Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Official Report 606KB pdf

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Further and Higher Education

Item 3 is an overview of further and higher education, for which we have in front of us a panel of witnesses. This is the first of a number of overview sessions this month to inform consideration of our future work programme. We will have a session with the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills on 28 September.

I thank all the people who organised and took part in the fact-finding visits on further and higher education at the University of Stirling last week and on skills at Stirling Community Enterprise. The practical experiences that members heard about on those visits provided valuable insight and context for the overview sessions.

I welcome our witnesses. Shona Struthers is chief executive of Colleges Scotland; Professor Andrea Nolan is convener of Universities Scotland; Vonnie Sandlan is president of the National Union of Students Scotland; and John Kemp is interim chief executive of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council.

We will go straight to questions. My first question concerns a report in The Herald this morning about the new university scheme to lure students from the working class. Can anybody give me some further information on that?

I would be happy to update you. It is part of our response to “A Blueprint for Fairness: The Final Report of the Commission on Widening Access”, which came out in March. All the principals have come together in Universities Scotland to ask how we can deliver the necessary step change. We have been working hard over the past four or five years, and even before that, to improve access to higher education as part of an holistic drive through schools and colleges—I am sure that my colleagues will speak about that—and we came up with a plan to deliver ambitious targets to which we are all committed.

The targets revolve around three areas. The first concerns reviewing and improving our admissions systems. Seventeen of our 19 universities in Scotland use contextualised admissions, with flags that enable us to identify whether people come from less advantaged backgrounds. We have been doing that individually and examining what works and does not work. We now have some evidence to show that that if we admit students from some areas who have deprived backgrounds and lower grades and who may have had more challenges in getting opportunities to develop their skills and expertise, they do really well. What is really important to us as university principals is that people succeed when they are admitted and go on to have good employment outcomes. We are looking at spreading our best practice and sharing it further.

The second area that we are considering concerns our bridging programmes. We deliver bridging programmes to make prospective students who come from school or college aware of what university is like so that they are not daunted by it and do not feel underconfident, but instead feel that there are other people like them. We have been doing that largely on an individual university basis and we feel that we should come together more and offer programmes regionally and—who knows?—potentially nationally. We will develop our bridging programmes collaboratively; if we do that, we have the potential to offer more places to people on those programmes and to those who do summer school activities that help them to transition to university and to believe that university is for them.

The third area where we plan more work, in collaboration with college sector colleagues, is to streamline our articulation routes to ensure that people have a range of opportunities and pathways into university.

When do you expect that work to be done and to be ready to be put into action?

Many building blocks are in place because we have done a lot individually. We agreed the plan last week at our Universities Scotland away day, and we will put together a board to deliver it. We are committed to moving on the actions in this academic year, but the impact will take a while, as we get more people into the system and attaining the qualifications that are needed for university.

The plan builds on actions—tried and tested methods—that universities have been taking for some years. For example, there is quite a lot of research behind contextualised admissions to show that a person with particular grades from a particular school might perform as well as a person with far higher grades from a different school. There is a lot of strong research behind that.

Andrea Nolan mentioned streamlining, and articulation is an area of work that has grown quite a lot in recent years. It has the capacity to grow further and become an important way of widening access for a large number of students. We strongly support it.

The college sector is looking at the articulation route to develop the learner journey. There are good examples of articulation, but not across the board; we want to see articulation used more by colleges and universities and becoming a standard route rather than just being something that is the creation of specific partnerships.

NUS Scotland welcomes the fact that Universities Scotland has been so bold and decisive, even before the implementation of the proposal for a commissioner for fair access. We are excited about the opportunities for students in this collaborative national and regional approach, and believe that articulation is a jewel in the crown of the Scottish educational system. It is a wonderful opportunity for students for whom direct access into university has not been right, for whatever reason.

NUS Scotland is clear in its view that where articulation works, it is wonderful. However, in recent years, of students articulating from college to university across all institutions in Scotland, 51 per cent are being forced to repeat years of study, and only 49 per cent are entering university at the right year or level. That is not a good or reasonable use of the limited resources that are available for tertiary education in Scotland. It is genuinely exciting to hear that colleges and universities in Scotland are working more collaboratively to make that progression smoother.

Are the figures of 49 and 51 per cent based on universities or courses?

The figures represent all students who have articulated from colleges to universities. There are a number of reasons for the figures. Some institutions do not have a smooth alignment between the college course and the university degree course. In some degree courses—law is an example that I often hear—specific subject matter has to be covered in the first and second year that perhaps will not have been covered by a college student who has done a higher national certificate or higher national diploma. I believe that streamlining curriculum content, which Andrea Nolan and Shona Struthers have talked about, provides the opportunity for a smoother path.

It works best when the college and university have worked together to design a course so that there is seamless articulation and the student is well supported.

Sometimes people repeat a year for good reasons. For example, they may be changing subject and need additional support. However, sometimes it is because the college and university have not designed a route that works.

Thank you. I invite Liz Smith to come in on that subject.

My questions are about the role of the Scottish funding council in helping that process. Concern about the clarity of that role has been expressed in Audit Scotland’s reports about both higher education and further education. The SFC briefing paper for today’s meeting does not respond to those concerns.

I will perhaps come to Professor Nolan in a minute, but I am particularly interested in how you measure the success of outcome agreements, which obviously include widening access.

The outcome agreements are the means by which we link the Government’s priorities and funding for further and higher education. They are agreements between the funding council and colleges and universities and are based on negotiations with colleges and universities about what is achievable with regard to the ends that we share.

We agree with universities a set of targets for widening access, and built into that are requirements for contextualised admissions and so on. We use them as a method for encouraging progress on widening access, which we link to funding. However, I stress that they are a collaborative agreement between us, the universities and the colleges about making progress on these things. They are not some simplistic method whereby we concoct a set of targets in our office and then tell the universities what they are. We have in our office a set of targets on widening access that we discuss with the universities, but it is a process of negotiation and agreement about how the funding is used for Government priorities. Is that the point that you were making?

Yes, it is, but why do you think that Audit Scotland is not very comfortable with the clarity of that?

I would not say that it is uncomfortable. The Audit Scotland report on higher education suggested that we needed to update the outcome agreement guidance to reflect our new strategic plan, and we are doing that. The strategic plan is fairly recent and the next set of outcome agreement guidance has not come out.

There is sometimes an expectation that outcome agreements are more directive than they actually are. They are about collaborative working between the university and college sector and the funding council to reflect priorities.

Professor Nolan, the indication is that a great deal more work is being done and will be required to be done, given that the Scottish Government’s policy intentions are changing. Is the process of setting outcome agreements by institutions and the Scottish funding council well researched, and is it well resourced in terms of the number of people who are able to help individual institutions work them up?

