 Good morning everyone. Can I welcome you to the 11th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee? Can I please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices onto silent for the duration of the meeting? Please note that Fulton MacGregor and Ross Thompson are both in fact finding visits to the SQA to inform next week's pre-budget scrutiny. Tavish Scott will be late arriving to the meeting as he is flying in from Shetland this morning. The first item of business is the decision to take two items in private. In this week's meeting, item 4 will be a review of the evidence that we hear this morning on the legislative consent memorandum, and next week there will be an item where we consider our work programme. Are members content that we consider both of these items in private? The second item of business is an evidence session on the legislative consent memorandum LCMS 54 on the Higher Education and Research Bill. I welcome to the meeting Professor Leslie Yellowlees, fellow at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Mary Sr, UCU Scotland official, university and college union Scotland, Alasdair Sim, director of university Scotland, and Philip White, policy and influencing officer, national union of students in Scotland. I believe that you want to make an opening statement. That is just the SFC. The SFC? The next panel. Excuse me, I'm daydreaming. We'll move straight to questioning. Before I ask the first question, can I remind members and inform witnesses that whatever possible questions and answers should be focused and members should make clear which particular witness they want to answer a particular question? I would also remind members and the panel that we've got a lot to go through today and we have quite a timetable. Can I ask Mary Sr about the UCU's position on this bill, as I believe it differs from? Yes. Thank you convener. We welcome the opportunity to speak to the committee today. I think we have some very serious concerns about the legislative consent motion, particularly in the way that the LCM links Scottish institutions with the UK Government's Higher Education and Research Bill. This is a bill that UCU has been opposing at UK level because of what it does. It basically introduces the teaching excellence framework, albeit the bill does not actually reference the tech. It provides the mechanism to allow the teaching excellence framework to come into being. This is going to be a competitive way, a really marketised way of measuring education. At UK level, the reason for the teaching excellence framework is to supposedly measure quality but allow institutions in England to increase tuition fees. It seems really ironic that the Scottish Government clearly has a very different position and a position that UCU is very much welcomed in relation to enabling Scottish domiciled students to access education without tuition fees. It seems really ironic that we have that system in Scotland and then a legislative consent motion that is going to allow Scottish universities to sign up to the teaching excellence framework. We feel that the metrics are flawed. The metrics are around student destinations after university and around student satisfaction, which again raises a lot of evidence in relation to the value of student satisfaction survey. The legislative consent motion is going to allow universities in Scotland to be able to sign up to a system that the UK Government says it is going to introduce, which is about increasing tuition fees. There seems to be a real difficulty in this. To be fair to our institutions in Scotland, I think that they have been put in a very unfortunate position because clearly universities in Scotland want to be attractive, to compete globally and to the rest of the UK. There is a sense that some institutions are thinking that we need to be in TEF because we need to have our teaching graded and assessed in that way. TEF is going to award a gold, silver or bronze category to institutions based on their teaching. Institutions such as the University of Edinburgh or the University of St Andrews feel that they will be left behind if they do not sign up. Our theories are going to get a domino effect for all institutions in Scotland, feeling that they need to participate. In fact, Scotland already has very effective quality assurance mechanisms that review our teaching, that are very much peer reviewed, which look at quality and are very much a holistic assessment around looking and measuring at teaching. I think that all of us on the panel, obviously my colleagues will speak for themselves, but I am very confident that they are going to say that Scotland has a very effective quality assurance mechanism as regards measuring our teaching. I would also say that we are hearing some worrying things from the UK Government in relation to overseas students. We have heard some worrying comments around linking the award that TEF is going to give institutions to being able to bring in more students from overseas, i.e., linking with immigration issues. The narrative around immigration has been deeply worrying from the UK Government, but to hear that in the same dialogue around TEF is deeply worrying. I would also say to the committee that I know that the Scottish Government is currently looking at education, governance and early years school education. In that, the cabinet secretary says, evidence shows that co-operation and collaboration, not competition or marketisation, drives improvement. I would absolutely agree with the cabinet secretary in relation to that point, but I think that it is worrying that we have this legislative consent motion, which seeks to enable Scottish institutions to participate in a system that we think is going to be flawed, which we are not going to have effective controls and influence over. It is really around privatisation and marketisation and being able to increase tuition fees in England, which is inevitably going to have a knock-on effect in Scotland. Thank you very much for that. I know that the Scottish Government is still in correspondence with the UK Government about many sections of this. Does anybody from the panel want to comment on that? I will probably be able to comment just from the point of view of the University of Scotland representing Scotland's university leaders. I think that the teaching excellence framework has presented institutions with quite a difficult choice that they want to make at institutional level, which is whether they participate or not. I entirely agree with Mary. I think that what we have in Scotland already is an enhancement-led institutional review process, which puts students at the centre and is driven by peer review and improvement, rather than being an audit-driven process. That is something that we value and wish to retain across the sector. It works well and has driven student-centred improvement. The TEF presents institutions with a dilemma. Basically, we are working in an extremely competitive environment. If you want to be able to attract students from the rest of the UK, if you want to be able to attract students internationally, you want to be able to say in as validated a way as possible that what you are offering a student is of top quality. Institutions are conscious of the potential for competitive disadvantage if their English peers are able to say that they have a gold medal for being a brilliant place for students, and they have not. It is a genuine dilemma for institutions that they are working through individually. Essentially, we are pursuing to intract on this. One is to get more influence on the development of the teaching excellence framework itself. Over the past weeks and months, I would say that, since middle of the summer, we would have a lot more traction with the department for education in Whitehall on that. We are starting to get sensible work on the metrics for TEF. We are starting to get much more involved in the governance and quality assessment of TEF, so some of our concerns have been met. In parallel, we are thinking about what things we can do in Scotland to make a Scottish system able to represent the highest levels of quality in a way that persuades people from the rest of the UK and international markets. There are choices there. We support the legislative consent motion from the point of view that it will enable institutions to make those choices about whether participation in the TEF is going to help them to draw students from the rest of the UK and around the world to Scotland in a way that contributes to our overall social and economic wellbeing. The Ross Society of Edinburgh is broadly supportive. It has two main concerns. That is of earlier, the enhancement led. We would like to see that. We would want to see that retained in Scotland because we think that it works to our benefit, just as Alistair said, far more than the audit system does. We would also want to support that. We would also want to have broad recognition that the Scottish education system is different from the rest of the UK. I am not sure that that is fully recognised in the bill at present. We have to push that forward because all of us are firmly behind the differences, but we want those recognised and taken account of. Thanks for that, Mr Waite. Just to reiterate what much of the panel has already said, the bill for us is an interesting one, in that the bulk of it is taken up by researchers such as Lesley and Alistair can speak to much more than we can. However, what it does obviously do is enable TEF through the creation of the office for students. To reiterate what a lot of the panel has said, I note that the minister in one of her original letters to the committee said that it remains to be seen how TEF will be viewed in the international stage. I still think that it is to be seen how it will be viewed in the UK stage. There has been talk that, essentially for Scottish universities, there is nothing more than a marketing tool by which they can draw equivalence with the rest of the UK. It remains to be seen if it will even achieve that. It is important to remember that what TEF will do is provide a snapshot of one particular point in time. What the Scottish system does is encourage much more granular and much more on-going enhancement of quality. It is enhancement of quality that is led and driven at every level by students. Just reiterating what everyone else in the panel has said, it is absolutely vital that, no matter what happens with TEF across the UK and what that looks like in Scotland, we do our absolute utmost to protect the Scottish system that we have and allow no diminution in terms of the quality excellence framework that we currently have. I am interested to know what your equivalent organisations in the rest of the United Kingdom think about the bill. The suggestion that in Scotland we have got this much better system, why would education and other parts of the United Kingdom not want to or would not share your concerns about the implications of the bill? That is the first point. The second point is really a question around the fear that this will be used as a means of justifying bumping up tuition fees, but would you not accept that currently there is a cross subsidy from tuition fees being paid in Scotland by English students, frankly, which allows the Government to underfund places at Scottish universities currently? Does anybody want to respond to that? I think that looking at the UK level, our partner organisation in England at universities UK I think is working through in detail quite a lot of concerns about the bill and in particular concerns about whether the bill increases Government control over universities. But I think, in principle, broadly, they see the teaching excellence framework if it can be done well and that really is a question as being something that may be of benefit because it does kind of introduce a sort of competitive element to making sure you're doing the best for a student if it's done well and I do at that provides though. I think in terms of the cross subsidy element, two things are important. One is even a lot of rest of UK students at Scottish university is actually paying less than it costs to provide their courses. If you're studying medicine at a Scottish university, for instance, a fee of £9,000 or so is not going to cover the costs of the university teaching you that course, so there's actually still an element of Scottish public funding going into that. In terms of our ability to track international students, I'll be frank, there is a cross subsidy there if we can charge market rates for international students and if branding Scottish universities as having highest levels of quality and student satisfaction is important to that, that's hugely important. First of all to the universities, obviously financially because we're underfunded for publicly supported activities so we absolutely rely on international students for plugging that gap, but it's also vital for Scotland's economy. I mean, we reckon that the economic impact of international students in Scotland as well of our £400 million a year and we need to compete to sustain and grow that in circumstances that are made extremely challenging by the immigration regime that we work in and that may potentially get worse. Can I just clarify if the NUS at UK Live were opposing the bill? Yes, it's going to have been. Certainly from their perspective there are a number of positives actually that come out of the bill, not least the fact that data becomes much more transparent, not least the fact that institutions are required to prepare and access participation plans, so there are a number of positives that exist within the office for students where the main concern, so just literally in the last 24 hours an amendment has been brought forward to ensure some form of student representation on the office for students, which previously the bill didn't allow for. I think where the real concerns have come through, as I said, TEF will provide for a snapshot. It will provide on the basis of current metrics, which is the way that they're recorded, collected and then produced. I mean that actually by the time that they're public, they're at least one year, if not