Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session on student support. The committee is keen to hear evidence from a range of stakeholders this morning. I welcome to the meeting Angus Allan from Colleges Scotland; Robert Foster from Who Cares? Scotland; Vonnie Sandlan from the National Union of Students Scotland; Mary Senior from University and College Union Scotland; and Alastair Sim from Universities Scotland.
I understand that some of you need to leave shortly after 11 am so we will try to be succinct with our questions and I would appreciate succinct answers as well. I believe that you have a meeting in Glasgow about the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Bill.
We will go straight to questions, beginning with Liam McArthur.
It is not my turn.
Apologies—I might have the wrong paper. I am sorry—we start with Mary Scanlon.
That is quite alright—your apology is accepted. [Laughter.]
That is very good of you, Mary.
I am feeling generous today.
My background is in further education but I taught on degree courses as well as higher national diplomas and so on. I had not appreciated that there is so much more uncertainty in further education with discretionary bursaries and all of that. Whereas students at university know exactly how much money they are going to get and when they will get it, further education students really do not know what they will get. I wonder whether one of the panel members will spell that out. I am looking at Angus Allan—I presume that he is David Alexander for the day.
I do not know whether I am David Alexander for the day, but I am certainly Angus Allan.
Well, I had the name David Alexander, but I wonder whether you can help us to understand how much more uncertainty there is in FE.
If you walk down a corridor at an FE college, you will pass students in all sorts of different classrooms, workshops, laboratories and so on. Those students may be funded through education maintenance allowances, Skills Development Scotland training allowances, Scottish Funding Council bursaries or Student Awards Agency for Scotland awards. The awards from those different agencies may be different; two students who are the same age with the same household income and the same sort of background may end up with different levels of award because of how they are funded.
I am looking at the recent review of student support that you have come forward with. You made various recommendations and you are now asking for a conversation about it. I am aware that FE colleges run out of their discretionary funds by about Christmas—the NUSS has given us a very good report on that. In view of your review, what are you recommending not just to simplify funding in FE but to ensure that FE students have the certainty of income that university students have?
Certainty varies depending on how the student is funded. A student on a training allowance has the certainty of an income of £55 per week—that is an entitlement. SAAS awards and EMAs are also entitlements, but there is an eligibility element on bursary-funded courses—those are discretionary awards. Colleges are given a pot of money to manage on behalf of the SFC for students on bursary-funded courses. The students are eligible to apply to that pot of money, but they are not necessarily entitled to an award from it.
What courses would be funded by bursaries? I seem to remember that it was under-18s who got bursaries. Could you explain that to me?
Further education provision is funded by bursaries.
Is that right up to HND and degree level?
Higher national certificates and diplomas are classed as higher education, so students on those courses would be funded through SAAS awards. As far as I know, there is no age limit on bursaries. The household income of students under 25 years of age is taken into consideration for a bursary or an EMA, but not for an SDS award.
For students who depend on bursaries, the level of bursary available has decreased over the years, with the loan component increasing. Could you explain how much that decrease is, and how it has affected students in further education?
The total amount of money allocated for bursaries has risen over the years, but colleges have been encouraged to have more full-time students. Therefore, the number of students accessing those funds has also increased. A bursary is an eligibility award, not an entitlement. If there is sufficient money in the funds to pay students, they will get a bursary, but colleges often rely on EMAs to top up bursary funds where there are insufficient funds available.
Okay. I will move on to Who Cares? Scotland—
Just—
It is my final question.
I want to bring in the rest of the panel. I think that some other witnesses wish to answer some of the questions that you have already put.
To be clear, students who are studying FE-level courses do not get loans; that would only be for HE-level students.
Yes—I realise that.
Within colleges, that would be HNC or HND students, and perhaps also those doing diplomas.
On the situation with FE student funding, although NUS Scotland is very supportive of the Scottish Government’s continued protection of FE student support, we believe that the current system is unfit for purpose. It leaves far too much uncertainty for students.
The current student support system has three fundamental issues that we would like to be addressed. The first is that the budget is cash limited, and the total supply of funding does not take into account the total student demand. As you mentioned, Mrs Scanlon, around this time of year colleges say that they have run out of money for bursary support. One of their options is to go to the Scottish funding council and ask for more money. I think that £11.2 million was requested last year, which was met with £7 million from the Scottish funding council. That left a substantial shortfall.
Secondly, as Angus Allan mentioned, FE bursaries are discretionary, meaning that there is no guarantee that students will receive funding, even if they meet all the necessary criteria. There is also leeway in the system. Colleges can pay up to 80 per cent of the guidance rate of bursaries. Two students could be studying the same course at two colleges five miles apart, but they could be receiving bursaries that are 20 per cent different.
Finally, we are concerned about the number of students aged up to 18 years and 11 months who are being paid the £30 a week EMA allowance because that is what is available to them.
Who decides on the bursary limit for each college?
Do you mean how much each student is entitled to?
How much each college gets.
I believe that is set by the SFC, although I would like to double-check that.
Does it have a formula for doing that?
I believe so. It is then up to the college to determine how much of that it pays to each student. It can pay between 80 per cent and 100 per cent of the fund that is allocated. That can mean that college students on the same course for the same level of qualification are paid vastly different sums depending which college they are studying at.
I wish to ask about the Who Cares? submission. I could not believe it when I read that, because they did not come from a family background, a care leaver had to give this information—and I will quote this, as it beggars belief. Because that student could not
“provide information on their household income ... students were asked to supply salary information of everyone who worked in the residential children’s home they currently live in.”
How humiliating is that? Do we really have further education colleges that are asking for that kind of information in 2015?
I spoke to the young person we mentioned in our written submission. They were extremely embarrassed and anxious about having to go and speak to the people who were paid to care for them.
