 Good morning, and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2018 of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off mobile phones, and any members using electronic devices to access committee papers should please ensure that they are switched to silent. We have received apologies today from Tavish Scott MSP. Our main item of business today is an evidence session on the committee inquiry into Scotland's screen sector. Today, we will focus on development of skills and training. I'd like to welcome our witnesses today, Sita Kumar, chief executive of creative skillset, Graham Fitzpatrick, creative development officer with screen education Edinburgh, Alison Gorring, the Scotland head of the national film and television school, and Linda Fraser, the back to vision and drama training programme, Hit the ground running. I'd like to start by asking perhaps a general question about the focus of this inquiry, the screen sector leadership group report, which was commissioned in response to parliamentary concern about the screen sector, and it's being used as the basis of building the new screen unit. That screen sector leadership report identified a number of issues in the area of skills and training, and it asked for a review of skills and training, and that is now under way. I wondered if you could perhaps address what you think the priorities of that review should be, what we're doing well in terms of skills and training in the screen sector at the moment in Scotland, and what we could do better—basically what the review should be focusing on? Well, I think where to start is what I would like to see the priority is starting at the start, because what we lack in Scotland for our sector is the basic strategy from which we can get our ducks in a row and line up the training provision that currently exists, and fill the gaps where it doesn't. We have some great initiatives that work really well, but we're not connected, and the funding is not connected, so when you talk about priorities, for me the priority is the basics as a starting point. I absolutely agree with Linda. In the past, the training provision, while it's been quite good as individual projects, tended to be funding-led, so whatever the given priorities are at a certain moment in time, that's what's been funded. Sometimes those priorities are not even necessarily Scotland's priorities, they might be priorities that have been set elsewhere in the UK. I also think that we've been quite fragmented and not consistent, and because funding has been such an issue, something that has worked very well one year will just not be available the next year, for example. It's really structural that we need to have a far more strategic approach to it and far more consistency. You talked about Scotland's other specific priorities that Scotland has that are more important here than elsewhere in the UK? I think that one of the problems that we've got, and the leadership group pointed that out in some of their evidence, is that our landscape can change very quickly. We can have a year with a lot of productions where suddenly there won't be enough of a certain crew position, we're not able to fill that, and that can change very quickly. Our priorities in terms of specific roles are not the issue, it's more of a long-term thing. We can be training people for a particular role that's a particular need this year, but next year that might not be such an issue, I don't know if that makes sense. I agree with both Alison and Linda that it's a structural thing about some great work that's been going on, because some great schemes have particularly hit the ground running. NFTS is very welcome development in terms of my organisation and the network we belong to, Film Access Network Scotland, there's partners in Glasgow, GMAC film, there's partners in Aberdeen, Stationhouse Media. We all work at a school age right up to that late teens age, particularly funding-like cashback for creativity, which is focused on SIMD areas and getting low income youngsters diversion for crime, but also basically creativity used to build confidence, build skills right through to a pipeline up to BFI Film Academy, which is a great scheme focused on 16 to 19-year-olds, another scheme called Moving Image Arts, which we've been running three years, which is really focused on a Northern Ireland A level, which is an out-of-school qualification and is a year-long whole-school year focused on all aspects of film, so the technical but also the film history and the film theory. The big issue we have is that at the end of that pipeline what we're really doing is preparing people for one level college and another level university, and then they're kind of lost in that system for three, four years. They come out the other end and there's kind of massive numbers and not enough opportunity. Actually, not every young person that you deal with should go down that academic route. They're actually far more suited to going into apprenticeships, modern apprenticeships, also new apprenticeships in terms of the younger age group, of course, is the foundation apprenticeships and stuff, which we're all starting to look at. So it's about that, so that's all happening. There's a lot of good work. There's thousands of youngsters across the country. We've all worked, we've over the last sort of five, six years. A lot of talented ones. There's ones that want to continue and want to work in this, right across the creative indices, because there's film, there's TV, there's adverts. There's a team here filming today. It's all of that. It's all those skills. It's then matching up where do they all go, where does the pipeline take them next, and it's not being totally connected up, and it's not through the fault of all the great people working in this area, because everybody's working hard, but you're always full on your own work, so it needs that at a more strategic level. It's someone that's linking everything up and taking all that talent through. Thanks very much. The point that you make about apprenticeships was made by many of the industry professionals who have taken evidence from. I was suggesting that perhaps a lot of people at university are doing media studies, but not enough people training and there are very many different practical skills that your industry needs. Sita, would you like to make some general comments about our strengths and weaknesses? I would say that what you need is a cohesiveness between three things, infrastructure. Before you even talk about skills, you need infrastructure, and I know that Scotland has got penfin coming up, which is great. You need content, and not obviously inward investments are really important, but you also want to make sure there is ongoing content that is being developed within any nation state, because if you don't have that, you won't have a baseline to continually upskill people, something that is acting like a solid nursery slope. You've got to look across, in my opinion, screen. Rather than look at film, I would look at film, television, and all the genres within television, that's children's, because children's is a brilliant nursery slope and games, because that way creativity can truly flourish, people can move around between different careers. Once you've got that tripod height and a cohesive approach towards that, and a genuine thing about how do I then attract inward investment, and Alison made the point, we all deal with this, you have fluctuations in demand, so you've got to have a responsive skills kind of business intelligence system that obviously understands the baseline of what you need, but then secondly, is able to respond to changing shifts in needs, because people's jobs are dependent on responding to what is needed in a moment in time, and again you can have different genres, it's suddenly become very popular, sci-fi is popular one moment, then you've got a lot of royal kind of, you know, regency type, you've got to be able to upskill and meet those needs, and I think that way people's talent and dreams and aspirations can be fulfilled. Now in order to do all of that, you've also got to ensure, and I think you made the point really well, is how much of the education that exists is truly relevant to the changing needs of our sector. Some of it is very practical and practitioner based, apprenticeships lend themselves, some of it needs to be very responsive, because consumer patterns are changing, and digital workflows are changing, so it's about how we collaborate, all of us, to make sure that excellence remains excellence. So there is a lot of work to be done, but I think that the first step is getting that tripartite to work together seamlessly. Do you think that the screen unit is in a good position to do that, to bring together that fragmentation? Is it the screen unit that should be the organisation tackling that? Yes, I think that it is. I think that it's best placed, because apart from anything else, it's across all the different elements that make up our industry. There needs to be a holistic approach where we shouldn't be seen in isolation, we are part of the whole, so I think that it absolutely is the screen unit. I really welcome the proposals for the screen unit, because training and skills has to sit with them in order that any strategies that are put in place are in balance with the aspiration for growing the industry, and at the same rate, the point that you