 Merth yn gweithdd currentiaeth yn gwasanaeth a llwysiau'r amser. Are you pleased with the public day 11 meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2015? First of all I will ask all those present to ensure that the electronic items are switched to flight mode so that it does not affect the work of the committee. I take this opportunity to welcome the Welsh Assembly public audit committee members who are joining us in the public gallery. Agenda item number one is the decision in taking business and private. Can I seek agreement that we take items four, five and six in private? Are we all agreed? Agenda item number two is evidence from two panels on the AGS report entitled Scotland's Colleges 2015. Collegs, we have a full agenda this morning and can ask members and witnesses to be as succ this possible. I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses, Margaret Monkton, the principal of Perth College, Paul Little, the principal and chief executive of the city of Glasgow College, Audrey Cumberford, principal and chief executive of West College Scotland, and David Belsay, who is the national officer of further and higher education of Institute Scotland. The panel is most welcome this morning. I understand that Mr Belsay has a short statement to make before we ask questions. Thank you, chair. Having been offered the opportunity to speak for two minutes at the start, I couldn't resist. I welcome the opportunity of giving evidence to the committee this morning. We also welcome the opportunity of looking at the Scotland Colleges 2015 report. The AGS has welcomed regionalisation from the start. It is always believed that regionalisation can deliver greater accountability, greater transparency. To be fair to the Government, it did always link the introduction of regionalisation to making savings. Whilst that is regrettable, we do recognise that there has been a tight funding environment. In terms of the Audit Scotland report, the AGS found the report disappointing. We found some of the evidence within it very narrow. It seemed a little uncritical in its conclusions in places. For example, in particular, looking at the voluntary seventh arrangements and the exhibits, at the end of the report, we did not quite match the conclusions that we felt in the main report. There are also other issues around colleges that are mentioned at the end, such as North Glasgow Coatbridge, as well as the other issues to do with leadership in the sector that the report could have dwelt with greater clarity. Finally, I note that Audit Scotland has made a written submission referring to compulsory redundancies within the sector. I have made some inquiries with my colleagues in the AGS. We are not aware of any compulsory redundancies for academic staff. I start with questions. This is for all members of the panel. First, I refer to the Auditor General's report. In particular, it refers to the Auditor General's statement that the impact of the mergers has had minimal negative impact on students. I wonder what the feedback from many members of the panel would be in respect of that statement. We were the pathfinder merger in advance of the Government reform, so we are a five-year past merger now. It was interesting in the funding cuts evaluation that, when the students were given evidence, they said, what merger they felt that we had attended to business as usual during the whole change process and, as such, that they had not been impacted negatively during that experience. In fact, I can attest that the college's performance has increased some 15 per cent in further education and the success rate is 9 per cent in higher education. Whenever you pull talent and technology and you give a diverse curriculum in one spot, students benefit from that. In fact, we have more guaranteed places to university since mergers than we ever had or even dreamt possible before mergers. The student experience of being in the classroom and being supported in pulling student support staff has been one of very positive. The last student survey said that 93 per cent of students would recommend sitting at Glasgow College as a place to study. From the experience, if you have slightly more longitudinal than some of the other colleges, I can say that it has been very positive on the students. I recognise that statement. I suggest that the report says that there has been a 12 per cent reduction in teaching staff. There has never been any occasion where a student said, we are losing lectures in this college, it is having an impact on the kind of classes that I can attend or the opportunities that I have in the college. Students never came across as a trade union representative never raised an issue about it. How do we gauge student opinion other than through surveys? I can finish off and then ask all my colleagues to come up on that. I walk round the college, I meet the students, I meet the staff, I listen to them through the formal channels and I listen to the informal channels. During that change period, people were unsettled during that time. To be clarified, they are unsettled, but there has been no negative impact on the issues. That is correct. How do those two reconcile with each other? We have a happy group of students who are saying that this is pretty positive. What merger? You are telling me that there is a pretty unsettled atmosphere in the college, so how can both of them reconcile? To be clear, there is not an unsettled atmosphere in the college that, going through any change process, students would want to ensure that they communicate it well, that they have all the resources, that the questions that they want answered are answered. We ensured through written response and meeting them personally and engaging formally and informally that that was the case. I merely used the five-year period to give you an example that there has been year-on-year progress. During that change process—like any change process—there were questions asked, but the success rates speak for themselves. Students are benefitting not just from better outcomes, better guaranteed, but, in our case, the opportunity to have better facilities. We also ensured during the process that they have better facilities. With a student population in the region of 32,000 students, we are trying our very best to make sure that every single one of those full-time and part-time students has the best possible experience. I will ask the three principles that are represented. I am happy to respond to that. You have not had any representations from students saying that those mergers will take place and that that has a negative impact on my education. That is quite the opposite. The core business that we are in is providing education and training to students and making it the best experience that we can for those students and to achieve the best outcomes that we can. Like Paul, in the case of West College Scotland, the performance indicators, which is a key measure of the outcomes of students, have improved at both FE and HE levels. That has been substantiated by the funding council's six-month merger evaluation that was done, which included speaking to substantial numbers of students who all reiterated the same point, which was that they have seen benefits to the merger in terms of their overall experience. I can give examples of that. To answer your question, do we just simply ask students through surveys? Surveys is one small part of how we engage with students in making decisions in the college and influencing how and what we do. For example, students are involved in college committees. We have student associations, which are very active. We have students involved in boards at sub-committee level and at full board. There are a whole variety of ways—course teams, where students are involved in working with the lecturing staff in developing their courses. In terms of the reduction in places that have taken place particularly in part-time courses, how do we consult with those students who are no longer at the college? I am sure that their experience has been impossible. How do we survey them? Do we survey students who have left the college? You are correct in that the level of part-time provision has reduced over the past couple of years. That has been the case in West College Scotland. I am not asking about the level at this point. If I am a student who is no longer at the college as a result of the part-time place that has been reduced, my experience has diminished. It is a pretty poor experience because I have had to leave the college. How do you survey me as a student who has left the college? That is a pretty poor experience for me, is it not? I cannot continue in the college. How do we survey students who have left the college in terms of our post-course destination analysis, which is information that we provide to the funding council, and where our students go on leaving college? For the committee's benefit today, we survey students who have had to leave the college as a result of the reduction in part-time courses. We can get access to the survey results for those particular students. Would that be across all the colleges? My college has not had students leave the college as a result of merger. In fact, the number of courses that we are offering as a result of the merger and the reform has increased. The number of progression opportunities has increased. The level and standards of a consistent coherent provision across what is quite a large region of the west has improved. We have students who are working across the region together as teams of students with teams of staff in a single college. There are huge benefits to being gained by that. I have not had a student who has been forced to leave my college as a result of reduction in part-time courses, but I have seen a reduction in part-time provision in the college. Perth College has not been involved in any merger so far. I would like to confine my remarks to the regional boards. I want to look at the benefits and challenges that are associated with the arrangements. I want to ask whether the regional boards and bodies have reduced the level of funding that is available for the delivery of learning and the quality of the direction, leadership and support that the regional boards are giving. I am specifically referring to paragraphs 36 and 38 in the Auditor General's report. Introducing regional boards has resulted in a complex framework of accountability. Individual colleges have expressed concerns that regional boards will affect their autonomy and that it has the potential to cause tensions and confusion. I was quite surprised that the United Nations regional board costs £40 million. I would like to know, apart from the other questions, is that money taken away from front-line teaching or how does the regional board affect, particularly Paul and Margaret from Perth and Glasgow, does it enhance the delivery of teaching and learning? Does it impact on your finances? That has been taken from the written submission by Dr Michael Fox. The expression of our annual budget is £40 million. That is an income budget that I figure for all the FE colleges in the region, but it is not the cost of the regional board. The cost of the regional board is £200,000 per annum, and that has been held since the regional board has been in operation. That is not £40 million, but it is our annual budget. He is writing as the chair of the regional board that it seems to assume that it is his annual budget, rather than yours. Just to ask about the impact on colleges in terms of autonomy and finances. It is fair to say and to reflect that our flexibility and autonomy has been restricted. I buy coming together as a region for FE. In the Highlands and Islands, we have a long tradition of working together as a partnership for HE as a university partnership. In effect, before regionalisation throughout Scotland in the college sector, we were already working together very well as a partnership. Our perspective, our individual board's perspective of the rationale for a regional board is very different to the rationale that is being used across Scotland. We have the university court, the FE regional board, which is a sub-committee of court—or rather, sorry, pedantically—a committee of court, and we have our own boards of management. Under regionalisation, we now have three layers of governance on our FE activity. We have two layers of governance on our HE activity but three on our FE activity. That is causing a lack of flexibility. We have always acted primarily for our sub-region, for Perth and Kynros, and also for the benefit of the region because FE has always been a feeder into HE, has always been a precursor in curriculum pathways, etc. We are just formalising arrangements more. It is costing us £200,000 a year of which Perth is paying about £60,000. I am aware that, before I came here, I was a lecturer in the UHI in 1999, so I am aware of the very good practice and how well the colleges work together. I have heard from other colleges that they feel that some of their autonomy has been lost. We have always felt that, when I was a lecturer, each region could respond to the employment needs in its area, and, of course, there are very, very different areas for Orkney, Shetland, Western Isles, North Highland and Perth. I ask you, apart from your £60,000, which I am sure would be helpful in your budget, how do you feel that the additional layers of bureaucracy use the word restricted? How does it restrict what you can do as a principal of Perth College? There are challenges to the autonomy of our board and, therefore, me as a principal and chief exec, as to where our authority lies, where our responsibility stops and starts. It is mainly being caused because FE is now being seen as the responsibility of university court. With the best of intentions, university