Education and Culture Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Official Report 651KB pdf

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Post-16 Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Under our third agenda item this morning, we will take formal evidence on the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Bill. We will hear evidence from two panels. The first panel is made up of Professor Gerry McCormac, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Stirling; Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal of the University of Strathclyde; Sir Timothy O’Shea, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh; and Professor Seona Reid, director of the Glasgow School of Art.

I apologise for the slight delay in starting this session. Liz Smith wants to raise a particular point.

Thank you, convener. As you know, I wrote to you yesterday about two concerns that I have about the scrutiny procedure for the bill. The first of those is about the availability of the written evidence that we have received. I understand that 75 to 80 submissions have been made to the committee. However, only some of those are available to us and a substantial number—about 50—came to us only at lunch time yesterday. That makes our job rather difficult, because it has been hard for us to ascertain the overall views of both sectors. This morning, we are taking evidence from people in the higher education sector, but it has been difficult for us to discern the different views in that sector in the information that we have.

My second concern is on what I believe is an important aspect of the bill. The committee will have to make a judgment on whether to enshrine governance in the bill. As I understand it, we will have to make a value judgment on the forthcoming code of governance, which the chairs will prepare, but it will not be available to us for two months. It will be difficult for us to make a judgment—in fact, I do not think that we can do it without the code being available to us.

I strongly agree with Liz Smith. We raised the issue at last week’s meeting, and the situation remains the same. Without the document, we will have great difficulty in scrutinising what is proposed.

I thank members for raising the issue. Clearly, we raised it last week, and I thank Liz Smith for raising it directly with me yesterday.

On the first concern, the written evidence that has been submitted so far was supplied to members yesterday lunch time, as Liz Smith said. That was not enough time for us to go through it properly for this morning’s meeting. I accept that the timetable is tight, but I hope that members will understand that the information and evidence were given to them as quickly as possible.

Liz Smith is quite right: some submissions are not yet with us and the individuals have asked for an extension. Given that we require the information in order to carry out our job, we have agreed to an extension, but we want the information to come to us as quickly as possible so that we can carry out our work.

As Liz Smith will be aware, I also said in my reply yesterday that we will leave the door open to call further witnesses as we go through so that, if it is necessary, we can either call witnesses back or call new witnesses, as appropriate, later in the stage 1 process. That will be difficult for us, but I am sure that, if we wish to do it, we can manage it.

On the code, the bill team said at last week’s meeting that the intention is to make a draft available by stage 2. My only comment is that it is not unusual for codes, guidance and so on not to be available during the passage of a bill. This is not the first time by any means. I am sure that members who have been here for a few years have witnessed that. However, if the committee deems it necessary to call witnesses later in the process on that basis, we will leave the door open to that. It is unusual, but it can be done. We could call witnesses at stage 2, to take oral evidence on the code once it is published, but it would be better to take a decision on that nearer the time, once we see the information.

I thank members for raising those concerns with me, and I thank the panel for their indulgence.

Before we begin, I remind the panel that not everybody has to answer every question. If you do not need to answer, please feel free to remain silent on any point that you wish. We seek as much information as possible, but there is no point in going over the same ground if it is not necessary to do so. We will try to keep our questions to particular sections of the bill, as we go through it.

We will start with university governance, and Liz Smith will begin.

Thank you, convener. When Professor von Prondzynski’s review was published, the recommendation was that a code of governance be set up, and the indications are that the universities are happy with the suggestion of a Scottish code. However, the bill proposes to extend ministers’ powers considerably further than the von Prondzynski review recommended. Will panel members give us their reflections on that?

I will answer first and then I will see whether any of my colleagues wants to pitch in.

In the universities, we regard engagement between the chairs of our governing bodies—to whom we are responsible as principals—and the Scottish Government on a code as a productive activity.

This is a good hook for me to express our principal anxiety about the bill. We support the bill’s intentions with regard to widening participation and having greater efficiency in the sector and greater accountability, which all make very good sense to us. At the same time, we are well aware that Scottish universities are seen as particularly successful in world terms and that outside commentators relate that success directly to the responsible autonomy that we discharge.

In recent years, I served for four years on the strategy committee of the excellence initiative that is designed to improve the German universities; and recently I had the honour of being the deputy president of the French investissement dans l’avenir endeavour, which is about improving the quality of the French universities. It is made explicit in France and Germany—it is also clear in the Republic of Ireland—that people find the way in which our universities discharge their responsible autonomy to be one of the key reasons why Scotland’s university system is so disproportionately successful. Our ability to create subsidiary companies, for example, and to engage with each other in pooling partnerships, without recourse to ministerial control, is seen as a key success factor.

As I said, we support the bill’s overall intention, but we are anxious that there might be, inadvertently, a reduction in responsible autonomy and that a future Administration could intervene in a way that would be unhelpful to the success of the universities in meeting their targets for widening participation and research.

As this is a fundamental point, I wonder whether Sir Jim McDonald would like to comment on it as well.

I will do so if I may, convener, unless there is going to be a supplementary question.

I was just going to ask you about something in your written evidence.

I absolutely agree that the strong governance and transparency with which we discharge our responsibilities are fundamental. It is certainly the intention of the review of governance to ensure those.

I echo Tim O’Shea’s concerns about ensuring that there is a balance between our responsible autonomy, which we will no doubt speak about over the next half hour or so, and the scrutiny to which we correctly present ourselves and which holds us to account. However, in all of this, I am sure that there are other matters on which I should present myself to Liz Smith.

On that point, Professor McDonald, you said clearly in your written submission that you felt that autonomy was crucial for innovation and you gave some examples of how you felt innovation had worked as a result of that. To take up Sir Tim O’Shea’s point, the overall scenario is that the world HE sectors that are doing particularly well are those with enhanced autonomy that is fairly free of the state. That is shown by figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Bank, and by other statistics. Is it inappropriate for the Scottish Government to consider moving in the other direction, so that there will be enhanced powers for ministers in relation to HE?

I welcome your recognition of the issue. The Shanghai tables of universities that perform best on the international stage show that those with greater autonomy perform better. The World Bank has also presented statistics on that, which the committee may be aware of. I reiterate that there is no separation between strong governance, absolute autonomy as we pursue our strategies and the transparency with which we must present ourselves and success. We must keep that balance in mind.

Tim O’Shea gave you an example from Edinburgh. In my own case, having the autonomy as an institution four years ago allowed the University of Strathclyde to recast its mission as an international technological university. In so doing, our court held us to account and put us through the mill on having an evidence-based strategy, as did our students and our union colleagues. On that journey of resetting our strategic intention, we were scrutinised by all the key stakeholders, including our Government partners. I stress the word “partners”, because I value the partnership with Government and Government agencies, which is part of our story in Scotland. It is not something that I would want to see disturbed, because it is excellent. For example, we work with the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. The context in which Scottish higher education is evolving provides a supportive platform.

On Liz Smith’s earlier point, the governance review is right and proper. It is correct that we are held accountable for the proper execution of our roles and responsibilities and the expenditure that we make. In all of that, though, there is evidence for autonomy in Scotland in determining a future that serves a Government strategic and policy-led purpose. The world-class institutions that we have in Scotland, including in Edinburgh, are testimony to the value that we are already playing back into the system.

11:00

That has come through in virtually all the submissions that we have to hand from student associations, staff, principals and chairs. Obviously, the overall objective is to maintain that excellence within Scottish universities. The issue of autonomy—or responsible autonomy, to use your phrase—is appropriate.

Drilling down a little bit further, last week we had the bill team here. In the submissions that we have to hand there has been a lot of concern about the distinction between the definition of “governance” and of “management”. In most of the submissions, there seems to be considerable reluctance to having “management” written into the bill. Why is that inappropriate?

It is not just the rhetoric in defining the difference between strategic leadership and management; it is that management is about delivery of a pre-approved strategy, and I would like universities to be tested on their strategy and their contribution to an aligned opportunity in Scotland. Management is really inside the machinery of the institution.

The policy intentions of the bill are clear and we support the principles. In drafting it, we must ensure that there is clarity on the purpose—what we are trying to achieve. The distinction between responsible autonomy and management of the institutions is important. If we have the trust and confidence that should be required of and in the sector, there is a chance to ensure that this is not just about running the organisations but about properly recognising the strategic alignment and opportunities for Scotland.

Have you asked for the removal of the term “management” because you fear that taking that too far would impinge on strategic governance and perhaps on the academic work of your institution? Is that the main reason why you have asked for the word to be removed?

Yes.

That is exactly right.

I want to pick up on Jim McDonald’s point about the importance of responsible autonomy enabling a diversity of sector that we do not necessarily see elsewhere. In a small institution, the nature of the governance and management will be different from that in a large institution, but it will espouse, comply with, support and endorse the same principles of governance.

All universities, whatever their size and nature, support the code of governance whole-heartedly. However, enshrining it in legislation risks it being misused by future Administrations to apply a uniform governance model that would be inappropriate in a diverse sector.

