Official Report 370KB pdf
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the fourth meeting in 2006 of the Equal Opportunities Committee. I remind all present that mobile phones should be turned off, as they interfere with our sound system. I have received apologies from Elaine Smith.
I welcome this opportunity for NUS Scotland to give evidence to the committee on behalf of the students whom we represent. We feel that careers advisers can have quite a limited knowledge of the issues surrounding disabilities and disabled students. That can lead to negative stereotypes running through the system. We also think that the careers advice that is given to pupils in specialist schools can be under par compared with the advice that is given in mainstream education.
That is helpful. You mentioned special schools. Do you think that there is an issue about attitudes in special schools and people's ideas about what disabled students are capable of doing, or is there just a lack of links with the careers service?
It can come down to attitudes, although staff in special schools acknowledge the issues a lot more widely than those in mainstream education do. Perhaps the boxes that they have to tick are a lot more varied and they are too busy ticking the boxes to think, "Let's get them out of the special sector and put them into the mainstream education sector." There should be a greater focus on mainstreaming disability issues.
I agree with pretty much everything that Scott Cuthbertson said. I can speak only for the higher education sector and not for further education, but I believe that not enough disabled students are told what they can do. That applies to schools as well. When pupils are thinking about moving on to further or higher education, they are not encouraged enough or given enough information about what they can do when they get into FE or HE. A lot of the focus is on the negative and on what they cannot do.
We have been told that a key worker scheme run along local authority lines would be helpful. However, you are suggesting that an approach involving Careers Scotland would be better.
A key worker could be very beneficial in helping out a disabled student. However, having a key worker might not necessarily solve the transition problems. Transition can be a terribly traumatic time for a non-disabled student and, for a disabled student, there are many more problems that must be sorted out before they attend university. A key worker alone cannot resolve those issues.
Thank you. We will be hearing from SAAS later.
We believe that a key worker approach is the right way to go, although it will not solve every problem. Our biggest fear is that if individual staff are put in to deal with each disabled student, that will lead to a whole new process that disabled students will have to go through but which mainstream students will not. That could lengthen the waiting period before disabled students enter further or higher education and lead to new complexities in the system. Also, although key workers are a good idea, it should be more about having more than one key worker—perhaps having three key workers who will be able to support the team of workers already on the ground and deal with any backlogs that develop.
Would it be helpful for a disabled student to attend a course earlier, to ensure that the adaptive technology is available? We heard that, for some universities and colleges, the technology works well, but in others it does not. Students find that they do not have the appropriate computer hardware or software that they need to be able to work. How can that be overcome?
Much of that will come down to more even assessments of disabled students to identify their best learning styles and the technology that they could use to improve their learning experience. As Katy McCloskey said, the students need to be able to use the systems easily and to go in early enough to work out how the systems will improve their learning experience. A lot of the systems that are in place are quite complicated, and they may not be what some students want or need.
I can give you an illustration of a model that works quite well. The University of Stirling has a good system. A student who is thinking about applying to the University of Stirling can visit the university and spend the day with information technology people and support workers to find out more about the services that would be available to them if they decided to attend the university. The students to whom we have spoken who have benefited from that all feel that the main reason why they decided to attend the university was the fact that they felt reassured. The visit also gives the university the opportunity to assess the students' needs and the level of support that they would require if they attended the university. It helps to break the ice and allows the university to assess what IT support and so on the students would require.
Transition is not just about assisted technology; a lot of reasonable adjustments regarding teaching and learning methods need to be carried out by an institution right at the start of the term. That is one of the biggest problems for disabled students. It is not just about not getting their equipment on time, not getting their forms filled in on time, and not getting their money on time; it is also about what happens when they get to lectures and the classroom, getting notes in advance and arranging meetings with lecturers. I do not think that those problems should be overlooked. A lot of the time, the transition is a settling-in period, and institutions are perhaps reluctant to view lecturers being late with notes, not meeting students when they need to be met or not talking to them before classes as discrimination. By weeks 3 and 4, however, someone who is only just getting their notes is already behind. They are already suffering and cannot hand in their coursework on time.
It is about people being organised and being aware of what students need.
I am interested in what the panel has said about the transition to university and what happens when a student is at university. You will be aware of the disability premium funding that universities can get from the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council. Would it help if that funding was in place before the students went to university? Could it have a dual role?
Disability premium funding is limited. The money is given to the institution to use as it sees fit. For example, some institutions use it to help disabled students with technologies that they might need in certain departments or to service groups that enable students with Asperger's syndrome to get together.
The fund can finance advisers, too.
We will discuss funding shortly.
I am sorry; I just wondered whether advisers would represent a step forward.
What examples can the panel give us of good practice in supporting disabled students in further and higher education?
Gail Edwards mentioned good practice at the University of Stirling, which leads the way in the HE sector in Scotland on disabled learning, from the application process to learning by disabled learners at the institution. Aberdeen College has a disabled student forum that works throughout the college, which students find extremely helpful, because information passes back and forth between them and the forum about course work, systems and so on. Those are the two main examples that we have of good practice in the HE and FE sectors.
I tried to find out about good practice. It says a lot that, when I asked disabled students what good practice their institutions had, they said, "None." That speaks volumes. However, at the University of Strathclyde, a good use of the premium that Sandra White talked about is for an Asperger's group. Many Asperger's students at university are quite isolated, so a user group was established to allow them to meet, to talk about the problems of being at university and of transition and to support one another. However, it was hard to find out from students whether their institutions had good practice.
If there is a strong students association, an autonomous group of students with disabilities or a disabled students group can take good practice issues to the association's governing body. Many universities and colleges have disabled students officers.
Scott Cuthbertson is right, but students associations have many problems in establishing disabled students groups. Sometimes, they are much harder to set up than lesbian, gay and bisexual groups or women's groups, because a terrible problem in HE—and, I presume, in FE—is underdisclosure of disabilities, particularly in mental health. A students association is only as good as the people who actively represent the students. Sometimes, it can be hard to give disabled students a voice if they do not come forth and become involved in the campaign. Much of that is to do with stigma and attitudes, but we must tackle the massive underdisclosure, particularly in mental health.
That is a good point.
The committee heard at its consultation events about pretendy courses that have no meaningful outcomes or qualifications. What can further and higher education providers do to ensure that students have sufficient choice in their courses?
That question is about further education, so perhaps Gail Edwards or Scott Cuthbertson could answer.
A few issues relate to extended learning support and dominant programme group 18 courses. The weighting that those courses attract from the funding council means that there is a better chance that a college will encourage a student to participate in such a course, rather than a mainstream course. For example, one of our students achieved good higher results at school and wanted to go to university but to do an access course first at college. When he turned up at the college, he was ushered on to a dominant programme group 18 course to learn about cooking, although he wanted to do an access course in IT.
Students get into university or college on the basis of academic credit. Why should that not be the same for a disabled student? Why should they be siphoned off to do DPG 18 courses when they have already proven that they have an academic credit record that could sustain them through the course that they want to take? As Gail Edwards said, if a more student-centred approach was taken, learning programmes would be modified so that disabled students could participate in all courses instead of being told that they cannot be accommodated.