made about it being in balance. I'll just move on to Claire Baker now. Thank you, convener. Just to follow on the discussion about the screen unit, as you understand at the moment, do you feel that the screen unit will have the capacity to take a lead on the skills and training within the sector? How do you feel in terms of the resources that are being publicly announced for the screen unit at the moment, whether there are sufficient resources in there and that you will have what you feel is the share of it that you require? I don't think that there's been enough detail in what's been released so far to be able to comment on that. There's been some figures that have been published, but I don't know on what basis they've reached those figures of what plans sit behind them. I understand that they'll hopefully be an individual who has the responsibility for skills development, who works within the screen unit, but I have no more information about what their remit would be at this stage. I don't know too much. I have met Tewitt, Scott and David. One observation is reflecting back on the changes that my organisation has been through over the past two years. We've been through a bit of a turbulent time, but we're coming out. We are entirely industry led. We work with practitioners. Our board is entirely industry led. Our councils are entirely practitioner led, so we are always close to the call phase. An observation is that if there is a way of enabling that within the screen unit, that would actually be incredibly helpful and will enable the success. I don't have a chance to look at the screen unit. It's quite a lengthy document that includes 12 action points, three of which relate to skills and training. I don't have a chance to look at the detail of those, but Seethel's comments about your body being very industry led and close to practitioners. As a group, do you have input into the 12 action points? Do you feel that you are able to comment on the three? The first question is, have you had any input into the document that was published in relation to action points? Secondly, if you've had a chance to study them, what do you think of the three that are focused on your sector? I didn't have any input into it. I've got the points here. From where I am, with continued professional development and practice-based training, it's action point 7, which is the most relevant for the work that I am involved in. As Linda said, there is not a lot of detail in it about what the plan is. Going back to what Seethel said, it absolutely has to be industry-based. Whatever the strategy is, it has to come from industry, it has to be responsive to the needs. There is nothing wrong with what I see in action point 7. It's just quite vague. It doesn't talk about work-based placement training at any level. It talks about short-course provision and progression of the existing workforce, but it doesn't talk about how we might do that. It just feels a little bit vague. You might have seen that, at the weekend, the committee put out an interim report where we argued that she had been independent stand-alone unit. One of the reasons for that is concerns around the role of the public sector agencies on the board. We were not convinced that the screen unit sitting within Creative Scotland is the best place for it to be. I don't have the panel have any thoughts about that that would relate. Why I came to mind in this discussion is that you are stressing the importance of the practitioners and understanding the industry. We have concerns that the current model maybe doesn't allow that to the extent that it needs to be. I welcome the interim report whole-hacked life. There has been a lot of talk of fragmentation in our industry as a whole and it feels like for training we are fragments of fragments in a way. As I was invited to hit the ground running as an independent training provider, I am also now a job share partner in a role with the back to the union delivering short courses and CPD initiatives supported by the BBC. However, as an independent training provider, it has been very difficult to try and maintain any continuity or delivery provision for the area that I work in. I am specifically looking at people who want to work in film and television drama in the entry-level positions. The training came about because I found as a practitioner working in the industry a real gap between people coming out of education or coming from other routes and having no route into our freelance industry is very precarious at the start. It is very difficult for people to get an opportunity to work in the industry unless you already know somebody who works in the industry. That is how our training came about. In order to deliver that training over the past 10 years, we have had to be very agile in the funding sources that we have managed to secure. We have had funding from a creative skillset. We have mainly for the past seven years been funded via Bec2Vision, which is funded from the Scottish Union Learning Fund thanks to the Scottish Government. However, other funding sources such as Creative Scotland have contributed at times. I generally have between 10 and 15 partners that we have to have on board to fund our courses. We do not do very much. We do an average of three training courses a year, but it is a vital route for a lot of people to get their way into the industry. It should not be that difficult. It is something that is very industry connected. We have industry practitioners on every course that we run, and it is well known within the industry. Over the years, it has become recognised and a useful addition to people's CVs. Initiatives like that should be part of an infrastructure that gives pathways. As Graham pointed out earlier, there are lots of good things happening, but we just need to have some infrastructure that lets us connect those better and supports them in the longer term. There are other training initiatives that we have done over the years that have been successful, but there is never consistency of funds available to let us repeat it. We do great work building channels and reaching out to people who have not otherwise considered this industry to work in. Then we lose momentum as we have finished our project and there is nowhere to go for the funding to repeat it and build on that. Mainly, everything that we have done in the past 10 years has been a pilot. I think about talking about priorities and following on from that. It is the fact that we need consistency, so the programmes that Linda has been doing need to happen again and again and again. We need to be training people on a continual basis, so that their pipeline is constantly flowing. That has been the problem. As you say, we have pilots that are very successful and then there is nothing. It is just that real lack of consistency that has been the problem. I think that it is exactly the same across education and the out-of-school sector, and then all that stuff will do with young adults. There has been some really great work. Most of your lives are about funding, reporting and outcomes. It is all good, valid stuff, but in the area that we are in, the big priorities that we have are about diversity and inclusion. It can take three or four years to turn a young person around or give someone from a BME community the confidence to come into the creative world. It is then about supporting, and then there is a really great scheme that we collaborated on with three years. GMAC, Shmuel and Hersels at Sea was only a year's funding that I think was in your report the fine scheme. It is like you just get that thing started and you start to make all the connections with industry. We are starting to put people from the big priority areas, which was low income. Young people live in rural areas, which obviously we do work in the highlands along Weed and Court. They are so isolated, so it is a different way of working, who still want to come and work in this industry and stuff as well. Young women, disability and also BME. That was a full-on year with 12 young people to get them really ready. They are all now continued in the industry, but then the funding runs out. It is just that it was all to do with one-off. A bit of money came from the Scottish Government, the film skills fund, and then it does not repeat. It is all these things that there is great work there, and then year on year you are struggling just to survive. Even in our org myself, I am a three-day a week person running an organisation because we do not have the infrastructure to keep it going. We are full-time team. It is things like that. It is a serious look across the board going, what works and let us really support that. I wanted to start off by asking Thetha about creative skillset and the training levy. You obviously collect training levy from those organisations that are creating productions over a certain budget. I wondered how that is distributed to the best effect and how you represent Scotland with that money. The way we work with the training levy, I come back to the point that I made about everything that we do being industry-led. I will use as an example the high-end TV levy, because all levys work in fairly similar ways, but high-end TV, I think, collects the maximum amount at the moment and then film comes second. It is linked to the tax credit, as you know, it is a voluntary levy. We do the collecting and then we have a council that is