I will finish with a question on diversity. What would you like to see within the code of governance that is being developed that is not within the current UK code but that you do not want to be enshrined in legislation? What is the advantage of having a new Scottish code of governance?

I think that it can speak to the other forms of accountability that exist within Scotland—it can be specific about the context. It is difficult to see where the principles would differ from the code in the UK.

I am having difficulty picking up why it might only be future Administrations that might misuse the powers that are given to them.

I think that that is quite clear. [Laughter.]

I am confused by that.

The evidence from Universities Scotland, which we received only very late yesterday, says:

“We do not see a need for the higher education provisions in the Bill, which create new and in some cases quite extensive and unspecific powers over higher education institutions.”

Really it is saying that there is no need for the bill. Is there a need for the bill?

As my colleagues have commented, the policy objectives of the bill are laudable, but we do not feel that legislation is necessarily required to give effect to those objectives. The sector has been particularly successful in a range of areas, including widening participation and some of the other issues that are addressed in the bill, without the need for specific legislation.

Perhaps the other witnesses could just nod if they agree with that, because that will save some time.

Professor McDonald, Sir Timothy O’Shea and Professor Reid indicated agreement.

That is fine. We have clarified that the panel agree.

That makes it slightly tough for the staff producing the Official Report, though.

It can state, “They all nodded.”

Therefore, how can we ensure that the aims are achieved without legislation? People have spoken about the grant letter and that kind of stuff. Finding out how you see the aims being achieved without legislation is key to our deciding whether we need the bill.

You have clearly picked up on the point that existing measures and mechanisms allow the universities to be properly overseen and held to account. You know about the letter of grant and the financial memorandum. More recently, outcome agreements have been introduced by the Scottish funding council, led by the Scottish Government. Some of those agreements are very detailed and they will evolve, as they have been in place for only a year. That has been a learning process for the funding council and the sector, so we will evolve and refine the way in which the outcome agreements sit alongside the institutions’ autonomous missions. I remind the committee of the context in which the agreements have developed. Individual institutions have made commitments on widening access, knowledge exchange and patterns of provision.

Through the conditions of grant and the memorandum that sits alongside that, and through the outcome agreements, we believe that the mechanisms exist to allow us to be held to account and to deliver on and add value to the public expenditure on universities.

Some institutions have failed miserably to extend or open up access. Will the process that you have set out force them to change?

I do not accept the premise of that. Every university that I am aware of works hard to ensure diversity in its population of students. We have seen a great deal of innovation over the past few years, and not just through the outcome agreements, although they have certainly focused attention. There has been plenty of innovation and engagement with society and broader socioeconomic communities over the past few years. I do not recognise that there has been failure. In fact, it is quite the opposite—I would say that there is a great deal to commend the sector at large, in different ways. As Seona Reid mentioned, there has been no single approach to widening participation. Some of the value has been in the great deal of innovation from different universities, which has informed the sector more broadly.

I might be missing something, but 2.2 per cent of University of Aberdeen students are from the most deprived areas and the figure for the University of St Andrews is 2.6 per cent. I do not know what measure of success that could be allied to.

The universities would not accept your notion that we have failed miserably. The 20 per cent most deprived areas in the Scottish index of multiple deprivation is one available measure, but a variety of measures exist that must be taken into account. The SIMD 20 is an imperfect measure because it is a postcode measure. Another measure, which we use strongly at the University of Edinburgh, is whether residual family income is low. Other measures include whether the family has ever had anybody at university and whether the student is at a low-achieving—in terms of university success—school. There is also the overall family context and whether, for example, the potential student has serious caring responsibilities.

The University of Edinburgh is the key leader in the Lothians equal access programme for schools. Last year, it had 1,200 participants who were not expected to go to university but who went on to university-level study at various universities in Lothian. Of them, nearly a third—371—went to the University of Edinburgh. The university also took in 130 students through the Scottish higher education partnership. Sixty-two students entered last year through our innovative pathways to the professions scheme, whereby students in medicine, law or architecture partner with students who are not expected to go to university, and 93 adult returners successfully entered. The University of Edinburgh gave out more than 1,000 substantial bursaries and scholarships for new entrants last year.

That success and that commitment are demonstrated across the sector, so we do not accept your characterisation, which is based on a single measure, which does not capture access needs. If we used the measure that the deputy convener suggested, it would tell us that there are no access students at all in Shetland, because there are no SIMD 20 postcodes there.

The debate must be conducted in a proper way and the whole range of measures must be considered. The commitment of the Scottish universities to widening participation is total, and we have had demonstrable success over the past 10 years.

I used the figures that have been presented to us; I am sure that the other criteria that you suggested are relevant. However, I suggest, with respect, that the Government is seeking to legislate partly because of the approach that you are presenting. The Government thinks that things have not gone far enough so it must legislate. That is the reality.

I am sorry, deputy convener, but we have all voluntarily engaged in outcome agreements that have explicit targets on widening participation.

I will give figures from the sector. Over the past six years, there has been a 16.9 per cent increase in SIMD 20 university students. There are 3,053 more students from those postcodes than were at university six years ago. The figures are misleading in the terms in which they are being presented.

There has also been an increase in state-school participation and in the number of full-time undergraduate degree entrants with socioeconomic classifications of 4 to 7. If we use SIMD 20 and other indices, we see that the number of students who are coming from the most deprived backgrounds is increasing. That is happening in response to the programmes that every university is undertaking.

Those are not easy wins. We need to recognise that, particularly in Glasgow, we are talking about schools in which 4 per cent of leavers enter higher education—that is a very low rate. All our work is about trying to work with partners in education and further education to increase the figure by increasing aspirations and the bridging activities that allow us to get people with higher aspirations into higher education, whatever that higher education might be.

On the evidence base, some of which the committee will have and some of which it will not have, I reiterate Seona Reid’s point. Many initiatives predate outcome agreements, which shows that, on the basis of responsible autonomy, institutions in the sector have been working together as well as individually. In my institution, the University of Strathclyde, we grew our MD 40 entry to first year from 687 to 736 people between 2010-11 and 2011-12 and we seek to grow the number further. Among the research intensives, we have the highest number of MD 20 entrants into university.

I am proud of that. Such work is part of our social mission and I am sure that other universities recognise their role in supporting gifted young people, regardless of their socioeconomic background, to achieve their potential at university.

Of course the sector wants to do more. You will have seen from the universal sign-up of principals to the principle of widening access that institutions are keen to push on with that strategic objective, for ourselves and to help to meet the Government’s objectives and ensure that we produce more school leavers who are ready for university and for the workforce as we build a knowledge-based economy.

I am aware of Strathclyde’s long-standing commitment to widening access—you even let me in. [Laughter.]

11:15

In 2006-07, the University of Stirling admitted 538 students from SIMD 40; in 2010-11, it admitted 710. Through the recent outcome agreement with the Scottish funding council, we have again agreed to increase by 135 the number of students from those categories during the year and to put on special courses during the summer to ensure not only that they enter university but that they actually succeed, are retained in the sector and go on to complete their studies. That is crucial, and all my colleagues in all of Scotland’s universities are making enormous efforts to ensure not only that we admit students but that they have a successful experience and exit university with a qualification.

We have strayed into the issue of widening access. We will come on to that but, for the moment, I want to bring the questioning back to the issue of governance.

In his opening remarks, Timothy O’Shea cited pooling and subsidiary companies as a couple of examples of what autonomy allows you to achieve. In what way would a Scottish code of good governance interfere with that activity?

It might not, but it seems to us that the current negotiations between the chairs—as principals, we are, of course, accountable to the chairs—and the Scottish Government on a voluntary code are the appropriate way forward.

So you have no evidence that a code of good governance would impact on your organisations’ ability to continue to carry out that work.

It all depends on its shape. As I have indicated, I spend some of my time giving advice to other higher education systems, particularly those in Germany and France. If you were to task me with writing a governance code that reduced autonomy, I could do that for you—after all, many German universities cannot set up subsidiaries—and if you were to task me with writing a governance code that increased autonomy, I could do that, too.

But do you expect any code of governance that might be produced to reduce your ability to do any of those things?

It has to be an anxiety, particularly if the legislation is underspecified. I heard the deputy convener make a wee joke about the current Government, but the universities have had a very constructive engagement with the four Governments since devolution and have flourished in comparison with other European and indeed the English higher education systems. However, the anxiety is that if a future Government were given the apparatus to intervene in our management or governance structures it might choose to do so. If you look around Europe, you can find examples of countries where the Government or, indeed, regional Governments have intervened in universities’ governance and it has usually been unhelpful.

We currently adhere to a code of good governance and utilise it fully in our organisations. Seona Reid was right to point out that a Scottish code of governance would contextualise that and ensure that the different circumstance in Scotland was respected. It is worth examining that matter.