If a student is put on to a dominant programme group 18 course, a clear progression route towards a mainstream course should be set out for them. Some colleges do that very well. The funding council asks colleges to provide evidence of student learning support plans and progression routes. As I said, there is good practice in the sector on such routes, but some colleges are failing to achieve that good practice.
Obviously, I cannot speak about DPG courses. I return to what I said before, which is that not enough disabled students are encouraged either in school or university to do the things that they want to do, and they are not given enough information about what they can do. It would be useful for students to be able to access a key worker—someone who could carry them through from school and help them to find out which course they could do and what adjustments could be made.
The committee has received written evidence that there should be more vocational courses, perhaps developed with supported employment providers, to assist people to gain core employment skills. What are your thoughts on that suggestion?
We have a strong feeling that students with disabilities often think that they are being steered towards vocational work because of the preconceptions or stigma that surround their disability. I agree that there should be a core focus on employability skills, but that should be for all students, not only disabled students.
Lack of flexibility in certain courses has been highlighted as a problem in written evidence to the committee. Are courses flexible enough?
NUS Scotland has heard of a number of cases in which students who want either to record their lectures or to be given the lecture notes before the lecture have been told by the lecturer, "I'm sorry, but I cannot allow that. The lecture is intellectual property." That is a bit strange. After all, students are expected to take notes at lectures; why can disabled students not have the same opportunity to benefit from the lecture system? Lecturers should not penalise disabled students; instead, they should disregard the intellectual property argument and allow their lectures to be recorded.
Are you actually prevented from recording lectures, or is doing so permissible?
There is great disparity across Scotland. Although I have never been prevented from recording any lectures at Paisley University, NUS Scotland has heard of students being told that they cannot do so because the lecture itself is intellectual property.
Obviously, it would be advantageous to roll out the approach that you have described across the country.
I hope that that will happen.
Flexibility is not taken seriously enough when academic courses are designed. The fact that lectures, particularly in higher education, are very central to courses can cause problems for students who might have to miss them for various health reasons or who do not feel that they can take in all the information. Courses, lectures and tutorials must be flexible enough to ensure that all students can get all the notes and information without necessarily having to sit in a lecture theatre and copy them down themselves.
There is a very useful project in further education, to which I would like to draw the committee's attention. The quality and equality of learning and teaching materials project is examining ways of producing a toolkit that will enable lecturers to develop their own, more inclusive, curriculum materials for students. The project, which is being funded by the Scottish funding council, is run out of Stevenson College and covers all sorts of needs whether they relate to race, religion, disability or sexual orientation. That is happening only in further education, and I hope that the QELTM model will be rolled out to the higher education sector.
There is also the teachability project, which is about encouraging lecturers to build their classes flexibly and to write their prospectuses to be encouraging. That is a very good system for making things more open.
A further point on the teachability project is that lecturers should perhaps receive disability training as part of their continuing professional development once every few months to top up their skills and ensure that they are meeting the needs of everyone in their class.
What more could further and higher education providers do to make adjustments to their courses?
As Scott Cuthbertson said, training is very important. Some institutions make training in the accessible curriculum compulsory for new lecturers and postgraduate tutors, but some institutions do not do that with the result that new tutors who come into academia slip through the net unless they want to go along and get the training. The people who take the training are often those who do not need it; it is those who are reluctant to provide the adjustments and flexibility who need the training but will not go. Unless the training is made compulsory, we will not get anywhere, certainly with higher education.
The demographics of lecturing staff in colleges and universities show that very few of them are disabled. That is quite telling of the traditional university environment, which is changing but very slowly. There is still not enough representation of disabled people in the workforce.
That is obviously a result of the old methods of doing things; it is to be hoped that that will improve.
We have had a lot of written and oral evidence on funding. It would be quite good if you could address not just the Scottish funding council's funding, but that of Scottish Enterprise, because it is a large funder of vocational education as well.
About 50 per cent of the cases involving disabled students that I deal with in my role as education officer for the NUS are about the struggle to get funding in time. One of the most significant issues, particularly in higher education, is the assessment of needs. At the moment, that is a long, protracted process that can be quite difficult.
To echo what Gail Edwards said about the DSA, I cannot make the point often enough that assessment needs to happen earlier so that funding and equipment are ready for the start of term. Sometimes the problem is that the forms can take a long time to be processed. The question of why the form has to be so lengthy has come up a lot in my investigations. There are a great deal of questions on the DSA application form, such as what the student's adjustments were previously and what adjustments will need to be made. The form is long and laborious. I question the need for all those questions—I wonder why SAAS needs to know those things. It could be the form that is holding up the application process. As I said, the forms can take eight hours to get sorted; if there are 100 new students in an institution, that is a long time.
I want to talk about two big barriers in funding. First, disabled students have to get their DSA applications signed by their institution. As Katy McCloskey mentioned, disclosure is a big problem for such students, as they might not want to disclose to their institution that they have a disability. That can be a big barrier, so we do not think that the institution should have to sign off a DSA application.
I will follow that up by asking about the support that is available to help disabled students negotiate their way through the maze of college and university funding. How easy is it for them to access information on the courses and funding that are available? Are they aware of the help and support that they can get? How easy is it for them to find the right information?
It varies across the country. There are many excellent examples of institutions that employ good practice, such as the University of Stirling, but there is no parity across HE and FE institutions. When I went to university, I knew nothing about such matters and very little information came my way to help me to look for further advice. The adviser in my students association was able to point me in the right direction.
There are two issues. There is the information that someone needs to enable them to choose their university and there is the information that they need before they go to university. The information that is provided in prospectuses has been mentioned. Not enough is done to ensure that the prospectus information provides the answers to the questions that disabled students want answered. It is not enough just to tag on answers to possible questions at the end of the prospectus. Universities need to be extremely careful when they describe their courses and their campuses. They must say what needs to be done and what can be done—what is compulsory as part of a course and what is not. The wrong information could be highly off-putting for many students before they go to university. They might read a description of a course and think that they cannot do it, but that might just be misinformation. Aspiring young people should not be put off because negative imagery or negative wording is used in a prospectus. That might result in students being pushed into doing courses that they do not want to do. More information needs to be provided.
Can the initial information that is given be issued in an accessible format?
I have not heard from anyone who has said that the initial information has not been provided in appropriate formats, such as Braille or large print.
I am not aware of that either. I would say that we are forgetting that loads of information is available in the voluntary sector already. Perhaps the important issue is to get better links with the voluntary sector and the community education sector. We cannot forget the issue of the student experience. Someone's life experience has a fundamental impact on what they learn. We need to ensure that disabled students have access to the social side of student life and can get information and support from their peers.
We all know that the funding cake is getting smaller and smaller. Katy McCloskey said that it would be useful to have someone to tell people exactly what is happening before they get to university. However, what do you think of the fact that, as Gail Edwards has said, the money is not ring fenced? If the money were ring fenced, and if the disabled students premium could be used to fund an adviser who could tell people how to access disability allowances and so on, as well as offering some sort of befriending service, would that help?
