Education, Children and Young People Committee 07 May 2025
I thank Ms Duncan-Glancy and Mr Kerr for their amendments. I am pleased to see that we agree on the value of setting out the purposes of inspection in the bill.
The amendments that I have lodged set out clear purposes for inspection, which will ensure that the chief inspector carries out their functions to promote improvement in education and to hold relevant educational establishments accountable for the quality of the education that they deliver. By including a ministerial power to amend the inspection purposes through secondary legislation if those purposes ever need to be changed, my amendments will also allow a degree of flexibility.
It is important to note that I am minded to seek to withdraw amendment 84. Fundamentally, I remain open to further consideration of the purposes of inspection. I have a number of concerns about other members’ amendments in the group, which I will explain in a moment. Although I believe that there are many similarities between those that I have lodged and Ms Duncan-Glancy’s amendment 313, at this point, I cannot support what she has set out, because, as well as making no reference to the importance of accountability, the amendment would appear to extend the chief inspector’s role to providing support for improvement, which would take resource and focus away from their core role, while risking blurring the very boundaries that removing the inspection function from Education Scotland will help to clarify.