entirely represented by industry. The council rotates and we look across skills shortages across the UK and where the pain points are. Whatever money there is, because the truth is right now, the business is booming so much that even with the money we have, we cannot keep up and there is not enough. That is just a fact. In fact, everybody is talking about shortages and gaps. Within the money there is, we try to work UK-wide looking across skills gaps and shortages to meet the skills needs, specifically areas where I know we have done quite a lot of work in Scotland, would be the training finder, where we actually come up here to recruit, and that is my understanding of Dr My Team in both film and high-end TV, and we try and ensure that we get trainees that work across the UK, because to be honest, the industry is UK-wide. We need to work in a UK-wide way in a collaborative way, so that is just with the training levy. Then there are other initiatives that the training levy does, which is it does things like make a move, and in fact we have had a significant success with one particular Scottish candidate. I think she is working on Les Miserables, I do not want to mention her name, but she is being moved up to be a producer, so we have different initiatives and each of them is to try and avoid what both of you are talking about, which is take a strategic look, where are the skills gaps and shortages, what are the interventions in every month, every year, forgive me, we set a strategy looking at where we need to intervene and why and what impact it has. Does what we do work? Because if it does not, we need to know and we need to respond with agility to what the needs are. Okay, so is there actually a Scottish pot of funding and if there is a Scottish pot, do you know the allocation? It does not work like that. We look across the whole skills needs and we look across all the money. We have not disaggregated money looking at where is money coming from Scotland, because productions work everywhere, and so what we tend to do is we just collect the money and then we ensure where the gaps are and we distribute it because we do that with Northern Ireland, we do that with Wales and all the different regions. We might not be aware, but we have been given money at sea from the high-end TV levy to work alongside Linda, doing a hit-the-ground running at the end of the year. It is basically to take a group of six young people living in poverty that we are working at, so at the end of their cashback journey with us, they will do a special hit-the-ground running at the end of this year, moving them into high-end TV. Things like that are very welcome, but it just randomly comes. Just a wider question to the panel. Is it easy to apply for the funding that is allocated towards Scotland from the levies? There are different strands and different approaches that Creative Skills has to their funding. As far as I am aware, there are no funds available to apply for. There is a different approach in that, as Cita said, identifying specific areas and asking for applications from strategic partners. There is a variety of different approaches that they have that we respond to for the funds. I would say that one of the challenges that we have as training providers is the model that Creative Skills has for distributing the funds based on skill shortages. It is kind of too late by that point, because when there are skills shortages in areas such as, and I speak from specifically film and television drama, but if there are shortages of first assistant directors or production accountants or different higher positions, the change is not going to happen overnight. What we would like to see is an infrastructure in Scotland that allows us to train everybody all the time, to have a strategy that identifies all the different areas, because there is such a diversity in skills that is required to make a television drama. We need to have channels and pathways for new entrants to receive quality training and support to grow that base so that we do not have the same consistency of skills shortages that we are facing in Scotland at the moment. 40 years ago, Scotland led the way in desiring a model for on-the-job training called the NEX programme, which has been delivered on and off for the past 40 years, subject to funding being available. It is widely respected in the industry as a great model for quality, reaching out to people to apply for it, giving people an opportunity to work across all the different areas of film and television. That is key for us in Scotland, as well. Practitioners work on both film and television drama, where in other areas of the UK they might specialise in a lot of the funding opportunities that come via the different funding pots that creative skills that have are specifically only for film or only for television drama. As training providers, it is difficult because when you apply for funding, it is maybe specifically to answer a need for film. When I work with new entrants, we need our new entrants to work across film and television in order to be best prepared for life working as a freelancer in Scotland. Can I confirm what you are saying? It would be great if creative skillset could widen the criteria so that the application for funding could reach those skills that are required in the industry overall. I do not know that it is necessarily just creative skillset's responsibility to do that. It would be my aspiration for the screen unit that it is all down to the strategy that has to come first. There are various different funding pots that from creative skillset, Creative Scotland, Skills Development Scotland, the apprenticeship levy is coming. What would be great is to have a skills strategy and then look at the funding sources and perhaps pull those or find a way that we can make sure that each level of intervention is covered and supported. It is easy to ask for more money, more money, more money, but my observation is that we could be working a lot more strategically already and make sure that there is no duplication of provision in the incident where we have it all covered. It is just for the sake of the committee briefly clarifying a couple of things, because I am not sure how much you are aware. I came on board about two and a half years ago and I will keep this really short. I came around the time that we lost 80 per cent of our funding from government. We have been on a path to modernise the organisation, be entirely industry led, as I said. We now get money from industry levy, that is high on TV, film and we get a little bit from children and we get a small amount of money for non-scripted. We recently won the BFI 10-point plan award last year. That focuses quite a lot of infrastructure, i.e. how do you build the infrastructure for the future in terms of skills. We have in this period refocused our vision and mission to only do screen, but in practice, because the money is limited, a lot of what we do because of the way the source of the money is focused on film and high-end, but those are the areas of growth. I am well aware that non-scripted, which covers a multitude of genres, is a very important nursery slope and we are working out how we generate income to invest in and support effectively that big area because it covers a big bulk of the television schedule. The other area I am looking at is games, but we have gone through a very challenging period and we are emerging, but the one thing we do have now is a coherent strategy and we are trying to work strategically and smartly with partners across the UK. That is something that I would welcome if there was, in the nicest way, an industry-led creative Scotland, an opportunity to look across and think, this is what we have identified, what have you identified, how do we work together to win together, because in the end that is what success is for the industry and the individual. We have heard evidence to the committee that jobs that are available in the screen sector should be more widely promoted because I do think that even going through school, myself, you are not made fully aware of all the sheer breadth of the opportunities that are available, all the different types of career, the options that are available to you. I was just really interested to get your thoughts on how does the screen unit essentially do something about that, how do we change that and better promote, as I say, all the sheer breadth of roles that are available? First, again, one-off pots of money to do outreach work. We did road shows going round Scotland, free to attend, open to all seminars, looking at all the different roles that there are in film and television drama, just for that particular section of it. We have done work trying to connect with the college and university courses again to go in, because we do find that there is a focus in FE and HE where students come out with a narrow view of being a writer, producer, director or camera operator. Of course, there is so much more. We have tried to find ways to address that, but only in very small and one-off ways, so that there are developed models for how that can work. It has come up in some of your committee sections before, in FE and HE, where there is a framework that we could build to enable them to better understand the breadth of the different roles that are available. We also have to remember that it is not just about media courses. The skills that we