Environment and Rural Development Committee, 03 Sep 2003
Meeting date: Wednesday, September 3, 2003
Official Report
210KB pdf
Convener's Report
During the summer recess, I circulated to members a rather large amount of correspondence, mostly in members' circulars. I draw members' attention to the matter of the Scottish Agricultural College. We have had rather a lot of correspondence on that following the witness evidence session that we held at our meeting before the recess.
The most recent letter from Ross Finnie refers to "benchmarking" SAC courses against other educational courses, but that leaves open the question of which courses the SAC courses will be benchmarked against. I recommend that we write back to the minister asking him to clarify the matter, because it will be an important financial issue in the SAC's future plans.
Since we issued the committee papers, I have received another letter from Brian Adam MSP and an e-mail from a member of the public. I recommend that we put the issues that they raise to the SAC and ask it to comment further. That is all that I recommend today but, now that I have circulated all that information, I invite comment from members. We took fairly extensive evidence at our meeting before the recess.
The question of benchmarking requires to be emphasised, especially in relation to the cost of agricultural education. We must stress again that the resource base for agricultural education is unlike that for most desk-top education. When we find out what the costs of the SAC's courses will be benchmarked against, we ought to ask whether the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council supports similar courses and whether we could be given some examples of equivalents for that benchmarking exercise.
The purpose of writing the letter is to clarify that issue. The SAC's courses could be benchmarked against lecture or class-based programmes, which would be entirely different from more intensive programmes. Do members have any other comments?
I felt that it was important to bring the issue back to the committee, given that we held a formal inquiry before the recess. The minister now has phase 3 of the Deloitte & Touche report, so I imagine that there will be an announcement on the SAC fairly soon. It is important that the final letters go back as soon as possible.
During the recess, I attended a meeting of the Game Conservancy Trust on behalf of the committee, in my capacity as convener. Many very good discussions were held. I also went on Scottish Environment LINK's farming visit last week.
Meeting continued in private.
Meeting continued in public.