 Welcome and good morning to this, the 12th and final meeting of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee of 2016. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones are switched off or on to flight mode? Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private, and our first item of business today is to consider whether to take correspondence from the commission of parliamentary reform and review of our work programme in private and future meetings. Our committee agreed to do that. Excellent, thank you very much. Moving on to agenda item 2, which is a substantive piece of work today, which is on the draft budget and the focus of our evidence today is to hear from the funding council, which provides funds to 19 universities in Scotland, and we will be hearing from the Scottish Government a bit later this morning. I am delighted to have on the panel with us this morning Dr John Kemp, who is the interim chief executive and Fiona Burns, who is assistant director of access and outcome agreements management at the Scottish funding council. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning. You will have a clear insight, because we are almost at the end of our budget scrutiny of where we have been going with this and the issues that we have been looking at. We have obviously been looking at the budget as an equalities with an equalities focus, and the issue that we have been looking at is widening access specifically for people with disabilities and people who use BSL as their first language. John, I think that I will kick off with you first, if you do not mind, because one of the things that we need to set the scene from the funding council is about outcome agreements and how outcome agreements come about and where you are in that process, because you are just at the stage where you are renewing them now. What aspects of those outcome agreements would require universities to ensure that they have widened access, and it is not just about some of the softer aspects of disabilities, it is maybe some of the more complex aspects as well, John. Okay. Now, outcome agreements were introduced around about four years ago, and they were a way of linking the funding that we give to universities and to colleges, too. There is a very similar system in colleges with priorities from the Government and from the SFC. That very much includes widening access for people with disabilities. We issue guidance to universities on what we would like to see in an outcome agreement, and that contains some measures that we would want them to use in demonstrating how they are meeting priorities. On disabilities and other protected characteristics, what we used to do was ask them to reflect on the protected characteristics where there was an imbalance in their institution and where they felt and we agreed that they needed to take action and then reflect that in the outcome agreement. In recent years, in the most recent guidance, we firmed that up a bit because it used to be that institutions very much could pick and choose whether a particular protected characteristic would lead to a measure in their outcome agreement. We felt that that needed to be firmed up a bit more in the current guidance so that there was more of an impetus on them looking at all the protected characteristics and being clear of that. The latest guidance is a bit clearer on that point that we want them to demonstrate that they are looking at all the protected characteristics and taking the correct action. The outcome agreements that are being negotiated now in Fiona is an outcome agreement manager, as well as head of access, are ones for 17 to 18, but also probably in most cases the subsequent two years. They have a slightly different set of guidance from the ones that we have heard up until now. We have the early drafts of those outcome agreements in, but we have not finalised those with institutions that are done after the budget setting process. In some ways, those outcome agreements are very much a way of linking the shared priorities that Government, the funding council and others have on equalities and other things with the funding that we give to universities. One of the things that we have picked up quite clearly is that in some universities, there is a bigger focus on equalities than others. You are right when you drill into that, what does that actually mean? I know that the funding council took a very proactive role in the summer about gender balance in colleges and universities. I am wondering how you could incorporate much more closely to some of the outcome agreements that are required of universities in order to provide access to people who may have different or complex needs. It seems to be, for the evidence that we have heard, that there is very good provision if you have dyslexia, for instance, but if you have got something that is a bit more complicated, whether that is physical access to a building for some universities, that is posing to be a problem for others. It is not. For people in particular, one of the aspects that we learn is people who use British Sign Language as their first language. How do we ensure that the policy that is going forward creates the opportunities for people to have that access at the need? You referred to the gender action plan that we launched in the summer. Perhaps that is the kind of approach that we need on other protected characteristics, but in this case, particularly disability, because there are areas of very good provision in the universities. There are some cases where they have picked up the issue and are running with it themselves, but you are correct. It comes out of the evidence that the committee has had submitted as part of this investigation. It is a mixed picture that some particular disabilities and institutions in the story are less good. Perhaps something that we and the funding council need to reflect on is how we give a bigger push to making the best things more common across the sector and ensuring that some of the more tricky issues. We have to acknowledge that they are tricky. Sometimes you are dealing with quite small numbers and so on, and that is part of the reason that a lot of the action is perhaps on dyslexia and so on. There are big numbers in dyslexia in the way that there are in some of the other groups. We need to think about how we give a renewed push to this particular aspect of equalities and make sure that it is something that is at the forefront of institutions' minds as we refresh outcome agreements. The current guidance does a bit of that, but I accept that there are other things that could be done. Key things that we heard last week and the week before was about the differences even between schools and faculties within universities. One aspect that I had spoken to some of the universities about last week was about staff training and whether that staff training was mandatory. What was the take-up like? There was an admission that some people go and staff training, but a lot don't, especially a qualities trainer or specific training around specific disabilities such as BSL. I wondered whether there was any space in the outcome agreements to ensure that elements of staff training like that become mandatory, because some of the evidence that we have had and written evidence seems to be about academic staff, not really the ethos of the institution or the student bodies or whatever, but it seems to be maybe direct one-to-one academic staff. In my mind, that can be fixed quite easily with a decent staff training programme, but it needs to be mandatory. I accept that that would be a useful way forward. The challenge for the funding council is that we have outcome agreements that we try and keep as strategic documents that are agreed with the institution. The question would be whether the most appropriate way to make staff training more mandatory and get more of it is through the outcome agreement or some other method. What we in the funding council can do through the outcome agreement is to focus on the outcomes that we want from that. I would be slightly resistant to being too specific in the outcome agreements about numbers of staff through training, because one of the risks is that you can put measures in an outcome agreement that do not tell you how much that is affecting your students and so on. I am very open to the point that staff training is part of the solution and we need to look at ways of making sure that it is happening. We need to think about how we put that in the outcome agreements in a way that is meaningful and does not lead to just loads of numbers about people who have been on training, but not necessarily looking at what outcome that is having for students. On that point, we undertook a full review of the college system and what was called extended learning support funding. The main finding that came out from all of that was people that help people. That is where you will get the biggest impact on any finance that you put in to help people with disabilities. Another finding that came out from that was the complexity of conditions that are being presented, particularly in the college system. It means that on-going training is absolutely essential for academic staff to enable them to best meet the needs of increases in autism, for example dyslexia or the combination of the two or other conditions on top of that. I absolutely agree that good CPD is the way to go. The needs are increasing at such a rate that is essential. I get the sense that the university sector is indeed investing in that within its system. We are very aware, particularly around mental health, of the increases in that and the need to invest in its staff to make sure that they can provide the best teaching possible. We have some very good examples of that, thank you so much. Good morning. I wonder if I could take you right back to the start and to the admissions process itself. Our students spend maybe five or six years at school getting their highest advance higher and so on, and then they apply to university and then they encounter this personal statement process that they have to get through. Is there any monitoring of that process to ensure that it complies with the principles of equality of access, not just for people with disabilities but right across the population? You mean of the personal statement aspect of it. There is no monitoring by SFC of how that particular part of admissions is used. Recently, as part of the work that the commission for widening access was doing at Fiona, I want to come in later on this. We did look quite closely at how admissions was working, particularly because we were interested in knowing the extent to which institutions were using contextualised admissions and looking at the circumstances of a student so that they weren't just looking at the number of hires they got but at the context in which the student got those hires. That usually means in the context of, are they from a school with a very low progression to university or are they from a particular postcode and so on? It can also be the context in which somebody who has a particular set of hires can be affected by disability as well. What we found was that the personal statement was not always used by every institution. It is a part of the UCAS system and many institutions are using it. It is not a huge part of the selection criteria in most. However, if you are going to operate a contextualised admissions system that looks at the whole student and understands the context in which they got the grades, perhaps it needs to be done more. As part of the implementation of the commission for widening access work, we will be working and the Government will be working with institutions to make sure that contextualised admissions become more widespread and the factors that are taken into account are broader than the ones that are currently used. We do not currently monitor how admissions are done in institutions. I fear that it is a recommendation of the commission on widening access that we take forward a full review of what they call non-academic factors. I was part of the secretary for the commission on widening access and was aware of the work that went into that. There was an expert group that was around admissions. It was admissions staff. Just as John said, there was variance of how that particular element was used. I am also aware from a student perspective how much time and effort can go into