 Good morning and welcome to the first meeting in 2018 of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee. I'd like to remind members of the public to turn off mobile phones and any members of the committee using electronic devices, so access committee papers should please ensure that they're switched to silence. The first item of the agenda is a declaration of interest. Claire Baker was appointed to the committee on Wednesday in place of Lewis MacDonald, I would like to warmly welcome Clare to the committee. I am sure that the committee will also like to join me in thanking Lewis Macdonald for his contribution to the committee since the start of the parliamentary session when he has been deputy convener. I would like to invite Clare Baker to declare any interest relevant to the remit of this committee. Thank you, convener. I do not have any relevant interest to declare to the committee. Thank you, Clare. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener and, as Clare Baker is the party's nominee to the committee, do we agree that she will be deputy convener? Our third item of business today is a decision on taking agenda item 6 in private, our members agreed. Our next item of business today is a panel discussion on the Erasmus programme. This part of the meeting will be broadcast on Facebook Live and I would like to welcome anyone observing today's meeting from Facebook to the public gallery. I would also like to welcome the witnesses today. Jackie Colleen, director of the British Council in Scotland, Emily Beaver, the senior development officer with YouthLink Scotland, Luke Humberstone, president of NUS Scotland, Marion Sporing, senior lecturer at the University of Dundee and Daniel Evans, who is the centrehead of commercial and marketing of West Lothian College. Thank you all for attending this morning. Many members of the committee will already be familiar with the Erasmus programme in different ways. Indeed, I believe that several members of the committee have already participated in the Erasmus programme. We were very pleased that the Jack Kane centre hosted our business development today last year and told us a lot about the Erasmus programme. There is a great deal of positive feeling towards Erasmus, and that is one of the reasons why we were keen to find out more. To give different participants the opportunity to let the wider public in Scotland know more about Erasmus and tackle some of the questions about what the future of Erasmus is in the context of Brexit. I am aware that you all represent very different approaches to Erasmus. Perhaps it would be helpful to start off with talking about what your particular organisations do in relation to the Erasmus programme. Who would like to start? Jackie, would you like to start? Yes, I am happy to. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you for the opportunity to come and share what we think is an incredibly important story about Erasmus Plus and its contribution in Scotland. The British Council is the UK's organisation for international cultural relations and education opportunities, along with a chorus where the national agency for running the Erasmus Plus programme in the UK, and I have done that since 2014. Hi, thanks for having me here today. I am representing YouthLink Scotland, where the national agency for youth work in Scotland. We are a membership organisation, so we have members from organisations that you will recognise such as Scouts and Girl Guiding, Duke of Edinburgh, as well as smaller, more local level youth work organisations. We are obviously representing and talking today about the youth element of Erasmus Plus. Thank you. Luke. Hi, I am Luke Humberstone, the president of the National Union of Students, so we represent all of the students across Scotland. I hope that we will be able to tell you a little bit about some of the experiences that students have had on Erasmus. My name is Baron Sbirring. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you. I am the chair of UCMLS, the University Council for Model Languages in Scotland, and we represent Model Languages departments in sections and universities in Scotland. We work, of course, in all our institutions, but also in collaboration with teacher training with schools, with SILD, Scotland's national language centre, to promote Erasmus, and through that, of course, language learning and intercultural experience, so I can talk about that. Thank you. Daniel. Good morning. My name is Daniel Evans from Westlothian College. I am responsible for the international programme at the college. I am here today just to tell you about the experience that we, as a college, have had with Erasmus Plus and how we have used it as a valuable tool to raise retention and attainment rates amongst our learners, as well as provide more opportunities to those with fewer opportunities. Thank you very much. I will pass on to Claire Baker now. Thank you, convener. I was interested in the figures over the past year that we have seen the funding coming to Scotland increase from £16 million to £21 million if the witnesses had any views on what has led to that success, what factors might be involved in that. Following on from that, if you have seen so far any impact on the decision to leave the EU, if that has any impact on either institutions bringing forward applications or students deciding to apply for the programme. That is just to all witnesses. I can talk a little bit about the figures if that is okay. We were very much delighted to see that uptake growing over the past year. It is the 30th anniversary of the Erasmus programme, and so there has been a bigger profile for the programme overall and an increased budget in this year. We think that that has probably increased the profile of it and has enabled us to get that message out more broadly. We also do think that there is a continuing and growing appetite for international exchange in all its forms throughout the whole of the country. I can probably add something to that as well. I know that we are in the middle of a two-year application at the moment. Our application is due to finish in 2019, so normally we would not apply again this year. However, we are going to apply in January for another two-year one, because this is the last year that the British Government will guarantee the funding for Erasmus Plus. What we will do is to backload all the mobilities into 1920, so we are able to continue until 2020. However, it is a lot of extra work that we have not planned for, because we are in the middle of organising mobilities, so it is a bit of a strain on us to do that. Our partners are very anxious about our future involvement in the programme and our partnerships with them, because they are similar institutions to us. We organise all our own mobilities and we reciprocate, so they are very worried about losing a key partner in the UK. I think that that is our two main concerns at the moment. I will just briefly show other questions. The papers that we received give us a breakdown for the £21 million in terms of where the money went—universities, schools, etc. The increase was a particular sector that benefited from that increase, or was it fairly even across the board? I think that other colleagues will pick up on some of the broader issues, but the way in which they run the project is unique to the way in which they run in Scotland. It seemed that they had a different model in terms of the time spent abroad, the focus on encouraging a more inclusive approach to the programme. Is that unique to West Lothian within Scotland, or are there other institutions that have taken forward a similar model? We have seen more diversity