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I would love to go further into that point around data with Neil Cowie, but I know that colleagues will come back to that later on.

Does anyone else have anything to add? Do not feel that you have to, if you feel that the points have already been covered. If there are no further comments on that, I will leave it there.

One of the messages that came through clearly from the sector in the lead-up to our inquiry was a desire for clear strategic direction from Government and an understanding of what Government expected of the sector. In response, the Government committed to develop the purpose and principles document, not just for the college sector but for the wider landscape. Now, around 18 months, I think, after that document was published, do you feel that it was the answer to the question about strategic direction? Has it been clear enough in setting a direction for the sector?

It was on the Strathesk report and whether the lessons learned have been followed up. Joanna Campbell has just covered that. Given how far over time we are, I am content with that.

Before I bring others in, it sounds as though you are saying that the purpose and principles document was so agreeable that it did not really provide direction. Is that a fair summary? The sector has therefore needed to make a series of decisions about strategic direction itself, because that document did not provide a clear direction of travel.

Thank you. When you are doing corporate planning for your institutions, have you sat down with the purpose and principles document and thought, “Right, we will work back from here”? Does it provide that kind of value and, if not, what value has it provided?

That is good to know. Thank you.

Were the other topics things that the SQA senior management had asked you to discuss with young people?

I will continue Keith Brown’s initial line of questioning. I think that I was the first MSYP to be on a local council education committee, but I did not have voting rights, despite having roughly the same mandate in terms of votes as the councillors did.

I am interested in what you said about education reform. I share a lot of your frustrations about the process, particularly the fact that the Government is, in essence, not taking forward Professor Hayward’s recommendations, which is a massive missed opportunity. Much of the reform cannot be put into law—a lot of it cannot be put in primary legislation, although some of it can be done by regulation—because a lot of it is a matter of policy choice.

However, one issue that has some relation to the Education (Scotland) Bill is, as has been touched on, how to engage with young people who are not already involved or are not naturally interested. I am talking about young people who do not become MSYPs—I think that I can say that as somebody who was one. I am interested in your thoughts on that kind of engagement. The bill sets out proposals to have a learner interest committee and to have someone representing the interests of young people on the board—I agree with Ellie Craig that that must be a young person, not an adult speaking on their behalf. However, that is a very small and, ultimately, self-selecting group.

We can take the example of higher history, on which we are about to take evidence. The SQA has no mechanism by which to contact every young person who sat the higher history exam last year. Particularly through the reform process, how can we create a system in which we get mass engagement with all young people who are affected by such decisions, not just a self-selecting group? We need that group, but those people are not necessarily always representative.

Good morning. To summarise, the SQA’s process review came to the conclusion that it had not done anything wrong and young people had underperformed. For the purposes of my line of questioning, let us accept that premise, even though we may not accept it outwith this line of questioning. To me, it felt like half a review. The SQA got halfway towards finding out what happened but, as soon as it realised that, in its view, it was not the SQA’s fault, it stopped.

When I asked Fiona Robertson about that, she appeared to be of the view that it was not the chief examiner’s role to find out what happened and why young people underperformed in those circumstances, or that it is not the SQA’s job to find out why there is a particular drop in a particular subject at a particular time. That has to be someone’s responsibility in the system, though. To be fair to the cabinet secretary, she said that it is ultimately her responsibility. In practice, though, the cabinet secretary cannot be the one who delves into individual issues with individual subjects every year to ensure that a crisis point is not reached.

I am interested in hearing your views on where in the system that responsibility should lie. Should it lie with the chief examiner or is there someone else in the system who should be responsible for investigating why there is underperformance, if we accept that that is what happened here? Personally I do not accept that but, for the purposes of this question, who should be responsible for finding out the reasons for sudden drops in performance in particular subjects at particular times?

Have you had any indication since the SQA’s review was published that it is genuinely interested in finding out what happened? If we accept the premise of the review, which was that the young people underperformed, have you picked up from SQA senior management that it wants to know the reason for that or are you under the same impression that—frankly—I am, which is that, as soon as it felt that it could take itself out of being responsible, its responsibility for the process also ended?