Beyond that, however, the passing of legislative powers restricting our capacity as organisations to reflect the diversity of mission that is of huge benefit to Scotland and the Scottish economy poses a real risk to the sector. As has been said, other countries look to emulate our autonomy, because they recognise the success of the higher education system in the UK and US. As Sir Tim O’Shea has said, Germany, France and others are trying to give their universities more autonomy to make them as successful as we are and we would see it as a retrograde step to pass legislation that might reduce the university sector’s autonomy.

I am glad that you mentioned the current code, which I am sure that you all abide by, because I am struggling to understand why there should be such an issue about a new code.

As the debate that took place among committee members before we started to take evidence bears witness to, the code is not in the bill but is separate from it. It is referred to in the bill, but the detail of the code will not be included in primary legislation. What is the source of your anxiety? What is your main problem with the new code?

Under the bill, ministers would have control over whether the unspecified code was utilised and might put in place some other code. That is where our anxiety lies. We are not anxious about looking at, reflecting on and reviewing what we do, because that is a constant process. We do not know what the new Scottish code of governance might look like. We are open and receptive to seeing what it says. Our concern is about legislation that would pass to ministers the power to control that.

What opportunity have higher education institutions had to input to the development of the new code?

I think that all HEIs have been visited or are in the process of being visited by the consultants who have been appointed by the chairs in Scotland. I think that student bodies and a wide range of other stakeholders are engaged in that process. The consultants have not yet visited the University of Stirling; I think that we are due for a visit in the next few weeks.

So everyone has been visited and asked for their opinion of and input into the new code.

They will have been by the end of the process.

Before the code is published. Okay.

I have a final question on governance. Is there a difference between your level of anxiety about the term “governance” and your level of anxiety about the term “management” as they are expressed in the bill?

Governance is about setting the policy and strategy in the way that Sir Jim McDonald articulated eloquently. An anecdote that is told is that the boat is steered through governance and rowed by management. That is very much the case. Management is about the operation and optimisation of the strategic plans. Governance and management are very different things. It would not be in the interests of the institution to have interference with the management.

Last week, a member of the bill team—Tracey Slaven—said in evidence to the committee:

“The phraseology in the bill refers to governance and management. Discussion with the sector has indicated that the focus on strategic management may have some unintended consequences and that that has gone slightly wider than we anticipated. We are therefore happy to talk with the sector about the detail of that as we get to stage 2.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 15 January 2013; c 1746.]

From that, it sounds as if the Government is reconsidering the position. Is that your understanding?

Yes. I met Tracey Slaven yesterday and that was my exact understanding.

That is helpful.

It is very helpful.

It is helpful.

Do members have any more questions on governance before we move on?

Some of the submissions, particularly the one from Universities Scotland, refer to concern about ministers having more power in other areas. Will you explain some of your concerns about such centralisation?

I will make an opening comment on that, and then my colleagues might want to respond.

Scotland’s higher education system is very particular. Unlike the system in England, we do not allow institutions that do not award the PhD degree to have the title of university. The Open University in Scotland is an important part of the offering in Scotland, and we have two highly successful art schools. We also have the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is particular to and highly appropriate for the north-west of Scotland, and for which there is no obvious model in any other part of the country.

We are anxious about that diversity. There are tremendous differences in scale—for example, the University of Edinburgh is about five times the size of the average British university, but some of the other Scottish universities are just a proportion of that size. That diverse system is working well, so we would be anxious that an attempt to systematise might inadvertently be unhelpful, for example to the art schools with their particular missions, to UHI or to the big universities such as Strathclyde, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I want to return to the question of concerns about governance. I do not want to be too historical, but the western tradition of establishing institutions that are autonomous and free from the fear of input or direct steerage from Government, the media or other special interest groups is a fundamental principle that is at the heart of what universities should be about, not only in Scotland but internationally.

On governance and scrutiny in particular, we recognise that the committee is well informed. However, I just want to remind us that as well as having independent lay members of the university court, we have the senate, which is the supreme group that looks at academic autonomy. Over the years, the universities, including my own, will go through scrutiny from the Scottish funding council, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education Scotland, independent accountants, the university court audit committee, bodies regulating the professions—be that in humanities, science, engineering or business—and independent external advisers.

Through all that, the universities sector is perhaps one of the most scrutinised sectors in society. We must continue to be scrutinised and to be accountable, but I want to ensure that we understand that as well as the correct governance review that we are going through, the platform for scrutiny, testing, challenge and accountability is well built and is there for historical reasons. However, for the universities, independence of thought and the ability to challenge Government, society and thinking are fundamental and precious, so we must protect them.

Thank you. I want to move on to widening access, an issue that we have already strayed into. George Adam will start the questions.

Thank you, convener, and good morning, gentlemen. I will ask a question that is similar to one that I asked the bill team at last week’s meeting. Widening access is about retention, as well as access. After the students’ initial challenge of getting into institutions, the challenge for the institutions is to retain them. I would like to hear how you deal with that.

As has been said, various universities are good at getting students from a variety of backgrounds. For example, in my constituency in Paisley, the University of the West of Scotland is particularly good at that. If we are giving extra funding to ensure that we get more people involved in higher education, why do we not put all the money into an institution such as the UWS and just say, “You’re good at this—you continue”? Why are we almost rewarding the failure to an extent of some of—not all—the ancient universities, whose record on widening access is not that great?

Convener, may I make a point about that?

Yes, briefly.

My understanding is that there is no provision in the bill for extra funding for widening access. That point might be helpful for the discussion.

I do not think that the notion of rewarding failure makes particularly good sense in this context. In the recent bidding for access, we have mechanisms that the Scottish funding council introduces, at the behest of the Scottish Government, which provide extra resource for the successful recruitment and retention of widening-participation students. Therefore, there is no sense in which anybody is being rewarded for success, but there are funding mechanisms—it is appropriate that they exist—that take into account the fact that the widening-participation students will on average require more money. They will require more resource prior to coming to university and more resource when they are at university to ensure that they are successful; that is entirely appropriate. I do not think that there is any way in which someone could suggest that the current funding mechanisms for widening access are rewarding failure.

11:30

We have a set of arrangements that have been voluntarily agreed by the universities with regard to the extra resource necessary to improve our position on widening participation. After all, there are three phases—recruitment, preparation for study and extra support during study—all of which require resources. In that regard, the Scottish funding council’s current mechanisms are appropriate and I think that the universities are successfully using them to improve the position on access.

We should approach the issue of widening participation on the principle that all students, whatever their background, should have the same choices as all other students. If we are challenged in that area, it is our responsibility as institutions to ensure that we work hard to remove barriers, raise aspirations and make those choices available.

The UWS has been mentioned, and I have to say that what Seamus McDaid and his colleagues have been doing there is an excellent success story.

Going back to diversity and the successes that each university is able to present, I realise that how the rest of the panel perceives the issue is another matter but I believe that every university has a compelling story to tell about how seriously it has taken the issue of widening access. Strathclyde, for example, is actively seeking a meaningful partnership with its own students. I know that our student president will give evidence very shortly, but I should mention that the university’s students association has innovated the StrathGuides programme, which makes a direct connection with Strathclyde’s interest in schools with low participation rates.

As Seona Reid said, we should celebrate diversity and the innovation that is generated at the Glasgow School of Art, at Edinburgh, at Stirling, at Strathclyde and so on is something that we all share. Indeed, Universities Scotland’s committee and engagement structures mean that if Gerry McCormac, say, discovers a certain approach it can be shared with the rest of us. Of course, the breadth of activity that we have through the responsible autonomy approach allows us to examine particular approaches and find out whether they can work for us given our geography, our region’s societal and economic make-up, and so on.

Harry Burns talked very recently about socioeconomic challenges in and around Glasgow, and Strathclyde has a particular chance to engage with those in SIMD 20 and 40, what with the number of underprivileged and talented young people we might be able to elevate into these opportunities. Again, there is no homogeneity in Scotland. Because the socioeconomic mix is different, universities will take different strategic approaches; however, the innovation that comes with diversity is an approach that we all share and can celebrate. The UWS has taken a number of exemplary approaches of which we are aware, and where we can we will try to take the best of them in the context of what we as individual institutions are trying to achieve.

I am probably going to the other end of the scale, but another very media-led question relates to the possibility of high-achieving students being displaced as a result of efforts to widen access. Obviously, some kind of balance is required.

The fact is that universities have a limited number of places and that working hard on one constituency will change the balance. The mediating factor is that this coming year the Scottish Government is providing an additional 1,700 places, which will be focused on widening participation and will therefore not result in displacement. Inevitably, however, something will happen if you have a limited resource and change the mix.

It is a competitive environment.

It is highly competitive.

The additional 1,700 places that Sir Tim O’Shea has just alluded to are spread across all the universities. We have all agreed to take on additional students and to put in place support mechanisms to ensure that they are given every opportunity to succeed. As that cohort moves through the system, we will be held to account for successful retention of those students and the successful completion of their courses. We have managed to do all that without legislation.