in the way in which the programme is delivered. I am sure that others will want to come in on that, but it is a very diverse programme, so it has three key actions, as you know. It enables different kinds of mobility, exchange and co-operation, but within each of those three key actions there are a variety of approaches. Organisations range from voluntary organisations, youth work organisations through to youth groups, colleges, schools and universities. We see a great range of approaches in how that happens. Some institutions establish and maintain long-term links with partners over a number of years. Others will grow new ones at different times. West Lothians is a particularly good example of how they have approached it and the outcomes that they have achieved for their students are fantastic as a result of that, but we see similar, if not identical, approaches across the country. I will add something to that. It has been especially important for teacher development, especially to support the 1 plus 2 language policy in schools, because Erasmus Plus programmes support the training of teachers not only through the first degree or initial teacher training, but also in the professional development of language teachers. There has been a growth in programmes to some extent to support and facilitate the 1 plus 2 policy, and that is also an area of concern in general that linguists have, that Erasmus Plus is essential not only just for universities, but for the whole sector, because we need graduates, but we also need people in vocational training. We need better trained teachers, so it is really an interlinked issue in community education. That was the point that I really tried to address in my paper that we need Erasmus Plus is essential and that it needs to tie in with all educational sectors. If we lost this, this would be a major disaster, I would think. I think that adding on to Marian's point, from our perspective we agree that Erasmus Plus is a really great way for youth work practitioners themselves to embark on training and professional development opportunities. We have certainly heard anecdotally through our members that people are now using those opportunities and really going for them when perhaps they would have been potentially a little bit complacent about applying or thinking that they would maybe apply the next round, but because of Brexit looming and the uncertainty that they really are going for those opportunities, youth link itself as an organisation has been running a project over the last few months around unlocking the potential for Erasmus, so providing applicant support for youth work organisations, many of which are applying a very small, don't often have, the administrative capacity or potentially the know-how or experience of doing these type of applications before, so we were really in that support mode helping them to apply and have seen a really positive increase in those interested in applying for the fund. We have a supplementary from Richard Lockhead. Emily, it's really great to have you represented here today from youth link, particularly in the year of young people. I'm really interested to hear how Erasmus has actually helped you to train people in order to deliver educational and sporting opportunities. I wonder if you'd be able to talk us through some examples that Erasmus has given to people in order to allow young people to actually access, for example, more sporting and educational opportunities. Yes, so obviously as the committee knows and was already mentioned about the visit to the Jack Kane community centre, so that's a really good example from our perspective of working with young people with fewer opportunities to really broaden their horizons, and we think that that's really quite holistically moves into that education field in attainment and talking about wider achievement. I think, as Jackie had mentioned, the programme's so diverse that actually near enough any project that's happening that has Erasmus funding does contribute to those aims that you were talking about. For example, we know that a lot of the large football clubs have taken Erasmus money. That's not necessarily the youth work that they're doing, but they're working with younger players to improve employability skills, language learning, understanding of diversity, for example. There are some really excellent projects that five council have run around young offenders' employability and improving that by again working with those practitioners to inform that. There are projects all over Scotland from a range of different sources that are working towards those goals. I think that it's really great that you mentioned the year of young people because it really contributes to that core aim of why a YP of helping young people to shine globally and to have a say in matters that affect them. We know that that's obviously a fundamental right for young people. Furthermore, Erasmus Plus really contributes to achieving a lot of the frameworks that we have here in Scotland, whether that's developing a young workforce or it's curriculum for excellence. It really touches on all of those areas and helps to achieve those. Tandwil Scott, did you have a supplementary? Thank you. I think that it's 2.3 million euros that were spent on the Erasmus programme in schools in the last financial year. I mean, I know, but could you just say what the benefits are for youngsters from Scottish schools going overseas particularly through the programme? The funding that goes into schools goes in a number of ways. For example, teacher development and training. As Marion mentioned, a lot of language teachers will improve their pedagogy and develop their professional development and their networks across Europe and, indeed, beyond through Erasmus Plus. It's a main source of funding for that. It's possibly one that's less understood when people think about the Erasmus programme. Teacher development and teacher training is not the first thing that comes to mind, so one of the things that we're keen to ensure is that people do understand that it has that benefit, as well as mobility opportunities for young people. Many schools themselves are involved in exchange programmes or in co-operation programmes from projects where they are looking at, for example, climate change or innovation or STEM. Erasmus Plus enables them to have partnership and co-operation and some mobility with partner schools across Europe in the main. It does work at every level, at the pupil level, at the teacher level and at the whole school level as well. Are secondary schools from Scotland been overseas with pupils in the last year? We have the figures from 2014 to 2016, so we know that 11,168 pupil students and young people in that period went. We don't have the 2017 figures yet. How many schools were that involved? Do we have a breakdown on that? We have—I think that I would have to double check that for you. I think that we have around 550 schools. Is the figure that I've got here? Just to get a sense of scale of how many schools are using Erasmus to overseas. I think that it's also worth noting that not only is going overseas really beneficial as part of the programme but also bringing international young people here to Scotland. We know, again, for a lot of our youth work organisations, that they do a lot of exchanges that way, so young people from across Europe come. For example, Royston Youth Action in Glasgow did a scheme last summer where they brought young people here. The language learning and understanding of others' cultures was just the same impact as if those young people had gone abroad, so I think that that's worth mentioning as well that