No wonder. How could the salaries of the people in the care home—
Make a difference? It would not make any difference. It is a means-tested bursary system, and the person in the student funding office obviously did not know what to do with that student, as they did not tick a box and did not fit the norm. They therefore asked them to get the household income at their residential unit, which is staffed by a lot of staff. They sent the person back to ask those staff for their salaries, which is an absolutely ridiculous thing to do. In terms of—
Sorry to interrupt, but could I clarify whether that is the policy or a mistake on the part of an individual?
I would imagine that it would be a mistake on the part of the college. I do not think that any college is going to have a policy on—
Exactly. It was an error.
Yes—it was an error.
I would hope so.
It was because of a lack of understanding in the system on the issues that some students face.
It is important that we point that out.
Yes—my apologies.
Returning to the question, a good place to start is by asking why student funding is important. It is not an add-on or additional extra; it is not a bonus for starting college. For the students I represent who have been looked after in Scotland, that funding is a lifeline—it is what they need to live. A lot of them have been put in tenancies by their local authorities at the age of 16, because they have timed out of care. They will have rent to pay, food to buy and other stuff pay for. I reiterate: it is not an add-on.
It is important to remember that student support is essential and that there should be a right to FE bursary support funding, just as there is a right to SAAS funding. It should not be discretionary or a postcode lottery for anyone.
Iain Gray has a supplementary question.
Thank you for your forbearance, convener. I have a point of clarification for Vonnie Sandlan. You talked about EMA being a lower level of support than bursary support. It is not that long since, I am sure with the best of intentions, the Scottish Government extended the entitlement to EMA to more students. Are you implying that that means that some students will receive less support than they would have previously?
My understanding is that, when EMA was introduced, it was supposed to support secondary school pupils to stay in education. There is no other element of the education system in which someone is entitled to student support. EMA is determined by someone’s age and not the level of study that they are on. We are hearing that some FE level students up to the age of 18 years and 11 months, which is the cut-off age, are being paid the EMA at £30 a week instead of their bursary, which is nearer £100 a week.
If I could just take a moment to clarify that I misspoke when I referred to the budget that the colleges were looking for last year. In fact, the SFC responded with £3.5 million of additional funding. Colleges had said that they needed £14.7 million, which left £11.2 million of unmet demand.
Bursary support for FE comes from a cash-limited pot, which can create problems and, indeed, a postcode lottery. I think that it was Angus Allan who said that there are situations that are similar but in which colleges pay different amounts of bursary.
The Colleges Scotland submission says that the
“discretionary and variable nature of the awards, can often act as a major discouragement for students wishing to participate in full time further education – particularly students from low income households.”
That brings me to my question. Given that students from low-income households are also less likely to go university, there will be more potential FE students in areas of high deprivation so there could be more pressure on the limited bursary support pot. Do small bursaries in poorer areas mean that potential students are put off applying to higher education or further education?
That links in to Vonnie Sandlan’s earlier evidence. If a college is cash-limited in its bursary funds, it has to manage those funds and then rely on additional funding coming into the pot later. At the beginning of the year, colleges are faced with the dilemma of having to decide whether to pay all their students all the bursary funds, or pay all students a proportion. If a college has 200 students, does it pay 150 of them their full bursary entitlement, or does it pay 200 students 80 per cent of their bursary entitlement?
The problem with both approaches is that they disadvantage students. If the college pays 80 per cent of the bursary at the beginning of the year, there is a risk of early drop-outs, which disadvantages students from poorer backgrounds. If the college pays 150 students instead of the 200, it disadvantages the 50. I understand that most colleges take the view that they should spread the funds thinly and, when an in-year distribution comes in, top them up later in the year.
You can imagine it yourselves: if someone says that they will pay you 60 per cent or 80 per cent of your salary and top it up later in the year if they get the funds, it is not entirely satisfactory.
Do you have figures to show how many students get 100 per cent first call?
I do not have those figures here, but I can supply additional written evidence if you would like that.
Could you also advise how many students who do not get the 100 per cent have to fall back on hardship funding?
Yes. The other linked point is that colleges also rely on EMAs. Some students will get an EMA. If they are 18 years and 11 months, about half the colleges in Scotland will pay them an EMA and the other half will pay them a full bursary. There is therefore variability, which is the point that Vonnie Sandlan made.
The current household income threshold for the maximum bursary is about £17,000. The Scottish Government has said that it will increase that threshold to £19,000. Will that help students when it comes in in 2016-17?
Yes. It will make a quite substantial difference.
I have some statistics here that I wanted to refer to. They are particularly for HE level students. The phrase “debt averse” is thrown around without an awful lot of looking into the actual statistics. I have the higher education student support in Scotland statistics for 2014-15. The number of students with a total household income of up to £16,999 was 24,700. Of those, only 19,665 took a student loan, which leaves a fifth of students from the poorest background who have a household income of up to £17,000—which could mean any variation below that—taking no student loan at all. That is a fairly stark statistic.
10:15
The United Kingdom Government has announced that it will move away from a model similar to ours, which involves loans and bursary, to a loan-only model. That will obviously have a devastating effect on FE down south. Could you say more about that, just to compare the different ideals of the Governments?
NUS Scotland has made it clear, as have our counterparts at NUS UK, that the Westminster approach to funding students is nothing short of a disgrace. In Scotland, we are seeing a very different approach, particularly to widening access, which starts at FE-level study, where some of our most vulnerable learners return to the education system to begin their studies before going on either into the workplace or into further study. Quite a substantial number of students are articulating through from FE-level study into HE-level study, either at college or at university, before proceeding to employment and out into the wider world. Our concern is that, with any further attack on grants, there would be an impact on the number of students taking up those opportunities to go on to college or university.
I want to move on to higher education, rather than further education, and explore the balance between grants and loans, particularly for students from low-income families. That balance is obviously important in allowing them to participate in higher education.