two or three years, out of date. So actually TEF will not allow for you to say substantively that in one given year an institution is doing well, poorly or neutral on any one of the metrics, because actually they're out of date. I think that's where the concerns have come through, that there's no substantive measures to actually genuinely improve quality there and then, but instead is yet another exercise that essentially produces league tables and everything else without really addressing the root causes of quality. In terms of fees, I think there's a real danger of TEF and what it means across the UK, but particularly looking between Scotland and the rest of the UK, which is there's almost a double trap within all of this, which is the minister's letter rightly states that at no point will TEF be linked to the level of our UK fees in Scotland. That's absolutely correct. Setting aside everything else, we're very keen to avoid a market in higher education whereby different courses, different institutions are allowed to vary their fees based on what we think is a flawed metric through TEF. So that's one side of it, but actually the other side is then the paradox that exists is the fact that 925.0 is at present the maximum that Scottish universities are allowed to charge, but that's the maximum that English universities are allowed to charge and as we get further down the line that could be the maximum or the maximum could be raised that if you're a gold standard university in England doing absolutely amazingly well in terms of TEF, you can charge that upper amount. If you're not doing so well or in fact have disengaged from TEF, you can't charge that amount. However, in Scotland, as things stand, by not linking a TEF, which is the right thing to do, you actually only have that one maximum amount, which means that every Scottish university, if they so choose, can race to the top in terms of that amount, and there's no recognition, actually, of how the four-year degree system versus three-year degrees in Scotland is. There's no recognition, actually, of differing standards that you could essentially see or race to the top that doesn't allow for any differentiation or the fact that Scottish universities don't have to adhere to many of the same requirements that English universities do for their participation in TEF or through the Office for Students. I hope that that made sense. I know Mary, the senior wants to come in, but Richard, do you want to ask your question then if you want to respond to it? Just to ask, if two universities in Scotland decide to apply to the Scottish Minister for Consent to get involved in the teaching excellence framework, where do you think that that will leave the rest of the Scottish universities? Do you think that there will be a long-term consequence for the distinctive nature of university education in Scotland? On the first one, I don't know. I mean, they'll make individual decisions. Decisions are often made by the 26th of January for joining in the next round of TEF. I think it'll be a varied picture. I don't know exactly where it'll end up. But the TEF itself is such an evolving picture. I think institutions will actually be making year-in-year decision. Is this really to our advantage or is it not to our advantage? And in particular, it's extremely uncertain what subject level TEF will look like. And I think universities will be making a fresh judgment on that. Would it change the character of Scottish higher education? I just genuinely don't think so. Our values are deeply intrinsic in what we do if we're participating in TEF. We're participating because, first of all, it enables us to get an external validation of the fact that we're doing excellent things for students. Also because, in some ways, some institutions may judge that it does help them to address the student experience or at least give them a challenge of addressing the student experience. But I don't think there's anything that it does that would drive an intrinsically different set of values that we would bring to higher education or that would lead universities to want to undermine what Philip and Mary referred to as our deeply student-centred approach to quality enhancement. I suppose that, in response to the most recent question, I think there'll be incredible and increasing pressure on institutions to participate because if just a handful of institutions are participating, the others are going to feel left behind and are going to feel that pressure to participate too. I think the consequences are unknown in my first contribution. I referenced how it's going to link in with immigration and the ability of institutions to bring in students from overseas, so that's a question. I think in terms of the metrics, we feel there's going to be establishing a pressure to dumb down course content or inflate grades because what a key metric is student satisfaction. That brings a whole range of factors into play, which I think would raise lots of different questions. We really don't want to see, I suppose, a dumbing down of the robustness of our system, but if that means you receive better student satisfaction scores, what's the pressure on institutions going to be to do that? Just to go back to Joanne Lamont's original question in relation to the response to the bill at a UK level, certainly the trade unions have been very opposed to the bill. We've been making that clear throughout its passage. I think there's been an incentive for English higher education institutions to be supported because the bill's been very clear. It's the mechanism with which they can increase tuition fees. There's that very clear link between TEF and the ability to bring more resource into institutions, so you can naturally see why institutions would want to be able to draw more funding to be able to do more. There's some worrying, other aspects of the bill, which are obviously not for debate here, but one of the things the bill provides for is new providers and private providers into the sector in England. One extreme, we're going to have a University of Trump in England, but that's in effect what the bill provides for. It might seem sensationalist to say that, but those pressures are going to be there. In Scotland, at least we've got a very clear idea of education being for public good. We do have a good system, so that's why it's very worrying to see this LCM and to see aspects of the bill being drawn into play. Professor, you will want to command that, and then we're going to move on to research. Okay, thank you. Just briefly to say that I think that Scottish institutions want to play on an international play. That's where we see ourselves playing. If TEF comes in, I think we're going to feel huge pressure in Scotland to join in or take part. I would want us in this intervening period just now to be able to exert what influence and pressure that we can to make sure that the differences in Scotland and the pride with which we hold education in Scotland is well understood south of the border and those differences are celebrated by us and recognised by them and then taken forward as such. I think that we can't afford to take the foot off the pedal and we've got to engage fully. Before we move on to research on that point, TEF will be essentially a marketing exercise in Scotland because of the way that it's set up. I don't think that risks the Scottish sector that we have provided, as I said, that there's no diminution and, more importantly, that TEF isn't projected as being the more important rating than your QAA rating or your institutional-led reviews or anything else, provided that the Scottish sector pushes that and there's no diminution. We've already heard rumblings of a double burden being created between the Scottish system and TEF. That's hugely worrying. Oh, sorry, a double burden in terms of workload of having to do work for TEF and having to do work for the existing Scottish quality arrangements. I think that we should be very worn against that and, as long as there's no diminution and the Scottish sector is proud to show that, actually, what we have right now in terms of quality assurance and quality enhancement can be is just as good as TEF if not actually better, then, hopefully, there shouldn't be any risk of Scottish universities falling behind because we should be projecting and exemplifying what it is that we currently have in place. I'm going to move on just now to research, but we may welcome back to TEF if there's other questions to be asked. Thank you, convener. Just before we go to research, can I just ask one point about process, given that amendments are being laid to this bill and given the comments that have been well articulated this morning? Is it helpful that this committee plays a role in submitting to the House of Lords—actually, we'll be the first one to take this further—and possibly back to the House of Commons to ensure that the teaching excellence framework, which we all have some doubts about in terms of specific links, to get as much Scottish influence on the matrix of a teaching excellence framework that would be much more satisfactory than the one that you have criticised this morning? Would that be helpful? I think that, particularly if we can all speak with one voice, it then makes it much more difficult to speak against us, so I think that it would be from the raw side of Edinburgh's point of view, yes. In my opinion, we need to do all we can to make this as less onerous and to impact in a softer way as possible and to get rid of some of the more dangerous elements because this really is about increasing fees. It's something that the Conservative Government at Westminster are pushing, so we really need to use the influence that we have to argue why this isn't appropriate for Scotland and do what we can to dilute those elements. From my perspective, yes. We have our foot in the door of the committee's support for making sure that we are robustly at the table to influence the TEF, which is important. I have to say that there's also an underlying worry that we just referred to earlier, which is what would happen if the Home Office, in our view, inevitably decided to link TEF-gradings to your entitlement to recruit international students now. As far as I'm concerned, every institution in Scotland is robustly quality assured. I don't think that there's any justification whatsoever if we're using TEF-gradings to say whether you're allowed to recruit international students or not, but I think that there's a risk in there, and I think that it's a very, very serious risk if the Home Office were to do that. Obviously, this bill is largely about research as well. Scotland's excellence in research is something that has come through all the papers that you have presented to the committee. It's basically one of the most important reasons why Scotland has been punching well above its weight. There are concerns about the way in which this bill might interrupt some of the funding for that research. Professor Yellw Liesew spoke on behalf of the Royal Society about this in terms of having a body that would be responsible for UK research at the same time as English research. Could you just expand on the practicalities of what your concern would be for some Scottish institutions? Yes, thank you very much. You've wrapped several things up into that one statement. Where we have support for the research elements of this bill is where it's trying to tackle interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. I think this comes particularly out of the nurse review and just how it was that we were missing a lot of funding opportunities in the UK for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. We applaud that. However, I think we have concerns that in addressing that, we don't then weaken the research councils and their championing of specific areas. I think that it's important to understand that the areas of research that we have routinely funded up until now using the various research councils still has a place, still has to take part and I think that that's still a large element of what they will do. We find ourselves supporting the setting up of UKRI. However, in that umbrella we would wish to see the individual research councils positions still the strength it has, so that is where we would see that. I think that taking into the same umbrella of the Office for Students of Research England then causes us some difficulties in Scotland wherein that the UKRI then has, I think, not to be too parochial about it, is that research England would have an unfair advantage. It's under the same umbrella. It's talking directly with the research council. It's all in together and I think we fear for what happens for our devolved system that we have in Scotland. How do we have a voice in that? Is our voice fully heard? How can we make sure that our dual funding in Scotland is properly then underwritten? I know your hearing from the Scottish Funding Council later to speak about that, but I think that it's a real concern for us is just how unfair an advantage will research England have in this overarching umbrella. Can I just probe further on as to whether you feel that amendments to the bill, which make it very difficult for the devolved administrations to be ignored in these decisions? Is that the way forward? I noticed that overnight there's more correspondence on this and why there's been a little bit of movement that's not been enough. Do you believe that we have to move that little bit further to ensure that there are locks in the system that would prevent any decisions being biased to any one part of the UK? Yes, I do think that. We have to continually, as I've said before, stress the differences in Scotland and be proud of them. I do think that it is under threat, so I would like to see a high barrier put in place there. In fact, I would like to see an insurmountable barrier put in place. I would just like to see the budgets for the different schemes separated and well separated, so I fear that, you know, okay, you can via money between one and the other, but you've got to go and get say so from the Minister. Is that sufficient? No, I don't think it is sufficient, and I think my fear in