court does not see that as its main reason for existence. We constantly get challenges. It is not challenges from the FE regional board. The FE regional board understands FE. It is comprised of all the chairs of our boards of management and some independent members. It is working increasingly well, but the interface between that board and university court is throwing up questions about our autonomy and our responsibility and accountability. That is very helpful. I could perhaps ask Paul a different experience within Glasgow, but maybe you could tell us what the cost of the Glasgow regional board and how much your college contributes towards the cost. Do you find it helpful in terms of the student learning experience? I would be happy to give you a written reply on the exact costing, because that is a bit of a fluid situation, but I will give you some indication of that. In terms of the overall autonomy, it is true that colleges have had a reduction in their autonomy. Indeed, that would not be tolerated by our higher education colleagues, but that loss of autonomy has also because of the reclassification of colleges as arms length bodies. In a sense, there is a conflation of those issues. Certainly, within Glasgow, we have two levels of governance between the regional board and the assigned colleges, but on a practical level, when you strip away a lot of the negative headlines that have been around Glasgow, I have found that in terms of the specifics of the regional board and the interface of the college, I have not experienced a degree of loss of autonomy, certainly at an operational level. In fact, the opposite. We have been very supportive of the regional board in helping to set it up. It is still very much in its early days there, and the fact is that it is presently located at the city of Glasgow College. The impact of the regional board has had a very positive impact on bringing the three colleges closer together and working in strong collaboration. Yes, there was the potential impact on funding and the finances. We were very fortunate that the funding council stepped in and supported that and funded that directly. In recent times, there is the potential to top slice some of our budget to support that. We are presently making representation to the funding council to reduce that, so that is still a matter of discussion. I believe that they are listening to us in terms of that, and they are continuing to provide some of that funding while recognising that it was always the intention through the guidance that the college sector would pay for that. In terms of regionalisation in Glasgow, yes, there has been a lot of negative publicity, but behind that has been a huge amount of development in the colleges, a huge amount of protection of student learning, a huge amount of continued input to the socio-economic development of Glasgow when responding to the needs, including of a map that we have produced up to 2020, so we have been looking very closely at that. Perhaps I can start by saying that I thought that the Auditor General report was actually quite positive in most respects. They recognised that college finances were sound, that planning for mergers was good and that the sector responded well to the period of very significant reform. I think that what you are telling us today reflects that, and that the colleges continue to meet their targets for learning. However, it is true that the number of part-time students has dropped, as members of the panel have already indicated, and that is in accordance with Government policy to focus on full-time courses leading to qualifications and, hopefully, employment. How significant has the fall in part-time courses been in your areas and the actual teaching hours that are being given on courses, has that been maintained? I answered quite straightforwardly from Perth. There has been no reduction, no discernible reduction in part-time learners at Perth College. We are quite convinced that we are doing the right thing for our region, so no matter what Government policy was determining, we were originally doing the right thing. The balance of full-time and part-time has been relatively stable, in fact, very stable. There has not been that swing, as has been displayed in the rest of Scotland. As to the number of hours in order to make ends meet with the cut in funding, the funding council had allowed us to go down to 16 credits worth for a full-time student. In Perth, we only went as low as 18, so we did not go to 16 credits because we wanted to protect a student experience. We have taken decisions locally to make ends meet in a different way from, perhaps, other colleges. Game A may be slightly different from the rest of the sector. 60 per cent of our funding that is available every day is higher education and 40 per cent is further education. Because we generate some money from commercial international, we will be able to use some of that money to offset some of the loss of provision in part-time learning. However, there is no doubt about it that part-time learning has impacted particularly the leisure learners. It has also had an impact on the opportunity to retrain and reskill. However, we have been focused in supporting the economy of Glasgow and, because we are a city centre organisation, we are trying to ensure that we work with the businesses and, indeed, the learners that need our help, particularly the new citizens of Glasgow. We have worked really hard to protect that. As I mentioned earlier, in terms of a Glasgow perspective, the map that we have produced has allowed us to plan an expansion, particularly in the communities, to ensure that that has increased. It is a challenging situation, but colleges are very resilient and adaptable. We are focused on Scotland's young workforce, but within our own budgets and other capabilities, we are making every effort to protect the part-time learners. However, as I said earlier, the City of Glasgow College has perhaps not had the large degree of part-time learning profile that there would be elsewhere. In the case of West College Scotland, it is responsible for around 10 per cent of the overall provision in Scotland in colleges, and our part-time provision in the past year has reduced. In saying that, we have had a particular focus on our over-25-year-old age group, and the numbers have increased in full-time provision in relation to the over-25 groups. Can I add on behalf of the staff that there has been a very clear move across the sector? I think that statistics support the large cut in the part-time number of students. That is, of course, going to disadvantage women and those with caring responsibilities. It would be unfair to put the cut of part-time students simply down to the merger process. It is one in which the Government has refocused the priority of the sector more towards preparing 16 to 24-year-olds for the world of work, and reducing the number of non-creditor-waring, non-creditor-waring awarding courses that have been cut. EIS members are very clear that there are fewer courses and that part-time courses have been hit hard. Perhaps, Mr Bell, I can mention now that the number of women on the full-time courses has increased by 15 per cent over the past few years, so there are some positive aspects there. However, is it true, according to the figures that I am seeing here from various sources, that the outcomes of the students on those full-time courses are much better than in the past? In other words, there are more students leaving with qualifications, more students leaving going into positive destinations, which is what, of course, it was targeted for? As I said earlier, in terms of full-time FE and HE provision at West College Scotland, the performance indicators have gone up by 2 per cent and 3 per cent in both cases. The outcomes are improving. As David and Paul said, the curriculum is being designed around what employers want and what they need. Work experience is a huge feature of much of the full-time provision that colleges are providing. That is something that is being built into full-time provision, which is a positive and a major shift in what colleges do. Without rehearsing the statistics of the great increase in Merger, before Merger, the collective colleges that formed the City of Glasgow College were, in essence, below sector average, now they are above sector average. In fact, we are now ranked third in Scotland and further in higher education. That is a huge opportunity for the advantage to students when they come to the college that they can be and their parents and their teachers can be more assured that they are getting even higher quality education than before Merger. I think that full-time students have got out of the recent changes better than part-time students. As you said, completion rates are up in most places. There is a wide access to universities, greater articulation. There was an agreement signed in Glasgow with the University of Glasgow only a few weeks ago. Yes, full-time students, there are some elements of good news. Just briefly, Margaret and Audrey said that there has been no reduction in part-time students, but in the Auditor General report on page 25, there has been a reduction since 2008 to 2014 of 150,000 part-time students, a 48 per cent reduction and a 41 per cent reduction in students over 25. So, if there has not been a reduction at Perth College or if there has not been a reduction at your colleges, there must be huge reductions elsewhere, because that is what is in the report. Part-time students' headcount has reduced at West College Scotland. What has increased at the number of full-time students who are over the age of 25? Can we just be clear here, though, that the question that was asked was part-time courses. Can we just clarify, Paul, what has been the number of reductions that has been in your college? Because it is over that value, I can confirm, but I will write to you with that written confirmation. Are there any recent figures in the last year? There must be something that is presented here. Because our profile was a curfewd plan to accommodate the development of the new campus, we were largely a full-time college. Yes, we did have a part-time provision and we protected that part-time provision. There has not been a significant cut to that part-time provision other than through leisure learning. However, leisure learning was always in that volume of students a very small percentage. I think that the question that you are asking is, so where is that 48 per cent reduction? Obviously, that is a question that the funding council can certainly answer for you. Obviously, Scotland's college can provide a more ever-written detailed answer, because certainly from my college it has not been significant. However, you are right that there has been that reduction overall. Can you clarify the point that has been made about leisure classes then? Those would be non-accredited courses. Those are hobby courses, if you will. Important courses in the life of a man. Why would you call them hobby courses? Do they have less importance because they are not accredited? Is that the way that the college looks at it? I call them leisure courses and hobby courses. What is the minister referred to the most? I would call them leisure courses in the past. So you would disagree with the term hobby courses then? In the past, life-long learning has been the route to wider access. I would not want to disagree with the minister. I would say that we would call those leisure courses. I offer some statistics that we have pulled together as a regional body. In the Highlands and Islands, a part-time student number for 1112 was £28,000, for 1213 was £27,000 and for 1314 was £28,000. So there has been no reduction in the Highlands and Islands part-time. Just before I bring to Aberystwyth Scotland, we have just been to be clear that the information that we are looking for from the two remaining colleges is clarity on whatever reductions take place. However, your understanding is that this has been minimal and we should look elsewhere for the other colleges that have reduced their costs. Can I drag you away from hobbies and on to money? I wonder if I could ask both Glasgow and West of Scotland what the costs of merger were. Yes, I can cover that. In relation to the merger integration cost, so I would describe that as being things like due diligence, estates work, integration of systems, etc. It was around £1.5 million. We spent £1.5 million on software hardware associated with the integration of major systems, so that would include things like our student record system, our HR systems, our student funding systems, our payroll systems, etc. A further £5.4 million on voluntary severance for staff. In terms of Glasgow, there has been a cumulative savings since merger of £26 million. No, I want the cost, not the savings. I want to ask about the cost of merger. The cost of merger was in excess of £5 million. How much in excess was it? For example, in the severance budget, we were in a different position because we also had funding from the funding council that was not available to the other colleges. We had a provision of, for example, more than £4 million for severance costs. In essence, our work figure was about £6 million. Thank you. Were you asked to provide those figures to the funding council and to the Government? Yes. You would be puzzled as I was as to why the funding council nor the Scottish Government could provide order Scotland with the cost of merger, as you would have read in the order of Scotland report, when you clearly did provide that information. I am very grateful for you providing that information. You obviously did. You were asked to provide that information on the specific costs of merger that you have very helpfully given this morning to the funding