require are across the board. We have done some work with a career stall reaching out to FE colleges, where we try to encourage people who are studying to be accountants or plasterers or electricians to think about the industry. The difficulty is, of course, that we cannot guarantee that there is going to be work, but we struggle, for example, with the Outlander training programme, where they offer training placements for electricians and plasterers and painters, to try to find a pool of people who will consider working in our industry and transferring their skills. I think that a film education programme would certainly help people to see this as a viable option. I think that we need to start earlier as well. I think that we need to be in schools. I have been in to do a school talk with into film, and it was fantastic when I was talking about my previous role in production, so it was very specific. That was, again, a one-off. I do not know how many of them managed to do. Interestingly, just last week, I received an email from a media teacher in Falkirk, who was keen to connect with National Film and Television School, who came in to talk to the pupils about what the possibilities were for career opportunities and what the pathways were and how they should be preparing. I really think that there is a lot of work to be done there, engaging with schools and with parents and careers advisers, because traditionally parents were trying to keep their kids away from that. While it is still a precarious industry, it is a precarious world. We live in an environment of zero hours contracts and portfolio careers. Perhaps working in the creative industries and in the screen sector is not as dangerous as it might have once been seen. I think that there is work to be done there. Also, if we are talking about diversity, we need to start a lot earlier than we have been. I think that there is good work in certain parts of the country. There is a lot of good work in Edinburgh, because we are heavily funded by Edinburgh Council from the communities and families department, and we have a responsibility to support all the media studies teachers in Edinburgh with CPD and their classes with what the industry is. The BFI film academy scheme has been brilliant for the past five years, particularly as a qualification is part of it now, which has elements of skill sets, occupational standards and so on. You are teaching young people between 60 and 19 what is required in times of time management, what is required in times of risk assessment, just working practices and so on, but also a big part of that whole scheme. We do it later years on our cashback stuff, as we do actually teach here's all the knows. I think that there is done kind of a hodgepodge. There will be good stuff in Glasgow, good stuff here, good stuff in Aberdeen and Dundee elsewhere. It's maybe a bit sketchy, and then you're also talking about reading through your report and stuff. There is a big issue about the qualifications in the school system in Scotland. A major issue is that we run three different types of qualifications at Screen Education in Edinburgh, none of them are Scottish. It's arts award for that more participatory stuff, which is Trinity London. It's an English-based qualification. It runs in a lot of arts organisations up here now. We run the Northern Irish A level, which has been rated the last 20 years the best film qualification for that, for any young person right up to county, leaving school age in Europe. It is really good and it covers all the areas. It also specifically focuses on young people being creative as well. Rather than just working in groups that they do, they also all make their own content and not just down to doing it in teams. They physically do all the roles themselves, so it really focuses as well as film history, film theory, because it's forgotten that this is an art form as well. Here, it's kind of mixed up as a literacy, which is a big issue. Although it's valid that you learn about the media and you learn about radio and you learn about other things, you learn about the media and printing stuff, there are all different things. Film is like the poor relation that has been for many years. In a school system, you can learn drama, music, art and design, dance. Every one of them is treated as their own stand-alone creative art form. You can't teach any of them unless you've studied one of those subjects before, whereas what we have in Scotland is that we have English teachers teaching this subject. There's a lot of CPD that Orgs like ourselves do, just to try and upskill, but there's all these other elements that young people are missing out. It all starts right at primary school in terms of what's actually needed. Again, it would have to be that film unit taking a lead, but at the same breath, because earlier you were talking about stand-alone unit, it also has to be understood at a Government level that there are elements that make up all of us that are working in this area teaching young people. There are elements within Creative Scotland that aren't the film unit, so there are things like the creative learning team. There are things like the young people's part of it, your cash back elements, things like that. Basically, for our side of things, you could throw the baby out of the bathwater by having the stand-alone unit unless it's looked at on the strategic level within the Government, realising there's pots of money in different interests, so this committee talking to education and things like that and getting it right across the board. Thank you, Ashley. You've introduced the subject that I was very interested to discuss. I'm sorry we don't have Rick Instrell this morning who is going to be here who submitted quite a detailed paper on the educational subject, which also came up in evidence a fortnight ago. It's a very interesting point because when you talk about dance, drama, literature and media, it occurred to me that it's a long time since I was at school, but the point was that there was a body of work that existed historically in all of these things going back centuries, but even when I was at school, the body of work that existed in film was more limited, but we now have a century of film, world film as well, a whole international culture stream which is available potentially to be equally as substantially represented within the curriculum as any of these other art forms and not only that but of course all the techniques and skills and different ways in which that is approached, all of which I think combine to to my mind at least to make potentially a very challenging and significant and relevant curriculum syllabus and I'm interested to know because you made reference to it and it was also in Rick Instrell's paper that Scotland does seem to have to be slightly behind in this regard and that the conversations that have taken place haven't really got past the SQA who've kind of in a sense dampened down any interest by Government potentially in trying to emulate the experience that's been being pursued in other parts of the United Kingdom and I think you were partly addressing it but where would you see within the curriculum potentially what the the kind of parameters of what would be very relevant would be and I suppose my second question of that is to the outlander thing that's been referred to we had the opportunity to go and tour the studios and it was fascinating to see all the different creative skills departments that have been set up and people actually working with no previous experience but now the specialised experience in carpentry or in plaster work or in costume or in in any other of the different ways that were established there as a commercial function of that production just renewed I saw this morning on Twitter for another two seasons so if it's brought 300 million in another three in three seasons possibly another 300 million into the Scottish economy going forward that long running series television seems to be a key to the content aspect you were talking about earlier is it has it is that as a function of a production or is there a way of having that car before the horse so there's the curriculum bit and the way in which you try to build these skillsets up do the I think possibly your argument was you need the content before you can actually be certain you can sustain these two different these development of these two skills so probably Graham to you in the first instance on the academic part and on the school part there's there's also that step back from just this focus just about industry and about jobs and all that there's also another aspect of just about health and wellbeing and just about being creative and as you all know one of the key factors for a young person's learning now going forward just with changing landscape with jobs and things and uncertain futures is creativity skills so at the heart of filmmaking is creativity skills at the heart of filmmaking in groups is about group work it is about learning from others it's about appreciating others opinions and stuff I mean we've worked in poem on prison and stuff and actually and had really great experiences of people that have never listened to anybody in their life and actually suddenly taking that so it's taking it in that broader sense of it is an art form I would actually argue it's the most accessed art form by young people today outside the popular music