 Felly, dim ond ymgyrch, ac mae'n gweithio i gyd. Mae'n meddwl i'n gweithio i gael i'ch ein pannag y ddechrau llawn i'ch gael i'ch gael eu panhau. Mae'n cairol Barrestock, rwy'n hiad o adnysg ymddurol Aberdeen, mae Ammell Marta. Ac Duncann, ysgolafur ysgolafur, i gael i'ch adnysg ymddurol Strasgwide. and Kirsty Knox, who is Assistant Head of Recruitment Admissions and Participation Service at the University of the West of Scotland. Thank you very much indeed for coming in to see us this morning. I would like to open with a question about how each of your institutions fosters an atmosphere of inclusion both around admissions, provision within lectures and tutorials for students who are either BSL users or have other disabilities, and indeed how you foster that inclusion in the wider student experience. We heard a lot about how sometimes universities get it right in terms of support through lectures, but there is no provision around the more social aspects of the university experience for students. Perhaps Carol, you'd like to go first. Well, obviously my expertise is in the admissions and to do with applications, so I'm not directly involved with the registered student body or in terms of their overall health and wellbeing, but I know that at Aberdeen the student experience is very much at the forefront of what we do. There's more and more work going on to ensure that the student voice is heard and that the student's needs are met. The most recent appointment that I'm aware of is the university has appointed a mental health adviser, and they have just been in position since September 2017. That is part of an overall strategy and action plan linked to mental health and wellbeing of all our students. That individual is looking to implement and evaluate the current strategies that are in place, but essentially our students support, our staff within registry are linked very much with working with students on a daily basis. We, at the application stage, are obviously looking to get as much information as we can, but it's all linked to what we receive through the application process and through UCAS, and whilst UCAS are making amendments to the process and the questions that they are asking, we are still not at the mercy, but we are still having to follow what the questioning that UCAS can ask. They are also dealing with technology that needs to be updated, so whilst they have a landscape of change in place, it's not moving necessarily at the pace that's perhaps required. They have focused on the postgraduate journey ahead of the undergraduate journey. They have started work on that, but of course you can only get the data that UCAS actually asks of the applicants, and that's what we have to work with in admissions. That's one particular aspect, but that's up there for now. Just to carry on with what Carol was saying, we are at the mercy of UCAS. I sit on the UCAS Undergraduate Advisory Group and we were meeting two weeks ago down in Cheltenham, and yes, they have focused on postgraduate, and they do have initiatives for undergraduate, but I will be able to say that they are behind schedule. Any fixes or tweaks that we need to deal with BSL or alternative methods, they are not a quick fix. There was a lot of that at a lead time next week, and I'll go into UCAS practitioner's update and review, and the new chief executive is there to present and give us an update on where they are as an organisation in their development. We'll find out more next week, but they are behind schedule and initiatives that you had in the last 12 months. Is there anything that does come in terms of recommendation and putting into practice? It's not going to be a quick turnaround, and this will impact all UCI institutions. I'm coming at it from a different perspective to my colleagues in the sense that I'm from a disability support perspective. My colleagues in admission reflect similar sentiments as what Caroline Cursey have shared in relation to the challenges with UCAS, and potentially has been limited in terms of making progress or getting quick fixes within that area. Some work that has been happening at the University of Stratlid is we have been working with our recruitment and international officers in one section to look at the information that is being shared and disseminated to applicants at recruitment fairs to try and enhance that and enhance the profile of disability support provision in universities. I know I was involved in an awareness raising day among school guidance teachers generally from the west of Scotland, although it was open up Scotland wide, and it was very, very clear from those dialogues that there was limited knowledge among our counterparts within schools about the support available to students with disabilities in universities, and equally how students go about accessing the support. We do work with a very, very different model of support at universities to the additional support needs model that is in place at schools and colleges. We are trying to work with schools to make them to increase their awareness of that to get students more ready and prepared for university and the type of support that they will obtain at university. When we get students in, similar to what Carol had mentioned, one of our focus is at the moment is definitely student mental health. We have just recently launched a student mental health action plan within the university, which has resulted in a significant investment in resources within that area, and is also involved in the amalgamation of disability service with wider support and wellbeing services. We are all coming under the one umbrella so that we can better respond to the needs of this particular student group. In the previous session there was mention of it being mental health. It is wider than disability. There are a huge number of students who are experiencing mental health issues at university, but they don't meet the criteria to be recognised as having a disability under the equality act. We are working as an institution to try to better address the needs of the wider student population. Can I just press you a little bit further on the issue of the wider student experience in terms of practices your institutions deploy to go beyond lecture theatres and tutorials in terms of integrating people who might