However, the bill seeks to enshrine that in some way in legislation. As we enter into the process, we do not know how the cohort and the individual students who are going through the system will respond. The bill provides more of a straitjacket for us to operate within. However, we would like to have the flexibility that currently exists to be responsive to the needs of the individual students and society.

Displacement is a charged notion. Over the past 100 years, the mix of students going into universities has changed. If we look at the statistics, we see that the big displacement—it is startlingly big—is one with which most people would be comfortable: we have moved from a position in which women were a small minority of university students to one in which female students are the majority. We could regard that as being more appropriate and gender fair or, if we wish, we could use the language of displacement and say that boys or males have been displaced from university by women. However, if we look at the statistics from 1945 and random years until now, we see that the change has been quite dramatic.

I have some questions about some of the specific measures that you use, or could use, to widen access.

What are your views on interviews? It has always struck me as strange that universities in this country do not interview more and tend to rely on paper qualifications. Some of the ivy league American universities—Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the one with which I am most familiar—put a lot of resources into interviewing all the students so that they can judge their potential, as opposed to judging it just by what is on paper.

Obviously, someone who went to a high-achieving, fee-paying school would be more likely to have straight As than somebody who went to a school that was in more difficult circumstances, who might not have quite such a fantastic set of results. How someone has performed against their peers and against the circumstances in which they found themselves can come out only in interview, as can the young person’s potential. Why do you not interview more?

I will offer a starting comment, mostly from the point of view of the University of Edinburgh.

There are two reasons why we do not interview more. First, the data from universities in the UK system that interview—such as the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge—does not give one comfort that that process would help us with widening participation. There is a certain amount of scepticism about a 20-minute or half-hour interview.

The University of Edinburgh has about double the applicants that the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have together. We have about 50,000 applicants, nearly all of whom, to judge by their paper qualifications, would be competent to come to the university. It would really not be feasible to run 50,000 interviews. My colleagues would not be doing anything else; we would have to stop teaching for a couple of months.

Therefore, because of volume and the apparent reliability of the interview technique, one is fairly sceptical about interviews.

I agree with Tim O’Shea. However, there are examples of interviews being applied. It is anecdotal, but the evidence exists if you are interested.

I am an ex-head of department in electronic and electrical engineering. Every applicant who indicated that electrical engineering at the University of Strathclyde was one of their choices was interviewed. It was a big overhead, but it gave us some insight into the broader mix and some of the depth. However, the care that had to be taken in that process meant that, to be fair to all those individuals, a diverse interview team was necessary. As a consequence, we had to take enormous care to ensure that we did not introduce any accidental disadvantages en route. Nonetheless, interviews can be appropriate.

Another example relates to our outcome agreements and is an example of us innovating. We have not mentioned it, but it concerns how the sector adds value to economic growth in Scotland. In the University of Strathclyde, we are about to launch the engineering academy in direct response to a stated requirement from business and industry, particularly around the Glasgow area—Babcock International Group plc, BAE Systems, Scottish Power and SSE plc.

In many ways, we are going to have two-year interviews with the youngsters who will come through the college sector. Again, we have to be subtle and also innovative in understanding how to pre-select and how to engage with our partners. All the universities that are at the table today—and, I dare say, most universities in the sector—have meaningful partnerships with their colleagues in the college sector.

Although we have the new regional restructuring, which in and around Glasgow will mean four groups, some of which were previously three separate colleges, at steady state, the 400 kids will be prepared and pre-qualified, as it were, through the colleges, but they will also be interviewed and, more important, supported and developed by the industry partners that get alongside us and our college partners.

I would say that a mixed approach needs to be applied. We need to be subtle and to apply different techniques as and when they are appropriate.

If we take the intention behind your idea of interviewing and characterise it as direct engagement with widening-participation students, that is certainly what we should do. In our successful Lothians equal access programme, we have directly engaged with 1,200 potential university students. A part of that might be something like an interview to encourage them to raise their aspirations, but it is not a question of having a big queue of students and giving them 15-minute interviews. To take the spirit of your question, I think that the key is for us to engage directly with potential widening-participation students, but not to attempt to interview the entire set of applicants for the sector.

Because we are tiny, we interview, and we consider portfolios and not just academic qualifications. Interestingly, the interview is the most contentious part of the process. In the research, the jury is out on whether interviews are a fair means of selecting candidates. There is some evidence that they are not and that they can be discriminatory as well as supportive. There is no single approach to admissions that supports widening participation.

My colleague to my right has not mentioned it, but the University of Edinburgh has an effective system of contextualised admissions whereby it scores differently applicants from particular postcodes or backgrounds in order to acknowledge that academic achievement might be less well developed in some schools and areas than in others.

Admissions is a particularly complex area and it is exactly the sort of thing that we see the institutions having responsible autonomy and control over, rather than having something done to us. It can involve, for example, portfolios of artwork, proficiency in music, grades in an exam or a wide range of other things. There are professionals who have spent many years assessing the capacity of students. When we admit a student, it is not just about their getting over a hurdle to get on to a course. It is about our assessing the individual’s competency and ability to complete the course, so that we are not setting people up for failure. The process is complex, and we try to execute it as fairly as possible.

Thank you. We move on to section 4 of the bill, on the tuition fees cap. Neil Bibby will start us off.

A number of bodies, including Universities Scotland and the University of Stirling, in its submission, have said that they are broadly content with section 4. Do you support the intention to have a cap on fees for rest-of-UK students? If so, why do you support it?

What is in the bill is in the spirit of the voluntary agreement that I, as acting convener of Universities Scotland, negotiated with the cabinet secretary. That voluntary agreement, which is capping us on a year-by-year basis compared with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has met the desired intention, which is that we wanted there to be no dramatic swings in numbers. We wanted there to be no dramatic reduction in rest-of-UK students, and no dramatic increase.

Our view is that that is a strong success, if I can express it in that way. The data for entry in 2012 and—now that we have passed the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service deadline of 15 January—likely entry in 2013 show that the fee regime that was put in place has exactly met the Scottish Government’s policy objective, which the universities supported. Therefore, we are content with continuing on the exact basis that we are on at present.

11:45

Do your universities receive more money from giving degrees to rest-of-UK students than they receive from giving degrees to Scottish and European students?

We have to account for the whole situation. If I can speak particularly about Edinburgh, we have committed to having the best bursaries in the United Kingdom, partly because we are committed to widening participation and partly because we were concerned about the possible flows. As I said, about 1,000 of our intake came in with bursaries. The highest amount that we provide to support students is £33,000 over the four years, and the scheme is uncapped. At Edinburgh, we have also committed many millions of pounds to a new personal tutor system to provide support. Overall, the financial position is neutral, and the pattern of students from different parts of the United Kingdom coming to Scotland shows that the Government’s policy objective has been met and that the universities are in the appropriate place.

Do you receive more money from English students who study at Scottish universities than you receive from Scottish and European students?

It is a bit more. As I said, we have been investing heavily in bursaries. At Edinburgh, we are dramatically improving our position on bursaries for Scotland-domiciled students.

You say that the funding from English students is “a bit more”. Am I correct that your university and others are marketing themselves to English students to come and study in Scotland?

I can speak for Edinburgh university on the issue, but not for other universities, so I will let my colleagues comment on that. Edinburgh wishes to maintain the current balance of Scottish, European Union and RUK students, and we have been broadly successful in achieving that.

Obviously, there is a concern that the Scottish Government wants to widen access, but the number of English students coming to Scottish universities is increasing. As I understand it, there is no additional money for widening access, so there will not be a huge increase in the overall number of places. Therefore, the displacement issue has a potential impact on widening access. We must also consider the potential for an increase in the number of rest-of-UK students to improve your financial state.

To take the situation at the University of Stirling last year as an example, we had funding for 212 rest-of-UK students taken from us by the Scottish funding council. Our expectation was that, by charging fees to students from the rest of the UK, we would replace the resources that were associated with those 212 students. We recruited 180 rest-of-UK students to Stirling, which leaves us with a deficit in the overall sums of money.

As we said, 1,700 additional places have been provided this year across all the universities in Scotland to admit students from the SIMD 40 group. I imagine that the money that was withdrawn from rest-of-UK students in some way enhanced the coffers that allowed that process to take place.

If you compare the 2012 statistics for the Scottish higher education system with those for 2011, you will find the position to be broadly neutral, with a very modest increase in rest-of-UK, Scottish and European Union students. We have heard the First Minister contrast Scotland’s positive position with the position in England. The point is that the position in Scotland is available; all you need to do is look at the statistics, which are readily available and show a small positive change in the numbers and a larger change with regard to the success of widening participation.

I agree that we need to keep an eye on the statistics to see how things are progressing.

One of the submissions suggests that the bill is unclear about charges for Welsh students. What is the current set-up for such students? Are there any comments on the matter?

I believe that only a very small number of Welsh students come to Scotland but, in funding terms, they are treated exactly like other rest-of-UK students such as those from England or Northern Ireland.