trying to provide a good personal statement. It is important that all that effort is being put in and that it is being considered equally across all our institutions. On the other side, there was evidence that was given to suggest that, quite often, private schools and so on know exactly the right information to put into a personal statement to give somebody an edge. Therefore, there was a bit of unfairness comparative to other students. It needs to be looked at to make sure that personal statements can be considered fairly, equally, and it provides additional information to help consideration in the admissions system. We are looking forward to that work and we fully agree with the recommendation that the commission came up with. Some universities use personal statements in the admissions process. Some do not. For those who do, how in earth can we be sure that what they are doing and who they are admitting and who they are not admitting? How do we know that that is fair if there is no analysis of this? The best kinds of contextualised admissions systems will be based on evidence that shows that if you take in a student who might have a couple of grades lower than other students that you are taking in, but they are from a particular type of school or whatever, there is evidence that, by the end of their university course, they will perform as well as ones with a couple of grades higher from a different type of school. In the perfect world, there is evidence that that works and often institutions have done it for their own entrants so that they can be quite clear that they are being fair in taking that student who has got lower grades than that student because they know the outcome will probably be the same because they have evidence that, in the past, when they have taken people with those grades from that type of school, they have performed well. You will have seen from the submissions that you had in your own call for evidence that it is not at all widespread—in fact, I am not sure that any universities are using the personal statements and issues about disability in making contextualised admissions decisions. Part of encouraging universities to do that would be building the evidence base of the kind that I have talked about, which tends to be about types of school rather than the personal statements. It is more challenging to do that, but it is worth exploring whether it can be done so that you can then make very robust contextualised admissions decisions that can be taken on board that kind of background information. Sometimes, though, it will come down to the training of the people who are making the admissions decisions and how they use the information that is in the UCAS form to its full extent, and they are not just looking at the higher grades. I have a last point on this, convener. For two students, for example, who have got exactly the same passes, hires, advance hires or whatever, applying to the same university from different towns in Scotland, and one gets accepted and one does not. The only basis in which they can conclude that there is a difference is the personal statement. How on earth do those two students and their families know that one was treated fairly compared to the other if their passes are exactly the same? Where it is working well, a university will make it clear, as part of the admissions process, that it has a contextualised admissions system and the flags that it will take on board that might make it. Universities have hard decisions to make. They cannot admit everyone, and even when they can admit people, it is not often to the course that they want. They have hard decisions to make. However, if you have a contextualised admissions system that is based on evidence that, if I take somebody with four A's in the higher from that kind of school, somebody with two A's and two B's from a school with very low progression or with other flags that you can attach to the student, the evidence is that somebody who has done that well from that school is likely to thrive at university. When it is based on evidence, universities will publish that up front and make it clear that they make contextualised offers based on that kind of evidence, so it is very open and transparent. In that case, you might get two students who have exactly the same set of grades and one gets in and one does not, because they are using contextualised admissions. Where it becomes more challenging is if there is not a contextualised admissions system, how you monitor externally how the personal statement is used as opposed to something that is more evidence based on the post-cord or type of school. We are also doing, as we have commissioned some research, to look into contextualised admissions in much more detail, because we are aware of excellent provisions at universities that do contextualised admissions—most do these days—but one of the issues is that it is not necessarily entire transparency and consistency across all of them. One of the things that we wanted to develop was a map of contextualised admissions across Scotland and to advise us as to which were the best factors to use and the best factors to take into consideration, so that we can then advise our university sector accordingly. That work is being undertaken at the moment and should report early next year. I want to follow in and ask a few questions about support packages that are available, because, in the evidence that we have heard and the sessions that we have had, there is an acknowledgement that equality for all in fairness and support should be freely given and everyone should be supported. However, that is where it ends. If you have, for example, dyslexia, you are supported through university. If you have more complex needs, it is far more difficult to get the package of care that you need. Often people are put off by going through that whole process. We have also heard that the application for additional funding for support cannot be made until an offer from university has been made and accepted, so quite often the funding does not come with entrance to university. What can be done to ensure that universities fully support individuals, do proper assessments and regularly assess to make sure that people are constantly getting the support that they need? Some of the support packages that you have talked about there are not ones that are funded by SAS, but they are funded by SAS. However, I think that the issue about timing and making sure that there is not a huge gap between acceptance and having the package in place is important and should be looked at. The more complex area is how you make sure that every student is supported, because sometimes we are talking about relatively small numbers. There are people with complex conditions or combinations of conditions that might not appear in that department of that university every year. Having a responsive system is partly about making sure that institutions are prepared and trained for the generality of issues, if there is a real generality, but also a responsive system, so that if you know that some students are coming with particular needs, you can put the training in place and sometimes adaptations as well quickly in order to prepare for those students. That is about having systems in the university that are geared up to do that, so that it does not come as a surprise halfway through the year that you suddenly notice that that student needs a ramp or that student is blind, that it is planned for and prepared for. There are some very good examples of courses being the deaf performance course that Conservatoire and so on specifically designed, but in most cases that is, you know, people will be choosing courses that aren't specifically going to be designed for students with disabilities, so it is going to have to be a responsive system in universities where they are using the resource that they get from the funding council in order to make sure that every student's need is met. I think that that needs to be responsive as well as preparatory on the wider range of needs. Sometimes you will have to respond quite quickly to Cosh. We are going to have to do something about where that course is located or what we are going to do to that building because we now do have students who have different needs. Fiona, do you want to say more on that? I suppose just to reflect that we are members of the new student support review group that is looking into issues such as this. We have already fed in quite a lot of detail in relationship to students with disabilities, particularly the point that you made yourself about the time gap between them getting the support that they need and once they are in the university system. On the whole, our system is about a rights-based model. If you like, there is an assumption of need there that there will be students with need and it is the university's duty by law to meet those needs, but there are, of course, the examples that you outline where that is particularly tricky and how that can better be done. I really look forward to working with the student support review group on that to see that time gap. It seems almost from the evidence that we have heard that most educational institutions and universities are reactive in the support that they give rather than being proactive. It is about encouraging them to become more proactive about what they do. I think that it needs to be a bit of both. They need to be proactive and prepared and that they have systems that assume that they can meet need and often that is something that is always there, but sometimes you will suddenly have a couple of students with disabilities that were not there last year and you do have to react, but reacting quickly, being proactively prepared to react if that does not sound like a contradiction, but if you know what I mean, so that you are looking at what the need is each year and are able to get things in place quickly is important. Can I just ask you the submission that you have given us that has been very helpful? In paragraph 6, you say that under representation it is likely to be the result of a number of factors such as lower attainment at schools for pupils with additional support needs. When I first read that, it seems a bit of a sweeping statement if you have additional support needs, you will have lower attainment. What other reasons are there or have you done any work to find out what other reasons there are for the lower attainment levels? Is it just about the support packages that are put in place for young people when they are at school? No, I think that there will be other reasons. Interestingly, we fund both colleges and universities and the figures are different in the two sectors, so I think that some of them are just about displacement. A lot of people with disabilities, the numbers are higher in colleges, so because of that they are obviously going to college instead of university to some extent. That is a sweeping statement, I accept that. It is one that we probably need to dig into more deeply, but some of that is about the data that we do not, as far as I am aware, have very good data on individual types of disability at school and how that relates to flow through to university and college. I think that it is an area that we need to look more closely at the data and accept that. That was a bit of a sweeping statement. The actual reference relates to students in the school system, according to the Scottish Government statistics, where the student has an individual educational learning plan or a co-ordinated support plan of some nature. When you look at the attainment of those students comparative to their peers, it is quite significantly lower, but it does not break it down by type of disability. I am aware that those figures are available in the Scottish Government, and we have been working with them, particularly in the college system, to see if there is a way that we can link the two sets of data up better so that colleges can future-proof themselves, if you like, for the students who are coming through the school system at the moment. There is absolutely no reason that that same kind of process could not happen with the university system as well. Just to make the data more available to both sectors, about specifically who the pupils are in the school system at the moment that they are coming through and what they may or may not need from the college and university system if they choose