council and to the Government. I think that the funding council will have those detailed figures, because they work very closely with each individual colleges to provide that. It is perhaps that mergers are in transition. I mentioned that we are five years past merger. Because mergers are in a phase basis, perhaps we would say that the first phases of merger are now complete. Perhaps they are not saying that the mergers are complete in the more recent cases. Those are questions that we can pursue another way, but I am just grateful that you were able to provide the cost, which is stark contrast to the evidence that we had when we had order Scotland here. Mr Little, you mentioned savings, so let me ask you about that. Obviously, the order Scotland report says that £50 million of efficiency savings per annum are to be achieved from this financial year forward. I appreciate that for the whole of the sector. Order Scotland said that there was no evidence of that in the report, which I am sure you are familiar with. Can you help the committee with any evidence on that? We are very clear that in terms of to date recurring annual savings are £5.5 million, which relates to VS, and there is about half a million in relation to other savings. Other savings are about things such as licence agreements, contracting and bringing three contracts into one. We are looking to make further savings around our estates and other contract opportunities where the three legacy college contracts are coming to an end and we are renegotiating single contracts with some of our suppliers. There are still savings to be made, but those are certainly the initial savings in the first two years of merger. Obviously, those are per annum. You have described a number of issues this morning, which I can well understand, but possibly only being one-off or are they recurring? Our payroll savings have been reduced by £5.4 million. In terms of the City Glasgow College on merger, City Glasgow College was about a tenth of the whole sector, so that figure that I mentioned in excess of £5 million would be in line with that for overall for the sector. In terms of the context, because I think that it is quite important to recognise that, as David had mentioned, the merger did not happen in isolation. It has been conflated with Government reform and regulation and reduction. The money that we have potentially saved by merger has been offset by the diminishing reduction in revenue funding in the college, so, in a sense, having taken a bold step forward, we have stood still. You are saying that the way that we should look at the £50 million of savings that the Government sees have been made and will be made from this year onwards, both the funding council's reduction in the support for the sector and the savings that you have very carefully and helpfully identified to the committee this morning. Is it both those factors that are part of the funding? You need to factor in the wider revenue funding, and the gap that is beginning to merge in student support funding as well. The challenge is to keep in mind that mergers were part of that reform, but there was the reclassification that had an impact on the colleges. Then there was the loss of parity with higher education funding. As such, the colleges, since my particular merger, have, year on year, had a diminished revenue funding, and that is most marked in recent years. How much has it been cut by in terms of what your previous sets of bodies would have had compared to what you now have in the 15-16 financial year, or maybe you could write to us with that kind of information? I will write to that, but I will give you an indication that, since that period, for the sector, there has been a 12 per cent reduction up to 2015. Across the whole sector? Across the whole sector, yes. I am sorry for the audit committee, so you will forgive me for being concentrating on the numbers. Are your savings audited by your college audit professional bodies? All colleges are audited both internally and externally, so they have internally appointed auditors and a separate externally appointed auditors. They are robust, careful and diligent auditors. That is very helpful. Those are then again provided to the funding council and, therefore, by definition to the Government. There is absolute clarity about not just your colleges, but others in that context. That is very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Don. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, colleagues. I would just like to pick up on one particular issue, since we are talking about money. That is an issue that comes to me quite often when my engineers have. College courses, where let me give you two examples to make the point. If you want to teach somebody to cut hair, then, a couple of weeks time, my hair will have grown and you can cut it again. There is no significant cost in that. Whereas if you want to teach somebody to put cement round bricks, you finish up with a wonderful looking wall, but not one, there are a set of bricks that you can use next time, so you have to buy more bricks. Many of the engineering courses and not uniquely engineering courses are more expensive to run than some of the others for precisely that kind of reason. To what extent do you feel there are pressures to provide or not to provide courses simply because they cost more to put on? I just start by saying that we do recycle the bricks. In which case they won't put together very well. We actually recycle the mortar, too. We use the used mortar and remix it. We have a machine that does that. It does take a bit of time and effort, however, so your point is well made. The revenue funding in the FE teaching grant was weighted higher for the higher cost of delivering certain subject areas, for example engineering. That weighting has changed and we are now approaching a simplified funding model where we will have our funding put into five subject funding categories. We are at the very early stages of that, so I do not believe that there are any case studies available as to how that new funding methodology will support us to enable these higher cost programmes to be funded appropriately. It is too early into the change of funding methodology. I would not have any concerns about the scenario that you have just described where the funding methodology allows that flexibility. Within a college, in terms of managing your own resources and curriculum portfolio, some of the portfolio is less expensive to deliver, some is more expensive and the two can balance, so I do not have any concerns. If I can give you some reassurance from Glasgow that in just over 10 weeks we will be taking delivery of a £60 million campus, a key and a core part of that campus is engineering, both marine engineering and renewables engineering and mechanical engineering, so we are playing our part to the renaissance of engineering in Glasgow and we have developed a STEM centre in association with local schools, so we are working very carefully to maintain the balance between providing important hairdressing courses and important engineering courses. I am not doubting the importance of all of them, but I think that the point was well made. I just hope that the brickies remember to use the right motor when they get out there and build real houses. I appreciate that the situation is different in West Glasgow and in Perth in terms of the merger experience in Glasgow starting in this process earlier, in terms of the city of Glasgow called Perth, not a merger as such, but you will paint a fairly rosy picture of the process that you have been through, so presumably you would not have any concerns about a further process of murder in the sector. We will let this settle down and we can do this again and save more money and make more improvements. I am not sure how to answer that question, actually. I think that if I understood your question correctly, there is no question and I think that the report makes it quite clear that the sector as a whole has been hugely successful in reforming over what has been a short period of time within an environment and context, which has been complicated and multifaceted in terms of the changes that we have had to cope with. There is no doubt in my mind that being a regional college across the West region has given the vocational system in the West a far higher level of influence of authority is helping to raise the value of vocational education, which is absolutely a key objective of the sector, and I am sure that many individuals around this table. Could I go through this amount of change again in the next 18 months? I am actually only 21 years old, so I have aged considerably. There is no question that it has been challenging at a personal level and in relation to the staff in the college and the senior teams and the staff as a whole. Going through change is never easy. I do think that it is important that we now, if you like, the dust is settling and that we absolutely maximise the true benefits of being regional colleges and having a regional structure, and that we continue to work through some of the challenges around the reclassification of what that is presenting and the on-going challenges with the funding situation that we have while maintaining and delivering the targets and the activity that the Scottish Government expects us to do. A quick example would be that developing Scotland's young workforce is an absolute key Scottish Government priority and is a key college priority in working with young people in schools. The challenge there is that the colleges have a huge role to play in delivering against the recommendations of developing Scotland's young workforce, but there are difficult choices and decisions to be made around what our provisions should be geared towards that particular policy area, which by definition means that we have to make some difficult choices elsewhere in what we do, i.e. colleges cannot do everything and be everything to everyone with a limited resource. I have just recently come back from Merrigan. I wish that I could claim the fifth amendment when it comes to Glasgow, because obviously Glasgow is very much in the attention and the headlines. What has been shown is that the three colleges in Glasgow have worked increasingly collaboratively and very close together. As indicated earlier, we now have a map for the shared curriculum right across Glasgow to 2020. In a sense, we are busy trying to ensure over the next few years that we deliver that map. From my own experience, which I have well over 15 years involved in Merger, I have seen different mergers in different jurisdictions, and I know that they are all context specific. If there is a clear need, if there are clear benefits, if there is a clear vision and that that is well articulated, then potentially there could be further mergers. However, we are busy in Glasgow bearing in the existing mergers and trying to ensure that the collaboration that they have is there for the benefit, not just of the students, but of the economy of Glasgow. If we are able to do that for the next period, I would be content with that. My response to that question would be that some of the fundamental principles of the college regionalisation were to remove duplication to increase the sharing of services and to increase the coherent voice of the sector. I do not think that that was a government priority, but it was certainly one that we took out of the regionalisation, was the benefit of that coherence of voice in promoting the benefits that the sector brings to the economy and to life-long learners. We have not been a part of the murder situation. I really do not know what the trajectory in the Highlands and Islands will be, but there are certainly still a lot of individual institutions in that area. I would just as an economist say that there is a tipping point between economies of scale and economies of scale. It is making that judgment when it is an institution too big to keep focus on its front-line production, which is healthy and appropriate learning opportunities for the people of Scotland. I suppose that, if I could convener, I am quite interested in the EIS perspective. The principles are telling us that savings can be made, there are no reductions in numbers of part-time learners, but we are not too concerned about that because it aligns with the Government's priorities. Do you think that we could make even more savings in this sector by getting more people working together? Is that doable? I would say that, when you look at them, Audra mentioned the savings from West Collar Scotland being around £5.5 million mostly due to voluntary severance. That is fewer staff in the sector and it is delivering, depending on the metrics that you look at, the same FE activity. There are fewer staff delivering the same amount of FE activity in terms of metrics to the same quality because the Auditor General's report and the sector is clear that quality has not dropped. Where that pressure has dropped is on the shoulders of staff. The staff across the whole sector management but also teaching staff and support staff. There is increased workload and there are larger classes. There are fewer hours being given to deliver some courses. There are increased absence rates. Possibly, yes, there is always efficiency that is being made but it will come at a cost and the cost will be the staff. I think that the EIS is hopeful that the present round of mergers will have an opportunity to settle out, to consolidate and if there are any future mergers in the offing, that they will be carried out in a longer drawn-out period of time, better planned in a way, because some of the recent mergers took place rather quickly. From that point on, I just asked if you were able to give us an indication of what is happening to