There is a common theme in a number of the pieces of evidence that we have received, but Universities Scotland’s submission has a paragraph that I think sums up the issue particularly well. It states:
“In August 2013, means-tested grants in Scotland were substantially reduced, with an overall reduction of around 40%. A loan replaced the lost grant. Due to the new loan/grant ratio of the current system in Scotland, entrants from the most deprived backgrounds will graduate with the largest financial burden as they will require to borrow the largest amounts to support living costs.”
That says not so much that the system is out of balance but that it is completely perverse. Could Universities Scotland comment on that?
As we further prioritise widening access, we will need to take an empirical look at what is actually happening in terms of student behaviour. As Vonnie Sandlan says, there is a problem of debt aversion, particularly among people coming from the most economically challenged households, and it will take careful monitoring, as we step up our emphasis on widening access, to ensure that the student support system is actually supporting people to come in from the most challenged backgrounds. We are in a better place than the FE sector is in terms of people knowing their entitlement, but we are certainly not in a completely unproblematic place in terms of debt aversion.
Let me explore that issue of debt aversion. The written evidence that we received from Lucy Hunter Blackburn, the former head of HE in the Scottish Government, states that many of the poorer students who receive a bursary, which has been reduced, do not take out their whole loan entitlement, perhaps because of the debt aversion that has been referred to. In spite of that, she says, poorer students take on a disproportionate share of the £0.5 billion of loans each year in Scotland. Is the situation that those students are either taking out a loan they cannot afford or that they are living without accessing the means of support provided because they are debt averse, so that they are caught either way? Is that what you mean by debt aversion?
My principal concern is that debt aversion is making people choose not to go into higher education. Given that loan repayments are spread over the largest proportion of a person’s working life and are income-contingent, the burden is probably not insupportable to almost everyone. However, if debt aversion is putting people off at the point of entry, it needs to be better explained that, although the burden might seem substantial at the time, it would be repayable over a very long period in increments that, it is to be hoped, would not hold them back from realising their future prospects.
However, you say in your own evidence:
“Those who enter relatively low paying careers post-graduation will also pay more overall due to the length of repayment and interest.
That is yet another perverse disincentive for those coming from low-income families.
I think that that comment was made to provide a comparison with England. As I understand it, there are repayment periods of 25 and 35 years. One might debate what the right repayment period would be; in one sense, you are balancing a higher level of annual repayments against a shorter repayment period. I do not have a definitive answer to that, but—
Your own written evidence is, I think, pretty clear.
The issue needs to be explored, but what I am asking for from now on is an empirical study of whether we are continuing to improve access to higher education for people from challenged backgrounds and whether debt aversion is proving to be one of the barriers that we are either successfully or unsuccessfully overcoming.
My next question is for Vonnie Sandlan. In 2013, when the change took place, means-tested grants were reduced and the amount by which they were reduced was replaced by loans, NUS was quoted as being quite supportive of the package. It seems to me perverse that students from the lowest-income families have to borrow the most. Does NUS think that that is a disincentive to students from low-income families who are seeking to enter higher education?
I make it absolutely clear that NUS Scotland and students worked incredibly hard for an increase in student support. Although increases in grants would have been absolutely preferable to loans, no increase at all would have been unacceptable. At least students are now guaranteed a minimum loan. That said, the balance between loans and grants needs to be redressed, with grants increased for the poorest students in particular.
Going back to Alastair Sim’s comment about how students repay their debt over their lives, I have to say that that is an incredibly gendered way of looking at the issue. Over the course of their working lives, women tend to earn less, might take career breaks and will end up paying more than men for similar levels of debt.
If it is okay, I want to share with the committee some fairly stark statistics from a survey of students that we carried out in Scotland earlier this year. According to the survey, 51 per cent of respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed that they felt able to concentrate on their studies without worrying about their finances; 67 per cent either strongly agreed or agreed that they sometimes felt overwhelmed by their finances; 79 per cent either strongly agreed or agreed that, in general, they worried about their financial situation; and 64 per cent either agreed or strongly agreed that they regularly worried about not having enough money to meet their basic living expenses. Moreover, 49 per cent stated that they had seriously considered leaving their course; for 62 per cent of those who had considered dropping out, the biggest single reason was financial difficulty.
Do you think that that describes an HE student support system that is fit for purpose?
We have continually made it clear that we want the balance between loans and grants to be redressed. We are seeing a lot more students taking out unmanageable levels of commercial debt.
Moreover, the Cubie-recommended limit for part-time work for students was 10 hours a week but we know of students who work significantly more hours than that around their course, even up to full time, in order to fund their studies. Indeed, 61 per cent of our student respondents have told us that work has had a negative impact on their studies.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute, I suggest that, if you asked the general population—or even the people in this room—the questions that you asked in your survey about what was worrying them, quite a large percentage would say that they were worried about their finances and their income and were concerned about their financial situation. It is quite a normal thing for people to do. Is the situation worse or about the same for students?
I do not want to say that it has become a joke, although I suppose that it has, but the stereotype is that students are cool with living in mouldy houses and eating cold beans out of a tin. The reality is very different. I do not think that students are any different from any other member of society in that regard.
There are not that many good-quality jobs for students who are dependent on having the hours every single week. Zero-hours contracts are more prevalent, and they obviously have an impact on how much a student is paid, whether they get any paid leave so that they can take time off to do their exams, for example, and whether their job is flexible with regard to their studies. We hear of students having to decide between going to their lecture or picking up an extra shift so that they can pay their bills at the end of the week. I make that point not to demean any of those financial concerns, because I completely understand them. Sometimes we get caught up in the belief that students are not troubled by such situations, when actually the figures are very stark.
I was not suggesting for a moment that students are not troubled; I was making a wider point about people in general being worried about finances—that is certainly the case at the moment, given the economic climate.
Of course.
To follow on from Iain Gray’s question, we have heard about the implications of the removal of £35 million, I believe, of student support from the HE sector in 2013, and about the shift away from grants to loans at that stage.