An institution in Nottingham ring fences some of its money for pre-entry induction. That is definitely a good idea. Institutions need to be more focused on induction. However, I would like them to get more money for that purpose as I do not think that it should be done at the expense of anything else. By and large, I think that the premium is spent quite well by higher education institutions.
We would encourage a befriending service that was organised by the university, although it would probably be better if such an initiative were to come from the students' peers rather than from the university. Perhaps the students association could provide such a service in conjunction with the university or college.
You have talked a little bit about the perceived stigma around disclosure and we have had a bit of a discussion about training. Do you believe that staff training in disability equality would be a way of combating negative attitudes towards disabled people in further and higher education?
Yes, but only if the training is compulsory, as I said earlier. In my experience, the people who opt for such training are the ones who need it least. They are the ones who are aware and who think about what they say before they say it in case it might have hurtful connotations. They already think about whether their teaching style might create barriers for people with disabilities. The people who do not choose to go on the training are the ones who need it the most, so the training needs to be compulsory, for the new people coming into academia and for the older ones.
Apart from training, do you have any other suggestions for combating those attitudes?
Not really—training is definitely what is needed at the moment. Attitudes can be bad among fellow students and work needs to be done to combat that. In one example, a student's mother asked for her child to be removed from a hall of residence because the person they were living with had severe epilepsy. Things like that are not fair.
I support everything that Katy McCloskey has just said. The difference between the further and higher education sectors is marked. On lecturers' attitudes, in further education, lecturers with specialist skills might be invited in. For example, plumbers and joiners might come in from the trade. That group of lecturing staff can be overlooked when it comes to training. It is important to ensure that they are given some sort of awareness training, too.
Perhaps the Quality Assurance Agency could be brought in to evaluate teaching styles.
Training is fine, but it is not enough if people do not follow it through. As I said, there is not enough institutional focus or recognition of the need to make the necessary adjustments—not to do so is discrimination. People in higher education need to look at that long and hard. Lecturers can often be persistent offenders—not providing notes on time, not meeting students, rushing through overhead projections and not providing them in a large enough font. Institutions need to take such issues seriously. Not much is being done about it.
On a lighter note, but still on college life, do your members have the same opportunities to participate in student life, for example by joining a union or other society, working part time or socialising?
Earlier, I talked briefly about the important role that outside life plays in education. We are aware that the current funding models do not take into account students' life outside education. They need to start doing that. They do not support additional activities or enable disabled students to go along to join clubs and societies. That creates a barrier between disabled students and their fellow students that it is not always possible for people to overcome. First, we need to consider developing an assessment model in which outside activities play a key role. Then we need to ensure that all college and university facilities are accessible, including students associations, sports fields and other facilities around the campus. A student's outside life plays a fundamental part in their life as a student, so we must ensure that disabled students can play as full a part as possible in that side of things.
For students who receive benefits, working and even volunteering can be a challenge and a concern, particularly if they receive benefits because of a mental health problem. They are constantly worried about whether they can volunteer, whether that will be seen as evidence of their ability to work and whether their money will be taken off them. That can be quite a trial, and the same applies to part-time work.
Are you content that your members know where to go to access information about the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the rights that the legislation provides?
The short answer to that is no. Much more work needs to be done through students associations, colleges and universities to get information about legislation out there in the public domain. Perhaps such information should even be built into the school leavers' programme or inductions, which Katy McCloskey mentioned earlier, to ensure that it gets out there. We must remember that a lot of legislation out there, on sexual orientation, disability, race and gender, covers students. Students must be able to digest information easily and know where to go if they require further information.
Students who are reluctant to push for what they require or who are always apologetic and say things such as, "I'm really sorry, but can you give me notes?" need to be equipped with knowledge about their rights and to know that what they need to be given to continue their education is not being provided. They need to know that it is wrong that something is not being provided and why they should—rather than could—ask for things.
So you do not think that people would have more confidence about being more assertive if they thought that they had legislative back-up.
Students who are hesitant and apologetic need to be more assertive. I was hesitant and apologetic, but I started to say to people, "Right. These are my rights and I'm not going to go away until you give me the notes." I can be quite pushy, but I have met plenty of disabled students in my five years in education who are not assertive. The number of books and statutes that are thrown at them will make no difference. Some people simply do not like to push, ask and pester because they are not comfortable doing so. We are not talking about only one lecture—there could be five or six lectures a week. There can be a lot of work and trawling. After a student has pushed and pestered a few times and is not getting anywhere, they can say to themselves, "What's the point? Everything is against me." As I said, if equipment is late, the DSA does not come on time and students cannot deal with their lecturers, they might simply want to leave in the second or third week as a result of all the stress. A fine balance needs to be struck.
So is there more of a role for students organisations such as the National Union of Students Scotland and the Coalition of Higher Education Students in Scotland, which you represent? Are you discharging a role on behalf of your members?
As I said, we need to campaign to make students aware of their rights, but the issue must also be addressed by the institutions, which must back up such a campaign. When students are told about their rights, they should go to the institution and people should not have to keep on telling them that there is a positive feeling about disabilities in institutions, that lecturers are encouraged to meet requirements, and that disability services are fully funded and are given all the staff and resources that they need to follow things through. Students frequently do nothing and suffer in silence or tell a fellow student to accompany them and ask for more assistance.
There is a role for the NUS in the dissemination of students' rights. We do that day in, day out with students who come to us. Dissemination should be not just for students but for college and university lecturers and staff. Instead of students having to point out their right to have courses made accessible to them, college and university staff and lecturers should know what they must do to make courses accessible.
Students associations in universities are generally well funded and are able to provide specific people to support students with disabilities. However, the situation is different in the FE sector. Some colleges do not provide enough resources and, in turn, the students associations are not able to provide services to students. There is a missing link in the chain in that sector.
Is there sufficient accessible accommodation for students in further and higher education?
The view in the NUS is that disabled students will end up living with other disabled students. There will be one accessible complex or flat provided by a university or college. The student experience will be based on that. That ghettoises the issue. All student accommodation should be accessible in one way or another. We are not saying that there should be wheelchair accessible bedrooms in every flat. However, there should be more wheelchair and disabled person accessible accommodation so that disabled students can mix with the general student population and make friends like everyone else. Why should they miss out on the home life of any other student?
I agree that there needs to be more accessible housing for disabled students. In my experience, only a specific floor is accessible for disabled students. It can be unfair for disabled students to be thrown in with other disabled students just because they have a disability, so that they cannot experience student life with other students. Some institutions that I have spoke to—I have a note about the University of Dundee—point out that there is accessible accommodation. However, often it is not where students want it to be. For example, they are given self-catering accommodation when they want catered accommodation. In other cases, it is not accessible or additional rooms are not provided for personal assistants, which can be a problem. Institutions that are building new student halls of residence are beginning to have a spread-out approach, in that there will several accessible rooms in each building. New buildings are okay but the older ones pose a problem.
Many students who attend universities away from home choose to move to private housing after one or two years in student accommodation. Public policy should provide an impetus to private landlords to make their properties as accessible as possible. That can be difficult in places such as Edinburgh, where wheelchair access is a particular problem, but we need some recognition that students should have the choice, irrespective of their needs. Private housing stock is not adequate for many students.