your absence rates. I do not have the exact figure but it is from memory that it is pretty stable. You do not recognise that there is a trend associated with mergers, so it has not been your experience? No, I would agree with what David said. As I said earlier, change has been significant. It is a credit to the staff that they have kept the focus on what we are here to do, which is learning and teaching, despite the change in the turmoil that has gone on around them. I have not lost that focus. In my case, and I know that other colleges have been very positive and embraced the opportunities that working as part of an increased capacity and enhanced scale of college has given them, in terms of course materials, in terms of sharing practice, teaching practice, sharing best practice, lecturers and support staff across the college have been very quick to grasp the opportunities that that has presented. I think that mergers can be painted as very difficult and certainly they are on a personal level. In terms of absentee, that has never been a major feature or of concern. Obviously, we monitor that, but we have to balance that with the opportunities that staff have had through merger. All our staff have had an increase in their pay. We provide the living wage now to, if you like, the lowest-paid members of staff. The salaries of the lecturing staff have all been harmonised at the highest level. At the promoted level, there have been many more opportunities both in terms of the challenge of management but also the professional development opportunities. In one sense, yes, there has been a huge amount of change and a huge amount of pressure on staff, but they have risen to that challenge. College staff always do it and we are very proud of what they do. Providing that we can continue that in any change, in a phiaised, managed and where possible, supported way, I think that David is right. If there is going to be further change, whatever that change is, if the Government continues to support it at the level that we were received, then I think that the transition to that new change will be much better than perhaps the more condensed change that happened after our merger. I think that it is fair to say that the significant threat to the learner experience, the student experience and to the burden on staff is the continual funding cut that the sector is experiencing. Perhaps it is not the murders per se, but the fact that we have all as a collective had to make efficiency savings of 12 per cent in real terms over the past four years. Just to finish on this point, I suppose that one of our frustrations or concerns with the report that the auditor general has put in front of us is that it does not quite understand why it does not give us the experience, as the convener mentioned, of people who are now outside the system or people who otherwise would have been in the system under previous models but no longer have that opportunity to be in and particularly thinking of women who might have been more attracted to part-time study and also to older learners returning to learning with the focus on young people. Whose job is it to stand up for the principles of lifelong learning, for example? Is that the job of college principles of the college sector to be advocating the case for that? Are you quite comfortable to be focused that you are delivering the Government's priorities? That is what you are funding to do. It is absolutely a priority for the principles and chief execs and their boards. Let's be clear. We are continuing to lobby in private the Government and policy makers in that particular area. We do believe in lifelong learning as educationalists. We see the benefit of that. We certainly see the benefit of that for female learners' access to education, but, as I mentioned earlier, it is also beneficial in terms of retraining and re-skilling. However, we also realise that we are in very challenged times and priorities have to be made in as public servants. We are trying to create that balance and to focus the resources on the present challenges, but privately and continually we are raising that issue. Rest assured that that issue might not get the public headlines, but, as an educationist, we see the benefit of that, and I have always seen the benefit of that and continue to make that a case. I have a request and a question in terms of the absence rates. I think that it might be helpful for the committee to get information from the three principles of, maybe over the last three or four years, what levels of absence rates there have been in percentage terms over that time. I think that that would be helpful to us. In terms of the challenges that are faced in mergers and the point that we have raised about effectively savings can be made through workforce reposible redundancies, can I just clarify has there been any compulsory redundancies and are there any plans from any of the principles to implement compulsory redundancies? In the case of West Collie Scotland, there has been no compulsory redundancies. There are no plans? In the case of City of Glasgow College, not only are there no plans, there are no intentions, and on merger, we actually offered a three-year employment guarantee for staff, and that continues. For Perth College, there have been no compulsory redundancies and no plans. For voluntary services, on some occasions, it is great on paper, but for the individuals who are given those deals with the additional money that the sector has been spending on voluntary services, they have often expressed to EIS representatives that they do not feel as if the process is voluntary. Many people, I am sure, are pleased to have taken the voluntary service money and left the sector, but there are others who did not want to leave the sector, but financially they had no alternative but to accept the deal, because the deal was better than the contractual deal. A little bit of care must be taken around the term voluntary services, because some people may have felt that they were forced to leave and had no choice. Is there any specific example of that without naming on it? I have spoken to individuals who felt that they had to go, because the deal that was being offered by Perth College was far better than what they would get if they stood and tried to fight it by a statutory redundancy payment. Despite the fact that there is now a non-compulsory redundancy policy? I think that there is no compulsory redundancy policy that does not exist throughout the colleges in Scotland. Paul has quite correctly mentioned the city of Glasgow College, but there is not a policy in place, to my knowledge, of every other college saying, we shall not make people compulsory redundant. What you have was a letter sent out by Michael Russell as cabinet secretary some time ago, in which he stated that he did not expect any colleges to make any compulsory redundancies. The first question is to Mr Little. Earlier you mentioned the situation regarding the hospital in your campus and marine engineering. Within the marine engineering area, is that just going to be focused on commercial and industrial courses or will there be opportunities for leisure courses there, too? There will be some opportunity for that. However, in the engineering there is less of a demand for that. The provision that you are talking about is at the riverside campus, and we have six faculties, one of which is engineering. We are very delighted to have been able through the non-profit distributive model to secure a new campus, which, as I said, takes delivery in about 10 weeks' time on that side in next August on the city campus. We will work closely with the local schools to provide access to engineering. We will work closely with the local community in the Gorbls area and the wider Glasgow community, but we have planned that campus primarily for full-time education, with allowing the provision because of the design of the accommodation to expand that. We also have additional space on that campus so that, in the future, we can continue to expand that. In terms of paragraph 46 of the report, it highlighted that, in 2013-14, colleges transferred a total of £99 million to the arm's-length foundations and the EIS submission that was received. It indicated that it was surprised that the report did not comment on the actual move of the £99 million to the independent bodies outwith the public sector and therefore not subject to the public sector scrutiny. In terms of the colleges and the centres that we have in front of us, have you asked for any of that money from the foundation? Perth College opted to use the Scottish Foundation, which was set up for a Scotland-wide arm's-length foundation. We have withdrawn funds twice from that arm's-length foundation, once very soon after our initial deposit in April 2014 and once in March 2015. The process that we went through was very robust, very appropriate, questions were asked as to why we needed the cash at that point in time and also the use that that cash was going to be put to. We were able to answer the questions fully and we received the cash into our bank as a consequence. We are now at the stage of about to let a contract to a construction company for a major capital build on campus and the remaining funds in the arm's-length foundation will be drawn down in accordance with that project plan. The whole of the remaining funding that we have as a college in the arm's-length foundation will be withdrawn over the next 12 months for that particular project. The Scottish Foundation made one transfer to the arm's-length foundation and has since then made one withdrawal. It is not our intention to make any more transfers to the ALF. Last year, we made a surplus of £12,000. The arm's-length foundation was a technical response to the reclassification of colleges to protect colleges and allow them, if you like, to secure and safeguard monies under the reclassification. Colleges are no longer to run a deficit or indeed a planned deficit, so to protect that money and in our case the City of Glasgow, we had an excess of £19 million as our contribution to the overall £228 million for the new campus. It was absolutely essential that because we had a 25-year contractual obligation that we had monies available to do that. The arm's-length foundation was a workable solution to that. We put part of that money in the excess of £11 million to sector foundation and a separate £10 million into a college foundation on arm's-length body. We have made submissions to both those two trusts again, as Mark has said, done three open, robust, rigorous submissions and we received monies in full from both ones to the bids that we put in. In terms of the monies that you have put out a bid in for and also received the sums, Mr Little and Ms Monkton mentioned capital issues. Is that solely limited to capital projects or could you put a bid in to obtain money for that to then be used and utilised for courses? In our case, it is restricted in that it should not substitute for the current funding. It should be of a one-off nature. It is not necessarily restricted to capital but capital is the easiest category that fits that situation. If we were wanting to start up a new team or make a one-off investment that would benefit staff and students, that would be looked on favourably. However, the main category of that one-off investment and non-recurrent investment would be a capital one. The technical response was to protect monies. In our case, it was for capital. However, the Constitution, or certainly the Glasgow Foundation, allows for non-capital revenue. However, there was no intention to set that fund up to subsidise courses that were either government funded or that we could fund through our own commercial and international income generation. That is how we generate about 40 per cent non-funded council monies, and we would use that to support that. However, in the constitution of the Glasgow Foundation, the provision has been focused not to duplicate the fundable course that is delivered in the college. I know that, in another committee in the local government regeneration committee, in the past, the issue of the arms-length organisations has come up on a regular basis, particularly in the scrutiny of them. In recent years, there has been a demand to have an extension of freedom of information to include arms-length organisations. That was undertaken in a limited fashion last year. Do you think that that particular arms-length foundation should also be included under freedom of information, bearing in mind that it is public money that has been utilised? I am not sure that it is public money that has been lodged in arms-length foundations because certainly from Perth College's point of view, a lot of that was commercially generated money, because we have one of the lowest dependencies in public money across Scotland. We are at 55 per cent dependency on public money. Of the money that we have lodged in the arms-length foundation, I am not sure that we could audit exactly what the route of that money was. There will be a mixture at best. I believe in the public interest that freedom of information should extend to anybody that is involved in the public sector, and that would include these alfs. What is important to me is that the accounts are subject to annual external audit and company reporting requirements, but also that the articles of association associated with that are such that the resource can be used and should be used for the benefit of students studying vocational further education in the west of Scotland. The important thing to realise about arms-length bodies is that the trusts that oversee that are subject to the regulations of Oscar, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulatory, but they have no full-time staff. I would hear to think