Just to elaborate slightly, I point out that students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland are treated in such a way that they end up in exactly the same position with regard to the personal demand on their finances. The concern with the drafting of the bill was that, inadvertently, Welsh students might not be treated on a par with English and Northern Ireland students. Of course, that is not the bill’s intention; the point is well understood by its drafters and will be fixed.

Okay.

Clare Adamson has some questions about section 14, which relates to the review of fundable further and higher education.

The bill’s policy memorandum says that the aim is to allow the Scottish funding council to review provision of fundable further and higher education to ensure that education is being provided by post-16 education bodies in a coherent manner. We have talked a lot about autonomy, but I note that the memorandum also mentions duplication of effort, regional pressures and competition. What are your views on that matter?

As things stand, education provision is demand led; in other words, students choose the universities they would like to go to and, in response, we put on courses or end those that are no longer required. If we were to flip that over and put in place a supply-led model, in which there would be a framework for making decisions on what courses would be offered and in which regions and students would simply choose not to turn up, it would be hugely disadvantageous to the sector. As a result, we suggest that the current demand-led model is practical and fit for purpose.

I want to reinforce those comments. If you look at the statistics for universities in the post-war period, you will see that Government interventions to—as it were—predict demand have very often been unsuccessful. The simple approach is to trust students; assume that, when they decide to go into computing, psychology or creative arts courses, they are being rational; and ensure that universities as autonomous institutions respond to that demand as quickly as possible. If you look around the world, you will see that demand-led university systems are much more successful in providing appropriate tertiary education to their students than systems in other countries in which Government departments attempt to predict the economy’s future needs in some precise way and instruct the universities about the number of places that there should be in this or that subject.

Let me build on that point, which I agree with. The student voice on the quality of provision, students’ selectivity and their experience of programmes are increasingly important. An obvious national programme is the national students survey, which indicates how students have been taught and their perception both of what they received and of the quality of the spend on educational or pedagogical materials, whether that be on library or other support activities. Of course, students’ employability and employment at the end of a programme are also important, so in the performance of programmes we are not dealing with a closed system. Students make value judgments and, in making their career choices, they will look at universities’ specialisms, which are quite different. That comes back to the point about diversity of provision. However, I think that it is important and correct—I am sure that you will hear more on this shortly—that the student voice on the quality of provision and the student experience is becoming ever more important, and that is to be welcomed.

It is worth saying that universities do not exist in a bubble, as they engage with a very wide range of stakeholders. Universities can also anticipate trends within society and identify areas where new programmes and new areas of demand may open up. That is the appropriate way in which to identify the shape of higher education, both for the stakeholders who depend on it and for the student applicants who will benefit from it.

I have a quick question on that section of the bill in response to what you have just said about provision being demand led. Obviously, that varies between higher education and further education, not least because FE receives something like 75 per cent of its funding from the public purse, whereas for HE the percentage share that comes from public funds is diminishing. Would that section of the bill be better if the issues were separated out, so that HE was dealt with slightly differently from FE?

A yes or no answer would do.

We would be reluctant to pontificate on what is appropriate for the colleges, but we are very clear that student demand and student choice are fundamental as far as the universities are concerned. We need to have autonomous institutions that can quickly respond to student demand. If you look at the pattern of demand over the past 50 years, you see that student demand varies quite dramatically. Very sensibly, we now have a great demand in the creative arts and in my own area of computer science, which hardly existed 30 years ago. We do not feel able to say how things should be done for the colleges, but we are very clear that the universities should be able to engage directly with the student voice on the pattern of provision that we provide.

Colin Beattie will move us on to the next question, which is on college regionalisation.

Professor von Prondzynski’s “Report of the Review of Higher Education Governance in Scotland” states that Scottish universities should

“engage proactively ... with further education institutions and any new governance structures that may be put in place”,

which is obviously a reference to the regionalisation of colleges. To what extent has that been happening already? Is that planned to happen?

There is an awful lot of activity. At the University of Edinburgh, we particularly engage with what were the separate Edinburgh colleges both on articulation and on planning routes. I am confident that all the Scottish universities engage with colleges, which may not always be local colleges. For example, the University of Edinburgh is a long-standing supporter and partner of the University of the Highlands and Islands. We were a sponsor and supporter of the UHI before it achieved university status, although it is obviously a large distance away. I served on the academic board of the UHI and we have a very close and productive relationship with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Scottish studies and Celtic studies.

It is a good question, but that is an excellent example of how, over the past two years, the HE and FE sector has very effectively self-organised while acknowledging its autonomy and responsibilities.

I have the privilege of chairing two of Scotland’s research pools, in engineering and in energy. The latter involves a partnership across all the universities and there is also a college articulation.

Two years ago, there was a clear demand statement from the energy industry—oil and gas, offshore renewables and grid—that we need to invest in Scotland over the next 10 years around £50 billion in infrastructure, which will be critically dependent on high-quality and high-end skills from universities in the form of PhDs and MSc and BSc degrees and the research outputs that flow from the pools, which are conjoined in the partnerships that have been mentioned.

12:00

However, what is critical for the skills agenda is the requirement for a large number of modern apprenticeships, with people with higher national qualifications. As a consequence, and stimulated by the Scottish funding council in partnership with the energy technology partnership that I chair, the colleges self-organised into what they call the college energy skills partnership, which covers all Scotland and addresses a national opportunity for a global market. As a result, we have the potential for pull-through now of thousands of new modern apprenticeship jobs from the colleges. Many of those young men and women who will start their lives in the colleges will find themselves in industry, but a significant proportion of them, some of whom are represented here today, will flow to the universities to pursue a higher-order degree, with a good chance of employment at the end of it.

All of that came not from a nationally driven agenda but from an opportunity provided by the SFC, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the universities and colleges working together effectively. It is an absolute exemplar of how the self-organising approach to opportunity leads to an excellent result.

Would you say that on the back of that, duplication among the different institutions has been eliminated?

I would say that there has been greater co-ordination and complementarity. On duplication, one cannot judge by a programme’s label what its detail might be. For example, in electrical engineering, the specialisations in institution X could be quite different from those in institution Y. Both will produce a BSc degree or an HND in electrical engineering, but the individuals’ educational experiences and their relevance could be different.

Again, what I am saying is more about co-ordination and partnership. The HE and FE sectors are showing that they can work together effectively. International opinion supports the view that pooling is an exemplar of how universities can work together to complement each other. I do not wish to make this an energy lecture but, for the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde, Tim O’Shea and I have regular strategic meetings with our research leaders to ensure that we complement each other in what we pursue and do. That then flows out to our colleagues in the University of Aberdeen and Heriot-Watt University, so that when we present the Scottish higher education scene on the international front, we present a coherent activity.

Universities and funding councils from around the world come here because of what we do together, which is to take an autonomous, responsible approach to concentrating on our separate missions, while working together to present much greater value.

Would I be correct in interpreting what you say as meaning that you have pursued the opportunity for shared services and resources within the group of universities?

Yes. Without going into too much detail—because of commercial confidentiality—I can say that Strathclyde and Aberdeen are in the process of making a significant joint investment in an enterprise resource planning system for the operations of our universities.

Colin Beattie’s question about shared services is a good one. Our universities have a really strong leadership position because of shared services. In joint procurement, we have a robust, jointly owned operation through which we do much better than any other group of organisations in the public sector or the quasi-public sector. I chair the joint information systems committee, so I know that the networking in universities is entirely run as a shared service. Through the Scottish higher education digital library—SHEDL—we share a lot of electronic journals, which reduces cost and improves access. Shared services are an important area for us, and the universities are conspicuously successful in putting together shared services.

Clearly, college restructuring changes the game plan throughout Scotland. What are the positive and negative implications for universities of college regionalisation?

A simple positive would be that it makes things easier. It means that there are a smaller number of points of contact with larger colleges.

In Edinburgh, I now relate directly to Mandy Exley, who heads the new Edinburgh College. Before, it was slightly more work to relate to the three colleges that were immediately nearby and then the other three colleges that were a bit further away. It certainly makes it a little bit easier for us.

The relations are good. I mentioned the Lothians equal access programme and the 1,200 students who, through that, have gone into university. Almost 500 of the people who went into that programme went to colleges and about 100 coming out of colleges came to the University of Edinburgh.

With fewer points of contact, it will be easier for universities to manage their relationships with the college sector.

The immediate challenge is the transitional phase that we are in just now. We are supportive of, and very appreciative of, what the colleges are doing and going through.

I will mention another example of co-ordination and partnership. I talked earlier about the engineering academy that will be launched this year. In an interesting natural evolution, through the early part of the year, we co-ordinated our outcome agreements with the college groupings that are working with us in the University of Strathclyde.

That was a good indication of the strategic alignment. The university showed leadership but, in order to work most effectively, the colleges decided—they were not guided by us—to align their outcome agreements to give a much more coherent and credible proposition to put to the Scottish funding council for making the investment.

The biggest challenge just now is the transition phase that the colleges are going through. It will not take too long—perhaps the next year—before the new mode of operation starts to settle down.