to stay in Scotland, of course. A young person in the school system that has additional support needs and has a package in place of support that they need to get them through the school, I am not sure if it happens and if it does not, I am not quite sure why it does not. I understand that there are concerns about the sharing of data, but it would seem that if the support plan that is in school is used almost as a basis for the support that they need when they go on to higher education and then that support package could be built on, would that not streamline the process slightly? Absolutely. One of the key issues that happens is that, when you leave school, you are an adult, so you have the right not to declare. That is quite common that students will choose not to declare—presumably it is not a visible disability—but they will choose not to declare and sometimes it only becomes apparent when they start to really need the support. Particularly when it comes to exam time, for example, when the pressures come up and there is a recognition that I need help at this point. That is always a difficulty in universities that do a lot of work to encourage as much declaration as they possibly can, so that they do not have that last-minute problem and issue. Obviously, they will do everything that they can to help, but if it has been left too late, it is very difficult for them to overcome that. We do work with the universities on that. Okay, thank you. Good morning and thank you very much for coming. Just a couple of areas that I would just like to explore a bit further. We obviously have the outcome agreements and you talked, John, in your initial comment about how you are trying to maybe make them a bit more proactive and encourage universities. I suppose the question I have is what happens if a university—it may pay lip service to it, but in practice nothing is changing. What sanctions would you think of? Have you ever considered that in the last four years? It is a very sensitive issue with universities. Where we have put in place specific funding, for example, for things such as widening access, and universities have not been filling those places with widening access students, we have taken the places away and moved them elsewhere. Our main sanction would be how we use our funding. It is not an area that we have gone into yet on any other protected characteristic. We have only used that sanction with additional places for widening access. In our outcome agreement guidance, we refer to the kind of things that we might do where an outcome agreement is not to be met. The ultimate sanction is not funding bits of activity. However, that was something that we would only do in extremist, because what we would want to do is use the system to get the institution to respond and to meet needs. In the case of protected characteristics and disability, the institution has a legal obligation to do things as well. Our funding is part of the suite of things that will encourage them to do it, but it is not the only one. That is a real dilemma for us sometimes. If we were to say that institution X is not very good at meeting the needs of disabled students, we are withdrawing X amount of funding and moving it to institution Y that is far better. In the long run, that does not help the students who might want to go to that first institution to need to do the courses that that first institution does. Our prime aim is to encourage that institution to improve rather than to use a primarily sanctions-based approach, but that sanction exists and has been used where additional places have not been met. If an institution were that bad, it would not be meeting its legal duties either, so that would put it in a very bad place. We need to be encouraging institutions to improve to better meet needs. We all acknowledge that, while there are some very good examples of what institutions are doing, there is room for improvement. We want to encourage that improvement rather than to use a sanctions-based approach. Do you want to say more on that, Fiona? My experience is an outcome agreement manager. The outcome agreement is essentially just the document itself. It is the whole process that sits around that, so there is an element as an outcome agreement manager of support to your institutions, but there is also a huge element of challenge consistently throughout that academic year. If they have committed to achieve a target that has been accepted by the funding council, your job as an outcome agreement manager is to continually ask for progress updates on where you are with that, and if you are not achieving it, why not and what you are doing about that? You are invested in it, too, so you want by the end of that time period for the data to come in and show that they said that they were going to do that, that they have done that and that it has worked and achieved. There is so much more to it than just getting the actual document kind of agreed, and there is an awful lot of challenge on outcome agreement managers to really deliver within the funding council as well. Okay, thank you. I suppose just going back to a widening access issue, which I think clearly all of us are signed up to and want to see happen. I suppose one of the unforeseen circumstances with a cap number of students is what happens to the person who goes to the school that gets before it is, but doesn't get the place. How do we end up not having discrimination the other way that, because I go to a certain school, I don't get a place because I'm assumed to be getting advantage academically? Have you done any work around how we level that off or are we not at that stage yet? Are we so far behind the curve that that's not really an issue? I think the issue about, well, there's one, admissions should be about fairness. We should be, if there is any limitation, and actually even if everyone who applied to university could get in, there would still be issues that some courses are more popular than others, so there does need to be a system of ensuring that the fair system of ensuring that the right students get on to the right course. That has to be about ensuring that the students with the best potential get on to those courses. As I've talked about earlier, it's about more than just exam results. Contextualised admissions is part of having a fair system. If we are to increase the number of applications from the groups that are currently not going to university, that will, unless something changes with the groups that are currently going, lead to a higher demand. The UCAS figures out yesterday that indicated that not everyone is getting in and the proportion that they are not getting in has been going up. There are a number of solutions to that. However, I think that the solution that we should be exploring most closely, and the solution that gives you a better outcome for most students, is looking at how we use the capacity in schools, colleges and universities together to improve the learner journey so that there are routes into higher education through college, into university, and that we use those to the maximum extent and use the capacity of both sectors, so that, increasingly, everyone who wants to get into higher education can. However, while that is working, we need fair admissions so that, even within that system, people getting on to the right course are getting it for fair reasons. I suppose that I declare the interest that I did happen to go to an independent school. I was interested with Fiona's comment that the private school seemed to have a slight edge in regard to how we may be filled out reform. Well, I presume that it is not rocket science, someone has told them how to do it, so why are we not telling every school how to fill out? I presume that it is not a kind of, you go off into a secret room if you are a private school and told something that nobody else has told the mistake sector. So, why has that information not been shared? I mean, I felt that it does seem slightly unfair. I mean, that may not be your area, but are you encouraging people to work out how you should fill out reform to the best way? I will go first. Some of the work that we support with schools projects is about both encouraging more people to apply to university from schools that traditionally haven't, but also supporting those schools in exactly that kind of thing. It is a thought experiment here. If everyone was writing the perfect personal statement and everyone had four A's and their highers, you still need to make choices. They need to be done in a fair, evidence-based, robust way so that we are getting the right people into the right courses and universities. I was just going to highlight that we have access initiatives of the school to higher education programme, for example, that works with low-progression schools. We have access to the high-demand professions as well, which is medicine law creative, that works with pupils who are interested in that, to help them to get the best application process that they can. It is also the reason why we are investing in this piece of work and the research that I referred to earlier, because the contextualised admissions process is so important to making sure that the admission process enables us to have the best talent in the university sector, but the talent that best reflects the population of Scotland as well, so that it is diverse and reflects the full nature of that. I hope that those three things together and the work that the commission on widening access has asked us to do in relationship to the non-academic factors. The personal statement is absolutely crucial, because if we are going to use that, we need to make sure that it is used fairly and by all universities in the same way, so that everybody knows when they fill that in that it is going to be considered equally right across the range. It is a very difficult thing for universities as well, because the personal statements are used in so many different ways, and it is quite subjective in its very nature. I noticed on the BBC website coming into work this morning that Bristol University has taken a view that we are now going to have different academic results depending on what school you come from. Is that a model? Are the universities that we can point to here in Scotland that have that policy as well, or is that something that you are looking to move forward on? Yes. Bristol University has been doing that for some years, and there were the pioneers in contextualised admissions. Increasingly, universities in Scotland are using it. In fact, I would say that the majority of universities use some form of contextualised admissions, which looks at comparing what a particular set of hires might look like from different schools. Now, sometimes they use low-progression schools, sometimes they use other flags that would identify a student that might have different circumstances, but that system exists, I would say, in the majority of Scottish universities. We are looking forward to the announcement of the commissioner for fair access, who will presentably help us to take forward the recommendation in the commissioner on widening access report about the access thresholds, as well as the next evolution of contextualised admissions, if you like. Last week in the previous week, we were speaking about admissions again, and we had a witness in who was BSL, who went through university. He had said that it was very difficult for him to do his personal statement in written English, because that is not how he was used to speaking. There are other people who may be written English as not their first choice. We were asking as other ways of admissions, so could BSL admissions be accepted as an application? Could video or something like that be used as an application, because people might feel more confident in putting their personal statement forward? It is just something that most of the universities last week had not considered. I have read the evidence of your earlier hearings. In that particular one, I was thinking about, could that be done? UCAS runs the admissions system rather than us, but we clearly have an interest in making sure that that is fair and that it is effective. I think that it is something that we should explore, whether there are changes that can be made that would allow that. I think that it would be challenging to do. The UCAS system is a fairly big streamlined system that takes a huge number of