Hansard

I thank the Parliament’s legislation team and, following these late sittings, the wider parliamentary staff, as well as Government officials and colleagues across parties for the constructive engagement that we have had on many elements of the bill. I also make special mention of our researchers, from all parties, because they have put in a power of work in attempting to improve the bill.

During stage 3 amendments yesterday, Pam Duncan-Glancy stated that the bill was a “job half done”. I agree. After all, this is the main education bill that has been introduced by the Government during this session of the Parliament.

We should not forget why we are here today. The 2020 exam scandal brought into sharp focus the failings of the SQA and the Scottish National Party ministers at that time. The changes that the bill was meant to take forward to respond to a range of reports and reviews, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s review of the curriculum for excellence and Professor Ken Muir’s report “Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education”, have not been achieved.

I joined the Education, Children and Young People Committee last October, just in time for the signing off of its stage 1 report on the bill. I am sorry to say that it feels as though the bill has been rushed through the Parliament in the last week of term and that it does not reflect what the cross-party report envisaged.

As my friend and colleague Liz Smith has stated, the bill is now the sixth attempt by the SNP Government to reform education in Scotland. It is clear that SNP ministers’ policies and half-baked reforms are not delivering for our young people. The stage 3 process has felt more like the Scottish Government trying not to take forward reform rather than providing a bill that could deliver the full recommendations of the reports of the cross-party committee and Ken Muir.

In addition, the pace at which the bill has moved through the Parliament, landing in the last week of the session, is problematic. Either ministers should have introduced the bill earlier or we should have delayed stage 3 until after the summer recess, so that important discussions—really important discussions—to develop a cross-party consensus could have taken place and the bill could, potentially, have received the confidence of all parties in the chamber, as happened last week in respect of the Deputy First Minister’s work on the Scottish Languages Bill.

Scottish Conservatives have, however, engaged positively and lodged a positive and significant set of amendments to try to shape a stronger bill that would deliver the outcomes that we all want. I note Ross Greer’s comments in the chamber yesterday in relation to the difficulty of legislating for culture change. I agree. However, the failure to take forward as part of the bill important reforms such as the independence of the chief inspector and child protection reforms will not provide the reset or the independence from ministers that the organisations need.

I fear that the Government has ended up in a weaker place and that the bill has ended up as a weaker response, which is not what we need to truly set up qualifications Scotland as a new organisation with the strong foundations that it needed. The question that we are all asking is: what measures in the bill will restore trust? Will the new organisation have a new culture? The jury is still very much out on whether that will be the case.

Scottish Conservatives were clear on our red lines over what we wanted to see in the bill, especially in relation to a new independent school inspector who would report directly to the Parliament. That has not been achieved. I regret that the bill has not been the opportunity that many of us had hoped for.

I approached the bill in the hope that we could genuinely work to restore confidence in our qualifications authority and the inspectorate. It was hoped that the bill would deliver a meaningful reform for Scotland’s education system, which is urgently needed. Instead, it is little more than a rebrand of the SQA.

Splitting the awarding and accreditation functions of the SQA is fundamental to creating a system that works, as the higher history scandal showed, with the SQA not being allowed to continue to mark its own homework. The SQA needed an overhaul, not a cosmetic makeover, and the bill’s proposed changes fall way short of what is required to ensure that the organisation can operate effectively and that it is properly accountable.

I believe that we could have built cross-party consensus on the bill if the minister had given us more time, and if the Parliament had had more time.