Draft Budget Scrutiny 2014-15
The third item is evidence on the Scottish Government’s 2014-15 draft budget. We have agreed to focus our scrutiny on the Scottish Government’s youth employability commitments, funding for those and how the policy focus on younger learners is impacting on lifelong learning.
I welcome Michael Russell, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, and his supporting officials from the Scottish Government. They are Mike Foulis, who is the director of children and families, Andrew Scott, who is the director of employability, skills and lifelong learning, and Fiona Robertson, who is the director of learning. I ask the cabinet secretary to make some brief opening remarks before we begin our questions.
I shall be brief, convener. I would like to give an overview of what is before you in the budget. I am always grateful for the opportunity to discuss these issues, and there is a considerable amount of detail in the draft budget.
I would sum up what we have been trying to do last year and this year as closing the attainment gap—those of you who have heard Pasi Sahlberg talk about that during his visits to Scotland will know how important it is that we demand greater equity from our education system—while, at the same time, creating opportunities for people to develop skills in our colleges, and encouraging excellence and ambition in our universities. Our aim is to make a good system a great system once again, and we have a clear framework and a programme of investment amounting to about £3 billion a year to make that happen.
In terms of the early years, we are trying to deliver the best childcare package in the UK. The committee has taken evidence on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill this morning, and I am sure that you will continue to consider that. The increase from 470 hours to a minimum of 600 hours will benefit 121,000 Scottish children, and hard-pressed Scottish families will save the equivalent cost of £707 per child a year. Over the period of the spending review, we are providing £50 million to support a range of early years initiatives, £10 million for the third sector strategic funding partnerships and £20 million for the third sector early intervention fund. That represents a sizeable increase in our early years support. Those investments will be significant in helping us to get it right for every child in Scotland.
In our schools, we continue to invest in the curriculum for excellence, as well as in driving up attainment. Indeed, the curriculum for excellence is the context in which we drive up attainment. In particular, we will reduce the inequity in education outcomes for children from deprived backgrounds.
Between 2014 and 2016, resource spending will fall slightly, but we will see continued investment to implement the curriculum for excellence and the new national qualifications. We continue to invest in our schools estate through the £1.25 billion Scotland’s schools for the future programme.
The committee has, of course, been interested in our ambitious post-16 reforms, and I have particularly welcomed your focus on colleges. Throughout the budget, I have placed emphasis on colleges, so I am pleased that we have been able to increase the funding floor from £522 million in 2014-15 to £526 million in 2015-16. That allows us to maintain our commitments on student numbers and will support implementation of some of Sir Ian Wood’s recommendations. This afternoon’s debate will provide a welcome opportunity to discuss Sir Ian’s interim findings and, although we have still to receive the final report, it is clear that colleges and schools will be involved in our efforts to improve job prospects for Scotland’s young people.
Regionalisation is transforming the sector, and it is important to emphasise how much Wood rests his argument both on the success of CFE and on the success of regionalisation, although our focus is not on institutions themselves, but on helping young people at every stage into jobs and on meeting the needs of employers. We are supporting non-profit-distributing investment and exciting college developments.
We are also ensuring that our universities remain internationally competitive, as we invest to ensure that no funding gap opens up between them and the universities elsewhere in these islands. We have allocated an additional £19.3 million of resource funding to our higher education sector in 2014-15, which will ensure that we maintain our commitment to free higher education for all Scotland-domiciled students. Of course, a substantial proportion—up to 20 per cent, or perhaps more—of our higher education is delivered in colleges. For as long as this Government is in power, education in Scotland will always be based on the ability to learn, and not on the ability to pay. Our student support packages, which are the best in these islands, provide students with annual support of up to £7,250.
Finally, the committee is focusing on youth unemployment, which is also one of our key focuses. Last year, youth unemployment was below the UK rate, and was down 0.3 per cent on the previous year. Our investment in training opportunities for young people is working. That is why, with this budget, we have extended the funding for 25,000 modern apprenticeships per year into 2015-16. We continue to fund opportunities for all, to guarantee every young person a place in education or training, and we will continue to deliver the employability fund, which is providing better support for those who are in pre-employment training.
Alas, along with other budgets in Scotland, ours continues to bear the mark of UK Government cuts, but we have identified savings where we can and have produced a programme that will continue to protect and enhance education in Scotland. I believe that Scottish education continues to improve, but there is always room for improvement, so in the referendum year, we are investing to make it better still. We are investing in early years, in our curriculum, in our colleges, in employment and in our universities. I welcome questions from the committee on how we intend do to that.
Thank you, cabinet secretary
Increasing youth employment through a range of training and learning opportunities is central to the Scottish Government’s strategy. With the current challenges in the landscape out there in the real world, and with a limited number of employers being available to recruit young people, can youth employability initiatives realistically lead to large numbers of young people achieving sustainable employment?
