Communication regarding the reform of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and Education Scotland: FOI release

Information requested

"All communications between ministers and/or special advisers and/or PR/comms staff” and that the request “related to internal communications regarding the recently published report by Professor Ken Muir into the reform of the SQA and Education Scotland”. You noted that the request “would include attachments to relevant emails and records of meeting/phone calls."

I contacted you on 13/06/22 to seek clarification for the timeframe for this FOISA request. You noted that the timeframe applied to the request should include the point at which Professor Muir took up his role as an Independent Advisor on Education Reform, and the period since publication of the report. This defined the timeframe as 2 August 2021 to 17 May 2022 (the date this FOISA request was received).

Response

Please accept my apology for the delay in providing this return to you. Unfortunately we received this specific FOISA request very late due to a system error where this specific FOISA request was not logged among others requested in the original email.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested as a PDF.

Some of the information you have requested is available from other public sources. For this FOI the Scottish Government website, such as Professor Muir’s report, recommendations and SG response; The Times newspaper’s articles cited in the response (here and here); and the “Official Report” for information set out to Parliament. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b)(personal information) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested because it is personal data of a third party, in that it consists of the names, email addresses and other information that may identify an individual and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

Exemptions under Section 29(1)(b) have been applied to this FOISA request. This is due to the exemption covering information “relating to” Ministerial communications between two or more Ministers, including Scottish Cabinet.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. We recognise that there is some public interest in the release of this information because of the scale of the policy changes being developed as part of the Education Reform programme and implementation of Professor Muir’s report recommendations. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in the need to ensure that while policies and decisions for this work are still in development, Ministers are able to discuss freely with each other the ongoing implications of this programme of work, and to ensure policy decisions are not made without appropriate consultation with the relevant Scottish Ministers.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.