that's a really valuable part of the programme, too. Before we move on, apologies to Martin, but it's possible. I just wanted to say that there are also lots of projects that maybe are not so clearly visible. So, for example, universities and schools working together as sectors. We have a project together with SILD, the National Language Centre, that university students who are going on Erasmus exchanges are actually working with schools in Scotland. They meet before they go on exchange, while they are on exchange, they are writing blogs, they are exchanging via Skype and they are visiting schools afterwards. So, there are many, many ways how this impacts without actually being even clearly visible in the funding application. So, we are really trying to make the most of the most benefits of all these different opportunities. Thank you. Yes, I was very struck by West Lothian College's paper where you say that every single FE learner in West Lothian College now has an opportunity to apply for Erasmus, and that would include people studying motor vehicle maintenance and hair dressing and childcare and things that perhaps a general public wouldn't normally associate with Erasmus, but it must make a big difference in those areas of education as well. Absolutely. We started in 2015 just with a number of sectors, and I was getting requests from centre heads in other areas when I will get students going to get a chance. We made sure for the 2017 application, we worked really hard to source partners across Europe that did vocational training specifically and had a good reputation, as we do, for finding good work placements and good outcomes for their learners in that particular sector. So, we were able to source eight partners covering 10 different sectors, plus a few side sectors. For example, our business students go to Cronchevier, our twin town in France, but we can send our travel and tourism students on that one, too, because the kind of placements that that school organises over there are the same. Our sports and fitness students and our childcare students go to the same organisation in Italy, and our construction students go to a college where we've built a really strong relationship over the last few years in Spain. We've worked all over Europe to find the best placements. The motor vehicle students go to Sweden, the town of Kalmar, and we receive their students as well. There's great relationships built between the teaching staff, between the students, we organise cultural events, it's a whole culture in ethos, and it brings a different dimension to our college. It feels really vibrant when you're in there, it's got a European feel to it. There's always things going up, we've got flag poles up, we fly the flags of the countries that are in the college that week, and they change every week and we've got flags from all over the world now, and our students are getting a completely different experience to the one that they encountered at school. A lot of our learners didn't have a great school experience and they're coming into college and they're just experiencing that their horizons are lifting, they're looking beyond Friday and they're looking at what they're going to do next year or in their future lives, and when they come back from mobility, we just encounter different young people and it's just amazing, it's what keeps me going because although I'm head of commercial, there's no money in this because the funding is tight, but the difference that it makes to the young people's lives is just amazing. Mary Goodgeon, thank you convener. I just really wanted to pick up on a couple of points on the back of what Rachel Hamilton in Tavish Scott had asked. Jackie Eid initially talked about the diversity and I was glad to hear Emily mention about the football clubs and some of the sheer range of projects that Erasmus covers, because I do think that people generally tend to think of universities and that being the maybe way that we hear about Erasmus, because I know that East of Scotland European consortium have done a lot of work trying to actually build that picture of all the ways in which all the different bodies that take part in the Erasmus programme and particularly our local authorities as well and through nurseries. You talked about the teacher training too. One thing I would like to ask is that Emily, I know that you've been part of co-ordinating the Keeper Erasmus Plus campaign and it's just in terms of where do we go from here? Has there been any engagement with any bodies that you're aware of or are you part of any engagement directly with the UK Government at the moment as to what will happen in the future and do you have any sense of where they're looking to go? Yes, so thank you for mentioning the campaign, that's really good. For those who may be unfamiliar, YouthLink Scotland are leading a UK-wide campaign called Keeper Erasmus Plus and that's a partnership across the Erasmus Plus programme, so with lots of other sectors and partners include NUS, SCVO, the national youth agency, UK Youth British Youth Council, Scottish Youth Parliament, Young Scott, Leonard Cheshire Scotland, YMCA Scotland, Carers Trust Scotland and we have lots more people who are talking to us about becoming partners and for me again like you said that's really opened our eyes, we're obviously as an organisation focused on the youth work sector but looking at the difference that all of these organisations have said so for example I've been really moved by the health and social care impact of Erasmus Plus through for example the European Voluntary Service volunteers that are working in Leonard Cheshire disability and really helping disabled people in Scotland to live a really fulsome life and and hopefully become a career for them to work in that style of work. We don't have direct contact with the UK Government at this point in the campaign, we're hoping to move in that direction like I said with all of the partners that we've got, the lobbying efforts and talking to different elected members is really wide-ranging so we know that for example the British Youth Council have really been talking to politicians down in London that they're already in touch with so we're moving in that direction it's obviously a lot of work for everybody on top of what we're already doing but I think we're really fuelled by the stories of people who've benefited from the funding and that's really driving us to continue. I don't suppose if anybody would be able to help with this next point obviously I mean there are different examples who see third countries that can be part of the Rasmus Plus programme but in terms of I mean we've heard a bit about the model that they have in Switzerland so it is like a parallel programme that they have. I don't know if anybody has any details on how that programme actually works and just some of the finer points of that and for other partner countries that are part of the Rasmus Plus how does all of that operate? I think being part of the Rasmus Plus programme would be the ideal scenario that we would all be looking for but what are some of the other options and some of the other programmes and how do they actually work? Happy to start on that if that's okay. I should say that for the British Council our position is that we believe that the UK should seek to remain within the Rasmus Plus programme it's the biggest and most successful mobility and exchange programme in the world and its benefits are multiple at every level. If we were to not be part of it in the future then we would need to create something we believe that tried to recreate all of those benefits of participation and we're very keen that everybody