and interestingly popular music is not really taught in schools either so it's kind of music stuck in the 17th century and it's just about being relevant and it's about those transferable skills and stuff as well the rest of it comes later I mean we've worked I think we've told it up the other day I think we've worked with about 3000 young people over the last six years at sea there'll be a small percentage you're heading into work in this the rest it's about just some it's about turning life around some it's about re-engaging my education some it's just about giving confidence some you know I like this it's a hobby I like film but I'm gonna go and study something else so it's it's to look at it on that broader sense of not just to think because I remember we've had this question a lot down the years what's the point of training loads of people if there's no jobs it's the same argument I always give back is why do people have a passion for football why do you start football at eight year old why do people play until they can't walk anymore why do people coach for free because it's a love of the game it's just it's keeping active it's keeping healthy a very small percentage you'll play in the SPL so it's the same for art forms it's there about life as well people are allowed to just appreciate dance and music and stuff as well but certainly what would be great is a lot more productions a lot more films and there's loads there's a whole other debate there about you know there's a once you're in this industry a lot of us that are in education are also filmmakers and you kind of have to be in education to survive because there's a block from going from shorts to features because we've got no kind of infrastructure for low budget features in scotland there's all of these things as well all need a dress going forward really to to raise the game for everybody and the broader outlander point Henry would like to take that if you mean about outlander giving fantastic opportunities to train specific skills in Scotland that we don't have then it's been a fantastic vehicle for that and when it comes to placement based training work based training which is you know widely recognised as what works best for our industry people have to come with certain skill sets to begin with to then be a new entrant in our industry having a sort of stable vehicle for that training delivery is very helpful but it was a concert i mean what's happened there is a consequence of content existing and a commercial requirement to actually require the skill sets that came from it i mean hopefully some of those skill sets will now be with people who are already leaving outlander to go on to other places within industry and be potentially available to other productions that come to scotland but but is the route to that kind of training and development opportunity as a function of the content already being here and that then being the opportunity that creates the skill sets or is there a way to do it the other way around is i think what i was trying to understand i think it's both i think is as as cita says you know we need we need the content so that people can have work based training placement based training and i think that outlander is one of the few continuing dramas and even it everyone has to wait to find out if it's going to get recommissioned river city is the only continuing drama in the country and so we need more content and we need more content that is going to be repeated consistently so that actually can build up training as they have done on outlander people have moved through the ranks and and have got any full-time jobs there and indeed elsewhere in the industry but at the same time we need to build up the workforce so that we can attract more work into scotland so it really is it's both sides of it i think and is that potentially what pentland and other studio capacity opportunities offer i mean from from that skill set development what is better uh the commissioning of a seven year international streamed television series with the certainties that that projects forward or um a major hollywood production locating in scotland out of pentland with all the post production facilities available there too but it's something of a one-off production that then depends on the next thing coming you're almost saying that the continuity aspect uh is at this stage in where we're at probably the most beneficial thing that we can we can achieve i think so but i've been again i wouldn't want to to say let's not have the hollywood production so i don't really want to choose between the two i would say from a point of view the continuity is a useful thing because the demands on kind of one-off feature films is it's much more fast paced and much less time for work placement training as such just in terms of the dynamic and the difference between how the speed at which television is made versus the speed at which films are made but that's just from a training point of view obviously from an industry point of view um you need the colour as well um yeah yeah i would say you need an ecosystem you need both you obviously need the continuity and obviously river city is great because it's a very brilliant nursery slope the drama and again it's it's deciding do you want to focus on fiction which is drama and in its multitude of forms and film or do you also want to break out into you know what it means for post production visual effects animation you've got a thriving game sector and avatar how do you join it because there are people who like to move across there's passion i mean you made a brilliant point about hobby and passion which is so true because when you're very very little it's feeling that that passion can be ignited it's feeling that i actually i love it because at that age you don't know about jobs but if you are allowed to nurture that passion you could end up being somebody who is a world stage creator and why not okay just one final question i'm just thinking about pentland them i mean ward park studios has got four studios within it all of which are committed to outlander and therefore developing skillsets but not available to anything else for as long as outlander runs pentland is looking at a seven studio seven shed studio capacity is it important then when that happens that all seven studios in the sense of the mix of the business they develop aren't all just given over to long term continuity but we need to ensure that that's a good healthy thing they have but there is a balance potentially of big feature films still having the capacity to come in there and not find that we've built something new but an american series is now completely monopolised all the capacity that it has or is that just a wish is that a nice problem to have the studio though because it's the commissioning conversation again you know having returning scottish series is a great training ground i worked on target for many years and we missed the opportunity that it gave a lot of crew as well as writers directors to to end actors yeah we missed okay all right thank you so just about why we have a supplementary alison are you able to tell us a little bit more about how the national film and television school will help change the landscape in scotland and are you able to share any of your plans with us yes we uh we had our first course last week so the doors are officially open it was a course in documentary and that's one of the things we haven't really touched on in this but but certainly the film school is going to be offering courses across film television drama documentary eventually games hopefully as well technical and editorial so quite a broad a broad range and actually just thinking back to the conversations we've been having about funding and consistency and priority led things we're in the very good position that we can because we're not dependent on funding in the same way that other training providers are we can we can provide whatever the industry wants as long as it's demand for it and we can we can develop it and deliver it we can do that and we can do it consistently so that actually we do a course this year it's very successful we can run it again in six months or a year's time and i think that i hope is going to make a real difference that actually once we once we've sort of gone through our first year and seen how the courses have been received and what the demand is and what the responses we can actually start to work out exactly what are the key things that people want again and again i think we are we know that we're going to be delivering some some of the things that they do in beckonsfield because they're the courses people want and people are now going to be able to do them in scotland and not have to travel down there but we'll also be developing local content locally for scotland so already we have plans we're doing some art department courses an introduction to the art department which is a five day course which is likely to be aimed at art school graduates possibly architecture graduates people who've worked in graphics but but a sort of very high level in terms of the quality of it and the detail so it's not it's not a general introduction it is quite specific so that when people do a course like that they will then be well placed to go in as a trainee or an assistant and i'd like to be developing that for different departments so that we can actually have a kind