the Scottish Parliament’s education committee has rejected a call to investigate the implementation of the teachers’ settlement. Brian Monteith, the Tories’ education spokesman, had urged his fellow committee members to do so in the light of reported problems.
But, according to Karen Gillon, the committee’s convener, all the other parties unanimously agreed that there would not be enough time left before the committee stood down in the run-up to May’s election to do the subject justice.
Ms Gillon did not rule out the possibility of the new education committee taking up the issue if MSPs felt there were problems.
Meanwhile Jack McConnell, the First Minister, sent a signal that investment must be linked to reform. In a speech on modernising the public sector this week, Mr McConnell clearly had the teachers’ settlement in mind when he called for “investment matched by changed working practices and 21st century attitudes”.