There are very positive things about the outcome agreement process. Given that we are all autonomous institutions, we have a discussion about our institution and how we can marry our institution’s mission and strategy and deliver to the Government’s agenda. It is positive to be able to discuss that.

The processes can always be improved. The discussions are bilateral and in the future it might be helpful, at the beginning of a session, to consider and say what things we want to achieve sectorally for the whole year and then discuss them individually.

Things have been very challenging for the funding council last year and possibly this year. Our outcome agreements are on a three-year basis, but our funding settlement this year has been for one year and it is likely that there will be a one-year settlement for 2017-18. That is where things become quite difficult. Universities’ planning cycles run from the moment they look to recruit a student to the student’s graduation, which is four years plus one year, or five years in total. That makes the situation challenging for everybody.

Although I am interested in widening access initiatives, I want to look at the context for the university and college sectors.

I have been advised that it is harder now for a young person in Scotland to get into university than it was five years ago. As a consequence—this is anecdotal and comes from my own family’s experience—places are being rationed by qualification. Does that not make it more difficult to address the attainment gap? Is it not the case that young people who in the past would have accessed a university course are now not doing so because of Government policy, the funding gap and capping?

10:00  

The number of Scotland-domiciled students at university in Scotland has increased by about 10 per cent in the past 10 years or so. It is fair to say that demand has probably grown above that, which is perhaps because of the success of some of the widening access initiatives.

In the long run, the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government and the funding council will have to consider how we make best use of the capacity in colleges and universities to meet the widening access targets. However, over the past few years, the number of students from Scotland going to Scottish universities has been increasing. The indication from this year’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service statistics is that the number has increased again—it is doing so by about 4 per cent year on year.

The issue is perhaps that demand is increasing at a greater rate than supply. The consequence of the introduction of fees in England, and therefore the charging of students from the rest of the United Kingdom to attend Scottish universities, is that that has enabled the number of places in Scotland for Scotland-domiciled students to expand. There has therefore been an expansion, but perhaps not enough to satisfy the demand.

You talk about an increase in demand, but there is an increase in the number of people who would in the past have accessed a course but who can no longer do so. It is not that there are lots of people who want to go but are not able to go; these are people who, five years ago, would have accessed a place but can no longer do so. The way in which we are managing that demand is by increasing the level of qualification that they require. I would have thought that that would have made it even more difficult to address the gap in attainment by the time that we get to the college and university level.

Yes. We accept that demand has grown more than supply.

The cap on places means that, logically, there is nowhere else for the universities to go but to ration by qualification.

Yes.

Therefore we expect young people to achieve higher qualifications to access a place at university than they would have had to achieve five or 10 years ago. We could argue that we are in a position in which young people who could contribute to the Scottish economy are not able to access a place that would allow them to do that.

In the long run, that is an issue that needs to be considered collectively, and not just by the funding council. We need to consider how we use the supply of places in both colleges and universities. Some of what we have referred to as streamlining or articulation is a way of using the same number of places but getting more people through. However, we also need to consider the total supply of places.

Can we also address the college context? We talk about bridging in terms of the opportunity to get from college into university, but we know that college budgets are down by 18 per cent since 2014-15. The Audit Scotland report tells us that part-time places, women students and students over 25 have gone disproportionately from colleges. Perhaps the NUS can reflect on how all that can address equality of access in education.

The NUS has been absolutely clear that it very much welcomed the protection of full-time education places and the opportunity for more students to be able to access a full-time place at college. However, that has come at the expense of part-time places, disproportionately affecting women, disabled learners and mature adult returners. We would like to see some investment to rebalance that.

On your previous point on access opportunities, it is worth mentioning that the application to acceptance ratio for 2015 for people from the Scottish index of multiple deprivation 20 most deprived areas was 63 per cent. That is in contrast to people from the SIMD 80 to 100 least deprived areas, where the ratio is 75 per cent. There is therefore a percentage gap of 12 points between people from the least deprived communities and people from the most deprived communities in relation to acceptance of their university applications. Conversely, 29 per cent of college students come from SIMD 20 backgrounds, so colleges are seeing an overrepresentation of people from the most deprived backgrounds. I think that there is something in there about equality of opportunity.

Do you agree that we would fail an equality impact assessment of the budget if it showed the consequence that poorer students disproportionately ended up in the college sector, which has been cut, and that better-off students were more likely to access a place at university?

I would not like to speculate on what the outcome would be, but I think that colleges do excellent work in an atmosphere of ever-declining resources. The chance to go to college to study is as valid for some students as the opportunity to go to university, but it is a case of making sure that students are not restricted to one path or another on the basis of where they are from.

Would our colleague from Colleges Scotland like to reflect on what she thinks that the direction of Government policy should be in order to address the question of equality?

The cuts to budgets have obviously had an impact on students, and although the target of maintaining the number of full-time equivalent students is welcome, we would like the consequential negative impact on part-time learners and therefore on women returners to be addressed. We would like the imbalance to be redressed.

There are many colleges that, despite focusing on the young learner, who tends to study full time, have looked at dealing with admissions on a first-come, first-served basis. That way, the older learner still has the opportunity to come to college. However, it should not be one or the other.

But it is one or the other at the moment.

Yes.

We need to move on. Gillian Martin has questions on college reform.

My question is about the admissions aspect of what Professor Nolan talked about. I am from a rural constituency and it has been brought to my attention that some of the strategies for widening access and the recording of people who come to university from a more deprived background as part of the widening access agenda tend to be postcode based. That does not really work in identifying students from deprived backgrounds from rural areas, where the postcode might be that of a small village. What are the challenges there? What would your advice be to us on collecting that data? We could be missing some targets because we are not identifying that type of student in rural areas.

It is a very good point, and it is one that we have puzzled over and considered over time. The measures and the targets have been set against the SIMD way of assessing deprivation. That is a composite measure, which has many things in it. It identifies areas of deprivation at a very high—a system or national—level. Our data suggests that it is right 50 per cent of the time if we measure what it tells us against other indicators of deprivation, such as receipt of free school meals. We find that there is an overlap of about 46 per cent in the identification of deprivation by those measures.

Therefore, the SIMD is not perfect—it is not granular and it does not give us a full picture of how to address the full range of deprivation. Universities Scotland has been looking at other measures, such as receipt of free school dinners, whether people are care experienced and their carer status. We might look at schools with low progression to higher education. There are various other indicators that some universities use in their contextualised admissions to pick up those people who are disadvantaged or who are living in disadvantaged areas but who are not being picked up by the SIMD 20 measure. You make a good point.

It is worth saying that we agree with Universities Scotland that the SIMD is not perfect for every purpose. However, at a high level—particularly at national level—it is an extremely useful tool in measuring progress on widening access. The latest iteration of the SIMD came out just last week. It is possible for people to go on that, put in their postcode and find out how wealthy or deprived they are. Particularly in urban areas, the SIMD maps give a very clear indication of the background of the student.