of raft of introductory courses as well as the other high level stuff that stuff that we're going to do thanks very much you'll be pleased to hear that the committee wrote a letter in support of the channel for the Glasgow channel forbid and we cited the presence of your film and television school as part of Glasgow's many strengths well that's fantastic and i hope the channel for comes that we're going to be able to build that partnership earlier on cita you'd mentioned that in terms of your own organisation took a couple of years to get that transition round after you lost the the government funding so in scotland when this screen unit comes forward how what is your anticipated timescale for for things to start operating the way that you would like them to see operate um i think it's a bit difficult to compare the two because i walked into a situation where i lost as i said 80% of my funding and the organisation covered a very broad footprint across creative so it covered advertising fashion publishing so what we needed to do was actually recalibrate and decide we're going to focus on screen and we looked at the reason why very carefully because it's a very fragmented sector we heard that it's a buoyant sector and it felt like there was a there was a potential need to do three things really well and just briefly the three things we think we need to do really well uk wide is be really clear what the skills gaps and shortages are so we can be responsive also horizon scan and have a clear narrative around screen a screen skills so there's a coherent narrative across industry and government which is really important the second thing is i think we've touched on is how do you get people to enter the industry and that has two planks what how do you provide careers information online in a portal so a wealth of job role mapping and the outreach we touched on and then enable people and again you made the point it takes four to five years for somebody to feel confident that they can navigate what is a portfolio career so that's and then the third bit is about cpd because in our world because the speed of change i was using expression to stand still you have to learn because the world is shifting so fast and obviously how do you define relevance and again those are points you made so i think it's because we went through a really painful period of not having money and recalibrating our strategy and figuring it all out it took us two years i'm hoping if the screen unit is set up with money the right leadership and the right remit it will take a little bit of time to build up momentum it should not i hope be as painful as it's been because it shouldn't be thank you this you mentioned and others have done earlier regarding the industry being too fragmented do you see a well it's an argument for the industry to do you know not so much downsize in terms of the various organizations and the various strands that are there but but for a more cohesive approach in terms of some of the organizations potentially joining so that they can actually kind of move forward and be stronger to do that or do you think the level of the fragmentation there is actually fine but then with that overarching screen unit then things will be better i think i i feel that it's it's about bringing people together it's not about simplifying it in terms of making several groups into one group but i think it is about communication and i think the thing with scotland is that we are small enough that we should all know each other and be able to speak to each other and are able to do that so i would really hope that the the screen unit that whoever is responsible for the strategy the skills strategy will kind of be there to lead a forum where we can all meet together and we can talk about make sure we're not duplicating we can make sure we're joined up and that we can you know talk about best practice so i think i think it's more about communication than than kind of streamlining personally from one of our earlier evidence sessions tommy gormley said that in terms of the whole industry he gave the comparison that think of it as the ship building industry instead of launching a ship you're launching a film and already today he's spoken about the various other aspects that are required joiners, electricians, plasterers and so on and so forth and i had this discussion last week through the sfa cashback scheme in one of the schools in my constituency because it's a similar idea not everyone is going to be the footballer not everyone is going to be the actor but it's everything else that's behind so on the issue of the of the careers advice i think you touched upon this Alison and the issue of the careers advice and the and the professional that continues professional development what would you actually like to see happen to try to give that message over to encourage parents but also schools and teachers that there is a wider aspect to the industry it's not solely about those who are performing in front of the screen i think it is it is about it's about going into school it's about forming relationships with careers advisors and so that when people are talking about becoming an electrician they know that one of the places they could be an electrician is in the screen sector and the same but you know accountants all those all those jobs that are transferable that we've talked about and also just as mary's touched on you know that the wealth of jobs you know we aren't just directors writers producers cinematographers you know those of us who've worked in production have had lots of other jobs and found them really fulfilling as a career so it's about getting that message across and i think and i think it needs to be in schools it needs to be with careers advisors i think already and we have in our website which we are overhauling to make it simpler and more intuitive we've got job role mapping for certain areas we've got a little bit on high end we've got visual effects just showing the visual effects family across factual production and what we want to do is actually make sure that we are mapping the range of job roles across cream and in a very simple way so someone who's never ever been who doesn't even understand our sector understands how it might work and then they can tell if they want to so there's different levels of curiosity the reason we think that's important is then at least you have somewhere to point to and then i agree with the point that you made linden i think you made allison and so did you about the outreach you have to keep communicating at all levels school interfilm does a lot of work but there are others and we've also got to talk to careers advisors we've got to also enable people to realise the wealth and then have confidence a lot of people think the world this sector isn't for us because for years it's been really hard to get into for years it's felt it's all word of mouth for years it's been difficult and i think now there's genuinely everywhere a recognition that we need to widen and have a very broad thank god skilled workforce which is a good thing but how do you convey and enable people to truly believe that this could be for them i think that's going to be a lot of work i mean that this also sounds as if it's not quite expensive so how much additional resource may we anticipate would be required to do this i think it needs to be proportionate with a growth strategy for our industry and it's the role that the screen unit leadership can play in ensuring that whatever investment is in education and training is proportionate to the ambition that's happening elsewhere seeking inward investment and it's a it's a long term strategy that's required for growth and proportionate to bring in other members if you don't mind Richard Lochhead thank you very much i'm trying to get handle on to what extent generating the supply of skills with attract productions to come to scotland as opposed to hoping the productions come to scotland to help us train up people for the future so i'd like you to comment on that point and related to that is i take it that 20 or 30 years ago CGI was perhaps the big thing and the countries that trained up people in CGI would help attract big productions are we thinking about the skills required during the fast development of the industry in 10 years with technology advancing and how we can get ahead of the game so that we get the skills available and then the productions which are expanding around the world are looking for the right skills they'll think let's go to scotland that's where the skills are so that's my question on the first part of that you need to have the productions to train the people so it's in answer to your question about you know it will having having trained crew will certainly encourage productions to base here but to get to that point we have to have the productions to train people on so it has to be a strategic growth strategy and but also having kind of trainee ships having apprenticeship systems which you can offer to productions that come here or indigenous productions having the infrastructure to have done the outreach and selected the trainees to be able to offer them onto the production is an incentive for productions and really it's the infrastructure that we need to be able to have those trainees ready when productions come because generally it's quite short notice when we have productions appear and opportunity