I understand what Alastair Sim says about the need for empirical evidence of the impact that that is having, but, on a point of principle, is it right that students from poorer backgrounds have the highest average borrowing? Typically after four years of study, they face a debt of just under £25,000, while those from better-off backgrounds are taking out significantly less by way of loans, if, indeed, they take out loans at all. Is that a principle that we should be decrying and swearing to do something significant about?
I do not think that anyone intuitively is going to say that that is the outcome that they want. It is really for the Scottish Government to answer that.
Our submission is very much based on what the people who manage admissions and retention are saying. As Vonnie Sandlan says, we are seeing students under financial stress. That is genuinely the case, and it is genuinely one of the reasons that people quote when they drop out.
On the other hand, we are also seeing a significant improvement in the retention rates for people who come from the most challenged backgrounds. Those rates are now increasing and are heading towards the rates for people who come from privileged backgrounds, and they are increasing much faster than the rates for people from more privileged backgrounds. Therefore, we are doing some things right. People are under financial stress, but the effort that is being put into retention is helping to address that effect, at least partially.
We are also seeing a progressive improvement in the proportion of students who come from the most socioeconomically challenged backgrounds, so although there are obvious barriers, more and more people are overcoming them.
The question is really for the Scottish Government. If we have a limited resource, how can we best spend it? Can we look again at redressing the balance between bursaries and loans, if we have the resource?
The First Minister told us in 2006 that a debt of £11,000 for a student who was emerging from university was a significant disincentive and would actually put them on the back foot as they entered the world of work. Is it not the case that, for those from the poorest backgrounds who remain in the system—and who shoulder more student debt—the long-term implications are really only going to play out over the next five, 10 or 15 years?
Vonnie Sandlan may want to come in on that. In principle, obviously you want people to come out of university with as reasonable a level of debt as possible, and you want that level to be fair.
We have not yet answered in Scotland the question whether the levels of debt that people are coming out with are proving to be a restraint on what they can do in their lives and careers in the long term. The levels of debt in Scotland are much lower than the levels that we are seeing in England. There is an open question about how debt will affect people’s behaviour over the course of their careers. The issue needs continued attention.
10:30However, the evidence of improved retention rates and progression into higher education of people from challenged socioeconomic backgrounds seems to indicate that while there is an issue, it is not fundamentally preventing progress on widening access, to which we are all hugely committed.
I will invite Vonnie Sandlan to respond to that in a minute.
You mentioned the longer repayment period for students south of the border—35 years compared to 25 years. You also mentioned the difference in the repayment threshold, which is £21,000 south of the border and around £17,000 in Scotland, although it is due to rise here. If we were to move in the direction of stretching out that repayment period and lifting the repayment threshold, would that have a direct and positive benefit for students from poorer backgrounds?
The Scottish Government has to answer for affordability, but raising the repayment threshold would have a beneficial effect on students. A bit of economics would need to be done around the repayment period. If it is longer, although someone may have lower annual payments, they would pay more interest over that period. Some economics would need to be done to work out what would be in the best interests of the graduate.
I am thinking specifically of poorer students.
I am sorry, but Mary Senior has been waiting to come in.
I support some of the points that Alastair Sim has been making around widening access. Universities are doing a tremendous amount to increase participation, particularly of people from socially deprived backgrounds. That requires public funding, but it is part of the pastoral work to link schools and colleges and it demands a lot of work from staff in institutions.
Our debate today emphasises the need for more public funding for post-16 education in Scotland. I draw the committee’s attention to a report that the UCU published last week, “Mind the gap: Comparing public funding in higher and further education”, which compares public funding across the UK nations. I will leave a copy for the committee. The report shows that Scotland does well, because approximately 80 per cent of the total cost per student in Scotland comes from the public purse, which compares to 63 per cent in England, 70 per cent in Wales and 68 per cent in Northern Ireland.
It is when we look at the distribution of public funding for student support and for support for higher education through the funding councils that we find issues in Scotland. For example, in England, 68 per cent of the public funding goes to student support and only 32 per cent goes directly to institutions through the funding council, whereas in Scotland, only 37 per cent goes to student support and 63 per cent goes via the funding council. That is where the dilemma lies. To the UCU, the answer is to give more public funding to higher education. We need a serious debate about how we increase funding by looking at taxation.
Everyone comes before the committee and asks for more funding. I am sure that there will be more of that as we move towards the budget. The issue here is how we best target the resources at those most in need and whether there are things that we should be doing that specifically benefit the students who, as we have all agreed, are now shouldering more of the debt burden as a result of the changes that were made in 2013. I have posited the idea of extending the repayment period and lifting the thresholds, but are there ways of channelling the additional public funding so that it goes with the grain of the efforts on widening access? Those efforts are showing results, but we need to quicken their pace and broaden their reach.
I totally agree with Mary Senior about public funding; I also agree with you about the repayment threshold. In Scotland, the repayment threshold for student loans is £17,335 before tax, which is not a large salary by any stretch of the imagination. In comparison, for post-2012 students in England, the repayment threshold is £21,000. My colleagues in NUS UK are challenging that threshold and campaigning for it to be extended because they believe that it is still too low. Low-earning graduates still have to pay their student loan debt despite not seeing any financial benefit from their education, so we support a review of the repayment threshold.
We also want more public money to be invested in grants for the poorest students. We have said repeatedly, and will continue to say, that that is the most important point, especially when we look at retention rates. We want students to be able to focus on their studies rather than being so concerned about the costs that are associated with being a person, never mind being a student, that they are not able to do that.
You have spoken about students from poorer backgrounds and the mix between bursaries and loans. Student Loan Company figures from 18 June 2015 show that Scottish students are in debt to the tune of £9,440 on average; in England, the figure is £21,180. Does the fact that Scots students graduate with a substantially lower level of debt indicate that very few people from poorer backgrounds in England and Wales apply for university? How does the £7,625 minimum income guarantee in Scotland compare with the situation in the rest of the UK?
