 Good morning and welcome to the 13th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2021. This meeting is in a virtual setting. The first item on our agenda today is a decision on taking business in private. Can I ask whether members are content to allow agenda item 3 to be taken in private? Are we all agreed? I think that we're all agreed. Moving on to our main item of business this week, the committee will take evidence on the alignment of skills policy with business needs. In this morning, we are taking evidence from Frank Mitchell, who is chair of Skills Development Scotland. Katie Hutton, director of national training programmes Skills Development Scotland. Dr Alan Calhoun, representing the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board, Karen Watt, chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council, Sharon Drysdale, assistant director of access learning and outcomes, Scottish Funding Council. Good morning to all of you, and can I welcome you all to our committee meeting this morning? If I may go first this morning and start the questioning and then invite my colleagues to follow. Last week, we had evidence from a number of different stakeholders, employers and employers organisations, and they felt that they could do with better transparency. They felt very strongly, in fact, that it was very strongly expressed that they wanted better transparency of how the apprenticeship levy is being spent. Dr Calhoun, if I may call you Alan, is that permissible? Yes, of course, no problem. Alan, why do employers feel that way? Because they are taxed through the apprenticeship levy and fuel some ownership of that money. And do they feel that their feeling is fully justified, in your opinion, that there is not sufficient transparency? Yes, I would say that there is not sufficient transparency. There was a publication, I think, in the first year of how the notional funds were divided amongst various activities, but I have not seen anything since then. Clearly, it is used to fund modern apprenticeships, graduate apprenticeships and other things as well. The employers felt that they weren't in the room when the decisions were being made about those apprenticeships. Is that a justified opinion? Do you think that your experience of your membership would support that idea that was given to us last week? No, I would disagree with that view. Obviously, SAB, which I have been involved since its inception, is employer-led and covers a wide range of sectors and employers large and small, and is charged with providing advice to SDS and the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council on all things to do with apprenticeships, and are now in charge of the definition of all apprenticeships. So your view is that they were not justified in saying that they felt that they were not in the room? Obviously, everyone cannot be in the room, but SAB is employer-led and is chaired by an employer who is here today. All the chairs and the vast majority of the members are from employers, so they are well represented and representatives of employer groups, CBI, Scottish Bill of Inferiorization, etc. They are all members, so there is a route, I would suggest, from every employer in Scotland into SAB. When I read your written evidence, which you have very kindly sent us, and it was very helpful in preparing for this session, one of the recommendations that you had made in relation to apprenticeships in Scotland was that there needed to be a demand-led funding system driven by employer demand. Was that recommendation best based on a conclusion from the evidence that you had gathered from your members that that was not the case currently, and how do you create a demand-led funding system driven by employer demand? What changes would you like to see made? That, to implement that recommendation, is that the current process is essentially top-down from the Scottish budget to the various agencies, and it does not recognise the contribution that the large employers make through the levy to the funding, and therefore naturally feel because it is such a hypothecated tax that they would like to see a return on that taxation for apprenticeships. There is not a direct link from an employer's need to the provision of apprenticeships from the apprenticeship system. Perhaps you could help me to understand what you were saying earlier. I was saying that they had said to us last week that they felt that they weren't in the room. I was putting that view to you and you said that that wasn't justified because the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board was in the room. What would have to change for—just describe to me what your organisation would prefer—was the arrangement in order to deliver a demand-led apprenticeship system? Many different models are tried in different places around the world, but the employer would have the ability to create and demand an apprenticeship from the system rather than ask for use of an apprenticeship from an allocation set centrally. Those would then need to be consolidated because we cannot sensibly ask a provider of apprenticeship training, be it a private provider or a college or a university, to run a course for an individual in a subject. There would need to be some consolidation and balancing of supply and demand to make sensible economics. The flip from asking to use an apprenticeship to saying that I have a voucher type system where you could use that voucher as an employer to get an apprenticeship funded. That is pretty much what they have in England. Would that be fair to say that employers effectively have access to that money to spend on apprenticeships? I do not think that it is the same—I do not think that it has similarities, but what we need to do is to balance the broader social and economic aspects from the Government as a whole with the needs of individual employers. There are major problems with the system in England, and it is subject to revision. I have been directly involved in some of that work and know the challenges that operate there. We can come up with a demand-led system that is Scottish and reflects the strength of our educational system, but has a better balance between a supply-side system and a demand-side system. That is very helpful. I think that Frank Mitchell would like to come in on the questions that I have or the line of questions that you and I have just been discussing. Frank, what is your take? I am Frank Mitchell, chair of Skills Development Scotland. I am also CEO of SPN's network for a large employer in central and south Scotland and also in England and Wales. A couple of comments I would say that ultimately the decision of allocation of budget is essentially driven by Scottish Governments. How that is formed is a question for Scottish Government, SAB, to not allocate the budget. Within SDS, we do multiple reviews every year about what demand looks like and the nature of that demand and produce that in concert with employers and industry and sectors and regions. However, there are still issues where there are demand outstrips supply. That is the reality of where we are just now. The nature of that is probably the best scene where we have higher demand for graduate apprentices just now than we have supplies. We know that we have demand of about £4,000. Currently, provision is around £1370 from a financial point of view. We also try through the year to find a push on that if funds become available to help meet that demand. How that financial allocation is given is a question more for the Government, the initial agency or SAB, but what we try to do is make sure that we understand the demand and feed that into the machinery and then administer it against the standards and the areas that we work with the employers and SAB to best use those funds where they are going to make the biggest impact. I hope that that answers your question. I thought that I heard Alan suggesting that some kind of voucher system whereby this money is basically released back to employers and they can then use the money effectively to create not to actually match funded demand as it were, which would then lift the numbers. You are saying that £1370 at the minute is the demand of £4,000. It seems to be suggesting that vouchers would be available to employers to be able to get the apprentices they want, or I may have misinterpreted them and you will come back in if I have. What is your reaction to that? There are various systems that demand-led purchasing is one of the many other vouchers a bit of a way. When we have growing apprenticeships from 10,000 to almost 10,000 2019 in the back of demand, there are real jobs in the real economy. We have something like 12,000 businesses that support those apprenticeships, so often what we need to make sure is that 90 per cent of those who are small and medium enterprises don't lose out to larger companies because they have got the resources to do more in this area where it is purely down to the employer to drive that through all the administration. We have to balance that given that we have to make sure that we support—larger the make-up of our economy in Scotland—the small and medium enterprises where we need to balance that and we help with that administration through SDS, and we obviously have a lot of contact with them to make sure that we understand their demand. In this world you never please everybody, but we are trying to make sure that we strike the balance against a financial envelope. To be fair to Alan Cullidane, I should bring him back in, because I may have misquoted him, so I will let him correct my misinterpretation of his comments. I was trying to say that, in a demand-led system, the employer would be proposing that—we must always remember that the employer is employing an apprentice and they are making the largest commitment in this transaction. The employer would have the ability to use an apprenticeship place that they wanted rather than asking to use one that somebody else has set up. The mechanism—as I said, there are many different mechanisms in use. The voucher concept was just an illustration of how that could be implemented. Is that a fair comment? Yes, that is what demand-led is. As I said, we have a finite amount of public money that has to be spent wisely and it has to be spent efficiently. You cannot, as I suggested, allow every employer to do whatever they wanted with whatever training provider. There has to be some balancing between top-down and bottom-up. Both extremes produce unintended consequences. I think that Karen Watt, the chief executive of the Scottish Funding Council, would like to come in on that point, and then I will turn to my colleague Willie Rennie. Thanks very much, convener, and hello committee. I feel as though the Scottish Funding Council is a fairly new entrant into the debate, because this is our first year of funding foundation apprenticeships—apprenticeships for young people in the senior phases school and graduate apprenticeships through universities. I am not going to proffer a view on vouchers or demand-led systems, because obviously we are part of that process where the Government has set a budget and they have asked us to distribute it through colleges and universities. However, I would say a couple of things about the levy payers, because while levy paying companies are obviously funding through the tax system, the apprenticeship programmes are also enabling flexible workforce development funds that come through us, and they are much more bespoke to individual employers. We spend about £13 million through colleges, where colleges can engage with employers on very specific training programmes for particular needs. That works for both levy paying employers and a small amount now for SMEs. The employer engagement that is so critical to make this work happens at a number of different levels. Obviously, there is a very important national level through SAB, and as Alan has described, I think that the other important engagement is at institutional level. We will not get this working effectively unless our institutions and the bodies that are funded to provide apprenticeships and training and development opportunities for business are engaging effectively. We have lots of forums where employers engage, and we have very programme-specific engagement. When we did our review of tertiary education and research, one of our recommendations was that we need to have a much more strategic and comprehensive set of engagements between our institutions and employers if that is going to work, not just programme-specific but over the longer term, and we need to invest in our institutions to be able to have those engagements. I just wanted to make those points at the outset around levy payers and the flexible workforce development fund, but also the importance of engaging at institutional level with employers so that they can really tailor the products to the needs in regional economies. Are you saying, Karen, that there are too many strands? Is that what you are saying? Generally, the education landscape in Scotland is quite cluttered. Are you saying that it is true in this sphere as well? I suspect that there are many routes for employers and others to try to engage with institutions and products. I think that it is a complex system, so I think that you need complex routes. I am not suggesting that any of those routes in and of themselves are not valuable. What we found in our review was that, for the colleges and universities, they had disparate funding streams coming to them for specific young persons guarantee, national