“Scotland’s colleges 2015”
Agenda item 4 is a section 23 report entitled “Scotland’s colleges 2015”. As well as the formal responses that we have received from the Scottish Government, the Scottish funding council and Audit Scotland, we have received correspondence from the University of the Highlands and Islands and Glasgow Kelvin College. That correspondence has been circulated to members and has been published on our website. I invite comments from colleagues.
Dr Foxley is a bit of a constant critic of this committee, including when we were looking at NHS Highland. I think that he has read something that I did say: I reflected accurately the figure from the Audit Scotland report that 4 per cent of students in the Highlands and Islands come from deprived areas. Unfortunately, Dr Foxley tends to read only that as the justification for his comments in his letter. I think that even Colin Beattie, a colleague who sits on the Education and Culture Committee with me, will agree that I constantly raise the fact that the Scottish index of multiple deprivation might work very efficiently in urban areas, where there are areas of deprivation. In the Highlands and Islands, however, the poorest child in the village can be sitting alongside children of millionaires—that is the way of life in the Highlands and Islands.
I was pointing out that, for people attending further education in the Highlands and Islands, the figure is much greater than 4 per cent, but there is no designated area of deprivation because of the sparsity of population. I have never missed an opportunity to say that the Scottish index of multiple deprivation might accurately reflect urban areas but does not accurately reflect the poverty and deprivation in very remote communities.
I do not think that Dr Foxley’s letter is worthy of a reply. It is unfortunate that he has not looked at the further work that I have been doing on the issue concerned, which includes raising it at stage 2 of the Education (Scotland) Bill yesterday when we were looking at the issue of attainment. That is all that I have to say.
Any further comments?
We are probably at the point at which we should just note the responses that we have received as we have a limited ability to take them much further at this time. I think that the committee probably has to come back to the overall question of the colleges, but perhaps that is something for our legacy document—I do not know.
I want to be clear whether we are dealing with the correspondence from Paul Johnston.
We can deal with any of the items.
I am interested in the—
Sorry, but I will just clarify this for the record. We have received responses to our report, so we can consider any feedback in that correspondence.
Thank you for clarifying that, convener. As a recent member of the committee, I just want to make sure that I am on the right spot.
I am interested in the student support budget, which Paul Johnston’s letter states is at “a record high” of £105 million
“in bursaries, childcare and discretionary funds”.
Has the committee received a breakdown as to which is actual maintenance payments and which is loans? Do we know that? I would be really interested to know.
We had that information previously.
I do not think that we have that information. However, if the committee requests it, I am sure that we can get it.
That would be good.
On another point, I find the letter from the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council very confusing. First, with regard to the merger savings, I really am no clearer than I was. I have no idea what those are and what they are intended to be. Again, I might have missed something because I was not on the committee when the process started, but £50 million of annual savings are supposed to come in from 2015-16, if am reading the SFC’s letter correctly. I might not be, as I find it a very extraordinary letter—it seems to confuse efficiency savings, which is something that every public institution has to undertake, with the merger savings, which are different.
I am also very unclear as to what regional costs are involved. The Motherwell, Cumbernauld and Coatbridge colleges merged into New College Lanarkshire—we have been looking at that in detail—but South Lanarkshire College stayed out of that, so there is still a regional structure above it. With regard to the £50 million savings, what are the additional costs of the regional structure? I am unclear about that because I cannot see anything about it in the letter.
In that respect, I think that we need to do a little bit more than note the response. I recommend that we say that the committee is not yet satisfied that it has seen precisely what is happening.
The recent Educational Institute for Scotland report, which reviewed staff expectations with regard to the mergers and the positive things that might come out of them, seems to have negated all of this. I am really pretty unhappy about the process. I know that we all agreed it and felt it necessary to have improved efficiency, less overlap and so on, but I am really unhappy about the information that the Public Audit Committee is being provided with.
Being realistic, I wonder whether we will be able to pursue very much in the remaining time that we have, but I note the Auditor General’s comment that her annual report on Scotland’s colleges will be provided next year. It might well be that the best practical thing to do is to leave our successor committee to look at the next phase, when the same issues will undoubtedly will be returned to.
I want to make a couple of points before we conclude and decide how to take this forward.
I think it perfectly reasonable for the committee to seek further information from the Government on the recognised decision that was made on college mergers and the savings that were to be made. I do not think that the mergers would have been pursued had the proposed saving not been £50 million; that was the amount that was highlighted and, as I recall, that was the basis on which there was significant cross-party agreement for proceeding.