arise on the subject of kind of change in technology certainly national film and television school down in beckonsfield does a lot with kind of really all the cutting edge things and so I hope we are going to benefit from that and we will be able to deliver whatever is whatever is required but you should that not be part of the strategy but you're also saying that we don't have a strategy in school and that's why I think it's so difficult to grasp is how these decisions are taken and who's taking decisions because you know if we want Scotland to be head of the rest of the world when it comes to screen productions and film production in say 20 years or 15 years we have to think now what are the skills that are going to be required then and start training up people just like we'd do if it was surgery in hospitals or whether we'd do it with the ICT so who's taking those decisions who's making sure it happens in Scotland and you know is it happening and what are the skills by the way what are your views of the skills that will get Scotland ahead of the game in say 10 years I suspect although I don't really know but I imagine skills around AR and VR and immersive narrative I think that's kind of the area we're looking at and I know that the down at UWS they're they're looking at looking at doing work they're up here in Scotland what's happening well no in that in the University of the West of Scotland so yes so I think I think you know people are aware of all that I believe so yeah yeah but I think it but we need to broaden it out and I also think that to a huge extent the skills that that we require now will we are going to continue to use you know the industry isn't going to change so much even in the next 15 20 years and while I think there will be obviously technological advances and changes that you say you know 20 years ago with CGI I think we can probably respond to those quite quickly once we once we have the intelligence to say this is what's happening next we can be doing that something that we've lacked of past years is data collected specifically about the landscape of the industry in Scotland on which decisions can be made carel locally and creative skillset do skills surveys and there's other there's there's quite a few different other surveys that come around from time to time but again what we lack is the strategic consistency of an approach for collecting data to get an overall picture of the landscape in Scotland we generally funding is based on the figures that skillset will collate and identified kind of skills gaps for the UK which isn't necessarily reflective of the situation specifically in Scotland so we welcome the survey that's being done by Skills Development Scotland and Creative Scotland at the moment but very much hope that that is an annual survey that becomes embedded in the industry we are promoting it through both hit the ground running and back to to get the survey out to freelancers to try and get a realistic picture of the landscape by database evidence base from which decisions can be made because from experience you know there's certain grades there's certain parts of the industry who respond to surveys but for a lot of the freelance crew they don't because they're working and they work very long hours and it's it's not their thing so I think there has to be work done to reach out to get responses so that strategy that's built on that data isn't just biased towards the people who responded and furthermore the data that's collected you know should be available to the sector for us all to access so that we're not constantly having different surveys of the same people. Thank you convener, Linda's comments on Skills Development Scotland are helpful. We took evidence from Skills Development Scotland, one of the bodies that's sit within the board and we took evidence from them along with Scottish Enterprise and other kind of key partners and what is your experience I mean I'm struck by at the beginning you said there's a lack of strategy and there's fragmentation and I kind of think well where does Skills Development Scotland sit into this is this not partly their responsibility and it's a bit interesting in what your experience has been working with them I do appreciate their currently carrying out a survey and there's some activity being taken place but they are the key partner within the new screen unit representing I would to my understanding representing your sector are you confident that they understand the sector well enough to carry that role and what is your experience of working with them up to this point? I think they do understand I think David Martin understands the sector he's got a lot of experience in it and in Skills Development my own experience over the past few years has just been that the SDS's focus has been pretty much primarily on apprenticeships and therefore there hasn't been space really to have a wider discussion about skills development and one of the things that I'm quite interested in is I know when the Government was doing its consultation about the apprenticeships there was a question about flexible fund and as far as I understand at the moment that's available to employers but for training which would be delivered through further and higher education and so I wonder whether there's a place for that flexible fund to be more flexible so that actually it's more relevant for our sector because in fact if employers are looking for training it's probably not going to be for all colleges and universities so sorry that's a slightly separate point about the apprenticeships but I think certainly in terms of SDS it feels has felt laterally until the discussion around the screen unit as if the focus has been very very firmly on apprenticeships I don't know if that's other people's experience we've not had a lot of dealing in our sector but are now talking just over the last few weeks about that kind of access sector that we belong to around the country taking on foundation apprenticeships so we actually host young people and then support them through their learning because they are at a different age they're younger they may be not ready for that college or experience and question marks around is colleges the best place for that to be taken place because the way we work is we can work quite intensively with small groups and do quite a lot of work and so there's more discussions to have that's the main part of what we've been doing we are alongside at times doing the certificate for work readiness with certain young people and stuff so that's our experience of that the two parts we have worked with SDS on the modern apprenticeships and we've been doing that for the last two years but I want to focus on the point you made about gathering skills data we started conversations with SDS and I would really I hope we can work in a very collaborative way and the reason for that is I think you're absolutely right that some in the past creative skill set used to do censuses in my view and I would say that because I come from a different world they weren't as business intelligent as they might be they weren't responsive you do a survey once a year it doesn't really give you the pain points in a sharp detailed way I also think within our sector I'm talking in general we don't have an agreed approach to the lexicon or the taxonomy as you describe it in terms of different job roles and classifications the government data centrally doesn't have that so what we're trying to do now in this new guys is actually work in collaboration so when we look at job roles or look at skills shortages we can go down a granular detail so the approach can be consistent hopefully across the UK because the industry is global but where SDS would be absolutely brilliant is to have more detailed play space data and if we're doing horizon scanning sometimes can we share because the more collaborative we are the more it helps everybody so that's what I would welcome a really in a collaborative approach where we know what SDS is doing they know what we're doing we share information we work together because you know if we do I think everybody wins okay thank you thanks very much we've talked about SDS delivering apprenticeships the Scottish funding council has agreed to support a single network of colleges and universities across the creative industry to focus on the sector's needs I just wondered if witnesses were aware of that and what their views were on that proposal I'm aware of it and that's that's a good thing okay Ross Greer just like to come back to the points around school level education I think we as a committee were quite impressed by the approach taken in Northern Ireland to this both when we went over and it's came up quite consistently in the written evidence and oral evidence given to us over the last few weeks the one of the key differences is obviously a number but Northern Ireland has a thriving industry it also has a far smaller population and geographically it's far easier to get round because the approach taken there was all essentially a school by school approach that the industry was able to work with individual schools to develop that that culture and that appreciation for the subjects that's obviously a much more challenging approach to take here if you're to get around everywhere so it would seem that approaching through local authorities in education Scotland is a more effective way to try and get