transition training fund and flexible workforce development fund. We put up-skilling and reskilling funds into universities—about £6 million—and those are for short, bite-sized courses. What I am saying is that there needs to be a much more long-term investment in those relationships over a longer period of time so that you get a deeper understanding of what employers and industry need and that the institutions involved can actually make those products work in real-time and in regional economies for employers and industry. The strategic relationships, I think, is what you might be describing there. On that point, I am going to turn to Willie Rennie, who has got a supplementary, but then he is going to take on forward the questioning this morning. Thank you, convener. Isn't the situation with the apprenticeship levy quite agudal? You have a mixture of policies that are set by the UK Government with the levy and the Scottish Government on the application of the funds that come through the funding system. Not every company that pays the levy requires an apprentice. The flexible workforce development fund is not really that flexible and it certainly is not big enough. It was designed in the first place to compensate those levy payers the best out of the apprenticeship scheme, because not every company needs an apprentice. It has now diluted the flexible workforce development fund by including non-levy payers in the system. Is it a surprise that many companies are now doing less training than they were before the apprenticeship levy was brought in? Is that a surprise? Do you have any reflections on what I have said? Who is that directed to, Willie Rennie? I think that if we go for Alan first, I would quite like to hear from Katie. I think that we should be clear about the difference between apprentices, employers and levy players. The levy payers are only a very small fraction of the number of employers in Scotland, although they represent a lot of the employment. The funding that the Government receives and then makes its decisions on how to dispute is for them. The allocation of the flexible workforce development fund to levy payers is a welcome response to work that is served during the creation of the scheme in response to the apprenticeship levy. Clearly, employers would like more than is currently there. £20 million is not a huge amount, but equally well its structure in that each employer can only receive £15,000 each year at the moment is significant for some employers and not so significant for others, but most employers that I have been aware of have made good use of that fund and done things that they could not otherwise do. The question of the distribution to non-levy payers is again a political decision for the Government to make, and it falls out with the remit of SAAB. I will pause there. The distribution of what happens to the levy in Scotland is obviously a matter for the Scottish Government. We know that apprenticeships get something like 4 per cent of post-16 education and training funding. You talked about the numbers side of things. I do not think that you should take last year's numbers as any indication. Most education and training last year was hit by Covid. What we know is prior to that and since the introduction of the levy apprenticeship numbers have been going up. You could argue that levy has stimulated some of the public sector organisations to do more in apprenticeships, because they also have that tax on their wage bill. From memory, the flexible workforce development fund, one of the papers that SAAB sent to the Scottish Government around that was some employers saying, look, we want our supply chains to be eligible for that flexible support because we see that as being important to the products and services that they provide to us as well. I know that some companies that pay the levy are now doing less training than they were before. That cannot be right. Is that an apprenticeship or is it in general in terms of training? They are just doing less training. They are not companies that would naturally take on apprentices. The way that the funds are set up means that they are doing less training than they were before. How could that ever be credible? It is obviously up to individual circumstances within employers. I suppose that engagement in learning goes up and down in terms of what happens depending on individual circumstances and what is happening there. However, I know that the levy has stimulated some companies for me, particularly knowing how to become involved in apprenticeships as a result of it. I hope that you can hear me now. It is difficult to respond to the point about overall training coming down for some specific companies without knowing the detail. The point about what was going on around Covid meant that there were some practicalities around general training provision. As Katie said, from an apprentice point of view, it represents only 4 per cent of the overall money spent in the skills system. There is obviously a lot of money elsewhere, and Karen has commented on that and what she is doing with the SFC. From the point of view of companies having to get ready for net zero, artificial intelligence or digitalisation, as an employer myself, we are investing a lot more in training now going forward than we have ever done. I see that in a number of other companies. We are a levy pair, and, as I said already, 90 per cent of the businesses involved in apprenticeships are sneeze and they are not levy players. There is always going to be a help for those smaller companies to be able to take on apprentices in the model, and that is just the nature of what goes on. Large companies, from my point of view, are seeking personally as a large company. We look at this as a general tax, and that is how we look at it. If we were to not do our training and if we were not to bring on young people into our business, whether that is a pregnancy or a graduate, and we would typically take on somewhere between 250 a year, then our business would not be sustainable. I should recognise why companies are not investing in training generally. If not, because of the practical reasons that we were going forward last year, we certainly have to be causing them. The degree of change that we have in front of us in the workplace is enormous, and if businesses do not invest in that and upskilling and reskilling, which is going to be a key topic, I worry for their sustainability in the future. Frankly, that levy is effectively a training tax. That is what you are saying, and those businesses that may have been spending that money previously or would have planned to spend that money on training, you can understand where Willie Rennie is coming from if they then say that our margins are insufficient, our profitability is insufficient, our budgets are insufficient to sustain an additional payment towards training. That is understandable, is not it, from a business point of view? It was certainly at the beginning of when the levy started that there was a bit of an easier reaction by a lot of companies because of that general view that it would be ultimately funding out of their training budget and would cut their internal training requirements. I think that the vast majority of businesses have got over that now, and they just put it in the pot of general taxation and tried to maximise what they can do with it. Ultimately, the world in front of businesses now require more training than ever before. The degree of change that we have in volatility that we have in front of businesses is enormous, and I have touched upon a few of the challenges. Businesses, if they want to be successful in the future, need to invest in their people and training, general training, but also in apprenticeships. As I mentioned, what we do to talk about here is only 4 per cent of what we spend in the skills system and apprenticeships, so it is a small part of the overall challenge. Ultimately, businesses need to make sure that they attract the right people and keep them trained. The amount of retraining and upskilling and retraining that is going to happen now in the future around the workplace is going to be by far much more than has ever had in the past. Do you mention the 4 per cent, because you think that it should be more? I am the chair of Skills Development Scotland, and I am a large employer who takes on their apprenticeships. Alan is here representing SNAP. We are very much cruel growing the apprenticeship family work-based learning, and if we look at other successful economies, we see the growth in work-based learning as a core part of it, as soon as it is equal to just pure academic ones. That is not to say that pure academic is not a great pathway, but what we want to see is more work-based learning through apprenticeship, because we believe that it is a really strong pathway for individuals, pathways for businesses and pathways for the economy. That is not to say that there are very strong pathways within other areas, but I would want to see more on apprenticeships. Some people might say that it is a higher road rather than an equal road, but I am not learning from a diplomacy, but I will see equal just now. Michael Marr with a short supplementary, and then we will be going to Bob Doris. My questions are probably slightly more substantive, convener. I may hang off to my term if that works. That is absolutely fair and fine. That is good. Thank you, Michael, for that. Bob Doris. Thank you, convener. I better dig out my paper in front of me slightly quicker than I thought. All good. It is really interesting. I will keep my powder dry to the private session of some thoughts on the apprenticeship levy, convener, but it is really interesting to exchange. I want to turn to the role of colleges in helping to meet skills gap and align the training needs of business with those in education. I was interested in the funding council's submission on the young persons guarantee, which said that the Scottish funding council secured £10 million from the fund in 2020-20 to work with colleges and universities to develop a proposal to be the aims of the fund. That collaboration resulted in a series of interventions linked to key priority sectors that included courses to increase the employability of skills of those funds from the market and the labour market that I am very interested in. Of course, I would have liked it a little bit more from the Scottish funding council in relation to the role of colleges in the spend of those £10 million. However, I met the principal of Glasgow-Kelvin College just the other day, and he tells me a lot of very short courses, sometimes as little as 10 hours at a time, which were really pre-employability intensive work with people furthest away from the labour market, have effectively disappeared during Covid in colleges serving the most deprived parts of the country, having major challenges ahead of them. In that context, I would quite like to know a lot more about that £10 million and how that is helping those furthest away from the labour market and the role of colleges in relation to that. Depending on what I have heard, convener, I have got a couple of short supplementaries in relation to that. Maybe one of the reps from the funding council would be best placed. Garon? To start. I might ask Garon to come in on this, if I may. The young person's guarantee has been really important. We have had about 240 courses over the course of this year's spend in colleges for the second half of the academic year. That has had about 2,500 students going through that. Between 70% and 71% were about from the 16 to 19-year-old cohort. We understand that that has been an important part of the college's provision. I have written out to colleges in the past couple of weeks to redefine some of the flexibilities that have been important to put into the college sector, particularly as we look at the consequences of the pandemic and the fact that it has not affected everybody equally. There are particular parts of our communities that have suffered most from that. Some of the flexibilities that we have just put into the system when we have written out to all principals, including Glasgow Kelvin, to suggest that they can use their credits in more flexible ways. For example, where there is a need for shorter, sharper courses, we are now enabling colleges to use their credits for that. We are also very clear that there are additional needs for some students, particularly those who may not have had the same access to placements or to practical engagements. Again, we have increased the number of credits that the college can claim for what it now needs to put in for additional learning for particular students. We are trying to reach out to those who have been most affected through this particularly difficult period and putting more flexibility into even our existing funding to enable those colleges to reach out to both young people and those who are also farthest away from the job market. I wonder if I could ask Sharon to come in on some of this. Good morning. I am happy to come in. Can you hear me just checking? Thank you. In terms of the furthest away from the labour market, what we have identified in the college around young persons guarantee and the national transition training fund is where colleges work very closely with those who are furthest away from the labour market, marrying up with employers to try and ensure that there is a progression pathway for learners undertaking a skills boost, what they call skills boost, to increase their employability chances. We saw some