I believe that they can, but we need to proselytise for those initiatives everywhere we can, and we need to encourage employers of every size to take them up. As Joan McAlpine knows, I went to Dumfries yesterday afternoon and in the early evening I spoke to a group of employers of varying sizes at Dumfries academy. I emphasised the need for every employer to consider what they can do and to play a part. Of course, the second part of the Wood process is to look at employers, employment and the wider scene and to see how business and industry can be further engaged.
I pay tribute to the fantastic work that my colleague Angela Constance is doing as Europe’s first—and only, so far—Minister for Youth Employment in constantly encouraging a range of initiatives. Some MSPs have held individual jobs fairs—I have done so myself—and have seen the effect that they can have in drawing employers into a dialogue that produces results. We should be unstinting in our efforts to continue with those initiatives, because they are working and can continue to work.
Some of the discussions that we have had about youth employment have been about communication and about ensuring that businesses and colleges work together, and I know that the intention of the post-16 reforms is to make it easier for everyone to work in that context. Is there proof that things are moving in that direction?
I see a positivity surrounding the post-16 reforms now, which is important. We have been through a difficult process with the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Act 2013 and there have been differing views expressed about it, but now is the time to ensure that the whole Parliament gets behind the college sector and behind the employment initiatives, in order to ensure that they work. That requires that we go out and talk positively about what can be done, because a great deal can be done. There are signs that it is working; we see signs in the figures themselves. There has been a constant attempt to ensure that young people get opportunities. Opportunities for all is a positive thing, as well.
I do not believe in coercion, or in systems that force people to do things and which disadvantage them if they do not do them. However, the power of persuasion in this system has been such that we are seeing a positive uptake, and that will continue.
Thank you.
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By what criteria is the Scottish Government measuring which initiatives are most successful when it comes to solving youth unemployment?
There are a number of criteria, including uptake both by individual young people and by employers. Although I suppose that we could say that that is a slightly subjective criterion, it is important. If initiatives do not attract support from either young people or employers, we have a problem. By that measure, the modern apprenticeships programme is outstandingly successful, because we meet our target year on year. Young people go into that programme, and of course they are employed young people. That is one criterion.
The broad criterion is to look at the youth employment figures and ask, “Is this working?” One of the difficulties—Liz Smith and I have discussed this before at committee—is with getting data that drill down to the next stage of that. That is why the provisions in the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Act 2013 on data exchange and sharing activity—which people paid not much attention to—are important. I think that we will see the benefits of that.
Also important is the senior phase benchmarking tool. That sounds like a technical thing, but you will know what it is and how we are rolling it out. Its first iteration—the sample iteration—was released at the learning festival. As a result of Ian Wood’s recommendations, we have taken it on board that the tool should include information on vocational qualifications, and I think that it will extend outwards over a period of time to give us some detailed information on how the systems work.
When we had the debate last year about so-called waiting lists, there was an attempt to use them as an indication of whether demand existed and whether people were being served. I hope that we have gone past that rather crude measure, because there are no such waiting lists. College principals will tell you that.
However, we can get more information on outcomes of college courses. I was at Cardonald College yesterday before I went down to Dumfries, and one of the courses that I visited was the digital media skills course. The uptake that it gets for the various courses, whether it is a foundation course, an HNC or an HND, is a good indication of what works and of the state of the market and how the college can push the market. I also saw some student nurses. Again, we need to know more about the various levels. Some come in from school, some come in from a variety of youth initiatives and some come in later in life; we need to know more about how they come out.
Essentially, there are a wide range of ways in which we can measure outcomes. I am always looking for more, and I encourage the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council to do the same, provided that we do not get into information overload.
You said that you see improvements because of the outcome agreements. Do you expect that, in the current academic year, the new colleges under the regionalisation process will—if we forget about the waiting-lists argument—meet their recruitment targets?
I very much hope that they will, and I hope that the universities will meet their targets as well. Among the most important things that a college or university can do is say accurately what it thinks demand is and what it needs in order to meet that demand, and ask to ensure that it has the resource to do that. That is the outcome agreement process.
So, the answer is yes: my expectation is that the colleges will meet their targets. If they do not, I want to know about it early on. The outcome agreement process is a rolling process and it has moved on substantially from the early discussions. In the college sector and the university sector, there is a rolling process by which both sides know what is being done and how, so I expect that to be picked up quite quickly.
Okay. Are you concerned that, in the context of the budget, because you are placing an emphasis on 16 to 19-year-olds, other college students including part-time students and adult learners—we have some pretty worrying statistics on each of those—are suffering?