understands what those benefits of participation are for everyone. We do know that Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and EU candidate countries like Turkey, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia do participate fully in the as programme countries in the Rasmus programme. They have required to create their own bilateral arrangements then with the with the Rasmus Plus and then to make a financial contribution into the programme so it is possible for non-members to participate in the Rasmus Plus programme but our starting position would be that it would be better to remain in it and negotiate from there if we can. The programme for 2021 onwards has begun to have development at the moment. The national authority in the UK is the department for education and in our national agency role as the administrator of Rasmus Plus, the British Council has fed into the early stages of development around the kinds of themes that the next programme might want to take on board. We'll continue to do that to the point that we're able to as that programme's developed. I understand if you're not able to answer this but do you know anything about the particulars of the programme that they have in Switzerland in particular and how that operates? We have a little bit more further information. The SPICE briefing that you have already received mentioned about the higher education element of the Switzerland's parallel programme. It also runs other branches of the project as in the same kind of form. The youth aspect, for example, we reached out to Movisha, who are the national agency in Switzerland, and they said that the challenges that they've experienced include negotiating complex bilateral agreements in order to maintain the European programmes and being excluded from the international network and further development for the EU programme for education. They expressed to us that this is an interim solution for them. It is not a long-term sustainable piece of work. It really is temporary. There is more information in our written submission on that, if you would like more information. There is extensive information in the written submission that I think is important to tease out into what struck me is that there are programme countries and there are partner countries. You might want to explain a little bit more about that. My understanding from the written submission is that the programme countries were members of the EU, members of the EU and countries that were moving towards membership, but everyone else was a partner. I suppose that the difference is the ability to shape and influence the programme, the priorities and the eligibility, what it will look like as opposed to being on the fringes. Participating from the outside in would be the headline way of just describing that. That is the main consideration for us for thinking about that for the future. If the UK becomes a partner country, I think organisations like Westlothian College would be excluded from participation because we would no longer be able to do bilateral exchanges with the partnerships, with the partners that we built up relations with, we would be excluded from that aspect of the programme. Jackson Carlaw. I understand the queue, convener. It is not a follow-up, but it is a separate point, so I do not know if you have somebody ahead of me. I am slightly interested in the administration of the programme by the British Council. Obviously, the British Council is the UK vehicle for participation. In Scotland we have a separate education system, and I am interested to know the administrative way in which the allocation of funds that Scotland secures is then distributed. Interestingly, when we were in Brussels last summer and met European officials, there was a very open view that, in so far as there could be, negotiating with the United Kingdom as the member state, the potential for any differentiated settlement that programmes such as Horizon 2020 and Erasmus were potentially of that ilk. I am interested to know, obviously, the British Council's view. The Prime Minister, I know that she has stated that she very much wishes to see the whole of the United Kingdom participate. However, in the way that the British Council is organised in Scotland and operates, and given that Scotland has a separate educational system, is it perfectly conceivable that, in a scenario where a United Kingdom participation had not proved possible, for Scotland, given that administrative infrastructure, to be a partner in Erasmus in its own right? I think that that would probably have to be a matter for government. The national authority for the whole of the UK is the UK Government and the Department for Education within that, and we are the managing agency alongside IKORUS. Within that, we obviously work across the policy differences and the reserved and devolved areas of competence across the whole of the UK, and I think that Erasmus Plus has been successful in working within the grain of the differences across the whole of the UK. Any future arrangement would be a matter for governments in terms of being managing authority or a national authority for a future programme. I appreciate that, but I am also trying to establish in my own mind how practical you believe the infrastructure that you have in place in the way that the programmes are managed in Scotland would be in the event that Scotland was seeking to participate in its own right, where that was ultimately the only option that was open to us. I think that if Scotland were able to, in any way, either as part of the UK or in another form able to participate in the programme, we would work to ensure that we were able to service that and meet those needs. I do think that those aspirations that colleagues have talked about at every level are very strong here, and I think that there is a very strong appetite to continue and to make sure that the benefits at every level are not lost. If you are asking if the British Council would be willing and able to support that, I would just have to say that we would obviously do that within the overall structure. I am not advocating that at this point, because the Prime Minister has made very clear that she hopes to see the whole of the UK participate. However, it was an interesting dynamic of the exchanges that the committee had when we were in Brussels, and I was just interested to participate in it, to pursue it with representatives here, too, to have a greater understanding. Travel is absolutely integral to the Erasmus Plus programme. As much as there are levels of involvement even for countries far out with Europe, the core of Erasmus activity is between countries that have existing freedom of movement arrangements as part of the EU and the wider economic area. On the UK's current trajectory, freedom of movement is a right that we are going to lose. If the UK was to still maintain some level of engagement with Erasmus Plus but without freedom of movement rights for our citizens, what impact would that have more broadly, and what impact would it have for your organisations? If I may start. Obviously, being part of the EU is not a prerequisite for being part of Erasmus Plus, but, as we have seen from the example in Switzerland, when freedom of movement or immigration rules are changed, it does make it much more complex to develop those bilateral agreements with individual countries. We would be concerned that there would be a lag in being able to negotiate that new arrangement so that students would lose an opportunity to be able to go and travel to these other countries. I think that it was really clear from the spice briefing and certainly the research that