all this as well is that will we have allowed enough voice here? Now, they're saying that they're going to allow one representative or at least one representative from the devolved countries, but our system isn't the same as Wales and it isn't the same as Northern Ireland. Can I just ask, with the amendment that you want to see be representation from all the devolved nations? Yes, I would. And a big high wall in there as well. Mr Sim, is that something that University of Scotland would agree with? I think that it would be great if we could get it. I mean, to do well, welcome the progress that's been made with the amendment that's been brought forward by the UK Government. I think also it's important that we don't just look at the membership of UKRI corporately, but we look at the membership of the research councils below that, because I think it's important that each research council, in drawing its expertise from the people who are best expertly qualified to be on that council, are drawing a geographical spread of expertise given the need to be insightful about the way things are different in different parts of the United Kingdom. I agree very strongly with Professor Yellowlees that there really needs to be a statutory firewall between the funding of Research England and Innovate UK and UKRI generally, because I think there is a risk here whatever assurances are given that if there isn't some sort of statutory firewall, the temptation is going to be to fire resources between UK wide functions of UKRI and English only functions of UKRI. I think that we need that, that's pretty solid. Would it also be correct to say, Mr Sim, that if you did have that firewall, that it would be easier when you're attracting the collaborative investment that you require from other countries, that it would be much easier for them to know exactly where that money is being used in research? Would that be another argument that you would use to convince Westminster Government that it would be good in terms of clarity for those people who want to invest in collaboration? I think that it's one of our competitive advantages as a sector in Scotland is that we are on the basis of our quality phenomena successful at bidding into the competitively one UK wide resources of the research councils and we need to be able to sell collaborators, look in an uncertain world. That is still an undiminished pot that we can build collaborations through. That's not going to be diminished by being siphoned off into England only priorities. May I just finish on one point? You've given us a very strong steer when it comes to TEF and you've given us a very strong steer when it comes to the separation of the funds. Before we proceed, is there anything else that is a very strong steer and what you would like to see in terms of the bill? From my perspective and the University of Scotland's perspective on the research site, we have said that there should be a general duty on UKRI to act in the interests of the entire United Kingdom, including its constituent-devolved jurisdictions. I think that that doesn't do any harm to policy of the bill. I think that it symbolically says the right thing about this being a UK wide body. We've talked about membership already. I think that Innovate UK should be under a duty to take account of the economic policies of the devolved jurisdictions as well as the UK. There are distinctive economic policies at devolved level and if Innovate UK is an instrument of promoting economic growth it needs to do that in a way that is adaptable to the different jurisdictions rather than being driven by one set of priorities from Whitehall. We think that the Secretary of State should be under a duty to consult the ministers of the devolved administrations when he's making decisions about research strategy and about potential environment and resources because these are issues of UK-wide significance. The devolved administrations are big research funders. The second biggest stream of funding in Scottish universities is from Scottish Government through funding councils. Scottish Government is also a huge investor in environmental and agricultural research, for instance. We need to see the research effort as a collaborative one that straddles the reserved and devolved boundary. It means that the ministers of the devolved administrations should have the right to be consulted about the UK's overall research strategy. Can I draw the committee's attention to what I think the new regulatory structure will do in terms of reinforcing an unhelpful division between research and teaching? Obviously, we've had discussions around TEF and research. Our view is that the best teaching is informed by research and there needs to be linkages, clear support and collaboration between the two. However, the focus on the teaching excellence framework and with the new REF coming into being where it's thought that all research staff need to be returned in the ref. There's a clear danger that we're going to get this separation between those that are specialising in teaching and those that will be specialising in research. I'm not clear that that's going to be helpful to our sector in the long term. Just to be clear, are you concerned that the teaching excellence framework would be used as something to dictate the research funding? Is that what you're getting at? I think it's the sense that the two are being viewed very separately that we're going to be measuring teaching separately, we're going to be measuring research separately and in terms of the research excellence framework, institutions are going to need to return every member of academic staff on a research contract in the ref. Therefore, those staff are going to be asked to focus around research and we're going to be losing something if people are not going to be able to undertake their research but then also deliver their teaching and there's going to be collaboration between the two. I understand that point, but just to be very clear about your concern over the separation that you have a real issue with, are you worried that the teaching excellence framework would be used as a sort of gold standard for universities that might attract a higher level of research? Is that your bottom line of concern? Institutions are going to want to be good at both teaching and research. Is this going to mean differentiation in terms of staff are either going to be channeled down a teaching road or a channel down a research road when actually there's value in both of those aspects and academics should be able to focus on teaching and research at different points in their career? Can I just come back on other things that we wouldn't want to stress? I think that we know that the UK does extremely well on a world scale for its research. All the metrics would point to that and I think that Scotland does even better compared to the rest of the UK, the metrics show that. My concern in the research part of this bill is that by tinkering with something that is already very successful and is successful by any measure that you care to point at it or to use, we end up damaging that. I think that we have to make sure that there aren't some unforeseen consequences in this bill. That is difficult to do because they are unforeseen. I think that what we have to do is to make sure that the overarching body, this UKRI, doesn't damage that and it enhances that. I think that that is difficult. I come back to Alistair Sims's point that we have to ensure that Scotland has a proper representation on all boards whether it's the overarching umbrella. Where I would make a play again for is to make sure that the seven research councils that we currently have, I would play for them to continue and that we have good Scottish representation on each of those as well to make sure—because I think that that is the most effective way that we can ensure that what has served us very well in the past continues to serve us well in the future. It's just a brief supplementary to what you were just saying, Mary Signe. The tension that you described is a long-standing one in universities. What is about the current proposals that would make that worse, or is it just that it's a continuing issue between teaching? In my understanding, research funding is not currently linked to teaching. What is your specific concern about those proposals? I was going to say earlier that the bill helps to give some status to teaching, which I think is something that everyone welcomed in some way because teaching is clearly important, but it stratifies it and separates it. It doesn't link it into research. How does that differ to the current regime? I think that's my slight confusion. Well, maybe it just inflames the current regime in a way that it isn't helping the collaboration in any way. Questions around research? If not, we've given Teph a good shot, but Daniel Pleath does one or two questions. I mean, so this relates to some comments that were made earlier. I understand—I think that the fundamental point here is about whether or not Teph is compatible with the standards that we have here. I think that Alasdor Cymru made some points about if we have confidence in our regime, we should, in a sense, have confidence that they will bear out. However, does that not alter substantially based on the composition of student numbers at the institutions? A particular Professor Ylilis, I know that you're here representing the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I also know what institution that you work at. For particular institutions with high levels of students from the rest of the UK, is there a more pronounced issue that those institutions might get pulled in a different direction to other institutions in Scotland? I wish I had the answer to that. I mean, that requires a certain amount of crystal ballgazing, which I can't do. Yes, we have a concern. I mean, we want my own institution and let me distance myself from the Royal Society of Edinburgh here and say that my own institution has had a very proud history of being as international as it possibly can be whilst serving the needs of Scottish students as well. There's a fine balance to be struck there. Anything that threatens, that makes, threatens our ability to play on an international field is one that we take very seriously and is one that I have grave concerns about. So, anything that threatens that, yes, of course we have concerns about it. Again, are there any particular points or features that would need to be addressed in terms of the compatibility of TEF with our own standards or particular points? Are there any mitigation steps? I'd probably put that point to Anastasia Sim. I think that there are some mitigation steps that are in hand. In a sense, there are different things, because being what we have through enhancement led institutional review is a constant journey, thinking how can we improve what we're doing for a student? How do we compare it to our peers on that? It's a self-reflective process. It's really rather different from TEF, but I think that in a sense that the problem that institutions are facing, that gives you real confidence as an institution that you're doing the right thing to make the experience for the student right. What it doesn't do is give you a badge that says you're excellent. Basically, you come out at the end with QA expressing confidence in you, and that doesn't quite hack it in a competitive market, necessarily. Hence the interest in TEF, and hence the need to get its metrics right. Things that we've been working on very closely are to make sure that TEF is measuring deprivation on a basis that makes more sense for Scotland than what was originally proposed. Also, given the typically longer duration of our degrees, it's measuring retention in a way that makes sense. Also, structurally, we've got people in the governance of TEF both at programme level and at assessment of institution level who understand the Scottish system and who can give commentary of why things are as they are. It's been important that we have been involved in what you describe as mitigation work, and we're actually influencing the metrics so that, if institutions do individually choose to go into TEF, they're going into something that isn't unfairly stacked against them. Are there points that you would like to see this committee perhaps raise in terms of commentary that it provides elsewhere? I would like to make sure that we're measuring deprivation on a way that makes sense for Scotland. There are different measures in Scotland in England. If you just measure it by England, you're disadvantaged. Just make sure that you're taking account of what you're going to see in retention over longer degrees. We're not disadvantaged. Also, look at a job market. If you're looking at the destination of leavers from higher education at where people go, you've got to understand that quite subtly in a UK that's got very, very, very job markets and also the institutions that have got very, very profiles of what is a successful destination for students. Frankly, if you're producing a lot of people who go on to be successful nurses, teachers and social workers, you need that to be recognised as much of a success as if you're producing lots of people going into highly paid professions. Just finally, and to Mary Senior, some of the comments you've provided at the committee about the nature of the opt-in and whether or not that lies with institutions or with ministers. I was just wondering if you could just maybe detail that a little bit and just explain what your concern there is about the decision-making powers that maybe ministers and the role they have within this context. I guess it's not really clear, albeit ultimately ministers have a say as to whether Scottish institutions can participate, but our sense is very much that there's going to be a pull from institutions to participate for all the reasons that colleagues have said that they feel they have to be in that competitive market. Our concern is that that's not a good reason to be participating in the Teth and it's drawing us all down this line of marketisation, privatisation and this push for increasing fee levels. Different universities are going to