No, but I am always conscious of the fact that the role and reach of colleges is much wider than just to address 16 to 19-year-olds. There continues to be an imperative to tackle the issues of actual and potential youth unemployment. I do not want to rehearse the argument forever, but those of us who have lived through a considerable period of youth unemployment and who have seen its effects, including its long-term effects—it still exists in some communities in Scotland—were quite determined, as the financial crisis unfolded, that we would focus resource on that issue.
I think that it is possible, however, for colleges to have a wider and broader view than they do. In two areas in particular where I have accepted concerns that there might be problems, we have acted. First, we put an additional £10 million into women returners, and we have encouraged the colleges to work hard on spending that money. One or two members here have been to the cross-party group on learning disability, so they will know that I have—secondly—encouraged charities that work in learning disability to work with colleges and the funding council to find imaginative and ambitious ways to ensure that the reach of colleges to people with learning disabilities is maintained and enhanced.
I am always open to discussion about people who appear to be disadvantaged, but I think that the full-time equivalent figures bear out very strongly the depth and breadth of college activity.
I do not deny that, but I am interested in the basis for your budget scrutiny and the Scottish Government’s aims and ambitions for the Scottish economy. Statistics show that college participation for the 25 to 59 age group since 2008-09 has gone down from 161,000 to 106,000, and that the figure for part-time learners has gone down from 398,000 to about 280,000. Those are quite significant drops.
You must put those figures in context—in fact, they must be seen in a number of contexts. I say that quite genuinely. The first context is that we have focused much more on full-time equivalent places. I really believe that that is the best and safest measure, because all other measures do not compare like with like. There is a huge range of things that colleges might not do any more, for a variety of reasons. For example, the difference in regulation for individual learning accounts has reduced the ability of people who might want to take college courses—retired people or whoever—to take short-term college courses. I am not saying that there is anything wrong in their doing such courses, but that that kind of provision has had to take second place to youth unemployment. I think that everybody in society would accept that that is an important thing to do.
The second context is that the pattern of learning has changed. Many people learn in different ways and are continuing to do so online. It continues to be the case that there is a vast range of different ways in which to learn, even compared with five years ago. Nobody is denying that there has been a change in the way in which colleges operate, which is now focused substantially on issues of employment and, for a period, in particular on youth employment. However, when I see evidence that there are people who need additional help, we will try to give that help.
John Henderson said to us last week that he is concerned about statistics such as I gave you, which he says put at risk the idea of lifelong learning. Do you think that he is right?
No, I do not think that he is right. I work very closely with the regional leads and the principals, and none of them has made that point to me. All of them are conscious of the need to be aware constantly of the breadth that is required in what they offer, and they want to have that breadth.
In terms of adult learning and lifelong learning, I chaired last Thursday morning the first ever strategic forum for adult learning. I am very keen that we engage closely with adult learning organisations and others, and that there is a strong link to the college sector. As you will know, we established, as a result of the von Prondzynski review, the strategic forum for higher education and we established, as a result of the Griggs review, the strategic forum for further education. I was very keen that we put a forum in place for adult and lifelong learning, which has never been done before. We have therefore brought to the table the main organisations—we will continue to expand the forum—and there is an interface with colleges so that we focus on adult learning and lifelong learning.
The first purpose of the forum is to develop a statement of ambition and an indication of how it can be delivered. I think that what we are trying to do in times of difficulty is to re-emphasise the importance of lifelong learning, in which I believe very strongly. It is in my job title; across Europe, very few ministers have it in their job title. I want to ensure that we continue to do that, so we will try to do so.
You mentioned the uptake of specific schemes. I understand that the £25 million youth employment Scotland fund, which was set up in April 2013, aims to get 10,000 jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds. I understand that uptake of the fund has been low and that there is—or certainly there was—a significant underspend. Can you inform us of the uptake of and underspend in the fund?
Yes, of course. The youth employment Scotland fund was a one-off opportunity to boost youth employment. Of the jobs that were predicted, about 5,000 plus are starting in 2013-14. The wider eligibility criteria will increase the number of places that are funded this year, so I think that it will produce the number of jobs that we anticipated or thereabouts. The scheme is continuing, but it is a one-off. If further European Union money becomes available, it is the type of thing that we would do again. There were some issues about criteria that had to be sorted out. Perhaps Dr Scott wants to say something about it.
Andrew Scott (Scottish Government)
The scheme has started and will continue until April and, in due course, we will take a view on whether it should continue further. We are examining whether the eligibility criteria should be widened to include larger employers than at present, which could affect the success of the scheme in due course. Since the scheme was considered, the youth labour market has of course improved considerably—unemployment is down and employment is up—so that will come into the mix, too.
To continue on the theme of youth employment, will the cabinet secretary update us on the opportunities for all initiative, which is the Scottish Government’s commitment to offer a place in learning or training to every 16 to 19-year-old who is not already in education, employment or training? It is now two years since the initiative was announced. Are you happy with the way in which it is being implemented?