Gillian Martin is quite correct to say that, in rural areas, the SIMD is less good, because the data zones are more mixed. We recognise that. Institutions such as Robert Gordon University and the University of Aberdeen are in a more rural area, albeit that the urban part of Aberdeen is an area of quite low deprivation. The targets that we would expect in those institutions have to be very different. In Glasgow, the percentage of the population that is from the SIMD 20 or 40 group is far higher.

Therefore, the SIMD is a very good overall measure, but it is less good at saying to an institution that it should admit one student rather than another, and it is less good at a granular level in particular institutions. However, it is still a very good overall measure.

Do you see a role for any self-declaration in admission forms, or maybe a checklist? You have mentioned criteria such as going through the care system.

As part of our outcome agreement process, we allow institutions to use other measures of widening access, and we are working with Universities Scotland on a wide basket of measures, including parental income, which will give a better match between what is and what is not a widening access student. It is important that that is done consistently across the country, so that we can measure the progress of one institution against another. Institutions use their own measures and, when those are added up, it is sometimes difficult to compare university X that has, say, five measures and X per cent widening access students with another university that has a different set of measures. It is difficult to say which institution is making best use of our funding to widen access if the measures are not consistent. We need consistent measures, but there is no reason why there should not be a wide basket of measures.

It is worth mentioning that the application form for the Student Awards Agency for Scotland, which is filled in for a student loan and bursary, asks such questions as:

“Are you a care leaver?”

UCAS, which runs the generic application system for most people going to university, is working very productively with the NUS at a national level to consider what other questions should be asked.

The commission on widening access was very clear that the data that is available to institutions could definitely be improved. As John Kemp said, although the SIMD is not perfect, it is the best that we have now. There is definitely scope for better data production and better data use. Anecdotally, I know that the changes to SAAS and UCAS information cannot always be picked up by institutions and their computer systems—those are systemic issues of data collection that could be streamlined, including not just data collected from applicants but also data from schools.

I have a couple of questions about the SIMD. John Kemp is right; it certainly works for urban areas, but it is a blunt instrument for rural Scotland. It has not worked for 17 years, so we need to come up with a better way.

I have two questions. The first is about Audit Scotland’s “Scotland’s colleges 2016” report. Could I clarify with John Kemp the point that Audit Scotland made about understanding colleges’ merger costs, on which the funding council published a report last month? Audit Scotland said that the funding council’s estimate would

“not include costs of harmonising staff terms and conditions, which could be significant.”

Is that fair comment, and is there a plan to publish those details?

Our report does not include the harmonisation costs. The reason is that there were a number of changes in the college sector during the merger period, some of which were related to mergers and some of which were not—we make that point when we look at all the costs of merger. It is therefore very difficult to reach a precise answer on what savings were related to the merger. Part of the change that was happening to the college sector over that time was the move towards national bargaining, and some of the colleges harmonised pay with an eye to that. For some colleges, the harmonisation did not cost much; in others it cost more, but sometimes that was related to looking ahead to national bargaining rather than the cost of the merger. For that reason, harmonisation was not included.

We agree with Audit Scotland that it is very difficult to be precise about which changes in the costs of colleges are related to mergers. We have used a robust and conservative way of looking at changes in staffing.

I take the point that John Kemp makes about it not being possible to have a precise figure, but has it been possible to come up with a broad number? Is that a number that Audit Scotland considers to be auditable, for want of a better word?

Part of the complication is that we did not include every merger in the savings figures, and some of the bigger costs were at one of the colleges that were not included.

We have figures; they are not figures that I would want to give just now, as we are still working on them.

But you could at some stage.

Yes.

The other question that I want to ask is a more generic one that relates to Johann Lamont’s line of questioning. Is the widening access agenda that you have all spoken about very logically this morning consistent with developing Scotland’s young workforce? I still think that the work on that is one of the most seminal pieces of work that has been done in Scotland in the time of the Scottish Parliament, because of the concentration that Sir Ian Wood had on vocational education and blurring the lines of that and taking out so many barriers to understanding why vocational education is important. Is the widening access agenda consistent with developing Scotland’s young workforce? What are you doing to make sure that they are seamless?

10:15  

Those agendas are consistent and it is very important that we keep on working to make sure that they do not diverge. The work that has been done on developing the young workforce, particularly the parts in schools about vocational pathways, needs to be linked into a number of possible outcomes when young people leave school. If it becomes the case that the vocational pathway is seen as “not university”, the whole thing will have failed. I do not believe that there is a divide that says that the vocational pathway is “not university” and the academic route is “university”.

In our work with colleges on developing the young workforce, we very much want to encourage flexible vocational pathways that allow young people at an early age in school to think about areas that they might want to work in. They should not be limited to particular outcomes but taken them on to vocational courses that might lead to a higher national qualification in school, then on to college and then on to university; or any of those outcomes might lead them into work. However, it is very important that we see it all as one education system and not as a separate education system for vocational education, in a different place from the academic or widening access education system.

If we are to introduce the kind of routes that are going to implement properly developing the young workforce, they have to be ones that also help with the aspirations of the commission for widening access. That can be done by improving the learner journey and improving articulation, and creating routes that are not trying, for example, to get everyone to stay in school till sixth year and then do a four-year degree. There will be other routes, which I think are a way of both widening access and giving us a first-class vocational education system.

I want to reinforce John Kemp’s points. I am quite clear that university is not for everybody. It is also not for everybody at 18 but might be for some people later when they are in their 20s or 30s, when they might want to do, for example, a masters degree. However, what we are about in terms of developing the young workforce is being totally aligned with our access agenda, which is about equality of opportunity so that people have opportunities and are not in some way negated by where they have come from, their race, their gender or whatever.

I support a lot of what has been said. Colleges are great places for many people to learn. The system that we have at the moment is a bit institutional in that it looks to schools, colleges and universities, but what we need to do is look to the individual and see, for example, that it would be much better for some young people in the senior phase of school to be in college—it would be better for the individual young person and better for society.

The technical or vocational training in college can lead on to university for some people, but it does not need to. It is not about seeing college and university as separate silos; it is very much about seeing them as choices flowing from the individual young person. The route is also not linear, because someone might go to university from school, for example, but then go back to college or they might go from college on to university. It is about ensuring that we make things simpler for the individual, and that is all part of our spending review submission around the learner journey.

That is fair. I have a question about one of Sir Ian Wood’s recommendations:

“Employers and national industry sector groups should form partnerships with regional colleges to ensure course content is industry relevant”.

He said that two years ago. Has that happened?

It happens daily, because that is exactly how college courses are developed.

So I could go to any college and it could show me all that.

Absolutely.