an unintended consequence of excessive freedom of information is that they would have to generate some sort of secretariat. Certainly, the monies that have been set aside, as Margaret said, and the City of Glasgow have been, monies that have been primarily generated through commercial and international income over many, many years. Given that the trusts are also subject to audit and subject to Oscar at this stage, I remain to be convinced that they need to be subject to FOI for the reason that I identify with them. I do think that, from the interests of accountability, that the money generated by the FE colleges, no matter what the route, is subject to FOI requests. I note that surplus is generated from now on in by colleges no matter what the source of that revenue will, in the future, be given to the return to government at the end of the year. It is important to mention that, even if there are large sources of private income and commercial activity, which we are not against, that work is still being carried out by college staff, who are public employees. The point is that, from Perth College's point of view, you would be relaxed with the option of FOI for the elves. That is the company that you would be comfortable with that proposal. Well, listening to Paul's reasoning, I would not like to see an overhead being incurred by the Scottish Foundation. However, we, as public bodies, are FOI-able, so the information could be obtained by asking an FOI of all the donors. So, just for clarity, there is the option within the FOI act that provides for fixatious requests and relates to costs associated with it. Given the kind of organisations that we are talking about and the wealth of experiences around those organisations, it would not be impossible for them to respond to FOI requests with it. I think that there are other routes under FOI that that information can be obtained. I think that the Armsland Trust's foundations are independent. So, they do not receive any support from colleges or sports? They do not receive any secretariat support from college. They have their own support that they use themselves, and I do not even think that it is anything significant. When I say support, they do not receive public money, is that what you are saying? No, my understanding is that the monies that have been put into the due trust that I am aware of have come from primarily monies that have been generated through commercial and international and also has committed money. You say primarily that there will still be public funds involved, is not it? If you can imagine over many years there has been a mix, but the City of Glasgow College receives millions of pounds that it generates from commercial and international, so it is difficult to disintegrate that from public monies that have been built up over that period of reserve time. I want to stress the point that Armsland trusts are staffed by volunteers, trust members, that they do not have any full-time members, and if there was a number of FOI requests persistently, then I could envisage the chairman of that trust or the trust itself then deciding to develop a part-time or full-time secretariat. That would then diminish the money in the trust and that would have an ultimate effect when any college such as your own went to bid for that money, there would be just less money there. My provision is that I remain to be convinced of the merits of FOI. Thanks, convener. I am just actually something that you picked up earlier on, Ms Cumberford, about the articles association. You are saying that it was all done in a true proper manner and whatever. Can you just explain to me who checks the articles of association when they are set up? The articles of association were created based on guidance that was provided by the funding council but also legal, separate legal advice. In the case of, I can give you an exact quote in terms of the articles of association of the ALF that is in the west, is to support students at West College Scotland and the advancement of further education generally for the benefit of the general public in the west region and the advancement of citizenship and community development. It was just to try and get the idea of was every ALF using the same terminology or is there differences in how could you check that it was appropriate? I cannot answer that specifically, but I would be surprised if they were not similar. I thank the committee for their contribution this morning and will follow up via the clerk in the request for information received. I can move the committee into a brief five-minute suspension. I would like to welcome our second panel witnesses and Scotland's colleagues to 2015. Dr Michael Foxley, chair of the University of Highlands and Islands Further Educational Regional Board. I would like to welcome Michael Daveney, the vice principal for the University of Highlands and Islands Further Educational Regional Board and Allie Jarvis, the interim chair of Glasgow's regional board and finally Keith McKellar, the chair of the West of Scotland regional board. I understand that we have a brief statement from Dr Foxley. Thank you, chair. Very briefly to add to my written submission, it was just to put the context of the Highlands and Islands because over 20 years ago the colleges and other public bodies came together to work to create the university and they have been working together as I say for over 20 years. This was achieved in February 2011. It is a federal collegiate model. The intention is that we work together regionally. The exciting thing in the Highlands and Islands is that you can turn up at a leisure or, dare I say, hobby course, gain a bit of confidence, start an FE course and then go on to get a job or an HE course. Those of us who go to graduation ceremonies see people who are there who have clearly been through that progression and that is the great thing about the Highlands and Islands. Thank you. I know that you were all sitting in in the previous session, so I do not want to repeat too much, but paragraphs 36 and 38 in the Auditor General's report, regional bodies has resulted in a complex framework of accountability. Individual colleges have expressed concerns that regional bodies will affect their autonomy and the need for effective leadership, etc. Some colleges seem to manage very well without having a regional board and seem to function very well, but there are some concerns in colleges around the Highlands and Islands MSP. I have picked that up. So, are regional boards really necessary? Do they affect their autonomy? What do you think Margaret Moncton meant when she said that they were restricted and you obviously heard about the three layers of management in FE and two layers at ITCI? That does seem to be a very bureaucratic model in UHI, so just a few questions in there. Thank you very much. I will try to explain because it is very complicated and complex. There are 12 colleges across the Highlands and Islands that deliver a further education. The chairs of those colleges come to the further education and regional board, along with two independent members through adverts and other members from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, etc., local authorities, director of education. The principals meet regularly at a further education executive board. It is changed with regionalisation. My purpose is to get further education to have a single voice from the Highlands and Islands because 10 of the regions are single college regions, and it is very easy for them to have a single voice—one chair, one principal—and it is about working together. To give you some examples of the sort of thing that we were doing up until the FE regional leader and then the chair for the last two and a half years, there was no curriculum map in the Highlands and Islands as to who was doing what and where. That was put in place 18 months ago. For the first time ever, we have an FE curriculum plan across the Highlands and Islands. It is for one year, but we are progressing to a three-year plan. We have done a lot of work collectively as a team on rurality. This is significant funding for the Highlands and Islands. It is a joint case for rural colleges and rural students. For the first time ever, we have commissioned work on rural deprivation. The social inclusion funding goes to the SIMD-20s and 40s. There is significant rural deprivation. There is the working poor, as people have to travel 50 or 60 miles under their own transport cross ferries to access a college course. Some of it can be distance learning, but if you are laying bricks, you need to be there. For the first time ever, we are exposing the extent of that rural deprivation. We have created an estates plan for the entire Highlands and Islands. The last one was six years old, which is clearly not fit for purpose. All of those work streams under way are done collectively with the chairs and the principles, but they do require leadership. It is to grow the needs for the region. We have managed to successfully challenge some of the constraints of the UNS, in particular commercial insurance and co-alignment of academic financial year. Finally, to come back to Margaret and Perth College, because she now owes me lunch. Perth College, the skills investment plan for the Highlands and Islands excluded Perth because it was in Tayside and Dundee. I, Mike, Perth College and Margaret, the then chair worked hard to make sure that Skills Development Scotland, the first part of their Tayside one, included the Perth College catchment area. We needed that information to have a comprehensive and cohesive Highlands and Islands plan. Equally well, there was work done behind the scenes to provide European funding for the Perth catchment area. I am very aware of the potential costs and overheads. I do not want to take any money away from students, but we have to work as a region, giving you a few examples of how we are doing that, because we need a voice for the Highlands and Islands. We are where we are in relation to the three layers that Margaret alluded to. One has to understand the genesis of that. It was unavoidable and inescapable at a given point when it was decided to create a new fundable body for the Highlands and Islands, the university's existing fundable body status should be invoked. From that, we have then got this emerging bit. Just because we have the university court and then we have the committee of the court called the FE regional board, and now we have also got the college boards, of itself that does not mean that the burden should be excessive. Indeed, far from it, it needs to be minimised. Generally, as we have gone about our business, I recall the first meeting shadow board meeting on December 12. One of the principles that we established on that day was that we would seek to minimise the bureaucracy associated with the onset of regionalisation and the formation of the regional board. If one understands the way in which we work as a region, when I came into the position on 1 August 2013, prior to that, I was a principal of one of the now assigned colleges, Murray College, for eight years, so I have seen it from both sides. I said that we ought to operate on the basis of distributed leadership and responsibility, and that is very much not only what I have practiced but what we are trying to practice. In other words, a lot of what happens in this region is led and accounted for by other senior managers, principals and senior managers from the colleges. I do not understand the mark's point, and we recognise that there are tensions. We go back to the Audit Scotland timeline. On 1 August 2014, the university formally became a regional body. Since then, other things have happened, and of course the eight colleges were assigned. However, there is still unfinished business in relation to things such as the financial memorandum that we are working on at the present time. It is fair to say that those things have caused some tensions and some disagreements even, but that is to be expected, and it is quite healthy in actual fact. I think that, hopefully, when the dust settles on all that, people will be reasonably satisfied with the balance that has been struck. I have listened carefully to your answers, and I do not think that either of you have answered the specific question that I asked on autonomy. I was a lecturer trying to come in here in 1999, and each of the 12 colleges in the University of the Highlands and Islands preciously protected their autonomy in responding to local needs and local jobs and local skills needs, and those skills needs are very different in the western Isles, Lewis Castle, compared to Shetland, compared to Inverness, Perth and elsewhere. Margaret Ewing used the word restricted. You have mentioned what you are doing. On rural deprivation, there was research being done on rural deprivation 17 years ago, so what I am asking you is, are the colleges still autonomous in determining the courses that they do, how they spend their money or, I think, I heard an example of a college applying to the board to provide a course that they thought was essential in that particular area and being turned down. That is where the background to my question comes from. Are you dictating to colleges about what they should do in a area that is 44 per cent of the land mass of Scotland, or are you working with colleges in order to ensure that they still have the autonomy that they had in the past? Just to clarify, I should have said this earlier. Can questioners and the panel please be as succd as possible so that they can get as many questions as possible? In relation to further education, I would argue that they are still very much autonomous. If you look at the other side of the business as we would regard that higher education, the degree of autonomy is much less than it