I am. In the first year, colleges were probably a little uncertain about how the initiative might work out for them, but it is a guarantee that we make and one that has been honoured. It is important to say that it is not a compulsion. There has been a lot of discussion and debate about compulsion and whether people should be forced to do things. I would much rather encourage people to do things. Because the offer is not a compulsion, it has been particularly useful. People have said, “Here are some opportunities—why don’t you take them?”, and that has encouraged people to take them.
I am encouraged by how the scheme has gone. It will continue to be in place and to be an important part of the mix. In Europe, there is a strong desire and demand—which have been resisted by the UK Government—to extend the guarantee to cover 24 and 25-year-olds. Angela Constance has said that she is keen for that to happen. We should ensure that there is a good strong offer for as long as possible, so let us see what we can do with that.
Can you give us more details on the timescale for extending the offer?
Well, if the people of Scotland were to choose independence, I would see that as a key issue. Let us campaign on that type of vision of a Scotland where the prospect of offering opportunity to young people is as strong as it possibly can be.
You made the point that you have not gone down the road of compulsion, but do you have targets for the opportunities for all programme?
My target is 100 per cent. It has to be, because I want everybody to take it up. However, that will not happen, because some young people will not do that. The question is whether we should say to young people, “Either you do this, or—.” I just do not think that that type of society works. I want to encourage young people to do things and to find ways of giving them real excitement at the prospects that lie ahead of them. That is what we are strongly endeavouring to do and what we will go on doing.
To follow that up, what does success look like? We all want 100 per cent take-up, but if we cannot achieve it, what would be successful?
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If we say that 100 per cent is success and 80 per cent is not success, we will get into a bit of trouble. I want every young person who is at school to say, “What do I want to do? How can I be excited by the prospects that are in front of me?” To quote a school motto that I am familiar with:
“Here lies a field open to the talents”.
Everyone has some skill or ability to do something and we need to help them to find that and to move forward.
I do not want to rehearse this afternoon’s debate too much, but the Wood review gives us another opportunity. Within the context of curriculum for excellence and a broad general education that then moves into a more specialised senior phase, there is a real foundation on which we can build. If we can get the implementation of the Wood recommendations right, it will mean that there is richness of choice, but that is not about either/or, or about the much-used phrase parity of esteem. We are saying that a complete education that provides opportunities right across the board in vocational and academic subjects gives people the chance to choose and encourages them to do so. We need that type of society; it goes wider than education because education does not solve all our problems. We need to bring to bear welfare, tax benefits, and labour market regulation to close the equity gap. If we can close the equity gap in Scottish education, more people will be inspired and excited.
Success looks like the type of system that I have just described operating well for all young people. There will always be young people who do not wish to take part in anything, but I would like to see as much work as possible being done by inspiring teachers and others to make the system work.
Last week, the committee had some discussion about the ability of the Government and public sector bodies to follow up young people. Are we sure that those who take up those opportunities in the first place are moving on to what we often call positive destinations, and in the longer term to sustainable employment?
Skills Development Scotland’s statistics show that the outcomes are pretty good. The latest SDS statistics for this year show that the outcomes were good and that we are getting better.
We also instituted data-sharing arrangements under the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Act 2013 precisely for those reasons, as you know convener. We felt that the information that was being exchanged and that could follow young people was not good enough. I go back to the senior phase benchmarking tool, which is another part of it. All that stuff is not an increase in the data burden. Asking the right questions and putting information into the system in the right way will help us to follow up those young people.
Will that work and the other work that is going on be effective in ensuring that someone, whoever it is, is given the responsibility to ask questions of those who drop out or refuse to take part?
Yes. That responsibility should exist, either in SDS or more widely in the community through training providers or schools. Will it happen on every occasion? That will probably take some time, but it should happen. We have a small country so the numbers that we are talking about are not enormous.
Earlier, Liz Smith asked about the role of colleges in encouraging and supporting adult learners. Has the Scottish Government completed a full equality impact assessment on the move to prioritising young people at college? Has the impact on women and people with disabilities and additional support needs been assessed?
John Swinney gave evidence on that at the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee when he talked about the way in which we had assessed the impact of those changes. I am happy to make sure that that evidence is provided to you.
I became Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in December 2009. As the impact of youth unemployment began to hit us, it was important to make sure that we put as much into the front line as quickly as possible so that we did not have a tsunami of youth unemployment that lasted for a long time. We do not know each other very well, Ms Baxter, but I hazard a guess that in Fife you are familiar with communities that still bear the scars of massive youth unemployment and you know, as I know, families who have been through several generations of worklessness as a result.