Should there be a residential college in Scotland?
I represent the Coalition of Higher Education Students in Scotland, so I cannot speak for initiatives in further education. However, I would not like higher and further education to be let off the hook by a system in which the sectors did not have to bother making their institutions accessible because all disabled students could attend a residential college. We should be careful not to encourage such an attitude.
We would welcome a residential college in Scotland, but we are concerned that it might be set up in such a way as to be regarded as a special school. We hope that the approach that was taken would prevent such an attitude from developing. Residential colleges or schools should be open and accessible not just to disabled students but to all students. Perhaps the issue is less about considering a single residential college than it is about ensuring that all colleges extend their provision for students who have disabilities and complex needs.
I asked about a residential college because the matter was raised in 2005. Some students think that they are at a disadvantage because there is no residential college.
Residential colleges can certainly run specialist courses that other colleges might not be able to offer. There are advantages and disadvantages to residential colleges, which must be carefully considered.
I thank the witnesses for giving evidence. You have given us helpful answers to our many questions. Please tell us—very briefly—if we have missed any aspects of the barriers that students face that we should include in our report.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome the next panel of witnesses. Lorna Caldwell, Leia Fitzgerald and Alan Scott are from the Student Awards Agency for Scotland—I am sorry, I am getting ahead of myself. I was too busy looking at the clock.
I will answer that question, but I start by making a personal declaration. I happen also to be a member of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, but that is not the capacity in which I am here; I am here as a member of Glasgow Caledonian University's senior staff.
Colleges have a broadly similar structure. Jewel and Esk Valley College has an equality and diversity group that is chaired by the college principal. Beneath that, there is an infrastructure of posts and service providers that support disabled students and others who experience barriers to learning.
I endorse those comments. They reflect what further education colleges provide.
Similarly, the University of Strathclyde's disability advisory group is chaired by the deputy principal. As the head of the disability service, I have regular access to that person—we have monthly meetings. The deputy principal takes a considerable interest in the issues and reports to the university management group to ensure that people at that level are well aware of the issues.
Such a programme must include everyone who works in the organisation. The Scottish Further Education Unit and other voluntary organisations have come to Jewel and Esk Valley College to run training on disabilities. That training, which was originally specifically on the DDA but has latterly covered equality and diversity issues, is mandatory for all staff in all positions throughout the organisation. We are trying to effect a culture change, so the training must involve everybody.
Are you happy that there is a top-down structure? Policy decisions do not always get through to all the staff who are involved.
We are very happy. Often, people who hold key posts in further education colleges, such as student services managers, are responsible and directly accountable to a member of the senior management team, if not the principal himself. It is a two-way process, so both sides are clearly aware of the issues and resolutions.
We must ensure that resources follow the strategy. A considerable amount of money has been spent on accessibility, including making adjustments and modifications to existing buildings and estate, and ensuring that principles of accessibility are built into the design of new buildings. I am not talking only about accessibility for wheelchairs but about, for example, lifts that talk so that people know what floor they are on, improved signage and colour contrast within buildings. Important investment has been made in such things.
I do not want to start talking about funding if we will do so later—
We will.
I will take up Jenny Rees's point. At the University of Strathclyde, we have a disability resource development fund, which allows the deputy principal to encourage academic and other departments to think about how they can promote the accessibility of provision, and to think about refurbishment of desks, of computer hardware and software, and so on. Departments can apply to that fund, which has been created with part of premium funding. The aim is not only to improve provision but to increase awareness of existing provision.
Earlier, we heard a lot about careers advice. How do you work with young disabled people at school to prepare them for college and university?
Universities are there for everybody who is able to benefit from a university education. If people happen to have a disability, that is merely an additional factor that we have to take into account. As we heard in the eloquent evidence of previous witnesses, coming to university is a confusing process for all students, who have to work out what they want to study and where. The sort of advice that we offer would apply to all students. Most obviously, we advise them to read our materials on prospectuses and to come to visit the campus to speak to the staff. That is more important for students with disabilities. We advise them to make early contact to find out whether their particular needs can be met and whether their chosen programme is appropriate and will be one that they can cope with and enjoy. Like any other student, a disabled student has to be able to make well-informed choices.
I would add a couple of points to the picture that Jenny has sketched. At whatever stage students find themselves in their education or careers, we welcome their coming to the university to find out more about what is available. In addition, when we offer disabled applicants places on courses, the disability service automatically gets in touch with them so that preparations can be made.
I want to reinforce an important point about role models. Several current programmes involve the use of role models—in the west of Scotland, we have the GOALS—greater opportunity for access and learning in schools—initiative, which is a major initiative to encourage to come to university people from a range of schools that have not traditionally sent people there, including schools that have pupils with disabilities. The programme involves the use of students as mentors and role models, including students who have disabilities. My university has the FE/HE articulation project, which has a disability strand that is aligned with a mentoring strand. Students who come to university from college after completing a higher national certificate or diploma can receive support from a student mentor. Interestingly, several of the group who have volunteered to act as mentors are students who have disabilities. That is crucial, because people think, "If they can do it, so can I."
There are fairly well-worn tracks from special schools into special programmes in colleges, which are often facilitated by careers advisers, but there is sometimes a danger that expectations become fixed. However, applications to colleges from schools careers teams and guidance staff are increasingly for courses that offer a bridge into mainstream courses, as a foretaste of full college life. People think that they might apply for a mainstream course a year down the line. Careers teams certainly help to smooth the transition for young people from schools.
Ruth Hendery mentioned adults who self-refer or who do not come directly from a school, where people are more directly supported by careers advisers. We used to have specialist careers officers but, by design, they have now more or less disappeared. It is interesting that the NUS witness referred to students who have special needs feeling that they are not fully supported by careers advisers because their skills and knowledge of issues such as courses, entry requirements and exit routes have become too generic. We may need to reconsider that situation. Careers officers who have much more specialist knowledge of special needs issues may have a role to play in meeting individuals' needs.
The careers service has had Beattie funding to provide transition workers, but that funding is coming to a conclusion and some of those workers will no longer be in post. They made a contribution for some people by tackling many of the issues and difficulties and by making the transition from school to college more straightforward.
We have heard in evidence that disclosing disability is a complex issue and that, if students are to disclose, that should happen only once, to a disability adviser. How do you manage disclosure?
I will pick up on a point that Katy McCloskey and others made—I note that underdisclosure in relation to mental health is a significant concern and needs to be worked on. What a student discloses and what it is appropriate to pass on from that must be unpicked carefully. At the University of Strathclyde, the evidence about a student's impairment is held in the disability service. What is disclosed thereafter to academic and other colleagues is the likely impact of a student's impairment on his or her studies. The impairment is not named unless the student makes it explicit that they want that to be available. The label is unhelpful, because what someone who has a visual or hearing impairment requires in higher education is so wide open that it must be interpreted.
We want students to disclose information for two reasons. The first, as Anne Simpson said, is to ensure that the support that students need is in place. If a student in a university does six separate modules in a year, that student will deal with six, or probably more, members academic staff. We take the approach that Anne Simpson described; we ensure that the support that a student needs—the additional time in examinations or whatever—is made known to the people who can ensure that it happens.