otherwise face exclusion in that social context of university? In our universities there is a number of initiatives currently underway. One of the most recent ones I have been involved in is we are working in partnership with the student unions to launch a student minds peer support programme that is targeted specifically at students experiencing mental health issues in our own operational practices within the university's disability service. When we are looking at the support requirements of students with disabilities, we are looking at their support requirements. It is not simply as you know attending lectures, what support do they need to enable them to access the student union, to access clubs and societies. What barriers is that going to present them with and how can we work with them to alleviate those barriers. We do take a much holistic approach. It is not just about the easy part in general. That is the most easiest thing to resolve is putting adjustments in for students to enable them to attend lectures and participate and succeed in the academic environment. That is only one aspect of university. We have students living in halls and we want to make sure that they are integrated and they have the same or comparable experience to all their other first year undergraduate and graduate colleagues irrespective of what additional needs they have. Can I ask Mary to come in now? Can I just ask our panel about the application process? We heard from them that we are taking evidence that the first barrier to access to higher university education is the application process because it is in one format. We heard evidence from one university that said that alternative formats would be considered where it was appropriate and suggested that it should be UCAS that makes changes to the application process. It is made at that level, not at an individual university level. I would be interested in your views on how open institutions you are to allow students to apply in different methods and whether you agree that it should be UCAS that does that. There are two application methods in the university. Predominantly, it is UCAS. We also work with agents and partners that are overseas. We have European partners as well who may come to study for a winter semester rather than for a full year, so they can apply directly to the university. Again, that is an online application form, but we do have more flexibility in how we can tweak and amend it till we turn to formats. It is not something that we have available at the moment, but we are exploring it. We have a new vice principal who is looking at the customer journey, the customer experience. He has come in the last nine months, so I am expecting some element of change. There is far more structure under UCAS than what we can and cannot do, but more flexibility in our own application systems. It is something that we are looking at just now. I would just build on what Kirsty has said. Essentially, as a member organisation with UCAS, you are under contract to ensure that your undergraduate applications are managed through UCAS. The applicant is not applying directly to each of the institutions. Their application is submitted to UCAS, and then the information is passed on. Obviously, the world is changing. We are looking at lots of different delivery types of education. It is not just about the on-campus experience. We have campuses overseas, we have distance learning arrangements, we have online learning. Yes, our undergraduate population applies through UCAS. Our postgraduate population will generally apply online. We have a lot more flexibility in terms of the questions that we can ask of those types of applicants. Interestingly, we have developed a significant online profile, mainly postgraduate level, for September 2017 entry. There has been extensive discussion in Aberdeen about the journey for the applicant and the need to ask the level of questioning that perhaps is asked through the traditional undergraduate and postgraduate. We are trying to recognise that the online learner has different needs, different requirements and the steps that they have to go through in order to become a registered student do not have to be exactly the same as it is for an undergraduate through UCAS. We are trying to streamline it and make it much easier and less questioning in terms of the questions that are asked or the procedure that they have to go through, because an online learner is probably never going to be on campus. Did you want to add anything? My response was very similar to Kirsty's in the sense that there are restrictions in terms of UCAS, but when we are accepting the standard, the localised application form for direct applicants to the institution, there is more flexibility in how those applications are received and there wouldn't be an issue with them being considered in an alternative format. Obviously, Kirsty, given the comments that you made previously about the length of time it takes UCAS to change, any change won't happen in the immediate future. In the last year at UCAS, they've got a new chief executive, she came in just in July, so the first time we'll meet her on Tuesday. They've had their marketing director leave, they've had their policy and staff leave as well, so there's a lot. The person I also worked on the content of the online application form has also left as well, so a lot of staff have extended UCAS in the last, I would say six months. At the meeting I was at, they had one of the directors in, don't worry, it's not a sinking ship, all is still well, everything's moving forward. There's some element of frustration. I attend that meeting with University of Edinburgh and we've been given a wish list from all Scottish universities of what we would like them to focus on and prioritise and we're still unclear actually what they have focused and prioritised on. So we're hoping we'll get more of a sense and choose to actually, this is the direction of where they're going and have a clear understanding of what the timescale is, because I had an understanding that by next year we'd have this simply and I'm really not quite sure, maybe 2019, and this is a slippage that's happened. I think I would just ask that of course UCAS, they have been criticised in the past before by universities when they've tried to