we have done that it is very difficult to get a full picture of what the agreement with Turkey looks like, for example, when we know that it would perhaps look quite similar to that model. Though I did find that the letters that were in the meeting papers very interesting to see a little bit of an insight into that relationship, our guess would be that it would look more similar to their model, so it would be great if someone could get hold of what that agreement really looks like in detail. For universities as well, of course, it would be a major concern for us, because we are relying very heavily, not only in language departments in general, on exchanges through Erasmus Plus and also on staff and also in the wider teaching sectors. As I mentioned in the briefing paper, universities in the UK but also in Scotland have signed up to double exchanges. If we don't have that, because most of our students actually go through Erasmus Plus, so it would be a disaster for both for the academic, social and internationalisation of the content, but also for the experience of our students and of our staff and for research. My own personal view is that the way that the final decisions that are taken and the way that the UK deals with freedom of movement will have direct impact on our ability to stay in the Erasmus Plus programme as a programme country based purely on the Swiss experience and what happened to them when they tried to restrict it. For your college, as it stands at the moment, I assume that the overall majority of your engagement with the programme will be with countries for which we have freedom of movement arrangements through EU membership. The international credit mobility dimension of the Erasmus Plus programme institutions such as the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow have significantly extended beyond Europe, for example, into South America. It is possible within that framework, within the current programme, to go further afield from Australia as well. The Swiss experience has been mentioned a few times. People might not necessarily be aware of the history and background to that. I wonder if someone, perhaps Jackie, could explain basically what happened in terms of Switzerland and Erasmus when they withdrew from freedom of movement. So my understanding and I thought your spice briefing actually was quite helpful. How often perhaps we could get it on the record? So, within Switzerland, there was a decision to restrict freedom of movement, which raised questions around how it would continue to participate in Erasmus Plus, which is contingent on accepting the EU's freedom of movement rules. So the 28 EU member states and the other EU countries all accept freedom of movement as members of the single market. So when Switzerland, as I understand it, introduced those restrictions, it then had to negotiate a separate or try to negotiate what they have described as an interim, is that the word that they have used? An interim bilateral arrangement to allow them to participate in the scheme, which added cost and complexity to the programme overall and made it far more cumbersome for Swiss participants in the programme. That is probably a headline summary. I don't have a very great deal of detail on how that filtered down to institutional level or to schools or participating organisations. My understanding is that it will have acted as a disincentive for application because it made things more cumbersome and increased the timescales for everybody who wanted to apply, as well as the actual stages that people had to go through. I think that youth links Scotland and their submission specifically ruled out the Swiss model, saying that it just wasn't appropriate. Like we said, we reached out to the Swiss national agency Movisha and they expressed to us clearly that they found this to be an interim programme, not one that they wished to remain part of longer term. They wished to be a part of the wider Erasmus Plus programme. In fact, I believe that that is what the Swiss Government is hoping to achieve in the next seven years of the Erasmus programme. Stuart McMillan Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I studied through an Erasmus Socrates programme some years ago. I went and read through the papers. It certainly took me back to some pleasant and happy experiences that I had going through that particular scheme. A few questions regarding the papers that we have. First of all, I thought that Daniel Evans's comment this morning, just regarding looking beyond Friday, was probably one of the most salient points that I have heard in many committees, particularly regarding this Erasmus Plus scheme. It is certainly something that I am keen for all members to do, and I take on that point, because I think that it was extremely powerful. In terms of some of the questions, certainly to Jackie, in your submission, you spoke about that 55 current world leaders have been educated in the UK, and do you feel that that would be beneficial going forward? Do you have any evidence that that has been beneficial? I suppose that we are talking broadly about the soft power and cultural relations of the UK. Both the UK as a whole and Scotland in particular are renowned for the strength of their education systems and the fact that people have had a very positive experience when they come here creates an on-going positive association with Scotland and the wider UK throughout their careers. We would hope that, if we are able to continue in programmes such as Erasmus, the intake of foreign students and young people at different stages in their life will continue. That mutuality of exchange is very important for our success as a country overall, not just for our own young people to go out and gain that international experience but for us to be enriched by inward mobility and for people to take away that positive and lifelong enduring association with the UK beyond the time that they have had here. It is one of the ways that we would think that we contribute to the stability and prosperity of the country more broadly. Is it one question for everyone? There will be people who are looking at their future, people who are in school looking at their future, and there will be some people who are considering going to university and they want to go and study the languages and have that opportunity to go and study elsewhere. If there is that uncertainty now in terms of what is going to happen, how do you think that that will affect people in Scotland but also people elsewhere who are considering going to study in Scotland for a period of time? How do you think that that will affect the numbers of people coming to have that cultural exchange and educational exchange in three years, four years, five years time? If I may respond to that, because yesterday we held an event at the University of Dundee. It is one of many events where we had school pupils engaging with business leaders from all over Scotland and talking about the importance of language learning and intercultural exchanges and going abroad. Actually, not only for people who go to university but also people who go to college, people who become hairdressers or engineers and ITU and are talking about the skills gap, which is very wide and it is actually very important to bring our young people, make them aware that it is highly important that we have got these opportunities. So there is great appetite of learning languages in the university sector. For example, we see a situation that actually more people learn languages with a degree, for example engineers or lawyers or psychologists, for example, or tourism specialists, because they see that this is essential