If you talk to any of the universities in Scotland, you will find that the relationships with colleges are strong.

For example, the University of Stirling works closely with Forth Valley College. We have a number of programmes. To go back to the point about being demand led, those programmes are created in response to student needs. We work closely together to ensure that we meet the needs of the individual students, who seek skills sets and education that will lead them to employment. We also engage with the business sector, examine their projections for the skills sets and sorts of workforces that they will need and then respond to those.

The integration of universities and colleges and the connections through to industry are strong across the sector. That is done by institutions on the ground, without the need for any legislation to force us to do it.

I was going to move on to questions on the next section of the bill—section 15, which is on data sharing—but I notice that the University of Stirling’s written evidence says:

“We understand that this provision is not intended to apply to universities.”

Sorry, is that from our submission or the one from the students union?

It is from yours. On section 15, it says:

“We understand that this provision is not intended to apply to universities.”

I can see nothing about that in the bill.

Yes,

“From discussion with Scottish Government we understand that this section is not intended to create new duties on higher education institutions, since existing data collection and sharing is assumed to be adequate.”

Are you quoting from the Universities Scotland submission?

No, I am reading from the University of Stirling’s submission. It may be in other ones as well.

Yes, it is a duplication of what was said in the Universities Scotland submission.

I am just trying to clarify the matter, because there is nothing in the bill to say that section 15 does not apply to universities, and paragraph 45 of the policy memorandum says:

“When a provider of learning or training enrols a young person they will share a record with SDS of that young person’s enrolment along with other agreed fields.”

Where does the understanding that it does not apply to universities come from?

I could not answer that question at this point in time. Perhaps one of my colleagues or someone from Universities Scotland could do so. Is it permissible for Alastair Sim to comment from the public gallery?

It is not.

We will get you the information.

I am sure that the information can be provided to us after the meeting. We will finish there and not ask you any questions on data sharing, if it does not actually apply to you.

I thank you very much for attending. We were slightly rushed, but I appreciate you taking the time to be with us this morning.

We thank the Education and Culture Committee for an interesting and thoughtful set of questions.

I suspend the meeting briefly.

12:09 Meeting suspended.

12:12 On resuming—

I welcome our final panel of witnesses, who are Christina Andrews, vice president education and engagement, University of Stirling Students Union; Freddie fforde, association president, University of St Andrews Students Association; Malcolm Moir, president, University of Strathclyde Students Association; and Garry Quigley, president, Students Association of the University of the West of Scotland. We are running slightly later than intended, so I apologise for keeping you waiting. Given that you have sat through all the evidence and heard what the principals had to say, I hope that you can say whether you agree with that previous evidence. We can then move quickly on to areas of disagreement or any additional information that you would like to provide.

We will begin with Liz Smith, on university governance.

Will you comment on the intention to legislate on the question of governance and management?

Our written submission states that, in the main, we welcome the intention to legislate. The principals said that they do not feel that it is necessary but, at Strathclyde, we are in the main in favour of it.

Can you tell us why?

Beyond the fact that it helps students associations to lobby universities, it is really because the measure will ensure that the system is sustainable.

Can you give us an idea of why, in academic, educational, economic or social terms, legislating for a code of governance would help the universities and therefore be in tune with students’ needs?

You have put me on the spot. Can you repeat the question?

We have an overall agreement in all the submissions that I have seen—from students, members of staff, principals and chairs—that the overall ambition is to sustain Scottish universities’ educational achievements, which are significant, and to enhance their economic and social achievements and diversity. Will you explain why you think that having a code of governance in the legislation would help that process?

12:15

It would show good practice across the sector. We have met the consultant who is working for Universities Scotland and discussed the things that we like in the von Prondzynski report—for example, ensuring that the chair of the court is as independent from the senior management team as possible, and ensuring that the student president is involved in the selection of the principal. There is disagreement among student bodies about the role of the rector and whether the rector’s involvement is the best way of ensuring that students’ views are heard in the university court.

On the university principals’ submissions on governance and management, we do not think that there is anything in the bill that would infringe on the management of a university. For example, access agreements are very much fitted around a university’s local context and ultimately have to be signed off by the university court. At the UWS, for example, outcome access agreements very much fit the local context and the need to address issues of retention.

To answer your question, the approach is to ensure that there is good practice across the sector and that good governance practice is shared across all the universities in Scotland.

Do you therefore disagree with the principals from whom we heard this morning, who said that they would like to see “management” removed from the bill? Would you like to see it in the bill?

I go back to my point. I do not know whether there is anything in the bill that infringes on management, so we would possibly agree on that. The point is that some of the issues that were outlined in the von Prondzynski report—for example, in relation to access agreements—are very much decided by the institutions, not by the Scottish Government or the Scottish ministers.

Last week, the bill team put the point to us—this is also mentioned in the submissions that I have read so far—that there is a bit of an issue around management involving the day-to-day running of some of the universities’ procedures and that, if taken to a fuller extent, what is proposed would start to impinge on the institutions’ academic freedom. Would you be quite happy with that?

We support academic freedom.

Okay. Thank you very much.

In general, to echo sentiments that have been expressed about the von Prondzynski report, I think that it is helpful that this discussion has come up, because different customs have grown up in many individual universities, some of which are appropriate and some of which are not. I refer to the evidence that we gave last week to Dr West, who collected our thoughts on the matter.

I ask for a bit of clarification on the specific issue. I am not that experienced in the area, so forgive me if I am asking you to go over old ground. I have a question about the wording of proposed new section 9A of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005, which states:

“The Scottish Ministers may ... when making a payment to a higher education institution under section 12(1), require the institution to comply with any principles of governance or management which appear to the Scottish Ministers to constitute good practice in relation to higher education institutions.”

My reading of

“any principles ... which appear to the Scottish Ministers”

is that it is a little vague. Can you elaborate for me how that might work and who those ministers might be? Is it—

For clarity’s sake, I should say that we ask the questions and you answer them.

That is a good question for the ministers.

It is the Scottish ministers who are referred to.

I am uncomfortable with that bit.

Let us explore that matter a little bit, then. I am sorry for interrupting Liz Smith.

The question is very good, and we will put it to the cabinet secretary when he comes to give his evidence.

What you have said ties in with what Garry Quigley said. There would be an issue for some people, and he said that he is in favour of academic freedom. There would be an issue if some of the exercise of that power was taken too far. At what stage would that be, though? What are you comfortable with?

I find the wording ambiguous as it stands, if further questions are not asked.

I am interested to know what the other representatives think. Do they feel that the wording is ambiguous?

We think that the word “may” makes the provision seem almost optional. We would prefer to have a requirement, so we would substitute “may” with “must”, to make the wording more concrete.

I do not have anything to say about the provision.

We will move on to section 3, which is about widening access. I ask George Adam to kick off.

You will have heard everything that the principals said. As I am Garry Quigley’s local MSP, he continually has a go at me about ensuring that we widen access, which I know is a big thing for the NUS nationally. The UWS’s figures in relation to the most deprived 20 per cent of data zones are quite good. However, a lot of the ancient universities do not seem to be as good at recruiting from such data zones and widening access. What are your thoughts on the way forward for widening access to universities?

I will tell the committee what we at the UWS are doing. You are right to say that we have a very good record on widening access. Just under 25 per cent of the students who come to the UWS are from an SIMD 20 background, but we should not be the only one, or one of only a few, to recruit such students. More universities must ensure that opportunities are available to all.

The UWS has strong engagement with the south-west articulation hub—for example, a lot of students articulate into third or fourth year. Although we are a regional university, we are still rooted in the communities of Ayr, Dumfries, Hamilton and Paisley. We have a high number of part-time students, many of whom come from the most impoverished backgrounds. It is fair to say that the university has a good relationship with us as the students association. We do various activities that help to widen access to students in local areas.

Where we fall down is on retention. Our record on access is good, but our retention levels are poor. I refute the point that widening access means high drop-out rates. Glasgow Caledonian University is a good example of an institution that widens access but has a good record on retention. If all universities are to widen access, everyone acknowledges that the right level of support must be provided, to ensure that students are retained.

In the past two years, we have called for a national research project that looks into the student experience in Scotland and asks why students drop out. We would hope that that would give us answers and solutions to improve retention rates overall.

I will let the other folks discuss the projects that they are working on to widen access.

The University of Strathclyde is reasonably good on widening access—about 13 per cent of admissions are from the SIMD 20 group. We welcome the additional places that have been funded this year at the ancients—the additional 20 places at the University of St Andrews, which were in the news, will represent quite a percentage increase.

I echo what Professor Sir Jim McDonald said. Progress is being made, and we have to start somewhere when figures are released. The key is to ensure that progress continues in years to come.