really great examples across the sector, West Lodian College working with the Scottish Ambulance Service in terms of identifying the identified skills gaps for the mobile training units and ensuring that those people who would ultimately become redundant due to the lack of mobile testing units, but that is about to ramp back up again. At that point, those people who are about to become redundant were given a course that was developed with the Ambulance Service that identified how they can move on to health and social care. Edwin MacRollage, equally so young persons guarantee, developed a course with a collaborative approach with NHS Lodian, looking at the hardest to reach skills gaps, jobs that people were really hard to fill in marrying that up to students in the system who were furthest away from the labour market. That course was really successful and, after the first two cohorts, 30 people were put into full-time employment, so quite a great success rate. We still look for collaborative ways of working and encourage collaborative ways of working within the college sector to work with employers, identify skills gaps and ensure that there is a pathway for learners to get into employment. That is very helpful. I should point out that I mentioned the young persons guarantee, because there is a quantifiable £10 million investment in that, but more generally it is clearly not just young people, but those in the most deprived areas that have the most fragile learning experiences are the most likely to be impacted by the pandemic more generally. Although the follow-up question is in the young persons guarantee, I just wanted to show an awareness that I know that. I see from our papers that 2,438 students were recorded as having rolled in the young persons guarantee that 53.6 per cent of those were from the four most deprived SIMD deciles and 18.2 per cent from the most deprived deciles. Are you comfortable with that balance? Should it be greater? Do we need more intensive funding? How would we follow the outcomes in relation to that? If you were back at the committee next year and we said that that was 2,438 last year and many have entered in the following year, what is the breakdown by SIMD and what were the outcomes for those in the previous year? That would be really helpful to know. I should also finish off by saying that, when I spoke to Derek Smith of the College for Glasgow Kelvin College, he was very excited about the challenges facing the sector, but they were well up and well placed to address that challenge. I just wanted to make sure that the appropriate funding streams get to those colleges to allow them to address those challenges. Would you like someone to comment on that, Bob? I think that the question is in the first half, convener, in relation to how do we monitor outcomes for those 2,438. What would anticipate the numbers to be for next year? Any breakdown in relation to outcomes and how is that spread across the country? We can get beneath the figures, convener, and do some monitoring skills when we work as a committee. Is that one for Frank or Alan? Again, I am not sure who does the monitoring. It is funded by the funding council, so is it the funding council that would measure those outcomes? I think that Sharon is saying that she wants to come back in on that, so that would be very helpful. Maybe Alan can tell us what he would like to see the outcome as the next family is invited to be before the committee. In terms of monitoring and looking at the outcomes of those, the students and learners, what we do is monitor each college individually. We have monthly meetings with the colleges around YPG and NTTF to understand what that output looks like. It also comes through our FES system, where that is our normal reporting system. However, because of the nature of that and because of how relevant it is to economic recovery, we are working closely with every single college in the sector that we meet with a monthly to understand where those outputs are coming, and they report into us in a bi-monthly basis. We will be able to give you some of those outcomes by the end of this academic year, once we can clear the requirements for our reporting and cleanse that data. If you do ask us in next year, we will be able to give you an update on both YPG and national transition training funds and our upskilling fund. Can I ask for that now, rather than wait until next year? In other words, I think that the committee will be interested in monitoring that on an on-going basis, rather than rehearsing it again next year. I suppose that was the point that I was making. That was £10 million, of course, from the young person's guarantee. Would the FFCC have used it for additional funds to additional places next year, and would you be keen to see those targeted at the most SIMD bottom 20 or 40? I am trying to know what the funding council thinks about this, rather than just telling me the numbers. That is Karen or Sharon. Shall I pick up first and then, if Sharon has any additional comment to make? I think that this is a really valuable programme. We would like to see it sustained and, if possible, increased. Of course, that is entirely a matter for the Government in terms of how much it continues to put into young person's guarantee. That will be one of the funds that we are still waiting to see how much we will be coming through into the college sector, because it was not on the face of the budget that was announced recently. As you will know, our national review was very clear. Those are extremely valuable funds. We would like to see them continue. I think that there is a huge value in those targeting in two areas that are most in need of encouragement on helping young people to get involved. I guess that that is part of the review that we will be doing this year, to see whether colleges are working with us and whether the Government's policy needs to go into a slightly more targeted phase. My answer would be that we would like to see those funds continue and that we would like to see them embedded in effectively into the future years. It is an open question about whether they become even more targeted and whether it is sufficient. I am not giving you an absolute answer, because I want to see how some of those teams are monitoring how they are working in real time and what colleges are finding is working well and what is more of a challenge in those funds. We are very happy if it is useful and we feel that data is ready to share to give you early sight of monitoring around that rather than wait until the end of the year. However, it may at times be slightly more anecdotal than hard evidence-based, but we will give the committee updates if that is helpful on a more regular basis than waiting until the end of the academic year. Thank you, Cam. Can you do that at the very helpful, no further questions? Thank you. I turn now to the deputy convener, Co-Cab Stewart. Good morning, everyone. That has been a really interesting and informative chat so far. I wanted to look at why we are all here, because we know that we need to upskill, reskill, but we also have skills shortages and labour market shortages. In the light of that, of course, there are untapped human resources out there, women, for instance, but also people from Black, Asian, minority, ethnic, heritage and cultural backgrounds. I am very interested to hear about what actual actions are taking place to encourage people from those backgrounds to come into the skills market and into the labour market using the national training programmes, for instance. In the first instance, I would like to put that question to Katie Hutton, and then maybe Dr Allan could come in and give an update on the gender commission that was referred to in the papers as well. We have just published a report of five years of the Equality Action Plan in apprenticeships, and it has highlighted the range of actions that we have taken and the progress that is being made. It is an important issue around reaching out to groups that participate less in some of the programmes. I could talk about other things with upskilling, but we will focus on it in terms of apprenticeships. We have made progress in terms of apprenticeships, but we look at much more to do. Our target is to reach the population share for the ME participation that is 2.7 per cent at the moment, going up from 1.6. There are interesting things behind that in co-carbon. If you look at the 2020 participation figures for 16 to 19-year-olds, ethnic minority populations tend to stay on more at school and tend to go into higher education, so that is 27 per cent in HE compared to 19.1 per cent for white ethnicities. One of the things that we have said is that if you want more people in apprenticeships from that background, you might have to take from higher education. There are all sorts of you-will-well-know cultural factors about what is the destination of choice, etc. Interestingly, the graduate apprenticeship population at the moment in graduate apprenticeships is actually higher, and the percentage is just slightly higher than the ethnic minority participation as it is for foundation apprenticeships. I think that there are really good signs there in the graduate apprenticeship programme and also in the essays of the work that we have been doing with community groups around outreach to community groups, matching up training providers with the range of agencies to make sure that we get as much participation as possible. That is interesting. Your statistic is about 2.7 per cent. The last census is sitting just over 4 per cent, but, obviously, 10 years later we are expecting that to be much higher, so that is quite a significant gap there. It is also interesting about the higher level of graduate apprenticeships. Do you think that there is a problem with perception in certain communities regarding apprenticeships and skills development? I do think that there is a cultural problem. It is terrible to generalise, as you know, but in some communities there is a view of parental drive to make sure that people go into university and do certain types of subjects. Again, I think that Karen and Sharon will know more than I do, but there are certain subject areas, for instance, that are a higher proportion of ethnic minority individuals in the population score. I think that there are perceptions about apprenticeships and what is the preferred route. That is the kind of things that we have been working on to get into the grassroots to say that apprenticeship is a very good route, which is why foundation apprenticeships in the schools, because you have to get the messages right down in the school system, rather than just a secondary education, but that is why foundation apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships are a fantastic addition to making sure that that message around apprenticeships is heard. I think that it is just important that, obviously, not one size fits all, and I am very keen that decisions come from the young people themselves, and they see parity with different pathways. That is very helpful what you have said there. Dr Allan, I wonder if you could come in and tell me a little bit about the work of the Gender Commission. Thank you. The SAB set up the Gender Commission a couple of years ago, and it has been led by Natalie Buxton of Weber Shandwick. We have heard a large number of meetings and consulted with a wide range of participants across the society. We are working closely with the SAB's Equalities group. They are finalising a report at the moment, and we expect that to be published in the new year full of clear recommendations that can be implemented. The diversity and inclusion agenda is very clear throughout all SAB's activities, and the principle floor for an apprenticeship is that it is available for all people of all backgrounds, whether it is gender, race, neurodiversity, etc. Employers recognise that they need to address the full population to address the challenges that you highlighted about skill shortages and the position of the labour market. We have to make the best use of all the talent that we have in the UK. Who would be responsible for monitoring the application of those recommendations? What normally happens? I am not sure about that, but I am. The recommendations from SAB to the business community, the employer community as a whole, I would say that, certainly within my company, and I am sure within Frank, there are huge efforts going on in this area. It is really us all addressing this issue and talking about it and making positive moves to address barriers to employment for whatever reason. As Katie talked about, providing the role models early in people's careers and the education system to show them the pathways to give them experience, I think the best way to learn something is to go and do it, so getting, for example, work experience or visits to factories. We are working, and I know, for example, in this as well, we are working closely with AFPE, which is a group focused on engineering and recruitment of engineers into the sector from the wide-ranging ethnic communities. I am going with that. That good work has been going on for many years. I have seen that myself through the education system. However, there are stubborn areas where there is a lack of movement. For instance, if you have a certain, and I do not want to pick on one because that is unfair, but say that there was a workforce or a type of business that consistently had an underrepresentation of female employees, how do you monitor that? How do you break that