A college outcome agreement is based on a regional skills assessment, which you can ask Gordon McGuinness from Skills Development Scotland about in your next witness session. The outcome agreements are very much informed by the regional skills assessment and skills investment plans, and we expect to see that reflected in the outcome agreement. The employers groups that are referred to in that recommendation are being established at the moment, but a lot of workforce evidence goes into the college outcome agreements to make them reflect local need.

It is important when we are talking about widening access and apprenticeships to be explicit that the widening access agenda is not just about getting more young people from deprived backgrounds into university; it is also about getting more young people from backgrounds that are not deprived at all to think about apprenticeships as a valid method of moving on after school.

That has to be taken in context. NUS Scotland’s research indicates that almost half of apprentices make choices about what apprenticeships to do based on what they can afford and not on the basis of the information, advice or guidance that they might have received or, indeed, their career aspirations.

Apprentices are in a bizarre situation. They are workers and learners, but they are not treated as workers, they are paid significantly less than workers, and they are not treated as learners. They do not have the opportunity to co-create their own curriculum, for example. They are also unable to access benefits—the council tax exemption, for example—that their counterparts in full-time education can.

I shall lay things out bluntly. On the basis of the current national minimum wage for apprentices between the ages of 16 and 19, their annual salary would be £5,544, which is £2,000 below the national poverty line, assuming a standard working week. It is also £2,500 below the maximum amount of student support that is available.

Apprentices are treated very differently, and there is also a very gendered difference. For example, childcare apprentices in Scotland—of whom women make up the vast majority, of course—receive a mean hourly pay of £4.23. That is significantly below mean pay; indeed, it is the lowest amount for any apprentice. Conversely, electrotechnical apprentices, who are massively dominated by men, receive £10.10 per hour, which is the highest mean pay in Scotland. Women make up just 5 per cent of those apprentices in the statistics.

I have a brief supplementary question that follows on from Tavish Scott’s point about engagement with employers. Audit Scotland report said, following its engagement with industry bodies, that maybe colleges’ engagement with employers had not been as fulsome as might have been expected and that there was some way to go on that. How do you explain Audit Scotland’s finding on that point?

I think that Audit Scotland’s point was about the mergers and whether they had created a different dynamic for employers. The point that I was making was about the outcome agreement process and how outcome agreements relate to regional skills assessments. From memory, I think that Audit Scotland spoke to the Federation of Small Businesses as part of its look at mergers. Is that correct?

Exactly.

I would like to explore college governance a little bit. As you are aware, there has been a fair bit of controversy over college governance failures in recent times. Are the measures that have been taken so far sufficient to address that and sufficiently robust to future proof against that happening again?

The college governance landscape has been massively reformed. A good governance steering group has been in place for around two years now, and it is populated by all parties—colleges, the NUS, the Government, the funding council and trade union members. Together, we have collectively developed our code of good governance, and that is now in place. The Government also had its task group, which came up with many recommendations.

We now have a different landscape and a different set of rules and regulations that make college governance much more robust. The situations that we have seen in the past belong to legacy colleges. We have a much better position now with board members who receive more robust training, and chairs are publicly appointed.

That sounds excellent, but Audit Scotland’s “Scotland’s colleges 2016” report says:

“College board activities are not sufficiently transparent. Only one college complied fully with the Code of Good Governance”.

That specifically refers to putting agendas, minutes and board papers on websites. We have addressed that with the sector recently, and that has improved. That point has been addressed.

One of the key measures was external assurance to mitigate the risk of future issues arising. That would have principally involved the funding council. Are measures in place to reassure us on that point?

The Public Audit Committee will soon consider some of this year’s reports on the college sector. Last year, we had quite a lot of discussion about North Glasgow College and Coatbridge College, and whether the funding council had been robust enough in how it dealt with those issues. The issues that will be in front of the Public Audit Committee this year relating to Clyde College and Glasgow Colleges Regional Board indicate that we have taken a fairly robust line with those issues that came up last year.

A set of procedures is in place that is partly to do with the reclassification of colleges as public bodies, partly to do with the code of good governance, and partly to do with lessons learned from instances such as Coatbridge. Those procedures put us in a different place from where we were a couple of years ago.

So you can give us that reassurance.

I can give you reassurance that we are in a position to act robustly when there are problems. I cannot assure you that there will never be any problems. We are working with the college sector’s code of good governance and I am fairly sure that the incidence of problems will be less than it might have been in the past.

I was hoping for a yes or no answer there.

Well, it is a yes.

It sounds like a qualified yes.

Do you think that the inequalities that were highlighted in the Griggs report in January 2012 have been addressed by the recent college reforms, notably regionalisation and activity to improve the governance of colleges?

Do you mean gender inequality on boards?

Yes.

Perhaps Shona Struthers can answer that.

Professor Griggs’s report contained a list of different inequalities. What we have seen between then and now is the reform of the college sector on many different fronts. I am sure that the committee is well versed in them: we have seen the mergers, which are structural changes; we have seen regionalisation, which is where the colleges and employers tried to make sure that there were opportunities in the region; we have seen colleges brought into the public sector and having to adhere to Office for National Statistics reclassification; and we have seen the reintroduction of national bargaining.

Professor Griggs listed a lot of different inequalities and all those reforms have addressed quite a lot of them in different ways. The landscape has been complex, with lots of different changes happening simultaneously. Some colleges are now significantly larger, so they have much more clout in their region and are working better with employers. The college sector is now set up to work better with schools, universities and employers. A lot of the inequalities that Professor Griggs highlighted in his report have been addressed.

I agree with the point about the large number of inequalities. I suppose that I was thinking simplistically about the gender imbalance on boards, which is a topical issue at the moment.

Oh, sorry.

I do not have the latest figures for gender balance on college boards—perhaps Shona Struthers does—but the reason why I do not have the figures is that college boards have reformed themselves during the past year or so, so the balances might have changed. It was not far off 50:50 even before the boards reformed, so I imagine that it has not changed.

Colleges Scotland recently did a survey of each of the college boards that looked at gender. I would be happy to submit that to the committee. From memory, I think that the figure is around 35 to 40 per cent for females on boards.

That sounds a lot better than it was a few years ago.

Has the original intention of college governance changes delivered on the aim of putting learners at the heart of colleges? That was in the “Report of the Review of Further Education Governance in Scotland” of January 2012.

I have two points here. There are now students on boards, and I am sure that Vonnie Sandlan will pick up on that. There is also now a student association framework that is a big improvement on where things were in the past. If we are talking about putting learners at the centre, the student voice is there.

That is absolutely right. I was a college student president in 2012 when the merger process was beginning and I sat on the boards of my college and of the regional merger group, while studying full-time and being on placement two days a week, and I have got kids. No student is ever going to be in that situation again as long as the status quo continues. Every college now has a student association with at least one full-time sabbatical officer whose job is to represent the interests of students to the college and nationally. Of course, there is work to be done in developing student associations. NUS Scotland and the Scottish funding council have a partnership project that develops and supports student associations to constantly get better.