feel that pressure differently. I was talking to a principal on Monday who expressed very clearly to me that he wasn't supportive of the Teth and it was a frustration that we couldn't get the Scottish quality enhancement mechanism to give a similar but equal evaluation if institutions need to participate. So you're saying ministers shouldn't be putting institutions in an invidious position or should they be making decisions collectively for the whole regime? I just wonder what you're... Yeah, I think we're all in between a rock and a hard place to be totally frank because we have a bill going through the House of Parliament. We have this pressure on institutions that we have a good system in Scotland. We want to be able to attract students from Scotland, the UK and the rest of the world and I think we're in an incredibly difficult place and I acknowledge that ministers are too but that doesn't make it right to go ahead and say yes on your go sign up to Teth. That's further to that but have you got any indication at all that that's what ministers are doing because I've been led to believe that so this is going to be a decision for the universities to make if they decide to opt in, not a decision for ministers to make to enforce people to opt in? Well I think it's a sort of a gateway for the minister to indicate yes, Scottish institutions can participate if they choose and then institutions will decide whether to sign up to the different stages of Teth. So I guess ultimately the minister could say no we don't want this in Scotland but I guess the minister and the Scottish Government is under pressure from institutions who for all the reasons that people have explained feel that they need to be out there and competitive and being able to compare the degrees and the education they offer with institutions in England. You're saying that ministers shouldn't be allowing participation or sort of almost prevent them from making that ambiguous choice. I'm just I'm just slightly confused what you're actually advocating ministers do. I guess we're in a really difficult situation because you know do we want to allow this marketised privatised the pressure to increase fees to come in and to be enhanced in our institutions in Scotland and that's the decision that the minister and I guess this committee has has to make and I agree it's incredibly difficult. How feasible would it be to have a standard equality standard that is equivocal in terms of different parts of the UK use different standards but they were seen on an equivocal basis for example when it comes to the measurement between hires and A levels in the baccalaureate there is a way of making sure that nobody is disadvantaged because they've done a different system. Is there any merit in having a look at system that might or would that just not work? It's not impossible and we've actually within university Scotland we've got a TEF working group which you know is kind of following twin tracks one which is a more urgent track just because of the timetable of the bill and the TEF is influencing TEFs so that if institutions choose to go in it doesn't perverse it's advantage and the other is looking at well what could we do in Scotland that might build that sort of equivalence. It's not impossible it's neither is it easy because as soon as you start to build in a kind of variegated judgment of quality into our enhancement led approach you start to change it it starts to be something that may you know be more prone to to competitive rather collaborative behaviours and so you need to think that through quite carefully but yeah it's the other option what you know the one one route is to to if institutions choose better not to participate in the TEF if you think there's advantage here the other is is to explore the space of whether or something that we can do for Scotland that generates an equivalence and both of those are are being examined. I suppose if I may I think that almost strikes the heart of what our concerns are or not even concerns so I suppose our fundamental position is we are resigned to TEF happening it will happen we want to see the system protected in Scotland but if you boil TEF right down to its very core TEF is nothing more than a set of metrics that are not new they're already recorded they're already measured they're already published they're already made public everyone can access them freely. TEF is a mechanism by which those can be packaged up and then it goes sits alongside a reflective assessment in the part of the institution trying to provide a bit of context to those so actually TEF is not radical TEF is not giving you any substantive if you take the headline measures of retention of widening access rates of graduate destinations none of them tell you anything substantive about the quality of teaching at that institution I think that's almost what's most disappointing that with TEF there was actually an opportunity to do something genuinely radical and genuinely interesting it tries to substantively get to the root of what good teaching looks like actually in a classroom that's what the allure system does whenever the allure system happens in Scottish institutions you get a panel together you have externals on that panel they question students and lecturers and everyone else saying you know higher students genuinely involved in forming their own teaching and learning what does that look like and what are the outcomes that are created but as I say TEF at the end of the day is a set of metrics and an attempt to explain those metrics through a contextual statement that is almost what happens with the existing system in Scotland only existing system in Scotland goes much much further in terms of trying to really critically and really reflectively question those metrics and question what happens in a classroom there should be absolutely no reason why the existing system cannot work within TEF and again I think that that's supposed to be most disappointing that TEF by some is almost being seen as something new and big that will divert attention and energy and everything else away from what currently happens and that is the thing that we absolutely must warn against that the system as it is right now you can take what you do right now in terms of the Scottish quality framework and actually just simply repackage it and submit it as TEF it really wouldn't be that difficult to do so I think we really need to be very careful about saying TEF is something actually that starts to divert huge amounts of energy and attention away because the worry is that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that alloys that to happen you call on did you want to come in one point I wanted to clarify many senior referred earlier on to the university of trump and I see there's reference in the the bill to deregulation of higher education corporations what are the implications of that well as I said the bill does allow for private providers I mean this is an aspect of the bill that as I understand it will apply in England so at the moment it wouldn't apply in Scotland and you know that's I suppose you know quite clear but yeah it's deeply worrying so you can only receive public funding in Scotland if you are a fundable body ie one that receives their funding through the sfc what will happen in Scotland is the public funding mainly tuition fee loans but also some student support element for that student suddenly becomes available if you're a private provider again provider we protect that very protected list of what constitutes a fundable body in Scotland we can obviously ward off any enroachment of the private sector in those kinds of institutions in to Scotland there's a there's a reputational issue here I think for the United Kingdom in particular as we look to to Brexit and beyond I mean one of the huge brand advantages that the United Kingdom has is the integrity of the reputation of our universities and you don't get to be a university and call yourself university unless you've jumped over some pretty high hurdles you know whether you're a new provider or an existing provider you have had to really prove that you've got academic integrity before you get the title and before you get the right to award degrees and I think you know albeit doesn't directly apply in Scotland I do have a worry about the diminution of the UK brand and the effect that would have on Scottish universities if institutions are not given an appropriately high hurdle to jump over before they can call themselves universities and offer degrees I mean to give you an example I mean India has you know a number of absolutely world-class universities compete with you know they compete with the best anywhere but there are also many many institutions that shouldn't be calling themselves universities in countries that don't have a really tight regulation of of university title they just don't have an equivalent to what we call university and I think if Britain allows the brand to be diminished then I think we lose a huge competitive advantage internationally as we look towards an uncertain world. How best can Scotland defend its reputation in this? Colin, can I just come in a bit, please? Thank you very much. The can I just ask then does that mean that you're suggesting that it might be a disadvantage for some of the Scottish universities to be part of TEF if the British brand is being diminished as it is as long as we can still highlight the Scottish quality? I don't think it relates directly to TEF, I think it really relates to the provisions in the bill that will enable the office for students to set lower tests than are currently set by the privy council as to whether you can call yourself a university and where you can award degrees. Sorry I clearly never made myself clear enough then but part of the whole process is this gold standard etc and if the British brand is being diminished in that gold standard or silver standard whatever is starting to mean less than it would have beforehand would that mean then that Scottish universities would be better to try and have their own Scottish quality recognised internationally and that would be in the long term better for Scottish universities? I think they'll have to make that judgment as the TEF evolves. I mean if attaining high levels in the TEF are in some form recognised as being a sign that you're actually an institution that's taking students seriously and doing things well fine if over time and with new entrants coming into the market you're seeing some providers that actually don't meet the standards of academic integrity you would normally expect attaining high grades in the TEF then you would question whether a system is in fact doing what it sets out to do and whether it's one you want to continue to participate in. Okay thank you very much sorry Colin you I want to come back in. No I mean the question I was just asking was one you've broadly answered which was how do Scottish universities defend themselves if there's deterioration in the quality of the provision down south? I think we have to make sure that as well as the UK brand being perceived the distinctiveness of the Scottish brand is being perceived it does get international recognition we work closely with a number of institutions including British Council, Roth Society of Edinburgh, Scottish Development International and Scottish Government on the Connected Scotland initiative which is about making sure we've got coherent brand propositions and making sure that we're targeting markets where there is growth potential for Scottish higher education's collaborations with international partners so we need to build on that and I think fundamentally the integrity of our institutions I mean if we are continuing to provide a world-class higher education we need to keep seeing that and keep claiming the distinctiveness and also the distinctiveness of the welcome that we can give in Scotland to people from around the world in these very uncertain times. I think I'm a bit more relaxed about it however because I think that it's not in the UK's interest it's not in England's interests to see a decrease in their standards why would it be they're proud of their standards as well so just as we are so I would you know I think there will be enough checks and balances in place but we have to safeguard Scotland I quite accept and readily agree with that but I don't think there's any indication that south of the border wishes to decrease their standards either. In that case can I thank the panel for their evidence this morning and we'll take a short break before the next session thank you very much. The third item of business is the second of four sessions on the committee's pre-budget scrutiny. We hear from Skills Development Scotland last week and later this month we'll be looking at the Scottish Qualifications Agency in Education Scotland. Today we are looking at Scottish Funding Council and I welcome to the meeting Dr John Kemp interim chief executive, Dr Stuart Fancey director of research and innovation and Lorna McDonnell director of finance Scottish funding council. Before we start I'd like to put in the record the committee's thanks for the SFE arranging a visit for Liz Smith and Colin Beattie last week and I understand Dr John Kemp wishes to make a short opening statement. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today. Scottish funding council is the national strategic body for the funding of further and higher education in Scotland. We fund support and care for 25 colleges, 19 universities, 470,000 students across those colleges and universities and nearly 50,000 full-time equivalent staff and we spend a total budget of around £1.6 billion. Our ambition is that Scotland will be the best place in the world to educate, to learn, to research, to innovate and that colleges and universities make a major contribution to Scotland's social, cultural and economic development. Our task is to care for and develop the whole system of colleges and universities and their connections and contribution to Scotland's educational, social and cultural life. In our written submission we've provided a summary of progress and we think that across a broad range of measures our colleges and universities are doing well. But neither sector can stand still. There's been a great deal of change in the college sector in recent years. In future there are shared aspirations for change in both sectors on widening access, on developing the young workforce, on developing new learner journeys and on implementing phase 2 of the enterprise and skills review. SFC looks forward to working with colleges, universities, government and others on all of those issues. We also look forward to discussing those with you today and are quite happy to answer any of your questions, either on this or on the legislative consent motion that you discussed earlier. Okay, thank you very much. We'll come to the LCM later on in the session but we'll have Johann Lamont to start the questions. Thank you very much and thank you for coming along and providing so much information. One of the things that comes out of the submissions to the committee is the extent to which people value the fact that you are distanced and arm's length from the Scottish Government, you're able to represent their voice and indeed you've just said that your job is to care for and develop colleges and universities. However, you also say that any advice you give to ministers you would give in privates. So in what set of circumstances would we know when you'd be concerned about Scottish Government policy or budget decisions? That's a tricky question. Of course, when we speak to ministers, we do speak in private because that is the correct way to give advice. However, I think that from looking at the work of the funding council across a whole broad range of things, it's fairly clear what our view is on many things and how that intersects with Government policy. So, when we are meeting with ministers to advise them, sometimes the sectors are there with us and a good example of that is on the discussions roundabout the spending review where we, with the higher education sector and the college sector, are meeting with Government and giving that advice with our stakeholders present. I think that what we mean by that statement, I think that we put in our submission that we generally give advice in private, is when we write to ministers with advice that is given in private. If the Scottish Government has given advice from you, for example, that they were all advised to undertake the regionalisation of college boards and cut budgets for part-time courses, you wouldn't say that in public and we wouldn't know what your view was. On both of those issues, particularly on regionalisation, that is one where we very much co-developed the policy with the Government and put learners at the centre was a policy document where we worked very closely with the Government and the sectors on producing that and then implementing it. So, that's certainly one where we were in exactly the same place as the Government and I think that that is how our relationship with Government works. Our advice feeds into the policy documents and which then feeds into what we implement. On the prioritisation of full-time courses, that was one where, again, the Government and the funding council were working quite closely together on that and that was part of our response to the economic downturn in 2008-09 at looking very closely at how we responded to what at that time was a very sharp increase in demand for full-time places for young people from colleges. That is one where, as with regionalisation, we were working very closely with the Government. We can work in assumption if you agree with them, we'll know because you'll say so. I would certainly have an argument that would last all day about how you deal with economic downturn by disadvantaging people in part-time courses, but that's a separate matter. What you're saying is where you're agreeing with and we quite happy to say publicly we're working things together. Our difficulty in scrutinising the budgets is we don't know when you don't agree and therefore how do we know that actually the advice from the sector, which is things that we don't know about because you're not going to tell us, how can we possibly take a view on whether you think the budget has been given to you to do your job is sufficient or have you become, is there a danger that at one level you've simply been an organisation which is a distributor of funds on behalf of government and the bit that presumably the institution's welcome, which is a distance from government, is blurred and will come on later to some of the proposals and how that might be blurred for that. I think the view of the sectors is that we are much more than just a distributor of funds from government because they are often, as I said, with us and the discussions on things like the spending view, the very issue that you raised. Just to make the point, we're not there, so the Parliament's not there, the people of Scotland are not there. You are having a conversation with the Government about budgets and presumably if the outcome is something you're not happy with, you're not going to say so. We are here. Ask us. Our views on the budget are what we're here for this morning. We are perfectly happy to answer any questions on our views on the budget. So if I were to ask you what your advice would be to the Scottish Government on merging the funding council with other bodies through the institute, the enterprise review, you would be able to tell us what you think. In that case, our input to the review has been made public. There was an open call for evidence as part of phase 1 of the review. In our submission, we highlighted several things, that we're about co-ordination and we're about closer working on innovation and on aspects of the skill system. We've been quite public in our view that we are looking forward enthusiastically to working on phase 2 of the review and that a lot of detail is still to be worked out in there. I think that we've made the point, both in my submission today and in our submission to the committee previously, of the value that we see in a body like the Scottish funding council. The University of Scotland, however, says that the SFC should have the capacity and confidence to initiate policy itself. That's the aspect of SFC's role that has diminished in recent years. First of all, would you agree with that? Secondly, would it be helpful if the Scottish Government were to say that the self-denyne ordinance of being private in your advice to government actually would help them if we were to see that that challenge and debate is at the heart of government? I think that some of the ways that policy has been developed in recent years have involved the Government, the sectors and the funding council working together rather than separately coming up with solutions and then choosing one of them. Actually, I think that that is a good way of developing policy. The issue of whether our advice to government should routinely be made public. As I said on some things, it is. We respond to public consultations and so on, and our views are quite well known there. I think that that would change the nature of the advice to government and I think that it would reduce the value of a body like ours if we are both working with the sector and with government and with other bodies. I think that if we were to go too far one way or the other, it would reduce our value. You will appreciate that when the Scottish Government comes out and says that the funding council agrees with us, that is strength and supposition, but there will not be a set of circumstances where we can say that the Scottish funding council does not agree with the Scottish Government. Therefore, it does not open up some of the challenging debates that perhaps it should be broadened out from a direct face-to-face with yourself and the Government. I accept that. There is a balance to be struck on the transparency of our advice to government. I would contend that on most things. It is fairly clear what our view is. Dr Kim, you have offered this morning to be very direct in answering questions that the Parliament and this committee might put to you. Could I ask you about phase 2 of the proposed mergers with the Enterprise Bourne Schools Development Scotland? Are you in agreement with University Scotland when they raise concerns that the role of the Scottish funding council would put you in an increasingly political role that would be chaired by a minister? I think that there is a lot of detail to be worked through in phase 2. I think that University Scotland and its submission have highlighted many of the issues that will need to be addressed in phase 2 in coming up with a structure that is appropriately transparent and focused on the very broad range of things that a single board would have to do. We look forward to working with the Government and others on phase 2. I acknowledge that we need to address many of the issues that University Scotland does. Are you concerned that the role of the Scottish funding council in a mergers body might be more political? I think most of... I'm not necessarily concerned. We'd have to see what the nature of that body was and who the members were and so on. But we already are a body that is created as an NDPB. We have a letter of guidance from Government. We work very closely with Government. I wouldn't necessarily see that changing if that board was very similar, saying its nature to our board. I think that there are a set of issues about how, as University Scotland has highlighted, about how you deal with the board that is so diverse and might be focused on an enterprise and skills as opposed to the wide range of things to do with the south of Scotland, the highlands and research and widening assets. There was an interesting comment made when Colin Beattie and I had the privilege to come to Queen Margaret University last week that the Scottish funding council was really a little bit removed from Government, but not terribly far. Is that a view that you are comfortable with? That you are increasingly political in the role that you have? Just to add the points that Johann Lamont has correctly asked you in terms of the scrutiny, this Parliament and this committee has to scrutinise the work that you do. If we go back to the Audit Scotland report recently, we're reasonably comfortable with what's happening on the short term, but on the long-term strategy, they had lots of questions and felt that there wasn't transparency and that there wasn't sufficient scrutiny of that. Are you entirely comfortable with the way that the Scottish funding council is running just now? Yes. We spend £1.6 billion worth of public money on colleges and universities, and it is right that we reflect the will of Parliament and the Government in the spending of that money. We receive a letter of guidance from Government, and we are there both to make sure, as I said earlier, to care for the system of colleges and universities, but also to make sure that they are delivering what that £1.6 billion worth of public funding is. Do you dismiss the concerns of Audit Scotland when they recognise that there is a lack of transparency on the longer-term overarching strategy and therefore our ability to scrutinise that is somewhat compromised? I was reflecting on the way into the committee this morning that between summer and Christmas, with committee appearances that have already happened, including today's and some that are happening tomorrow and between Christmas, I have appeared at seven committees. The level of scrutiny of SFC is fairly clear. We are open and transparent and available for scrutiny by Parliament. The issue about the longer-term strategy on Audit Scotland, was that on which issue? There concern is in the more recent report that when it comes to the way that you are asked to implement Scottish Government policy alongside the institutions, when it comes to outcome agreements, they were relatively comfortable, but when it came to the longer perspective of what the process involved, they felt that there was a lack of transparency and they felt that, because of that, it was more difficult for us to scrutinise it. That is a fair point that they make. It is that. I think that, if you combine what John Lamont is asking this morning and what I am asking now, it is an issue that raises a question mark. I think that we are perfectly happy with any level of transparency. If you know that there are detailed things that we can do to make our work more transparent, we are quite happy to work with this committee or any other to do that. Can I just ask about a comment that is made by University of Scotland, where they say that policy teams that might have previously had the capacity to concentrate on widening access or knowledge exchange policy have found themselves increasingly stretched after an organisational restructure to focus time on outcome agreements process? Is that accurate? The staff of the Scottish funding council has been reducing in recent years. There has been a very tight public spending climate, so our staff have been going down. At the same time, we have been focusing on outcome agreements, which was quite a major change for our organisation a few years ago. However, I would push back slightly on University Scotland's point on that. We used to have large policy teams that did things like widening access skills and research and so on. We now have people who work as outcome agreement managers, but also sometimes are part of an access team and so on. We think that that is a useful way of using their skills so that they both have an outward focusing experience of what is going on in institutions but also have some policy expertise. We need to constantly think about the balance of that. When outcome agreements were new, the teams expanded quite a bit because they took a bit of bedding down. As time goes on, that balance is changing. I accept the point that was made by University Scotland that there has been a change in the focus on the staff and the funding council. If it is true that your staffing has been reduced, then by definition those existing members must be doing more work, particularly given the extent of the work that is required in the Aegean FE sectors just now. Is that diminished? It is a