in able to, so you don't need to move at all, you can actually stay in Scotland, but you need to be able, as a shop assistant, as a tourist guide, as a driver, to be able to engage. So there is a great appetite and we have good evidence that people would like to take this and people like to go on Erasmus, but the questions we are being asked by pupils, by teachers, but also by potential applicants is for how long do we have this opportunity. They are extremely concerned and parents are concerned that this opportunity will be denied to them. So, I mean, we were trying to reassure and say, well, actually in our view, of course, after breakfast they need to engage and to go abroad and to learn languages is even more important. But of course we cannot give people the certainty, but there is certainly an awareness there also by the public to some extent that we cannot shut ourselves off that we need to have the opportunities to do so. But I think what is missing at the moment will be that maybe the impetus through the campaign actually to make people aware what it could mean if we have to withdraw from programmes like this. I think for young people considering the opportunities that are available for them in terms of Erasmus Plus, it's not just university, it's college, it's apprentices, and it's staff as well that have the opportunity at the moment. That uncertainty is obviously very worrying for people and the prospect of those opportunities not being available in the future would be a tragedy if it was lost. I think as well that it's maybe worth pointing out that a lot of the research that has been done with young people since Brexit about what their main concerns are and what they wish for their elected members to lobby on their behalf on Erasmus Plus has come up really strongly consistently in different research as one of the key areas as well as social justice really interestingly. So again that really close tie between social mobility and physical mobility around Europe as a really key issue for young people. I would just echo the points that fellow panellists have made about this being a really significant area of concern at the point that the UK is going to need to be even more international and have a strong base of internationalism within our young people in terms of their employability but also in terms of our economic and social prosperity. The need to be able to participate and exchange internationally has probably never been greater. We don't want young people to feel disincentivised from looking at careers or study choices or opportunities that have an international dimension because of uncertainty about the future because we need them to have those opportunities and that outlook even more than ever. That lack of clarity going forward will certainly have that negative effect for people to consider that opportunity. I must admit that when it arose for me to sign up to a course to go and study abroad I couldn't sign it quick enough to go and have that opportunity so I genuinely know how beneficial it is, that cultural exchange. At the final point in their jacket it touches upon something that Marion has put in her written submission, where you state that there is still widely spread assumption that everybody speaks English as a fallacy. Do you like to expand on that? Yes, I think that it is a very widely held belief that everybody speaks English and that you just need to go abroad and that it is okay if you speak English. I would like to point out that English is my second language, but it is not the case. There is research by the Council of Europe, the European Language Centre, by the British Council, which exposes this misconception and although English is taught as the first foreign language in Europe as well, it does not automatically mean that people have attained the skills that they can use freely because you only build this up if you then back it up, for example, with exchanges and that this is an obstacle in the mindset I think in society and that permeates I think many many different areas and saying well we don't need to do that because especially if you look at the employment market and that's not only for graduates for anything it is highly important that people have the flexibility the flexibility of mind and the global mindset and that is not just language skills or the ability to say a bit and it doesn't also not mean that somebody needs to be absolutely fluent speaker but actually the understanding and the willingness to to learn languages and picking them up at different stages of their life and that's why maybe lifelong learning also comes into that so it is highly essential that we develop this in in people. Also English as a language in the internet for example is actually going down it's one of the biggest ones but I think Mandarin and Arabic are catching up very quickly in Spanish so we cannot rely on the fact that everybody speaks English and in any case if you're talking about it is always much better if you can talk to people in their own language we cannot rely on that and UK English is only one variety amongst many different world Englishes and there's international English as a specific variety so we cannot just rely on this fact and most people as you will know in in a European in the European Union will also have learned two languages and certainly if you go to university it's expected that you have relatively fluent knowledge of two languages so these are actually the graduates who are coming to us in many cases in the universities and they already have two languages and English and learning more so our young people also have to compete on the global market but also within him and again yesterday at this business event we run with Sylt which is one of many events across Scotland several employers large employers spoke to us and they said they have difficulties in recruiting appropriate staff at all levels not just graduates and they have to look to the European Union at the moment to find people with the skills and a lot of these are selling skills marketing skills on the phone they just cannot find enough people who have got the skills. I was actually going to ask the panel how you'd like to see the future shape of a framework and how you're actually feeding into the negotiations all of you've talked about the importance of Erasmus and how much benefit we get from it here in Scotland and the value that you find in it and it's just a wide open question to see you know what we can do better perhaps what don't you like about Erasmus and how are you going to feed into the shape of things to come? We've been very involved, you think Scotland, we're involved in different elements with along with the national agency about shaping the current programme and that's certainly something that we would like to maintain going forward so our preferred option is that the UK would stay a programme country so have that full access and involvement in shaping the programme and the full range of opportunities that come along with that obviously we've already spoken about the campaign that we're leading on that's we feel our way of contributing to the negotiations as far as possible and hoping to shape those. The title of your campaign is exactly what we feel keep Erasmus plus you know it's so vital it's so positive that everyone who has been part of it thinks so. In terms of any problems there's possibly one around the some of the timings of the course in the apprentices side of things and perhaps that could be reflected on and if we are going to lose Erasmus plus then you know if we could replace it with something better in terms of the number of partner countries that will be