At Strathclyde, we are working with the university on a major project, and we are running one ourselves—StrathGuides—which the principal mentioned. That involves engaging with local schools in which a low percentage of students enter higher education institutions to encourage students to think about education beyond high school and to teach survival skills for university, such as budgeting and lecture note taking. The aim is just to show that it is possible and that they can easily go on to university if they wish. We hope that the majority of the 40 additional spaces for which Strathclyde has received funding for widening access will be filled by people from SIMD 20 areas, rather than SIMD 40 areas. Obviously, as we are in Glasgow, we are situated quite well for that.

Widening access is important to us all. Institutions are starting to make headway on that but, as always, progress tends to be slow, and the student unions and associations want to speed it up a little. The University of Stirling tends to sit in the middle ground on the number of people that we get from the SIMD 20 areas, but our retention figures are also in the middle ground. It is important to have a balance between the two. The statistics show that the UWS and GCU both have high access rates but, on retention, the numbers start to differ. For Edinburgh and St Andrews, the numbers on access are similar, but the retention rates are different—Edinburgh has a slightly higher retention rate than St Andrews. In looking at widening access, we must consider what support is available and ensure that institutions are appropriately supported to cope.

Christina Andrews finished on the exact issue that I want to talk about. It is the elephant in the room. I represent the institution that has by far the worst record on the issue. We are all aware of that and agree that we have to do more. If there is one thing that I want the committee to walk away with today, it is how different each institution is—the reason why I am here is to emphasise that. We have talked about the different programmes that universities have. St Andrews has to do a lot more, but it needs support with that, because we do not have an urban area to draw on. I am not surprised that we have low numbers of people from areas of multiple deprivation and that widening participation is a challenge for St Andrews, because we are in the middle of nowhere. To the north, in Dundee, there are two universities; in Edinburgh, there are at least another two or three; and, of course, trying to get students over from Glasgow is a big challenge.

I am sorry for indulging in such personal experience, but what I really want to come out of the process is that universities—particularly St Andrews, as that is where my experience comes from—are provided with the right kind of support to implement their widening participation programmes. I know that the proportion of money that is spent on the outreach work that we do, such as summer schools, is not very big in comparison with the resources that are spent on other matters. I urge the approach of taking each institution on its merits and challenges, and having funding agreements that reflect those specific challenges. Funding should perhaps be contingent on what works for each university. For outreach programmes in schools, we have to go a long way to reach potential students. We need more money to be invested in that, based on evidence of what works. That would be much more helpful.

I feel rather embarrassed for my students that we get kicked the whole time. Students come to me complaining that they feel that they are being positioned in the media as the wrong kind of people and that St Andrews students do not care about people who are not from the same background as them. That is just not the case. In defending my constituency, I find that to be an enormously difficult challenge. I apologise again for giving my personal experience, but we need more understanding of the particular challenges that we face, rather than a general blanket approach.

12:30

To be fair, when I have asked about St Andrews, I have said that questions about St Andrews have been media-led, given that it is easy to look at the figures for those who go there.

According to the principals, they were getting to this stage slowly but surely and without the need for legislation. However, I think that a look at some of the figures suggests that legislation is needed to widen access. Do you agree?

I do not agree with the principals’ views. Indeed, the NUS report states that we have been waiting 40 or 50 years for a record that we can be proud of.

I do not think that any reasonable person is having a go at individual students at St Andrews, although we might be having a go at the defences that are put up, often by the institution, as reasons or excuses for not making progress. Forgive me for being somewhat critical, but it appears that you might be buying into that when, for example, you say, “St Andrews is in the middle of nowhere”. It is not exactly too far from Dundee, Kirkcaldy or the rest of Fife, and I think that we need to be a bit wary of St Andrews trotting out yet another excuse.

In its submission, the University of Stirling suggests:

“the process for developing outcome agreements did not adequately involve students and has led to outcome agreements with little to no student input.”

Is that a general feeling across the board?

I wrote that partly because, as you know, sabbatical teams tend to change year on year. Last year, it was agreed by the president and vice president at academic council—after which the issue went to the court—that the principal would decide about outcome agreements in the principal’s strategic group, which has very few members. It is all very well for people to say, “The students on the court ticked this off, so it’s absolutely fine,” but the fact is that, although the University of Stirling is trying to get in more students from SIMD 20, it is not getting in enough and needs to be more ambitious.

All outcome agreements tend to get signed off at the court, which has two student representatives. However, we do not have much of a chance to make any input into those agreements. Even though we broadly agree with and support everything in the agreements, we think that there should be more space in the process for involving students. After all, we are important stakeholders in the university.

I agree entirely. We would welcome the chance for the students association to have more input. Of course, things start to get complex when you try to work out how that would happen, given the difficult nature of these documents. As Christina Andrews pointed out, the teams change every year, so I and my predecessor wrote a joint letter to the principal setting out what we were looking and hoping for in the outcome agreements. However, it is difficult to make any input beyond that. We sit down in various meetings to discuss education strategy and so on and through our two representatives on the court we sign off the agreement but we would welcome more input into its drafting. As I have said, though, I do not know how that would be done.

Can I just register my agreement with that by nodding my head?

That is fine.

All four principals told us quite clearly that although SIMD is important it is not, on its own, the most accurate document. Indeed, they all gave examples in that respect. If memory serves, I believe that Seona Reid said that, in the past six years, there had been a 16.9 per cent improvement; the principal of the University of Edinburgh outlined quite a long scenario about how Edinburgh has improved; and we heard the same from Stirling and Strathclyde. Do you agree that these are important criteria that can be worked on to benefit people from different backgrounds and that they might be even more successful than a simple examination of the SIMD analysis?

We would welcome moves to get a much truer description of where a student is coming from. To be honest, the response that you mention was a sign that principals do not want to make improvements when it comes to widening access. We have been talking about the issue for too long. We cannot afford any more delays in finding out a true picture of the student profile.

Do you dispute the figures?

There are flaws in a system that looks at postcodes. However, that is the only system that bodies seem to use at this stage.

We will move on to the issue of the fees cap.

What is your position on the provision in the bill to put a cap on fees for students from the rest of the UK? What do you believe that cap should be?

I should first of all make clear that one of the reasons why I do not know my colleagues on the panel very well is that they are members of the NUS and I am not. That clarification might be helpful. They will represent the NUS’s views, but I will not.

As I understand it, there is a proposal to make the cost of a Scottish degree the same as it would be south of the border—that is, you would get four years for the price of three. I hope that I have not misunderstood the position. I think that that is absolutely right. I do not think that there should be a difference, for the reasons that have been laid out previously.

I have a concern, however. I will find out on Friday whether our union is going to be rebuilt, which will be a huge project. We need a new sports centre. All our accommodation is falling to bits. My concern is that, without extra support from the Government, the four-for-the-price-of-three approach will create a huge funding gap—of millions of pounds—which might lead to an impact on front-line student services of the sort that I have just mentioned. Although I absolutely agree with the principle of the fees being no higher in Scotland than they can be south of the border, I worry about what will be done to make up for the loss in revenue for universities and how that will impact on services that my students would expect.

We are here representing our students associations and not the views of the NUS.

Strathclyde welcomes the fees being capped, so that students from the rest of the UK are not spending more on their education than others are. Strathclyde has set the cap at around £27,000, which comes to £6,000 or so a year. That is great.

Fortunately, we are in quite a nice position in that we are not talking in the millions, as it stands. The sums will not break the bank, if that makes sense.

We welcome a cap across the country. We think that it should not cost more to go to university in Scotland than it costs south of the border.

We come at this from an interesting perspective, as we have a very small number of students from the rest of the UK—around 200.

I echo Malcolm Moir’s views. We support a cap that means that it is no more expensive to study here than it is to study down south.

We believe that there should be some sort of support and bursary packages. If the core message of the bill is to widen access, we must ensure that that includes students from the rest of the UK, so we do not end up with only the wealthiest students coming to Scotland to study. Again, a portion of the fees that are brought in has to be ring fenced for bursary and support packages.

We have only about 200 rest-of-UK students studying at the UWS, so the amount of funding that we could gain under that system is limited in comparison with what could be gained by an institution such as the University of Edinburgh, which has a high number of rest-of-UK students. We ask that the system be monitored to ensure that the amount of cash that Edinburgh can generate is not so much greater than the amount that the UWS can generate.

I echo what everyone has already said. There should be a cap on the fees that rest-of-UK students can be charged. However, I noticed that there was a reference to a fee cap within each academic year. It is important to consider what students will get from coming to Scottish institutions. As far as I am aware, most students will come to do a bachelor’s degree and end up doing an honours degree. That needs to be taken into consideration, because it means that the students need that additional year. It is also important to consider whether a fee is charged for the award that they will receive when they complete their course.

Our stance is that there should be no fees and, in an ideal world, there would be no fees for education—it would be free for everyone. That would be the real solution for widening access—no fees for any students. That is Strathclyde’s stance, at least, and I hope that it is the stance of all students associations across Scotland and the UK.

Do you mean no fees for rest-of-UK students as well?

Yes—equal for everyone. It is like that across the EU, anyway.

I will go as far as to say that free education across the world is what students associations would be looking for.