different work as well. The sectors have changed quite a bit. We have been changing funding methods, so we have not been staying still. Does that mean, in any sense, that the case work for the people who remain is increased and, therefore, would that have any implications for the quality of the work that they can do, simply because they have not got so much time? We would not overload people to the extent that they are affected quality. It is important that we do work to a very high standard. University Scotland's point is that our policy teams are not as large as they used to be, and that is often people who are doing a mixed task with outcome agreements plus policy work. One of the ways that we are addressing that is with University Scotland on things such as the implementation of the commission for widening access work. We are working very closely with University Scotland on that. I think that that is a good way of ensuring that we are very close to the sectors and how we might implement those things. It is a different way of working, but I think that there is pressure on all parts of the public sector to operate more efficiently and to get better outcomes by working more collaboratively with others. My final point would be that, obviously, if there are fewer people in policy teams and fewer policy developments in the advisory role that is so important that the Scottish Funding Council has with the Scottish Government, are you entirely comfortable that your advisory role is as effective as it used to be? Yes. If you look at the major changes that have been in the college sector recently, that has been very much the funding council working very closely with Government in an advisory role. If you think of some of the challenges that are coming up on things like the learner journey where the Government has set out an aspiration to change that, we will be very much part of advising the Government on how to do that with partners in other parts of the world, in schools and in other organisations too. I do not think that we have, in any way, diminished our capacity to participate in that kind of policy change. I continue to ask a couple of questions about this theme of an NDP being independent of Government or simply being an arm of Government. My reading of the 8th of February letter, guidance letter, that you have mentioned the letters of guidance from ministers, Dr Kev, the 8th of February guidance letter is that there are 55 power graphs in that letter and they are prescriptive by any standards. I see in the RSE submission to this committee today that that is one of their concerns. Would you accept that that has changed quite a lot in recent years? I do not mean you personally, but the organisation is under much more descriptive direction from ministers. I have been at the funding council for about 15 years and I am trying to remember the length of guidance letters over those years. They have varied up and down and it has often depended on the style of the minister and that has covered several administrations over that time. I am not sure that there is a direct relationship between the length of the letter and the prescriptiveness of the Government. I would contend that 55 paragraphs for £1.6 billion is reasonable. You can be very prescriptive within that or you can be less prescriptive, but I have not perceived a huge change in the prescriptiveness of Governments. I have been at the funding council for about 16 years and that has covered quite a few ministers and quite a few Governments. They have all had aspirations for change in colleges and universities and they have all expressed that through guidance letters. On the letter of the 23rd of March, which has a section on widening access simply because you raised that and happened to have it on the screen in front of me, in that there is a sentence and I am just choosing this, for example, where the minister says, I want to see no diminution in efforts to widen access. That by any standards is a very clear ministry on 10. Now you go through that whole 55 paragraphs and apologise and you find that kind of language. You have got no room for their tallest organisation. You are being told exactly what to do, aren't you? That is something that if you have to pose a counterfactual, imagine a funding council that did want to diminish its efforts to widen access. Clearly against what I perceive as the wishes of pretty much every party in the Parliament and the Government, I think that you would be asking questions about, we voted you £1.6 billion, so you have chosen not to carry forward something that is the agreed policy of all the parties in the Parliament. To take John Lamont's question, many of us disagreed with changing the relationship and college funding so that there were less part-time courses and less women able to take college courses, so actually there wasn't a political agreement there, but again, I can't find it right now and you'll forgive me, but I could find a bit there where again the minister is saying, if I may say so, get on with it. So there wasn't agreement on that one? No, no, and on that one, when there was agreement between the funding council and the Government on that, that was one where we had been advising them way back in 2008-9 that there were a lot of very short courses that didn't lead to recognise qualifications that we felt could be prioritised in order to have more part-time. I'm trying to think of an example of where we have been directly told to do something that we didn't perceive would be the will of the Parliament, or it was actually quite closely related to our strategic plan or our council's aims as well. I'm not really arguing, I'm not in that sense trying to pick that kind of hole, Dr Camp. I'm just saying that I think the line of questioning is more that it strikes some of us that there's much more direction now. Can I just take one other example? It's because Colin Beattie and I spent an ordinary amount of time this on in the Audit Committee last time round. In the submission to, again, to the committee from the Auditor General, she says under college governance—you'll understand why I ask all those given previous subjects—and I quote, the SFC's rule in regulating college governance is not clear. It's quite a—why, I suppose, is the obvious answer. Well, that would be a question for the Auditor General, but what I perceive her to mean is that—and I did follow up with the Auditor General staff when they were writing the report—was that some of the failings that there were in college governance over the last couple of years, it hadn't been clear exactly what our role was as opposed to others and how we should have been handling that. Since the events at Coatbridge and North Glasgow, there has been a good governance group established by the Government when we have been working with other stakeholders on clarifying that role. I would hope that, as that has worked through, that role will become clearer. There are aspects of college governance that are very properly with the board of colleges as charities. There are bits that rely on Government powers and there are bits that are our responsibility. We need to be absolutely clear on that. I will finish the loop, which takes me right back to Duran Lamont's very first question, or one of her questions. Isn't the logic, therefore—haven't you just absolutely made the case why an SFC board with responsibility, for example, for college governance, is the right way for the future? That kind of issue would never get the attention at one of the super boards that is going to be in charge of everything that all these organisations do. The Auditor General's report referred to dealing with that as part of the enterprise and skills review, and that is very much one of the things that needs to be looked at in phase two. It is how you retain the capacity to have an organisation that is dealing with those issues within that new structure. Thank you. Not so much supplementary, I had a questioner. Yes, thank you. It strikes me that political parties spend a lot of time calling on ministers to intervene in terms of further and higher education funding decisions, and therefore it is an intriguing debate that funding councils too close to Government. However, can I ask, in light of that theme, how your model compares with models in other countries in terms of how close or not you are to Government? Well, the most immediate parallel is with England, where there used to be a funding council—what there still is—but you were talking earlier about the legislation that changes Hefgae into something very different and offers for students and separates off the research parts of it. It is very hard to compare, because further and higher education systems vary a lot around the world. We are quite unusual in that we fund both further and higher education, and I think that that is a huge benefit that we think of as one post-16 system and fund both bits of it. In terms of relationships with Government, because we do spend quite a lot of money on further and higher education, in other parts of the world a lot of that is coming from fees and from other sources, so there is not the same type of body as us. Funnily enough, the parallel that the funding council would perhaps speak to most, because it is most like us, is far away as New Zealand. To be honest, I could not tell you how interventionist their Government is compared to ours, but it is very hard to compare, because the systems for funding further and higher education are so different, and therefore the extent to which you would expect Government interference is very quite a bit. England is moving in a completely different direction. My question is really about retention and two different types of retention, retention of quality staff and retention of students. If I can deal with staff, first of all, and you will know my background that I was a staff member of a college and then I became an agency lecturer as well, so I am really coming from that experience. Is there any monitoring of the level of agency lecturers against those with permanent contracts and the impact that that has on the quality of teaching? I am not saying that from the point of view of agency staff being lesser calls, but I am saying that the retention of those people with those contracts, given that permanence, is that something that you monitor? We do not collect the data on whether staff or agency staff or full-time or permanent staff, and we do not relate that to quality. When Education Scotland are doing reviews, I am not aware that they would monitor that either, but it is something that we could look at. The data on staff in colleges is not as extensive or has not been in the past as it has been in universities, and that is one of the areas for equality reasons and so on. We are keen to improve, so that is one of the things that we could look at. I will tell you where I am coming from in that. In terms of quality of teaching, you could have a situation. I have seen this in my experience of 15 years that I spent at a college where excellent people come in to work in a college from industry, who then leave and we do not know why. They have never given any kind of exit interview as to what it was and it has made them move on. I am glad that you are saying that you would look at that, because I think that that is a real issue, particularly given that we are going to have more stronger links with industry. We are asking those people to come from industry and teach in our colleges. We would want people with industry experience and recent industry experience to be working in colleges. Sometimes a revolving door is a way of doing that, but you want to know that it is revolving for the right reasons. You want to know that it is revolving for the right reasons, exactly. One other thing, since you are taking notes on my wish list here, those people coming from industry who have got an awful lot to offer colleges could be instrumental in keeping those courses relevant and doing development work, but because they are working for an agency and they do not have those staff contracts, they are not given the paid time to do that. The other issue that I want to speak to you about is student retention and how that is monitored. My understanding is that colleges are funded if students are retained up until a certain point in the academic year. Can you explain that for us? Perhaps, as my colleague Lorna will comment later. There is a date in the roundabout November where, if the student stays beyond that, they get more funding. The way that we monitor retention and success rates is that we look at the whole range of how many stayed until the early retention date, how many stayed until the end of the course, and how many were successful as well. We look at the whole range. Do you want to say anything more on that, Lorna? The impact of having that date, something that the NUS has spoken to me about, is the impact of having that date is that beyond that date they have made criticisms that students have not been given the support that has allowed them to retain them because it does not have an impact on funding. How would you answer that criticism? We focus on, for funding purposes, we have that cut-off date because there does tend to be a drop-off and we need to make sure that we are only funding students that were there. What we would want and what we focus on through the outcome agreements and the performance indicators is success by getting to the end of the course and passing it. We certainly do not ignore once we have got to that date that our performance indicator is not that you stay for 25 per cent of the course, but performance indicators are that you stay until the end and are successful. That is what we focus on in the outcome agreements. Is what you are suggesting that the funding method might incentivise colleges to be more concerned about the early part than the latter part? I think that it is more about coming forward. I was speaking to NUS and they were saying that because there is this drop-off level of retention and obviously student retention is really, really important and it is really important to identify why it is that students are dropping off, that there