I was passionately committed—I think that I am allowed to use the word “passionately”—to doing whatever we could to ensure that that did not happen, and one of the several tools that we used, which included the modern apprenticeship tool, the SDS tool and the way in which we increased SDS’s capacity and made it fully functioning, was a focus on youth issues, youth training in colleges and the guarantee that we introduced. If there has been any concomitant effect on other groups of adult learners, we have looked at that where we believe that it has happened and have tried to help, and I will continue to do so. However, I think that this judgment was the right one at the right time to do the right things. Mr Swinney has addressed some of the wider issues and we will let you have that evidence.
When you say that the Government will take steps to help, what steps can it take to mitigate those impacts?
I have already indicated some of them. For example, I was very keen to focus additional resource entirely on women returners. Interesting issues have arisen with bursaries; where we have had any evidence of pressure on bursaries from groups because of childcare or whatever, the SFC has stepped in and tried to help.
With regard to learning disabilities, I have met the charities on two separate occasions, have attended cross-party group meetings, have provided additional resource, have sought projects from organisations, have asked how we can spend money to help with the matter—and will continue to do so. The very strong adult learning strategic forum, which I have already mentioned, arose out of an event at Newbattle College that I attended last March—I also attended a follow-up event—at which it seemed to me that one of the things that we could bring to bear to ensure that lifelong and adult learning was given the focus and priority that it had not had for some time was to bring it into parity in our strategic approach and in terms of Government support. I chair the forum for higher and further education, and I will chair the adult learning forum as well. As a result, the cabinet secretary will focus on ensuring that each part of that continuum gets strong attention and that we build the right strategy for it.
I am open to other ideas. If you see things happening in Fife in what is an emerging and perhaps very strong college situation—after all, the situation in south Fife has not been without its problems, which have not been to do with resource—please come and talk to me about them. I am more than willing to discuss them.
Thank you.
You said that you would send us what John Swinney said about the equality impact assessment. Can you also send us any equality impact assessments that the education department has carried out?
I will ensure that you receive documentation on this but, as I have already told your colleague and as I will make clear again, the decision to prioritise young people and youth training was based on very strong experience of and feeling about what had happened in previous generations. I would have hoped that our approach would have had wide support across Parliament.
You have said that you have increased the funding floor for colleges. Can you confirm that there will be a real-terms cut to the college budget in 2014-15 and 2015-16?
You would not expect me to confirm that, Mr Bibby, and I am not going to. The figures are in front of you and you can see exactly what the situation is.
We have made substantive changes to the college sector. Last year, I promised that I would create a funding floor of £522 million, which is what I have done. That will continue in 2014-15 with a small but significant increase in 2015-16. That is substantially better than people’s expectation this time last year. The figures in front of you indicate that, with the Office for National Statistics reclassification, overall college operational expenditure is £687 million and that non-governmental operational income is £165 million. The net figure, therefore, is £521.7 million.
Now that the ONS classification has to be used, the figures show that the college capital expenditure is £46.1 million, expenditure receipts on capital £19.5 million and net college capital £26.6 million. That is a more complete set of figures on college funding than we have ever given before but you may, of course, draw your own conclusions from them.
Can you confirm that the baseline in 2013-14 was £521.7 million and that, at 2013 prices, it will be £512 million in 2014-15 and £506.8 million in 2015-16?
If you wish to put those figures on the record, you are, of course, able to do so. I have indicated to you what is taking place, which is a substantial improvement on earlier plans. It indicates precisely what we believe needs to happen in a sector that required reform. That reform has taken place, and regionalisation is producing benefits. I think that Ian Wood made that point in his report.
You mentioned a massive improvement on previous plans. Can you confirm that, in 2012-13, the total figure for college funding was £546.4 million and that, in 2014-15, the figure will be £521.7 million in cash terms? That is a £25 million cut in two years.
As I said, if you wish to read out the figures that are in front of you, you are absolutely at liberty to do so. My position is that the published plans for colleges have been in the public domain for a considerable period of time. They are the result of a series of changes and mergers that will produce significant savings for the colleges. The reports on that from the Accounts Commission and the SFC are absolutely clear.
If we are all putting things on the record, I might add into the mix that the figures for 2013-14 and 2014-15 will remain higher than the figure for the last year of our predecessor Administration. We are therefore spending more than our predecessor Administration spent. I put that fact on the record, too.
And you are spending nearly £100 million less in real terms compared with—
I put my figures on the record and I stand by them. I regret that the important process of changing colleges, on which many commentators have warmly commented, including Sir Ian Wood in his report, was opposed by the Labour Party, which also voted against widening access and against, regrettably, a single set of terms and conditions for staff. I simply put that on the record.
We have heard concerns from Unison and others about the implication of reductions in college staffing for quality. According to Colleges Scotland, we have seen a reduction in staff from 16,900 in 2009 to 13,600 in 2013. That is a drop of 3,300 in that period, or nearly one in five staff. If the regionalisation agenda is to save around £50 million, how many more job losses will we see over the coming years?