We will stick to trying to control the situation here.

Right.

Well, today Scotland, tomorrow the world.

We have to start somewhere.

Indeed.

I know that you all heard the question earlier about the Scottish funding council reviewing higher and further education with a view to ensuring that education is provided in a coherent manner across the sectors. Do you have a position on the premise on which that is based and how you see that moving forward?

There are two ways to look at it. First, it places a lot of power in the hands of the Scottish ministers. We would support it if it could stop a situation such as the one at Strathclyde a few years ago, when courses were removed. We would be less likely to support it if the Abertay issue arose again, when certain institutions were being forced to merge, without the consent of the two institutions.

I completely agree with what Garry Quigley said. It makes sense to review higher education. It is important that it will be a review of higher and further education, because it is about education as a whole—that is how I see it. Some people will say that what could happen is that certain courses at different institutions will be cut, because too many people are applying to them and we do not need them. However, the opposite can be said, because it is about protecting the courses that we need at the moment. For instance, if we suddenly need more nurses or more modern language teachers, more places can be created for those who want to go on a nursing course or a modern language teaching course, and so on.

The previous panel definitely talked about delivering a student-led demand system at the moment. Do you all feel that that is the situation at the moment?

It was mentioned before that there would be a change. At the moment, it is about meeting the demands of potential students. What could happen is that there will just be all these places and it will just be hoped that students take them. I do not think that that will happen. I hope and presume that it will always come down to demand and what people need but also what the country needs.

I presume that you agree that it cannot just be demand led? We cannot all get what we want. As you indicated, there are clearly demands from industry and business for students and graduates in certain sectors. There is a limited pot of money and there are reasons why we cannot have a completely demand-led system. I presume that you accept that it is a balancing act.

Yes, I accept that. It is a balance between everything.

12:45

We welcome section 14 but, from our perspective, we have to be cautious in the sense that it could protect courses and local provision but it could also cut them. The cost is another factor.

In that case, what is your response to the following comment in “Putting Learners at the Centre—Delivering our Ambitions for Post-16 Education”? It states:

“there is too much duplication and unnecessary competition within ... regional universities.”

That would tend to suggest that something has to be done about that, or that there has to be some sort of intervention.

There still has to be a local context. At the UWS, we sometimes have the same courses at Hamilton and at Paisley. The distance between them is small, but one of the features of widening access is that—to use the phrase—people should have a university or college on their doorstep, so I suppose that that helps with that aspect.

Does anyone else want to comment on the quote that I read from “Putting Learners at the Centre”?

I am a strong believer in the free market and competition. This is my personal opinion. If a number of institutions provide the same form of course, they will strive to be the best and to deliver the best education that they can. I believe that that is a good thing.

Thank you. We move on to questions on regionalisation and its impact on universities, from Colin Beattie.

I think that all the members of the panel were here when the universities gave their opinion on the subject earlier. Perhaps you could comment from your perspective on the positive and negative impacts of college regionalisation in relation to Scottish universities engaging with the colleges, and on whether there is any sign of institutions sharing resources and so on.

Could you repeat the question? Sorry.

Sure. Maybe I will break it down. What are the implications, positive and negative, for the universities engaging proactively with the colleges in terms of their regionalisation?

What we are looking for in any discussions about the college regionalisation is recognition of the fact that a high number of college students come straight to the UWS and we want that to be protected. We are also looking for the articulated groups that I mentioned earlier to be sustained and possibly to be extended so that college students could articulate into Strathclyde or Edinburgh as well. Those are the two key features that we would be looking for under the programme.

With regionalisation, there is potential for students associations in the colleges to be more effective. Either last night or this morning I was reading through the explanatory notes, and I believe that having members of students associations on the boards will be a great thing. It will help us to work with those students associations. It is not just the institutions that need to engage with the regionalised colleges. The students associations will be able to work together better.

From our experience as an institution that merged a few years ago, one of the lessons that we learned as students was that it is important to have enough time and that students’ views must be listened to. During the merger process, the previous sabbatical officers felt that their views were not taken on board. Students should be involved in the merger process.

When it comes to institutions working together, I know that the University of Stirling is doing a lot more to work with Forth Valley College. Last year, a degree was introduced that is provided by the University of Stirling but three years of the course are done at the Forth Valley College campus. In the last year, the students come to the University of Stirling campus. It is good and positive that the institutions are looking into different things they can do.

Malcolm Moir made a great point when he said that it is not just about institutions working together. It is also about student unions and students associations working together to ensure that students are getting everything that they need.

I do not know enough about this to be able to add anything.

From what the university principals said, it seems that, as you stated yourselves, there is already a fair degree of exchange between colleges and universities. Will there be more opportunity to share resources with the regionalised colleges than at the moment?

You made a point about student associations. That seems to me to be an obvious and helpful link. It jumps out at me as making sense.

A large number of UWS students study in the college and vice versa. If the regionalisation agenda fits that purpose, it would be welcomed.

The University of Strathclyde is working closely with some colleges on articulation. I am not able to speak for the university on sharing resources. I imagine that that would be welcomed, but the cuts that are happening in colleges will not help the resources and universities will not be able to make up for the £36 million of cuts.

I was not suggesting that the universities would subsidise the colleges.

If resources are shared, we need to ensure that the university students who study in the college or vice versa are not forgotten about because they are not on the main campus. Too often, we hear that the UWS students at the City of Glasgow College feel that they are not represented or not given the same level of support as students who study at the main campus.

I have a quick question about what the witnesses said about the integration and joint working between the colleges and universities. They said that, although work has been done on widening access, it is not happening quickly enough. Work on integration between colleges and universities is going on, but is the pace of change quick enough?

No.

No.

There seems to be indifference in the relationship between some universities and colleges. It seems to be much easier for a student coming from a college to articulate into advanced entry to UWS than to the University of Edinburgh, perhaps. Every university must play its part in widening access and in articulation.

Contextualised admissions and recognising different entries into university come into that as well. Ultimately, one university can take only so many Scots. It is easy for a university to say that it will take the applicants with five As, of which there is a hugely disproportionately lower number in the lower SIMD groups, if we are using that measurement.

For contextualised admissions to work, there needs to be more assistance for, or pressure on, the universities—however you want to do it. When I have talked about it at my university, the reaction has been, “Well, sometimes, maybe.” There needs to be some form of coercion to recognise potential. It would also be useful to share best practice across universities—for example, sharing certain situations in which interviews have not worked.

If contextualised admissions are the same across the board, there is no longer an issue. As Freddie fforde said, there are only so many people so, if the University of Strathclyde looks to increase its percentage of students from SIMD 20 or SIMD 40 backgrounds but does not increase its outreach, it might find that it is taking some of those students away from Glasgow Caledonian University. However, it would be fantastic for Scottish education if we could increase the outreach and, through standardised contextualised admissions, increase the number of people who are interested in education, want to apply to university, are able to do so and have potential.

We are almost out of time, so I will ask a final question and I ask each of you for a short answer. What are your hopes and expectations for the bill? What do you hope will come out of it in terms of benefits for students at universities? I will start with Malcolm Moir and work along.

Widening access is the main issue. I want to be able to sit down in university meetings and say, “This has been legislated for. You need to work with us on it. We have these additional places, so what are we going to do? How is it going to happen?” We can talk about why for so long, but we need some sort of leverage that allows us to ask, “How are we doing this?” That is the main thing.

I have the same hope about widening access, but we need to bear it in mind that widening access is about not only getting students into university, but retaining them and allowing them to graduate at the end. We need to be more aware of the reasons why students drop out and to be more prepared for the potential pitfalls of widening access. I hope that the institutions, the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and student associations start to discuss what more they can do to help retain students from all backgrounds at university.

Good governance is about having transparency in institutions, which I think will come from the bill. Widening access is about all the universities working together to improve the intake. They should not only encourage students, but support them when they get there. I hope that the bill will encourage that.

As I said earlier, my main concern is to ensure that there is an understanding of the different challenges that different universities face. Obviously, I am reflecting my experience here, but I must resist what Neil Findlay said earlier about me recycling old arguments. The University of St Andrews not having the kind of local population that is found in the University of Glasgow, for example, is one instance of a particular local problem. There are different local problems at different universities.

What I hope for is an understanding that we are not enemies here. I hope that the student associations, the universities and the Parliament can work together to analyse the problems and come up with a sophisticated and mature solution, rather than viewing it as about being confrontational, with one versus the other. The problems are much more complicated than that. I referred earlier to ambiguity in the bill. The question seems to be what we can do to get one solution that looks good. Every institution is different, though, and the sooner the Parliament appreciates that different solutions will work in different contexts, the better.

Thank you very much. I thank you all for coming this morning.

Just before I close the meeting, I give apologies from Liam McArthur, who has been delayed by transport difficulties. He had hoped to be here, but he has unfortunately failed to manage that. He has emailed me his apologies.

I close the meeting to the public.

12:58 Meeting continued in private until 13:04.