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I was going to alight on the word “recognition”, which probably takes me to my next point.

I will be—sorry. I am talking about the culture of recognition as it pertains to universities. For some learners, the next stage in their journey will be going to university, which is a kind of recognition. I am worried about the assessment methodology and whether it is replicated in universities. Essentially, learning the trick of doing an exam at secondary school prepares somebody to do it at the next stage. Do we have to have a certain amount of that to prepare our young people for the next stage, or is there sufficient culture change in higher education to allow us to accommodate that?

It strikes me that, if there is an opportunity to solve that problem or at least to do something about it through the process of reform, that opportunity must be grasped. The Education and Skills Committee in the previous parliamentary session concluded that something had to be done on the issue, and nothing has been done. There is a confluence of resourcing issues, but I think that your analysis is that it is a structural issue as well as a resourcing one. Is that your conclusion?

The methodology of your paper is an international comparison. One of the contradictions for us in that is that the Government has withdrawn us from international comparative studies. Is there value in such studies for evaluating performance?

The conversation has been really interesting so far, and I want to explore a couple of issues on the theme of culture. One of the great successes of Scottish education over the past century has been the integration of women, Catholics and ethnic minorities, and a huge part of that is having a piece of paper that says, “I am equal to other people—I have the talent, the intellect and the capabilities,” and which therefore acts as a passport to prevail against racism or prejudice.

There are merits in the many areas that you have highlighted with regard to comparisons, but we need to ensure that we have that kind of robust culture that sees such an award as having the same value, no matter who has it. That feels like part of the trade-off that you are describing. Would you agree with that?

Professor Stobart has raised the issue of multilevel teaching a couple of times. An awful lot of teachers have made representations to me about that over a number of years. There are huge problems with it. They do not see it as multilevel teaching; in essence, it is multiqualification teaching—teaching different syllabuses, examination processes or assessment processes in the same classroom. Do other jurisdictions or countries do that?

That is useful.

I want to ask about data. I was interested in your points on the annual student surveys that are carried out in other jurisdictions and countries. What kind of data do we require in Scottish education to monitor effectively the reform process? Is there sufficient data?

More data in this area would be helpful. I know that the equity audit was not quantitative. We need to see more information on the area so that we can assess, in the kind of work that you are involved in, whether the current policies and spending priorities of the Government actually address what has become a far greater problem in terms of the level of need.

That brings me to two specific areas. One is around pupil equity fund spending. I would like colleagues from the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland to comment on the availability of that money and the transparency of how it is allocated in different areas. As a councillor—which I will continue to be until May—and as a member of the Scottish Parliament, I find it difficult to find out what that money has been spent on and to what end, at a local and a national level. It would be good to hear some comments on that, after which I will turn to the question of school buildings.

I appreciate that. With regard to spending on ventilation, £10 million was recently allocated to recording the amount of CO₂ in classrooms so that teachers would know whether to open the windows. Has Audit Scotland or the Accounts Commission looked at the question of whether school buildings are now prepared for the pandemic that remains with us and how public spending is being used to adapt them in order to prevent infection?

Fergus Ewing’s line of questioning was useful. Across the United Kingdom, we have the Barnett formula, which delivers an additional £14 billion of spending to Scotland, specifically to provide services across our broader geographic area. I suggest to the Accounts Commission that it would be useful if the piece of work that it is doing looked at the school building programme that was provided by the Scottish Government via the Scottish Futures Trust to see what the match-up was between the aspirations of the policy and how it was delivered.

Kaukab Stewart made a point about private finance initiative building schemes and other such models. It would be useful to ensure that work on that includes non-profit-distribution models and all the various forms of private finance initiative that the Scottish National Party has used since it came to power in 2007—I know that Audit Scotland has previously identified those models as being forms of private finance initiative. It would be useful if the committee could see the full scale of those models.