In England, the institutions that charge the £9,000-a-year fees have to set out an outcome agreement with the Office for Fair Access. I am not sure exactly what those agreements are called, but they are similar to the outcome agreements to which our institutions sign up in Scotland. To be able to charge the higher fee levels, they have to put significant funding into bursaries for students who come from the poorest backgrounds, which at the institutional level offsets quite substantially some of the costs that those students might face. In Scotland, discretionary funding is available from universities, but the arrangement is not as formal as the arrangement that the institutions down south have.
I am afraid that I cannot speak to the income guarantee off the top of my head—I do not have the figures in front of me. However, I am more than happy to submit written evidence to the committee, if that would be okay.
Yes.
I will clarify a couple of points that Vonnie Sandlan made. You mentioned the threshold of just over £17,000, which is, of course, going up to £19,000 for the coming academic year. That is correct, is it not?
I believe so, yes.
It has been announced, as far as I am aware.
Yes, but it is still £2,000 a year less than the threshold for our counterparts in England.
However, it is going up by a substantial amount, from £17,000 to £19,000.
We have discussed student debt figures. Do you accept that, although we are all concerned about student debt levels in Scotland, they are the lowest in any country in the UK?
I do not have the figures in front of me. To be honest, my main concern is with the disparity in debt levels between the students who come from the least-deprived areas and those who come from the most-deprived areas, and how that disparity perpetuates the circumstances that students have worked incredibly hard to remove themselves from.
Gordon MacDonald used a figure of £9,000 for the average debt, but in the Who Cares? Scotland submission, the figure is £26,000 of debt on completion of a four-year degree. There is therefore some confusion about how much debt students leave university with.
We took the full loan amount and added it up over four plus one years: four years of a degree course and one year of an HNC in college.
On the debt aversion that everyone is talking about, the young people I work with through our advocacy service tell us that their corporate parents—the local authority—actively encourage them not to get into debt. They are told not to get into debt because they will get into trouble. However, they have no choice.
One of the young people with whom I work was put into a flat by the local authority when she was 16. She got herself into council tax arrears and rent arrears and had county court judgments for debt. She is now a second year student at university and is terrified about paying off her student loan debt because she has all that baggage in her life through no fault of her own.
There is debt aversion and young people’s corporate parents actively encourage them not to get into debt in the first place, but they have no choice but to get into a lot of personal debt when they are at university, as they do not have parents to go back to at the weekends. If they do not budget correctly one week or one month, they cannot just pick up the phone and get a loan of £20, say, to see them through—they have to get into personal debt, because they have no one at the end of the phone.
We were clear in our submission that we would like to see an end to loans for looked-after young people in Scotland. That does not involve a large number of people—there are 1,000 looked-after people at college and university just now, whereas there are 15,500 young people in care. We do not think that it would be too big an ask for a corporate parent such as the Scottish Government to look after Scotland’s children.
Just to clarify, the figure that you use in your submission is the maximum possible amount that somebody could have.
Yes.
It is not the average.
It is not an average. It is the maximum possible amount that someone could have, and the barriers—
That is fine—I understand now. I just wanted to clarify that.
Yes—no worries.
Good morning. The convener alluded to the changes that have been made recently with the increase in the amount of bursary payable to students from households with a lower income. As he pointed out, the income threshold for repayment has been raised from £17,000 to £19,000, which Vonnie Sandlan welcomed in May, saying:
“This is great news for Scottish students”.
Clearly, we would all like there to be a different scenario, given different financial circumstances. I am not surprised that some students are confused about the situation—I am confused. On the subject of widening access, the UCU highlighted the research that it conducted, which
“showed that Scotland had the lowest percentage of university entrants from the poorest backgrounds (26.2%)”.
In its written submission, the Scottish Trades Union Congress provided a graph that it says
“shows that Scottish Universities have made modest progress with regard to widening access”
and Universities Scotland sought to point out that “significant” progress on widening access to students has been made by HE institutions in recent years.
What I am struggling to understand is whether, against the background that I have just enunciated, the current system of student support in FE and HE is creating a barrier to efforts to widen access to higher education. I ask Mary Senior to answer first, please.
I will do my best, convener. I think that all the statistics that you have indicated are right. Scotland has traditionally had a very poor record on widening access. Although some improvement has been made recently, as Universities Scotland highlights in its submission, there is a range of complex reasons why people do not go to university. Poverty, expectations and aspirations are all related.
You need a whole range of levers to address the issue of widening access. Indeed, the commission for widening access is considering those. Part of that involves addressing the underlying issues relating to poverty; it is also about encouraging people. That is why school education and pre-school education are important in this regard. Of course, student support is one of the levers that can be used to improve people’s access to post-16 education.
I will give you a little contextual information on widening access, and we can perhaps then come on to the widening access commission’s report, which charts a way forward.
This has been an area of substantial effort and significant progress over recent years. The statistics from 2013-14 show that the number of people coming from the most challenged postcode areas went up by 10 per cent compared with the previous year, which represents continued incremental progress on widening access—a progress that is now accelerating.
If we consider who is applying to university, the chances of someone coming from one of the most challenged postcode areas having a successful application to university, if they do apply, are as good as they are for someone who applies from one of the most privileged areas. However, that is work in progress.
The widening access commission report says that a lot of good work is going on, but it is not necessarily as joined up, systematic or evaluated as it could be. All the connections right through school, college and university for encouraging aspiration and attainment from the early years onwards, which could help people to realise their full potential whatever background they come from, have not necessarily been built yet. There are some crucial things in here about better joined-up work and about making sure that we are consistent about contextual admissions and recognising people’s potential when it might not be fully demonstrated by the exam results that they have achieved.
The report does not identify student support as crucial to promoting wide access but, to come back my earlier comments, as we progress with widening access, we need to take a good evidence-based view of whether there are things that we can do to tweak the student support system and make sure that it is not proving to be a significant barrier to people realising their full potential.