One key requirement is to provide enough information and staff when the student wants access to them. We are busy saying proactively that all the support services exist and that they are easy to find, and we are giving students lists of names and faces but, sometimes, students are overwhelmed at the beginning. When they arrive in college and are simply looking at what is going on, they have a great deal to absorb in the early stages.
Many colleges, not just my own, are finding more and more that students who had not declared anything at the beginning of the course are self-referring later on to an extended learning support manager or to a tutor who is responsible for delivering support services. I hope—indeed, I believe—that, even at that later point we see to students' needs and give them the same responsive support that we give to students who follow the usual process of referral through a guidance tutor or through a declaration on an enrolment form. We do not demand that they go back and follow the proper processes; we simply respond to the need that is presented to us at the time.
I realise that we have covered a number of points about careers advice and the transitions between previous existence and college or university. We have heard that disabled students find it particularly useful to have an early start because that allows them to deal with matters such as test-support provision in order that they can orient themselves on the campus and ensure that services are in place for them. How do you provide those kinds of opportunities for disabled students?
The simple answer is that such opportunities are important and are available to students. Students are positively advised to try out the campus—perhaps when it is a bit quieter—and see how it works. In any case, students certainly receive encouragement and support in that respect.
Does the timetable for applying for and being accepted on a course contain constraints? For example, someone said earlier that things start to swing into place when a course is offered. Are there constraints in respect of when students apply and when they are accepted that make it difficult to pick disabled students out of the thousands of people who apply, and to get provision in place to give them an early opportunity to experience campus life?
Ideally, a student should apply through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service by 15 January and, if they have ticked a particular box on the form, we respond immediately to find out their needs.
Colleges face more of a problem in that respect because they often receive applications significantly later. We have arrangements with the careers service to deal with young people who have learning difficulties and who might well come from supported units in mainstream schools or from special schools. In order to prepare them for moving on, those young people might, for example, take link courses at college. In fact, in the city, students can take link courses at two or three colleges, after which they will be asked to make a decision. The courses are vital in allowing students to get a feel for college life and to see what they like about it. Those courses also indicate to students the skills that it would be useful for them to acquire in their leaving year.
I concur with everything that Ruth Hendery said. I have nothing to add.
Students know that they can go to university when they get their higher results in August and there is sometimes considerable pressure at that time to make sure that the right arrangements for the transition are made. When a student requires funding support for independent living, the social work department that is responsible for the student might need to be encouraged to come up with the direct payments that will enable them to live independently in halls. Previously, if the parent was the carer, the arrangements would have been straightforward, but if the student wishes to stay in halls, persuasion has to come into force to make sure that that is financially possible. I have seen problems in that area.
What physical mechanisms are in place to support disabled students?
Will you clarify what you mean by "physical mechanisms"?
Practical mechanisms, then.
My university has an arrangement that is not dissimilar to that of the University of Strathclyde. We have a central disability team of disability advisers and we have disability co-ordinators in each of the eight academic schools. They are members of the academic staff, so their role as disability co-ordinator is one of their duties. We also have the normal provision to staff of equalities and disability awareness training. That provides the human link and the human contact, particularly once the student has disclosed what their needs are. We hope that that will enable their needs to be met.
I could go on for a long time but perhaps the committee does not want me to. The project has been successful. It attempts to make sense of the complexity of the issues around meeting the needs of disabled students in an academic context. For example, the person who is teaching next week's seminar ought to be aware of the potential issues for any disabled students, and the person who is organising placements, preparing field trips or setting exams needs to think about the accessibility of arrangements. Getting to a situation in which disabled students are not people for whom adjustments have to be made but people for whom routine provision is more often right than not is the desirable social model of disability. One way of regarding teachability is as an attempt to apply the social model of disability to higher education by asking what makes education accessible and what gets in the way of students making use of a lecture.
In colleges, the infrastructure reflects much of that activity. Most colleges have a central student services team that picks up on a broad range of general issues that are of concern to all students. However, the team will include people with experience of working in the field of disability.
I seem to be in the excellent position of being fourth in the line of witnesses, which gives me the opportunity to concur with everything that my colleagues say. I want to add just one point, about which I am enthusiastic. I presume that most colleges are like Cumbernauld College, in that they have effective and efficient estates management teams. Such teams are transforming the physical institutions in Scotland and making them accessible, inclusive and—on the whole—pleasant, comfortable and responsive environments in which to study and work. We are moving much more quickly towards achieving those standards throughout the further education sector and I congratulate estates managers on their achievements.
How is the support that witnesses described monitored and evaluated to ensure that it achieves its aims?
We should start with Miki Quigley this time.
We monitor and evaluate support in a variety of ways and we involve the students themselves in the process. In Cumbernauld College, students have ownership of their personal learning log. At various times during the academic year, students reflect on and evaluate their learning progression and the support mechanisms that the college has put in place. Students can do that by themselves or with support and input from their guidance tutors. They are asked to give both an evaluation and their view of whether they feel that the support is right and is allowing them to progress towards their predetermined goals or whether they have changed their goals as they have moved along.
Informally, we have self-evaluation, which is the quality control mechanism through which all the teams—the academic teams, the learning support team and the guidance team—are obliged to evaluate their own processes and services. As Miki Quigley said, central to that is what the student thought about the service that they got. That is part of the process. In addition, when Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education comes in every four years, it drills down and examines all the data and evidence. As members know, we publish information about the performance of the different teams and the extent to which they are considered to be doing the jobs that they are paid to do.
From what I have seen of the written evidence, it appears that the students are satisfied.
That is what comes out in the college audits.
That is right. The simple answer to Mr McGrigor's initial question is that we ask the students themselves. It is pleasing and encouraging that the various studies that we do suggest that many disabled students are happy. However, it clear that the committee has heard of cases in which they are not yet fully satisfied, so there is still work to be done.
A certain amount of monitoring is done by the disability service. Through the Pegasus staff-student information system, disabled students are asked whether the necessary adjustments have been made in their exams and in the classroom teaching that they receive. For the most part, the feedback is positive, but one should not be complacent, as there are examples of disabled students not getting what they require when they require it. We ought to do better and to consider how we can do so.
Are you happy, Jamie?
Very.
When the committee held consultation events across Scotland, a recurring issue concerned the relevance of courses and how meaningful they were in relation to what students wanted to achieve. We heard that some students experienced a revolving-door situation: they went from one course to another and so on. What can providers do to ensure that students have sufficient choice and that courses are as relevant as possible?
I am conscious that often the information given by witnesses does not include students with general learning disability. There is a tendency for us to focus on physical and unseen disabilities, but we need to be clear that we are also talking about students with general learning disabilities. I will answer your question in relation to those students.
The criticisms that we heard had more to do with access courses for college entry or work. It was claimed that an individual could be on one course, then another and so on.
It is also about the group 18 courses. People with learning difficulties in particular felt very frustrated that the courses were pretendy or that they did the same course year after year, but it led to nothing.
In some cases, they had achieved their quota of courses and had to go on to a waiting list to get back into college. I assume that that was due to lack of places.