involved or you know if we come up with our own programme that would be great but we've got one already so let's keep it. I would just add to that and I would just echo that it's really important that the UK stays in Erasmus plus if I was to change it though. Our FE learners which is probably about 65% of learners in the college go on a two week work experience overseas and they undertake a work experience unit while they're there and they work, live, experience what it's like to be in a foreign country are FE learners and about 30% of all of our students are FE learners. Under the current rules of the programme must go away for a minimum of three months and for a college learner who lives at home who might never have been overseas before it is just too long. It is geared towards universities who send their learners for semesters or for whole years. We need that three months to come down so that college FE learners can get an equivalent overseas experience. Could I just ask a supplementary on the point that you made about the timings not just about the work experience but my colleague was explaining to me because he has experience obviously of the Erasmus programme about the difficulties of the three year this very much talking about higher education in terms of the length of a degree. Is there any difficulties that you have found about the three year degree and the four year degree and the differences that that poses and how can we improve that if there was a difficulty? Maybe just specifically for a specialist language students this is an issue because they hear abroad is compulsory so that's a four year degree they have to do which is fully funded and if you take this is also a requirement for teacher training for entrance into teacher training so if this opportunity would be taken away this would be very very difficult for the students because it wouldn't be able to fulfil the requirement for entrance into teacher training and also this would have a major impact on their results. However there are also a number of students who are going abroad as part of a three year and four year degree because maybe we have a situation that although the majority of students study on a four year degree there are options to go on to a three year degree however the likelihood that people will go abroad then and can fit it into their study programme is going to be very much reduced because they're worried about their results and also the requirements degree requirements and professional requirements will be much more difficult to fulfil and it raises a lot more concern for students as well of course. Okay final point you mentioned about the number of the skills gap that we've currently got do you think that some tweaks in the Erasmus programme would increase employability well obviously employability opportunities are huge because it's proved that in this spice document that it increases people's chances of getting a job however how about looking at the retention that we have of the number of students that come from other countries and actually doing a job to actually keep them here to work and live in Scotland. I would think that that would also be a beneficial way to do so. I mean from the university's perspective in general I can say that actually a lot of students who have come to us maybe initially for for Erasmus semester or a year then continue to study and maybe to do their postgraduate degree here or to do another degree or then work work here. So I think that would be certainly something which would be beneficial to look at ways how this could be done also the opportunity to have teachers or people who could give their experience and share their experience here that is actually something extremely valuable and again if I may say so for the teacher training that is highly essential and again if you want to successfully support one plus two this is essential. If I may we don't have tracking data looking at the numbers of incoming Erasmus plus students who subsequently stay but we do have quite a lot of anecdotal examples of people who have come on Erasmus plus programmes who have come back either to work or to take on postgraduate study or develop develop careers and those links tend to be positive and and enduring. The other thing I wanted to emphasise was we've done quite a lot of employer research and tracking of our own UK and Scotland participants in Erasmus plus and we know that they are not just more employable but also they're more likely to both retain employment and progress into management and be more I suppose have a stronger career progression than peers who haven't participated in Erasmus plus programmes. The other area of concern for us would be looking at the programme as a whole and thinking about its reach into the whole of our society and all our communities so we do know that Erasmus plus is very successful for communities that have experienced disadvantage and we would be very concerned that if this opportunity were not to be available for disadvantaged communities what would replace that either in an interim period or beyond that it's possible that in other areas that gap might be met in other ways but we would be particularly concerned around young people in particular coming from disadvantaged communities should this opportunity not be available to them in the future. The last thing I would say is that we know it's not just languages, languages are fundamentally important and we do a lot of research into what the UK's language needs are going to be into the future and we are not doing as well as we could be but we do also know that employers very highly value international experience even if it's not from the point of view of being a linguist so having had an international experience be that on a work placement, a voluntary placement or a study placement is a differentiating factor when employers are looking for their future workforces. I know sorry just quickly anecdotally we welcomed a group of Spanish trainee chefs to West Lothian College a couple of years ago we put half of them into Glen Eagles and the other half into the Sheraton in Edinburgh for work experience placements after they'd spent a bit of time in our kitchens and some of them continued to come back and I believe one or two are still working I've come back to the country after their studies and work here all the time but when our students went to the Spanish college for the experience the story just grew arms and legs and ended up on the Spanish national news with our lecturer and students and you just wouldn't get that kind of exposure without this Erasmus Plus programme and the students were just absolutely buzzing about it as was the lecturer when they came back and we've got a really strong relationship with that overseas college now which will continue regardless of Erasmus Plus but Erasmus Plus was what made it possible. Thank you for giving evidence today and did you mention chefs there did you because Scotland's short of chefs is good to hear you're making a contribution to get more chefs to work in this country. Parliament had a debate in Brexit this week and it was sponsored by this committee the debate that took place a couple of days ago and one of the themes in the debate was the fact that the EU want a deal by November 2018 which is only a few months away so the UK Government clearly have a lot of work to do and I was just wondering what your thoughts were if you felt or had a sense that the UK Government were treating seriously the issues we've been discussing today around Erasmus. Who wants to go first? You're getting feedback or you're getting positive messages? The Erasmus programme obviously is just