The colleges are the employers, not the Scottish Government. Colleges decide how they deliver their courses. I am sure that Mr Bibby will agree that the right way to decide what is delivered in colleges is not to take an arbitrary figure for staff or the budget, but to focus on the individual needs of individual learners, decide what the appropriate curriculum is to fulfil those needs, and then decide the appropriate place in which those things are delivered. It is absolutely meaningless to do things in any other way. We are seeing a college sector that has been strengthened by the process of regionalisation to focus on its core mission, and I am glad that that fact is being welcomed right across the sector.
I simply stated that we have seen a staff reduction of 3,300 over the past couple of years and I asked for an indication of how many more job losses we are likely to see.
You would have to ask each college what its plans are. When I visit the colleges, I see colleges of scale and ambition that are delivering significant courses to a very large number of people of every age. The staff are fully focused on that activity and, indeed, are very supportive of the change that has taken place. Nobody denies that reform is a difficult process. It was a difficult process, but it was necessary to ensure that we have a college sector that is fit for the 21st century. We have done that, and there is a widespread view that that was the right thing to do.
On full-time courses and quality, you have said that the priority has to be the full-time courses. Why, then, have you reduced the number of hours that a full-time course can consist of, from 720 hours a year to 640?
I did not reduce the number of hours. The funding council reduced the number of hours.
There is always a debate about how courses are delivered and in what sort of way they are delivered and it is important that we talk to and listen to the professionals in these fields on the way in which they deliver courses. If they believe that they can deliver courses more effectively and efficiently for public money, my role as a minister is to say that that is a good thing so that we can get more bangs for our buck. That is the reality of what we are trying to do at difficult financial times. I pay tribute to the work of every college lecturer and college manager who has managed to do that and has continued to increase the quality of college learning.
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Yesterday at Cardonald, I not only saw the digital media students but spent a little time in the department that does fashion and design. I saw world-beating work that is going on with a number of local employers in Scotland. Some of us are old enough to remember the demise of the lace industry up in the valley in Ayrshire. I think that one company still produces it, and it is working with Cardonald on stunning designs and ways of producing new material that is being sold all over the world.
Those students are going from basic one-year courses through to articulation to Heriot-Watt University to do degree courses and on into good, solid jobs in which they are producing things in Scotland. There is the reality of the college sector. My job is to present that reality, to encourage that kind of thing to take place and to ensure that it continues to take place.
You are entitled to have these kind of arbitrary discussions, but the economy needs to get behind the college sector and make it work. It is working, and you do it a disservice if it is run down in the way in which it is being run down by your questions.
I asked you about the number of hours for full-time courses being reduced from 720 hours a year to 640. You said that it was a Scottish funding council decision and not your decision. Did you support that decision? Presumably you did.
What I do is to let the Scottish funding council do its job so that we can have a really effective sector in Scotland. I would be very keen for you to engage in that process and in encouraging the excellence of the Scottish college sector. It is about ensuring that we do not have mass youth unemployment and that we contribute to the future prosperity of Scotland and individuals in Scotland. That is the reality.
We had a long debate on the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Bill in the past year. The bill was passed and is now law. Regionalisation is in place and is producing colleges of scale. The excellence of what takes place in those colleges is undoubted. That is where our focus should be.
I was glad to see Neil Bibby and Kezia Dugdale at the first birthday party of Edinburgh College last Tuesday. It was an encouraging sign that you were celebrating the success of the college in Edinburgh, which had gone through a difficult process of merger and was succeeding in things. That type of work with the colleges will produce dividends. I endorse your presence there, Mr Bibby—I am glad to have seen you there.
Good morning, cabinet secretary. I want to follow up on Neil Bibby’s point about quality. The colleges have said that, whatever budget they have, they will make it go as far as they can. However, they also made the point that, as well as the constraints on their budgets, additional responsibilities are being placed on them. We have seen in this evidence session, as we saw last year, that the reductions in staffing that Mr Bibby has referred to, alongside rising weighted student unit of measurement targets, are creating pressure and some anxieties about the quality of the provision.
I assume from the Government’s policies until now on primary school education that ratios are seen as directly relevant to the quality of provision. Does that not hold to the same extent in colleges? Are you prepared to accept that expanding those ratios may have a bearing on the quality of what is provided?
That is an interesting point. I have argued that the biggest effect of smaller class sizes lies in primary 1 to 3, so I suppose that the logical extension of my argument is that how much the effect diminishes depends on how much older someone is. In those circumstances, I do not think that ratios have the same effect in colleges.
Mr McArthur, I am not unsympathetic to evidence-led argument on this. If the inspection process of colleges indicates problems there, by all means that should be looked at, but I do not see that evidence. I see evidence of colleges that have gone through a process of change and merger and now deliver higher than ever quality courses to a very focused range of students.