10:45
I would like to follow up on that, and perhaps all the witnesses might answer. We heard earlier that some students are not applying for particular loans for which they might reasonably apply. We already have communication, information and support services, but are they efficient? Are students fully aware of all the funding opportunities that are available to them? If not, what more should we do? It is important that students should understand fully what is available to them? Is that happening and, if not, why not?
The written evidence and the evidence that you are hearing from all of us show that this is an incredibly complex and large area. There are connections between all the different facets of funding, whether it be FE funding, SDS funding or HE funding. Anecdotally, I can tell you that a summer holiday fund is available to students who have been looked after and, if I remember rightly, it has been claimed a total of nine times in five years. Social work practitioners do not know that such a fund exists and they are the corporate parents who are informing their students.
Who owns that responsibility?
The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 places a corporate parenting responsibility on a number of different organisations and we hope that that will definitely change in the future.
Is that not the problem? You say that several organisations are involved, but we should be able to point to a group or individual or whoever, notwithstanding the complexity of funding—somebody should look at how that can be rationalised—who can say to a student, “Here is everything that is available for you.”
I can help with that question. Colleges generally deal with a different cohort of learners from those who go to universities. Statistics published by the Scottish Qualifications Authority this month broke that down by five different quintiles, from the most deprived postcodes to the least deprived. The proportion of students from the least deprived postcode areas who achieved HN certification from colleges was 22.6 per cent. When we are talking about widening access, colleges are in the business of providing students who come from the most deprived and disadvantaged background with second chances and best chances. That is with the support of the funding council and the Scottish Government.
Today, you are hearing that many positive things have been done to improve student support but, as with everything, things could be better and there are better ways of doing things. The people who are around this table might not be in a position to pull the levers and make decisions about who manages the funds and makes them less complex. Government agencies manage those funds; we simply administer them on behalf of those agencies.
Are the Government agencies doing what they are supposed to be doing?
Like everyone else, they are dealing with limited budgets and are trying to do the best they can. That is my view rather than an analysis.
Yes, but it does not matter whether it is £10 or £10 million—somebody must be able to communicate what is available to the students. We have just heard about a vacation fund.
In colleges, teams of people communicate that clearly to students, but the course and how the student is funded will decide how the funds are released. If someone is on an SDS training programme, we have advisers who will advise the student what funds they can access through that. If someone is on a Scottish funding council bursary programme, we have advisers who will advise them how to access those funds. Colleges and universities employ people to advise students how they can access funds.
I will give a practical example of that. SAAS has changed its policy in relation to people with experience of care who apply to SAAS. If people tick the box saying that they are a care experienced student, they go on to a completely separate page that has tailored questions for them. They are not asked about household income or their previous address for the past five years and so on.
Simple things can be done to make that sort of thing happen. In our advocacy work, we advocate for young people across Scotland. We have a problem advising our advocates on what to do because every college does things differently. Just last week, a woman was applying to a college and she was asked to give her addresses for the past five years; she had 14 of them. She could barely remember which town they were in, never mind which postcode or street number and so on.
There are other things to consider. The group of people I am here to represent are highly unlikely to have a driver’s licence or a passport. No one has been supporting them to take driving lessons; no one has been there to take them on holiday. The risk assessment to go to the park is long enough, never mind to go for a week in Spain.
There is a lot more that colleges, universities and other organisations can do, but SAAS is leading the way on this. It is already changing its processes and doing simple things to change its policies to improve accessibility and to make the funds available to the people who need them the most.
I want to ask about the UCU Scotland report that was referred to that says that Scotland has the lowest percentage of university entrants from the poorest backgrounds. Can you give me some basis for those figures?
I guess that that has been covered already in the discussion about Scotland’s poor record on widening access. I think that that is why the Scottish Government set up the commission on widening access to try to address that. As we have mentioned already, there is a range of historical reasons why that might be the case. We have been asking why it is not happening in the same way in England, where there are £9,000 fees. Vonnie Sandlan explained that in part with reference to the bursaries that universities that charge £9,000 are able to give out to students from poorer backgrounds.
However, one of the issues that England has not grasped is access for part-time students and older learners. Scotland’s record on access for them is much better.
That was the point that I was going to make. The commission on widening access’s interim report, which was published this month, says:
“Scotland, traditionally, has a high rate of participation in higher education relative to other UK nations. In 2013/14, the Scottish HE Initial Participation Rate for those aged between 16 and 30 was 55%, compared to the English rate of 47% ... In 2013/14 the participation rate for those from the most deprived areas in Scotland was 42% – up from 35% in 2006/07.”
That ties in with Universities Scotland’s submission, which states:
“Application rates from students from deprived backgrounds to Scottish HEIs increased by 50% since 2006”.
There is also a reference from a company based in Leeds called Imactivate, which worked with the End Child Poverty campaign group. Looking at the period between 2004 and 2014, Imactivate found that
“the chances of pupils from Scotland’s more deprived areas going to university have more than doubled in the past 10 years.”
It went on to say:
“Scotland’s inequality of access does seem to be the highest of any UK nation, but over the past decade it has come down the most ... This looks like success, not failure, to me.”
There is a problem with the cross-border comparability of statistics. That has been a frustration that I have tried to address again and again. There is a cross-border group on institutional statistics that I hope will come up with an answer.
There is not a satisfactory, like-for-like cross-border comparison that we can make. There should be, and we should be able to say—particularly if we take people in different household income brackets—what people’s chances are of getting to university. The figures that you quote on progress represent a significant step change. However, it frustrates me that there is not yet a statistically sound cross-border comparison of whether people have a less good chance of going to university if they come from a challenged background.
That was the point that I was going to raise next. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service itself says that people who study higher education at further education colleges are not included in UCAS figures, and they could be up to one third of young full-time undergraduates.
That makes the comparison extremely difficult. I would much rather have the ability to work on accurate and disaggregated figures.
I could give you a very long and extended series of issues—
No, you cannot.
—but I know that I would probably get thrown out.