applications and dishes them out to lots and lots of different universities. I think that there might be technical challenges within that, but it is worth exploring whether they can be overcome. There are, of course, quite a few institutions that do not recruit through the traditional UCAS system. There are variations for the conservatoire and the art schools and so on, because they use portfolios and auditions. It is possible to do some of those things. I think that we would be happy to explore whether that would be feasible. I am not sure that I could give a categorical answer at the moment. Obviously, the other side of it is that if we can look at doing something like that, how do we then look at assessments and exams? If someone's BSL, can we look at that side of it as well? That is immediately the question that would arise if somebody is admitted based on something that does not include written English, but the course requires written English, then we need to take the sense that, well, is it reasonable to then change the course? I think that there are valid questions that need to be looked at. I think that we would be happy to explore that with UCAS and see whether it is feasible. We are also members of the national advisory group for the development of the plan that will be coming out of the national plan, and we are feeding in that information into that. Good morning and thank you for coming to see us today. I would like to look at the issue of admissions through a slightly different lens. That is about when pupils and students with additional support needs or disabilities choose to come to which university and the barriers to that decision are making based on the fact that we have heard a myriad of evidence over the last couple of weeks from people who talk about things like the wider student experience not being particularly geared up to deal with their additional needs in terms of society life and the wider social elements to university, but also the physical access to buildings. Having gone to an ancient university myself, I remember tutorials and four flights of steps up in a windy garret that absolutely would have been inaccessible to people with mobility needs. Some of that requires just an astronomical, almost prohibitive amount of expenditure. As a funding councillor in particular, what are you doing to help universities box clever and disseminate best practice as to how we get round the significant obstacles, both to the wider student experience and to the physicality of access to the university estate? First of all, I have read some of the evidence of the previous sessions. I was struck by the point that was made by several students that, even when access was arranged to the academic part of the course, some of the wider student experience was less accessible as well. It is something that we need to consider. It is not just about that tutorial room, it is about the student union and all the other things that go around it. In the evidence that I read, I think that there is evidence that some of the universities are boxing clever and that if their whole estate is not accessible and cannot be made accessible straight away, they are making sure that things are located in the parts of the estate that are. However, it was evident from what I read that often that was not happening as neatly as it could. It was only after people had climbed up the four flights of stairs that they realised that there was an issue and then changes were made, and it was not always happening. Part of, in the ideal world, what we could do is fund universities with enough capital that they could resolve all of the really difficult issues. Realistically, in the current financial climate, it is going to take some time for that to happen, but nonetheless, students are going to university now. Knowing that in 10 years' time somebody will have an accessible building, there is no use to the current students, so we need to encourage universities to, as you say, box clever. Within the evidence, I thought that there were some very good stories about how that was being handled, and there were some stories where that was not happening. I think that part of the task of the funding council and other bodies is to disseminate that good practice and make sure that that is the standard and that the bits of bad practice are not happening. However, the bit that I think is more challenging and I think is important is that universities will react to the tutorial rooms of the labs being accessible and make adjustments for that. However, some of the stories that I read about what is happening in the refectory and things like that, that is important too, and we need to encourage best practice in that too. However, our role is using the outcome agreement system and other interactions with institutions to promote best practice. I am working with some of the other organisations that you have heard from as part of this investigation. I am glad that you mentioned outcome agreements at the end there, because that brings me neatly into my second question. I am very interested in the application of outcome agreements in the university sector. It is a fair criticism leveled at local authority single outcome agreements. In a lot of cases, since they were first envisaged in 2007, they sat on a shelf in a local authority and gathered dust until the next iteration of the single outcome agreement was to be published. There was no sanction deployed against local authorities that did not meet their own outcomes and very little scrutiny, very little consistency as well. I am really interested to hear how universities get to take those outcome agreements seriously, how they measure them, how they measure success, and more importantly, how they measure failure against the delivery of them. Our outcome agreement certainly does not sit on a shelf. Although outcome agreements usually have a three-year time horizon, they are refreshed annually. There is an annual cycle in which we issue guidance making it clear what we think the outcome agreements should contain. There is a process of agreeing the outcome agreement between the SFC and the institution. Once that is done, we then have a process in which we ask the institution to do a self-evaluation of how it is done against the previous year's outcome agreement, including all the targets, and to reflect on whether it is done well or badly or it could have done better. We then assess that self-evaluation using a whole range of data that we collect through the higher education statistics authority and other things, so that, as well as their self-evaluation, we are looking at their performance on winding access and a whole number of other things, and engaging with them throughout the year, but particularly at the time of the self-evaluation. We use that self-evaluation to feed into our consideration of the next year's outcome agreement. Round about this time year, a council will meet tomorrow and will consider the evidence from the self-evaluations and the current performance as a prior decision-making process before it decides what to do about next year's outcome agreement. There is an annual cycle of preparing the outcome agreement, having the guidance for the next year's assessing performance, but, as Fiona said earlier, the outcome agreement is partly about the written piece of paper and the assessment of how well they are doing against it. That is, in its essence, a funding contract with the institution, but it is also about the relationship between the outcome manager, of whom Fiona is one, and the institution so that there is somebody who is constantly challenging the institution and supporting them sometimes. If they are saying, well, we are having trouble doing x, are there ways you can help, but also a supporting challenge function that goes on throughout the year. There are particular points where that feeds into the outcome agreement preparation, but there are other points where it is just an on-going challenge. They certainly do not sit on a shelf. There is an annual process and cycle round about them, which we pursue fairly vigorously. There is also an access team within the funding council as well. A key element of our job is to assess every one of the outcome agreements through an widening access lens and provide feedback to the individual outcome agreements. That is shared with at director level and also at chief executive level. That is all documented in terms of how the quality of each individual one and how they compare to each other. That feeds into the guidance for future years and the individual institution where that is necessary. Just to follow on from the line of questioning that Alex started, in 2004 the university of Edinburgh conducted a study on disabled students in higher education. There was a number of points highlighted. In the evidence that we have heard in the last few weeks, many of the points that were highlighted in 2004 caused problems for students with disabilities that have been raised to us again. I appreciate that there are a number of outcome agreements and that you monitor and work with institutions, but it would seem that very little progress has been made in a number of areas. While I welcome the appointment of a commissioner for widening access, there must be another mechanism for ensuring that more is done to widen access. I would be interested in your thoughts on that. One of the things that is key to this is the disabled students premium. The criteria for how that is set, the strategic front funding programme that is used for, and how universities are either encouraged to use that or to use it better, and how that is monitored. That ties into Mary's question into what we are doing, but there are funding streams here to make sure that it gets done and how is it getting done. I would accept your point that a lot of the issues that I have come up in this investigation are ones that I have been about for some time. I would contend that there has been some progress. If you look at the retention rates for students generally, they have been improving over the years and that the gap between students who are declaring a disability and all students has been narrowing. I think that there has been progress. In that time, there have been some very good examples, such as the Conservatoire's deaf performance course, of institutions doing very good things. I would accept that there is still a journey to go and that further narrowing the gap in attainment between students with a disability and others is about how you correctly apply the funding that universities have to support all students. Part of the reason we, several years ago, put the disabled students premium in effect into the main pot of funding, because it exists as a separate line, but it used to be that an institution would get it based on the number of students who would declare disabilities that it had, but we felt that that was probably over supporting some institutions and under supporting some others, because dyslexia is such a big part of the declared disabilities in universities, it was skewing it towards particular institutions. Our view was that all institutions have a responsibility to be prepared for students with a disability and that that should be in proportion to the number of students they have, not just the ones with bigger numbers. We quite deliberately put it in proportion to the main pot. While we hold institutions accountable for what they are doing on disability through the outcome again, we expect them to use all of the funding that we give them for students as part of that in theory. Clearly not all of it. It goes for all students, but in looking at what pot of money they have to support disabled students, they should be looking at the whole pot, not just at the proportion that is identified as a disabled student's premium, because it is a legal responsibility that they serve all protected characteristics. Our philosophy has been that while funding is important, we do not want that to be an area where we are trying to work out exactly what the cost of each particular student is and then give that, because that leads to the lumpiness of reaction that means that institutions are not responding quickly enough. We expect institutions to see that as core business and build it into their core funding. As I have said earlier, I think that it might be an area where we need to up our focus a bit more so that we are clearer