10:30  

We can compare university student associations, which have existed for a significant amount of time and usually have far higher block-grant support to fund their activities, with college student associations, which are very different bodies. College is by nature very different from university, with a far more transient student body of people, who may stay at college for only one year before moving on.

Before Professor Griggs’s report came out, there was a significant difference in the way in which learners were treated in colleges. Is the situation perfect? No, but nothing ever is—the status quo is never good enough. However, the intention and the partnership approach are there.

As Shona Struthers said, the framework for colleges is used by student associations and our colleges to build a partnership approach to ensure that the learner is at the centre.

Fulton MacGregor wants to come in briefly on a point that was raised.

It is just a supplementary, convener.

John Kemp specifically mentioned Coatbridge College. As the constituency MSP, I would like to know whether that situation has been fully addressed and whether assurances can be given that it is unlikely to happen again.

Yes. The final post-merger evaluation of New College Lanarkshire showed that the college is operating well. On the specific instance at Coatbridge, there is no risk of that happening again.

Colin Beattie fairly significantly beat me to the punch on what I was going to ask about, which was the relative weakness of student representation in colleges in comparison not only with universities but with schools. Looking at the education journey, and taking into account parents and guardians, the relative political lobbying power of people at school and university in terms of who represents them is much greater than the power of people at college. Perhaps that is why the college sector has experienced cuts to its budget that are disproportionate to cuts in other sectors. Vonnie Sandlan covered the issue quite significantly. How do we continue to improve the voice of college students, not just in their own institutions but in the national conversation about the sector?

That is really interesting. Reflecting on the situation pre-2012 in comparison with the situation now, I feel that I have been lucky to have been involved with NUS Scotland, first as a volunteer and now as a full-time officer, since the regionalisation process was set in train.

NUS Scotland is hyperaware that the vast majority of our members are college students. I think that we are talking about issues that affect college students in a way that the NUS has never done before, because the voice of college students is being strengthened through student association development. That was funded first of all through transformation funding while the regionalisation process was happening, and now colleges are funding it themselves.

Some college student associations are doing very well. Others—perhaps because they are a bit smaller, or for whatever reason—are not quite at the same level of progress and development. We are working with them to develop their student association structures to ensure that they develop institutional memory, year on year. College student associations’ biggest weakness is that while universities have in their student associations an abundance of staff members who know year on year what is being worked on and what is not, what is being lobbied on and what is not, and what successes the association has had in pursuing its agenda, that has not always been the case for college student associations. There is not that institutional memory.

Historically, before there were sabbatical officers, a new student officer team came in every year. A lot of those student officers may have dropped out of their role during the year, especially when national assessment bank items and graded units came up. It is a lot of work to take on that level of responsibility, and sometimes it has to give when the student has to focus on their academic progression. Things are significantly different from four years ago, but we are absolutely committed to working with student associations to help them to get better and to improve their voice.

I have certainly seen such improvement over the past couple of years. Is that reflected in improved representation for the part-time students, mature learners and so on to whom Johann Lamont referred and whose courses have been disproportionately affected in recent years?

It can be really difficult to reach some student demographics. That is not just a college representation issue; it applies to universities, as well. For a lot of part-time college courses, students come in at night, when there might be no student association representatives around. Distance-learning students are also not around the campus.

The situation is significantly better than it was when there were no sabbatical officers. I probably could not put a figure on what the direct intervention and interaction is with—I hate this phrase—hard-to-reach students. I do not think that anyone is “hard to reach”; there are just different methods and different ways. I am talking about students with whom we do not normally have as much contact as we do with full-time daytime students.

Anybody would welcome an increase in students’ ability to engage. That element of the reform programme has been really important. Should targets be established at college level or through Government policy to address the fact that while you have had increased representation over the period there has been a 41 per cent reduction in college student numbers, with a 48 per cent reduction in the number of women in part-time places? The irony for me is that although there is increased representation, you are representing a smaller number of students. What should be the next stage in addressing that?

That is a very big question. NUS Scotland has been absolutely clear that there needs to be some kind of rebalancing. There has been a focus on full-time places, and it is right that there are opportunities for any student who wants to take them up. Unfortunately, however, that has come at the expense of part-time places, which disproportionately affects women, mature learners and disabled people. We would like there to be more opportunities and more part-time places, and perhaps a rebalancing of the focus.

What can be done to address the rather dismissive approach—“Well, they were only hobby courses, anyway”—that explains the disappearance of part-time courses?

I should say that that was one person’s comment—it is not anybody’s official line.

When it comes to re-establishing the benefits of part-time courses—including courses for people with learning disabilities who are able to be sustained in the community as a result—has any work been done to analyse which of the courses have gone?

There is a narrative that says that the purpose of education is to get a qualification to go out into the world of work. That ignores the fact that education serves a ream of other purposes, including confidence building and getting people back into a social context where they can interact with other people. That is hugely valid, too.

I do not want to be at all dismissive or to suggest that all the part-time courses were hobby courses, but some of them were very short courses. At the time of the economic downturn, there was a decision made—partly by the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council and partly by the Government—to prioritise full-time courses for young people at a time when that was needed. I agree with Vonnie Sandlan that we need constantly to keep under review the balance of courses. There are still part-time courses in the college sector, although there has been a rebalancing away from some very short ones. I am not being dismissive of those courses: it was about prioritisation.

Students are part of the decisions that we take about prioritisation in the funding council. If Vonnie Sandlan and I had not been here today, we would have been at our access and inclusion committee. Our skills committee also has a student member. Vonnie also attends our board meetings as an observer. We involve students in those decisions.

The changes to college provision to increase the number of full-time students and reduce the number of part-time students—without being dismissive of the courses—were about prioritising something that was needed at the time.

I get the point about prioritisation and I get the fact that you are addressing challenges at particular times, but if you do that simply according to the length of the course, you may be losing very important courses that allow people to enhance their ability to access work, while at the same time sustaining other courses that might not do that. Did you apply criteria that were more subtle than simply focusing on people who are under 18 or who are on full-time courses?

I do not know whether the college sector has looked into this, but I am advised, anecdotally, that the kinds of courses that would support and sustain people with learning disabilities in the community—which do not result in a qualification but which are critical for people being able to achieve their full potential—are disproportionately disappearing. If you do not know, can you at least give me a reassurance that you will consider that question, so that you are not—to put it crudely—getting rid of courses on the basis that they do not provide a qualification? For some groups, such courses are not just nice things to have; they are very significant for people who are being supported to achieve their potential.

I undertake that we will meet and give you more detail on that. The only courses—I covered the matter in the Audit Scotland report going back to 2009—to which we applied the length-of-course criteria for not funding them in the future were those of less than 10 hours. They were very short courses and not the kind of course that you are talking about.