used to be much less than about 2001, when UHI was designated. I will give you a specific example. One of the responsibilities of the regional board is to monitor performance of the colleges. I will take two examples under that banner heading. We monitor the financial performance of those colleges and we monitor the quality. That is the word. The key word is monitor. In actual fact, monitor is important. It is almost a distillation. The regional board only meets four times in a year. It has a very significant reference. It has to be very focused on how it spends its time. It is very focused on how it spends its time. We take quality and finances. Those two examples are very much the case that the burden and the responsibility largely still rests at college level with college managers and with college boards. The situation in Glasgow is slightly different, slightly less complex, obviously a tighter geography. I am very clear that Glasgow College's regional board only exists to add value to its assigned colleges. We have no students, we have no staff. What we can do through support and challenge is to enable and support our assigned college chairs and our principals to achieve more in synergy than they could do on their own. That is the sole role of the board. The committee needs to be aware that nearly a quarter of the college budget goes through Glasgow. Although each individual college has its autonomy, yes, there are some limitations because now they have a second tier of governance, but that tier of governance should add value for Glasgow in its region. For the first time, we have a regional outcome agreement for the whole city. Given that we are dealing with CPPs, it does not make sense that each individual college is having the same negotiations with the same CPPs. Therefore, what we can do on a regional basis has to be something that enables that synergy. For me, it is about strategic coherence, it is about curriculum alignment and it is about providing clearer pathways for learners. Insofar as meddling in the business of principals and chairs, quite frankly, they are better at it than a regional board is. Therefore, it has to be about adding value. I would tend to agree with you on that one. Maybe I can just carry on that line of questioning. Does that mean that on the target of £50 million recurring efficiency savings every year, given that you have a quarter of the budget in Glasgow, you will have to find—I will just keep you right about the regional boards rule here—12 million a year, 12.5 million a year? Significant amount of savings. The thing to do with that is, again, to work in partnership. It is the college principals and the chairs who actually know their business, but the regional board that is looking over the top can say, well, okay, are there opportunities for regional procurement that we could do across the Glasgow region that could add value and achieve savings more than could be achieved at the individual colleges? Where have we got duplication of provision? Because, again, although we recognise the importance, particularly at access level, for learners to be as close as possible, those nontraditional learners or those who are furthest away from education, then something on the doorstep is very important. Glasgow region brings in people from the city, from outwith the city, from internationally and nationally because of the range of some of its specialist provision. Therefore, we want pathways. Therefore, there are savings. This is 12.5 million in the current financial year that your regional boards, I presume, now has to find. You have presumably set a budget, so are you going to make those savings in this current financial year? Let's just remember where we are at the moment. At the moment, albeit that it is now one year into its existence, Glasgow College's regional board is not yet a fully operational fundable body for a whole range of reasons. On that basis, at the moment, the funding is still going directly to the assigned colleges. So it's actually not a question for you, it's a question for the board. I was going to say, the assigned colleges are currently making those savings, and their budgets are balanced to achieve the savings targeted for this coming year. So in 2016-17, it would be a fairer question to you as a regional board if you become the full-time, I suppose, interim chair, that you'd have that responsibility for imposing that savings target, which Government has set out must be achieved across the sector, of which your share is a quarter, give or take, of discussion with the funding council. You'd have a role in doing that. Yes, I would challenge your language. I think that imposing is not the word for me. Who doesn't impose it, then? It would be about... It's a target of Government. They've said it. It's an Audit Scotland report. I am giving to you the evidence that this committee has had on Audit Scotland. So my approach would be to be working in partnership with the chairs and the principals to identify where the savings are and where the regional board can add value to those savings. They know that they've got efficiencies to make and those are the budgets that are already there. So exactly what role will the regional board take in this year, in the current financial year? In the current financial year, already to, again, working with the individual assigned colleges to establish the regional outcome agreement, which sets the targets on which the funding is based, to have contributed to the work that was done on curriculum alignment, which, again, is where we start seeing the opportunities to shift provision, make provision more relevant, to avoid duplication and to recognise the impact of a major capital investment on curriculum provision in the Glasgow region, and also the progression and pathway analysis, which actually starts making the learner journey much clearer to navigate through the system, again ensuring that the right learners can get the right learning in the right place, which up till now has been more complicated, particularly when there were nine different colleges offering things that it wasn't always easy to follow a pathway through. There's a different perspective on that, I take your point. Mr McKellar, would you like to comment on your area's role in achieving these savings? You'll forgive me for going on about these savings, but that's the main finding of the Audit Scotland report, that these savings are to be made, but Audit Scotland could find no evidence, quote, no evidence as to how they were being made. Could you help me with that evidence? Well, of course, it's slightly different for us at West College Scotland because the regional board is the college board, we're a single college region, so it really is down to us to try and find those savings operating as a board with all of our committees. We work very closely with the principal, community planning partnerships with employers to try and identify and better streamline our services to try and drive as many efficiencies as we possibly can. The merger process has allowed us to do that in many areas, such as procurement. In fact, Audrie Cumberford highlighted a few of those in her evidence. Okay, well, give me the numbers. I mean, presumably, if it's 12 and a half for Glasgow in the current financial year, the 15-16 financial year we're now in, you have a funding, sorry, you have a savings target from the funding council. Could you tell the committee what that is? Well, we're down £1 million on last year. What do you mean you're down? We're down. Our funding this year from the Scottish Funding Council is £49.9 million. Previously, it was £50.9 million for the previous financial year. Yeah, but that's not the same as a savings target. That's the grant you have received from the funding council. Yes. On top of that, you presumably are asked to make a savings, to make savings on top of that reduction in funding you've received from the funding council. Would that be right? Yes, to an extent we are, yes, but not explicitly. We're trying to make up as much as we possibly can through commercial and other sources of income. Sorry, just to be clear, there's no instruction on you from the funding council to make savings in line with the £50 million target that the Government set out when they announced the whole college merger proposals. Well, certainly not explicit targets on that. Is there an implicit one, then? I think there's an implicit target. Yes, because basically you've had a reduction in your core grant. Our core grant basically covers our staff costs, so we've got to try and make that up in some other way or reposition our services to allow us to deliver. Forgive me for just seeking clarity on this. There's no letter, you don't have an email, there's nothing from the funding council. Is it a spoken word from the chairman of the funding council? I mean, how does this system now work? How the system works now is that you have your regional outcome agreement, which you signed up to for three years, and every April you're given an indication of what your funding will be to start in August. That's pretty much it, yes. The £50 million is neither he nor the other. In terms of how you operate the regional board, you don't recognise this £50 million figure in terms of what it means to you as a regional board. I'm not sure I follow you in terms of what... The Audit Scotland report, Mr McKellar, said that the Government set out to save £50 million every year from the current financial year, and they couldn't find the evidence that what I'm asking you as a regional board chair, because you obviously know this very, very well indeed, is how does that affect the running of your business, and what you really tell on the committee is it doesn't, because you get... Oh, no, no, I'm not saying that. I think perhaps we're talking slightly at cross purposes in terms of how I've picked you up. We have made savings of £6.1 million since merger. And what year was that? That was 2013-14, this last year. Since we merged, we merged a year past in August, so over that period of time we have saved £6.1 million. Okay, so that's very helpful, but that's a savings figure per annum, or is that a one-off savings figure? No, some of that will relate to staff costs. For instance, about £5.4 million of that will relate to staff costs, and that will be on-going. Some of the other savings perhaps will be more one-off savings due to the nature of the merger process, others will continue on. Is the regional board audited? It is, yes. By whom? We have an external auditor. And is that a private company? It is. There is a process. We are auditing pretty much in a similar way to the old colleges. We have external auditors who come in and look at our books. We also, under ONS, require to provide information to the funding council on a regular basis as well as part of that process. Okay, so can I thank you very much for that? One final question if I may to Dr Foxley about how the relationship works between the funding council and your committee. Gordon, as goodness knows, how the court fits into this, but has the funding council given your committee any instructions in relation to savings in the same way that I've been asking your colleagues from the west and from Glasgow? No, there's no instruction on savings, there's been no mergers, we're seriously looking at shared services, IT, there may be other services to share across the colleges. And just to make it clear, if I can, the FE regional board, which does report to the university court, is virtually autonomous, and I fiercely protect the autonomy of the colleges because Shetland, Perth, in Vanessa, has very different demands, very different interests, and it's very important that we collect that information. But at the end of the day, we're trying to have a single teamwork approach in the Highlands Islands, so we've got one voice to speak for. That's a very light touch to garner that information whether it's issues, problems, wishes, and we have certainly not rejected any course if I could just maybe come back on Mary Scanlon's point. That sort of issue would be discussed. Bill Ross of Orkney leads on curriculum planning. It would be discussed by the principals within their own merit. What we're trying to do is to try and ensure that if there is an initiative, whereas funding comes in for learning and teaching materials, it's to add and support and make the whole bigger than the individual parts. So that's our aim, thank you. Okay, thank you very much to you. Combeaty. Thank you, convener. Just trying to explore one or two questions here in relation to your relationships with the colleges. In the Auditor General's report, she refers to college pension deficits having increased by 75 per cent. To what extent do you take any interest in that or are concerned in that? Or is that left completely to the colleges? Sir, is this on the Highlands? Is it on the Highlands? This is in general. Yeah, it's left to the colleges. Maybe I can start with that. I mean, again, remembering that the post 16 act has got quite clear statutory divides between the role of the regional board and the role of the assigned colleges. And essentially, as I said before, the regional boards are not the employers. Where we see things such as the challenges on pensions, the regional board has an opportunity to take that helicopter strategic view and say, okay, this looks like the problem we've got coming over the horizon. What can we do on a regional basis to address that strategically? However, we are not the employer. So are the regional boards actually taking that view of it? And are they having any discussions with colleges? These are the types of discussions that are on going. And I know the individual college boards, as they look at their own positions, are very mindful of that fact. Doesn't