Education, Children and Young People Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Official Report 780KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023 [Draft]

Good morning, and welcome to the 30th meeting in 2023 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee. The first item on our agenda is consideration of the draft Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023.

This statutory instrument is being considered under the affirmative procedure. If approved, the order will require that there be two trade union nominee board members—one from college teaching staff and one from support staff—on the management boards of the incorporated colleges, New College Lanarkshire and the Glasgow Colleges Regional Board. As with every statutory instrument considered under the affirmative procedure, we will take evidence from the responsible Scottish Government minister.

I welcome Graeme Dey, Minister for Higher and Further Education and Minister for Veterans. Alongside the minister, we have Adam Mackie, senior policy officer at the institutional governance and reform unit of the Scottish Government, and Alison Martin, a solicitor in the Scottish Government legal department.

I invite the minister to make an opening statement. Minister, you have up to three minutes.

I am delighted to be here today to discuss the Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023, which makes changes to the constitution of the boards of management of all regional and incorporated assigned colleges, regional college boards and the board of management of New College Lanarkshire. For ease, I will, from now on, refer to the changes as affecting “college boards”.

The order makes amendments to existing legislation to ensure that there are two trade union nominee members—one from the teaching staff and one from the support staff—on college boards. Consequential amendments to the board sizes are also made to ensure that there remains a balance of independent board members. I hope that, among other things, that will go some way to improving industrial relations in the sector by giving greater voice to trade union views in decision making and by helping to improve confidence, particularly among the workforce, in decisions that are made by college boards.

I am grateful to the committee for its work in scrutinising the Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023, and for accommodating my diary today in order that I can also attend a similarly important event elsewhere this morning. I also want to put on record my thanks to Ross Greer, the good governance steering group and the trade unions, who have all provided input at various times to help develop the order and prepare the sector for its implementation.

It is no secret that industrial relations in the college sector are far from ideal, and that has been the case for some time. Concerns have been raised through the committee and through my engagement with trade unions about a range of workforce issues, including college governance. I have been clear throughout that engagement that the workforce issues are a matter for colleges to consider, but it is my expectation that there will be meaningful engagement and collaboration with trade unions and workers on such matters. I should add that existing processes are pursued when issues arise.

The order will make improvements to college governance by adding trade union nominees to college boards, and I am optimistic that it will improve confidence in college board decision making by giving trade unions a more direct route to bring workforce issues to boards. That aligns with the Scottish Government’s wider fair work agenda, which, at its centre, is about workers having an effective voice. Having trade union nominees on boards will further the input of trade unions in decision making.

I welcome the committee’s continued focus on college governance and industrial relations and its scrutiny of that legislation. The Government has always been clear that, although industrial relations are matters for trade unions and college employers, it will work alongside both to encourage and improve relations and ensure good governance in the sector. I look forward to taking any questions that the committee may have.

Thank you for that, minister. We will move to questions from members.

Good morning, minister. This is a welcome move, and it is important for the fair work principles that you set out. Will there be any further opportunities to strengthen board governance? That is always important, but, particularly while we are operating in times of financial constraint, it is crucial that we have excellent governance on our college boards.

Indeed. We are getting under way a piece of work that is a review of the guidance that is issued to college boards. Perhaps Adam Mackie will explain the detail of that.

We are currently looking at the guidance on the appointment of board members. We have been working with the good governance steering group on that, as well as on the order. We will consider the appointment processes and the skills that we look for in board members to ensure that there is fairness and parity across the sector and in how members are appointed to boards. We have been working on that in tandem with the order. Once the order is agreed to by the Parliament, we will seek to consult on the guidance document. We are happy to flag it to the committee when the consultation goes live.

In addition, we will ask the college development network to look at the nature of the training that is provided to participants on boards. It is no secret that, when MSPs join the Parliament, there are opportunities for training on questioning techniques. That might be worth exploring to ensure that there is full accountability in board settings. I am happy to consider any other suggestions that the committee might have in the context that I have just outlined.

In a similar vein to Ruth Maguire’s question, I want to explore the no-compulsory-redundancy policy again. I accept what you have said before, which is that colleges have always been excluded, despite the broader statements that were made in the past. Are you recommending to colleges that there should be no compulsory redundancies?