Is not it reasonable to look at what courses do and how they enhance people’s skills, rather than putting a blanket ban on courses under 10 hours and defining them as worthless? That is not a particularly rigorous way of looking at what those courses offer.

I am very happy to give you more information on the courses.

You can send the information to the committee. That would be helpful.

While we are looking at the doom and gloom in Audit Scotland’s report—I am conscious that we should not be drifting into the Public Audit Committee’s area—it is probably worth noting that the report states:

“The college sector has continued to exceed activity targets”.

A comment was made today about women being disproportionately impacted by the termination of short-length courses, but the report says that

“The gender balance is now broadly equal overall”,

which seems to be laudable. The number of students going to positive destinations is at a record 82 per cent, which has to be good. Additionally, the overall percentage of full-time further education students completing their courses has increased from 59 per cent in 2009-10 to 64 per cent in 2014-15. Those are all positive things that we need to look at, as well.

I recognise that some students who are on short-length courses—such as the 10-hour courses that have been described—have probably lost out, but we need to look at the bigger picture to see whether the Government is successfully delivering the outcomes that its policies are intended to deliver, as it appears to be doing.

We should make it absolutely clear that Scotland has a world-class education system that we should rightly be proud of.

I want to return to the 64 per cent successful-completion figure. It means that 36 per cent of students are not completing their courses: That is one third of students who go to college—arguably, it is one third of our most vulnerable learners, who come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. That is a huge number of students not completing their courses. I recognise that there are in Scotland’s education system significant successes that we should celebrate, but that figure of 36 per cent of students not completing their courses is not one of them.

I agree with you. It would be wonderful if 100 per cent of students completed their courses. The point that I was making is that there has been improvement—although you can argue that there is not enough improvement and that it should be going further—and we should note it. I have not seen analysis of whether the 36 per cent represents students from disadvantaged backgrounds or a mix of students from across the community. It would be interesting to have that analysis.

Once we get our destination survey information, we will find out what has happened to that 36 per cent of students. Often, it can just be that they got a job, which is not a negative outcome.

Colin Beattie has beaten me to it; I wanted to look at the drop-out rate and the reason for it.

I have quite a broad question about the impact of college mergers and regionalisation. We have had reports from the funding council and Audit Scotland, but what criteria do you in the college sector think should be in place to judge firmly and robustly the success or otherwise of the merger programme?

Do you mean the success of just the merger programme?

Yes.

I risk repeating myself. It is really difficult to look at and disentangle the benefits of just the merger programme, because it took place at a time of massive change. I will focus on just the merger programme. We now have a smaller number of colleges, some of which are large scale, which has enabled us to act more cohesively as a sector and to work more cohesively with employers. Those are definite benefits. We are bigger players and we are more influential, for example, in community planning partnerships.

Colleges do not fit neatly into the regional structures of community planning partnerships, but they are still big players. There have been benefits from the structural changes, and the mergers have also brought together colleges to avoid duplication of courses, where previously we had colleges side by side competing for the same students. There are definitely benefits and, as the merger evaluation reports that John Kemp alluded to show, there have been savings made in the pay bill of over £50 million per annum.

10:45  

I will back to the drop-out figure—the third of students who do not complete. I take on board Shona Struthers’s point that many of those students have found themselves in positive destinations, but a significant number have not. The summer months are an acute problem for that. What is the next stage in supporting students in that gap over the summer, which is where the funding issue becomes most severe?

I will clarify the figures—I know that I have them written down somewhere. The figure of 64 per cent of students passing their courses refers to FE-level students. The successful completion rate for HE-level students within colleges is 71.3 per cent, which is quite significantly higher, and I think that there is probably something in that.

NUS Scotland is very clear that the FE student support system as it stands is unfit for purpose. We have information that we have accrued through student surveys about how students feel about applying to courses when they do not know what their income is likely to be. For example, a mature adult returner with children has to decide whether to apply for a bursary or to remain on benefits if they want to do an FE-level course. The system can be really challenging to navigate if you do not know what your options are.

Also, the current system for FE student support discriminates by age rather than by level of study. For example, if you are doing an FE-level course and you are aged up to 19, it is likely that you will be paid the education maintenance allowance of £30 a week rather than the maintenance bursary, which is between £74 and £94 a week. That is not a case of colleges doing anything wrong: they have a limited cash sum of money that they have to allocate between all their FE-level students and using the EMA rather than the bursary is a way of making sure that that pot is stretched further and can support more students.

As far as NUS Scotland is concerned, we absolutely welcome the Government’s commitment to a student support review. It is fair to say that if we were starting to design a student support system right now, it would not look very much like the current system.

I hope that we will be very involved in that review and I look forward to some really strong recommendations coming out of it in the long term; certainly in the interim we should make sure that that funding gap for college FE-level students is plugged.

I have one final question. I took Professor Nolan’s earlier point that it is difficult to plan when you get one-year funding but you have three-year or more extended lengths of financial planning within universities. However, a budget is about to come up. What pitch are you making for funding? Will you share it with the committee—not necessarily today but at some point in the autumn? I presume that you will ask for funding on a three-year basis. What is the justification behind the pitch? In other words, why should we give universities more money, given the financial constraints that the country faces?

We appreciate the financial constraints that we have had over a long period. We believe that universities add hugely to the prosperity of the country—to Scotland being fairer, wealthier and greener.

All sectors argue that.

Absolutely. We believe that the growth of the economy is fuelled by our graduates—by graduate-level skills—and that investing in those skills and beyond, in masters-level skills, is really important. If you look around the world, that is what many developing economies are doing.

Universities play on an international stage: we have five universities in the world’s top 200, but it is not just about those universities. We have a world-class system. My university is not in the world’s top 200, but I teach 6,000 students in Hong Kong, Singapore and India. We play on an international field and many countries really envy Scotland’s higher education system.

We are pitching for sustainable funding. We have talked a lot about Audit Scotland’s report “Scotland’s colleges 2016”, but there was also an Audit Scotland report “Audit of higher education in Scottish universities”, which indicated quite clearly that the sector’s sustainability is not being addressed. We need the funding for a sustainable sector that will recover the cost of our teaching and our research, while recognising that we are in difficult times.

I want to ask two specific questions about funding. I will start with the topic of research and innovation. Notwithstanding Brexit and what is a very difficult and worrying situation for university research, I want to ask about the problems with the research excellence grant. That is causing some concern, given that, as I understand it, the grant is being cut. Obviously, you have to raise as much in research funding as you possibly can for exactly the reasons that you have just set out, and the cut has an impact on the balance of the funding. Will you say a little bit more about the problem with the research excellence grant?

The research excellence grant is part of our core funding from the Scottish funding council; John Kemp will probably say something about that in a minute. We use the grant to fund our facilities and various other generic research costs in our universities. It is there because the research funding that we get from research councils, charities and European sources does not cover the full costs of research. That is absolutely clear. That is the dual support system, which we live and breathe every day.