cycle, because we have been doing all of those other things in the past? I just wondered whether there was anything else that we could push for as a committee or suggest. Well, I think that reporting is obviously the easiest way to see these problems. Obviously, encouraging employers to set targets for representing the communities that they serve legislation is a possibility. There have obviously been some moves in that direction on things such as the gender pay gap that highlights certain parts of the issue. Encouraging where you can to have positive action was involved with SFC and a lot of the working in the education system to address the issues such as SDS and the gender issues in apprenticeships in certain sectors. There is a lot of attention. The biggest driver is that employers require skilled staff. They are blind to all those things. What they are open to is people with the right skills and the right attitude to do the jobs that they need done. Thank you for that reflection. As I said earlier, it is an untapped workforce that is right there, so reaching out and encouraging, but also incentivising as well. People's attitudes towards work have changed, so they want fair paying conditions, access to skills, up-leveling and increasing their own repertoire. Thank you very much for that. That was very helpful. I think that Katie Hutton wanted to come in on your line of questioning. It was just to say that it is part of the recommendations that will be SAV that will monitor the recommendations. There will probably be recommendations in there for policy makers as well. I think that what is going to come out is things around a whole system approach to this, because it is cultural normalisation, as we say, starts early on in the system. When we survey employers, they will tell us that almost all employers, for instance, are electrical or automotive or construction. Most or all of their applicants are males, for instance, and the reverse is true for dental, nursing and childcare. What I should have said earlier is that in Spain and Scotland they have just put out a piece of work that is interviewed by 400 young people mostly from deprived backgrounds and 100 front-line staff working with them. It highlights that young people tend to stick with what is familiar to them, so you can imagine that we have all been in a shop, we have all had a meal in a restaurant, so retail and hospitality figures are quite highly. If they cannot see it, they cannot be it, which is why early exposure, way down the school system, involvement in work experience, exposure to the workplace and work base learning in the school system through foundation apprenticeship, is all important in trying to change what is happening, because employers applications have to come forward to employers. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, for instance, do an awful lot around gender, et cetera, so as a whole system approach they are required. If you can't see it, you can't be it, I do like that. Should I have heard that before? That sounds like something could be made into a good strap line. The other one is nothing about us without us. I like that as well, yes, that's very good, very inclusive. Stephanie Callaghan, if you would like to take us forward with your line of questions. Thank you, convener, and thanks to our panel for coming along today. I was going to quote the quote that the cold cab just stood there, nothing about us without us. I think that it's very popular at the moment, and very pertinent. I'm going to speak as well about diversity and equality and ask some questions around that and, again, untapped talent there. We already have a bit of a focus on gender imbalances, which are well recognised across various sectors, and there's work going on to encourage women into sectors. As mentioned as well, we've got black and minority ethnic communities, or socioeconomic groups. My words are coming well this morning. We've also got learning disabilities and neurodiversity. I just want to ask a bit about neurodiversity. We get quite high unemployment in this group of people, and very often we can't make it through recruiting processes like interviews and the common skills that employers are looking for, such as communications, teams work, networking, and things that are challenging for them. Effectively, they can get screened out at that recruitment stage, but they do have lots of unusual and valuable skills. In evidence, we've been hearing of its skills gaps in digital, computing, IT, data analytics, et cetera, there as well. Very often, those can be strengths for people who are neurodiverse, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, et cetera, there as well, quite a range of things. What is the current representation on boards now, as far as diversity goes, and on neurodiverse individuals, on SDS, on SAP, on SFC? I have a quick question to the three of you that represent those organisations. Who would you like to go first? Okay, if I could ask Frank first, please. I hope that you can hear me. I don't know that. I think that I see Alan up. We can hear you, Frank. Carry on. Okay, thank you. I think that starting from maybe, first of all, with my employer hat on, it's important that all parts of society are given the right opportunities and the right pathway to have a role in the economy going forward. As a business, I know that we try a lot to do that and invest in it, and there's a huge responsibility in business, particularly large businesses, such as myself, to be doing that, and I can talk to you about that. As far as making sure, and it's quite an area to do with encouraging people into particular areas where they might have a strength such as digitalisation, as you mentioned, mathematics, is the area where we're working with the industry on looking at how we can transition people who otherwise might be out of employment, but have some of those skills that can be useful to employers in those sectors. Work programmes are done in particular in digitalisation, where people have been able to do courses for, I think, 15 to 16 weeks to transition in and be much more employable to that sector, but come from a different place. They've got the fundamentals around mathematics, including giving them those competencies that, otherwise, without a bit of training, they might not have the entry eight parts to get into it. That has been done with employers, but I probably suspect that we need to take away, because it's quite a detailed question that you've asked, that I'll probably need to take that away and come back with a written response. I might ask Katie for many states, but she might have some more insight into that very detailed group. I have a lot of work done in the digital sector, as you mentioned. We published a report in 2020 about neurodiversity in the digital sector. Since then, there has been a range of actions, including working with colleges on supporting individuals with neurodiversity around entering the tech sector. Technology provides fantastic opportunities for individuals in their engagement with the sector and the skills that they have, as Frank has outlined. There is a programme of work behind that that we can get details to you of. Thanks, Stephanie. The SAB itself is made up of representatives from mostly employers and training providers. We've got a diverse range of members there, and they represent a whole range of different groups of people. In addition, there is the Equalities group, which clearly focuses on that area. I think that we are well covered. As I was saying before, all our activities are covered and consider the effects of diversity, including neurodiversity. My primary interest is in the scientific and engineering sector. Slightly seriously, we are all on the spectrum somewhere. The range is quite broad within the sector. We make efforts in recruitment to accommodate as many routes as possible and tackle things, such as dyslexia and dyscalculia. During the recruitment process, if anyone flags something up, we make great efforts to accommodate them and provide support in the workplace. We are taking some positive action on that with a trial with some apprentices this year. That is a summary of where we are, but we can clearly recognise what the neurodiver population brings to the engineering and particularly the creativity side of things. Thank you very much for that. Sorry, was someone else looking to come in there, Katie? Oh, I do not think so. Sorry, my apologies. I think that the point that I would make there is that, with the absolute best will in the world, if there is not representation from those individuals, what can seem like really good solutions that improve accessibility to neurotypical people, or normal, if you like? I am the same for disabilities, but those things in practice are not always what people need, so representation is something that we really need to be looking at there, making sure that we have that representation right at the level at which ideas are coming through. My second question is just following on from that as well. What kind of pathways do we actually have just now? Is there anything else that MD wants to mention, as far as the pathways into employment for neurodiverse individuals or any plans for the future? I would be interested in maybe sharing an answer in that question. Thank you. Both the college sector is absolutely key to this in terms of the way that they reach people who are furthest away from the labour market and who do come into the college sector with a wide range of additional needs, including neurodiversity. We can see through our data that the numbers are increasing and that the colleges are very well placed to adapt provision to ensure that they bring people through the process, and that pathway from early access straight through to HNC and then onward into university is very clearly documented. I think that we can provide data for that for you and some of those if that would help you, but I do not have that hand right in this minute and down. We did not come in on the recruit on the board. We do have a commitment to ensure that we digress the board. We have made really good progress in achieving a 50-50 balance on our agenda. It worked really hard to ensure that that was put into place. In our next recruitment round, we will have the opportunity to go a bit further on that. We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the EHRC and it is coming to a February board meeting to speak to the board about governance responsibilities around those issues. We have also addressed all of our directorates in terms of HSFC, a directorate has had a diversity training from EHRC, so we are making progress, but there are some ways to go as well. That is great. I really appreciate that. The training is incredibly important, but I think that representation at the highest level is also completely vital. Thanks very much, convener. I think that Katie and Karen wanted to come in on your question. Let's see if Katie first and then Karen wants to add anything. I just wanted to agree with you about the whole local point of when you are delivering services and skills programmes, that you have to understand what needs are and co-design. Lift experience is such a huge part of equalities for making sure that there is diversity in participation and outcome, and that is something that is absolutely core to our equalities work. The thing about pathways is an interesting one that you raised, because what you are also trying to do is mainstream within your provision to not get wise individuals into that course for that group of individuals and so on. Our approach to quality strategy is to mainstream as much as possible, but, crucially, lift experience is so important to the design of services to make sure that they are going to hit the mark. Thanks, convener. Sharon may have covered the point. The memorandum that we have with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is incredibly important, because not only is it challenging us about how we engage with the sector and our expectations, reporting and action plans, but it is getting to the heart of where the persistent inequalities that we need to spend greater time and energy on. As Sharon said, they are coming to our board. Our board is a publicly appointed board. We have another opportunity in 2023 to look at the diversity of our board and to explore other ways of doing that. EHRC is coming to address the board in February to look at different options about it, even in its existing and current state. It can become more open to understanding representation and needs across the piece, whether that is through different observers or different participation around our board table. The last thing that I would say is that we have some extremely good case studies of colleges looking at, for example, neurodiverse communities. I am thinking about West Lothian colleges looking at digital and computing skills. They have done some quite groundbreaking work with neurodiverse communities. If it is helpful, I am sure that we could get the committee some more specific work on that. The issue is how do we use that good practice to more fully embrace all pathways for particularly challenged groups in society to make the most of the opportunities that are available from our institutions? Thank you for that. I am going to come now to James Dormin, and he will be followed by Michael Marra. James, if you are all set, I think that you are, and then Michael Marra James. Okay, thank you very much, convener. I would like to start off by asking—excuse me, Alan. How do you