about expectations and about making sure that good practice is happening in a more widespread way. However, there has been some progress. The fact that the retention rates have been narrowing the gap between all students and students with disabilities is positive. It is not fast enough. Some of those things take a while to fix and we should be pushing for it to be faster. Just bumping up against our time when we have another panel this morning, but just very, very quickly on the back of that, John, that the Scottish Funding Council reports on destinations of university graduates. No, you do not. We want to know whether you do. We know that colleges report destinations and one of the measures in measuring where students have been successful in their higher education is to determine their destinations. We know that colleges report on that, but whether universities do and whether that would be something that you would consider building in to the outcome agreement. There is a report on destinations of leavers from universities. Do you have the figures in front here, Fiona? I will ask Fiona to come in and explain what they are. What would stress those destinations are six months after graduation, and quite a lot of students—all students, not just those from protected characteristics—will not have settled in their final career by then. There is a bit of a health warning about those statistics, but we do. They are collected by the Higher Education Statistics Authority. What are the specific elements of young people or people who have lived in university who have disabilities? Is it broken down in that way? That would be helpful. I can certainly share a very similar story to that that is in the college leaver destination survey as well. There is a gap, which is not what we want. We can share that data with you. That would be really helpful. I thank you both for your attendance at committee this morning, your written evidence and future evidence that you have agreed to share with us. We appreciate your responses this morning, and we have some way forward with some of the inquiries that we are doing. Thank you so much. If you go away and you think you should have told us something else, please get back in touch. I want to suspend committee for about five minutes for a very quick comfort break, and then we are back in with the minister and the cabinet secretary. Good morning, and welcome back to the Equality and Human Rights Committee. Our second panel for this morning on our inquiry on the budget, we have with us this morning Angela Constance, who is the Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. Shirley-Anne Somerville, who is the Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science. Good morning, minister, and I believe that this is your first appearance at a committee. As a minister, yes it is. Excellent. We'll be gentle with you. Supporting both of those this morning, we have Leslie Irving, head of equality policy and Leah Fitzgerald, who is the policy manager of the Higher Education Division with the Scottish Government. Good morning to you all to the committee. We are now, this is essentially our final session on our inquiry on the budget, and we decided to focus on a part of the budget on equalities about widening access, and specifically about people with disabilities and who use BSL as their language in accessing university. That's why we needed both of you here today in order to address some of the equality issues and to address some of the widening access in the policy functional issues at university as well. I know that your busy schedules mean that this is not always possible, but we're really delighted to have you here this morning. You'll have maybe heard some of the evidence that we've already had, but I believe that maybe both of you have an opening statement that you want to kick off with. Cabinet Secretary, would you like to go first? Okay, thank you, convener, and good morning, committee. Grateful for the opportunity to appear before committee as part of your scrutiny process of the 2017-18 draft budget. You will appreciate that, as the draft budget will not be published until this afternoon, the committee will be aware that I'm not able to comment or reflect on the Government's spending plans. However, I can confirm to committee that, as in previous years, equality analysis and assessment has been undertaken as part of the budget preparatory work. The results of that work will be published in the eighth equality budget statement that will accompany the draft budget. Also, as in previous years, we've been supported in this process by the equality budget advisory group, so I want to put on record my thanks to its members for their expertise, for their insight and, of course, for the challenge that they bring as we continue to look for the best ways to ensure proper consideration of equality right across the Government. Of course, I understand that the committee is very keen to focus on disability and access to universities. My colleague, Ms Somerville, is best placed, engaged with the committee on access to university and matters relating to disability and education. However, I would like to say just a few words about disability equality more broadly. It's a great idea to have ministers from different portfolios appear before committee, because it's important that, as a Government, we're demonstrating that joined-up approach and that equality is for every portfolio and not just the community's and equality portfolio. It is 20 years since the Disability Discrimination Act was introduced, which has now been replaced by the Equality Act. Although progress has been made, we know that there are still many disabled people who are unable to live their lives as they want. The barriers that they face day in, day out prevent them from making their full contribution to daily and to public life. The way that our public services, our workplaces and local environments are designed to operate can exclude people—this is just quite simply not acceptable. The committee will be more than aware that, on 2 December, we published the Fairer Scotland for Disabled People delivery plan to 2021. The plan draws on the views of disabled people and those who participated in the consultations and discussions. The plan has five long-term ambitions and a wide range of actions that we will take over the lifetime of this Parliament. We are determined to make meaningful progress, for example, in reform and adult social care, so that we shift the focus to achieving independent living, promoting independent advocacy so that people know about and can claim their rights and mental health, for example, and to conduct an awareness-raising campaign to tackle negative attitudes as part of the One Scotland campaign next year. In the coming periods, we will be very focused on addressing the employment gap for disabled people and our new devolved Scottish employability programme will give high-quality support tailored to the needs of disabled people. We will be placing dignity and respect at the very heart of our new social security system and our ambition that Scotland should be the best place in the world for our children and our young people to grow up has to apply to all of our children. We will be developing a national framework for disabled children and young people to ensure that they get the best provision and support possible. Our fairer Scotland action plan will also work to ensure a fairer and more equal society for all of Scotland's people. At the heart of that plan is 50 fairness actions for this parliamentary term that will help us to meet those ambitions. Again, that ranges right across all areas of Government responsibility. My final word is that we all know, convener, that creating a fairer Scotland actually requires all of us. It requires Government, it requires communities, it requires listening to people with that lived experience of poverty and disability. It will require business and industry, public and third sector to work together to achieve change. We know that Government cannot deliver change on its own, and nor would we want to. We will continue to work with anyone and everyone to make those actions a reality. One final note, convener. I just want to highlight to committee that we have maintained our commitment to equality investment over this period of public spending constraint. We will continue to support and work with a range of organisations that represent disabled people. It is important that it is vital that the voices of disabled people are heard and that disabled people participate in shaping the decisions that affect them. I very much welcome this important inquiry. I would be very happy to consider incorporating recommendations coming from the committee into the disability delivery plan, which will be monitored to ensure progress and to take account of emerging issues. At the end of the day, convener, we all share the same aim that disabled people should be able to study at universities without experiencing discrimination and barriers, which could and should be removed. I very much look forward to a discussion this morning. Can I reiterate the point that the cabinet secretary has made that, due to the timings of today's statement, I will also be unable to answer questions around the detail of the budget that will be given later today. However, the committee is aware that widening access for higher education is a key priority for this Government. Indeed, the 2014-15 programme for government set out a stretching ambition that a child born today, irrespective of socioeconomic circumstances, should have an equal chance of entering university. It is a policy objective very much in harmony with our wider vision for a fairer, more equal Scotland that is driven by inclusive economic growth. The commission on widening access was established to advise us of the steps necessary to meet that ambition, and the commission made 34 recommendations, which taken together represent a bold and ambitious agenda for change. Indeed, I would argue that it is perhaps the most radical set of actions being undertaken anywhere in the UK to tackle what has often been regarded as an intractable problem in our education systems across the world. The committee has already heard evidence that the commission's primary focus was on tackling socioeconomic inequality. However, I echo Russell Gunson's evidence that there are intersections between those issues and disabled access. I was struck, for example, by the common themes emerging in the evidence heard so far by the committee, issues such as cultural barriers and the need for enhanced pastoral care. Therefore, I expect the commission's proposals to have a naturally positive impact on the participation of disabled learners, perhaps especially those relating to the reform of admissions, more rigorous support for access learners and progression from college. The commission also recommended that the new commissioner for fair access should consider whether there are further barriers for learners with protected characteristics to make any necessary recommendations to ministers. Similarly, in October, I announced an independent review of FE and ITCHE student support. The aim of that review is to assess the effectiveness of the system for student support for all students engaged in further and higher education in Scotland and to make recommendations for change. The review will consist of a number of subgroups, and one of which is around support available to vulnerable students. Understanding the needs of students with disabilities will be an integral and core part of that work. There are a number of mechanisms through which we can ensure that the evidence specific to the cohort is examined thoroughly and that any necessary policy interventions are tailored to meet specific needs. In that regard, the work being completed by the committee will form a crucial part of the on-going discussions. It is important to have in mind that institutions have clear statutory duties in relation to disabled learners. I am sure that the committee shares my expectation that it will be very proactive in responding to the evidence that emerges from that work, too. I will close by highlighting that, although by no means perfect, access for disabled learners is improving, the proportion of undergraduate entrance with a declared disability has increased year on year and, as of 2014-15, stands at 10.8 per cent of