Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in Tier 4 of the Agricultural Reform Programme: A consultation

Section 11: Monitoring and evaluation

This section of the consultation is about the monitoring and evaluation of the CPD system.

Monitoring and evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation are key to ensuring that a CPD system would work well, meet its goals, and could adapt to future needs.

Monitoring and evaluation could be undertaken in different ways. These are:

• The Agricultural Reform Programme will have an overarching monitoring and evaluation programme. Tier 4 support, including the CPD system, would be included in this.
• The CPD system would also have its own monitoring and evaluation system. This would depend on how we developed the CPD system and whether it was a mandatory, part mandatory or voluntary system.
• If the CPD system was mandatory or partly mandatory, we would use our powers in section 31 of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 to set up a monitoring and evaluation system.
• If the CPD system was a voluntary one, we would look to introduce a robust monitoring and evaluation system. We could look at how the headings in section 31 of the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act could help us develop this. We recognise that the alignment of monitoring and evaluation schemes can be helpful in tracking changes in their use and impact over time as well as changing requirements.

Question 50: Do you have any comments on the proposed approaches to the monitoring and evaluation of the CPD system?

Please state your answer.