sound like a lot's happening there, to be honest. There's also a reference to the general's report to the need for long-term financial planning. Now, given the fact that the present structure has been in place for a very short time, it's probably a bit of a challenge to achieve that. But the auto general refers to a 10-year plan. Do you think that that's feasible? On certain things, it has to be. You have heard my colleague Paul talk about a 25-year plan on the campus. You have to be able to plan long-term. But clearly, there are constraints within the current system, particularly in terms of classification of colleges, reclassification under ONS. It does change the nature. Our regional outcome agreement is three years, and clearly the part of the role of the regional boards is to help the assigned colleges to provide that longer-term view. I would imagine part of the problem is that the Scottish Government itself doesn't really know what its budget is year on year, as has just been demonstrated. We talked about the reclassification of the colleges as public bodies and the issues around autonomy there. The order of general actually referred to autonomy and flexibility. We have explored the autonomy side. How has the flexibility been impacted by that change? Again, I think that the principles touched on it. The key flexibility is the inability to either run a deficit or get loans. You are talking about a recurrent annual budget. You have already talked at some length about the arms-length foundations as being a technical way of addressing some of the issues about earned income and how to put that back into the system. However, I think that the flexibility is largely around financial management. Reference has been made about, earlier on in the discussion, about monitoring the colleges. Does that translate into additional reporting requirements, more statistics being produced? Is there any evidence that regional boards are actually asking for additional requirements from colleges? Obviously, we have put a bureaucratic strain on that. We are certainly trying to avoid that at all costs. In fact, early on, we set up a group to consider the terms of reference of the regional board and endeavour to try to avoid at all costs any duplication. We must try to avoid two different bodies assuming the same responsibility and falling over each other. If we take, for instance, the issue of monitoring of quality, what the regional board does is to look at educational Scotland review reports and college reviews. It also looks at the annual paper that colleges provide to the funding council, which is signed off by the board, which indicates its satisfaction with the quality arrangements that are in place. So, what we do from that is we can then, I personally would then take these reports and then distill them. So, in other words, the regional board gets to kind of overview. The regional board would then be, by exception, made aware of things that appear to be wrong or not so good, but the regional board would not be expected to pour over nine separate reports, which may be 10 to 15 pages in length. That's already been done at the college level, and that's how it should be. Well, we've worked hard with the board's secretaries of the individual assigned colleges to look at the schedule of meetings for the year to ensure that the audit, the performance, the resources committees all align so wherever possible we can repurpose existing data and materials such that, in adding that extra layer of synergy, if you will, or oversight, then what we can actually really focus on, as my colleague says, is very much about identifying exceptions, identifying variances from trend, and then seeking where, as a regional body, we can support the transfer of good practice and learn between each of the assigned colleges so that each can be helped in being as efficient and effective as possible. Presumably, where there are multiple colleges within a region, there is now a uniform system of producing, reporting, performance indicators and so on, and that boards are able to tap into that. Yes, it's largely getting there. I mean, it would be disingenuous to say it was perfect because, remember, we've gone in a short period of time in Glasgow alone from nine colleges to three assigned colleges and one regional board, and each of those colleges had different starting points and has been on a different journey of merger. So we're not yet at a point where it's absolutely consistent. No, I recognise we're still very early in this. Of course, we have, you know, there's multi-college regions in, there's us, and we've still got the nine. But yeah, I mean, one of the, again early on, and one of the priorities was to start, we had to understand this region. What was the starting point? There was very, you know, we didn't really, as a regional board, have anything to go with, and I think there was certainly an information deficit. So we have established a student data sharing group. So again, here we have an example of a body that actually includes members from most of the colleges. So we are generating this stuff increasingly at a regional level, but that's not just for the benefit of the regional board. It's also the data that's being used. There's actually the data that will then be used at board level, college board level, CMIs at level, and even at course level by the colleges. So these are clearly, it's kind of akin to a shared service, you might say. Is there any mechanism in existence whereby the different boards can communicate with each other, transfer good practice, you know, where someone comes across something that's really a good idea to do? Yes, two points of stop. And all of the regional chairs sit together and meet on a regular basis. So again, that transfer, that learning can be done on a national basis. Has that, I mean, I realise again early days, but has it proven effective at all? Well certainly from my point of view, because I've been going to those meetings for two and a half years, I find it extremely useful to meet the other FE regional chairs and get insights into some of the solutions they're working at, some of the problems they're dealing with, where their success is. It's a very great venue. If I can very briefly just come back on the commonality, as give you a specific example from the island's eyes, to the university and the 13 colleges, there were 14 risk registers, but they were all different. There's now a common template, so people are having their risk register going to assess across the entire highlands and islands what the risks are and how they're being mitigated. So that's an example of the sort of work that's under way. Most of the bureaucracy and the additional work comes from the burden with ONS, because there's monthly reporting, there's monthly cash flow issues, but that's entirely independent of regionalisation, the FE regional board. Can I just take Ms Jarvis back to the point? I think there's a statement you made earlier. You made a helicopter strategic overview. Would that include areas like pay awards, so potential pay awards? Well obviously we're moving into an area of national bargaining, so clearly that's a bigger helicopter view, that's for Scotland as a whole. That's again what the chairs are working on together to ensure there's an aligned approach to that. What I meant in terms of the helicopter view is much more around things like working with the key employers, ensuring that regional wide stakeholders are involved and that they're not having to deal with three colleges. So would I also look at compulsory redundancies or potential redundancies? Would it get extended up, possibly? I think this is a case of form follows function. When you identify what needs to be delivered in a region, then you can identify what resources you require to deliver that, and certainly as the three assigned colleges have worked together on the process of curriculum review and provision mapping, particularly in the light of two very large new buildings in Glasgow, there's clearly been some movement between the colleges and provision that was previously being delivered by one has now subsequently moved to be delivered by another. Clearly there will be a staff change that's associated with that. So can I ask, in terms of activity, probably the Glasgow one where we could consider the experience of, has there been discussions about workforce planning across the three? That's part of the curriculum planning, yes. So that kind of discussion is taking place. So I take it, there has been discussions about potential redundancies then. When most of the work that's gone on has gone on through the merger process, I mean again, anything that's now looking is looking forward from the work that's been done on curriculum review and that's an on-going process. I think quite frankly, as the learner needs changes and we seek to reflect both learner requirements and the requirements of the economy through developing Scotland's young workforce and our major regional employers, then there will always have to be flexibility in that system because we're never going to get to a point where we can look back and say, we've done it, that's now it. It's going to be evolving because our economy is evolving and our learner needs are evolving. OK, Mary Scullum. Just a point on that. The 2012 Audit Scotland report on colleges did look at national pay bargaining. As an ex-lecturer, I am aware that within the UHI network some lecturers are paid around and up to 5,000 pounds less per annum than lecturers in the central belt of Scotland. Are we really looking at national pay bargaining for the whole of the FE sector in the near future and how would you reconcile the considerable differences between college lecturers in UHI and your college too? How can that be done? I guess the quick answer to your second point is with great difficulty. It's never easy to align scales. But this is certainly something and Scotland colleges are leading on this, that the college sector has been clearly tasked by government to move towards national bargaining. Working very closely with the unions and the staff groups and across the sectors, that is under way and is well under way. Perhaps Keith wants to say more. Is there a timescale to achieve that? Yes, perhaps. I can come in on that. Actually, we are currently in a situation where we are asking all the colleges to sign up to a national protocol and recognition procedure. That has been backed by colleges Scotland and the principles in the college sector. It is currently out with the colleges just now, out to their boards. We are hopeful that the colleges are signing up to that quite soon. Months or years? I hope weeks and months, rather than anything else. Thank you. Dr Smith. Earlier on, you raised the question of planning for crossings. Can you take us through the role that regional college boards have, those that are currently in charge if you like, and those that will assume the responsibility as time goes on? What is your process in relation to the decisions about cross planning? The fund has kicked off in the first process is agreeing the regional outcome agreement, which is essentially the contract with the funder about what will be provided in what ways. That's based on a number of factors. The analysis of the regional demographics, the analysis of the market and economic need, the demand from learners and all of that feeds in to shaping the type of provision that will be needed within a region. Within then a number of assigned colleges we work with our partners in those colleges to identify how that can best be delivered. Are there certain things such as access courses that need to be duplicated in a number of places so they're very close to source? Are there specialisms and Glasgow's got a classic in terms of its nautical studies? You know, there is a country leading, if not world leading, excellence there and it would be foolish for all three colleges to be offering that when clearly city can offer it in the best position. That would then be negotiated but we know the types of volume we're looking at and we know what the demographics, the market need, the economic need and our regional partners. Within that I include pre-16 schools, I include a higher education partners with whom we have articulation arrangements. All of that is what feeds in to the types of courses. That process has presumably already begun over the last year. You've seen changes in where courses are delivered. Absolutely. The regional outcome agreement is public and makes clear what provision and what types of courses will be offered in Glasgow and I'm sure does a new H.I. as well. If I can just briefly add to that, we're looking for growth. We're looking 1-2%. There's Arizona and Met Demand. We've got European funding coming through to bolster that. But what we've got, and as I mentioned earlier, we've got a one-year curriculum plan but we're led by Bill Ross from Auckland. We're looking at our three-year curriculum plan but it's critical that we look at regional performance. For example in the 13-14 year, three of the colleges underperformed and under the old system they would have had a significant clawback but because nine of the colleges overperformed, the region overall overperformed, so Mike leaves with that. It's a question of clever monitoring and as Al has been saying, trying to assist and support to make sure that collectively the region overperformed. Otherwise an individual college could have faced a clawback of £3.5 million. That's very important that we look at that as well as we're looking ahead for the growth. I think the challenges that we face are obviously quite different from Glasgow. Scytidel are on a big part of the drive for regionalisation as the determination to deal with overlapping duplication. We would