total entrance. Retention is also improving, and it is significant to note that the gap with all learners has closed to just over one percentage point. The disabled student allowance in Scotland has been protected and continues to be demand-led, meaning that the budget is determined purely by student need. That is all positive and indicates that our policy direction, together with the more practical interventions of the funding council and institutions, are delivering outcomes, but we are very much not complacent. As with all areas of access, we are ambitious and sharply focused on securing a more equitable distribution of opportunities for all, and I look forward to working with the committee to achieve that. Cabinet Secretary, in your opening statement, you mentioned the disability delivery plan and the work that is being done on that, and specifically on the work of the committee. We are very interested in that, but you will realise, just as well as I do, that the figures around about 50 per cent of households who are in poverty have someone in that household with a disability. That is a huge proportion. In order to have that inclusive economy that we want, we have to create the opportunities for people in order to lift themselves out of poverty. One of those opportunities is a university education, because it then leads to a higher paid job and more opportunities in that respect. How do you see that playing out in the disability delivery plan? I can see quite clearly how the two portfolios can work very, very closely together on this, with the policy being right and the delivery being right, you could make huge changes, life-changing opportunities for people here. I wonder whether there is a specific area in the disability delivery plan where you could address that specific issue and whether you can give us some insight into that this morning. Yes, absolutely, convener. It is important to note that the longer young people spend in either education or training—some of what I am about to say applies to FE, HE and modern apprenticeship programmes—in that all the evidence shows that, for any young person, the longer they spend in education or training, the better their career prospects are and, therefore, the better their income is. There are many actions in the disability delivery plan and the Fairer Scotland Action Plan, because the Fairer Scotland Action Plan has a huge focus on income inequality and some very specific measures in and around tackling inequality, socio-economic disadvantage in particular. I suppose that the one action that I would draw committee's attention to is the action 20 in the disability delivery plan, in which it talks about that all-encompassing approach that we need to work with schools, local authorities, health and social care partnerships, further and higher education institutions and, in particular, to focus on transitions. Transitions for young people with disabilities start in school, going from primary to secondary school, going from secondary school to their post-school destinations and then, crucially, going from university or college into work, because we know that, even where young people are making significant educational achievements, that is not always being translated into the workplace, so that focus on transitions is crucially important. That requires a change of mindset and continuing to evolve our ways of working. It is easy to talk about partnership working, but partnership working in terms of tackling transitions is absolutely crucial. Although there are many actions in the disability delivery plan that are indirectly or directly relevant to supporting young people, to pursue their dreams of participating in higher education, there are particular actions, and action 20 and that focus on transitions is crucially important. I wholeheartedly agree with you there. Alex Thank you. Good morning, minister. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Thank you for your time this morning. Cabinet secretary, I complimented this Government in debate in Parliament last week about its intent to bring forward a framework for children and families affected by disability in absolutely high time. I am interested in the content of that and what that is going to look like in the resource behind it. Nearly 10 years ago, England and Wales got its own strategy for disabled children, aiming high for disabled children, and with that came a consequential of £36 million. The presumption against ring ffencing went straight into local authority grants and did not go to children with disabilities. I think that we still have a way to make up on that regard. Without wanting to pre-empt the stuff that you cannot talk about in terms of the budget or financial settlements around that, can you reassure us that that will be adequately resourced? I firmly believe that the disability delivery plan will be adequately resourced. I certainly have read Mr Cole Hamilton's speech that he made in the debate led by my colleague Gene Freeman last week, because it had been highly commended to me along with Mr Balfour's speech, so I went back to the official record and read both speeches. I was particularly struck that Mr Cole Hamilton spoke about that life stage, that lifespan approach, which is absolutely important. While I will point to the fact that, as I said in my opening remarks, we have protected the equality budget. I can also point to the fact that, over this period of tough times, we have also protected the third sector budget. I actually believe that the Empowering Communities Fund has an important role to play here as well in terms of participation and in terms of changing that mindset about who should be making decisions about how resources are spent is important. However, the point is that, if one in five people have a disability, the question is about what we are doing with all our resources. As the Equalities Minister, I can point to the equality budget and the third sector budget, but it is about the spend right across Government in education and in health and ensuring that, particularly with those large universal services, those who are disadvantaged in some way are getting their fair share of core services and core resources, so that the additional resources that we have in terms of equality budgets adds value. I will not for one minute demure from the importance of investment and continued investment, but there is something quite fundamental about what we should be doing anyway. We all want more of the resource, but irrespective of the size of the resource, it is about attitudes, culture and how we deploy resources. It is about how we prioritise resources. I am trying to delicately point at that. People cannot say that we are not doing this unless you give us extra money. We all have to do this, and it is all our business. We have to ensure that all the arrows across the massive investment that is made across the public sector are all directed in the right direction. Thank you. I think that therein lies the rub, does it not? It is about matching rhetoric with reality. This is an issue that we do well to take party politics out of and try to work together on. One of the challenges for us—you mentioned it in your opening remarks in terms of particularly those transitions and, in particular, moving young people with disabilities from education into employment—is one of the biggest challenges in our community. A significant metropolitan authority in Scotland declared in its 2011 single outcome agreement that it wanted to get 200 17-19-year-olds with a disability into the workplace by the next iteration of its single outcome agreement. When that iteration came around, it had only succeeded in managing to get 11 17-19-year-olds with a disability into employment, but nothing happened. That is a separate problem with the single outcome agreement process. There was no sanction, there was no kind of accountability for that, but it very elegantly delineates the problem before us that we all agree in the political classes that we need to do more to break those barriers down and to help young people who have so much to contribute, even though they may have a disability into the workplace. That is a significant challenge. What can we do differently that we have not been doing so far that will close that gap? One of the things that myself and Jeane Freeman have worked very hard on when we were pulling together the Fairer Scotland action plan and the disability delivery plan was to ensure that the actions were actions and not just rhetoric, because it is easy to talk about our ambitions, our philosophy, our approach and what you will see in both the Fairer Scotland action plan and the disability delivery plan is actions that are about doing things and, in some cases, doing things differently. Other partners have various types of outcome agreements that there are within the university sector or local authorities. It is important that they evolve over time where we are actually focused on what it is that we are going to do as well as what we are saying. There is something important about scrutiny, about saying what is your ambition, what you are going to do and not just publishing a plan and then moving on to say what is next. You have to stick with it for the long haul, you have to be monitoring your progress, you have to understand your data, because that leads to transparency. We know that, in that particular instance, for that local authority that they have not met their ambition. Therefore, there is scrutiny about that and transparency about that, which I hope will lead to redress of that. It leads people to think about what more they can and must do. Thank you very much for coming. I think that there is cross-party support on this whole issue around transition. I think that what the Cabinet Secretary has said this morning is very helpful. Particularly for those with a fairly severe disabled learning difficulty or physical or disability, how we work with them and their educational school to get them in is something that we need to do work on. However, I am grateful for the comments that she has made this morning. My question is aimed at the minister. We have heard quite a lot in the last few weeks that universities are trying to open their doors more to those with disability, but there seems to be almost a hierarchy of disability. If you have a certain disability, it is reasonably easy comparatively to get in, whereas if you have a more complex disability, it is really quite difficult to get in. I wonder, without committing any financial money to this, whether there would be some kind of research that the Government would be looking to do along with universities of saying not just disability, but how many disabled people are in. We have got the breakdown already of the different types of disability, but what can we do then to help those who have that maybe complex disability get into university or into college? How do we encourage colleges and universities to do that? Thank you. You raise a very important point about the good practice that is going on within higher education institutions. I saw from the submission from University Scotland that it details some of that good practice. I think that what we have is good practice and that needs to be embedded across the board. Part of that lies out with being a university and on to some of the aspects that the cabinet secretary mentioned, about cultural change and the statutory obligations that a university has. It is anticipatory duties to look at what they are delivering and how they are delivering it. I think that there is a lot more that can be done to question and to analyse what is going on, which will not only help those with a disability but will also help students from different backgrounds, those with caring responsibilities and so on. I think that there is an obligation within each university to take a step back and analyse that. I think that they are doing that and that the statutory obligations that they have should ensure that that happens very much, and where the Government and the funding council can come in to facilitate that discussion and to ensure that that good practice is shared. I think that there is a very important role in that. However, I also took a lot from the evidence that you heard from committee about that it is not just enough to speak to those at university but to those who feel that they are unable to apply or receive