over.

I am conscious that we are now at that part of the proceedings that George Adam referred to at stage 1 as the MGM chorus line of everyone who could be involved.

The cabinet secretary’s reflections on the issues with the composition of the SQA board in 2000 were interesting, but the amendments that I have lodged reflect the issues with the SQA board that we have seen in the past decade. The cabinet secretary, Liz Smith and I will be particularly familiar with those issues from our time on the previous session’s Education and Skills Committee, whereby many—not all, but many—of SQA’s governance failures could be partly traced back to the fact that, for substantial periods of time in its recent history, the SQA has had almost no individuals who are educators on its board. Indeed, until very recently, it had only one headteacher—and no classroom teachers at all. However, it did have three management consultants. I do not want to dismiss the importance of corporate governance, but I think that the public would expect our national qualifications agency to have more educators than management consultants on its board. Again, that is not a judgment on the three individuals who were there at the time.

To that end, amendment 27 sets out a simple principle that a majority of the board must be qualified educators. It does not specify that they should be working in a school, a college or another setting, just that they are qualified educators.

To address Pam Duncan-Glancy’s point, I should make it clear that amendment 27 does not exclude union representation. There is, perhaps, a nuance to highlight here. If Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendments were agreed to and a teaching union representative were required to be on the board, that representative would, in practice, be required to be a qualified educator. I do recognise that full-time union officers are sometimes not drawn from the profession that they represent.

In this case, it would be desirable and reasonable for the Parliament to say that, if we agree that the unions are able to nominate individuals to the board, those individuals must be from the profession concerned. I would not exclude union representation, although it would somewhat narrow the criteria that the union could use to nominate individuals. I will come back to that point in a second.

My amendments in this group seek to make permanent the current and recent arrangement that separates the role of chief examiner from the current chief executive of the SQA and what will be the chief executive of qualifications Scotland. I think there is value in separating those two distinct roles for a number of reasons.

Concerns have been expressed to me that, in the past, there has been a conflict of interest, where the individual who was fulfilling the single role has suggested to others in the sector that, wearing one hat, they might agree with them but, wearing the other hat, they might not. In those cases, the decision never tends to land in the way that other key stakeholders in the sector would like it to. In particular, there is value in ensuring that the chief examiner of Scotland’s qualification system is a qualified educator, but I do not think that it is necessary for the chief executive of the organisation to be, if the roles are separate.

Clearly, separate skill sets are needed for each role. To be an effective chief executive of any large organisation, and certainly any large public sector organisation, requires a particular skill set that is not exactly the same as that of a qualified educator. In recent years, one weakness in the system has been that we have had a chief examiner who has not been a qualified educator and who has not had knowledge or experience of delivering qualifications. Separating the two roles would allow greater focus on those distinct responsibilities.

Amendments 47 and 48 aim to make permanent the current arrangement, which I think works particularly well. However, I recognise that what they propose clashes with Stephen Kerr’s amendments in the group. That was not deliberate—it is simply that we were simultaneously aiming to do slightly different things. To an extent, we are trying to address the same point, which is about whether the person who is in charge of the system should have the expertise and qualifications of an educator—the intent is the same. I believe that the best way to do that is to separate the role of chief executive and chief examiner, because the person who manages the organisation does not need to be a qualified educator, but the person who manages the system should have that experience.

I am not convinced by the proposal in amendment 223 to limit the term that a chief executive may serve, but I am interested in hearing Mr Kerr’s argument for that. Broadly, there is a lot to welcome in the recent restructuring at the top of the SQA. My amendments 47 and 48 seek to make those changes permanent for the new body.

I move amendment 47.

I absolutely agree with that. Members have hinted at that in their comments, as did the cabinet secretary in her response to my earlier intervention. I repeat that, if we move to a vote on any of the current options, we will not achieve consensus. There is still the possibility for us to achieve consensus if we can continue the discussion outwith stage 2 proceedings and bring something forward at stage 3.