We recognise that there is probably an issue there. I know that from my college and I have talked about it at the SFEU inclusion forum with colleagues from other colleges. We all know that there is a group of learners made up of adults who may have left the formal education system at 16, 17 or 18 and who may have reached a particular plateau or level in their upwards progression through the qualifications framework. We have always tried to provide a range of courses that allow them to develop their skills and interests and to learn in a lateral progression.
Thank you. That was the point that I wanted to be answered.
We have a range of bridging programmes for school leavers who have additional support needs. That is not to say that they all have the same disability—some have many disabilities and some have challenging social and emotional issues. Whatever the reason, when those people come on the programmes, we are well aware that their main goal is to get out there into the world of work. They want to do what their peers are doing, and some of them would like to get out and work straight away; they do not want to study any more because they have not been particularly successful at school. We certainly have a selling job to do, as we have to say, "I'm sorry, but you really need to push up your literacy and numeracy skills. It's an investment, and you will need those skills."
My next question is a wider question for all the witnesses. It is about flexibility, which was highlighted as a problem. We have heard about good practice today, but how can we ensure that good practice is rolled out so that there is flexibility and reasonable adjustments can be made?
Katy McCloskey highlighted something that is important in higher education. There must be encouragement to allow and support part-time study, even on courses that do not traditionally offer that. That additional flexibility is really helpful, and many disabled students could study more successfully if there was a part-time version of the course of their choice.
The issue has two dimensions. Internally, we all seek to be flexible and to make appropriate and reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of students with disabilities; indeed, the committee has heard about many ways in which we can do so. We could undoubtedly do better—for example, individual staff will sometimes not be as caring and thoughtful as we might want them to be—but if the student is kept at the core internally, we will get things right. We should ask students, "What is the appropriate thing to do to meet your needs?"
The final question that I wanted to ask has more or less been answered. I was going to ask about monitoring and evaluation, but those issues have been covered.
That is helpful, as we are trying to get through as much as possible as quickly as we can and we are running out of time.
If you could make any changes to the further and higher education funding systems for people with disabilities, what would they be?
There are funding issues relating to people with particularly complex needs. I am thinking of people who have been in special schools with a staff ratio of seven children to three members of staff, for example. When those people go to college, the funding mechanism will perhaps support a group of nine students to one member of staff. Perhaps partnership working can produce something more, as the students will not necessarily need learning support. However, supporting those young people is being considered in a broader context.
I reinforce Ruth Hendery's point. It seems to me that there is an irony. A person would normally progress to the higher national certificate or higher national diploma education level having completed a national certificate-level academic course. Prior to that, perhaps they would have done a part-time return-to-learning course. It is during those early courses that people identify their needs and have them met, before progressing to courses at a higher level. However, if funding is not available to meet the needs of part-time or NC students, the chances are that they will not progress to a higher level. They will be denied access. That seems unfair, so perhaps the means of funding should be revisited.
When they make the transition from school to college, many youngsters will tell us that they are dyslexic—or we may discover that they are dyslexic. Sometimes, educational psychologists in schools will have found out that youngsters are dyslexic but will not have made a report. As others have said, the youngsters then have to go through a costly assessment of their dyslexia. I have spoken to educational psychologists and asked, "Why don't you just write it down while they are at school? Why do we have to do a reassessment, get signatures and all the rest, before we can access funding?" That anomaly would not be difficult to clear up.
That is now on the record.
Funding has three aspects. First, we should not forget the physical infrastructure of our buildings. We have made many changes and adjustments but we have not finished yet. A sizeable investment in equipment is still required.
They may have been eloquently covered, but some points are worth repeating—especially with regard to the timing of the disabled students allowance. We have to ask what the funding is for. We want to ensure that disabled students get what they need, so that they can access the courses of their choice. Sometimes that requires the assistance of a service—providing non-medical personal help, for example—and sometimes it requires equipment or other resources. So the question arises whether we can have the funding to provide what individual students need.
I take it from those answers that there is a layer of bureaucracy, the intention of which seems to be to make funding as difficult to obtain as possible, as happens with pensioners, who find it difficult to get supplementary benefit. The bureaucracy makes it impossible to get funding and when the funding is kept to a limited level, that is seen as a success. I do not ask you to respond to that, in case it embarrasses you.
I am sure that the witnesses are happy to respond.
The committee has heard that students may have difficulty accessing information about the support, courses and funding that are available and about aspects of student life. What information do you provide to disabled students and how do you monitor that provision to ensure that it is accessible and appropriate for your students' needs?
We provide a lot of information to all our students. In addition, we provide specific information to students with disabilities through a publication that is provided in a range of appropriate formats. However, that does not make the process all very simple. Beyond doubt, the process is complex, as the students from whom you heard earlier said. We endeavour to make information available in a range of formats, but the key is to ensure that people rapidly get in contact with the college or university where they wish to study, because information comes across better when real human beings interpret it and help people to understand it.
The witnesses should not feel that they have to respond to every question, but are there any other comments?
Through work that we have been doing on the implementation of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 we have been talking more to schools. For young people in special or other schools who have had a range of services, one of the biggest points of dislocation is their 16th birthday, when they move from child to adult services. On top of that, a year or so later, they will leave school. Schools generally do an excellent job of preparing people to leave school, but I often feel that we have a bit of work to do with schools on managing the information exchange to give teachers a better feel for what happens in college and what it is like there.
We are always at the mercy of the assumptions that potential students and those who advise and guide them make. Even if we make information available, that does not mean that people will seek it out and read it. Assumptions might be made that people will be unable to do a certain course and that facilities will not be available for them. As I hope the committee has heard from us all, the range of courses offers many opportunities, and facilities are available. We constantly need to reinforce the message that we genuinely seek to make our universities and colleges as accessible as we can, on the basis that education is a valuable commodity that we want to make available to everybody, whether or not they have disabilities.
What training do you provide to enable your staff to support disabled students effectively?
I can use my college as an example of what is done in further education. We provide staff with training that helps them to cope with all students and all the needs that are presented. A recent initiative in my college is that staff must maintain an online professional development log. Every time that they complete a piece of training—whether it is an internal or external event—they must record that and the purpose of the event. That information can be taken to their annual personal development meeting, at which they talk about the training that they have had. It can also be set against a checklist of national and in-house initiatives, new legislation and a range of issues on which we desire staff to have completed training that equips them and gives them knowledge to work with the students whom the legislation and initiatives are intended to support.
Do you agree that staff training in disability equality is a way of combating negative attitudes towards disabled people in further and higher education? Are there other ways of combating negative attitudes towards disabled people?
First, I challenge the idea that the place is awash with folk who have negative attitudes. Things have moved on and many lecturers are much more geared up than they used to be in the days when the number of disabled students at college was much smaller.
Nobody suggests that colleges and universities are awash with negative attitudes, but Anne Simpson said that engagement is sometimes patchy. Students tell us that they encounter negative attitudes—Katy McCloskey talked about the amount of work that she had to do to push for something that should have been given to her immediately. That is our focus. We are trying to focus on whether training is provided to all staff across the sector. We are also focusing on what happens if that training is not effective in encouraging people to give support and combating any negative attitudes perceived by students.