sufficient support when they get there. We have lessons to learn on all of that, some of which are for the universities as autonomous institutions and some of which are very much for the Government to take on board. We have an outcome agreement and we have just been talking about it this morning with a panel before you. They feel slightly new to us, lots of carrots but not many sticks. I wonder whether we need to rebalance how we address the outcome agreements, that yes, we want to encourage and show good practice, but maybe there needs to be a bit of a stick there if institutions and particularly faculties. I think that she seems to be at the top level with principal, co-op, absolutely by and to it, but you go down to the lecture in what subject, there that is the individual that is causing the problem to the disabled student. Again, looking at what is going forward, without being too cruel, can we have some sticks? Well, I think that outcome agreements are quite a new concept still. I think that they have delivered a lot both for universities and colleges to ensure that we are looking at the outcomes and to have that baseline analysis, which is very, very important. Because it is new, it is only right that we periodically take a step back and review those, and we are going through that process with the funding council at the moment to see whether there is necessarily a different way of doing things and to see where they can be strengthened. It is also very important that they are effective, Mr Balfour is quite correct. They should not just be a document that sits on the shelf and that we have discussions about it, but that something follows from that. The funding council and the Scottish Government have a variety of funds that we can give to different universities, for example on widening access. If we need to learn from how we facilitate those funds and how those funds are distributed among the institutions, the outcome agreements and how those are actually implemented are very, very important. I take his point that there needs to be both carrots and sticks. I am open to, during the review of the outcome agreements, to see whether we have got that balance right or not, because I think that it is only right that we take a step back and have a look at that. I thought that it might be quite useful to say something about public sector equality duties, because the general duty under the Equality Act talks about how public authorities, and in this instance it includes universities, that, although they exercise their functions, they have to be eliminating unlawful discrimination, they have to be in the business of advancing equality of opportunity, as well as fostering good relationships between those with and without protected characteristics. All that points to the need for a proactive response. The public sector equality duties that are listed within the specific duties regulations, for example, undertake equality impact assessments on new or revised policies and practices and to publish the results. That is an important strand of the duties that all education institutions are subject to in terms of transparency of what they are doing and to assist with the evaluation of that. In terms of the Scottish Government's responsibilities, our responsibility is to help public authorities to exercise their responsibilities in terms of the quality outcomes. We have a project, the SNP, Scottish national equality improvement project. That is about our partnership with the EHRC, closing the gap, the equality network, about how we can bring forward a programme of work that helps the public sector to fulfil their duties. We are currently considering the work plan for 2017, as well as a Government reflecting on what we need to do in terms of our disability delivery plan as a result of committee's deliberations. There is also the opportunity in terms of SNP, in terms of what we do as a Government to help aspects of the public sector comply with their very clear duties. There is a stream of work that Government and partners need to be focused on. It is also worth saying that it is the Quality and Human Rights Commission that is the regulatory body for the public sector to comply with its act as well. There is a lot that we can do as a Government, but we also have to respect the role of the EHRC as well. I echo the comments that my colleague Jeremy Balfour has made, because I too would like to see a bit more stick and a bit less carrot. I reflect the evidence that we have heard in the past few weeks. There is a recognition and acknowledgement that universities and higher education institutes need to do more. They recognise that they have students that have a varying range of disabilities and that they should be supporting them. Unless it is a soft disability, it becomes very difficult. The length to which students need to go to get the support that they require is simply not acceptable. I welcome the words from the Cabinet Secretary this morning around the disability delivery plan when you talk about actions. I come back to the carrot and stick, because if you have actions, you must have consequences. I wonder if you could perhaps expand a bit on what you would expect those consequences to look like, because if I reflect on a question that I asked in the previous panel, the University of Edinburgh did a study in 2004 on disabled students in higher education, and many of the things that came out of that study we have heard in our evidence in the last few weeks. There have been a number of action plans published, there have been a number of recommendations made, but 12 years down the line, things have not improved. Unless a disability delivery plan actually has teeth and sticks, it would appear that nothing much is going to change. I would like a reassurance and perhaps an indication of what those consequences might look like. That is a very broad question. We will have a different shape and scope depending on the different portfolios that are involved in delivering the delivery plan, and that will be reflected in the different statutory responsibilities that colleagues across the Government have. I am very clear about what the law says. Although it is the Equality and Human Rights Commission that is the regulator for non-compliance with the Equality Act, I think that it is important that its Government, in our work with our partners, that none of us are defensive about this, that we all accept that there is more to do, that we all look for the opportunities to pick up the pace. It is quite difficult to talk about sanctions without being specific about specific actions and an acknowledgement about where the specific powers on specific things rely. I suppose that we have to be conscious that sanctions can of course be counterproductive, but sometimes they can be effective. Of course, there are a range of activities that you can undertake as a Government, but it is not always about financial sanctions, which tends to be what springs to mind. However, if I can say to you that the Cabinet Secretary for Equalities is very clear about what the law says, that applies to the Government. We are under scrutiny about that. There are things that we need to do better on this journey in terms of really incorporating a human rights approach to all our actions in terms of how we take forward our programme for government commitments, how we engage with people and how we can embed further economic, social and cultural rights. Some of this journey will not be comfortable either for Government nor our partners, but a light needs to be shed in it, and we need to face up to our discomfort and to focus on actions that will make life better. On the back of Mary's question this morning, I asked the funding council about the disabled students premium, how those decisions are made and how the funding is allocated, and whether it is ring-fenced or not. On the back of Mary's question, could that be a carrot and a stick that is used to enable change? I think that the premium is an interesting budget that, again, with the review of student support going on, which is looking at the student support that we have for all students, including those with disabilities, I had already said that I was open to that review, not just looking at the student support in terms of the allowance, but whether that premium supports students with disabilities. If it does not, we need to question if it is going in the right direction, if it is being used correctly. That message had already been given from me to the review when they were looking at the support for disabled students to analyse that premium. More than happy to see what comes out of that review and indeed feed anything in that comes from the committee's work, where they feel that questions have been raised about that. It is an independent review. It is not for me to set their work plan, but it has already been highlighted to them as an issue. I also thought that it might be helpful to look at one of the specific action points that is in the delivery plan that went to do with SASS and the workings of SASS. One of my first meetings as a minister on one of the first visits that I went on was to the student awards agency and heard a presentation from Who Care Scotland and someone from a care and experience background who went through how SASS had discussed with them how they had changed their entire application process to ensure that it worked for them. The change was very much led by users of the system and Who Care Scotland, who were therefore a lot more happy with the outcomes and the way that care experienced young people are dealt with through SASS. There is an action point about disabled students going through that application process and SASS looking at that and analysing whether anything needs to change in that. I certainly was greatly heartened by the work that that agency had done with people with care experience backgrounds, and we will look closely at what it does when it comes to disabled students with that action point in mind. However, I certainly took great heart from the work that they have already done and the very proactive way that they engaged with individuals and with people to see whether that system worked and really tested it out. We have now got a system where that aspect is much better and we can look at that for disabled students going forward. That is one action point, but I am very confident that SASS will deliver on. I am sure that nobody sitting around this table wants to think that, in 10 years' time, another committee will be looking at that issue. We will be talking about the things that we have talked about in the past few weeks. That is why it is so important that any delivery plan does deliver meaningful change. I appreciate the comments that you have made. Willie Coffey, I want to go back to the admissions process itself. I have raised this at every meeting of the committee that we have had and the part that the personal statement makes in that process. John Kemp from the funding council just before came in and said that there is no direct monitoring of that aspect of the admissions process, so that we can see that that meets all our obligations in respect of the equality of access. Fiona Burns, who spoke after John Kemp, said that we are. There is some process under way to examine that process of looking at non-academic factors in the contextualised admissions process. Can you tell us a wee bit more about that so that we can get some kind of understanding of how and whether that aspect of the admissions process is actually a fair process? I think that it would very much help for the entire admissions process to be a lot clearer and more transparent. It is one of the aspects that would not only help disabled students but would help potential students from a variety of backgrounds, whether that is from an socioeconomic perspective or a variety of different demographics. There is a requirement for more transparency to allow those who are looking to a college or university to be able to understand the options that are open to them, and they can make a choice where they would like to study based on the best information. Personal statements were looked for by the commission for widening access. It is an area of concern, because it can often be difficult for those from an socioeconomic deprived background to be able to complete in a way that those from a more advantaged background would be able to complete. Personal