���˿���

That really is all from me this time, convener.

You mentioned that a number of countries provide good examples. Our predecessor committee in the previous parliamentary session visited Sweden and Finland, one of which provides a better example than the other. In the examples that you are aware of, is it the case that there is more administrative capacity in the schools, rather than at municipality level, to make the transition manageable? In other words, are headteachers able to manage the additional burden because they are not expected to do it themselves? Are there teams of administrators located in schools, rather than in the local authority, to help them with the work?

I have a couple of questions for Mel Ainscow, although others may want to respond, in which case they should indicate that.

Mel, I am sympathetic to your argument about the need for more professional autonomy for individual schools, teachers and heads, and I am interested in your suggestion about greater devolution of budgetary powers to headteachers. It is only a few years since a suggestion along those lines was made in Scotland, but at that time the feedback from a lot of headteachers was that they did not want to become the chief financial officers of their schools. They wanted to be leaders of learning and did not want to be buried under the bureaucracy that would come with significant additional financial responsibility. How would you respond to that?

My second question is much more political, but I am interested to hear your thoughts on it, given your experience elsewhere.

The phrase “postcode lottery” is not unique to Scottish politics, but it is used an awful lot here in relation to not just education, but health and a range of other areas. One of the challenges with decentralisation and giving local authorities or schools much more autonomy is that we inevitably end up with more variation, which creates a particular tension. The Scottish Government and we as a national Parliament are held accountable for the performance of Scottish education. There is partly a tendency for us to be collectively judged, at least at election time, on the national performance of the education system. However, the more power that is devolved to the local level through decentralisation, the harder it is for those who are held accountable nationally to have any influence over outcomes.

How is that tension managed in other settings? How would you resolve it here?

In the examples that we have of areas where extracurricular activities are free of charge or, at least, there are no significant financial barriers for families, there is higher participation, but it is not 100 per cent. How do we reach young people who, even if we remove every financial barrier, still face other barriers to participating, such as chaotic family lifestyles, or who simply do not want to participate in extracurricular activities? The activities are voluntary. That is great and they help a lot of young people, but what about the young people who simply choose not to participate in them?

Absolutely. I am still wondering, though—if we were to significantly increase the amount of funding that goes to the third sector and the organisations that are reaching out to young people in other contexts, would additional funding alone ensure that we reach everyone that we are trying to reach if the objective is to close the attainment gap, or are changes in approach required as well?

I am trying to figure out for the purposes of our committee inquiry whether we should consider recommending that some of the money be allocated not to schools, but directly to third sector organisations. Is it as simple as reallocating the money or do we need to explore whether we should recommend changes in approach as well?

Thanks. That is all from me for now, convener.

Are you saying that, in the Scottish context, our 32 education authorities, which are essentially clusters that education is delivered through, are too big?

Is that not moving in the opposite direction, with 11 or a dozen regional bodies instead of the small clusters that you have highlighted?

I will move on. One of my frustrations with the wider debate in Parliament this year—I exclude the high level of scrutiny that is provided by this committee—is that it has, yet again, focused almost entirely on spending, rather than on consideration of where and how we raise money. We can compare that with what was—certainly from my experience in Parliament—the highest quality of debate in any year, which was ahead of the 2018-19 financial year. That was the first time that we collectively, as a Parliament, seriously considered what we would do with the new powers over income tax.

At that point, the Government’s approach was to ask all the Opposition parties to provide proposals, which were submitted to the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Projections were worked up on that basis. My memory is that we could have had five options; in the end, four were submitted. That resulted in a much more informed debate in Parliament and one that was in some ways more comparable to the system that a lot of local authorities use, whereby opposition parties are obliged to produce their own alternative budgets rather than just voting for or against the budget that the council administration has submitted.

Could we open up the budget process to better parliamentary debate if other parties were provided with the opportunity to come up with alternative taxation proposals, and not just alternative proposals for spending?