bring about change without due notice, because when it's a technology-based change, each university and how they receive the data from UCAS will be managed differently with different systems, so there is justification for a long lead-in time. The other aspect, which is perhaps a delicate one in that Scotland as a voice in terms of the number of institutions in Scotland, we are kind of of about 16 in number. There are nearly 400 institutions who are members of UCAS and through the groups that the Scottish universities are part of on the admissions, we are very vocal in our views and our wishes and we don't like to be forgotten, but we are a small voice when UCAS are listening to the rest of their customer base and that includes applicants and schools as well as all the institutions south of the border. Can I just interrogate that revelation that we've had a massive change in senior management at UCAS? It strikes me that UCAS is part of the jigsaw here in terms of improving access and widening access. Is that a problem? Is this an organisation in distress and is that going to be a barrier to our efforts here? At the meeting I was at, we were comfortable with the fact that Claire wants to halt where we are right now and doesn't want to rush. She wants to get a sense of where they are as an organisation and then identify the key things they now want to work on. They might be behind schedule, but she wants to hope where they are and get real sense and involve all the petitioners and all the HEPs rather than ignoring our voice. She wants to work in partnership, put yourself a bit of a change, I would say. I think to UCAS, they have brought about a lot of change already. They have focused on different groups of their customers. They have, to some extent, improved the way in which the information is available to potential applicants. They have improved the systems that allow universities to promote the degrees and the information relating to the degrees. There is a huge investment going on behind the scenes in terms of their technology and their developments. I think that they have just hit a little bit of a stall at the moment and it is a pause, but I think that they are looking to progress with renewed vigor. I think that they have to get a mandate from the members and that will be through the annual update, which is next week, and further development at the conference. There is our annual conference in March. OK, thank you. I would like to bring in Gail Ross now. Good morning, panel. Thank you for coming along. Mary Fee touched on the applications process. When the committee took evidence on the topic, there were a certain number of people who said that there needed to be greater transparency in how applications were processed. Carl, you touched on the UCAS side of it. That included how contextual applications operate. Can you tell us a little bit about those? OK, so in terms of the contextual information, I mean obviously through universities, outcome agreements and our discussions with the funding council, these are constantly evolving. So there are additional fields of information, information that we are analysing within the applications. So yes, universities will present their minimum entry requirements. That is looking to give an indication of what you need to have in order to be considered, but there are other factors. I think universities are doing more and more to explain what those other factors are and how they are used or measured and assessed within the process. It is a journey that is not complete by any means. There will be more and more that can be said to give our audience more information, but obviously we are looking to get a sense of the experiences that an applicant has had today through their schooling, through wider issues. It is difficult because the information that is presented in the application is what we have got to go on. Telling the story can be problematic because some of that information can be very sensitive. Of course they are putting it into a great big UCAS system in terms of a personal statement or a reference. So I know that universities do a lot to engage with and do outreach work so that we are working with the schools directly through a lot of different environments. Aim for a uni at Aberdeen for the reach project to give applicants the confidence to talk to us or communicate with us off record so that we can marry that information with the application. We are trying to do more and more in our outreach work to get that message across with the extensive work that we are doing with schools so that we have all of that information. And to encourage applicants to declare and answer the questions as best they can in the UCAS application and as honestly as they can. So we can then enter into that dialogue. I think that admissions is much more now about a kind of continued dialogue. It is not just a case of taking an application and making a decision yes or no. There is engagement with applicants and schools and their advisers a greater way than it once was. It was never straightforward and it's even less straightforward now. Just really to add to that and it's probably one of the things just to emphasise is that we do a lot of work as well with the selectors when the applications come in and particularly to do and consider in detail students' personal statements and we know now that there is increased ever-increasing pressures on applicants to illustrate this really, really broad range of external experiences but a lot of people it's luck favourably for students to have had work experience or voluntary experience which for students with disabilities or applicants with disabilities that may not be tangible and particularly some applicants with more significant disabilities so for them to get their 2A's and 3B's or to get their 5A's or whatever that's the only thing they could do is to focus on their academic work so we've been working with academic selectors to take that into consideration that it's not just about personal statements and sometimes it's okay just to look at entry requirements and to contextualise approaches great and it is about considering things in context but I do think there's it's not just on applicants it's when students get in and you know students go on into employment there's so, so much