Hansard

Indeed, yes. I refer the member to the bill. One proposal is for ministerial call-in: if a consultation process is not carried out properly, parents can refer the decision to ministerial call-in.

As I have just outlined to Margo MacDonald, in order to support such improvement the bill removes the automatic referral of certain council decisions to ministers—I refer to referrals that can be made on the rather arbitrary grounds of occupancy or distance. The responses to the Government consultation showed clear consensus on the need for change, but views were polarised on what should replace referrals. Further consultation with all those with an interest helped us to identify an acceptable way forward: replacing ministerial referrals with a new power for ministers to call in certain decisions.

The bill restricts call-in to closure decisions and only when there appear to be serious flaws in the consultation or decision-making processes. The intention is to enable local decisions to be made by those who are locally accountable and locally elected while providing a balanced and consistent check on the most contentious decisions, which are—as we all know—closures.

The Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee deliberated carefully on the evidence that was submitted to it. I thank its members for their helpful and thoughtful stage 1 report. I am pleased that the committee expressed broad support for the aims of the bill and that it recognised the need for decision-making processes to be as widely understood and—importantly—as transparent as possible. That is a key aim of the bill.

Let me turn to the report's conclusions and recommendations. The committee supports our intention to introduce statutory guidance on the contents of the educational benefits statement and has recommended that the guidance is extended to cover the whole proposal paper. I recognise the value of that suggestion. In extending the guidance, we will address the committee recommendation to encourage councils to include other factors when relevant, such as the condition of a building. We will also consider how best to provide guidance to councils on how the cost implications of proposals should be illustrated in a proposal paper in a way that is both proportionate and easily understood.

The committee also suggests that we give further thought to the practical issue of maximising engagement with consultees, and it supports the suggestion that I made in my evidence that we engage with the children's commissioner on consultation with pupils. I am happy to give an undertaking that we will take that forward and reflect it in our guidance.

The committee asks the Government to note concerns in evidence about notification of the consultations, particularly the use of pupil post. I have noted those concerns and will consider how to address that point in guidance. Some wry smiles there—as a mother of three, I have some sympathy with that issue.

Finally, the committee asks the Government to consider extending the time that councils have to notify it of closure decisions. I am willing to do so.

I will respond in my closing remarks to the more contentious points raised in the report and in the course of the debate, but at this point I want to address the fundamental issue of rural schools. I note the committee's recommendation that the Scottish Government should give further consideration to extending to all schools the three additional rural factors set out in the bill. There are two important aspects to that: what we propose for rural school closure consultations—and why—and what we propose for all school consultations.

It is important to recognise the different experiences of our rural communities. The closure of a rural school can mean that children have to travel many miles to an alternative school—in particularly remote rural areas, that can often mean travelling to another village. In turn, that can impact adversely on the viability of whole communities, as families with children are drawn to villages with schools.

As I said in my evidence to the committee, at the launch of the bill in Dalwhinnie I was struck by the fact that nearly all of the pupils' parents worked on local estates. The gamekeepers there told me that, without the school, those estates would struggle to recruit. I know that such a situation is replicated throughout many parts of rural Scotland—there are many fragile rural areas in Scotland where the continued existence of the village school is closely intertwined with the continued viability of the local economy.

The Government recognises the importance of preserving and promoting a rural way of life. If the bill's rural provisions were to be extended to all schools, that would be to disregard the fragility of many rural communities and the proportionately greater impact that rural school closures can have on job opportunities, the local economy and the community.