Our position, as we have discussed in the chamber on other occasions, is that colleges ought to be exhausting all possibilities to avoid compulsory redundancies. We have to recognise that they are stand-alone institutions and that, regrettably, circumstances might lead to such a situation, but we are encouraging them. For the most part, college principals and boards are very much committed to trying to avoid compulsory redundancies.

When Mike Russell was in your position, he was quite clear that he was making a strong recommendation. He said, “This is Government policy and we expect colleges to follow it.” Is your position slightly different from that? Do you have a softer approach to it, or are you still as firm as Mike Russell was?

I cannot speak to what Michael Russell said all those years ago. My position is realistic. We have been very clear with colleges. As I said earlier, for the most part, college boards and principals want to do anything that they can to avoid compulsory redundancies. That is where we are.

Good morning, minister and officials. One of the points that you made earlier, minister, was about training and the ability to question people, including in situations such as this. I am sure that many members of boards, including trade union members, would want to benefit from that. However, the evidence that we have had from the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers Association and Unison has been that, rather than needing to improve their negotiating skills, they need the facility of time and support to be able to engage in the structures. They have also said that the machinery is not independent, so the machinery—not just the questioning—is part of the problem. Is there anything that you could do to reset that relationship and re-grow trust in the machinery?

Do you mean the machinery within the college, if they are sitting on the board, or the whole machinery?

I imagine that it is both: the ability to influence a board decision and also the way in which, for example, the management of the joint committee is held and whether you consider that it needs to become independent.

You are referring to a negotiating committee.

Yes.

I agree with you, and there is no doubt that there is scope for doing this far better than is currently the situation. However, we need to get agreement on what those changes might look like. I have had a number of conversations with all sides on it, and I do not think that we are in the space where there would be agreement right now. However, it is incumbent on me, as minister, to try to drive that forward, because we cannae go on as we have been for years. There have been far too many personality clashes involved in it. There are question marks about the structures and how they work, so I think that we need to review it.

I very much welcome the instrument, and I think that it will go some way towards resolving some concerns. However, I am interested in what the process of escalation would be. You will be familiar with the current issues at the City of Glasgow College. That is what has caused me to ask the question, but I am asking it in a general sense, because I think that it applies to more colleges than just that one, particularly where colleges sit under the regional board in Glasgow or Lanarkshire.

There are still questions from unions about how they should escalate an issue if they are unable to resolve it with college management. What is the role of the college board, the regional board, the Scottish Funding Council and you in that? Will you explain how a trade union that has been unable to resolve an issue directly with management should go about escalating it? I am sure that, as MSPs, we all get lobbied by unions on a variety of issues in this regard, often with a variety of suggestions about whether the issue should go straight to the SFC, straight to you or straight to the college board—or, in some cases, the regional board. What process should be followed if there is a concern about redundancies, particularly when the correct process has not been followed?

The regional set-ups congest the landscape a little bit. To go back to the original point, it is not for ministers, as I have kept saying, to intervene in individual disputes, but there are processes in place. If we take the example of Glasgow and the current set-up there, the escalation route is to the regional board.

In the context of the dispute that has been running at one college in Glasgow, that route has not been followed. I met the trade unions last week and, to my surprise, I learned that they had not pursued it. That raises the question about the board’s role: should it be proactive when it sees a dispute?

On the back of those discussions, I met the board last Friday. I encouraged the board and the trade unions to get together—I did not care who made the first move—to explore some of the claims that have been made around the dispute. I am pleased to say that, on Monday, they took that opportunity. There have been discussions, and I understand that, as of today, the trade unions are to go back to the board with further information.

I outline that example because it shows that processes exist. I am not saying that they are perfect. As you know, we are considering future governance arrangements in the regional set-ups. That is the process that can and should be followed. If a regional board comes to the conclusion that there is something of concern to it, it has the opportunity to escalate that to the Scottish Qualifications Authority [Graeme Dey has corrected this contribution. See end of report.], which I would expect it to do, if that were the case, in any such circumstances.

In the interests of time, I thank the minister for that update, which was useful.

Thank you for your answers, minister.

As members have nothing further to add, we move to the formal debate on the instrument on which we have just taken evidence.

Motion moved,

That the Education, Children and Young People Committee recommends that the Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023 [draft] be approved.—[Graeme Dey]

Motion agreed to.

I thank the minister and his officials for their time this morning. I suspend the meeting until 9.20 to allow the minister and his officials to leave before we move to the next item on our agenda.

09:13 Meeting suspended.  

09:20 On resuming—