claim that, given our geographic context, it's difficult to identify the existence of either of those things. However, we do have to recognise that there is duplication of effort when it comes to the creation of learning and teaching materials, so we have already invested heavily in creating the platform for our FE learners to begin to access materials in the way that our higher education learners have assumed for years and years. Another key development that has been mentioned this morning is the developing Scotland's young workforce. We are working with Skills Development Scotland. They have made it very plain that they have worked very hard diligently and I applaud the work that they have done in the Islands Islands over the past year or 18 months in getting us to what we have got to, which is from this August to be 10 pathfinders in foundation apprenticeships across the Islands Islands and another 10 to follow in 2016-17. However, they have said that they do not want and cannot carry on investing their time and energy as much as they have over the past week. They want us to do that. They want it co-ordinated. They want to be able to come to a place where it's beat. Although no-one at the centre is going to do the hard graft that needs to be carried on at a local level by the colleges working with their schools and employers, they do want it co-ordinated. They do want it and there is a benefit in that because, again, we are seeing advantage in sharing practice and sharing the development of materials. Rather than nine colleges all setting about that in parallel, it is just crazy. Will you give me an indication of what has happened to travel times for students? I can only speak from the Glasgow perspective. Glasgow is a weird one because when we looked at travel times pre-merger, students travelling past colleges offering the same provision to get to other colleges that were offering that provision. There was something about attraction, and I think that is peculiar with the previous layout of colleges in Glasgow. Our approach is to keep access as close as possible to users because that is the critical path. That is the path that is batting to education on a lifelong basis for those for whom education has perhaps failed them first time round. As you go more and more specialist, you will probably move that into fewer places but provide a higher quality experience with better resources and better facilities. The work that we have done with students has indicated that, as one of my colleagues from West said, finding that gives them a better learning experience because they can guarantee at those higher levels that they have better resources, better focus and better environments in which to learn. In Glasgow, the distances are not enormous. It is one more stop on the bus. You are sure that the distances might not be enormous, but you are talking about a region with the lowest car ownership in the country and the expense of public transport, so I think that those issues are important, wherever you live. I do not disagree with anything that you said there, but what I did not pick up was what has happened to travel times up or down. I presume that you measure in terms of averages and in terms of maximums. I would have to come back on the detail, but as I said, the data that we had beforehand was— That would be something that would be pretty key. If you were making decisions about courses being moved around the city, that would be something that you would always look at. There is one thing to talk about duplication, but my constituents might call duplication local availability. I agree. Access courses are very close to local availability. I will have to come back to you because it was within the curriculum review that they looked at that, and I do not have that data to hand. Ron asked the principles about the principles of further education, and we talked about the position of lifelong learners in the system currently, the position of women learners and other learners who might be more reliant upon part-time courses. Whose role is it to defend these principles in further education, as Colin? It is not an easy thing to do at this time, given what was outlined earlier. It is suggested by some of the principles. As far as it has been possible, colleges have driven to hang on to the vestiges of the Scottish tradition. It has been made more and more difficult by the way in which things have been, the rules of change, about the hours and specifically what can be funded. It does still arrive. Indeed, if you look at the, I talked earlier on about us trying to understand this region at the outset, and it is quite remarkable when you look at the profile of each college and the balance of activity. Some of our smaller colleges in Orkney, Shetland have more part-time learners than most of our big colleges. There are very few full-time courses offered in Orkney, Shetland, and there are nine full-time courses compared to over 50 inverness. That has been one of the early priorities of the regional board. How do we begin to address that imbalance? Back to the mention of regional planning earlier, it is very interesting to note that, in large measure, where the drive is coming from and the thirst for more FE in the Highlands and Islands is in these places. Walking a bit tighter up to try to keep all those things in play at the same time, some of the colleges in the past have entered into relationships with the local authorities whereby they have taken over what was described earlier on in adult learning or leisure classes came over to colleges. In other cases, that did not happen. What I am hearing is that it is no one's job to defend these. I think that Mr Little said that he had privately discussed these issues with Ministers. I am not hearing a great urge from regional board chairs to say, we see that as part of our role. As opposed to the question that would then lead me to, I asked earlier about could we merge further, could we find different models and make even further savings. If these institutions and bodies are just there to deliver government's priorities, then we could do this nationally, couldn't we? No, no, I am very fiercely protective and defensive and supportive of further education because I have seen the transformation it makes. I was 18 years chair of Lechabba College and then chair of West Highland College in the area where I was the local GP and I have seen people who have been given the NFE certificate and go on to get a job or an HE degree and go on to get a seriously good job who a few years ago had not a hope of doing that. There are 70 learning centres across the Highlands and Islands and one of my favourite ones is going to Malig and Jane there regularly grabs hold of people who are basically in a dead end job or no job at all and convinces them to go on a weekend course and they end up merchant shipping courses, working for Caledonia McBrane, running their own boat. I have seen that transformation and to me it is the absolutely vital end of it. I think part of the job that we have as regional chairs is to convince the Scottish Government that when they are giving funding to tackle inequality they need to give it to the colleges and they need to give it for further education because we are the people who make the real difference in terms of tackling inequality. I am sorry for those who we paused at the beginning. Confusion is the nature of the question who's responsibility because the obvious but somewhat trite answer is the course. It's all of our responsibilities. It's how we do that and how we balance a range of competing demands which you'll be very familiar with in terms of public policy and public finances but there will always be trade-offs and we have to be constantly balancing those and I think that the other principle that applies to that will always be one of public value and how we match what government wants, what learners want, what indeed our employers want and I think again when you add in the developing Scotland's young workforce and you see what some of the employment and the economy demand sometimes they're different things as well so I think the question is one of judgment how to take a range of often competing views and try and come up with the most elegant appropriate solution that best meets the needs of the learners first and foremost and the country in terms of what those learners deliver. Maybe in a slightly different way. I can understand that the role of principles in college boards and I appreciate in some cases boards and regional boards are essentially the same thing but that they have a management function of the college itself and the learning that's going on. The regional boards and we talked about earlier the tension that exists in the audit report of what we don't hear in this is the voices of people who perhaps might have had the opportunity to be in the system in the past but we know as a fact that several thousand of them are not in college education as a result of the policy changes that have been made. It's at the job of the regional board to take in account the views of those people and how do you go about assessing what the demands for college education whether it's part-time later learning or anything else. Say for example Glasgow, how do you address what that is? I think one of the first things to do is understand it because if you look at the Glasgow figures one of the most significant areas of our part-time decline is pre-16 learners so again we're not talking here I mean there are some older learners and some workplace learners but the colleges have done an awful lot to try and protect that deliberately for all the reasons you highlight. One of our most significant declines is pre-16 school children where obviously there was arguably a duplication between money being put into the public sector at pre-16 and them also having enrolled places in colleges at the same time. Clearly that is changing and as we move into both curriculum for excellence and the working with developing Scotland's young workforce we can put that on perhaps a more effective platform because one of the challenges for some of the school college partnership work that was done over the last let's say six to four years ago was perhaps some of that was delivering less for them and less for the public value. So some of it we need to understand where the change is not simply go out and ask people who aren't at college why they're not at college. In the previous session I had the example from a little regarding the marine engineering in the city of Glasgow College and with the new arrangements obviously the work that yourselves will undertake for something from a board level is to work within your own particular region but are there any opportunities to actually work across region between the colleges? An example I could provide would be potentially with marine engineering the courses that will be offered. There may be a better facility elsewhere within Scotland to provide some aspects of the courses that are training and so would that be allowed under the new arrangements? Is there anything to stop it and I think it would be again one of those opportunities to add value. I mentioned already that Glasgow already has some national provision that doesn't just service the Glasgow region it services Scotland as a whole and beyond and I think I'm sure fellow chairs would see that as an opportunity. We already work with colleagues in higher education from the university sector in terms of articulation pathways that go well beyond the region so that principle is there. I think the challenge, not the challenge, the opportunity for the regional boards they are still new bodies as I said Glasgow yet is not a fully operational fundable body but these are the sorts of things that I think provide the clear strategic opportunity for both enhanced provision, more effective use of public money and better transfer of good practice and that's where I think the regional boards can add value perhaps over and above the individual colleges. I thank the panel for the contribution this morning. I don't think that we have any correspondence to follow up so thank you very much for your time. Can I move into agenda item number three which is a section 23 report managing the early departures from the Scottish public sector. Can I advise colleagues that we have a response from the Scottish Government in relation to the AGS report entitled the managing the early departures report from the Scottish public sector. I just wonder if colleagues have any comments on the response. David Scott. Can I just suggest that we need to consider this really important area very carefully and I want to come back to it. There has been some evidence this morning and there has been some evidence in other sessions that do relate to some of the issues that we have discussed previously as a committee on settlement agreements and the complexity of them and what they mean in the long term. Now the Government's helpful response gives us something to go on but we may want to reflect on that in light of even this morning's evidence and I wonder if it might be appropriate to come back to that at a later stage. Okay. Any other comments? I would tend to agree with that. It was also raised in the Audit Scotland report, the Scottish colleges, that there are at least another two colleges where the early departures are to be questioned in more detail. I would prefer to do a proper job on this to take time, consider it more thoroughly and to come back to it. I think that that's a sensible approach. I just confirm that in the middle of the meeting is that we, the committee, as it would defer this until a further stage we can give further consideration, is that agreed? Agreed. Okay. Now move the committee into private session as previously agreed.