pressure on them to do more than just obtain a degree which in itself is hugely challenging for the bulk of students irrespective of whether or not they have additional needs or disabilities so it's kind of making selectors aware of that and getting that to follow through into employment or is it another challenge? Okay, thank you. Of course, do you if you get anything to add? I mean, for UWS we're quite a different organisation and we've got quite a broad-based student population just other day we've got, I think, over 50% comes from SID 40 of our student population so we do have quite a wide, widening access agenda we've got an outreach team, student recruitment team who work very closely together but I'm sensing in terms of discussions this morning that it's slightly more that we could be doing in terms of our disability team as well enhancing the information that's certainly given out but we do have a strong sense and an outreach across the university and we work closely with our secondary schools and AFE colleges but yeah, so what do you have then? How do you think that or do you have any evidence of your individual institutions taking forward contextualised applications as the national BSL plan? I can just respond to it in terms of where our institution is with the BSL plan and it is, we're at the stage where it's up for discussion at our Equality and Diversity Strategy Committee meeting in a couple of weeks so this kind of we're at the early stages in terms of implementation but the recommendations from this report will be considered in detail when we're implementing the BSL plan. I was also going to ask what challenges that you see arising from the implementation of the plan that might be a, I don't know if it's an easier question to answer, more straightforward one to answer. I mean certainly I was given some information by our disability team and I think it was raised last time I was here in the chamber that the mention was made. The North East of Scotland, there is a particular challenge with regards to BSL interpreters. I think they describe it as a dearth of interpreters in the North East of Scotland and that presents a real challenge for students that would require those services if they're coming to study in and around Aberdeen not just at the University of Aberdeen but Robert Gordon at the college. That is of major concern and that will be something that our disability and our student support team will be taking on board. I think they have been attending meetings recently. They have been working with our Equalities Officer within our human resources section and they have made mention of a lady called Alison who is going to be working with both the FE College and the HE sector in the North East of Scotland to help to take that forward as well. That is one of our particular concerns. We have a member of staff that is training herself to become BSL and she has a video on the website under student support section and she has been engaging with each of our six schools and having a general welcome for each of the six schools. That has been discussed. We have also been working with a rich media company on our video content, on programme information, why come to UWS, virtual tours and we have a BSL slant for that as well. We do have lots of plans developing but we do have one video online just now in the website. I think for us in particular coming from a student support perspective I think probably one of the challenges is going to be getting the sector to recognise the BSL plan as something that extends beyond the mere support provision for BSL users within higher education. You know what is kind of looking at as a poster because it has been passed and I know from speaking to my counterpart to other institutions it is very much being perceived as something that's a kind of a student support issue whereby the fundamentals of the BSL act is to get BSL recognised as a language, it's a culture in its own right. Practically we'll have the same challenges as everyone else in terms of resources and the availability of sign language interpreters to bring some of this work forward but equally it's the recognition of it being something much broader. Thank you Gail. I'd like to pick up on that last point Anne and I was struck when you said earlier as well that the stage at which you are at in your institution in terms of the implementation of the BSL plan is that it's up for discussion. I think that there is clearly a tremendous amount of goodwill around BSL and an understanding that we should be doing more. It's important to recognise that it is an official minority language rather than just an equalities agenda. This is a culture in and of itself. Perhaps also I'm reflecting on Kirsty's remarks about the fact that you have one member of staff who is teaching herself. Do institutions need to do more to proactively recruit and train in-house translators to answer the challenge of the BSL plan? That was an easy question. How? And who? That's harder. I think the member of staff that we have and she's very keen and she wants to do more. But it seems to me that there's conflicting views within the organisation on priority and role and remit and I think unless we have a dedicated person that that is the role I think the confusion of the struggle will carry on. I'm hoping that's not just a UWS but that's what we certainly have feels like a conflict. We'll build it into your continuous professional development of lecturing staff or teaching staff. Or could you? I'm not aware but it's something we could. Yes. I invite you to take that. David Torrance. Good morning everybody. I'm going to go back to Brexit and the impact it will have on the university sector and applications and the possible loss of some of the European call to laws. Can I also ask about a loss of European funding and the trickle down effect that will have across the whole university sector? How it will affect? Well certainly I think we'll be finding when we go to our UCAS meeting next week we'll be getting some statistical information with regards to applications for the 2017 cycle. We had an informal UCAS meeting of practitioners on Monday and we got some advance information which would suggest that acceptancies to the Scottish universities has increased for 2017 entry and that is contrary