We have latched on to disability awareness training, which is important, although I agree that there will be some who perhaps do not attend the training or appear not to have benefited from it. However, that training is only part of what we need to do. Going on a one-day training programme does not change attitudes. Interaction and practice, as well as people being aware of what are appropriate behaviours and supports, will change attitudes. University staff need people around them to advise them on that. Hence the importance of the role of a disability co-ordinator within an academic school whom staff can ask if they are doing the right thing to help a student with, say, a visual impairment. That kind of support is needed for staff, who are generally well-intentioned but sometimes inadvertently do things that are not supportive or helpful.
That is absolutely right. The idea that staff development occurs in a centre for academic practice that runs seminars for staff is only part of the story. What these provide should be very high quality staff development, focused on people's roles as lecturers, providers of seminars or whatever. For example, an academic can listen to the experiences of people in different disciplines on how a subject was made accessible to someone with a particular impairment when originally it was thought inaccessible. That would be helpful for academics in subjects that may have fewer challenges. However, day-to-day interaction with disabled students is the more powerful learning experience.
The challenge is not so much that people are negative about disability issues, but that they do not know what to do. We must get across the sense that it is everyone's responsibility because at any point a disabled student could be in an academic's class. It is not about another group of staff looking after the issues. We are moving forward on this, but we have some way to go in getting people to have the confidence to ask for help and seek training. That is as well as our saying top-down, "Thou shalt be trained." It is a question of encouraging people to seek out additional information and even using their colleagues as sources of information and guidance.
We have heard some examples of working with other agencies. Are there set-ups in place for universities and colleges to work in partnership with other agencies such as the national health service, employers, local government, housing associations and voluntary organisations?
Yes, we have both formal and informal set-ups. Formal partnerships may arise from forging new agreements with partners as a result of the Executive's partnership matters initiative. Colleges are beginning to forge ahead with these partnerships and to take the lead in setting up dates, times and venues to identify key organisations and named people within them. These will examine the partnerships' purposes, the issues that will be raised and how they will be resolved. They will also examine how to reach signed agreements about remits and responsibilities for coming up with the goods in addressing the whole gamut of issues and problems we face in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.
Do the institutions that you represent have direct links with other organisations and employers? We found an excellent example of that when we visited West Lothian College, which has direct links with employers in Livingston town centre and with local housing associations and health services, which can be useful if students have problems with housing benefit or are off sick. Is such an approach widespread in the further and higher education sector or is it patchy?
The approach might be patchy, but most colleges probably have strong, on-going direct links with local employers and services.
We have always had a rapport with the organisations that traditionally refer students to us, such as social work departments and—more recently—housing and voluntary associations, because such organisations work with our students. In recent years the links have become more formal; we have legally binding collaborative arrangements about who provides what. Community-based activities form part of one of our college-based courses and the social work department provides staff in that context. Many colleges have arrangements, but much depends on the local authority. Our area is covered by three local authorities, but other colleges are based in a town. Such variables have an impact on the effectiveness of partnerships and the amount of hard work that is needed to put them in place.
Jewel and Esk Valley College has links with the social work services in its area.
Yes.
Do the institutions that the other witnesses represent have a comprehensive system of linking up with other agencies that work with disabled people?
There is a west of Scotland disability advisers forum, which is in collaboration with the national health service to consider issues to do with students with mental health difficulties. The forum supports initiatives such as the Scotland's mental health first aid training programme and research into the experiences of students who are mentally unwell. The forum has been useful in the exchange of information and the development of mental health policies and guidelines in institutions.
Does the University of Strathclyde have links with employers?
There are informal links through the placement arrangements on some courses.
I think that you have answered the question that I was going to ask about the funding difficulties that you face in relation to other agencies. You mentioned funding and timing problems to do with the DSA. Can you give examples of other difficulties that you face in your work with disabled students who want to continue to attend college?
Personal care and transport are the two big difficulties, but the Scottish Executive guidance, "Partnership Matters", went a long way towards clarifying the situation. There remains a grey area in relation to people who have Asperger's syndrome. We must ascertain whether such people need learning support, which the college should provide, or personal care, which another agency should provide. We must start by considering the individual's needs and work with other agencies to consider how the support that is required can be funded. The intention of the partnership matters guidelines is to enable the parties to sit round a table and hammer out such issues before the student comes to college, so that the student does not encounter additional barriers to attending college.
You have talked about funding for support and the timescale in which support is offered. Other agencies must be involved and perhaps there should be joined-up thinking and more frequent meetings. We will mention the matter in our report.
Such a forum will exist. At the previous meeting of the Equal Opportunities Committee, Rowena Arshad talked about the new Scottish equalities unit that the Scottish funding council will fund, the remit of which will include disability. That work will build on the success of existing activity, such as that of the Scottish disability team, which provides support for higher education. The benefit of the new equalities unit is that it will cover colleges and universities, on the basis that the same legislation applies to us all. Students and their needs are at the heart of what we do, regardless of where they choose to study.
The unit's work will need to be monitored and evaluated.
Certainly. The Scottish Further Education Unit routinely brings colleges together to trade best practice. HMIE also has a role.
The further education sector recognises that, as well as sharing good practice within the sector, we must endeavour to identify routes and forums through which we can externalise that good practice and share it with other key partners and organisations that are not necessarily involved in education, such as employers and voluntary organisations.
Perhaps much of the caution that has been expressed about the umbrella Scottish Executive equality unit is to do with the fact that the needs of disabled students are particular—I do not want to use the word "special". If the needs of disabled students who want to access education are to be met there must be a back-up of staff development and support, such as has been provided for 10 or more years by the Scottish disability team, which is based at the University of Dundee under the directorship of Paul Brown. It is important that such support is maintained in the new arrangements that the Scottish funding council puts in place.
I thank the witnesses for their helpful evidence.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I extend a warm welcome to our third panel this morning. Thank you for sitting through all the previous evidence; I am sure you will have found it interesting.
We have no responsibility for further education; we work purely in higher education. SAAS is responsible for the operational delivery of funding, rather than for the formulation of policy, which falls to colleagues elsewhere in the Executive and to the minister, obviously. We are more about providing information and guidance to students, as well as making payments to them. We make them aware of how much funding they are entitled to and the application process they must use to access support for higher education.
Perhaps you can tell us more about your role in higher education.
Students can currently access three thresholds in the disabled students allowance: an allowance for non-medical personal help, the maximum limit of which is in the region of £11,800 per year; an allowance of around £4,500 for large items of equipment, such as personal computers, laptops and so on, that students can access over the duration of their course; and a basic allowance of about £1,600 per year that students can access for anything additional. We provide the application forms to students and they come back to us. We process the applications and make payments.
SAAS has a role in informing, so how does it inform people about the services that it provides?
As well as providing specific annual literature, such as the application forms, we provide the guidance on the disabled students allowance that we send out to institutions. It is also available on our website.
It sounds as if you are doing more to promote SAAS, but given our focus on disabled students, is there anything that you can do to ensure that information on your services is available and accessible?