is a correlation perhaps between how the funding model works and the effort to retain students and to look into the reasons why students might be in difficulty. I think that that might have been a part. Certainly ten years ago, when there was less focus on the performance indicators and before outcome agreements, funding played a bigger part in what happened than looking at the outcomes. I was aware of issues then about colleges being more concerned about the earlier part so that they got over the funding hurdle. I would think that that is probably less true now because there is so much focus on the end point and getting the success rate. The success rates have been going up, with the exception of the full-time FE one that was dicked a bit last year. However, the overall trend has been that they are going up. That leads me on to my next supplementary question to that. In terms of measuring the destinations of students, either destinations where they have maybe come out of the course early, sometimes for fairly legitimate reasons, or other opportunities, how are they being measured? That seems to be that there are stats there about retention that are not really dug into as to what we are the destination is that people have left the course early. We do have a destination survey now that tracks where students go to after their course. I would accept that the students—that covers, I think, about 85 to 90 per cent of students—are tracked. However, the ones that we don't track are probably more likely to be the ones that have dropped out early because they are harder to find that they have not gone on to other courses. That is one that we need to keep on working to make sure that we have the data on the students who have dropped out early, as well as the ones who have completed the course. It is very hard to fathom sometimes why students have dropped out. Sometimes it is just the wrong course. Other times they wanted a job, they have got a job halfway through the course, so they will leave. However, we need to know the detail of that so that they are at college. If people can get a job halfway through a course, then the course is too long. We should be running a different course that gets them to where they want to go quicker. You absolutely get that this is really important information to have in the course. On the note of student drop-outs, I do not like to talk about students dropping out in purely financial terms, but, as we are doing pre-budget scrutiny, there seems to be an issue of money being spent on students who then drop out, not representing good value at all because not enough is being spent on the student support to keep them in. Longer term, looking at reform of student support, what is needed in the short term to prevent that money essentially becoming wasted? There seems to be a big issue with the discretionary support budgets. What we have been trying to—there have been issues in the past that we have heard reported from colleges that the availability of the FE bursary and the discretionary support and so on has been part of the reason that they have perceived that students have dropped out. In recent years, we have tried to focus that funding on need better because one of the issues is in allocating places to a college that is relatively stable. You know roughly how many they will need and how much they can use. Student support is far more volatile if you have a different body of students, different ages and different genders and so on. That can really affect the student support budget, so it is far harder to predict. Last year, for the first time, we used a need-based analysis, which I think will reduce the need for an in-year redistribution that we do every year as well. That has been quite a sticky method of getting the funding in the right place, but it is the kind of thing that will be looked at in the student support review that is kicking off as well. However, we recognise that one of the potential reasons for drop-out is uncertainty about student support. First, I thank you for accommodating us last week to Liz and myself on the visit to Cwmurgat University. I thank you for providing this helpful document on depreciation, which I am sure we have all been studying. It was actually quite interesting. I realise that it is a professional accounting practice that dictates this, but there are a couple of concerns here and a little bit of information that I need. Obviously, it means that most colleges are going to end up with a technical deficit, no matter what they do. First, is that deficit year on year or is it accumulative? In other words, will it get worse in terms of the impact that it has on the apparent bottom line? I think that this is one where I will bring in my director of finance. It is not cumulative, but you are absolutely right that technical deficits are what we should be expecting. You will see from the Audit Scotland report that, in 1415, the overall deficit was £28.3 million. With adjustments for non-cash aspects and one-offs, the overall deficit underlined was a £3 million position. In the number of colleges that showed a deficit at that time, technical deficit and other potential deficits, there were about 15 colleges in that category. That is the norm. It is not something that is going to get worse and worse. The priorities for the use of depreciation have been set. In many cases, any revenue spend on that depreciation category, the non-cash budget and the priorities of student support and pay pressures will continue, but you cannot keep allocating additional priorities to that amount of money. Obviously, from the budgetary point of view, the committee is interested in being able to look and readily see if a college is in deficit or not. Members tend not to look at whether it is a technical deficit or whether it is a real deficit. How are we going to get this presented in such a way that committee members can readily see what the real financial position of the college is without having to go into the accounts and interpret it? You are absolutely right. You will see from the note that we have added requirements in the accounts direction to make that communication much clearer. Understanding where it is a technical deficit and understanding where it is an underlined deficit is very important for everyone to understand. Just a small clarification. We talked about professional accounting practice. Is it the same professional accounting practice across the whole of the public sector? It is the recommended practice for further education and higher education institutions. Is that different from other sectors? Yes. For instance, other charities would have to apply a charity sort, but for colleges and universities they have to apply the further education and higher education sort. How does that significantly differ from how other public sector budgets are handled? Quite considerably different from the normal Government accounting accounts. Indeed, there is going to be a further change in the sort, which will make the interpretation of accounts more, quite sadly, more confusing going forward. However, the communication of the underlined message is something that we have to improve on collectively going forward. Obviously, it is a concern if we cannot compare one area of the public sector with another. Would it be possible for you to encapsulate on one page what the differences are, what the significant differences are and how, when we look at the education budget, it would differ from another area of the public sector if I am making myself clearer? I am happy to provide that after following this committee. I will put that in writing. I think that that would be quite important. In the paper that you supplied under the heading of priorities for spend of depreciation funds, you were very touched on the three areas that were prioritised, which are student support funds, loan repayments and costs of the 2015-16 pay award. These are not necessarily one-off payments, are they? They are continuing obligations. Absolutely. Therefore, the flexibility with the net depreciation is reduced because the commitment goes forward. That is an annual commitment that has to be met from that allocation. Are those guidelines laid down by the Scottish Government or the SFC? The priorities have been ministerial approval for the priorities. The loan repayments are a legal commitment for any loans that existed prior to April 2014. We are relying on the accounting practice as we have to continue. In order to be able to in effect fund these. Perhaps just one other question arising from our discussion last week. One of the areas that I did highlight was, as we bit concerned, about the role of SFC as a regulator as opposed to a provider of funding to the colleges and universities. I got the impression that there is still not a clear role there as to where the regulatory part lies and where the pure funding lies. You raised that last week and I have been thinking of it since. Whether there are benefits in being both or separating them. A regulator is responsible, often usually on behalf of the public, for ensuring a service of high quality, efficient and using money correctly. We do that on behalf of the public in our regulatory role. I think that it is probably easier to do it while we fund as well because of the relationship that we have with the institutions. We discharge our regulatory role in a number of ways through our quality work, some of which you have talked about earlier today. That is very much part of ensuring that what happens in colleges and universities is of high quality. We do that through QAA and Education Scotland. We have other roles and governance that we have talked about earlier, which is part of a regulatory role. We do that in the college sector through the recommendations of the College Governance Task Group. Is it easier to do those if we are standing separately from the colleges and universities or from the funding? It is probably a question not for us but for the wider world, but I do not think that it would be because many of the interactions that we would have, if quality is not good, if there are governance issues, some of the ways that we can bring things back on track is through the work—the day-to-day work—of our outcome agreement managers and others with colleges and universities and through funding levers. That is one of the levers that we have. That does not work for absolutely everything, but it does work for some things. I am not arguing for one model or another. What I am arguing for really is clarity, as to where the two roles sit within SFC and clarity as to how SFC sees themselves as a regulator, being responsible overall for the health of the sector and for ensuring that whatever regulations, laws, guidelines and so on are made are enforced. I think that we should perhaps make that clearer to yourselves and the world how the things that I have talked about fit together about how our quality work is regularity work and how that fits with the governance work and how that fits with the outcome agreements, which are a way of ensuring that what we think we are getting from colleges and universities is what we get. Just further to Colin Beattie's budgetary points, rather than his regulatory points. Again, Audit Scotland is saying the letter to us for today. The SFC does not currently prepare medium-to-long-term budgets. Why not? Partly because we are funded year to year by the Government. In times currently, the last budget settlement was a one-year one. The next one will be a one-year one. Before that, it was more common that there was a longer time horizon. When we huff that certainty, we have had medium and long-term planning. We also do while I would not want to contradict the Auditor General, Lorna does have a huge amount of information about the rolling forward of budgets and what a strategy for the future would be. We have probably not expressed that in a way that the Auditor General has seen as a strategy. However, it is something that we need to look at. I suspect that, if I could be so bold, the committee would really welcome that. I think that I want your makings a really good point. If you are doing your work anyway, if you wanted to share it in some sense with us, I think that we would support that. Further to that point, the clarification Colin was asking for, and you suggested that it might be a good idea that it might well be that you want to pull stuff together in the Senate. One point on a very related theme. Previous committees have asked your predecessor, Lawrence Helleson, in Mark Bathow before him, about whether you feel that there is sufficient data available to measure effectively whether the Scottish Funding Council is doing a good job. Do you believe that there is sufficient data available to measure the quality of what the Scottish Funding Council is delivering, or are there other aspects of data that would be helpful? It is always useful to have more data. In analysing the effectiveness of the Scottish Funding Council, often what we are doing is analysing the effectiveness of what our funding has turned into in terms of widening access or research. There is a huge amount of data there. It is often how we use it and how we promote that to the world so that you can see the changes in something like widening access. Often, if you could link data together in different ways so that you could, the point that we talked about earlier about what happens to students after they leave college, particularly if they have left early, we know that for 85 per cent of the students there is the other 15 we do not. A lot of it would not be about developing new data. It would be making sure that our existing data sets are complete, that they are covering the right things and that they are linked together so that we know when somebody leaves a college, where do they go? What outcome does that have for them if they completed the course or if they did not complete the course? That is the kind of information that I think would be very useful for us to know if we are doing the right thing. Often, we take policy decisions based on the data that we have, the world changes. You need to see how that looks in five years' time. Something that