serve ensuring that the membership is representative of industry in Scotland both in terms of the current labour market and expected emergent demand, and also how do you, particularly after Covid, recognise what that emerging demand is going to be? Thanks for that question. I think that there are several parts to serve, as I am sure you have seen from the briefing paper. We have the group board at the top level, which provides the overview, and we receive briefings from SDS on labour market intelligence, things that are changing. In the Standard and Frameworks group that I am a member of as well, we are defining and designing and approving through the Apprentices Approvals group the actual frameworks for apprenticeships. We have a work programme for there looking at what needs to be refreshed, what is new, what is no longer required. The employer engagement group is the voice of the broader employer market. We have, as I mentioned in previous answers, a range of bodies—CBI, et cetera—feeding in there, so that is a broad funneling effect from an individual representing an organisation, but they have hundreds of thousands of members, and then the equalities group that we have covered. Between all those parts, we have the ability to foresight across the skill of landscape and see where the issues are, what is being required, digitisation and machine learning. After vision intelligence is a hot topic just now. How does that feed into the skill system? We have referred about the type of people that they need for those skills, so there is that marrying between the technological advances, the work of individual companies and what they require, and larger groupings of organisations, trade bodies, largely. Thank you for that. I see that Frank Lawrence, the commander, was going to ask the committee to come in. I might come back to Alan, but Frank, would you like to come in at the stage? The Sabbath employer-led organisation is focused on apprenticeships. First of all, the people who are really interested in apprenticeships and who we encourage to join Sabbath is voluntary. If people put their own time into it, companies invest people's time in it, so it is a big commitment, because a lot of work goes on, heavy lifting behind the scenes, particularly in the standards of sexual school. We can get people from the appropriate companies to try to look to others to try to help in those areas to get that best advice on about it equally. There is on-going engagement with industry leadership groups and regional groups and enterprise agencies to make sure that we understand what is going on both regionally and sectorally. As Alan outlined, SDS tries to inform through the work that it does at an annual basis about what demand is looking like and check-pointing that with the people represented in the Sabbath. It is clear that we depend on volunteers, and we depend on those who have an interest in apprenticeships. We welcome any company who wants to be involved to do that, and we try to make sure that we outreach to them through what we do, through employee engagement. As Alan already said, we have the GBI, the Chamber of Commerce and other groups involved in that to try to help to bring coalesce areas together for us where we cannot get specific companies involved. There is a range of sectors in the Sabbath membership on the evidence that was laid out, and we try to make sure that that is covered in the representation. Alison McGregor, who is the chair of the Sabbath, is the ex-CBI president of HSBC Scotland, and the ex-CBI president of Scotland. Alison and I continue to talk about that and make sure that we try to refresh the mutual representation that we get around that table as forward-looking as we can through the voluntary process. That touches more on the role of the SDS, but how do you gauge what the future demand is going to be, what the future market is going to be, and how has that impacted and changed by what has happened over the past two years? Has there has to be a rethinking of what type of apprentices we are going to need, how many are going to be needed, and what sort of markets are we going to be needed? We try to do that through regional and sector skills assessments that go on annually and regularly and also produce skills investment plans both regional and sector-wide. We try to be agreed with those relevant bodies that are involved in that at stakeholders in those areas to make sure that we are picking up what we think the demand is going to be for the forward period of looking at 12 months and beyond. We also look at what is happening globally in trends and there is work that goes on, and I am sure Katie will talk about it, a research and development that we are doing within looking at what is happening out there in the trends and technology for instance and what is going on, but undoubtedly Covid has had a big impact in some sectors, so retail has accelerated some of the changes that have been seen in coming. That way that was probably seen to be longer in the horizon than what happened through Covid with the department in there, and obviously hospitality has been impacted. We are also very interested in what we look at as upskilling and re-skilling opportunities to try and move people across sectors to make sure that what we want to do is always keep people in employment and get them into employment. That is the fundamental scope that we are trying to do and making sure that there is good employment when we do that. In apprenticeship, we have always got to have an employer backing up that is a real job there, so that is at the heart of what we do with apprenticeship because you do not get an apprenticeship without having a real employer who wants somebody there. That also gives us a lot of confidence in the practices that we are starting to have real jobs involved in that as well, and that is a strength of what we do in that area. The one thing that I would say is that any forecast is never going to be correct, and that is just the nature of the beast. We need to have the ability to react to events, and we are trying to keep where we are in the ground. We have a regional structure across SDS, and we have a sector structure across SDS, so we are trying to keep where we are near to the ground about what is going on, see what the effects are in short-term, and try to dynamically shift when we see demand growing or demand reducing certainly as we forecast in advance. We do not stick to the plan for the sake of it, so we try to make sure that we have a best view looking forward, agreeing with the various stakeholders including SAB, and then we make sure that we react to events as they occur through our network of people out there that are locked into regions and sectors to do that as well. However, as I said, Covid has probably been unprecedented to cope with some of those changes that you have highlighted. Before Carson was that easy, I had a one that pulls something ago. Can I just ask, I do not know if you are a caterer, if somebody else wants to come in. There seems to be some sectors that people do not seem to recognise as a good opportunity for apprenticeships in their future progression, good learning experiences, etc. I do not know if you will be able to respond to how you can fill that hole, or if it should be a caterer. I will ask you to comment whether you have a specific mind about the sector, but we see a presence of opportunities in every sector, in every region. We would like to do more, as I mentioned earlier on. We want to go through the great pathways, and they are really strong every time we look to it. I said that there seems to be a very strong pathway in helping young people and others at different ages across all parts of society to get into a job that is good for businesses and the economy. We are very much to push that forward. If there are gaps out there, we need to push on. I am sure that other sectors can do better. I go at the oil and gas sector for some time because I felt that we were not doing enough to create apprenticeships by the top-tier companies, all that we are doing is taking it from the supply chain. I had long-time conversations with some of the chief execs about the need to invest more in apprenticeships and graduates, rather than keep recruiting from the supply chain. Do you want to ask Katie to comment on anything that she has in that area around the supply chain? Before you do, Frank, that last point that you made about cherrypicking workers from the supply chain, would that be a reason why you would be more in favour of the apprenticeship grant than not? Because those companies then would not be participating in the apprenticeship grant but would just be taking out the staff from elsewhere. Some of the larger companies that we are not doing in many apprenticeships, as I would suggest, should have done, but they are actually sizing up their work to be leery pairs. Some of the companies that we are taking train people out of rather than training their own to a level that they should have been doing were those who weren't leery pairs because of a small company who were using the apprenticeship programme to grow their own talent. Ultimately, people were throwing money at them when they wanted to get some resources, so people were moving for a bit more money. Abbey is encouraging some of those talk-tier companies to do a lot more to grow their own talent. They have taken that on board in recent times, but it has been an area where we have some challenges in some sectors where some companies within a sector could be doing more. I do not disagree with that. It is incumbent for everybody to do everything that they can in this area to be growing and to give everyone the opportunities through apprenticeships that they can possibly do. Kate Russell will come in. The annual statistical report shows that what we have done around pathways is that there is a real priority around higher-level NAs over the past piece. When you look at the data on the wages returns around things, there has been a real priority in the policy in our managed demand process to go into areas with higher-level BQ type things. Also, the graduate apprenticeships as a pathway is that very attempt to provide higher-level pathways to. Also, a big development in the development of frameworks going forward under the SAV process is the introduction of meta-skills, because if you look at everything in the future in terms of what people will need, it is the adaptive and resilient things around self-management, management change in the workplace, because things are fast-moving now and what technology has brought innovation. Meta-skills are a key part of the development of frameworks and everyone that is being revised now so that people can move jobs because of the state of the labour market and what they will need in their own work situation. They will also need it if they go into transition into other industries. I think that another area that is important in looking at the alignment of skills is obviously around the whole green jobs aspect and what is needed there, whether it is for new pathways that are going to open up or for people transitioning into different roles, needing to enhance their skills that they have already and just the sheer scale of things going forward there, too. Obviously, we have touched on digital as well, being a huge area for Scotland in terms of what we require in that, too. I think that there will be new pathways opening up, but we have also tried to emphasise within our contracting and within the staffs that we fund each year that move towards higher-level opportunities and the graduate approach, too. Thank you very much for that, Kate. I see that Sharon wants to come in. I wonder if I can get Sharon in. Absolutely fine. Thank you very much. If I could just go back one slight step where you were talking about regional skills assessments and demand assessments and how we can then identify what the future looks like, which, as you said, we all had a crystal wall that would be wonderful. One of the most positive—we are relatively newbies in this environment around SAB—one of the positive progress that has been made is that SFC now has membership of SAB, and we also sit in subgroups such as the Employer Engagement Group and Standards and Frameworks. That brings together a really unique opportunity to align the aims and objectives of our accountability equally with the delivery partners and colleges and universities in understanding how those aspirations are aligned. We worked closely with SDS in development of the regional skills assessments, but we do not just utilise that. As Frank said, it is not an exact science, but what we do is work closely and talk to all of our institutions to see what the capacity is, where they see things progressing, what we feel in terms of numbers and what we can do, and where they see opportunities to be able to change or look at new frameworks with the future. Having all of that brought together, it is absolutely really a positive progression and a positive piece of work that we are doing. On that point, you made Dershan and the points of it previously about flexibility and about being able to move from one field to another. Is the funding as flexible as you have to be around about the training? If the training is going to have to change slightly, is the funding as easy for the funding to follow? For us, it is easy to be able to move between frameworks. If an institution comes back to us and says that we are seeing a decline in demand in one particular framework, we can ensure that they have the