that overall reach but whose responsibility would that ultimately be because it seems the way it's happened in Scotland so far is within the industry individuals or organisations have taken the initiative and tried to reach as many schools as they can but there's no overarching strategy and overarching responsibility that you presume would come from a public body to make sure that that approach is being taken within every education authority so who should be taking the lead on that it would have to be it would be the education within the film unit which is currently I'll go through the change in whoever's in charge of education it has to be that lead but I know historically even going back to the Scottish screen days there's been a preference for going down that route of Northern Ireland which wasn't taken up by Government and wasn't taken up by Education Scotland and wasn't taken up by SKA so actually the industry body the whole time has been saying this is what we need and it's the other side that the educational body saying it's not what we need so there's a kind of a log jam that is maybe needing you guys to sort out I would say and I know the Northern Ireland thing it is it's more than just a individual school approach it's it's across that entire entire small country because everybody takes up moving image apps and we've ran that for three years so we've our tutor team go over to Northern Ireland once a year catch up for two days training and stuff catch up we teachers that are delivering all of this and sadly just to do we the setup of creative Scotland that now ends that ends next month and we can't run it again because wider creative Scotland doesn't doesn't see their role so it's not the film team but wider creative Scotland there's an issue of doesn't see their role as funding qualifications except what we're actually using it for was beyond school age as well as taking young people that really needed it to get themselves progressed industry wise or to university and maybe come for more challenging backgrounds so I would say overall film units responsibility engaging on the last point you mentioned there but creative Scotland over the overall body not seeing the opportunity there is your hope then that with the screen unit there'd be an opportunity to revisit that I would hope so but I think on a Scotland wide basis because this year actually it was it was we're also supporting Eden Court in Inverness so it's getting running in Inverness as well and actually quite sad that it's running for a year and then stops so again it's just that hotch potchy things that are happening and I think organisations like ourselves it's about working with us to work with schools as well and education departments luckily in Edinburgh it's quite strong because we are heavily part of that department funding wise and stuff and agreement wise but elsewhere obviously there's a lot of work to be done and just on a different note looking at public service broadcasters obviously the the BBC and their responsibility their public services to do more than just create entertaining content and there's a responsibility there to create the kind of in-work opportunities to develop the industry overall I think that seems to have happened quite successfully in Wales off the back of what spun out of Dr Who in Torchwood in the industry there. Do you think that the BBC in Scotland have a clear sense of their responsibility to the wider industry and their responsibility to workforce development? I think they do I think it comes back to content you know I think they do understand that and certainly I know they've supported the drama training programme which then does running and which I used to run but it does come back to the programmes we need the programmes for people to to get that workplace experience on but hopefully with you know the investment and the new channel those those opportunities are going to be there thank you Graham can I just actually go back to what you just said about Creative Scotland, wider Creative Scotland not understanding the the programme that you were running with Northern Ireland what kind of conversations did you have with Creative Scotland around that presumably they did fund it at one point and then they changed their mind so could you I just wonder if you could give us more detail about it? There wasn't much basically it was the person who previously was running an organisation who left back in October just once the funding came through and stuff the note then came through for a meeting and basically got informed that this we're funding it for this year it was the first time Creative Scotland directly funded it the previous two years it was Scottish film education that funded it which is obviously a bit of money from BFI but also Creative Scotland again as a test pilot because their role was obviously to to CPD the teachers in Scotland as much as they can in clusters and wanted to try that out as well and then so it was basically it was a wider than the film team was we'll do it this one year and then basically it's not a role it's kind of seen as school for the red and higher education to be doing qualifications and stuff except actually a lot of the young people we work with going through a lot the programs some of their only qualifications are actually words in film you know it's kids that have been in and out of school and things like that kids that have been in care and then others that just needed that kind of qualification to get them towards film school like Napier and things like that but I think it's a great it's a great program but it'd be very worthwhile actually being in the Scottish curriculum and supported properly with the kind of infrastructure over there there's organization similar to us the nerve centre there's one in Derry there's one in Belfast and they kindly support that whole infrastructure of moving image apps across Northern Ireland and that's part of the Northern Ireland screen agency that's their remit yeah yeah and so so these opportunities have been lost in Inverness because that's another thing that we've sort of touched on in this session the the need to reach out and provide training and opportunities right across Scotland can I just ask you a little bit more about something else you mentioned I think it was Linda in particular mentioned the new entrance training scheme and you're not the only person to have praised it we've got a lot of written and oral evidence that have praised that scheme the kind of tone of that praise tends to be almost as if it's something from the past I wonder if you could tell us currently what the what its status is or why people are talking about it almost as if it's something that's in the past why isn't it still happening if everybody agrees that it's so great I think they talk about it in that way because it's been running for such a long time it was as far as I'm aware the first structured sort of placement based training programme in the UK because it was about for 1979 I think is when it started and it's been through different guises across that across the 40 years it's sort of changed it's the way in which it's been delivered but it has the respect of the industry because many people have been through it I have been through it but it you know provides a really valuable way in for people who haven't got any connections with the industry in previous to that existing it was all you know family members and neighbours who were working in the industry the last time it was funded was through the screen skills fund which came through creative Scotland it was a million pounds for skills that was a number of years ago now and it was delivered at that point for around about a year I think with only four trainees part of the model is it's small numbers of individuals who are placed within specific departments and those are identified based on what the industry's need is you know looking really on a granular level at what because it's specifically for drama mostly so where the gaps coming up so it's anticipating that so what it provided was a constant stream of really high quality training and a really high success rate because of the recruitment procedures and the buy-in from the industry to train those individuals and we're kind of suffering for the lack of it now why we have skills gaps at a kind of higher level is the lack of continuity of providing that stream we aren't a big industry you know it's very specific areas where we can have interventions we would we would struggle with a big increase in the volume of new entrants who are looking to work in the industry in terms of the capacity to accommodate them so what the new entrance programme does is responsive to the needs of the industry where it's at at the moment is there was no repeat funding for the screen skills fund and it's it's an expensive programme to run because it's fully funded for the individuals who are being the trainees and it's supported given that we all agree that we're currently in a boom I take it we would all agree that that if there was one thing that we could do funding that programme that everyone thinks is wonderful is really something that we ought to be doing pronto really okay with that I'd like to thank you all for giving your evidence today it's been absolutely fascinating and I will have a short suspension of the committee thank you we'll now move into private session rather thank you