might, a student destination, six months out or four years out, might be very different for when they look in ten years and so on. I am the kind of person who would always like more data, but I do realise that there are limits. Just relating on to those points about accounting measures, and apologies if this is getting technical, but Colin Beattie was asking about comparisons across the public sector. Is it not fair to comment at this point that colleges and universities are very different statuses with regard to that regard? Obviously, with universities being charities and colleges now finding themselves categorised as public sector institutions. There are also charities as well. They are very different beasts. However, in terms of accounting standards, I will defer to my colleague Lorna on the difference in accounting standards between them. I think that I will follow that up in a paper on the difference in accounting standards, but they are very much following. They have to follow a certain recommended practice for their operations. Are you going to ask my main questions? Following on on the points on colleges, colleges have probably seen the biggest changes within the tertiary education sector. I think that it is with some concern to note both the comments in the Audit Scotland report through the summer, but also the comments that the Auditor General supplied to us before this meeting regarding the measurements of the benefits of that process. There are serious issues in terms of fully measuring whether or not the merger programme has delivered all of the expected benefits. I am just wondering what your reflections and comments on that point would be and whether or not we really will be able to determine whether or not the benefits have been delivered and whether it has been successful We published a report reflecting on our post-merger evaluations. We have done post-merger evaluations of all the mergers and we have done the two-year ones of all of them earlier this year. We published a summary report and that measured the progress against the stated aims of the mergers against their plan at the time. The Auditor General's point—I think that it is a valid one—is that there are other baselines that could have been used at the time and then we could have tracked things forward. There are some of the data that we have on things like college leaver destinations. We simply did not have at the time, so we could not have used as baselines. I take the Auditor General's point though that perhaps some of the other things we should have been clearer in stating at the time what the aim was on some of those measures. However, for the ones that did exist at the time and do exist now, we have tracked and that was part of our post-merger evaluation. We have tracked on things like retention and success rates in colleges. That was not explicitly set out as an aim of the mergers programme but we have tracked the impact of the merger programme. That is maybe overstating because we do not know what has affected success rates over that time and it is not clear. We are able to track quite a lot of the baselines. It comes back to the point that more data would generally be good so that you can measure success, but quite a lot of it we have. It just was not explicitly stated as part of the merger programme. I think that the Auditor General is making a much bolder point than that, saying that the Scottish Fund accounts and the Scottish Government have not publicly set out when the benefits of those college mergers will be achieved and how they will measure them. Specifically, it is saying that there is incomplete baseline data. I think that the particular point here is also raised about the cost of harmonising staff pay, just not included in those cost assessments. That sounds a bit more central rather than marginal in response to what you have said. At the time that the Auditor General published her report, we had not published the post-merger evaluation summary. When we published the post-merger evaluation summary, we did not have all of the harmonisation data from the colleges. I am pleased to say that we do have that and the cost of the harmonisation... I will come back to a caveat on that, but the cost of the harmonisation related to the mergers was about £6.2 million, so you need to consider that against the £52 million recurrent savings. The challenge in that harmonisation data, and this is the caveat, is that, as national bargaining was coming in, some of the decisions about harmonisation and how you harmonised pay costs in the college sector would take against that background as opposed to the merger. It is quite hard to disaggregate the two, but the total cost of the harmonisation was £6.2 million a year. In terms of the success of our colleges, I think that their ability to invest is absolutely critical. You have highlighted that there is a well over £200 million worth investment that you needed to bring college estate up to standard, but at the same time, we have seen a 77% reduction in capital investment available to colleges. What would your commentary be on that and the ability of colleges to move forward? Secondly, what has the impact been in terms of reclassification as public sector bodies? Once they became public sector bodies, the ability to retain reserves and to borrow money to address capital projects became much more difficult. You can retain some reserves through an arm's length thrust, but it is at arm's length and it is not really a reserve. That has changed the way in which colleges can address capital issues. Previously, they could, in effect, save up and then use that with sub-grant from us to address capital issues. The fact that they cannot puts far more on us, on the funding council and the Government, to be aware of their capital needs and to help them to address those. We are currently doing some estates needs work with colleges, and we are expecting the outcome to be available in the next few weeks. Then we are going to be doing a larger piece of work on estates needs over the next year or so looking at all the colleges. We recognise that, although some of the college sector in Scotland has a very good estate, there has been a lot of new buildings. Glasgow opened a very large new building just a couple of weeks ago. There are other bits that are now coming up to the stage where they need investment. Given that very large hurdle that has been placed in the college sector, are you concerned by recent reports that your board may be merged into the overarching board for enterprises and that that may be directly chaired by a minister? Would that, to your mind, potentially put universities' status at risk? Potentially, would they be liable to become classified as public sector bodies? What would that do to the £2.5 billion that universities currently hold and reserve and their ability to invest? The issue of universities being classed as public bodies is an issue for the ONS. They are looking at it. I would not want to speculate on how likely that is to happen, but there are a series of choices to be made in that. If the ONS were to decide that they were part of the public sector, there would be a series of steps that Government or others could make to move them out of the public sector to change degrees of control over whatever issue it was that led them to believe that they were part of the public sector. That is one of the things that I would expect the Government would look at in phase 2 of the enterprise and skills review. However, that is an issue where there are choices to be made. However, the change in governance regime certainly potentially pushes it in that direction. Is that your understanding? I would not go that far. At the time, there was quite a lot of concern at the time that your colleges became part of the public sector and the impact on charity states and so on. There are ways in which you can react to that and avoid those consequences without going into the huge detail of it here. For example, what sorts of steps? I think that mainly to do with the degree of control that Government has over bodies. We will move on to the LCM now, unless I have any other questions. Perhaps I could direct this to Dr Fancy. I think that you were present in the room when our previous panel was giving evidence on the concerns about the LCM. Do you share the concerns that were raised this morning? We do share a considerable number of the concerns that were raised this morning as we put in our most recent submission to the committee relatively recently. We absolutely share many of the concerns around the desire that we all have in Scotland to see that the UK body that will be overarching the research councils as we currently know them in their new form will properly reflect UK-wide policy considerations and that individual research councils will be able to respond to the needs of the entire country, including this part that we are in Scotland. To the concerns that were raised earlier, I would add one that I do not think was mentioned, but perhaps quite as explicitly as I would, but it was an oversight and I added it now, which is that the function of the UKRI body that will oversee this new overarching body, one of the ways in which we would hope that that body could be helped to operate in the way that my colleagues earlier spoke to you about and which I would largely agree with. One of the ways in which that could be made more effective for us in Scotland is if it remained relatively slim. We were pleased with John Kingman's reassurance, John Kingman, the shadow executive chair of this new body, his reassurance that he saw that as being a relatively light body which would not have a large amount of policy and strategy staff and activity going on within it. It is in that space that I think danger could potentially lie, and it would be good to see his suggestion of a slim overarching body carried forward and if it could be made as clear as possible in the process of creating a new body. Did you agree with the point that Professor Yellowlees made when she said that when it came to the research councils that she would like to see Scottish representation and each of that, is that a point that you would agree with? Yes, the research councils have operated very well for so many years for all of us in the UK and particularly as we reflected on more than once this morning already for us in Scotland partly because they are directly responsive to and indeed work very closely with the research communities that they serve. The history of those research councils bringing into their boards, their committees, their advisory structures, experts in their various disciplines from across the UK is one that we would very much like to see maintained. So whatever the governance structures in the research councils or committees or however they are termed post change, however those governance structures are arranged, we would very much like to see that openness and drawing on the ability the researchers from across the UK to be to be maintained too. Clearly one of the outstanding features of Scottish universities have been the fact that they have been able to attract top-class research funding, in fact, as a percentage share greater than we might expect. Could you tell us what specific qualities it is within the Scottish universities that you believe make that possible? Clearly there are some extremely good people working in our Scottish universities, extremely good people from all across Scotland, all across the United Kingdom and from around the world who have chosen to build their careers in our excellent universities and that is naturally the strongest possible component of their success but there are some structural advantages that I think we have in Scotland which have been extremely valuable. One of those is an incredibly collaborative culture so the ways in which Scottish universities work with each other both at disciplinary levels and through university Scotland as a sector is a very distinct strength of our system and we in the funding council working with the universities have acted at various points over the years to try to support that and nurture it both through the research pooling initiative for example and more recently to the collaborative work that we have been doing on all manner of things from entrepreneurship to innovation support. Collaboration therefore is a very important feature of a system that supports that excellence. How comfortable are you that the Westminster Government recognises the strengths of the Scottish institutions in this respect? Do you feel confident that they really do recognise that that is something that must not be lost? I think the discussion that this committee has had with the previous panel and is having now with us reflects the fact that we are not complacent at all that the changes from the research council and HEFKI and the Innovate UK system into one that brings those together that there is a concern that our distinctiveness and our ability to operate in ways that are different and effective could be less recognised. We also welcome the letter that appeared overnight that shows that in the formation of UKRI some consideration is proposed to be given to the diversity of the UK's research and innovation cultures and it's hugely important that that's a great step but as we said this morning it could go further and give us even more such reassurance. We agreed earlier that it would be helpful to have a united front on supporting further amendments. Is it something that the Scottish funding council would welcome? Most definitely and I think the committee can see from the submissions you've had from various parties including the ones you heard from earlier and ourselves that we are of very, very similar minds and indeed share the views of ministers and their representations to their colleagues in Westminster that there are safeguards and structural provisions that we would like to see in the bill if there can be and certainly they're operating protocols and practices we definitely want to see in addition. Thank you. In that case can I thank the panel very much for the attendance this morning under evidence and that closes the public session. Thank you.