one of many although obviously all of us sitting here know that it has a really wide reaching and strong impact within all areas of our communities in the UK. It's obviously just one element of the programmes and we hope that the UK Government is really listening to people that are talking to them about the impact and really showing where it is making a difference and I hope opening their eyes to that so that it will be a prominent feature hopefully in this next stage of the negotiations where we'll really start to see some movement towards maintaining programme country status. The British Council have a very close relationship with the UK Government, so what feedback are you getting from them in terms of how they're responding to your concerns? For us it's in two parts. One is specifically feeding into the Department for Education as the national authority around the shape of a future Erasmus-plus programme beyond 2020 when the current one will conclude. We welcomed the Prime Minister's statement in December indicating participation and being underwritten up until 2020. We noted that education and cultural programmes were particularly highlighted in the Prime Minister's speech in that. We have specifically at every opportunity made clear the importance of programmes like Erasmus-plus, Horizon 2020 and Creative Europe in that respect. I'm making sure that the wider benefits, the depth of the programmes reach as well as the breadth of what it achieves for us are fully understood but I don't have any deeper insight into where that sits. It's ironic that it's the year of young people and we're talking today about a threat to Erasmus, which is a big benefit of EU membership for young people. I wondered if you had any thoughts on the fact that Scotland voted to remain in the referendum, unlike other parts of the UK. More so, young people voted to remain, and if you felt that Erasmus was an influencing factor and by so many young people voted to remain in EU referendum? Absolutely, and the work that we've done or have done since the Brexit vote has really shown to us that Erasmus was one of the key things on young people's minds, as was mentioned earlier, about looking forward to their futures and what opportunities they might or might not be able to access is certainly definitely up there in prominence of the issues that they care about. In the research that we've done with young people around the world but particularly here, around their attitudes to internationalism, we know that there is a huge appetite for it. Young people want to be able to travel, to have these experiences, to exchange and develop overseas. We think that that's really important that we listen to that appetite from young people, particularly in this year of young people where we can show how our young people can flourish internationally as well as at home. We're very strongly encouraging people to consider Erasmus Plus seriously and apply to it in this year for all of these opportunities. We would encourage everyone to not just think it's under threat in the future. We would be very keen to encourage people to take the opportunities that are available now and to apply across the range. There are application deadlines in February, April and October in 2018, and it would be fantastic to see as many institutions taking up those opportunities as possible. The final point is to say that I was interested in your comments about the importance of learning foreign languages in this day and age. Your message is that if we don't have a successor to Erasmus or continue to our membership of Erasmus and, given the Scottish and UK track record of not being the best countries at learning foreign languages, that that would be a setback for learning foreign languages? Definitely. Again, based on research by British Council and also by British Academy, if you look at the languages, which are the 10 most important ones, they are not necessarily the languages that are taught in all institutions, apart from French, German and Spanish, which is fairly well-cated. Also, if you then look at different factors like export, then suddenly Germany is at the first level or Mandarin. We need to have a diversity of languages, not just European languages. Again, it's a definition of what are the most important languages. There are community languages, there are heritage languages, British Sign Languages Court is also part of it, but it's not just the languages that are important or necessarily taught in the institutions. We need a diversity of languages. We can't just rely on just teaching one or two languages in school. We need to have the supply there and we also need, and that was the point that I was making, a strategic approach in Scotland, not just focusing on schools, but also on all sectors, the importance of business in colleges, in nursery, in adult education, lifelong learning and, I think, only that way we can address the issues because it's all linked together. Thank you very much, convener. I think that we all recognise the importance of the Rasmus Plus programme and, certainly, everybody here is looking for a way to maintain it going forward. However, we can't ignore the fact that that will be challenging, particularly around issues around freedom of movement, where we can see the direction that the current Government is looking to take. There are other opportunities in that the programme is currently under discussion for what it will look like post 2020. Given the situation in Switzerland and the challenges that have been there as well, does anybody have any insight whether they see any significant changes, the possibility of that happening to the membership criteria that there currently is that would maybe make a future relationship with the UK slightly easier? I don't. I'm afraid. Sorry. Does anyone think that there is any appetite? We, as a country, as we are going to the post-20 leaving, have particular issues with Rasmus. Do you see any other countries who are either trying to engage with the programme or are currently engaged with the programme where they are looking for similar flexibilities to be introduced if that is likely to be pursued? Not sure about flexibilities, but certainly a big movement in other EU countries at the moment is increasing the Erasmus Plus budget by 10. We are travelling on to try and keep it. They are trying to raise it tenfold. That highlights the significance of the programme for other EU countries that they see such value and benefit in it that they want to grow it even more. We know that the focus of the last or the seven years of this project has been diversity and inclusion and we know that research has shown that young people with fewer opportunities rate the programme more strongly than well-off young people. We know that that focus has been a good one and successful. It would be really interesting to see if they increase the budget tenfold of what that inclusion process and success rate would be like. I think that it is important that we are clear about this. As things currently stand, if we are going to be outwith the EA and we are leaving freedom of movement behind, we cannot be a programme member. It is just not possible. You are nodding your heads. The only alternative is that a UK EU mobility programme such as the Swiss have come up with which you have all said is not really what you want, but even that does not seem to be on the table. You are not given any indication that you are hearing that that has been discussed or anything. We just have to hope that sessions like this influence those who are taking the negotiations forward. I would like to thank you all very much for coming to give evidence today.