flexibility to provide that there is a need, that there is an economic need to develop the other framework and that the numbers and demands are there from employers. That is quite an agile process. We can do that in a year and we can do it within a few weeks. We can reallocate that funding to ensure that the correct frameworks on the employers needs to be met on the graduate apprenticeship programmes. Thank you very much for that and thanks to the other panel. I want to step back to an early comment that Frank Mitchell made regarding a particularly high demand for graduate apprenticeships, higher demand and their supply. I wonder if you could unpack that little bit. In my mind, a graduate apprenticeship scheme has been a real success in recent years. Would you agree that that is the case? Yes, I think that the graduate apprenticeship is a great innovation and something that I really support both within SDS as an employer. I think that the point that I was making is that we currently are funded to provide around 1,350 graduate apprenticeships, which is great and we are doing that, but we know that that is around about 4,000 that we would like to do. That is an on-going discussion that we are having with the Scottish Government about how we can make sure that we can do more to meet that demand request around the graduate apprenticeships. It is a great innovation and there are some companies that you would not have thought would have been in this marketplace. In this marketplace, the one that I will quote is GP Morgan, who is using it now as a core recruiting area for them to get skills in. We are seeing this as the real opportunity to get an early to the brightest at school leaver and make sure that they get them at that level, rather than at post university, where they can be perhaps a different competition and bring people in and not only get them up to a professional level but also train them in the way that GP Morgan wants them to do and actually get a lot more positivity out of them as they are going through. It is great for individuals because they are learning and it is great for the economy because they are paying tax as they go through. I think that graduate apprenticeships are a tremendous area and all I was commenting on is that we already know to work with employers that they would like to do a lot more in this area. I think that that is a real positive that that demand is out there. I appreciate you bringing that to our attention. I have questions to the Scottish Funding Council in this regard. Can the University of Scotland, after the budget last week, have expressed real concern that the cost of graduate apprenticeships is to be absorbed within their core budget? Is that the case? The Scottish Government has asked us to explore how much of our main core funding could be put towards the apprenticeship programme, both the foundation and graduate apprenticeships. I would echo all the comments that Frank Mac's about how important not only this provision is but the demand for it is there. What we are doing at the minute is that we are working through the fourth working day or so after the budget announcement. We are currently modelling what is possible. We are determined to maintain the current commitment to graduate apprenticeships, which, at the minute, is something shy of about 1,200 graduate apprenticeships that are being funded, and again, Sharon may have more detailed figures on that. We would like to grow that programme as well. The issue for us will be working very closely with universities on graduate apprenticeships, because there are, effectively, in the sector, probably a handful of universities that are at the forefront of the provision. You will have Harriet Watt, Strath Clyde, Glasgow Caledonian, Robert Gordon and Napier are our premier universities in this field. We have choices to make about how we support those particular universities, because they have invested significantly in specialist teams that are engaging with the employers and are very successful at doing that. Whether we are having an expectation that all universities are involved in the graduate apprenticeship programme to a greater or lesser extent, but what we are trying to do at the minute with the quantum of funding that we have been given is rapidly model the opportunity that we have to still maintain and sustain the programme, grow it where we can and make sure that we do not lose this very valuable programme. We are utterly committed to making that work. It is good to hear that that commitment has come. Given the success that has been described in the demand in the economy, I think that that is really important. You will understand that I would have some concerns about the mechanism around some of that. You will also recognise that funding drives activity and that one of the reasons that universities across Scotland have invested in this opportunity around graduate apprenticeships is because it is an alternative funding source for the universities. They have diversified their activity to drive into this area. Do you foresee that that will remain a separate incentive-based resource opportunity, or are you looking at mainstreaming this into current grant that is awarded to the universities? That is a great question. We are in the middle of working through how we maintain the incentives for that, because, although it is a really important part of provision, you are absolutely right, that has been funded through separate funding streams. It has a different kind of cost base and a different kind of interaction between the student and the employer. Therefore, some of the provision to make sure that it is most effective is slightly more expensive than other types of provision. We have a number of options that we are exploring. It is actually too early and I am very happy to come back to the committee when we have worked through the distribution methodologies. We are likely to bring that forward to our board in March, so we will have a clearer picture of the opportunities. We have a number of options, including how much of that is incentivised, how much of that is ring-fenced and how much of that is mainstreamed through our normal expectations of institutions. We will have a range of other agreements, for example, or outcome agreements, where we specify the nature of the outcomes that we expect to see from the funding that institutions receive. Early days, I am absolutely committed to that. It is a little early for me to give you an absolute answer, but I am very willing to keep engaging on that. Just to note that we will keep an eye on that as a committee in terms of the issues regarding the willingness of my fellow committee members, but it would be an issue of concern. I suppose that overall we see that in the picture of what last week has been described as a very disappointing funding settlement for universities. We would want to see that retained, but given that we are talking about skills and skill matches in the economy, can you give some reflections, Cam, on the understandable reaction of higher education to the funding settlement that came about last week? It is so important to drive the economy and where we are headed, but we are looking at quite substantial real-time cuts. It is a challenging budget settlement, I would say. If we look at it in the round, we would describe it as fairly much a flat cash baseline settlement. We have had a commitment, which is incredibly important, that the students who were taken on in the past two years will have a large increase in the number of funded places in the university sector. There has been an additional £21 million to ensure that that cohort effectively completes their studies and is supported to do that. The Government has recognised the commitment to those students, and that is a greater number of funded places than the university sector would have had in, if you like, normal times that the pandemic has not been normal in terms of the number of students who have been able to and who have wanted to access university education. The issue for us is that, working with the Government's priorities, it is our job to distribute that in a way that does a number of things. It has to maintain the commitment to those students who are going through the system already. It needs to plan for a suitable number of funded places over time. It must accommodate the apprenticeship programme. Importantly, it is a settlement and a distribution that needs to make sure that universities and colleges are still able to play their full part in economic recovery. I would say that some of the vital funding that we have seen for upskilling and reskilling and for other forms of interventions are the parts of the jigsaw that we are looking at in terms of whether we distribute in particular ways to fulfil different kinds of missions in the future. I guess that this is the challenge that any funding council will have at the minute, but, with this settlement, there are a number of particular pressures. We are at the middle of modelling all of that for decisions into the new year. We are looking at no increase in the unit of resource since 2014, since a bit per student plus, as you describe, an increase in the number of domestic students over the last couple of years, driven by the pandemic. I think that that has to be protected and a positive thing that we give those opportunities. Then inflation figures that we see today are running at 5 per cent. Is this becoming an emerging storm for our higher education sector? Every single institution is in a different position, so there will be some institutions where they have, for want of a better word, ballast, a range of other options for how they think about sustainability long-term. I think that our closest potential will come to some of that kind of squeezed middle, so they are chartered in the modern universities where they may have particular cost pressures and do not have the same resource that some of our more ancient and longer-established universities will have. It is coming together with a number of different pressure points, so we have fewer, for example, European students coming into some of our courses. We have a complex set of cost pressures, as you say, with pensions and other kinds of costs, and we have seen the sector borrow more either as a result of the pandemic or simply because of the adjustment that some institutions have had to make. They have been brilliant at adjusting their models and how they have operated in a very short period of time. That is where we will need fundamental engagement with individual institutions. Of course, we are not out of the pandemic, so we still have a significant amount of concern about how the coming together of the kind of situation that you have described affects not only individuals' institutions but the sector across the piece. Thanks, convener. I could go on at this at length. It is a matter of significant concern and distress in the sector, but I will leave the questions there for the moment. Thank you, Michael. I am going to bring in Ross Greer. Ross, you will be followed by Fergus Ross. Thanks, convener. I have a couple of specific questions for calls from SDS, so I will direct these at Katie in the first instance. That is okay. In relation to the fit, the funding information and processing system for apprenticeships, you might be aware that we took some evidence last week from employers and an issue with the fit was flagged up in relation to the number of hours that an apprentice might complete before they are registered on to have a problem with Ross, which is a great pity. We will bring him back as soon as he reappears. In the meantime, Fergus, would you mind coming in at this point? Hang on, Ross has reappeared. I think that we will go with Fergus Ross, and then we will come back to him when we have a stable line with him. Fergus Ross, would you mind coming in? Not at all, convener, and good morning to all our witnesses. I would like to start off by saying thank you for all the terrific work that you, your members and your colleagues do throughout Scotland. Over the years, I have seen countless examples not only in University of the Highlands and Islands and the Forestry College in Baloch in my own patch, but throughout the country that I have been involved in, as some of you know, in a number of matters over the years in a different capacity. I also think that the material that is submitted by SDS is illustrative of a very positive story, not just amongst universities and colleges, many of which are world-leading, but also in the scale of apprentices, because we have gone from, as Frank Well knows, from 10,579 in the year 2008-09 to 29,000 10 years later. An increase of threefold in 10 years is a tremendous success, and of course the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges of that. I just wanted to preface my remarks by making that general comment in what is a huge topic, but I did want to address two issues today, convener, primarily to Frank, although, of course, others can chip in if they wish to. Two areas that, from what I have seen over 22 years in this institution, is that the needs of rural Scotland and small businesses are quite difficult to accommodate in terms of skills and training in general. For logistical and practical reasons to do with distance scale, small businesses do not have an HR department. They tend to be extremely busy just doing their work. There might be two or three people that could be in small businesses, for example, shared apprenticeships. I would like specifically to ask whether there is work