Chamber and committees

This is out of order.

Good morning, everyone. I have more questions for Shirley Rogers. One of the things that the committee has constantly heard about—as you will have seen from the evidence—is the lack, or loss, of trust. I am positive about the fact that you want to rebuild that.

I will summarise some of the convener’s questions, which took him 35 minutes to ask—it took so long that, in all honesty, that I thought that it might appear in the SQA’s next higher history paper. Can you give me some tangible examples of what you are planning to do to rebuild trust and to move forward in such a way that the teaching profession can trust and engage with you? It is important that teachers engage with the new organisation as it moves forward.

I appreciate that. When we heard from the history teachers in SATH, they did not seem to be people who did not want to engage with the process. They were upset and disappointed that it had not worked, but they wanted to engage. Are there ways in which, as things move forward, their voices will be heard? You hinted at that.

From the universities’ perspective, given the way in which the funding works, they are trying to deal with the shortfall, so you can understand why that might be the case.

I agree, so is there a need for the SFC to have more flexibility?

My question will be on widening access in general, mainly because of my constituency. Indeed, Audrey Cumberford will be aware of the demography there, having worked in the area in the past.

Colleges do not actually get any credit for being an access point to higher education. We talk about widening access, but at the same time, we do not say much about colleges in that respect. How are colleges dealing with the sorts of challenges that we often hear from HE establishments? For example, they will say that the first and second years are difficult and that there are challenges with the individuals that they are dealing with.

As a sidebar to my question, I know that we use the SIMD figures to identify that sort of thing. Neil Cowie will have some rurality in his area—I assume that Joanna Campbell will, too—and the fact is that the SIMD does not reflect where the poverty actually is in rural areas. It is the same in some urban areas; the situation can be different almost from street to street. How are you dealing with that? Can you measure the data in other ways to identify young people or mature students in poverty? How do you deal day to day with people coming into HE in the current environment?

Thanks for that. You mentioned UWS. Last week, I visited the UWS campus in my Paisley constituency. My question follows on from Keith Brown’s question about the Scottish Funding Council, as it hit on a specific cause of the problem. Because there was a drop in college students, UWS had a drop in the number of its students—that might be unusual for it but not for certain universities—which had a knock-on effect on how funding came through from the SFC. Audrey Cumberford spoke about the need for “agility and flexibility” in the funding mechanism. Do you agree with that? Does the SFC need to take account of that when organisations such as yours and universities are going through situations like that?

I will give an example. Most of the nurses in Scotland are trained at UWS. Basically, fewer people, both younger and older, are taking the two-year nursing course at college—I know that the course lasts for two years because my daughter did it. That has a knock-on effect. How do we deal with that? Do you agree that there needs to be a bit of flexibility in the funding mechanism in order to deal with the situation more strategically?

There is so much to say about the ONS situation, but I will leave that and ask a nice simple question about industrial relations. During my time on the Education, Children and Young People Committee, there has been a tension in industrial relations in the college sector that possibly does not exist in other parts of the education sector, particularly between lecturers, the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers Association and management.

We now have a four-year deal pay for lecturers and three years for other staff, but how do we improve industrial relations? There was a lack of trust on both sides from the start. How did we get to that place? People are people, and if you get them in a room, nine times out of 10 they will disagree but come out with some form of plan to go forward. How have we not been in that position over the years?

I am happy with that, deputy convener.

I want to follow up on the point about other independent media organisations that you work with. The Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster was told that IMG Media was an example of a Scottish production company. It produces thousands of hours of snooker coverage. Forgive me—my parents love snooker, but I cannot stand watching it for thousands of hours. However, that company is actually based in Chiswick, west London. Although it has a cupboard or something in Pacific Quay that it rents, it does not have any Scottish talent.

I come back to the issue of having to make decisions, which Hayley Valentine referred to. If we are spending money on getting that independent production company to provide thousands of hours of snooker coverage, why are we not doing the same for coverage of the Scotland football team?