It has become clear from the evidence that this is an incredibly complex area, as I think I have said already. We would certainly welcome it if the committee continued to look into the issue. I want to make it clear that in no way are we saying that Scotland has anything less than a world-class education system. We are very proud of it. However, the issue is how we make student support fair and equitable. Gordon MacDonald talked about 55 per cent interaction with higher education but 42 per cent participation among those from the most deprived backgrounds, which is a difference of 13 per cent. We want to address that and to make the situation fairer. We believe that student support is key to fairness.
I have a brief question on the figure that Gordon MacDonald referred to of 42 per cent participation among those from the most deprived backgrounds. My understanding is that the figure for participation at universities is just under 16 per cent rather than 42 per cent and that the commission on widening access was charged with looking at participation rates in university. Is that a sensible distinction to make when we are talking about articulation, different pathways and routes into higher education, or should we try to keep the two things distinct in order to avoid some of the problems that arise not just for cross-border comparisons but in simply considering how well we are doing within Scotland?
HE participation means people doing higher national awards, predominantly at college, and people doing qualifications at university. When you mention 16 per cent of people going to university, do you mean that that is among people from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds? That is very low.
It is from MD20—the 20 per cent most deprived areas. The figure that I am looking at is 15.9 per cent.
Okay—if it is from MD20, that is probably about right.
College and university learners are very often the same learners at different stages in their journeys. Personally, I think—Vonnie Sandlan probably has the same view—that it makes sense to think across the system about how we support people to access the opportunities that will help them to realise their full potential. For many people, that will be an opportunity to go to college and progress through an articulation agreement to university at a later stage. That is certainly a pathway that we want to continue to grow, because it provides an important opportunity.
I echo that. NUS Scotland is very supportive of articulation and we would like it to be more and more embedded in normal practice in education.
I want to highlight another figure. We know that financial hardship puts a strain on students’ ability to complete their studies, but that is particularly apparent in further education courses, where almost 30 per cent of students fail to complete their course successfully. We have talked about articulation, and Alastair Sim has mentioned that many university learners have come from colleges. However, 30 per cent of students who start at college do not finish their qualification, because of the FE student support system which, as I have said and will continue to say, is unfit for purpose. That has to be addressed urgently.
Just to clarify, you appeared to say that 30 per cent of students at FE college fail to complete their course because of their financial situation.
It is not solely because of their financial situation, but we know that financial hardship is putting a strain on students’ ability and—
Just to be absolutely clear, you are not saying that it is because of financial hardship.
It is not only because of financial hardship, but that is a significant concern. Some of the statistics that I referenced earlier demonstrate how concerning finance is as an issue for students.
So some of the issues might be to do with financial hardship, but there may be other issues.
There may be other issues.
Thank you.
11:00
I am disappointed to hear what the witnesses are saying on articulation. I understood that, 20 or 30 years ago, people could do an HNC at college and then go into second year at university, or they could do an HNC and then an HND and then go into third year. I think that I am right in saying that students are funded only for four years of higher education. Of the students who do a two-year HND, some can get into second year but most go into first year. That is six years of higher education. It seems from what I am reading that there are no supplementary grants or bursaries, so they have to pay for some of those years themselves.
That says to me that articulation is not working. Students can finish their degree in an FE college, where they would not have that additional financial burden, but they have to be pretty rich to go to university, because they get no money for one or two years. Articulation was supposed to be the answer to widening access that we have all talked about. I am disappointed that universities and colleges are not aligning their courses to allow students to move automatically and easily between FE and HE. Am I right in thinking that that is the case?
Perhaps I can correct that misconception.
I am here to learn. I am reading your evidence.
There has been a huge amount of work over past years on widening access, and universities and colleges have been working together on very clear progression pathways. The funding council has allocated funding specifically for that. You will find in all colleges that students who are starting on an HNC programme will have an exit route that is either into work or into second year in a university. In other words, there is an articulation arrangement in place that allows that student to jump from an HNC to university.
So they have to do two years of further education before they get into their second year of higher education.
No, they can do one year of an HNC and go into second year at university. Some students choose to do an HND, which is a two-year programme, and that would grant access to third year in a university. The arrangements vary a wee bit from college to college and university to university, but there are—
That is the problem that I am picking up here.
There are arrangements in place.
Some students can go into first year and some can go into second year.
Correct.
Students really do not know, so the best thing would be to stay in further education and finish their degree. At least that way they would not have that additional year of study.
That depends—
Which is maybe not what every student wants.
Let Mr Allan answer.
That depends on the entry requirements at the higher education institution. I have been working in FE for 30 years, and when I look back over that period my perception is that articulation arrangements are better now, not worse.
However, the arrangements vary among colleges and universities across Scotland. That is what I am reading from the University of Strathclyde.
Yes. It varies from university to university and college to college.
But maybe—
Mary, it was a supplementary. Come on.
Colin Beattie has a question.
I am thinking about the various funds and grants such as disabled students allowance and the discretionary funds that are available for specific groups, and about the issues around them, including the cost of childcare. What specific measures do we need in order to remove the barriers to participation, retention and positive outcomes for disabled students, lone parents, part-time learners and so on?
The blunt answer is that there needs to be more money in the pot. The statistics that I quoted about unmet demand and the in-year review being short every year in November and December paint a very stark picture.
I do not want to keep reinforcing the point with statistics, but in the survey that we did earlier this year, 57 per cent of FE students stated that they were not clear about how much financial support would be available to them. It is a massive barrier to a parent not to know whether you can afford to pay for a breakfast club or for the childminder who is looking after your kids so that you can do your placement or go to your classes. That is especially the case for people who go into courses having been out of education for a few years and at home with their family: there are confidence issues in that.
I will reiterate what Angus Allan said earlier: widening access is something that colleges do incredibly well; it really is their bread and butter.