to what has happened south of the border and that the increase in acceptancies to Scottish universities has predominantly been from Scottish domiciled based students. But of course Scotland operates in a different environment south of the border. There is no cap on the south of the border. Universities are free to take as many students as they want to and that's not the same situation in Scotland. There is a control on the overall population within the institutions and that has to be factored in. But essentially there is an expectation because it's already started to happen that applications from European Union applicants is on the decline. So we are seeing fewer applications coming into UCAS certainly at undergraduate level. And in terms of overall staffing in terms of overall funding all universities in Scotland will have that concern about the links that they have with the European other universities, other academic staff the access to the funding that's available through the European Union structure will all have an impact and I would suspect all universities are working at looking at the impact that this will have. We have noticed a few lecturers already leaving UWS and European lecturers coming back to their home country and it's not a significant number but maybe two or three as a result already. You did mention there about the loss of European funding and that impact on staff are you saying that it could be possibly staff jobs made me redundant because of the loss of European funding? I wouldn't say that necessarily I'm not party to that kind of information but I think universities will be concerned that they will not have full inclusion in terms of the developments and being at the table in terms of research activities because we're not part of the European Union. Thank you. Thank you David and on a different topic and we are coming up against our time but we certainly have time for annuals always. Very much convener, good morning panel. I was really encouraged to hear you speaking about mental health and making that more of a priority within the universities. Probably for me it's we know that people with who disclose mental health have one of the lowest outcomes. How are you looking to encourage the schools to get a mental health issue and are we looking at staff training as well so that there's more covers there all the time and not just at the admission stage or application stage? I had mentioned at the start that we have just launched a student mental health action plan and as part of that it's very much focused on students mental health and overall well-being, mental well-being and we recognise that it's fundamental that we flip things on their head because we know, we're encouraged in the fact that the number of students declaring mental health issues is increasing however we do know that it is significantly under reported. We know that many of them as I had said earlier don't equate having a mental health issue to having a disability and rightly so they shouldn't. So basically what we're trying to do is implement or have a new strategy whereby we're focusing very much on prevention and awareness raising. We're working very closely with the students union to implement a number of initiatives to try and work with the general student population. We know that the number is access and any of the support service not just disability counselling health services within universities while demand for these services from the students group is increasing we do know we're only getting a very, very small proportion of the numbers of students presenting with mental health issues. So we're doing a lot of work with the students union. We're also working with staff across academic departments. We plan to roll out, we've started a mental health first aid training programme which is going to be rolled out across across the whole university and we are working with academic departments in the very early stages but what we're hoping to have is we already have disability contacts within every department and we're considering extending their role to be disability and wellbeing advisers. We're at very early stages of discussion about this but it's to recognise that the bulk of students aren't coming near student support so we need to work with our academic colleagues and again the student population we know that students are more likely to tell their friends about challenges, their experience and as opposed to speaking to either an academic member a staff or a support service so we need to work with that cohort and upskill them to enable them to better support each other as well. Any further questions? No, that would be. I'm really encouraged that mental health has been taken seriously within the disability framework of the universities. Just a final question for me. We are interested as a committee in the review of student support which is expected but we're not excited on when that's likely to be forthcoming. Can you shed any light on this for us? Is it in terms of SNFC outcome agreements? Yes. SNFC were actually at UWS yesterday I wasn't parted to the meeting but I do know from a colleague although we haven't been given outcome agreements we've been given it's a ministerial letter of guidance and within that it talks about dissections and widening access, gender balance stem and part of the intensification. I think John Hem talked about earlier on so we haven't been given our full outcome agreement as yet but we are aware that it does give more content to what we've discussed at the committee. Thank you. Well I think that draws us to the end of our questioning unless any of my colleagues have any further follow-ups in which case thank you so much for your time and it's helpful to our consideration of this issue. Aware that there were sometimes questions that you didn't feel comfortable answering for your institutions if they're more than welcome to write to us if they want to provide clarification I'm sorry if at any point you felt put on the spot but similarly if you feel that there's something you would have liked to have said that didn't have the opportunity to then by all means get back in touch and we can continue this as an open dialogue. So thank you very much for joining us and I'll suspend the committee to go into private session. Thank you.