Seòmar agus comataidhean

I agree with you that the key issue and the elephant in the room is that there would be winners and losers from a revaluation. The direction of travel, as set out in the commission’s recommendations, is that the losers from any change—those who do quite well in the current system—will generally be wealthier people with more social and political capital. That is the reality.

However, no one has ever proposed a cliff-edge revaluation. The commission in 2015 was very clear that any change would require substantial transitional arrangements. For at least 10 years, there has been something approaching a consensus that any substantial change would include a long-term transitional arrangement so that there would be no cliff edge. Given that there would not be a cliff edge—we have already agreed that that should not take place—is it not a source of regret that, 10 years later, we are not any closer to revaluation, never mind replacing the system?

I agree with that and welcome the offer. However, in 2015, the commission on local tax reform undertook an exercise that had not been done before—that level of depth, detail and substantive policy development was unprecedented—and my worry is that, 10 years later, we are in danger of repeating that work in the first part of the process that you announced a few weeks ago.

Can you confirm that the next stage that you mentioned, which relates to commissioning experts to give us a starting point for public discussion, policy development work and so on, will not repeat what the 2015 commission did? When you look at the policy development work that has been done since then, you see that very little has changed.

I would love to go further into that point around data with Neil Cowie, but I know that colleagues will come back to that later on.

Does anyone else have anything to add? Do not feel that you have to, if you feel that the points have already been covered. If there are no further comments on that, I will leave it there.

One of the messages that came through clearly from the sector in the lead-up to our inquiry was a desire for clear strategic direction from Government and an understanding of what Government expected of the sector. In response, the Government committed to develop the purpose and principles document, not just for the college sector but for the wider landscape. Now, around 18 months, I think, after that document was published, do you feel that it was the answer to the question about strategic direction? Has it been clear enough in setting a direction for the sector?

It was on the Strathesk report and whether the lessons learned have been followed up. Joanna Campbell has just covered that. Given how far over time we are, I am content with that.

Before I bring others in, it sounds as though you are saying that the purpose and principles document was so agreeable that it did not really provide direction. Is that a fair summary? The sector has therefore needed to make a series of decisions about strategic direction itself, because that document did not provide a clear direction of travel.

Thank you. When you are doing corporate planning for your institutions, have you sat down with the purpose and principles document and thought, “Right, we will work back from here”? Does it provide that kind of value and, if not, what value has it provided?

That is good to know. Thank you.

Were the other topics things that the SQA senior management had asked you to discuss with young people?

I will continue Keith Brown’s initial line of questioning. I think that I was the first MSYP to be on a local council education committee, but I did not have voting rights, despite having roughly the same mandate in terms of votes as the councillors did.

I am interested in what you said about education reform. I share a lot of your frustrations about the process, particularly the fact that the Government is, in essence, not taking forward Professor Hayward’s recommendations, which is a massive missed opportunity. Much of the reform cannot be put into law—a lot of it cannot be put in primary legislation, although some of it can be done by regulation—because a lot of it is a matter of policy choice.

However, one issue that has some relation to the Education (Scotland) Bill is, as has been touched on, how to engage with young people who are not already involved or are not naturally interested. I am talking about young people who do not become MSYPs—I think that I can say that as somebody who was one. I am interested in your thoughts on that kind of engagement. The bill sets out proposals to have a learner interest committee and to have someone representing the interests of young people on the board—I agree with Ellie Craig that that must be a young person, not an adult speaking on their behalf. However, that is a very small and, ultimately, self-selecting group.

We can take the example of higher history, on which we are about to take evidence. The SQA has no mechanism by which to contact every young person who sat the higher history exam last year. Particularly through the reform process, how can we create a system in which we get mass engagement with all young people who are affected by such decisions, not just a self-selecting group? We need that group, but those people are not necessarily always representative.