We do a customer survey and we take on board any feedback that comes in from students about the delivery of support and the operational aspects. We are part of the disabled students stakeholder group and so is the NUS. Any concerns that it has are fed through that group so that changes can be made.
Do you use accessible formats?
Yes. Documents are available in Braille and in large print, and we can provide them in other formats if somebody makes a request. I have worked for SAAS for six years and I have never had people say that information is not accessible or had any special requests for information in different formats.
That is interesting.
It would be interesting to know how many disabled students have responded to your surveys and evaluations, given that Leia Fitzgerald said that you have not had requests for information in accessible formats. I imagine that disabled students are less likely to respond or to raise issues.
We send the survey to about 3,000 students but, as I understand it, there is only about a 10 per cent take-up. It is not sent specifically to disabled students; it is sent to a random selection.
We are pleased that you are here this morning, because lots of disabled students have raised concerns about accessing information from your organisation. That is why we are asking about feedback from disabled students. If there is an issue for them but they have not been able to feed back, you will not know that there have been problems.
The feedback that we get from students tends to be about their individual cases, especially if things have not gone to plan and they have a particular grievance about the way in which their case has been dealt with. I suspect that feedback on more general areas, such as the overall support that is available to students, goes to our colleagues at the Scottish Executive, rather than to the SAAS.
I could be quite cynical and suggest that most disabled students get help to fill in their forms, which is perhaps why you do not get that feedback—it is usual for those students to access help. However, I will leave the specific questions to my colleagues.
We are participating in the funding for disabled students project, which our colleagues in the funding for learners division of the Scottish Executive are taking forward. We are looking at a forum to which students with disabilities can appeal if they have a grievance about not only our procedures, but the procedures that they encounter when they go for their needs assessment.
We would be interested to see how that project develops.
It is only in its initial stages.
I realise that.
Students and, indeed, universities have told us that the application process can be complex and lengthy. Do you agree and, if so, what can be done to simplify it?
Any process will take longer if it involves more than one agency or body. However, SAAS aims within 20 days to turn around for assessment any application that it receives, and our figures show that we are doing so.
We would be interested in finding out which areas of the SAAS application form students have had concerns about or have found too lengthy. At the moment, if a student ticks a specific box on the main support application, they will be sent the DSA application, which I think is about seven or eight pages long.
I cannot tell you what parts of the form are causing difficulties, but I am interested in your response to the question.
We have already taken such steps. For example, instead of having to write a letter, students can e-mail their inquiries to us. Moreover, in the past couple of months, we have introduced a new telephony system that makes it easier for students to get through to us and which allows us to record calls and monitor our feedback. We are constantly updating our technology. A lot of disabled students are using our e-mail facility, which has taken off in the past few years.
We are also about to introduce a text service. I am not sure what length it will go to, but it will remind students to apply. I do not know whether it will be DSA specific but, in relation to travel, it will provide some sort of warning about closing dates. Again, we will ask whether there are any ways in which we can help people with that format.
I note what you said about your caseload being made up mostly of individuals' cases. To what extent do you provide an individualised, person-centred approach to students? Do you act only when they complain about certain aspects of their funding?
Several years ago, case workers in the agency had a specific allocation of work, which might be a percentage of the overall work to do with someone on a specific course at a specific institution. However, as has been said, technology in the agency has progressed substantially and we now have an electronic document management system that means that everyone has access to the same information. The new telephony system means that a caller can enter their phone number or a reference number, if they have it to hand, which will bring up all the student's information on the screen of the case worker. That information includes details of previous calls and inquiries and provides a complete history.
In the past couple of years, the DSA team and other SAAS staff have attended specific training. Representatives from Capability Scotland gave a two-day seminar to staff, which the DSA team attended. The team has also visited the BRITE centre out at Stevenson College in order to understand better the kind of references that are made in many of the needs assessment reports. In proportional terms, the agency allocates more staff to deal with the group of students who receive the disabled student allowance.
The situation seems to have improved.
Is there a way of avoiding the need for students to reapply each year if their circumstances have not changed?
My experience is that there are few students whose circumstances do not change. They change courses and, as they enter their third and fourth years, the amount of work that they are required to do increases. Technology changes as well; a bit of equipment that they had in their first year might be obsolete by the time they get to fourth year. It is to students' advantage to apply every year and to let us know how their needs have changed, even if it is just a matter of their needing a further two hours of medical help a year.
We have introduced a shortened application process for students who claim only tuition-fee support or the non-income-assessed loan support. That captures their information from one year to another and is sent out directly to them. If they are happy to get the same support the next year, we require only a signature from them. For the reasons that Leia Fitzgerald highlighted, that is not extended to students who claim DSA.
So the annual application process builds in flexibility.
Yes because—depending on how the course develops—a student's needs for equipment may change although they have the same disability. The current process provides scope to deal with that. In any case, because student support is reviewed and rates are uprated annually, we have an audit and public accountability requirement to get some form of student signature annually.
We have heard from many students about delays in assessments, which lead to missed opportunities and can mean that students fall through the net and miss out on entrance to a year's academic study. Problems will always arise, but how can the assessment process be improved and made much more student centred so that students can access funding when they need to? When a student may miss out altogether, can a temporary solution be put in place?
Lorna Caldwell highlighted our work through the stakeholder group to introduce a toolkit of quality indicators for institutions. The aim is to bring more institutions into the needs assessment process because of the substantial bottleneck at access centres in recent years. If we receive a disabled student's application without a needs assessment report, we refer the case to one of the access centres. Under the new pilot scheme, about a dozen institutions are authorised to carry out needs assessments, so we no longer have to go to the access centres, which takes the pressure off them. We have already seen a slight improvement in the overall timescales within which the SAAS refers applications to an access centre and receives a report back from it. We are, with colleagues in the Executive, taking steps to encourage more institutions—we hope some of the larger ones—to come on board, which will result in improvement in the overall turnaround time.
What percentage of institutions are already on board in the scheme that you mentioned and in what timescale do you envisage getting other institutions on board and rolling out the scheme? If barriers arise to a student accessing a course, do you have any flexibility to help with that?
Steps have already been taken to bring more institutions on board—about seven or eight are going through the application process and have just a few indicators to finalise. We hope that more institutions will come on board in the short term.
I want to raise a technical matter. You said that the number of DSA applications peaks just after students start their courses. How does that peak fit in with other peaks and troughs of pressure on your resources?
Our peak tends to fall later than the main processing session, when the rest of the agency is quieter, so we can call on a great deal of support and help from other parts of the agency.
If it was in your gift to change any aspect of the service that you provide to make it more responsive to disabled people, what would you do?
Nearly everyone has mentioned the problem of identifying students' disabilities. The universities do a great job, but it might not be picked up that a student has dyslexia, for example, until they start their course at university. The student could be three or four months into their course before realising that he or she is struggling. More work could be done in schools on identifying such disabilities before people go to university. I do not know whether universities would be able to provide more equipment to lend to students while they go through the process of applying to us.
Thank you very much for your helpful evidence. We will take a short break to allow the witnesses to leave the table; I ask members not to leave.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
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Equalities Review