However, I hope that, when all the necessary information was provided to the Government for that informed decision to be taken, the £50 million figure was a pretty robust one. The question that we are asking—and which we are quite right to ask—is whether the figures in question are as robust as they should be at this stage. It would therefore be helpful to seek information from the Government and, indeed, whatever agencies can provide it so that we can be clear about how robust the figures are. I must admit that, after reading the SFC’s response, I am no more convinced than I was when Tavish Scott raised the matter with the funding council in our evidence taking. It will not be unhelpful to seek whatever information the Government or the SFC has at its disposal; indeed, I would be astonished if they were pursuing this without being aware of more significant information and detail than we have been provided with.
I also draw members’ attention to the correspondence from Alan Sherry, the principal of Glasgow Kelvin College, in respect of the compulsory redundancies that have been made at the college. It is important that we recognise Alan Sherry’s concern about the accuracy of the term “compulsory redundancies” in this respect and his feeling that it was not an accurate reference in our report. However, having reflected on the matter, I am content that the wording of the report is correct. Redundancies did take place at the college, although I point out the footnote in the report that sets out the background and makes it clear that the compulsory redundancies were carried out by a private contractor responsible for the catering contract. It needs to be recognised that, as I understand it, those employees had been transferred under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 as part of the previous contract for Stow College. I am therefore satisfied that there have been compulsory redundancies.
I also note that in an exchange with a number of members around the table the education secretary Angela Constance confirmed that she, too, opposed the compulsory redundancies that had been proposed at the college and asked for the Government’s policy to be implemented, although she recognised that it was not within the Government’s gift for that happen and that it was up to the college to take those decisions. I am satisfied that we reflected the situation accurately in our report, but I understand that the college has its own opinion on the matter and that it is quite entitled to that. We will note that and ensure that Alan Sherry’s response is provided on the public record.
Can we proceed on this, colleagues? Is there any more feedback?
I have no problem with asking for more information but, like Nigel Don, I am conscious of the time that we have left to look at it. I also note that the SFC letter says that there will be
“a post-merger evaluation for each individual merger”
in autumn 2016; it actually says that the evaluations are scheduled to take place up to July 2016, which means that we will get the hard figures in the autumn. That is when we will see what has been achieved, no matter what anyone is saying at the moment.
I have two points to make. I do not think that that should stop us asking about the £50 million annual savings that were promised because that was why we all supported the decision and voted for it.
However, there is a second issue that I think we should keep on the agenda. We were not just promised £50 million savings every year; we were promised that the quality of education and training would be enhanced. I know that we are the audit committee but we should not lose sight of that because that was another reason why we thought that it was a good idea—the larger colleges would have greater expertise, economies of scale, and be more specialised. We expected—and, I believe, were promised—an enhanced quality of education and training.
I am just a substitute member of the committee, so I pop in and out, but I have looked at the legacy paper for the audit committee. Having read the letter and looked at the table of colleges, mergers and pay-outs, my concerns lie with the SFC. I do not know whether you can ask questions in regard to that as a follow-up rather than closing the matter but, as an audit committee, I think that perhaps you should be looking at the SFC in the next round.
Okay, colleagues. We have the option to note the report—I am not getting the feeling that the majority of the committee wants to do that. The other option is to write to the Government to ask for further information. A recurring theme in the committee’s evidence sessions has been the lack of clarity around the £50 million figure. We all want to achieve that saving but we want to see how it is going to be achieved.
We have to make it clear to the SFC that we want to see clearer and more concise information on that figure so that we can be satisfied that the direction of travel is one that will achieve those savings.
It would be a poor reflection on the committee if we arrived back in the autumn and the figure had not been reached and we had not in some way highlighted that it was an issue. Do members think that we should write to the Government on that basis?
Convener, I think that you have it absolutely right. It is about the direction of travel. I think that the SFC letter says that we will not know that we have got to the station until we have this year’s accounts to add up but it is about the direction of travel and the SFC must have some work in progress on the numbers. It would be good to see what the SFC can provide us with.
We have seen from the evidence that we have taken from some of the other colleges, including Coatbridge College, that sometimes the accounts are not coming forward as quickly as they should be and some information has perhaps not been as robust as it should be. We have to be clear that even an interim position on the numbers would be useful. I would be surprised if the SFC was not at least carrying out some kind of assessment of the current position in respect to the savings and I would be surprised if the Government was not putting pressure on the SFC to advise it on that.
The Government will want to ensure that the £50 million that is saved is redistributed and is used for the benefit of students, as Mary Scanlon said, because the whole idea was that we were making the savings so that we could then reinvest in the college estate and the other aspects of the student experience. It would be reasonable for the Government to have at least the same appetite as we do to be able to clarify exactly where we are with this.
They merged in 2013; we are just about to go into 2016. We should have annual accounts; it should not be that difficult to look at what savings have been realised.
Okay, is that helpful? Do colleagues think that we should move forward on the basis of seeking further written information?
Members indicated agreement.
I thank colleagues for that. We move to agenda item 5, which we have agreed to discuss in private.
10:59 Meeting continued in private until 12:49.Previous
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