Public Audit Committee
Meeting date: Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Official Report
435KB pdf
Public Audit Committee Report
“Scotland’s colleges 2013”
Under item 4, we have a response from the Scottish Government on the report on Scotland’s colleges. Are there any comments?
You will note the Auditor General’s comments that her next report is due to be published in early 2015. She mentioned that a couple of times in response to the points that we raised. Perhaps the best opportunity for us to pick up further on the colleges report will be at that point.
One comment was:
“The Scottish Government expects the SFC to fund colleges in line with the outcome agreements they negotiate: we do not, therefore, expect colleges to transfer significant amounts of public funds to ALFs.”
The Times Education Supplement Scotland has been doing an investigation, and I think that it identified a substantial figure running into the millions of pounds. It would be helpful to have clarified exactly how much has been put into the arm’s-length foundations. We can certainly ask the Scottish Government to follow that up later on, but it would be helpful to have information just now about how much is currently going into those foundations. I am not quite sure what the definition of “significant” is in this context, and that is one of the areas that concerns many people.
I agree. We should get to the facts of the matter on that. A statement was made and we need to establish whether the amount of public funds is significant.
Do we agree to write to the Scottish Government to ask for clarification and for the up-to-date figure? We will hold the item until we get a response.
Members indicated agreement.