I am always open to discussion on issues that arise. If individual colleges say at any stage that there is a difficulty here, that is something that should be addressed first by college management, within their resources, and then by the funding council. I am by no means unsympathetic to that, but I think that, now that we have gone through the process of merger and change and got the regional colleges to operate and have heard very positive things about that process, we should continue to build and support that.
The SCDI carried out a survey of employers’ skill requirements in summer 2013. The results showed that 59 per cent of employers surveyed found some of their vacancies hard to fill for several reasons, which included the skills of the applicants. What steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that the workforce has the skills needed to meet the current and future labour requirements?
There is a close liaison between employers, employers’ associations, SDS and the Government—Angela Constance in particular—to ensure that that issue is constantly addressed. Colleges have an important role in that too. They are close to the labour market.
One of the ideas of reorganisation to create colleges of scale is that, on a regional level, they can be even closer to the labour market. They have great sensitivity to what takes place. Their doors are open to employers who will come forward and say where there are skill shortages. Some areas are glaringly obvious. When you go to the north-east of Scotland, it is clear that there are areas in engineering and the oil industry where training needs to take place. There is a big focus on that. I was in Banff and Buchan College this summer, when the Cabinet met in Fraserburgh. It is very focused on making sure that the specific needs are met. Other colleges that I have been in recently have the same focus. I would not point to one thing. I would point to the context in which we all work to be sensitive to that. The SCDI plays a role in that, as does Scottish Engineering. Organisations point to where the issues are and where training is needed.
There is a pipeline issue behind it that is even more significant. It is not just a question of specific training for work, it is also a matter of readiness for work and employers talk about that regularly. I addressed the issue in Dumfries last night. The certificate of work readiness that is now available helps to address that. We constantly consider how that works and how it should work.
Some evidence has been given—and I think that Unison was one of the organisations that highlighted the issue—that there is insufficient interaction between the colleges and the smaller employers, who perhaps do not have the same resources to be able to engage with the colleges as the bigger employers do.
I have encouraged colleges regularly to address that issue, and I am sure that they do. A persistent issue is engaging small and medium-sized enterprises in research activity. One of the issues in the horizon 2020 planning has been to ask how we get SMEs into research and development activity. The funding council addresses that through the interface and other programmes.
We need to do that constantly. Some SMEs by definition are not group players. They are not members of organisations, so it is difficult to do. Constant visibility and presence are important for colleges, as are inviting people in and leading by example. If you can get one small employer in a small town to take on board one modern apprentice and that works well, the effect of word of mouth is fantastic. If one MSP organises a jobs fair in a smallish community and gets small and large employers interested in seeing what is there, they can begin to create an atmosphere that says that this is important to us. We had a very successful fair in Dunoon in the summer.
What steps are being taken to help working-age adults—those aged 25 and over—to gain access to reskilling or upskilling, in order to cope with the changing labour market?
Colleges are effective attractors of older students who are often motivated to change. When you visit college courses, you will find quite a number of older students who are retraining in one way or another. Earlier this year at Falkirk, on the test rig—a rig that simulates offshore engineering conditions—I met a very interesting youngish lady. She would be in her late 20s, I would say, and had previously been a travel agent. She had decided that being a travel agent was not particularly fun—sitting behind a desk, talking to people—and that she wanted to retrain as a process engineer. She was out there on the test rig and was planning to go offshore.
People get motivated and they need to have access to colleges. Colleges of scale can provide that and are providing that—so is SDS.
The European and External Relations Committee took evidence from the Latvian ambassador. Latvia has just taken over the presidency of the European Union for the next six months.
Lithuania.
Sorry—I beg your pardon. When we asked the Lithuanian ambassador about the priorities for the next six months, youth employability and job creation were key, given the problems across Europe. You have explained the use of one-off funding for tackling youth employability, but can you give us an indication of what progress has been made on accessing structural funds in the coming year?
The progress of the availability of the new structural funds grinds on—I think that that is a good word to use—but Angela Constance is very active in the European sphere, both in Brussels and more widely, with other ministers who have an engagement in this issue and with other ministers in these islands. She continues to take that forward. We anticipate that resource will be made available and, when it is, we will apply it in the best way possible.
You opened the session today with a wide sweep over all the areas that fall under your purview in the context of the budget. In that spirit, I will ask you about higher education funding, particularly the grants that are available. Will you write to the committee with an estimate of how much will be spent on non-repayable student support in each year from 2012-13 onwards, as far as figures currently exist?
I am happy to do so.