statements and non-academic statements have to be looked at, and we have to be very clear about what role they should or should not play. I would expect the commissioner to look at that when they are looking at the admissions policy. Contextualised admissions are somewhat broader than that. Personal statements are only one aspect that could be part of a contextualised admissions. You can therefore look at different greetings, for example, for the same course, depending on what a person's background is. That is a different type of contextualised admission that does and should play a more important role in admissions. Mr Cofi is very correct to say that that should be done in a very transparent way. There is no point in any institution having a process that people do not understand and, therefore, they cannot take advantage of. The requirement for transparency is very important. The admissions process for each university, as an autonomous institution, is up to that university. However, we have a basic understanding of what that should look like, and it should be open and transparent and easily understandable. I will allow a fair process of admissions so that people can access university. Will the per university be able to see the data that has been gathered over the next few years about how it is treating that process, so that we can have a look and see that there is an objective and fair method of treating it? We will have to. Part of the work of the commissioner as they go forward will be to challenge the Government and the institutions. Admission is a very important part of that process. After all, it is the gateway into the university, so that will play a very important part of the commissioner's work. Remain may correct me from wrong, but the target by 2021 is that 10 per cent of students should come from 20 per cent of the more disadvantaged backgrounds. That is at every university. There was some good news reported this morning, where the figures are 10.9 per cent, but that is overall. When will all those universities meet that target? If you look at the data that we have presently, four of the universities—Robert Gordon's, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and St Andrews—have never reached 10 per cent in the previous 10 years, so what work will the Scottish Government be doing to encourage those universities to meet that target and deliver on that, particularly for students in that category? You are correct to say that the figures that were released today show that we are at a historic high for those who are coming from the most deprived communities, but we are by no means complacent about that because we are by far still short of the targets that we have set, both for higher education in general and for each institution. Every institution is coming from a different starting point. Some of them will find it more challenging than others, but they are all obligated to reach those targets and they have all signed up to it. Now, there are some aspects that will be easy for them to be able to put into place. There will be some aspects that will be more challenging. I think that that was one of the very important reasons why the commission report suggested that we did have an independent commissioner that can drive that forward, independent from government and will be able to challenge both the government and the institutions to do that. Asking for a timescale about when each individual institution will be able to reach that target, I would not be able to give for each institution, but we have set that target for each of them to reach that 10 per cent and all the sector is signed up to it. We will very much work towards the establishment of that becoming a reality. We fund widening access places, but I go back to one of the points that Russell Gunston made in his evidence about that being an attitudinal and cultural change that is required within higher education, and that will require a greater step change than we are seeing at the moment at a greater pace. For some institutions, that will be challenging, but they are obligated to do so. I just finally ask that if they do not meet that target. I know that it is by 2021, and that is five years from now, but my friends were interested in carrots and sticks today. I mean, if they do not meet the target, what would be likely to do? Would it be thinking about funding arrangements and making adjustments there, or just exactly what would it be? Because we have to be serious about this. This is an equalities committee. We want to see progress on this, and we do not want to be sitting here another five years with the same messages. What would we think about doing to make sure that we deliver that target? I fully appreciate that we need to deliver the target. That is an important priority for the Government and for the education ministers in particular. There are carrots and sticks to this approach. We already fund widening access places. We have a number of policies in place to support that, but we will see over time whether that needs to change. For some institutions, as I said, it will be easier than others, and we will have to look at the different outcome agreements that we have and the different arrangements that we have in place for those universities. However, I hope that the committee can be in no doubt about how serious the Government takes this as a political priority and how passionate the commissioner will be to drive this forward as well. Good morning. It is a question from this morning as well. We are saying that we want equality for everyone, especially in the application process, to get into universities. What we do not—we had a witness in who was a BSL user who said that he found it very difficult to complete his application in written English because it is not how he communicates with people. When we are looking at personal statements, can there be an opportunity for those personal statements to be made, either using BSL or in other forms such as FIDU, for people who have got other disabilities? That would make it a fairer process for people to get into university courses. The cabinet secretary has already mentioned some of the statutory requirements that are on the universities, and applications are very much an important part of that. We simply cannot have a process that is, by all means, closed to certain parts of the population because of the language that they use. The application process needs to be open to all. I read with great concern that the personal statements and some of the witnesses that you have had forward from you about their difficulties of filling in the application process, but they also staged before that about not even feeling that it was for them that they should bother trying to apply. There is a cultural change that we need to do within our schools, not just within the universities but within the schools, within careers advice and a systems change that we have to look at to ensure that disabled pupils, when they are still at school, feel supported and encouraged to know that they can apply to the universities, but that the universities fulfil the obligations to ensure that that application process is open to all. Maybe just to add, this Parliament is well aware that BSL by law has to be treated and respected as a minority language. In terms of the overall public sector and general equality duties, we have to be very proactive and flexible about how we make sure that we turn words into actions. I will point to a couple of specific actions in relation to higher education from the disability delivery plan. One is that the student awards agency will work in partnership with disabled students and stakeholders to deliver an increasingly accessible application process. That should include a range of methods of enabling people to communicate and improve advice and guidance in and around that area for all students with additional support needs and, in particular, students with a disability. From 2017, the Scottish Funding Council said that its outcome agreement guidance, which is mentioned in the disability delivery plan, will require colleges and universities to produce an access and inclusion strategy that will define their inclusive practices. That is about being quite specific again about what you will do to reach your aspirations. On the back of that, how would we measure that? How will it be measured? Again, that is part of any outcome agreement process that the plan is clearly articulated. It is helpful if it is as specific as possible, so it is therefore easier to measureable. It needs to be published in any evaluation or progress report so that there is transparency. In terms of the balance between carrots and sticks, it is very festive, convener. We could change it to mince pies and snowballs, if you prefer. It is important that we need to be keeping an eye on the ball considering our options, both in terms of carrots and sticks, as we move forward. Carrots and sticks are not just for Christmas. At the end of the day, we need to be focused on what will work. As a Government, we have the right to consider on a case-by-case basis what sanctions would be helpful in moving a particular agenda forward. One of the other aspects that we are looking into is having discussions with the UKAS about the application process from its point of view. Between the different stakeholders that the cabinet secretary is pointing to, there are discussions on going, particularly on the issue. I hope that that gives the member some reassurance that those discussions are on going. We are looking to ensure that, particularly with the legislation that has gone forward in Scotland with BSL, we have a process that fulfills those obligations. Those discussions with the UKAS can continue. The other side of the argument that Annie Wells had brought up this morning is about exams and being able to do exams in BSL if English is not your first language. I hope that that would be something that you could add to your extensive list. The predecessor of the Equal Opportunities Committee in session 4 commended equality impact assessments. I have to say that I have a bug about equality impact assessments because they are only as good as the quality of the information contained therein. I suppose that our question is how the quality impact assessment process is used to ensure that anything that is contained in the draft budget does not then have a negative impact on the equalities programmes going forward. In terms of a broad approach in terms of our equality budget process, it is something that we have gained considerable experience on now. This is the eighth year that we have included as part of our budget process the equality budget statement. We are helping that process by independent people. That is not just internal government people. COSLA, academics and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation are involved. I agree that equality impact assessments are dependent on the quality of information and the precision of information that is contained in them. Some stakeholders would say that Scotland is a world leader in the process, but I have absolutely no doubt that as we progress, it is a process that has to evolve, it has to be refined and we have to learn from the experience of doing it in the past and apply it to the future. I think that that exhausts our evidence to this morning, right on the button for timing, because I know that you have questions in the chamber soon. Just at the end of the session, we are obviously the focus of this inquiry is about the budget and how the money is spent and the outcome of that money being spent and whether it actually works or not. Obviously, that is the very narrow focus of this inquiry, but the broader focus of the committee around equality, duties, human rights and a rights-based approach. There may be elements that have arisen from the evidence that we have taken that we would pursue in a wider context. Are you all okay for us to continue to write to you to seek clarification or information and advice on some of that work? I am always happy to oblige, convener, always. Indeed. Thank you both for your attendance at the committee this morning. We really appreciate your attendance here this morning, so thank you very much. That allows us to move on to agenda item 3, which is scrutiny of the draft budget, and we will take that item in private. I will now close this session of the committee.