The grant is a hugely important part of our being able to attract in research. Scotland probably spends around £280 million, invested through the REG and university research. On the back of that, we have leveraged in up to three to four times that amount, so the investment is very well used. The teaching cuts that were sustained this year meant that our teaching grant took more of a cut in 2016-17 and our research grant was a flat-cash settlement, which was better than having a cut.

On competing internationally, research is not local any more. Whatever you are doing, research is international, whether that be the connectivity of scientists or the problems. The societal challenges that we face here are the same as those that are faced by many communities around the world, so it is pivotal that we invest in our research infrastructure and maintain the funding balance.

I re-emphasise the point that there is no cut in this year’s research grant; the core research grant was kept the same—it was a flat-cash settlement. I accept that with inflation that is a real-terms cut but, in cash terms, the amount was preserved. However, there have been changes in the distribution between institutions. As a result of the previous research assessment exercise, which had a differential outcome, some institutions did better than others. Quite a lot of institutions in Scotland did very well, which meant that they took a bigger share from a pot that was the same size as it was the previous year, while other institutions did not get as much money. There has been no cut in the overall pot.

I want to put together everything that has been said on funding this morning. Obviously, the Scottish Government has decreed that 20 per cent of every Scottish university’s intake will come from disadvantaged backgrounds by 2030. On top of that, we have research funding issues. Professor Nolan and Mr Kemp have flagged up the issue about the supply of places. On top of that, we have issues to do with the Brexit settlement.

I have an important question. If we are to widen access successfully and not cause the difficulties that Johann Lamont mentioned about squeezing out students because of the cap system that Mr Kemp mentioned, we must have a debate about finding more money for the sector. As I understand it, to do all that we want to do to deliver everything that the Scottish Government has set out, we must have more places and money. Is that the correct direction of travel? In addition, to return to Tavish Scott’s question, to what extent will we have to increase the funding to have a sustainable future for our world-class university sector?

The targets for widening access are not for this year; they are for the future. The First Minister talked about a child who was born in—I think—2014, so we are talking about 2030. That means that there is time for us to make adjustments to funding levels in order to achieve the goal. The targets can be met in a number of ways, and some of the ones that we have talked about this morning, involving articulation and so on, do not involve a linear way of expanding everything to exactly the same size.

I am the interim chief executive of a funding council that funds colleges and universities and, in the spending review, I want colleges and universities to do well, because I think that the big benefit that we get from an educated population is what drives the economy. Innovation is important, but largely it is people who make the difference.

I will not sit here and say exactly what number we want from the spending review or what that should be over the next 15 or 20 years, but there are a number of ways of approaching the issue that can equalise participation without necessarily expanding the system to the highest level that we have at the moment.

Could you expand on that? If we are to ensure that 20 per cent of students come from disadvantaged backgrounds but we are not to do that in a way that has a disproportionate effect on existing students, that must mean that there must be more places.

I do not think that I would deny that. I am saying that there is not necessarily a linear progression with everyone doing six years at school and then getting five highers and going on to do a full four-year course. If we get the developing the young workforce approach operating properly, with different learner journeys, not everyone will take the same route. Arguably, we do not want 60 per cent of the population taking that route. The economy needs a variety of different people with higher education experience. It is important to link the developing the young workforce agenda with the widening access agenda. We need to produce the output from our universities and colleges that the economy needs.

Johann Lamont eloquently made the point that we know of students who are extremely well qualified but who are finding it increasingly difficult to get into university. That is a good thing in terms of the competitive edge that universities have, but it is surely not a good thing for the Scottish economy’s future.

From our perspective there is a conversation to be had and political choices to be made about how we fund a higher education system. If we are to increase places in order to hit the 20 per cent target without there being a change in demand, and if we continue to have a fixed system, there is only one obvious conclusion, which is that some people will be displaced. There might be other choices that are developed for those people, and demand might change if they take those choices.

A key point is that we need to ensure that the teaching that we are providing in the rich research environment of universities is properly funded. I would be sad to see any erosion of the unit of resource for teaching. In that regard, I point out that our tuition fees have been static for six or seven years now. There is a conversation to be had across the education system about how we prioritise issues and what is right for Scotland.

I have a question about funding, especially with regard to Brexit, the debate that is going on in the media, the think pieces in newspapers and the evidence that has been given to various committees. What monitoring is taking place of the impact of the various Brexits on further and higher education, in terms of your own responsibilities?

Secondly, I have no evidence for this, but I have been hearing that consortiums for research that are being put together in Europe are now not including UK institutions because of Brexit. Is that the case? Do you have examples of that? Are you monitoring that closely?

11:00  

Yes. We have heard examples, as well. The challenge at the moment is that we have heard anecdotal examples of people putting together research proposals and people from British universities being less likely to be involved, but that is in advance of anyone knowing what the arrangements will be in the future. Therefore, it is quite difficult to guess the full impact. There is a whole range of unanswered questions on Brexit that nobody knows the answers to at the moment.

We have worked to look at the potential impacts on Scottish universities and colleges, because some courses in colleges are funded through European money. There are implications for students from the rest of Europe who study in Scotland. What will be the impact on them and what will the numbers be in the long run? There are impacts on potential research funding.

We do not yet know the answers to many of those questions. We know the potential impacts and we have looked at the amounts of money involved, which are substantial, but we do not yet know when Brexit will happen, what the rules will be for some European research funds or the outcome for European students who study in Scotland.

There are a number of unknowns. We are working quite closely with the Government and the sectors on trying to reduce them, but they are still unknowns at the moment.

Is it your understanding that research proposals and bids are being put in place in Europe at the moment and European universities and institutions are excluding British institutions?

I have heard that anecdotally from universities.

I have heard perhaps not quite as much anecdotally—I do not have the evidence base—but I have heard of a UK or Scottish person who was the lead being made a co-applicant just in case, as people do not know what will happen.

I agree with John Kemp. Who knows what the impact will be? It will be some time before we know that, but giving certainty to people where we can is really important for us. Therefore, we welcomed in our sector the speed with which the Scottish Government clarified the situation with EU students and their fee status for 2016-17, and the very reassuring messages about how much we value EU national staff. Many of my staff came and said to me that it was really good to hear that and that, although they did not know the outcome, at least they were appreciated and valued.

We are trying to seek clarity on EU students’ fee status for 2017-18. That is my point about the long timescale. Our admissions opened yesterday for UCAS. Students apply against prospectuses, and I have in my prospectus—as all universities have in theirs—that there will be the same fee status in Scotland; EU students do not pay fees in Scotland. That is there now, and we in the universities have real concern. Is that some kind of pre-contractual arrangement? Do we admit EU students? On what basis do we admit them? We seek an early resolution about their status; it is clear that we will move out of the European Union at some point, so it is not a question for the long term. We seek an early statement on the fee status of 2017-18 students to help us to plan for the future and to continue to attract students. Most of our conservatoire’s admission applications have to be in by early October, as do applications for medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. Such reassurance where that is possible—not for the long term—would be most welcome to help us to transition.