going on to develop shared apprenticeships. Secondly, I would like to ask, in relation to rural, whether Frank agrees that really more needs to be done in rural and whether SDS is committed to doing that and how the rural skills action plan, which was launched not that long ago, is faring in terms of meeting the potential of young people in rural Scotland. Primarily, it is a question to Frank. It is good to see you again, Frank. I think that you have heard me say all of this quite a few times before. I thank you for your kind comments and I think that a lot of work has went on in this year as you have rightly identified. We always want to prove that we should not forget successes that have been achieved and that it is good to remain dissolved in that picture. A couple of comments. I think that we still have a lot of—how do we define a sneeze if we take on a apprenticeship? When you get down to the micro-businesses, it is very difficult. I have certainly met potential employers in rural communities both in south of Scotland and in north of Scotland who say that they might be using a apprentice but one or two days a week. Is there any way that I can share it with another company? We are looking again at how best we can do that. We want to be flexible as we can to try and make that happen because we do not want to have any obstacles to bringing people into the workplace. There are a couple of things that are challenging for us to overcome from what we have looked at. One is that we need one of the companies to be the ultimate employer. I think that that is right and proper for the individual. They know somebody who is the ultimate employer in that setup. Until now, when we have those discussions, there has been a reluctance in the micro-businesses to be the ultimate employer who is ultimately going to make sure that that person has a job when all this is finished. That is proving a challenging discussion when we have those micro-businesses to say, well, who is ultimately going to be the employer? I can talk about the other European models where the state becomes the employer in those circumstances but there are issues where somebody then finishes that apprenticeship and then looks around to see the companies I work for to say who is going to be my enduring employer and sometimes that has not problem to be successful for them. There are practical issues around that but I will recognise that this is a challenge around flexibility and how we do that. The other part is being fair to the person in the apprenticeship side that they are getting the appropriate training from all those micro-businesses and in doing that equally well that the standards of training on the job are at the level that we think they should be for somebody who is undertaking that. In between micro-businesses, you too get different approaches. I appreciate this challenge and I have talked to employers in that area. Those are some of the challenges that we are trying to overcome to try to get this flexibility to work and we are continuing to look at it and I am sure that Katie will comment on that as well. You are right to identify the particular challenges of the rural communities. I remember an example where I was down just pre Covid for one of the South of Scotland meetings and I was meeting some employers in advance of it and some apprentices and there was an alarm company—I am sure that it was in Gala—of their abouts that the problem they had was that for one week a month their apprentices had to go to Glasgow to do the college training. I thought that that was a real challenge for the individuals and for the businesses to cope with that upheaval. I was pushing on how we can use more and more digitalisation to get the training to the individual rather than the individual to the training. There is an area that I want to keep pushing on that we should not be having people having to take a week out of their family life and the business that they are engaged with to go up to one of the essential belt colleges to get trained. We have to use technology more and more and one of the benefits of the recent experience through Covid is that ability to deliver training remotely is possible through academic training. I think that it has broken down some of the barriers and we cannot let that slip back. We have to keep pushing those opportunities because I think that the digitalisation frees up a lot of opportunity for rural communities that otherwise would have been barriers for them to get those opportunities. We need to balance that appropriately. There will be a need for classroom teaching, but it should not be as regimented as one week a month regardless of what is going on to do that. That is what we have to focus on to open up those opportunities. We do work on the rural sales assessment and the rural investment plans with the various stakeholders. We will ask Katie to comment on what you have just asked for. I recognise the challenge of getting this flexible for micro-businesses to work and there are real obstacles that we need to overcome. It is a challenge that I am focused on. How do we make this work for everybody, including the apprentice? Maybe Katie can comment on the other parts. We are a small business economy, so we have huge representation from small businesses in apprenticeships already, but it is something that we are always wanting to make more inroads in. Particularly on the rural side of things, we have a rural supplement in the contribution rate recognising some of the logistical and cost issues around rural side of things. We work very closely with the partners in the local area. You probably know that we have a charter with the Western Isles, and that model will be used for other areas of Scotland. When we contract for apprenticeships with the Development South of Scotland agency, we now identify what we need in the Highlands and Islands in terms of demand, we identify what we need in terms of the South of Scotland too. We have staff dedicated to working with partners in those areas to look at the rural areas that we need. The comments add to what Frank said about shared apprenticeships. We are working with the South of Scotland at the moment on developing the model and the key focus at the moment is the demand side of that. We have had other models in Angus and other areas. One of the other issues, apart from the employment status of the individual and who will bear the costs of it, is that it can also be detrimental to the young people in terms of moving about employers. It is like going through induction again, the new being, the workplace, etc., so there are some practical issues there. We have found in some of the models that we have had that some employers will not pay play ball. Once they have the individual, they will not hang on to them as well. There are some practical things, but rural and SMEs are a key focus for us, particularly within apprenticeships and the work that we do on skills planning and partnerships. Thanks to Frank and Katie for your answers. Everything that you have said and recognised from previous discussions is a very practical issue. I will not repeat that. I agree entirely with the analysis and the points that you have made that are all very reasonable. I feel that the shared apprenticeship is a model that has not yet been cracked but could be. I wonder whether it might be worth engaging further with small business representatives, both the generic one such as the FSB and particular trades associations that are often very well informed about the details, such as SNPF, plumbers and electricians and so on. They have a lot to offer in terms of practical driving things forward. I accept that we have to look at the interests of the young people as well as the employer quite obviously. The point that Frank makes about using digital rather than kids having to travel 100 miles to a classroom must surely happen if we have went anything from the pandemic. I wonder whether I will finish by asking for two things, convener, following this meeting, not just right now. One is, would it be possible for SDS to provide us with some statistics about the performance in rural and small business insofar as you are able to have them? I appreciate that the compilation of statistics involves classification definition issues. Nonetheless, I think that we really need to have a picture of what is happening in rural and small business, particularly as we are a small business country. Finally, there is a specific plug that involves training for young people, a pre-apprenticeship scheme and a believer apprenticeship scheme with an organisation called Ringlink, which is a farming machinery and labour co-operative operating in the north-east and elsewhere in Scotland. As Frank knows, it set up an excellent scheme for young people, which provides a great model to be rolled out throughout Scotland in farming involving groups of farmers providing training for a whole host of young people. I know that they were funded on a pilot basis until 2021, so I was keen to see that that funding continues and is mainstreamed by SDS to say that I do not expect the witnesses because I did not raise this with them before to answer it now. I never like to try and ambush anybody, do I? Perhaps they could take away both those questions and get back to us please if they may. It seems like a very fair summary and a couple of fair requests from Fergus Ewing. I do see that Frank Mitchell and Sharon Drysdale wanted to come back in in response to the line of questions that you had raised. Frank and then Sharon will go to Oliver Mundell while Ross has had a few technical problems. We will come back to Ross after we have heard from Oliver Mundell. First, Frank and then Sharon. Thank you again, Mr Ewing. I hope that you can hear me. We will take those away and come back to you, because I agree that there is a joint training initiative that is pretty different from shared employment, but the point is well made. You will take that line and come back to you what we are doing in the rural communities and answer your questions. What I forgot to mention was something that I wanted to do in this context, which is really something for the committee to take on, particularly for the rural communities, is the work that we did with the Western Isle Charter. It is not just about the job and the apprenticeship, but it is about housing and a whole lot of other things. In that innovative approach that we did in the Western Isles, that charter and what we are doing with other islands is equal to some rural communities on the mainland as well. It is not just about the job, it is about housing and a whole lot of other factors that are important for people to stay, particularly working-age people to stay in those communities. The other thing that we will share with you, if you do not have it at hand, is that with another charter, which has now been adopted by other communities, which I really think is a really innovative approach to trying to tackle some of the, not just the training issues but the people shortages of a working-age happening in the rural communities. That is what I wanted to add to the comments so far. Sharon, have you something to add to that, too? Just one small thing. I will round about the ability of employers and small SMEs in the rural areas to be able to access training and up-skilling provision. I am reluctant to say that there was any silver lining in the pandemic. However, in very challenging times, our institutions converted a lot of their online training for Flexworkforce Development Fund and up-skilling to online and virtual environments. For Flexworkforce Development Fund, we went from having five per cent of all learning online to 60 per cent in a very short period of time. That has enabled more SMEs in all areas across Scotland to access it. Maybe that is something that we just need to expand and market a bit better so that those SMEs in rural areas are aware of that provision and can access it more fully. We will look to do something right at marketing. As you say, silver linings in the pandemic are hard to find. However, there are some lessons that we can usefully forward. Thank you, Fergus, for your questions and for those responses. I am going to go to Oliver Mundell and then Ross. I think that he is back online. Oliver, first. Thank you, convener. I do not want to make a statement, but I feel that it would be remiss in light of the previous comments, not to reference the fact that for many people in rural areas online is a positive, but there are also benefits from learning with other people in person. The funding council and others are mindful of that, which relates to my substantive question, whether the funding council feels that there is enough support under the current model going to rural education providers and whether the additional costs of delivering education in rural communities at a higher and further education level are fully reflected. Do you want to bring in Karen Moore? As part of—we do this in a number of different ways—part of our funding model provides a premium for institutions working predominantly in rural areas. We are recognising, in the way that we distribute funds, an additional amount of cost that goes into reaching out and making sure that communities are well served. As you rightly say, Mr Mundell, I am not just having online opportunities, but the cost of making sure that local communities are well served in person and in community. For example, in the Highlands and Islands area, we have a significant amount of premium going into colleges and university