Good. I ask that to some extent on the back of an article published at the end of last week, in which a former official of your department, Lucy Hunter, stated that, on the basis of the figures that are available at the moment,
“by 2015-16, students from lower-income backgrounds will need to borrow well over £20m more every year, because the Scottish Government has replaced this lost grant with student loan. This additional borrowing will confer no extra spending power and is additional to the extra loan being used to achieve a ‘minimum income’ for students ... it is safe to say that these spending plans must be underpinned by a significant raid on the future earnings of students from low-income homes – pretty much the same group who elsewhere are the target of widening access policies.”
Even at this stage, are you able to say what the pattern of spend is from 2012-13 onwards?
When a commentator uses the phrase
“it is safe to say”,
I always wonder where they might be coming from. It is not safe to say that. I found the article very curious, and I will tell you why. I am happy to provide figures.
First, we are looking at the continuous improvement of student support packages. We will do that and we will talk about that. The options that Lucy Hunter gave for dealing with what she called a
“continued squeeze on student funding in higher education”—
which actually does not exist—were an end to the practice of increasing grants by at least the rate of inflation, reducing other grants, such as disabled students allowance, or a planned reduction in student numbers. If you forgive me, convener, I want to address all of those, because her position on all of them was plain wrong, unfortunately.
The cost of disabled students allowance represents less than 1 per cent of the universities budget. Any suggestion that the answer to supposed funding pressures would be to squeeze that would be nonsensical, because it would not make any difference at all.
There is no planned reduction in student numbers. Our policy position on that has been absolutely clear. We offer free tuition precisely because we recognise the importance of putting as many of our young people through the university system as we possibly can, so there is no planned reduction. Far from a planned reduction—which I think is her phrase in the article—we actually have a record number of full-time students at universities in Scotland. The number of Scots accepted into Scottish universities has risen to a record number this year. That was published. I am surprised that Lucy Hunter was unable to access published information.
Moreover, in order to meet our commitment to widen access, we are planning to fund even more places. To use the phrase a planned reduction is utterly wrong. To base an entire article on that is simply not on. It has clearly misled some people, and Lucy Hunter should probably apologise to those people whom she has misled. That is not happening. Therefore, the thesis is wrong. I am happy to provide the information, but Lucy Hunter’s article is based on an entirely false premise, and that needs to be said.
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I am grateful for that commitment regarding the additional funding.
The one other issue that I wanted to raise with you is one of your favoured straplines in relation to HE: a funding package for students that is the best anywhere in these isles or in the UK—the terms seem to be interchangeable. Is that still your belief? Would you be willing to provide the comparative analysis that underpins that?
Yes, it is my belief. Overall, that is the case. It remains the best package. There have been attempts to salami-slice it and to indicate bits here or there that might not be as good as bits elsewhere. Overall, however, it is the best funding package in these islands, and it has been warmly welcomed as such by the former National Union of Students Scotland president Robin Parker, whose quote I just happen to have with me. He said, in August 2012:
“From next year, Scotland will have the best support package in the whole of the UK available to college and university students studying at higher education level.”
Those are not my words.
I am surprised that you have not got that tattooed, and that you only carry that around on a piece of paper. Whoever’s phrase it was—I think that it originally emanated from the Scottish Government—will you be prepared to share the comparative analysis?
I am quite prepared to demonstrate to you why, overall, this is the best package. There have been attempts to decry it for a variety of reasons, but we should be very pleased that what we have tried to do in Scotland we will continue to do, and it seems to me that the sensible position is to support that rather than to talk it down.
It was very fortunate that you happened to have that quote on your person, cabinet secretary.
My final question is a request for an update on the position in relation to the ONS’s reclassification of the status of incorporated colleges. A change is happening throughout the UK that has implications for colleges and the Government here in Scotland. Could you set out what is happening, what discussions are going on and what the next steps are?
You have seen the presentation figures today. Those are done in a different way, because of the ONS reclassification. The regional leads have a practice of operating through a lead person, so that one of the regional leads takes prominence in this matter. That is Michael Yuille, who chairs West College Scotland.
A considerable amount of work has been done involving the Scottish funding council and the Government, and we are in the very final stages of that. I am confident that we have a set of arrangements that will work for the colleges, and I think that the colleges are confident about it, too. The best thing that I could do, given that the arrangements are still being finalised, is to undertake to write to the committee as soon as we have them in place. I am happy either to come back to the committee and discuss the matter, if it is sufficiently important to you, or to provide other information. We have progressed very significantly, thanks to the work of the colleges, the SFC and Scottish Government officials.
I would be very grateful if you could write to the committee with the detail of that.
Absolutely.
It is an issue that has concerned committee members.
It will be a few weeks.
As soon as it becomes available—that would be greatly appreciated.
I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for attending this morning. That concludes our evidence taking on the draft budget. I thank all those who have contributed both oral and written evidence to the committee. We will take all of it into account as we consider our draft report.
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Meeting suspended.
12:04
On resuming—