Childcare fund awards to students increased by 22 per cent between 2012-13 and 2013-14, which is quite a significant amount. I do not have figures to hand for disabled students allowance, but I know that that money helps a lot of students to get on and do the work that they need to do with the resources and equipment that they need to succeed. I do not want to sound flippant in any way, but the answer is that we need more money in the pot.
Do the other panel members also believe that this is all about money?
I do not believe that it is completely about money, but I find the idea of a looked-after child who has been brought up by the state joining a queue for student support a little bit absurd: it is the state’s job to look after those children. I know for a fact that when my now five-year-old boy goes to college or university, I will not sit him down and say, “Let’s have a chat about how I can support you as a student.” I am more likely to say, “Let’s have a chat about how, as your parent, I can support you through your education.” It is important to remember that in this discussion.
This is not all about funding. We talked earlier about the four-plus-one funding model and so on, but people have to be mindful of the fact that a lot of things outwith their education could be happening in a looked-after or care-experienced young person’s life.
I have brought with me a young man called Connor Chalmers, who has had a couple of cracks at getting into college. He has had to drop out both times because of external factors, one of which was that he was struggling with his workload. He was diagnosed as having global learning difficulties when he was a child, but no one told him, his teachers or the college. There was a real lack of communication between the local authority and others. That shows that it is not all about funding.
A joined-up approach is needed in our education system. The 80 per cent of care-experienced people who are leaving school at 16 with just a Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 4 qualification are not going to walk through the door of a university the next year; they are going to have to come back into education later in life and go to college to get the qualification that they need to get into university in the first place. Alastair Sim is right: we need a much more joined-up approach, and getting that approach is everyone’s duty—not just the universities’.
Taking into account what you have said, what specific steps do we need to take to support care leavers in entering and participating in further and higher education?
This year has seen partial implementation of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, as a result of which colleges and universities have, from 1 April, become corporate parents. Like the Scottish Government, they now have duties and responsibilities to look after children who are brought up in care. Part of that is the duty to assess need, so they should be assessing the need of anyone who identifies themselves as being looked after and who has additional support needs. In that respect, those individuals are also protected under earlier legislation, and they should be having those conversations with the local authority and other corporate parents even before they are in the door.
The 2014 act also puts real emphasis on collaboration between corporate parents, so it is the responsibility of a college or university to work with the local authority, the education department and the social work department to ensure that college is as accessible as possible to looked-after people. It is not just a case of giving people an extra bit of bursary funding to see them through to the end of their course; there are other factors that can make them leave education early. In order to improve the retention figures of that cohort of students, we need a joined-up and holistic system of support.
The pastoral support that people get at university is incredibly important. We are conscious that this is one of the areas in which we have to invest in people. If we are getting people from care backgrounds or from the most challenged backgrounds, we have to put extra effort into ensuring that we address their different expectations. In particular, we need to look for early indications of retention difficulty. Is the individual starting to drift out of classes? Are they not turning up? Are they not getting assignments in on time? A lot of work is now being done on developing quite sophisticated systems that enable earliest detection of the people who appear to be starting to drift out of the experience, and which allow people to go in, to ask them questions and to offer the support that they need to continue with their studies.
That sort of work is really resource intensive at a time when lecturers, librarians, student-support staff and others are being asked to do more. The emphasis in the funding levers is on research excellence, but what retains people, helps to widen access and ensures that those harder-to-reach students stay in institutions is, as Alastair Sim has indicated, the one-to-one time that is spent with students—the tutorials, the pastoral support and so on.
The new corporate parenting legislation in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 puts a responsibility on every post-16 education body, in effect, to be a parent to any young person who is care experienced. It is really important that we remember that we will have, because of the extension to the age of leaving care for those young people, not care leavers in further and higher education but, rather, young people who are still in care. It is important that there is, as Mary Senior said, a joined-up approach to ensure that there is a holistic perspective on those students and their successes. The UCAS tick-box approach has been working incredibly well, although we know anecdotally that a substantial number of care leavers still do not trust it and are not quite sure what they get out of ticking the box to say that they are a care leaver. As Robert Foster mentioned, the first question on the SAAS application form is now
“Are you or have you ever been in care?”
As Robert Foster said, those tweaks are having a massive impact on ensuring that access to education is much less stressful than it might otherwise be.
How can the funding system be improved to support better those who choose to take a longer route through higher education—for example, those who use articulation, who obviously take longer to complete their studies as a result?
It is important to be clear that articulation does not necessarily mean that the path is longer. We have pockets of really good practice with the two-plus-two model, in which people do two years at college to do their HNC and HND and then articulate straight into third year, then fourth year at university.
As was mentioned earlier, FE student funding is a cash sum and is not allocated per student. If there was a way for the funding to follow the student, that could be a solution to the question that you pose.
There is one final question, but I know that Alastair Sim and Mary Senior are keen to leave, so I am happy for them to go at this point. I apologise to Liam McArthur if his question is for either of them, but they have to go to another meeting.
I know where they live.
I am sure that that is helpful.
This question is not so much for Robert Foster, because his answer is fairly predictable. We have heard of the changes that have been brought in through the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 in relation to care leavers or those who are going through the care system. We know that the Scottish Government has placed the highest priority on closing the attainment gap either completely or measurably. Who Cares? Scotland has said that 7 per cent of looked-after school leavers progress from school to university whereas the percentage generally is 39 per cent. Budgets are all about priorities. Should addressing the discrepancy between those two figures be a priority in the budget, whether it is through additional support, pastoral care or whatever?
To be clear, it is absolutely critical to acknowledge that these are our children—Scotland’s children—and we have a responsibility to parent those children in the way that you or I would parent our own children. The answer to that is absolutely yes. Those children have to get the fair crack of the whip that they have not had up until this point. The statistic that tells us that a care leaver is more likely to see the inside of a prison than the inside of a university is a national disgrace. I would absolutely support co-ordinated work to address that.
I thank all the witnesses, including the two who have already left us, for coming. We are most grateful to you for giving us your time.
I suspend the meeting briefly to change panels.
11:13 Meeting suspended.