provision. The second point that I would make is that, in areas such as Scotland where we have similar challenges, in the round for colleges alone, it is something like an additional 10 million across the country in particular rural areas. That is specifically to recognise the challenges and the opportunities in rural areas of learning and teaching in those settings. The second point is that, in areas such as Scotland, we are very keen—that is why we have talked about our pathfinder projects—that we are very keen to look again at whether we have the right provision, the right kind of engagement with employers and the right kind of responsiveness in the system to ensure that needs are fully looked at not just from employers but from student needs and the pathway through from school, college up to higher education and beyond. In particular areas, people are not always having to travel outside a particular area to get to higher education where there is not a particular university close by. In all that, I would say that there is obviously more that we can do. Secondly, I think that the pathfinders are a way of testing whether we have quite got it right and we have deliberately chosen the south of Scotland as a rural area with less higher education opportunity than we might see in other parts of the country. I will stop there and see whether that is answering the question that you have posed. That is starting to answer the question. I am pleased that someone who represents a constituency in the south of Scotland is looking at a specific programme there. My concern is still around that. You used the word predominantly when you were talking about the institutions who get support. You are looking at the Crichton campus in Dumfries and the University of West of Scotland, the University of Glasgow, who would typically be seen as more urban-based new institutions. I wonder what more support can be provided to them. I have a particular concern and it is probably broader than just rural areas, but once we continue with a model where institutions are funded on a fees-only basis to provide courses, it is difficult to see how those places can be fully supported in outreach campuses and how students who are learning remotely can get the support that they need, particularly off the back of the pandemic, where there are broader issues that identify the mental health support and wider wellbeing, so anything that you could add on that would be helpful. First of all, I will not go into the fees-only issue, but that is a choice that universities make in terms of the marginal cost of their places and how they choose to fill them. We fully fund a significant number of places. Is it right to say that you sign off on those places and you provide the funding? We fully fund places and then universities choose whether they bring in students into either classes where they can accommodate other learners, where they only get a fast student fee for that rather than a fund place for that one. You agree that with them, though. Is that part of the role? That is actually their choice. If we sign off the fees-only part of it, we do not sign off the funded places. If I could pick up those points, you are quite rightly making about whether we have the right kind of provision in some areas. The reason why I pick up the pathfinders is because we have had active engagement in West of Scotland, Glasgow University, to a lesser extent, Harriet Watt in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and the Crichton campus has been tremendously important in providing a physical place for those universities to have a footprint in the south of Scotland. Through the pathfinders, I think that we would like to test further the nature of that engagement and whether there are other relationships that could develop between the colleges and other universities in Scotland, or how those colleges themselves might develop their higher education offer in situ. I would say that I am very happy to keep in close contact with you as those pathfinders develop, because they are aware of testing whether we have quite got it right in some particular areas. I will leave it there for now, convener, but I thank you for that. Thank you all over. We have finally turned to Ross, who I think we have now on a stable link. Thanks, convener. I just want to absolutely make sure that you hear and see me okay. We can indeed. Nice to see you and nice to hear from you. Excellent. Thanks. I have got a couple of specific questions for SDS colleagues, so perhaps for directing these to Katie in the first instance. You might be aware that when we took evidence last week, some of it was from employers, one of whom flagged up some concerns that they had with FIPs, the SDS system for registering apprenticeships. Essentially, the issue that was raised with us was that an apprenticeship that was lodged, that was processed with FIPs, could not account for any time served before the point of registration. Therefore, the example that they used was that they had started an apprentice at their company over the summer, but only sorted out the FIPs registration now. All the time that that apprentice had been with them would not count towards the time served element of the apprenticeship. It would therefore extend the duration of the apprenticeship beyond what would be desirable either to the apprentice or to the employer, or they mentioned the concerns of trade unions as well. In the first instance, could you just clarify what the technical requirements are there? Is it possible to register and process an apprenticeship through FIPs and backdate the time served or is it only time that is served from the point of registration onwards that counts? Sorry, Katie, you are not. Katie is speaking, but we can't hear her. The point about FIPs is that an apprenticeship is recognised and it is a contractual requirement that when an apprentice starts and they are in receipt of public funding, i.e. through the contracts, it is offered via SDS that they are registered on FIPs. Registering on FIPs makes sure that all the rules have been followed in terms of whether that person has an initial assessment. As the training plan will be developed, etc. All the things that are needed to put in place for support and it is formally registered, the Scottish Government only recognises apprenticeships that are registered on FIPs as to HMRC. HMRC use, we are required to give HMRC data on our system and who our apprentice is, and that is where they do their checks in terms of the minimum wage for apprenticeships. It is important that they are registered on FIPs right away, because then all that contractual requirement kicks in about whether they have a service in terms of understanding their needs. It could be that the individual has got special needs, so we know that that has been catered for, too. I understand entirely the need to register with FIPs. Just to clarify, the reasons that you have just cited there, such as HMRC compliance, etc. That means that you could not retrospectively register with FIPs. Someone could nominally have taken on an apprentice, so it could be someone working with an employer with the title of apprentice, but until the moment that they are registered with FIPs, that cannot count to work. It should not be because they should be on the system from the start. Obviously, HMRC would only recognise them as an apprentice if they were doing follow-up sampling when they were on FIPs. How are employers supported to make sure that their apprentices are on FIPs? I am not familiar with how long the FIP system has been in operation for. I do not know whether that is relatively new or something that has been around for a while now. A direct contract with FIPs does not need to bother about that. That is the duty of the contracted provider. Their duty is to do all the paperwork. That is one of the reasons that we have contracted providers, and we have a lot of SMEs involved in FIPs so that they do not have to do the paperwork. All that is done by the contracted training provider. The content was a wider concern when it came to consultation with the involvement of employers in the development of SDS policy systems, like FIPs—that was used as the example—but there was a wider frustration raised in that previous session about having employers in the room and giving them a voice as those systems are developed. I have taken on what you have just said, which has been useful around what involvement they have in the use of the system. When systems like that are being developed, what kind of user testing consultation do you do with employers so that they are clear on exactly how that operates, what their role is or is not, and how they should engage with the system and how they should engage with providers? As I said, the system will not touch the employers—that is the duty of the contracted training providers—to fill in the paperwork and complete the system. It is just a giant database, that is all it is, and that is where you get the details of who is involved, what backgrounds, what area do they live in and all the good things that you then see coming out in the annual reports. We consult with the people who use the system and the development of the system. We have a working group with contracted training providers. Every time there is a new development on it, we work with them and test it. Some of the points that were made last week were about representation and engagement with the construction industry. The construction industry is complex. It has many subsectors and it has lots of very small companies. It is one of the longest—probably the longest—standing apprenticeships. There are very strong views and there are lots of groups. Some of them represent the whole industry, but they do not. There are other parts of it. We get multiple touchpoints with the construction industry. We get a sector manager devoted to construction skills. We engage with the industry leadership group, which is the recognised group in terms of engagement. That has a skills subgroup. Some of the people who are speaking to you are on that and the federations that they were talking about. The ILG skills subgroup, for instance, has an influence on estimating what the demand every year is for modern apprenticeships, graduate and foundation apprenticeships. There is also a construction industry leadership group, which is a skills subgroup. There was a Covid recovery group that worked with an MA task force that involved all the federations, the colleges and ourselves as part of it. There is also a new qualification and construction skills council that has been set up, and we are members of that. There is good representation in all of the SAP group from the construction industry. In fact, Mr Mitchell, who was mentioned—I think that maybe Alan said this earlier—who gave evidence last week that he has been on the standards and frameworks group of SAP since its inception. I think that there are absolutely multiple touch points. One of the biggest growth areas for modern apprenticeships over the past four years has been in construction. We have had over 2,000 more starts over the past few years. In fact, the industry estimated that, in 1920, just under 6,000 starts and actually 150 more were achieved due to the demand. Thanks very much. I think that you have really helped to clarify this for us. I really appreciate that. That is just one final question based on what we had heard previously. Are you aware of—not even widespread—multiple instances of there being a delay between someone starting an apprenticeship role and the registration? Is that an issue that you were familiar with before it was raised with us last week? We became aware of it over the last wee while there, and we have been working with the contractor concerned about what arrangements they are putting in place to get everybody registered on the system. There has been a bit of a perfect storm, obviously, for the construction industry. You can imagine the nature of the industry itself—your own site, et cetera—and also the nature of the training that goes on in workshops has been hugely affected by furlough and physical distancing. You have people who started last year, people starting this year, people who started in previous years. There has been a bit of a delay to what is happening there. There is a lot going on, but in that specific registration issue, we are working with the contractor's concern. We have weekly meetings with them to make sure that any backlog is caught off in our contracted numbers. Is that a specific issue with the one contractor or provider? You are not encountering multiple instances of that? Not that we are aware of it at all. Construction is a specific issue with one contractor, and it is due to a range of things. There are a number of measures that they are putting in place to catch up. I will leave it there, convener. I think that that has helped to clarify that issue. For us, I am grateful to Katie for that detail. Thank you, Ross. We are two hours and twenty minutes into this hearing. I cannot thank Frank Mitchell, Katie Hutton, Dr Allan Calhoun, Karen Watt and Sharon Drysdale enough for the evidence that they have given us today. It has been very insightful, very helpful. I hope that you feel that it has been good use for time because we certainly have valued your contributions today. The public part of today's meeting is now an end. I will now suspend the meeting and ask members to reconvene on Microsoft Teams, which will allow us to consider our final agenda item in private. Thank you again and have a good day.