I will pick up on that in a similar way to Professor Nolan. NUS Scotland absolutely welcomed the speed at which the Scottish Government gave that assurance, but we are not entirely clear about what the assurance will be for students who do not follow the linear route of starting university in first year and doing a four-year degree. There may well be students with an EU background who start their education journey in college at national certificate level or even below that and whose journey through education may be six or seven years or perhaps longer if they want to progress to attain a degree. Clarity on what the guarantee will mean for students who are not taking the traditional route through education would be very much welcomed.

The points that have been made about the impact on the university sector apply equally to the college sector. There is an impact on our European funding, our staff and our students.

There is an issue that I want to raise on the back of the question that Richard Lochhead asked. We have talked about internationalisation and attracting international students. You will all be aware that a post-study visa pilot is under way, from which Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish universities were excluded. What effect could that have in disadvantaging Scottish universities in attracting international students? Were Scottish universities consulted on the pilot? Were they asked to submit applications to be part of it? Was there a consultation period prior to the UK Government’s decision?

I was not aware of it; I heard about it from a colleague. When the decision was announced, I saw it in our press. I believe that universities were chosen on the basis of visa refusal rate, although I am not quite sure. The announcement came as a shock to us.

What impact do you think that that will have on your ability to attract international students?

Given that only four universities are involved, it is not clear to me what impact the pilot will have, and it is quite a limited trial. However, the broader issue of students and immigration policy is impacting—and impacting hard—on our ability to recruit.

Over the past 10 years or so, the number of international students in Scottish universities has risen by about 50 per cent, but it has plateaued in the past four or five years, and that will be because of the tightening up of the visas.

In the college sector, the numbers on the international front have absolutely plummeted—they are down by about 75 per cent. Although the numbers are relatively small, the proportional impact is massive.

What impact is that having on your funding? We are talking about fee-paying students.

In the college sector, we need to bring in other sources of funding, so anything that impacts on any funding stream will have a negative impact. Therefore, the situation is not good.

As John Kemp said, the number of international students has been growing but has plateaued. The number of students from some countries has plummeted. The number of students who come from India has dropped by more than 50 per cent over the past three or four years because of changes.

I make it clear that we want good students to come. We really appreciated the fresh talent initiative that was in place in Scotland. We believed that it benefited Scottish businesses. We want to have students who are here by right, but the future will be extremely challenging. The Audit Scotland report told us to diversify our income streams. We are trying hard to do that, but it is becoming increasingly difficult with the myriad of changes in immigration policy that occur on almost a monthly basis.

This issue has been partly covered by the line of questioning on EU funding, but given that just under 10 per cent of students at Scottish universities are non-UK EU students, has there been any communication from the Scottish Government about the status of 2017-18 applications? Am I right in my understanding that some universities are having to underwrite the funding for those places? What might the impact of that be?

We have had discussion in which we have highlighted that we would like an early statement on the status of those applications so that we can plan, but we have not had an answer yet.

You have not yet received anything.

What might the consequences be for Scottish universities if they are left to cover those costs themselves?

They would obviously be significant. We have our prospectuses approved for the next round of recruiting. It is extremely challenging to be able to plan on that basis.

Would it be fair to say that the universities are being left in limbo?

We need a decision one way or t’other.

I would like to ask about the issue of sustainability, which you have raised. The Audit Scotland report highlighted that there has been an 8 per cent decline in real terms in the tuition fees that are paid to Scottish universities. By 2016-17, there will have been an 8 per cent cut in the teaching grant. Would you classify that as a sustainable level of funding?

Obviously, it depends what happens in the discussions that are going on now about the year ahead. We appreciate that the environment is financially difficult, but for us the issue is long-term sustainability. We are working with the Government to be part of a short-term fix but we cannot go on with the current underfunding of the sector.

I have a final question on the Higher Education and Research Bill. What will be the impact of that legislation on Scotland, including any risks for teaching or research?

There are two main areas of impact, one of which is teaching quality and how that is measured. The bill proposes to set up a teaching excellence framework in England. As a substantial number of students from the rest of the UK come to Scottish universities, Scottish universities will want comparability with the teaching excellence framework at some point. In Scotland, we have a separate quality measurement system that we intend to continue with, so the issue would be how we would marry those two systems. We would need comparability between the teaching excellence framework in England and the quality enhancement framework in Scotland. I was down in London yesterday, giving evidence at the committee stage of the bill, so I know that there is on-going work on that aspect of it. We are quite clear that Scotland will continue to have a distinctive quality measurement system.

There are also implications for research funding with the creation of UK Research and Innovation, which will merge some of the funding of the Higher Education Funding Council for England—which is our equivalent body in England—with the research councils to create a body that has both an England-specific role in terms of the former HEFCE funding and a UK-wide role through the research council funding. We want to ensure that Scottish universities are not disadvantaged in any way, that the body operates properly as a UK body and that Scottish universities continue to receive a fairly substantial amount—currently, it is about £250 million a year from the research councils—from that UK-wide body.

The NUS has significant concerns, and I would be happy to submit the documentation that the NUS has prepared and sent to Westminster for its consideration if that would be useful to you.

We have grave concerns that the metrics that are proposed for the teaching excellence framework do not align well with the Scottish system and the students-as-partners approach that Scottish institutions have developed very well. We have concerns about the proposed office for students, which, as the bill stands, will have no guaranteed student representation on its board. To me, that would make the office for students an oxymoron.

A number of amendments to the bill have been tabled, which seek to address the major concerns that the NUS has. The NUS—not just NUS Scotland, but the NUS in its entirety—is gravely concerned about the proposals.

I agree with John Kemp’s points about the areas that give us concern and that we are working on—the TEF and the UKRI’s reconfiguration of the research landscape. We want to make sure that Scotland has a clear voice in that.

How can we get the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament to oversee the proposals as well? At this stage, the UKRI would be accountable only to Westminster ministers.

We have lobbied quite strongly to get Scottish representation on the UKRI board and we have flagged up the need for that where we have been able to do so. It is an issue not just for Scotland but for Wales and Northern Ireland.

Of course.

We are pushing hard. Our concern is that, if research England is in the middle of it, there will need to be a financial firewall between that organisation and the research councils that fund a lot of our research. Scotland is hugely successful in accessing research council funding—far more than our population share would determine. We have lobbied hard on that and have tried to get representation from Scotland on the UKRI board.

I thank you all for your time and your very useful evidence. That is the end of our first panel. We will take a short break and resume with our next panel of witnesses.

11:15 Meeting suspended.  

11:22 On resuming—