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I am incredibly enthusiastic about the whole package of reform that you have proposed. It is probably fair to say that the element that has captured public attention the most is the question about the status of high-stakes end-of-term exams and alternative assessment methods. You have not prescribed exactly what those alternative methods would be when it comes to what continuous assessment, et cetera, might look like.

To illustrate the options, I will pick Ken Muir’s subject. Five years from now, if a 16-year-old were to take geography, what could that assessment look like? If it is not the high-stakes end-of-term exam model, what might that experience be and what options are available?

You mentioned some of the potential new elements. Touching on what you said at the start of your answer, to what extent will it also be about recognising work that is already taking place? For example, you mentioned some of the assessment project work that is already happening in geography but does not currently count towards the final grade that a young person gets. How much of it is simply about bringing that into the mix of what makes up the collective assessment for their final grade? That would address some of the perfectly legitimate concerns that teachers have about workload, for example. It is about not just adding new stuff but recognising some of the good work that goes on that does not currently make up what decides the grade and what goes on the SQA certificate at the end of the year.

That would be useful. Thank you.

Thanks.

My next question touches on Willie Rennie’s line of questioning on the SQA and is about how this is taken forward and what specific proposals are adopted in taking forward your recommendations. I will ask a two-part question, because one part is a bit provocative and you might not want to answer it. How credible can the approach be if the SQA in its current form takes a lead on making decisions about what the new models of assessment might look like and what the balance of assessment might be?

You might want to sidestep that—although I urge you not to—so I will ask a general question. Who should Government involve in the next step of making those specific decisions on the balance of assessment and the models of assessment for each course, on the basis of your recommendations?

Professor Muir, you deserve a lot of credit for being one of the driving forces behind the organisational reform that is taking place, but, realistically, we are probably three to four years away from having the new qualifications body established, bedded in and operational. I presume that you would not want us to wait until we have the new body—hopefully, with its new culture—before engaging in the implementation of the recommendations. That leaves us with the question of the current SQA and its role in taking this forward.

On additional support needs, I am interested, in the first instance, in the guidance that is provided to local authorities on completing their local financial returns. It is quite interesting that some local authorities are able to detail their spend on ASN across primary, secondary and special schools. They can break it down and disaggregate it. Some local authorities record an ASN spend of zero outside of special schools either because they feel that they can or because the guidance is not clear enough for them—I am not sure. Whatever the reason is, their return states that ASN spend is zero, certainly for primary and secondary schools. They have integrated it into their wider spend. Is the guidance on what is expected of local authorities in a local financial return clear enough? I ask that specifically about ASN, but, if you want to speak more generally about the expectation of a local financial return on education spend, that would be helpful as well.

I can ask the question in more general terms, because I recognise that that was a very specific technical question. Do you, in your local authorities, feel confident that you are directing spend as appropriate for children with additional support needs? There are a number of points of tension here. In the first instance, the Morgan review tells us that we need to see all education as ASN education and that it needs to be mainstream. That leads you towards a position where it is very hard to disaggregate the data, but we all recognise that the outcomes for children with additional support needs are not nearly as good as they should be and are not nearly as good as they often are for children without additional support needs. We need to be confident that we are putting in the right resources. There is obviously a tension here. How do you manage that in your local authorities so that you are confident that the resources are going to the individual children who need them and that you are directing resources at class and school level towards those where there is a higher prevalence of ASN in general and of specific, more complex needs that require additional resource?

I have one final question if we have time, convener.

It is just about additional support needs support staff or ASN assistants—the job title varies massively, and that is the point of my question. A couple of years ago, the Government statisticians who compiled the school staff census merged the categories of “classroom assistant” and “ASN assistant” into “pupil support assistant”. Our predecessor committee in that session brought them in to give evidence on that. Essentially, they said that there was no longer enough distinction in many settings between a general classroom assistant and somebody assigned to work specifically with kids with additional support needs, so they were unable to give us numbers on how many ASN assistants there were. Does it present a challenge for you that we are unable to count how many support staff work directly with children with additional needs rather than providing general support to the whole class?